Immortality's Touchstone

by Mark Tufo

  “But?” Lana prodded.

  “I have some concerns, Lana. You and I both know that we will only be able to hold out against Lunos for so long.”

  “Our walls are strong, Bailey. We have fortifications that could thwart him.”

  “That may very well be true; perhaps he will smash part of his army up against those very walls and when he realizes that he cannot gain entry quite so easily, he may just wait.”

  Lana’s look of anger at Lunos’ imminent attack quickly melted to fear.

  “The harvest,” she said.

  “Yes. It sits in the field unprotected. You have food in this city for two, possibly three weeks. Lunos is intelligent; he will see those crops, he will know the state we are in. He will gladly camp out among your plantings, celebrating and taking his ease as he eats your hard work and starves your people into submission.”

  “What would you have me do?” Lana asked.

  “Our lot is cast. We cannot escape with the entire populace. The problem becomes Gabriel. It is fair enough to assume if Lunos wants the boy he will force our play, and if that is the case, it stands to reason that we can never allow the boy to fall into that beast’s hands.”

  “I agree with that statement.” Lana could not or did not want to know where the conversation was heading.

  “Lana, Denarth is going to fall. It does not matter much whether it is tomorrow or a month from now. We have to decide what we are going to do with the boy.”

  “What are you proposing, Bailey? That we send him out to Lunos before he destroys us?” Lana was looking questioningly into Bailey’s eyes. She gasped when she realized what she saw. “That’s not it at all...you would kill the boy before you ever saw him in Lunos’ hands.”

  “There is great power in Gabriel, Lana. And we are already fighting a war we cannot win. We cannot give that Lycan yet another weapon to use against us.”

  “Are you so sure that is the boy’s purpose?”

  “I do not think we can take the chance that it is not.”

  “I will hear no more of this madness. This is my city and nothing bad will befall that child while he is under my care and protection. Is that understood, Bailey?”

  Bailey hesitated, not quite willing to yield her position.

  “I will toss the lot of you out of my gates right now, Bailey, if you do not give me your word.”

  “What if I were to take the child to Talboton? Lunos would not be expecting that.”

  “A minute ago I might have considered that, but now that I know your intentions should things go from bad to worse, I cannot allow it.”

  “Do you suddenly mistrust me because I am giving my counsel? I am merely offering suggestions, Lana. It is certain the boy is much, much more than he seems.”

  “Then does it not seem the wiser course to see what secrets he may yet yield? Perhaps Lunos wants the boy to prevent the good he might do for us. In that case, destroying him would merely play right into Lunos’ hands, delivering that which he most wants.”

  “You mistake me if you think that destroying Gabriel is my primary wish; I am just attempting to ascertain what we should do when the inevitable happens and Lunos comes in here to claim his prize.”

  “By then our worries will be over, will they not?” Lana challenged.

  “That is short sighted, Lana. There are more people than just us to consider.”

  “Perhaps we should spend more time trying to figure out why the boy is so valuable rather than debating the merits of murder.”

  “The person best suited to do that is not here and could very well be dead.”

  “Oh, Bailey...even you do not believe that. Azile is who she is and she has a man that has one single-minded purpose and that is to keep her safe at all costs. Can you doubt the will, desire, and strength of a man that came back from the grave to finish all of this?”

  “I would be more inclined to agree with your position if they were both here. I do, indeed, fear for their safety. Nothing untold will befall the boy whilst he is under your care, but at least think upon my words. Good night, Lana.”

  “Good night, Bailey. Get some rest; perhaps the world will not look so bleak upon your arising.”

  “Let us hope that is the case.” Bailey closed the door behind her.

  Mathieu had lingered in the adjacent room, stoking the fire, and had been about to return to tell Lana he’d got it going when he’d overheard the conversation. He never bothered with the affairs of State and was heading back to keep warm when he caught the part about Gabriel. His attention rapt, he waited until Bailey left. He then opened the door to Lana’s side.

  “You want me to get the boy and bring him back here?” Mathieu asked.

  “Very much so,” Lana answered.

  Mathieu was not pleased when he got to the room Gabriel was staying in; there were two guards at the door and another two inside watching as the boy slept. They were all from Talboton.

  “We are in agreement that you are in Denarth?” Mathieu asked as he picked up the slumbering boy.

  “We were ordered to not let the boy out of our sight,” one of the guards said.

  “I don’t care!” Mathieu grumbled, allowing his muzzle to elongate and show his wicked teeth. The guard wisely stepped back and allowed Mathieu to pass by.

  The next morning came with an expectancy in the air, something which the rain did nothing to dampen. Lana fretted for the first few hours as the sun struggled to come through, with whether she should attempt to harvest the unready crop. She received her answer at noon when the sun finally broke through and heralded the arrival of unwelcome visitors. Nearly all of Denarth at one point or another got onto the parapets to see the approaching enemy. A thousand or more invaders lined the fields outside the town.

  There was crying and sobbing from within, and even the women were scared. Lunos had his army arrange themselves in straight rows and columns. It was an intimidating sight as they covered almost all of the visible landscape. The Denarthian guards first looked on in wonder and then began to laugh as all of the combatants began to take off their clothes and fold them neatly. They hurled derision and scorn across the field, which changed in the tick of a metronome as the people, as one, turned to werewolves. The sight was beyond terrifying. Gawkers jumped down from the wall and went to find places to hide. Defenders involuntarily backed up. Lana gripped the wall so hard she thought she would crumble stone.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life,” Mathieu said with no shame.

  The beasts were silent, unmoving; if one hoped hard enough, they actually looked like statues, until the wind betrayed the lie and stirred their fur.

  “Citizens of Denarth!” It was Lunos, his voice magnified beyond its normal limitations. A tall man dressed all in green stood next to him.

  “The source of Lunos’ new found power?” Bailey asked, pointing to the man.

  A shot rang out from somewhere left of Bailey. A tuft of sod and dust blew up nearly fifteen feet in front of the Green Man and Lunos. Bailey was not sure exactly what she’d seen, but it was as if the bullet that had lodged in the earth had been plucked up, and in a moment of rewinding time, sent back into the rifle from which it had come—but with much more damaging results. The soldier’s weapon exploded in his hands as the round shot back down into the barrel and blew out of the side of the upper receiver, sending shrapnel into his chest, arms, and face. He screamed in shock and pain as he fell over, bleeding from a half dozen different wounds. He would most likely live, but he would forever carry the disfigurements.

  “War has not yet been declared; yet you fire on me? Are you savages?” Lunos asked. “It was my hope we could avoid bloodshed altogether. Let this one unfortunate event be the last of the day.”

  “May we assume that by meeting his demands he will agree to a lasting truce?” Mathieu asked aloud.

  “Perhaps in words, but I do not believe he would hold to a long and lasting peace.” Bailey gritted her teeth. She was mad at h
er soldier for taking an ill-advised shot and she was even angrier that he had missed by such a wide margin. And now the fool was injured on top of all that and had to be removed from his post. Three strikes, according to something she had read in BT’s journals, was not a good thing.

  “You say you have not yet declared war, but yet here you are at my doorstep with an army of werewolves. What would you lead me to believe, Lunos?” Lana’s voice rang out loud and clear without enchantment, and not a hint of the dread she was feeling affecting her timbre.

  “I come to retrieve what is mine. To get back what was stolen. Give me the child, Lana Saltinda, and I will not raze your fair town this day.”

  “Again with ‘this day’,” Mathieu said.

  “We all know what he means,” Bailey told him.

  “How is a human child yours, Lunos?”

  “He is more mine than you know...and what makes you think he is human?” Lunos asked. The Green Man reached out to Lunos as if to tell him he may have given too much away.

  “What are you talking about? You illegitimate off-spring of the gleaning,” Lana answered with the worst thing she could think to say to a Lycan.

  “You will personally pay for that insult.” Lunos was absolutely fuming; long runnels of drool hung from his mouth as he pulled his muzzle back in a growl. “I will pull those walls down post by post, stone by stone. I will dine on the soft internal organs of your entire cabinet. Your citizens will beg for mercy as entire families are consumed; your streets will run red with their blood. By the time we are done, Denarth will be a tale used to frighten children and nothing more.”

  A chorus of howls erupted from the army, deafening, all surrounding sounds. Birds flew from tree tops nearly a mile away to escape the din. All thought this was the start of the war, yet Lunos sent none of them forward.

  Then it got even more strange, Lunos did something which was a very rare event in the life of a Lycan, performed only in times of extreme danger or need. He turned into his human countenance.

  “What in the bloody fuck is going on?” Mathieu asked.

  “You’ve been hanging around Michael too much,” Lana scolded him.

  As a man, Lunos was exceptionally tall, taller even than the Green Man, who stood easily over six and a half feet. He struck a more impressive figure as a man than he did a Lycan; a broad, barrel chest cut sharply down into a classic, narrow vee shape at his stomach and torso. His legs were heavy set and spread wide, his thighs roped with steel tendons. A thick beard covered his long face and he had a mane of hair that traveled down to the middle of his back.

  “Am I not a sight to behold!?” Lunos spun once with his hands in the air. “I am the natural born leader of werewolves and men alike!”

  “I notice you did not include ‘Lycan’, oh great one,” Lana said. “I would be curious to know what they think of your little uprising.”

  “It does not matter what they think. I have knowledge so powerful it will change the very way they will have to view themselves and their world.”

  “Do you plan on regaling us with your tale, or are you seeking to bore us to death with your splendor?” Bailey could not help herself.

  “Are you in such a rush to see your ancestors?” he asked back. Bailey did not answer. “This man’s name is Ganlin,” Lunos said as he put a meaty hand on the Green Man’s shoulder. “He has shown me many things, so many things I was ignorant of on topics I loved but was in the dark about, as are all Lycan, werewolves, and man as well. I will share but a few, because knowledge is indeed powerful, and as pitiful humans, you are not deemed worthy to own more than just a smattering. Lycan were created by Mages, much like the man next to me. The world had been plagued by Old Ones, or vampires, as they were more commonly called. Defeating them was almost an impossibility, and man was nearly wiped out during the dark ages from the scourge of so many of these predators roaming Europe. The greatest witches, warlocks, and mages assembled to find a way to deal with this problem. It was Ganlin’s bloodline that believed mixing a wolf’s blood with that of a human fetus still in the womb was a possible answer.”

  “Ganlin sure has found a way to ingratiate himself into Lunos’ life,” Lana said.

  “Is what he says true?” Mathieu asked. He was vested; this applied to him directly. Nobody could answer to its authenticity, though.

  “Of course, the experiment wasn’t without its problems. The new being ripped through the belly and sex of his mother, destroying her completely. Though he himself lived and prospered under the care and teachings of that council. A group of twelve Lycan were created that year. They were trained and taught the best way to destroy the vampire plague. After fifteen years they were sent out into the world to do what they had been created for. There were many successes and many failures. The vampires were initially not prepared for this new breed of warrior and were caught completely unawares. The problem was the pack itself; they were more animal than human and they were unsupervised adolescents. They did what is only natural.”

  “The idiot mages thought having creatures of both sexes was a good idea?” Mathieu asked the heavens. “I thought they were supposed to be smart?”

  “We had proved ourselves worthy in battle, killing twenty vampires that first year alone. Then, well, we had offspring. We procreated. We grew weary of our overseers and their rules. We wanted more than killing and death—we wanted life. Shunned by wolf and man alike, we made our own tribes, our own clans, with our own rules. We were slaves to none, masters of our own fate. The first werewolf was born through the union of a Lycan female and a male Human. It was a lesser beast and was shunned through much of its miserable existence. Its bloodline should have died with it, except Lycan youth used this creature as only misguided youth can. A virus, a disease was spread among the entire populace, thus allowing werewolves, in their own way, to be propagated without sex. That is why there is such a deep-seated hatred among Lycan for human and werewolf alike; we are all much more similar than they would care to admit. To me, it is liberating to know our origins, to realize the harmony and embrace our ancestry.”

  “Yet here you are, ready to destroy those who helped in your creation?” Lana asked.

  “You were given an opportunity to prevent what happens next. You chose to ignore it and insult me instead. The blood spilled will be laid at your feet and I will make sure that you are witness to it all.” The werewolves changed back into their human form and soundlessly donned their clothing. “Oh, and just in case you believe help to be coming, your hero and heroine have fallen. Michael Talbot and the Red Witch are no more, and we made sure they took their children with them,” he laughed.

  Bailey gasped, the set of Lana’s eyes got harder, if that were even possible.

  “Bullshit!” Mathieu yelled out. “If that were the case and you had actually been able to defeat them you would have kept proof. Show me their heads or I call your words fraudulent!” Mathieu was about to use Michael’s one-fingered gesture since he figured he had caught Lunos in a lie, but just then a messenger ran up to Lunos carrying a bag. The Lycan tipped it over and the hideous contents rolled out onto the ground. They were dirty and rotten enough as to be completely indistinguishable, but there were indeed four of them, and two were but infants. “You lie, Lunos! In my very soul, I know you lie!” Mathieu had to be restrained from jumping the wall and ripping into the Lycan.

  Lunos laughed before he withdrew, leaving the bloody remnants behind.

  Mathieu stared at the heads for hours trying to pick out some distinguishable feature, but from the distance he was at and the condition of the remains, it left identification impossible. “Lunos would have made a better trophy of his prizes if it were indeed them,” he muttered. This was followed by: “I’ll kill him for this.”

  “Stop thinking about it.” Bailey had come up and offered him a piece of venison jerky which he had, at first, waved away and then tore into hungrily. “He is only trying to get into your mind.”

  “He’s done a w
ildly successful job.” Mathieu had not turned away from the sight. “Even if it is not them, which I am mostly certain it is not, he had still murdered two infants merely to attempt this ruse.”

  “Those are but two wrongs in a sea filled with them,” Bailey answered.

  The sun was going down when Lana had to forcibly remove Mathieu from the wall. “At least get some dinner. You can peer more later.”

  As they sat down and ate, Mathieu could not help but ask: “If it was indeed Michael and Azile on the ground out there, what chance could we possibly have of winning?”

  “It may not be about winning or losing anymore,” Lana said cryptically.

  They’d nearly finished up when the first cries of battle issued forth, immediately followed by the firing of rifles. Lana was out the door first, grabbing her scabbard from its hook by the door.

  “Who is firing?” she yelled out in question from the town square.

  “Up here, Lana.” Bailey motioned from the south wall. “You may want to see this.”

  Lana strode over quickly, not wanting to run and reveal just how nervous she was. The entire woods was lit up by the burning of so many campfires. It appeared as if the mage had the ability to let the sun shine down only where he chose.

  “As impressive as the fires are, there is something else I wished to show you,” Bailey said, pointing off to the left.

  Lana peered to where a bunch of men were working on a structure. “A siege machine?” she asked.

  “It would appear so,” Bailey said.

  “Is it...are they ladders?” Mathieu asked, looking at the spectacle. “We will cut them down before they can put them in place!” he said defiantly.

  “Lunos is not above sacrificing his soldiers, yet he will only do so up to a point,” Bailey offered. “If the expense is too high, he will not pay. He must know that ladders are an ineffectual way of breaching these walls...no, there must be more to those structures. I think the part we believe to be a climbing apparatus is rather an arm.”