Abomination (22 page)

“Will you shut up about it?” said the fatter of the two men drinking at the table. “It’s all you’ve gone on about all bloody morning!”

“It’s an old wives’ tale anyhow,” said the other. “You do no one any favors spreading it around. Trade around here’s bad enough as it is, and you want to saddle us with ghost stories besides.”

The old man finished the last of his beer and slammed the tankard down sloppily. “You’re none old enough to remember!” he exclaimed, with a wildly gesticulating arm that almost unbalanced him from his stool. “I am! Decade past, entire kingdom was rife
with monsters! Roaming hither and yon, savaging all they came across, man, woman and child.”

“Perhaps once, years ago,” the fat man conceded. “But the Order did away with them. Everybody knows this.”

“Ha!” The old man snorted, punctuating it neatly with a deep, resonant belch. “I’ve seen what those things left behind with my own eyes. Man and beast alike, ripped limb from limb. The same as we’ve seen these past two nights. I saw what happened over at Treacher’s farm, saw it for myself!”

“We all saw it,” said the fat man. “I still say it was a wolf what did for them sheep.”

“Aye, wolves’ve been acting up lately,” offered the other one. “Howling more’n usual and coming down out of the hills at night.”

“A wolf’s clever enough to know what you two don’t,” slurred the old man. “They know when one of them things is hereabouts—they can sense it! As for Treacher’s flock, more’n a hundred head, butchered like that in their pen? No wolf, not a pack of’em, could’ve done all that. Nor what was done to old Hagarth last night! Hewald saw what was left of him early this morn, told me all about it. Torn in two at the middle, like he’d been tied between two plow horses!”

“For crying out loud, Walt.” The fat man grimaced as he put down his ale mug. “Enough.”

“Ach, you’d rather stick your head in the ground until the truth of it’s right in front of you. By then it’ll be too late! I know what this is about, and it’s not no beast that belongs on God’s good earth. It’s a demon, an—”

“Don’t you say it, Walt!” The barkeep pointed a finger at him. “Not under my roof—it’s bad luck!”

“An abomination,” came a voice from the doorway, and all heads turned. There stood Indra, her twin swords securely belted onto her back. The men exchanged looks, uncomfortable.

“Little lady, you’d best be on your way,” said the fat one. “And forget whatever you heard. Folklore’s all it is.”

Little lady
. For a brief moment Indra imagined her hand at the fat man’s throat. The image of it would have to be consolation enough. She had need of these men and what information they might possess. She stepped forward, trying to project an air of confidence and authority—not the easiest of tasks for a woman easily ten years the junior of the youngest man here. She reached into her tunic and produced a silver and gold medallion, holding it out for all to see. It bore an emblem in the shape of a five-pointed star similar to the one carved into the wall behind the bar, embossed with a relief of two swords crossed against the face of the sun, three Latin words engraved below:
Contra Omnia Monstra
.

The four men stared at her for a moment, nonplussed, before finally the barkeep spoke. “You’re one of the Order?” he asked in a hushed tone.

“Yes,” replied Indra, and that was a lie, or at least half of one. Technically she was not yet a paladin, a knight of the Order, but she would be soon enough. The medallion was her father’s; she had taken it without his permission—just borrowing it for a while, she told herself—on the day she left home. She had hoped he would not notice it missing until it was too late to pursue her, and so it had proven. Or perhaps he had in fact finally chosen not to go after her; perhaps he had recognized that her task was already greater than that undertaken by any initiate before and that she would need every advantage.

It had been years since the time such a medallion was known throughout the land, but it still commanded respect. The four men were looking at Indra differently now, albeit with a degree of skepticism.

“But . . . you’re a girl,” said the fat man, mouthing the word
girl
as though it was as good a way of saying invalid or incompetent. Indra flexed her right hand and heard her knuckles crack. This was proving to be a robust exercise in managing her temper. About to say more, the fat man caught the eye of the barkeep, behind Indra, and decided to hold his tongue.

“How old are you?” asked the drunk at the bar, who did not care about causing offense. It was one of the perils of being drunk and one of the privileges of being old.

“I am old enough,” she said without hesitation, and that, too, was a lie—though not by much, she told herself. Though she strove to be a truthful person, her ten months in the wide world had taught her that it was often necessary to embellish or bend the truth to convince people that she should be taken seriously. Through time and repetition, those lies had started to become truths in her own mind. They were a bulwark against her own fears and doubts and from the voice that sometimes visited on restless nights. A voice that sounded much like her father’s, whispering,
You should not have come. You were driven to this not by courage or duty but by anger. You may be trained, but you are not ready. You are a foolish girl on a reckless quest, and you are going to die
.

She motioned to an empty chair at the table where the two men sat. They glanced at each other and shrugged, as good an invitation as she was going to get. She pulled out the chair and sat, noticing as she did so that the beggar who had been seated by the door was now gone.

“Thought the Order was all done with years ago,” said the fat one.

“Few of us remain,” said Indra. “As few abominations remain. But our work is not finished until the last of them has been slain. If one is here, I mean to hunt it and kill it.”

“‘I’?” said the old man. “Where are the rest of you? I remember when the knights of the Order used to come through here, years ago. Always mob-handed, a dozen or more at a time.”

“As I said,” replied Indra, “few of us remain. And what I do, I do best alone.”

More glances were exchanged. “You’ve done this before, then?” asked the fat man. “Hunted these things, and killed them?”

“Yes,” said Indra, and that was the biggest lie of all. The others had been easier to tell; this one did not come out as cleanly, and
she worried that these men would see the brief crack in her facade. But the medallion and her practiced air of confidence had done their work, and now the men leaned in, becoming believers themselves, as though drawn into a compelling campfire story. Still, Indra sensed that some disquiet remained.

“It is not bad luck to speak of these things,” she said. “It is refusing to speak of them, failing to heed these warnings, that leads to misfortune. I need you to tell me everything. Start with exactly what you have seen, and where.”

For more than an hour they spoke and she listened. She learned every detail of the slaughter of the sheep in a farmer’s field two nights ago and of the cattleman who had been so brutally killed on his own land just last night. She produced paper and had one of the men draw a map, as best he could, of the surrounding area and the two farms where the incidents had occurred. It suggested that whatever was committing these atrocities was moving in this direction. All three men ordered another drink when Indra made that observation. The barkeep poured one for himself.

She also learned of other things: strange behavior among the local dogs and other animals for the past several days, cowering and yelping and barking at things unseen; a god-awful screeching late at night that echoed across the countryside, waking children in their beds; and mutilated trees, their trunks scratched and scored deeply all around in ways that suggested someone or something had attacked them in a violent frenzy.

From her training, Indra knew that the first two omens were common signs of an abomination, and she had heard the screeching herself just last night. But the third sign puzzled her. She knew not why an abomination might attack or damage a tree and had certainly never heard of any such cases. Perhaps an animal fleeing from the beast had, in a panic, tried to claw its way upward
to safety? Even then, odd that it should happen in more than one place.

Still, though there were small anomalies, things that did not yet make sense to her, she knew that she was closer now to an abomination than she ever had been. For it was an abomination that had done these terrible things, she was sure of that, and its path was bringing it closer still. All that remained was for her to stalk it to close quarters and kill it.

From the demeanor of the men around her, it was clear they were in a greater state of unease than when she had found them—shaken by her warning that an abomination was near and not in the least reassured by her promise to vanquish it. That was all right, she told herself; they were not the first to underestimate her, and they would not be the last. That honor would fall to this beast, when she found it.

You are not ready
.

She felt her heart beginning to thump harder and knew what that meant. Hurriedly, and with hands that had begun to tremble, she folded away the map that had been drawn for her and stood, thanking the men for their cooperation.

You didn’t expect to be this afraid, did you? Now that it’s close. Now that it’s real
.

It was becoming more difficult to take a breath, each one shallower than the last. She quickened her step as she made her way to the door. Yet though her mind was reeling, as she passed the table where the beggar had sat, she noticed that the ale in his mug was still full to the brim, untouched.

Return home, while you still can. There will be no shame in it. Better to admit to your father that he was right than make him grieve for you after this beast tears you limb from limb
.

Dizzy now, she found her way to the doorway, and stumbled over the threshold into the open air. She steadied herself against the wall and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself and focus on her breathing. These sudden onsets of anxiety, the tightness in her
chest and shortness of breath that made her feel as though she were drowning on dry land, came without warning, and at the most inopportune moments. But she had learned to better withstand them by turning her mind inward and telling herself, over and over, that the episode would soon pass. They always did, though some lasted longer than others.

The panic now began to subside. Her mind was quiet once more, her heart no longer a great drum pounding in her chest. She regained her breath and took a long, deep gulp of cold air, grateful for it and for the spattering of raindrops on her face. The raw touch of nature always calmed her, brought her back to earth.

Then she steeled herself once more. She would not allow her own fears or doubts to defeat her. Perhaps this beast she sought would. She was not so arrogant or naive as to deny that possibility. But first she would stand and face it with weapons drawn and fire in her eyes. And it would know why she had come.

She reached for her staff, which she had left propped by the door, and turned to head out, thinking of how best to prepare for the night’s hunt, when she recognized the hooded beggar across the road, once again at the blacksmith’s stall. He appeared to be in something of a hurry as he hoisted a great length of heavy iron chain up onto his shoulder, preparing, it seemed, to carry it away.

She stood and watched him a moment, her curiosity pulled in several directions at once. She had encountered many vagrants and vagabonds in her time, but none that had ever appeared to be in any kind of rush, nor any that would leave behind a free mug of ale. Why had he left so abruptly, without so much as touching his drink?

And that was to say nothing of the chain, which the man was inspecting carefully while wrapping the last of it around his waist and over his shoulder. How he could even carry such a load was a mystery all its own. While there was surely an explanation, for now the queer picture he posed was like a puzzle with a missing piece.
The kind of thing that had infuriated her as a child, and infuriated her still.

She was contemplating whether her small act of generosity in the tavern had earned her the right to ask the man a question or two, and was halfway to yes, when she saw three men, new arrivals, who seemed to recognize the hooded man and were talking animatedly among themselves as they approached him. Perhaps their exchange would satisfy her curiosity, which otherwise would gnaw at her for the rest of the day

The blacksmith seemed to take offense at Wulfric’s so-careful inspection. “That chain’s stronger now than it ever was,” he said, stabbing his finger at the point where he had joined the two pieces into one. “That’s better work than you paid for, I’ll tell you that.”

Wulfric nodded; it was good work. Whether it was good enough, the night would soon tell, but not before he was far away from here. Being anywhere near a town was danger at the best of times, but having someone from the Order arrive and stir up suspicion was enough to make him hurry the smith along and leave all the quicker. There were still a few hours until sunset, and he would need that time to—