Tales of the Old World (112 page)

The search was called off after only a few hours. There was no sign of
Bernard’s missing brother, but neither was there any trace of the sea daemon
that had supposedly made off with the man. A furious Veytman had returned to the
meeting hall, a murderous look in his eyes. He was quite vocal in his
determination to beat the whereabouts of Claeis and the hidden plunder from
Bernard and it was not too long after Veytman had entered the structure that the
first screams of agony sang out across Wulfhafen.

The other men returned to their homes for the most part, although a few chose
to watch the proceedings in the meeting hall. Some, no doubt, did so out of
sheer sadistic urges, but Gastoen privately wondered how many did so because
they harboured doubts about the honesty of their hetman and desired to be
present to hear for themselves what Bernard had to say.

Gastoen and Karel returned to their home, Karel’s mother already preparing a
stew from one of the lobsters they had captured the day before. Karel, for his
part, fell asleep awaiting the preparation of the food, slumping down in his
chair. Gastoen smiled, knowing how little sleep the youth had had over the last
few days, excited about his trial of manhood. Gastoen rose from his chair,
prepared to rouse his boy and usher him to the greater comfort of his bed when
he noticed the soggy, leather-bound book tumble to the floor from its resting
place within Karel’s shirt. Curious, Gastoen picked up the book and returned to
his chair.

It was nearing dusk when Gastoen finished his examination of the book. He had
scanned every page, trying in vain to decipher the smeared script, a task his
own feeble reading skills were not equal to. The drawings were in better shape,
and Gastoen gazed at them with a thrill of wonder he had not felt since he
himself was a young boy. He stared at the strange pictures, likening them to a
curious creature he had once seen in a Marienburg shop: a beast the shop owner
had called a lizard, claiming it came from far off Araby. Gastoen could discern
no scale for the animals depicted in the drawings, but he could not shake the
feeling that the subjects of these pictures were massive, resembling the lizard
he had seen in the same way an ogre resembled a man. It was not until he saw the
strange plants that a frightful thought occurred to Gastoen. The fisherman and
ship wrecker shook his son back into awareness.

“Come along, Karel,” Gastoen said, rising from his chair once again and
grabbing his hat from its peg beside the door. “We are going over to the meeting
hall.”

Bernard’s screams had long since stopped. As Gastoen and Karel entered the
large building, its floor composed of looted deck planks, they could see their
former neighbour lying hunched in one corner of the main room. The man was
unconscious, his chest barely rising. One of his eyes was a darkened hole, the
flesh about the burned socket blackened and charred.

“He didn’t say anything,” Veytman said when he noticed Gastoen enter. Emil
and a half dozen other men stood near the hetman, drinking some of the gold
coloured rum. “He stuck to that idiotic daemon tale of his.” Veytman paused and
took a deep swallow from his own leather mug. “We’ll try again when he comes
around.”

“I want you to see something,” Gastoen said, walking towards Veytman, the
book in his hands. Gastoen opened the volume to a page he had marked and showed
it to the hetman.

“Do you see this?” Gastoen asked, pointing to one of the drawings. Veytman
glanced at the picture of a strange looking plant and shrugged his shoulders. A
few of the other men gathered around to see what was being discussed, staring at
the book from over Gastoen’s shoulders.

“What am I supposed to see in that?” Veytman sighed, taking another pull from
his mug.

“We found a plant just like that washed ashore,” Gastoen answered, one of the
other villagers nodding his head in affirmation.

“So? Is it valuable?” Veytman remained confused. Gastoen turned the pages to
where the drawings of the animals were.

“Don’t you see? If they had some of the plants in this book on the ship,
perhaps they also had some of the animals,” Gastoen’s voice was on edge,
frustrated that he was not getting through to Veytman. Before he could press the
point and try to remove the look of confusion in Veytman’s eyes, the door of the
meeting hall again opened.

“The daemon!” wailed the grizzled, toothless face of Una, the wife of Enghel.
The woman closed upon Veytman, beating on the hetman’s chest and wailing
hysterically. “A sea daemon, as big as a house! It rose out of the fog and
killed my husband!”

Every man in the room except Gastoen, Karel and the unconscious Bernard broke
into laughter. One of the men grabbed Una and pulled her off of Veytman.

“Enghel should not have told you about that,” laughed Emil. “You see enough
monsters in your cups without him providing you with more.”

“I shall have to see if all of the rum is accounted for,” joked Veytman,
draining his mug.

“I tell you, a sea daemon killed my husband!” the woman shrieked again in
protest. A fresh round of laughter broke out.

“As big as a house?” mocked Emil. “I remember the time you said there was a
wolf living in your boathouse and all we found was a marmot! This daemon of
yours is probably just a big ship’s rat and Enghel is sitting in his home right
now with a bitten finger!”

Una began a fresh tirade of shrieks and curses causing Veytman to look across
the room at Emil.

“Better go and have a look at it, just to shut her up,” the hetman declared.
Emil stomped across the room and gathered up a wicker lobster trap. He marched
toward the door but paused on the threshold to stab a finger at the sobbing
woman.

“When I catch this damn thing, whatever it turns out to be, I am going to
make you eat it, you wailing harpy,” the man warned. With that, he was lost to
the growing shadows in the lane outside.

It was about fifteen minutes later when the door of the meeting hall opened
again. The pale, drained figure that entered bore little resemblance to the
jovial, half-drunk Emil they had last seen. The ship wrecker dragged the lobster
trap across the room, dropping it midway. A stunned silence gripped everyone in
the room, even Una, as the apparition crossed to the elaborate weapons rack that
rested against one wall. Looted from the countless ships that had smashed upon
the reef and rocks, the armoury of Wulfhafen was a haphazard, but impressive
affair. As Emil strode to the weapons, the others in the room could see the
huge, gaping wound in the man’s back, as though the flesh had been peeled away,
leaving the wet muscles to glisten nakedly.

“We’re going to need bigger traps,” he stammered before staggering for a
moment, then falling to the floor.

That life had remained in Emil for so long that he had been able to walk as
far as the meetinghouse had been a testament to the hardened shipwrecker’s
brutal vitality.

“Sound the alarm!” ordered Veytman, the hetman being the first to shake
himself from his shock. The command brought a fresh wail of terror from Una, but
one of the men hurried to set the alarm bell ringing. Veytman scrambled over to
the weapons rack so recently visited by Emil and began handing some of the
carefully hoarded armaments to those men in the room. Even the choice armaments,
like the heavy Bretonnian broadsword and the finely crafted battle axe that one
visitor to Wulfhafen had sworn was dwarf-made were doled out. Now seemed to be
no time to hoard the more elegant weapons.

“What good are these against a daemon?” protested a wide-eyed fisherman as he
was handed a spiked mace.

“It is no daemon!” declared Gastoen, pushing his way to the front of the
group. Already men were rushing into the meeting hall, summoned by the alarm
bell. Gastoen raised his voice for the benefit of the men who had just arrived.
“It is some strange beast from whatever foreign shore that ship visited!”
Gastoen repeated, trying to calm the superstitious dread slinking into the mob.

“Alright,” Veytman snarled. “Everyone arm themselves, every third man get a
torch, and let us see what manner of beast has chosen to die in Wulfhafen!”

The mob was strangely silent, for all of its numbers, as every able bodied
man in Wulfhafen crept through the darkened lane, creeping like a band of
thieves toward the all too near row of boathouses and fishing shacks. The fog
hung thick about the village, clogging the streets with a misty grey shroud that
the torches could pierce only partially. The men kept close to one another and
even Veytman could not bring himself to enforce his earlier command that the men
break up into teams of five. The sound of the surf striking the beach grew
louder as the men pressed on, ignoring the fearful visages that peered at them
from behind the windows of the huts they passed.

At last they reached the site where the long row of boathouses and shacks had
once stood. The ramshackle structures were in a shambles, looking for all the
world like victims of a hurricane. But no gale had blown upon Wulfhafen, for the
fog lay thick and unmoving all about them. A strange sense of dread fell upon
the armed mob. Veytman and a few of the braver villagers crept towards the
nearest of the shacks, staring with horror at the gaping wounds torn into the
wood, bespeaking tremendous strength and lengthy claws. In hushed tones, the men
discussed the ruin, concluding that whatever had dealt such damage was no such
creature as they had ever heard of. Once again, Gastoen said that it was some
weird creature captured by the crew of the lost ship.

As the talk continued, more and more men stalked forward, deciding that if
Veytman and the others could linger for so long amidst the devastation, then it
must be relatively safe. The men spread out, slightly, examining the destroyed
boathouse next to the shack. One of the men at once came running back, his hand
smeared red with blood.

“It must be from Enghel or Emil,” Gastoen gasped. He rallied several men to
his side and ran towards the boathouse. Veytman was quick to follow the older
man’s lead, bringing the bulk of the mob with him.

A ghastly sight greeted Gastoen’s group as they rounded the corner of the
partially collapsed boathouse. Looming out of the fog, only a few feet away, was
an immense shape of scaly grey and black flesh. The man to Gastoen’s right let
out a cry of horror as he saw the massive scaly back and tail revealed in the
flickering torchlight. The creature turned around slowly, facing the crowd just
as Veytman and his followers rounded the corner.

It was huge, easily twice the size of a man. Because it had been hunched the
beast’s head not been visible over the boathouse, Now it rose to its full
height, towering over the structure. Indeed, Una had not exaggerated when she
said the monster was as big as a house. In shape it was roughly like a man,
though only roughly. Its entire body was covered in grey scales, which faded to
white as they came to its belly. Stripes of black, thicker scales criss-crossed
its back and shoulders. The head was also scaled, a brutish snout protruding
from a thick skull. Dangling from the monster’s powerful jaws was the body of
Enghel, his head completely within the creature’s mouth. Yellow, snake-like eyes
gazed indifferently at the mob while thick, muscular arms swayed indolently from
the monster’s broad shoulders. The reptilian horror worked its lower jaw and the
skull of Enghel cracked like a walnut, the loud snap echoing into the night.

The sight of the fiend so casually feeding on one of their own snapped some
of the men out of their horrified daze. One bold fisherman lunged at the monster
with a boat hook, the makeshift polearm sinking into the thick flesh of the
monster’s shoulder. Another lashed at the creature with a broadsword taken from
the armoury, cringing back in fright as the weapon impacted harmlessly against
the thick scaly flesh of the brute’s leg.

The monster was slow to react. At first it just stared stupidly into the
night. Then its lower jaw opened, letting Enghel’s body drop to the ground. A
thin, purple tongue whipped out of the scaly mouth, flickering in the air for a
moment before withdrawing. Then, the seemingly lethargic beast became a blur of
carnage.

A huge clawed hand dropped down upon the man who had so ineffectually struck
at the creature’s leg, the blow crushing the man’s collar bone and battering him
into a heap of broken bones, a twisted pile of meat recognisable as human only
by the screams it still cried. The brute spun about, his powerful tail slamming
into the villager with the boathook, knocking him some fifty feet away. The man
landed in a crumpled pile on the beach, his head lying at an unnatural angle on
its snapped neck. The beast paused, focusing its beady eyes upon the main body
of Wulfhafen’s defenders. It opened its jaws and from deep within its massive
form came a grunt-like bellow that had several men dropping their weapons to
shield their ears from the sound.

Before the mob could react, the monster was in their midst, lashing out with
its powerful claws and snapping jaws. Swords and axes struck again and again at
the brutish reptilian abomination, more often than not failing to sink into the
tough leathery hide. The few wounds that did draw blood from the beast seemed to
go unnoticed, as the monster continued to deal death and mutilation to his
would-be killers. In that same amount of time, the monster had killed or maimed
over a dozen men, their dead or broken bodies lying strewn across the beach.

Veytman swiped at the huge beast with his elegant blade. The finest sword in
the entire village impacted against the scaly flesh, sinking deep into the
reptile’s thigh. The brute turned, swiping at Veytman. The hetman dodged the
crude attack, but the combination of his manoeuvre and the monster’s assault
snapped the steel blade. Veytman stared in horror at the broken sword, and the
three inches of steel sticking out from the beast’s leg, the creature seemingly
oblivious to the injury.