In The Shadow Of The Beast (37 page)

Sigourd saw Jonn Grumble curse in disbelief,
but the wild man’s words were lost amongst the deafening sound of
the falls and the shrieking of the dragon. And then the waters
dropped away beneath them, and they cleared the rim of the great
falls.

But they did not fall. At least, they did
not drop like a stone into the maelstrom below.

The dragon boat tucked its head and dived
through the impenetrable wall of spray. It dived so fast and so
steep that Sigourd felt sure they would crash into the waters
below. The dragon plummeted hundreds of meters in a matter of
instants, such was its furious velocity. They were only meters from
the raging surface of the river when the dragon turned its head and
swept them up into a sharp climb, snapping the trio back in their
seats and plucking them from death’s grasp in the blink of an
eye.

CHAPTER 20

Full moon...

Crowds of peasants and day workers who had
spent their time laboring in the fields outside of Corrinth Vardis
now filed back into the city through the great archway of the main
gate. They talked and sang and laughed and grumbled about the days
events as they filed back to their homes under the watchful eye of
the city constabulary.

In the absence of The Regent and his
fighting men, the defense of the city now lay in a skeleton force
of two hundred and fifty men at arms, plus another two hundred of
The Baron’s own Baratiis 75th, including the company of men that
had returned with Huron from their recent foray into the Eastern
Fringes.

It had been a long held belief that the city
of Corrinth Vardis was largely impenetrable, and could be held for
an indefinite period against any foe with naught more than a
hundred men to man its defenses, such was the ingenuity of its
design.

Of course, this may have been mere hyperbole
on the part of those who sought to sing the praises of their city’s
elaborate protection. But certainly, Corrinth Vardis had come under
siege several dozen times in the course of its long history, and
each time had withstood magnificently any attempts to breach its
walls by an invading army.

Of course, the premise of the defenses was
that the assault came from the outside, with massed men and
machines laying futile siege to the city from beyond the great
walls that ringed the interior. No one had ever considered the
possibility that the assault would come from within, spreading like
an infection spreads through a living host to bring it low from the
inside out.

Scattered amongst the hundreds of workers
and peasants returning from a hard days toiling in the fields,
there were those who did not talk and laugh and joke with their
supposed fellows. They kept their own quiet council, and turned
their faces away from the casual scrutiny of the constabulary as
they passed beneath the great arch and into the city proper. They
carried pitch forks and trowels and spades, and wore the garments
of those workers they’d quietly killed out of sight of the rest of
their fellows. Under their stolen garments of rags and desiccated
cloth they carried their real tools. Knives and blades and garrote
wires for the business of quiet murder. After entering the city
they disappeared into the thronging crowds and gathering darkness
as high above a full moon rose to its zenith in the darkening
sky.

Those subversives waited
patiently for the traffic into the city to abate. They waited for
the mighty portcullis of the main gate to slide down heavily into
place, clanking shut with a resonant
clang.
They waited patiently for the
constabulary manning that great entranceway to relax into laughing
and horseplay of their own. Lighting up pipes of heady, aromatic
tobacco and talking animatedly of the crude antics of the more
adventurous whores working the city’s taverns and brothels. They
waited for the full moon to ascend to its position of
transmutational prominence in the night sky. Only then did they
make their move.

Drawing blades and unwinding garrote wires
they stalked the unsuspecting constabulary, falling upon the
hapless guardsmen, who choked and bled out under cover of the
enfolding night. Their blood, flowing darkly, glittered like
quicksilver in the light of the ascendant moon.

Once the slaying of the watchers of the main
gate had been accomplished, and no other remained alive who might
raise an alarm, those who had posed as the city’s peasantry moved
to open once more the heavy portcullis. They pulled at the archaic
leavers, activating heavy chains as thick as a man’s leg which
clanked and clattered loudly as the gate rose again to disappear
into the meters thick walls of the great arch.

Waiting in the darkness beyond the gateway,
trans-human horrors poured into the city. Bael and his hundreds of
wulfen brethren. Nearly five hundred of them, fully transformed
into snarling beasts of shaggy fur and razor fangs stormed through
the gateway, howling at the moon, exultant at the prospect of
shedding so much human blood for their cause.

Death had come to Corrinth Vardis, and it
fell upon the inhabitants of the city. Soon, the howling of the
wulfen was joined in chorus by the screams of the dying.

Veronique staggered down the corridor. She
could barely lift her feet so heavy was the burden of grief that
rested upon her.

Sigourd was dead. Her son, her beautiful son
was gone forever. She would never again have the chance of holding
him in her arms. Of seeing him laugh or cry or sit proudly in the
saddle before riding out to hunt. She would never again get to see
him nervously pushing his breakfast around the plate on the morning
of a joust or tournament. He had always hated the pretense of the
affairs of state, mused Veronique with an almost smile upon her
lips. That smile faded quickly when the reality of her loss washed
over her once more.

Veronique was numb. She could barely feel
her limbs let alone the excruciating pain of the anguish she knew
she ought to be feeling at this moment. But the pain was
coming.

The full horror of the nightmare knight’s
revelation and the fact of her husbands betrayal, very likely to
his death, had yet to descend upon her. She knew that when that
time came the agony of loss would break upon her heart like waves
upon the shore. It would submerge her, and suffocate her. There
would be nothing left of the woman she was when the tides of
torment finally receded. If they ever did.

Huron marched beside her,
the sharp,
clack, clack
of his heavy footsteps echoing along the corridors
length. Rhythmic, monotonous. A metronome beat to mark the rising
pressure in Veronique’s heart.

The knight had said nothing since being
ordered by The Baron to escort the Lady Veronique to the cells in
the bowels of the castle. Such a thought filled Huron with a
feeling of utter disgust. To picture such a one as the Lady
imprisoned in those dank chambers was beyond abominable. He wanted
to reach out to the woman who shuffled along before him. He wanted
to hold her and comfort her, although he realized that the action
was totally unfamiliar to him. He had never in all his life so much
as entertained a polite conversation with such a woman as she, let
alone divulged the depths of his own great turmoil in the face of
her presumed heartbreak.

Unconsciously, he clenched and unclenched
his armored fists in frustration. Huron sought to release his
aggressions through the only means he knew. Violent action.

‘
I regret the...death of
the young lord,’ the words came from Huron’s mouth unbidden. He
almost surprised himself by lending voice to the desperate thoughts
in his head.

Veronique made no indication that she had
registered the knight’s attempt at communication. Huron wondered if
she’d even heard him at all. He he could not help himself, he was
compelled.

‘
My lady,’ he began again,
‘I regret...’

He paused mid sentence as Veronique stopped
suddenly before him. She turned slowly to regard the knight from
behind eyes shot red with tears. Her face was an impassive and
hollow thing in the dim candle light of the corridor. She appeared
more wraith than woman, her fine features sunken and hollowed out
as if all the life essence had been leeched from her.

‘
You regret...?’ she
whispered. It was more accusation than question.

For a moment, the knight stood non plussed.
For the first time in his life he was rooted to the spot by
inaction. Confronted with the stark and depthless sorrow in her
eyes, Huron found himself unable to formulate any more meaningful
response that the weak platitudes he’d thought to attempt.

Veronique lunched herself at him. It was so
sudden that she caught the knight off guard as he stood there in a
stupor, managing to get close enough to beat her delicate fists
upon his armor, and scratch great red weals along the side of his
bearded face before Huron brought his hands up to shied
himself.

Veronique screamed and wailed, unleashing
all of the torment that had lain coiled within her in a blaze of
incandescent rage. The wave had finally broken upon the shore, and
she allowed herself to be swept up in it. Her hate and pain and
guilt came gushing out of her in a torrent, and she directed it all
upon the nightmare knight.

Huron, more fearful that she might damage
herself than him, swept her up in his arms, pulling Veronique close
so that all she could do was struggle futilely against his great,
armored strength.

After many moments she relented, having
burned out the blazing fire of her hatred she collapsed into his
embrace, totally spent by by the hurricane of her emotions. She
sobbed quietly in his arms for many moments more, almost in a fever
state.

The knight held her. This was as close as
he’d ever come to sharing something even remotely like an emotive
connection with the object of his desires, and the feeling felt
both strange and wonderful despite its bitter context.

‘
It is a great pity that
warning did not reach you sooner of The Baron’s perfidy,’ said the
knight, ‘perhaps we might have at least saved The Regent, and
spared you some suffering.’

Slowly, like a wounded bird, Veronique
raised her head to look upon the knight. Huron could not help but
marvel at the beauty of her, even ravaged as she was by grief.

‘
It was you,’ she said,
‘you sent the note.’

Huron was quiet then, content to merely look
upon the lady in his arms.

‘
I don’t understand...’
said Veronique.

‘
I am sworn to serve. But
even duty must have its limits. I could not stand by and watch as
The Baron served up your lord to his enemies.’

‘
You did this in the name
of honor?’ said Veronique, her sneering tone cutting into the
nightmare knight as surely as any blade.

‘
No,’ Huron insisted, ‘not
for honor. I did this for...’

Huron allowed the sentence to trail away,
but a note of understanding dawned in the eyes of Veronique. ‘Your
gesture was not in vain,’ she said, ‘I was able to despatch a rider
to warn my husband. With the god’s favor he’ll reach The Regent
before it’s too late.’

Huron nodded, ‘You realize that there is
slim hope of The Regent being able to avoid the ambush.’

Veronique’s eyes blazed then, a righteous
light filling them from some place of defiance deep within, ‘I’ll
take whatever hope I can find.’

A loud tolling began peeling about the
corridor jut then, and beyond that its metallic resonance rolled
around the skies above the palace, finding its way to the ears of
all within the city’s limits.

Huron looked up suddenly, ‘The tower watch,’
he exclaimed, ‘the city is under attack!’

CHAPTER 21

Bloodletters...

Corinth Vardis was awash with blood as the
wulfen tore through its narrow streets. Bael’s horde fell upon man,
woman and child, rending them apart with an animalistic ferocity
that beggared belief. The frantic screaming of the populace mingled
with the berserk howling of their attackers, and above it all, the
bells of the high towers of the city rang unendingly in warning
that had come far too late.

So unexpected was the attack that the
remaining city guard had not the wit or quickness to respond
decisively to the rampaging hordes of fanged horrors running amok
within the walls. Fragmented pockets of resistance consisting of
small groups of bewildered soldiery, bolstered by a scattering of
citizens who were desperate enough to fight back, attempted to
repel the monsters in their midst.They met them with sword and
lance and pitchfork. They met the beasts in the street, or atop
buildings, or in the ornamental gardens.

And there they died. Overrun before they had
any real hope of organizing a coherent defense, their blood ran
freely to mingle with that of their families and neighbors.

The wulfen leapt from pillar to post, from
rooftop to rooftop. Moving so quickly and covering such distance
that before the screams of the dying had died down in one
neighborhood, they had already swept on through to the next, and
there the chorus of death would rise again.

In the ensuing chaos, fires had started in
several buildings, the ravenous flames whipped up by a dread wind,
fanning them maliciously so that they burned all the more
furiously.

Soon enough, the lower tenements near the
main gate were a great writhing conflagration, the inferno sweeping
from building to building, consuming the city as the wulfen
consumed its citizenry. It was like the blazing ruin of the
wulfen’s own village, except that this time it was their turn to
visit such abhorrent destruction upon the homes of innocents. That
was their aim all along. To retaliate for the murder of one of
their own communities. They had traveled for weeks to bring their
retribution down upon the heads of their hated foes, and this was
their moment.