In The Shadow Of The Beast (2 page)

The odd smell too was overpowering now that
the door had been thrown open to allow access to the chamber, the
heavy musk of the creature filling the room entirely.

Beth stood there, transfixed by something
that was almost beyond her comprehension, as the beast turned its
head to look upon this interruption. Beth saw a snout filled with
razor teeth that dripped a viscous saliva, and deep set eyes that
were as black and fathomless as the endless night sky.

The creature peeled back the dark lips of
its snout to better show the rows of vicious fangs, and in that
moment all reason left Beth as a flock of birds might suddenly take
flight in panic at the approach of some quiet predator.

She screamed so loud and so long that she
felt her lungs might burst and her throat would split, the silver
tray of fine smelling foodstuffs falling from her hands with a
tremendous crashing that echoed throughout the chamber.

The low panting that had been building in
the throat of the man beast erupted in a nerve shattering roar, as
the thing leapt from the prone Veronique to the cold stone of floor
of the chamber.

Slowly, the creature padded toward the
screaming serving girl, those razor fangs dripping wetly with the
promise of certain death, one taloned hand reaching out to seize
and silence her. Closer and closer the creature came, across the
large cold chamber.

For Beth, turning to run was not even a
glimmer of an option, she found that her fear had weighted her feet
to the floor and they would not respond however much she might want
them to. Her throat was raw from that perpetual scream, but that
was a response as much beyond her control as her immobile limbs now
were. The man beast was mere inches from her, the ravenous,
murderous intent shining behind its black eyes.

Suddenly he was there, a member of the
household guard resplendent in the claret and gold of the family
Fellhammer, his short stabbing sword flashing as he roughly pulled
the serving girl out of the doorway to get himself between her and
the slavering creature. He swung up his weapon to fend off the
beast’s advance with tight cuts and thrusts, maintaining a close
guard with the blade to ensure that his adversary had little
opportunity to press an attack.

Howling in rage, the beast made to slash at
the guardsman with its own razor talons, and tried to slide its
mouth past the thrusts of the short sword to snap at the face of
the guardsman, his expertise with the weapon the only thing keeping
him from having his throat torn out in a bloody geyser.

‘
Back girl, get back,’ he
cried to Beth, who cowered in the hallway behind him,‘Get
help!’

Her senses reeling, she turned to run back
the way she had come.

The ferocious attack of the beast was almost
more than the guardsman could handle, its talons and teeth snapping
and flashing at him faster than he could parry the mad blows.
Moving to deflect a quick snap of the creatures jaws, he was taken
off balance by a superhumanly quick slash of the razor sharp talons
that cleaved clean through the hardened leather bodice of his torso
amour, brutally rending the flesh below.

Pain lanced through the guardsman, pain so
intense it took his breath away. He staggered back, instinctively
clutching at the open wound and dropping his guard so that the
creature was able to land a bone shattering blow to his chest that
sent the guardsman sprawling out of the chamber, where he thudded
jarringly off the far wall of the corridor before coming to rest in
a pile on the floor.

The beast pounced, that one powerful leap
carrying it from the bed chamber to the corridor where the stunned
guardsman rose unsteadily to his feet.

It landed with a terrible impact upon his
shoulders, driving him to the floor. The beast gripped his prey
around the throat before tearing off the guardsman’s helmet with
his clawed hand and tossing the useless article away down the
corridor where it clattered noisily to a stop amongst the deeper
shadows.

The man beast looked down at the prone form
pinned beneath it, their eyes meeting briefly before the creature
threw back its head to dive upon the guardsman’s exposed
throat.

From the far end of the corridor, more
guardsmen, bustling noisily around the corner, their mouths falling
open as they laid eyes upon the monstrosity before them.

Howling angrily, the creature rose from
where it knelt, turning suddenly to cast a baleful gaze upon this
latest interruption.

And then its eyes fell upon the flintlock.
Clasped in the hand of one of the guards, the ornate pistol could
pack enough of a punch in its single shot to shatter the skull or
pulverize the heart of even a creature as terrifying as the
beast.

As the guardsman raised that flintlock, the
beast was already turning to pounce again, but this time not in
attack. As the trigger was pulled, and the hammer fell to strike
the spark that would ignite the gunpowder in the flintlock’s
chamber and propel the heavy lead round from the barrel in a flash
bang of black smoke, the beast was already mid leap through an
ornate window lying midway along the corridor. The glass shattered
in a puff of glittering debris as momentum carried the creature
into the cold dark of night and out of reach of the household
guard.

Out in the darkness of the grounds, beneath
the cold stare of a full moon hanging high in the night sky, the
beast man loped between tall trees and manicured hedgerows, making
quickly for the deeper recesses of the old forest that lay beyond
the gardens.

Already, the pursuit had begun, the light
from flaming torches bobbing between the trees in the near
distance, men’s angry voices carrying on the frigid air.

The beast was no stranger to the darkness.
It had spent a lifetime in its embrace, lurking in the shadows as
was the way of its troubled kind. The darkness was always its
friend and ally, and that was never truer than now. But perhaps
even the familiar embrace of night might not be sufficient to see
the beast through. It stumbled, tried in vain to catch itself on
the low overhanging branches of an old oak, and instead tumbled
face first into the hard ground.

Surprised at its own clumsiness, the beast
struggled to rise, trembling with the effort as a sudden jolt of
pain gave it cause to re-evaluate the truth of its
circumstances.

Clasping a taloned hand to its flank, the
beast could feel the warm wet seeping there. When it pulled that
taloned hand away it was dismayed to find that there was a measure
of fresh blood about its fingers and palm, glittering darkly in the
pale moonlight. The flintlock had found its mark. For the first
time, the beast knew real fear. It pushed itself from the bole of
the oak, and staggered off into the enfolding darkness of the night
as those flaming torches gathered ever nearer.

CHAPTER 2

Knightmares...

The withered trees sprout from a desolate
plain, clawing their way toward a blood red sky, churning like some
mad tidal crush as dark clouds race overhead, clouds that swirl
like dervishes, faster and faster, causing a sickness of imbalance
in any who is fool enough to stare upon them for too long.

He runs helter skelter through the rough
hewn landscape, fleeing for his life in a blind panic from
something that lurks between the trunks of those densely gathered
and twisted trees.

He dares not look back, for to look back
from whence he has come would enable his pursuer to fix on him, to
run him down and tear him limb from limb. To rend him from this
life like a maddened dog might tear flesh from bone.

But he cannot help himself, his fear is
matched only buy a burning curiosity to understand what it is that
pursues him. What it is that has caused such an unutterable dread
to possess him so completely. Even as he runs, he turns, knows that
it is the last and most foolish thing he will ever do, but he
cannot help himself, he has to look...

Sigourd’s eyes flickered open and he sat up
suddenly on a bed draped with the fur pelts of beasts from his
father’s forests. He didn’t at first realize how hard he was
breathing, the terror of the nightmare still written into him, and
only after a few moments, when he understood that he was indeed
safely in his bed chamber with the morning light shining weakly
upon him, did Sigourd relent to let his heart rate ease, and his
breathing steadily deepen.

The nightmare had been a regular occurrence
these past few months, but that familiarity did not serve to
diminish its impact upon him. Always the same, pursued through a
nameless forest by a faceless terror, Sigourd had almost resigned
himself to the mystery of his troubled sleep. He had considered
consultation with the royal seers, but had decided that to do
anything but keep his own council on this matter might be
incautious, his vivid dreams viewed as weakness. The heir to the
throne of Corrinth Vardis could not afford to be branded with any
label that might endanger the authority of himself or his family.
Not in these troubled times.

Throwing his legs over the side of his bed
he sat there for another moment, considering the soft morning light
filtering through the gauze over the high window, and the deep
purple shadows that lay about the room here and there between the
bars of light.

It was barely daybreak by his estimation,
far sooner than he’d intended to rise. But since the advent of
these troubling nightmares he’d been waking earlier and earlier.
Perhaps this was what awaited him as Regent. A life of restless
sleep and moments of troubled solitude in the weak light of dawns
barely broken. He’d known his father to lie awake all the long
night, staring into the darkness for hour on end in the hopes of
seeing the solution to one dire matter of state or another.

The prospect filled him with a glumness that
he knew would dog him all that day. For appearances sake he must
make a supreme effort to submerge those dark feelings beneath a
veneer of royal civility. Today Sigourd would choose a wife.

Cal Whiteheart was a decorated battle
veteran of a hundred campaigns in the service of The Regent
Fellhammer, lord of Corrinth Vardis. He’d seen bitter fighting
across all the lands of the known world, and even done a measure of
bloodletting in a few places yet to be inked onto any
cartographer’s map. From the blood riven ice wastes of Hok’ur to
the seemingly endless war to overthrow the tyrant Balrog Neize at
the very gates of The White City of Anur, he’d seen and done it
all. Retirement from the field was the hardest battle he’d ever
fought.

Of course no-one had acknowledged it as
retirement, they’d called it a re-tasking. He’d been ‘re-tasked’
with the stewardship of the young lord Sigourd’s entry into
manhood. A position of supreme honor that it was assumed he would
be proud to accept, which of course he had been. But he did so miss
the old days. Alas duty was duty, and that was a value that ran
through Cal like the iron core of a mountain.

These were the thought’s that swam in his
mind as Cal buffed the imperial crest in his hand until it caught
the light just so. The brooch glinting to his satisfaction, Cal
moved over to where Sigourd stood facing a floor length mirror,
adjusting the straps of his leather jerkin in anticipation of the
royal gala that was shortly to commence. Cal began to fasten the
brooch to Sigourd’s chest, but the young man raised his hands in
mild objection, ‘I have it, Cal’.

Cal, used to such repudiations of his formal
duties passed the brooch to Sigourd, ‘Of course, my lord’, stepping
back a pace.

Sigourd deftly fastened the brooch to his
chest, and stepped back himself to admire the reflection of the
handsome, if ostentatiously dressed, young man in the mirror.
Indeed, Sigourd’s clothing would have been the envy of any young
court fop, eager to impress his counterparts with elaborate
embroidering and delicate, colorful silk weaving.

‘
I look a fool,’ said
Sigourd after a moments consideration, ‘It isn’t me at
all.’

Cal understood that Sigourd wasn’t just
referring to the brooch and his attire. He knew of the young lord’s
desire to be free of bearing the weight of responsibility for an
entire kingdom on his shoulders, and pitied him for it.

‘
Fear not, lord’, he said,
‘responsibility is a funny thing. Although it may seem a tall task
it has the possibility to develop the best in us all’.

Cal reached inside his jacket, drawing out a
metal object that he began to fasten to Sigourd’s forearm. The
vambrace was a simple looking thing, a steel sleeve designed to fit
over the forearm of the wearer, it was engraved with the crest of
Sigourd’s family, the hare and the boar.

Sigourd’s eyes widened in delight, ‘Cal,
I--’

‘
You’re old enough to take
a wife, you’re old enough for this,’ the old soldier cut in.
‘Besides, you’ve been eying it long enough. We’ll call it a wedding
gift. One you may have cause to need if this business with the
Morays is not resolved peacefully.’

He finished buckling the vambrace, stepped
back to admire his handiwork. The metal sleeve glinted in the
morning light as Sigourd turned his arm to study it in more
detail.

‘
There, the very picture of
nobility,’ said Cal. ‘You’ll turn some heads no doubt.’

‘
Looking like this,’ said
Sigourd gloomily, I’ll be turning a few stomachs too.’

‘
Ha,’ Cal barked, clapping
Sigourd affectionately on the shoulder, ‘that’s the spirit
lad!’

The city of Corrinth Vardis was at the
centre of an agglomeration of townships that had sprung up in the
north western planes of the land of Atos. Over the course of a
thousand or more years the townships had been incrementally fused
together via means of trade, conflict, alliance, famine and
countless other turbulent happenings. Corrinth Vardis, amongst the
larger and more prosperous of the settlements, had come to be
recognized as the capital of the lands by virtue of its proximity
to several tributaries of the River Atos’halla, a primary route for
trade and expansion throughout the region. Like some oceanic
leviathan Corrinth Vardis had worked its tentacles into the
surrounding settlements, each successive ruler inheriting the
authority of the capital city.