In The Shadow Of The Beast (39 page)

The war axe swung in great arching loops,
cleaving heads and torsos and limbs as the knight stood his ground
against the implacable foe there on the steps of the dais.

Behind him, Veronique sank to her knees, her
hands clasped in desperate prayer. She had already seen such
horrors to wither the soul, and still she must continue to bear
witness to the ongoing depravity.

CHAPTER 22

The bitter
end...

The steps around Huron’s feet ran wet with
spilled blood, and the air seemed to be thick with it. It ran down
the haft of his axe and covered his gauntlets. His hair was slick
with the stuff. His face was a mask of red vitae and for all the
gods he appeared a living avatar of death incarnate as he waded
into the press of monstrous bodies around him, shouting his
defiance into the faces of his enemies even as they pulled him
down.

The knight disappeared beneath the crowd of
wulfen as of more and more of the pack dived upon him to tear and
rend and feed. His shouting turned to screaming as they cracked the
shell of his armor to reach the meat within. Soon enough he fell
silent forever.

Veronique knelt upon the cold stone of the
dais, trapped and alone. Her face streaked with tears, she resigned
herself to the fates. There, before the throne of her husband she
prepared to meet whatever brutal end the gods had conspired to gift
her. In the deepest places of her heart, she believed that it was
an end well deserved.

An end earned for all of her misdeeds. For
her complicity in a lie that had spanned a lifetime. For the
sacrifices she had allowed out of cowardice. For allowing her past
to endanger and ultimately cost her son his life. Yes, she deserved
this fate.

The air was thick with the iron tang of
spilled blood. Veronique could hardly breathe for gagging on it.
She wondered momentarily if perhaps she was already dead, and had
arrived in the pits of Hell to be surrounded forever by the rank
odor of death and the stark horrors of her poor choices.

One of the monsters rose from the pack
surrounding the mutilated corpse of the knight Huron. He turned to
regard Veronique with eyes as black and fathomless as an abyssal
fault. Larger and more powerfully built than any of the monsters
surrounding her, she recognized what must have undoubtedly been the
alpha male. He padded slowly towards her, the sound of his clawed
feet snick, snicking on the tiled floor of the throne room. The
noise was strange to her not by dint of its nature, but by the fact
she could hear such a small sound at all. She realized suddenly
that silence had fallen over the chamber like a blanket. Now that
the screams and the cries of mercy had died down, the monsters
regarded Veronique quietly, attentively, as pack animals were want
to do when seizing up a stranger in their midst.

The approaching beast’s thick, dark fur was
matted with filth and fresh blood. The cloying scent of his animal
musk mixed with the abattoir stink that hung so heavy in the air,
and Veronique was forced to press her hand to her mouth for fear
she might heave right there before the Throne of The Regent.

The monster padded closer still, coming
right up beside her. It towered over Veronique now. Large even by
the standards of the other beasts in the chamber, it stood easily a
head taller than most men of the realm. A match indeed for the
enforcer Huron were his entrails not spread all over the floor of
the throne room.

The beast crouched down, craning its long
neck so that its maw was merely a hairs breadth from Veronique’s
face. The creature sniffed the air about her. The gesture was
almost one of curiosity, of intimate invasion.

Veronique was trying so hard to stifle the
shivering in her bones. She could barely breathe, so overpowering
was the ripe stink of fresh death.

Then there was the hate.Veronique had never
possessed the sight as she knew some people believed themselves to
be. It was said that her great grandmother on her fathers side was
inclined to such extra sensory perception, and her wisdoms were
highly prized. Indeed, Veronique herself didn’t place too much
stock in tales of peoples connections with otherworldly forces that
existed beyond the realm of rational thought. But she could feel
the creature’s malevolent antipathy as surely as she could see it
standing before her. That hate radiated off the beast in hot waves
so thick it was like standing next to an open furnace.

She lifted her head to meet the black gaze
of the beast, and as if it had been waiting for her to look it in
the eye, the dark, wet meat of the beast’s lips peeled back to
reveal a serrated grin of pearlescent incisors. That snarling maw
opened slowly, gooey ropes of saliva trailing between the tips of
those flesh tearers, the creature yawning wide to invite Veronique
to look upon her fate. She closed her eyes, a silent prayer of
forgiveness upon her lips as the jagged rows of ivory daggers
loomed large before her.

From above, there was a sound like the storm
riven sea crashing against a rocky shore, and an ear piercing
shriek to herald Veronique’s salvation. She turned in alarm to see
what new horror was presenting itself, and found herself gazing in
wonderment at the sight that greeted her.

The stained glass of the great mullioned
window set high above the dais was raining upon the throne room.
The colored debris fell in a deluge, like a rainbow shattered by
the wrath of a storm seer, the resultant fragments falling in a
torrent from the sky.

What had caused the great window to give way
with such implosive force was something from the dreams of the lost
lunacy.

A great wooden dragon, its vast wings
outstretched and its snapping maw spread wide as that ear splitting
shriek came again, dove through the aperture of the shattered
window.

The wulfen were just as shocked to witness
this sight as Veronique. They stood transfixed as the dragon swept
into the vast throne room, swooping just below the latticework of
beams.

Even the monstrous creature that crouched
beside Veronique was given pause in the face of this mythic
interruption. The man beast stood up on its hind legs, rearing to
its considerable full height to stare in astonishment as the dragon
circled lower.

There was movement from upon the dragon’s
back, something that had been riding it as one might ride the white
waters of the River Woe, leapt high as the flying beast swept by.
It all happened so quickly. Veronique glimpsed fur as white as
snow, a snarling mass of talons and teeth, it collided with bone
jarring force into the the beast that towered over her.

The two creatures thudded into the marble
base of the dais and rolled apart grunting.

The dragon dropped suddenly into the crowd
of gathered wulfen, scattering them pell mell as it came down with
the cacophony of splintering wood being dashed against the hard
stone of the floor. The dragon’s great wings sheared off, spinning
lifelessly away as its fanged head shattered at the point of
impact, the terrible, deafening shrieking dying in its throat
instantly.

Isolde and Jonn Grumble clambered from the
wreckage of the dragon boat, their weapons ready. Sighting
Veronique, they rushed to her, both of them taking the stone steps
to the dais in a few bounds that brought them to her side.
Veronique looked upon them in bewilderment, but she was quick to
recognize Isolde, her mouth moving to frame the question that her
mind was struggling to process.

‘
It is good to see you
again m’lady,’ said Isolde, as she and Jonn Grumble turned their
weapons toward the remaining wulfen. But their caution appeared for
the time unnecessary. The beasts attention was held firmly by the
encounter between the two beings on the dais. One of them a hulking
brute, matted in shaggy dark fur dripping with the blood of dozens.
The other was a creature the polar opposite. More slenderly formed,
it was a man beast of purest white. Its fur seemed to shimmer in
the light of the full moon that glowered into the throne room
through the shattered window above the dais. As Veronique looked
upon that White Wulf, a single word escaped her lips in a
breathless whisper, ‘Sigourd.’

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.