In The Shadow Of The Beast

by Harlan H Howard

  Sigourd pushed himself from the ground, springing to his feet with an agility he could never hope to possess as a human. Looming before him, thick and dark, his savage maw dripping with heavy saliva and rich blood, Bael was an intimidating prospect. His long arms were thickly bound with solid slabs of muscle beneath the shaggy hair, and his broad shoulders were set upon a barrel chest that heaved almightily with savage breath. At Sigourds estimate, he was outweighed by some twenty or thirty pounds, and overtopped by several inches.

  For his own part, Sigourd could feel the strength and vibrancy of his own body. The Change, though agonizing, was also an overpoweringly heady experience. Every sensation, every breath was nuanced in a way that he had only had glimpses of before. All of the moments that Sigourd had experienced previous to this, all of the flutters of insight he’d perceived without ever understanding what they were, felt as nothing to the heights of sensation he was living now.

  In the clearing in the forest under the light of the full moon, his first experience of The Change had been unexpected. More than that it had been unwanted, forced upon him. He had been caught in its grips like the proverbial fly in the web, powerless to resist as the essence of the wulfen surged to remake his form, warping his humanity out of him. It had been agony.

  But this time, as he and Isolde and Jonn Grumble had drifted above the clouds upon the back of the dragon, he had embraced his other self. Once more under the brilliance of the full moon, Sigourd had willingly accepted his metamorphosis. Not merely as a necessity of saving his family, although that was the reason he’d convinced himself of, there was a part of him that wanted The Change. A part of him that craved it.

  There was a moment between Sigourd and Bael as their eyes met. They were cousins, bonded by the blood of their fathers, but there was nothing in all of creation that would stop them from attempting to destroy each other.

  Sigourd could see the smoldering hate, boundless and unchecked beneath Bael’s mesmerizing, black gaze. The young lord was gripped suddenly by the great and tragic irony of their situation. Here he was, forced into confrontation with one family so that he might save another. Then an image came into the mind of Sigourd, flashing across his consciousness like lightning flickering behind distant clouds. It was the memory of Cal’s quick and bloody death at the hands of the creature that now stood glowering before him.

  Sigourd launched himself at Bael. He was met head on by his cousin, who pounced in the same instant. They collided with the penetrating slap of meat hitting the butcher’s block. A snarling mass of ripping talons and fangs, tearing into each other with abandon. The battle was fierce as each one sliced into the other with razor claws that struck sparks from the stone floor and bloody gouges in their opponents flesh. Spittle flew from fanged maws that snapped at throats, flashing grinning teeth that held the promise of sudden and violent death. They moved so quickly that their fighting became a blur as both turned and slashed, blocked and countered in a relentless whirlwind of biting, tearing fury that did not let up for a single moment.

  All the while the remaining wulfen stood silently by, observing the contest without any inclination of preference for either their leader or the White Wulf. Nartaba lingered at the head of their number. His eyes were alight with keen interest, but otherwise he made not a single movement or sound.

  Blood was flowing freely from fresh wounds torn in the sides of both combatants. It stood out especially stark against Sigourd’s white coat, like scarlet chevrons of office, fiercely emblazoned upon his person.

  Every blow, every fresh new wound inflicted upon her son gave Veronique cause to hold a breath. Every time Sigourd stumbled under the the onslaught of the brute before him, Isolde felt her heart skip a beat. Sigourd was fast and strong, but he lacked the ferocity and sheer power of the other creature. To every spectator in the room it seemed that despite his strength and agility Sigourd had met his end.

  Until he seized the advantage. Ducking under slashing talons, Sigourd slipped inside his opponents guard, just as he had been taught to do on the sword mats under the watchful eye of his tutors. He pulled Bael on top of him, kicking his feet up into his opponents midsection and using the larger wulfen’s forward momentum to propel him head over heels across the chamber. Bael landed with a sickening crack upon his skull near the foot of the dais, next to the bisected remains of the fallen Baron. Momentarily stunned by the impact, his head lolled and his eyes rolled as he struggled to stand.

  Sigourd saw his opening and leapt. He cleared that distance in a single murderous pounce that carried him halfway across the great chamber, talons outstretched, his dripping, fanged maw gaping wide to clamp fast upon the neck of his fallen adversary.

  As the young lord landed, there was a sound like the cold steel of a meat hook being driven through a fresh cut. Sigourd seemed to be rooted to the spot, his attack frozen at the decisive moment with Bael poised beneath him, a look of triumph burning in his dark eyes.

  Sigourd staggered back apace. When he turned so that those on the dais could see clearly what had happened, Veronique and Isolde cried out in the same moment, anguish breaking their voices and their hearts.

  In Bael’s outstretched hand, he clutched Mortaron’s fallen blade. The wicked steel transfixed Sigourd through his left flank, penetrating deeply enough so that the gleaming tip of the sword was visible amongst the shaggy white fur of his back. A stain of dark blood bloomed rapidly across the winter white of Sigourd’s torso. The heir to the throne of Corrinth Vardis staggered again as Bael pushed himself off the stone floor, driving the blade deeper and forcing Sigourd to his knees.

  As Sigourd looked down at his blood dripping from the length of steel protruding from him, he marveled at how odd the ornate weapon looked clutched in the rough, taloned hands of a creature like himself.

  Standing over his enemy, Bael was exultant in this reversal of fortunes. He dropped to a crouch over his fallen prey, savoring these precious last moments. Bael reached out slowly with his taloned hand, clutching a handful of Sigourd’s hair and jerking his head back to expose the young lord’s throat. Once more, the dark, wet meat of Bael’s lips peeled back to reveal that rictus grin of dagger sharp incisors. His jaw yawned slowly open, impossibly wide, and he threw back his head to dive upon Sigourd and tear out his throat.

  There was a click, snick an instant before Bael’s mantrap of a mouth could clamp around Sigourd’s neck as the prince punched his fist up into the soft meat under his cousin’s exposed chin. This time it was Bael who seemed to be frozen in place, his mouth pinned open, his eyes betraying deep surprise.

  Sigourd jerked his fist back, sliding free with a wet sucking the long, curved blade that had been spring loaded into the polished vambrace upon his wrist.

  The puncture wound in Bael’s throat welled and glugged with dark blood. His shoulders sagged as he slumped backwards, clutching at his neck. The blood flowed unendingly, like spilled wine, cascading down his chest and stomach to pool beneath him. The polished mirror surface of that blood grew ever larger across the cold floor even as Sigourd dove upon Bael, driving his own dagger sharp bite deep into his wayward cousin’s neck. There was a noise like the tearing of meat from bone as the White Wulf suddenly wrenched his head up, ripping free the grisly flesh and cartilage of his cousins throat.

  Bael, his black eyes bulging in surprise, dropped dead to the floor of the throne room. Sigourd threw back his head and howled triumphantly, shattering the silence that had descended upon the throne room, the sound caught like an ethereal thing in the great empty spaces of the high roof.

  First Nartaba and then the other wulfen in the camber joined Sigourd in chorus, their voices coming together in one long ululating, primal cry.

  As the cry died down, Sigourd looked to the remaining wulfen, and a mutual understanding seemed to pass between them in silence. They stepped back a pace to allow Sigourd to pass through their number so that he might climb the steps of the dais to where his mother knelt. Sigourd, The White Wulf,
crouched before Veronique. She reached up to tenderly stroke his scarred face as Isolde and Jonn Grumble looked on uncertainly.

  ‘My beautiful boy...’ said Veronique, as she marveled at her sons miraculous new form.

  Tears welled in her eyes, and she spoke once more, her voice a whisper for her son alone.

  ‘I have failed you, Sigourd. Failed you because I was to cowardly to come forward with the truth as I should have.’

  Her hands brushed the side of Sigourd’s face, and again there was a flash in his minds eye. Just as when he had witnessed the nightmare vision of a future where there was only unending war, Sigourd was propelled through time and space, traveling lifetimes in the beat of a heart. But this time, hetraveled backwards. He saw events through his mothers eyes, as they had been before his birth.

  A young man, perhaps a little older than Sigourd, and bearing a startling likeness to him. His handsome face is smiling as he lays with Veronique who is herself only recently risen to full womanhood. Their laughter is full, carefree.

  They make love amongst crumpled sheets in the dim, soft light of flickering candles. Beyond those candles the pale light of a full moon falls through tall windows.

  The face of the young man begins to shift as he writhes in ecstasy, his brow thickens, his canines lengthen as his jaw begins to slide forward into the distinctive snout of the wulfen. It is The Change.

  The vision shifts, melting and coalescing to take the form of a serving girl standing in a doorway. The girl is screaming, screaming so loud! She is pushed aside by a guardsman resplendent in the colors of House Mortaron. The guardsman and the young wulfen engage in battle, steel against talon.

  Ere long the image fades to that of...The Baron Mortaron, standing before Veronique who sits weeping in her brother’s study chambers. The Baron speaks; ‘The creature that attacked you is dead!’ Mortaron’s tone is stern, without pity or compassion.

  The image shifts once more, Veronique stands upon a cliff top overlooking a dark sea. She weeps still, her eyes red with tears that will not stop, and after only a few moments she throws herself from the cliff, the calm surface of the sea rushing up to meet her. She speeds toward the water, closer and closer until....

  Veronique awakes in her bed. Her brother stands before her, his expression as dark as the nameless sea she had flung herself into. Beside him is a meek little man, twitching nervously in the presence of his liege lord. His voice is reedy and thin, ‘She will live lord. As will the baby in her womb.’

  Mortaron’s face twists with undisguised disgust. He bids the little man keep his silence before dismissing him. Alone with his sister, The Baron steps forward and leans close so that he might whisper in her ear, ‘Your wedding to The Regent will go ahead as I have decreed. You will say nothing of your encounter with the beast, or of the child growing in your belly...’

  Sigourd is wrenched back to the present as the vision dissolves before him. He was kneeling once more upon the dais, staring into the watery, red eyes of his mother. Her face still twisted in anguish, ‘I allowed the death of your true father,’ she said, the tears falling afresh from her eyes. ‘I did not speak up in defense of the man I loved for fear of judgement. I did not confess to The Regent the origins of a son that was never truly his. I obeyed my brother because I was weak, and I have lived with the shame ever since.’

  Sigourd had no words of comfort to ease his mothers suffering. Rather than hate her for all of her failings, he found that his heart was breaking for her. To imagine his mother suffering alone under the weight of all these terrible troubles for all these many years caused him more sadness than he could have thought possible. His instinct was to hold her close despite all of the wrongs she had confessed to, and that is what he did as she wept into his arms.

  Sigourd was still holding his weeping mother when the heavy oak doors of the throne room were ripped from their hinges in a blinding flash and a deafening thunderclap of an explosion.

  The force of the detonation shredded several of the wulfen who had been standing too close to the doors. They came apart in a puff of superheated blood and viscera as the unbridled energy of the blast ripped into them. It laid the rest on their backs, their ears and noses bleeding from the shockwave. Isolde and Jonn Grumble were likewise flattened, stunned into insensibility. Saved only by virtue of the distance between the dais and the grand entrance to the chamber.

  Sigourd instinctively covered his mother, his size and bulk providing barely enough counter balance to the blast to keep them both upright while simultaneously shielding Veronique from the worst of it.

  Sigourd was peppered with fragments oak and stone, many of those burying themselves in the thick meat of his back and arms. From the depths of the billowing black smoke that filled the great entrance, streamed a sight both wondrous and terrifying.

  The soldiers of The Regent, their colors of claret and gold muddied and bloodied from intense combat, poured into the chamber. Galloping into the throne room at the vanguard of his forces was The Regent himself, sitting atop his magnificent steed, his armor riven and buckled he held an ornate hand pistol of most intricate design in one hand, and swung a tri star mace with the other.

  Even as he stormed the chamber, The Regent Fellhammer had already found and sighted the target upon which he would unload the single lead shot of his deadly musket. The most compelling threat in the chamber was that of the hulking white monster leering over his terrified wife, and the beast could not be permitted leave to continue to draw breath.

  Sigourd saw the look of determination in his foster father’s eyes, and before he even had time to react there was a flash, pop as the weapon in The Regent’s gauntleted hand discharged.

  In that moment there were no sudden gifts of insight to save Sigourd. No more moments of pure clarity where he shared a primordial link with the All-mother. There was only the beat of a hummingbird’s wing between the musket ball leaving the weapon’s breach and the projectile finding its target. For Sigourd, that one moment was frozen in time, immediately preserved in the amber of eternity. His life was at an end.

  Suddenly, Veronique was there before him. She had thrown herself across her son to shield him from the lethal musket round. That lead round cracked into her back, and even as her son reached to hold her, Veronique was falling.

  Sigourd caught his mother, a howl of bewildered horror escaping from him. He lowered her as gently as her could to the floor of the chamber, his eyes searching her face imploringly for a sign that she might transcend death and survive the shot.

  The Regent, aghast at what had occurred, threw the antique pistol to the ground as if it were cursed. He swung himself down from the saddle of his horse to rush to his beloved wife’s side.

  Kneeling there beside her, The Regent took Veronique in his arms and held her close as the life ebbed out of her.

  ‘My love,’ he exclaimed in anguish, ‘what have I done!?’

  Veronique had not the strength to talk, instead taking her husbands hand, she squeezed it once, reassuringly, before placing it between Sigourd’s bloody talons. So taken with grief The Regent at first barely registered the creature beside him, The White Wulf, his once pristine coat awash with the blood of battle.

  When The Regent finally looked up, he was stunned to see that in place of the monster he had tried to lay low with musket and gunpowder, there now knelt his son. The impetuous young man whom he had always known, whom he had raised from birth. In whom he had instilled the noble virtues of his lineage, was before his father once more. The Regent could scarcely believe his eyes.

  Sigourd placed a comforting hand upon The Regents shoulder, ‘I will explain all in time, father,’ he said, before turning once more to his mother.

  Veronique struggled to fix tearful eyes upon her son, ‘Follow your heart, Sigourd,’ were her final words, and with that whisper the life passed from her.

  In death her features were gaunt and hollow, but there was the faintest hint of a smile upon her lips, as of someone w
ho knows the joyous release of final redemption.

  The Regent fell forward, sobbing into the breast of his departed love. Isolde and Jonn Grumble moved to stand beside Sigourd, who looked up to cast his eyes upon the great throne on the dais. It was bathed in the light of the morning sun as it lanced down through the great shattered window high above them. A new dawn was breaking.

  – THE END –

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Harlan was born into a decidedly middle class family and raised amongst the leafy suburbs of South West London. From an early age he was an avid sci-fi and fantasy enthusiast, collecting comics and reading voraciously whatever fiction he could.

  He later went on to study theatre at the University of Plymouth, before deciding that he’d rather try his hand at film making, at which time he jumped to The Surrey Institute to study on their prestigious film course. Harlan lasted precisely three months before dropping out to pursue a career as a professional wrestler. For the next ten years he traveled the world wrestling all comers before settling in Los Angeles to focus on a burgeoning acting and writing career.

  He now resides once more amongst those leafy South West London suburbs, drinking copious amounts of Earl Grey tea, while pondering his next literary jaunt...