In The Shadow Of The Beast (31 page)

‘
Only the All-mother knows
where he first laid eyes on her,’ continued Bael. ‘Perhaps he
caught a glimpse of her lilly white skin as she bathed in a stream.
You know these fancy court harlots are inclined to such lewd
behaviours. Nevertheless, he saw something he wanted and took what
pleased him. I do often wonder if it pleased her, to be ravaged at
the hands of one of us. It certainly didn’t please your uncle, The
Baron. When he caught your father he had him strung up and flayed
for the indiscretion. And so began the systematic purging of all
known wulfen communities in the land of Atos and beyond. We were
forced to flee, as we always have done. We traveled over the
Ash’harad and made our home here in the Eastern Fringes where no
human would dare step foot. Entire communities were reduced to less
than ash at the command of your uncle, and all because of your
father. So preoccupied with taking vile liberties with some human
wench that he would bring down unthinkable wrath and slaughter upon
his people....and now my father, in his infinite wisdom, would have
that man’s bastard step into his place as the leader of our
tribe!’

Sigourdcouls stand it no longer. He lashed
out at Bael, made to drive his fist into the other man’s leering
face for daring to heap such disrespect upon his mother’s name.

Moving so quickly he was but a blur, Bael
smote Sigourd to the floor of the chamber with a thunderous blow.
Dazed, Sigourd struggled to stand. Bael loomed over him, the shadow
across his eyes, his leering sneer glinting in the light of the
orbs.

‘
But fear not cousin,’ said
Bael, ‘when events here have run their course, I will enact a
terrible revenge upon those who have wronged us. Sacrifices will
have to be made. The spark to ignite the fire of revolution will be
struck here. Do not fear death, it is but a small
step--’

‘
--in the direction of the
greater good,’ finished Sigourd, as the realization slammed into
him like a blow from a war hammer. ‘It was you. You killed
Cal....,’ he breathed in horrified recognition.

Bael’s only response was to sneer more
broadly still, rows of razor sharp teeth splitting his face giving
him the aspect of some grinning skull.

From within his cloak, Bael slowly drew a
wicked looking blade that curved to a lethal point. He stalked
towards the prone Sigourd, stalked him like the reaper.

Suddenly, there was a sound like the skies
splitting and everything began to shake violently as if the earth
itself was heaving to. Bael staggered, and Sigourd was thrown once
more to the floor as the thunderous peel continued, followed
moments later by another and another.

Sigourd recognized this for what it was
almost instantly. He had already lived through it once before, the
same as at the palace in Corrinth Vardis, when the weapons stores
had been lit. Someone was using gunpowder on the giant trees of the
village, using explosive charges to cleave through the mighty red
trees of the wulfen dwelling, shattering their huge trunks like
they were the flimsiest tinder.

From somewhere close by Sigourd heard
screaming, blurred by the thrumming vibration that seemed to
radiate through the very air he breathed. When he looked up, Bael
had disappeared into the darkness from whence he had come.

The explosive detonations lit up the silver
grey of morning like star bursts. The resultant compression of
their detonation shook the surrounding trees and blew the leaves
off their branches in great flurries of shredded foliage. The
surrounding pods rattled and shook as their attachments sheared and
split in the wake of the blasts.

As for the trees to which the explosives had
been attached, their great bulk was splintered as the fuses burned
down to the charges and great blooms of destructive energy ripped
into them.

Some of the great trees were only partially
crippled by the charges, defying the terrible death that had been
cast upon them, refusing to fall. At least initially.

Other great reds were entirely bisected by
the explosions, their mid sections blown to matchwood, they toppled
with such majestic grace, bringing down those strange pods attached
to them and crashing into yet others as they made their stately and
inexorable descent.

All of it came thundering to the earth like
an avalanche. The pods shattered upon impacting the ground like old
wooden crates falling heavily from the back of a trader’s wagon,
spilling their contents of burning, flailing bodies across the
forest floor. Flames and strange gasses blew out of some of the
pods, and all around came the sound of thunder as the echoing noise
of the explosions found itself trapped inside the valley.
Rebounding off the surrounding mountain ranges, that thunder rolled
ponderously back toward the village to hang in the air like the
booming of angry volcanoes.

Huron looked upon the destruction wrought by
the Baratiis gunpowder smiths. They had stolen into the strange
village under cover of darkness and laid the charges while the main
body of the assault force had secured positions around the
perimeter. They had waited for this, the moment the quiet dawn
would be rent by the terrible explosions and the village would be
thrown into chaos.

The nightmare knight had seen things both
wondrous and terrible in all his many campaigns. But what he saw
before him on the breaking of this new day must surely be counted
among the most wondrous and terrible of them all.

He looked on as the villagers rushed from
the surviving pods. They streamed from their ruined homes in
disarray, shouting and screaming. Some ran to the assistance of
their fellows who had been caught in the initial blasts, flash
burned by the intense heat or else crushed under the tonnage of
splintered wood. Women and children wept in terror and their
menfolk shouted above the tumult of the crashing trees in an
attempt to organize themselves.

Huron was allowed a brief moment to see the
effect such destruction had on the humors of the Baratiis. Their
faces danced and glowed with a fiendish pallor in the light of the
flames, a mad gleam of blood lust in their eyes. He caught the eye
of the watch commander, who looked to him expectantly, awaiting the
signal to attack. Huron dipped his head once in assent, and with a
bestial snarl the commander drew his blade, followed a moment later
by the blades of the assault force. Their weapons came free with
the collective metallic sigh of steel being drawn across steel.
With an ear splitting bellow of rage, the mounted killers of the
Baratiis 75th broke from cover, and fell upon the ruined
village.

Sigourd rushed through the chambers of the
pod as the vibrations that resounded throughout intensified. He and
two other wulfen males whom had chanced upon him continued
searching in desperation for any means to escape the structure
before the inevitable happened.

The vibrations of the massive pod were an
indicator that the explosives had done their job only too well. The
trunk of the massive tree had been compromised and it would not
hold. Shuddering under the weight of its own immense bulk bearing
down on a now shattered base, the entire thing was likely to give
way and collapse to the floor of the forest with earth shattering
finality. Anything inside would be pulverized to dust, or else
reduced to a fine red slurry.

One of the males, a stoic figure named
Toric, had been introduced to Sigourd during the celebrations. The
other male he had also been introduced to, but could not now for
the life of him remember the fellow’s name. For some reason, it
seemed important to Sigourd that he should. Even as he was running
pell mell for his life he felt that in sharing a danger with this
man he should at least have the decency to know his name. But
Sigourd would never get the chance to ask him for it, for the
nameless wulfen was the first to die.

Toric suggested they take a tunnel which
would lead to the upper reaches of the great pod. From there he
said they would be able to clamber through the interwoven branches
of the huge trees into a part of the canopy that wasn’t ablaze, and
hopefully work their way down to the ground.

As they ran, it became apparent to Sigourd
that the terrible screaming was not coming from within the walls of
the pod, or even from outside. The very structure itself was
screaming as it burned. Sigourd was horrified at the realization
that the bone like substance that wove in and around the trees,
that comprised the pods and the structure of the village, must
indeed be a living entity in its own right.

Just like it had when the stores at the
palace had burned, thick oily smoke, this time heavy with the
sickly scent of burned pine and cinnamon, coiled up into the
darkened space of the screaming pod as the trio ran.

Without warning the west facing wall of the
pod sheared away with a sound like a cannonade unleashed. One
moment the wall was there and the next it simply wasn’t, flensed
away in the blink of an eye by a neighboring tree that had crashed
through the canopy, falling across the side of the pod and
virtually bisecting the sphere, leaving it open to the breaking
dawn. The nameless wulfen had likewise disappeared.

Cool fresh air rushed in to fill the sudden
clearance as the black smoke was released, dissipating almost as
quickly as the wall had disappeared. Sigourd could not believe his
eyes. The path of the falling tree had cleaved through the great
pod merely feet from him. Had he been standing a meter to his left
he would have been smote out of this reality just like the wulfen
had been.

He looked behind him to see that Toric was
stunned to near insensibility by the brutal intensity of the
destruction and the death of their fellow escapee.

‘
We must keep moving!’
urged Sigourd. He grabbed at Toric, pulling him away from the
shredded edge of the opening before them and out of his stupor.
They hadn’t even moved another meter when there was another
concussive bang, followed by a wave of overpressure that flattened
both men.

The remainder of the floor beneath Toric
gave way as the pod lurched mightily, throwing him into a great
rent that opened up like the mouth of hell.

Without thinking Sigourd dived at the edge
of that temporary crevasse, his hand shot out to grip the wrist of
Toric who slipped over the lip of the rent and toward his doom.

Sigourd’s hand closed around Toric’s, both
men struggling with the immense effort of keeping the larger wulfen
from falling into the murderous flames that roiled beneath him.
Toric’s legs dangled uselessly over the precipice, and he looked up
at Sigourd with solemn understanding in his eyes.

‘
Hold on to me,’ shouted
Sigourd, desperation edging his voice. He began to pull, but had
barely the purchase with his free hand to keep himself from going
over the edge.

Toric spoke then, his voice calm and
reassuring, ‘It is my time young lord. I accept this with the grace
of the All-mother.’

‘
All-mother be damned!’
cried Sigourd, ‘get your other hand around mine.’

Toric looked at Sigourd then, their eyes
meeting in a moment of serenity within the madness of the raging
storm fire around them. ‘You are the one who will heal the wounds
in the hearts of both our peoples,’ said Toric, ‘and I am content
to lay down my life for you and for the good of all.’ Sigourd’s
eyes went wide in horror as Toric relaxed and his hand and slipped
from Sigourd’s grip. He disappeared into the roiling smoke and fire
of the hellscape beneath without uttering a single sound.

Sigourd lay there, stunned at the sacrifice
he had just witnessed. It spoke not only of great personal bravery
on the part of Toric of the wulfen, but of the depth of belief
these people held in the hope Sigourd represented.

As the remainder of the pod shook to pieces
around him, Sigourd pulled himself to his feet, a bitter oath upon
his lips. He vowed that he would survive, and that he would see
through to the very end this madness. He would see it out in the
name of those that had sacrificed their lives to bring about his
emergence.

Sigourd looked to the great tear in the side
of the pod and the scene beyond. The rest of the forest canopy lay
just beyond the screaming skin of the pod. It was open to him if
only he could jump far enough to reach it.

The floor beneath Sigourd lurched again, and
he had to brace against a strut of the bone tissue to keep his
balance. Tongues of ravenous fire were reaching up to him from the
lower levels of the pod, the heat from the roasting structure was
intense, and that sickly scent of burnt pine and cinnamon rose
cloyingly to stifle Sigourd’s breathing. He pushed off from the
wall as hard as he was able, sprinting towards the massive tear in
the wall as another concussive bang clobbered him and the floor
beneath his feet began to drop away. Sigourd leapt.

Isolde’s heart was racing, thundering so
fast she thought it might burst from her breast and dance upon the
floor. She had never been so terrified in all her life. Woken from
a deep sleep by the terrible explosions, she had been consumed with
a wave of panic to see that Sigourd did not lie next to her. She
rushed from her chambers to the great central pod, her jaw falling
open in disbelief when she had lain eyes on the flaming ruin that
her home had become. The central pod, where only hours before their
community had danced and sang and reveled in the joy of their new
found hope, was now a blazing pile of slag which lay shattered upon
the forest floor a hundred feet below her. All around the great
reds of the forest were ablaze, the fierce heat causing her to step
back, an arm raised to shield her face.

Attack, they were under attack! How was this
possible, they had always been so careful to watch the passes and
cover their own tracks.