No, no, something more than fear, he decided. It was more like terror.
Grendel’s pulse exploded as panic flooded through him. If only he wasn’t alone, so terribly, terribly alone.
Blinking in the darkness, he rose shakily to his feet and clenched his jaw to stop his chattering teeth. He couldn’t see, even as far as his own feet. There was a flash of movement that could have been the horse, a tiny halo of half-seen foliage around a gap in the forest canopy above, and that was all.
Although Grendel couldn’t see what had spooked his horse, he could certainly smell it. He was amazed that he hadn’t noticed it before. The stink was acrid enough to cut though the scent of oak leaves and rotten mulch. It was something he had never experienced before, but even so the hairs rose on the back of his neck.
He tried to tell himself that it was a herd of goats that he could smell. He tried to tell himself that that was what he could hear rustling through the undergrowth, oh so cautiously.
His horse began to scream.
Grendel felt an answering scream trying to escape from his own bony chest, and for one awful moment, he thought that he wouldn’t be able to hold it in.
He didn’t scream, though, and neither did he run. Even now, trembling with the adrenaline that coursed through his wasted body, he managed to compose himself. He was, after all, a wizard of the Grey College.
The horse’s scream spiralled upwards until it was sharper than broken glass. There was something horribly human about the emotion in the cry, and it was almost a relief when it ended with a meaty thud.
Grendel paid no heed as the soggy sounds of tearing flesh replaced the horse’s cry. As for the copper scent of fresh blood that mingled with the stink of the unseen predators, he didn’t even notice it; he was too busy concentrating.
A moment later, the first of the beasts stalked past him, its nose wrinkling with suspicion. It snuffled around him, sometimes so close that Grendel could almost feel the heat of its massive body. Again, that treacherous scream rose up in his throat. Again, he fought it down.
After what could have been a lifetime, the shapeless thing stopped its prowling around and lumbered towards the wizard. It loomed over him, its unseen bulk blocking out even the grey patch of light above, and it grunted a series of low, wordless sounds.
Grendel remained as frozen as a rat caught in a cobra’s gaze. A trickle of urine flowed unnoticed down the inside of one scrawny thigh, and he started to feel dizzy from the effort of controlling his breath.
Then the thing was moving again. Perhaps deciding that there was nothing here, but for a particularly stunted tree, it turned back to fight for its share of the feast. A few minutes later, the wizard could hear a sudden snarl and the crunch of splintering bone.
By the time morning came, Grendel was numb. His shattered nerves and the agonising cold of the night had left him feeling as dead as his horse.
There was no sign of its carcass. Long after the sounds of dismemberment had ended, and long after the light had chased the last of the night into the shadows, the fugitive had staggered over to where his mount had been. There was nothing left of it. Even the scrap of rope that he’d used as a bridle had been chewed.
Too exhausted to think, Grendel had stumbled back onto the road. It stretched emptily away in both directions, fading away into a forest that might just as well have been endless. Starving and alone, the wizard couldn’t even remember which direction he’d been travelling in.
He sat down on a boulder by the side of the road, and dropped his head into his hands. After a while, he started to giggle, and then he wept. When he ran out of tears, he slipped into a mindless daze that was almost sleep.
It was afternoon when he awoke. His head throbbed like a broken bone and his mouth was so dry that he could barely peel his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
For a while, he thought about just lying down and dying. By nightfall, all of his problems could be over, vanishing like dust into the immensity of this wilderness.
It was an appealing idea, but one that Grendel knew he would never succumb to. Even now, when there was nothing left of him but despair, the instinct to live still coursed through him, burning within his frail chest like a lantern left in a sinking ship. So he got to his feet, chose a direction, and started staggering down the road.
Above him, the first of the ravens had started to circle.
The galloping hoofs of the carriage team drummed through the hard packed earth of the road. Grendel could feel them through the worn soles of his shoes. He could hear them too, although the sound meant nothing to him. He had long since retreated into the soft grey world of his own collapse.
It was painful in this world, and frightening, but it was nowhere near as bad as the real one. In the real one, his feet were bleeding from a cluster of popped blisters, and his muscles ached with a thousand bruises and strains.
Then there was the thirst. It had gripped him in a fever of desire that was almost a madness. The inside of his mouth was torn from where he’d chewed at it. Even the coppery taste of his own blood had become a relief from the sealed throat.
The worst thing in the world, he’d decided, was thirst, and the best was water: water in clay pots, cool and refreshing, water in crystal, fizzing with sherbet, hot water, steeped with herbs, even water from a puddle would have done. Although it had poured with rain only days before, the forest was now as parched as a desert.
Grendel was beyond the appreciation of such ironies. Even the possibility of rescue couldn’t cut through his stupor. The beat of the horses’ hoofs filled him with nothing but fantasies of hailstorms, delicious with ice, and the squeak of the harness reminded him of nothing but the sound of corks being pulled from bottles.
His lips, dry as leather, pulled back into a crazed grin at these dreams. From somewhere deep in the back of his throat there came a gurgling sound.
Grendel was still laughing when the shadow of the carriage fell upon him. He carried on walking, oblivious to the cries of the coachman, and would have marched the last few miles to his death had the carriage not pulled up in front of him.
It had barely stopped when a gilded door was flung open and the passenger emerged. He was beautiful. The immaculately shaved lines of his face looked like the work of a sculptor, and although he had the jaded look of middle age, his skin was as smooth as a child’s.
Even when his nose wrinkled in distaste, he still looked sublime, his sneer as coldly perfect as a crescent moon.
Leaping easily down from the carriage’s running board, the man took a step towards the wizard. He wore tunic and hose beneath a flowing cloak, and the clothes revealed the immaculate proportions of his body, just as the diamonds that twinkled in his ears reflected the lustre of his flawless skin.
For the first time, Grendel realised that he was no longer alone. He staggered to a halt no more than a foot away from the man, and held out a filthy hand to touch him.
“Are you real?” he whispered, the words painful in his parched mouth.
The traveller looked down and smiled, the expression as joyful as the rising of the sun.
“I certainly am,” he said in a smooth baritone, “and you seem to be real, too. Although,” he added with a twinkle in his eye, “only just!”
He laughed at his own joke.
“Water,” Grendel begged, scrabbling at the fine cloth of the man’s tunic. “Please, do you have any water?”
Before he replied, the traveller reached down, gripped Grendel’s bony wrist between thumb and forefinger, and prised the shaking hand off his clothes.
“Yes, I have water,” he nodded, pushing Grendel away before wiping his fingers on his cloak, “gallons of it, but it’s for the man I have come to meet.”
Grendel’s eyes flared with the desperation of a rabid dog. The traveller decided to stop toying with him.
“I am looking for a man called Grendel,” he said, studying the emotions that twitched across the wizard’s face. “A friend of mine sa
id that he had been wronged, and that I was to offer him my help.”
“I am Grendel,” the wizard said, all caution gone.
“Yes, I was afraid that you might be.”
“Then you will give me the water?”
“Yes, but first, I have to ask you something.”
“What?”
“What is the name of your master?”
Grendel looked at him in painful confusion.
“I have no master,” he rasped, “not anymore.”
“Yes you do. Don’t be coy. We are all friends here.”
Understanding dawned in Grendel’s bloodshot eyes.
“What is your name?” he asked, his voice no more than a whisper.
“Count Otto Zhukovsky,” the traveller said, and bowed.
“Then you are my master?” Grendel offered.
Once again the count laughed. The sound was perhaps the only ugly thing about him. It was as harsh as a seagull’s caw.
“No, thank you for the offer, but you are wrong. I’m sorry to have bothered you, old man. I must have made a mistake.”
He turned to go, and panic flared in Grendel’s bony chest.
“Wait,” he hissed, “I cannot think. Please tell me who my master is.”
The count turned back to him. He studied the soft hands and the rags that had once been robes. He saw the signs of true dehydration, too, which any child knew could’ve been helped by chewing the blue fronds that grew everywhere here.
“Very well, Menheer Grendel, I will tell you, and you will tell me if I am right. Your master is my master. Isn’t that so?”
Grendel’s eyes bulged, and he took a step back. His cracked lips moved, but no sound came out.
The count watched his suffering with some amusement.
“The water I have,” he said, “is in a cool earthenware pot, a big one, but it is only for the servants of my master, greatest of all the gods, Lord of Pleasure. Are you his servant too?”
For a moment, Grendel balanced on the brink of his decision. Or, maybe he only thought that he did, maybe his decision had been made long, long ago.
“Yes,” he hissed.
He didn’t try to tell himself that a single word couldn’t be binding. He was too much the wizard for such foolishness. When he spoke, he spoke in the knowledge that words such as these were the truth: always the truth.
“Yes, he is my master too,” Grendel said, a sudden bitterness seizing him, “and why not? In all the world, he is the only one to have helped me.”
“Well said, brother.” The count nodded to his coachman, who leapt down from his bench. He held a jug in his hand. It sloshed, the most beautiful sound that Grendel had ever heard, and when the coachman handed it over it was just as cool as promised.
Hugging the jar between his spindly arms, the wizard drew the cork out with his teeth. Water glittered inside, and an animal whimper of pleasure escaped his parched lips.
“To our lord,” the count prompted him.
“To our lord,” Grendel repeated. Then he lifted the jar to his lips, and drank.
The sensation was beyond pleasure. It was nearer to pain. The first taste of water on his leathery tongue pierced the numbness of his condition, and even as he drank, the thirst grew into a daemon that he felt barely able to contain.
Tears ran down his cheeks, blood instead of precious water, and he gulped down pint after pint.
The thirst didn’t start to leave him until he had fallen to his knees and vomited up what he had drunk too fast.
When he had finished doing that, the coachman handed him a leather water skin. Grendel took it and drank again. This time, the water was warm and tasted of tannin, but at least he managed to keep it down. When he had finished, he looked up at his rescuer, ashamed at his greed.
The count was smiling.
“Come, brother,” he said, helping the sorcerer to his feet. “Ride with me to Praag. It is a long way, but I am sure that you have much to tell me.”
“Yes,” Grendel said. “I will tell you whatever you want.”
As the carriage turned around and headed back to the north, that is exactly what he did.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The witch hunters rode with the wild joy of the unleashed. Their nerves had been stretched as taut as bowstrings during the wasted days at the inn, and they galloped for the sense of release as much as anything.
Vaught led the column. His hood billowed out behind him, and the autumnal breeze chilled his shaved head even as it made his scars burn. Together with the sting of tears in his eyes and the strain of staying astride his galloping horse, it was a fine sensation. It was good to be alive, good to be doing what his god had made him to do.
Usually, he would have avoided using his horses and men so hard. Only a fool arrived at a battle exhausted, but he knew that the wizard must be days ahead of them. There would be enough time for rest at night, he’d decided. Until then, all they needed was speed.
The branches of the trees whipped past above him, and the foliage on either side of the road blurred. He didn’t stand a chance of spotting the rope that had been stretched across the road.
The first the column knew of the primitive trap was when Vaught’s horse tripped and fell, hurtling forwards onto the rutted earth.
The witch hunter snatched his feet from the stirrups as the horse collapsed beneath him, and vaulted from the saddle before it could catch him beneath its weight. He hit the ground hard, the smack of the impact driving the air out of him in a sickening rush, and rolled away from the thrashing hoofs.
Blinking tears from his eyes, the witch hunter struggled to his feet, staggered to one side, and then fell again. He looked down in time to see the rope that had tripped him.
It stretched across the track, as thick as his wrist and as strong as any hawser. Before he could shout a warning, the rest of the troop was upon it. The screaming of horses and the cries from his men ended in the thud of more bodies hitting the ground. There was a snap as loud as a firecracker, and a horse started screaming with the pain of a broken leg.
Vaught drew his sword and looked at the confusion into which his galloping column had fallen. At least five horses were down. Three were struggling back to their feet, whilst the fourth lay writhing on the ground. Some of the riders dodged amongst them, grabbing at bridles before they could bolt. Others remained where they had fallen.
The rest of the column had shuddered to a halt. They milled around in confusion. Vaught opened his mouth to shout for a remount when he noticed the stink that pervaded this part of the forest.
It was as sharp as an Altdorfian sewer, and as sweet as rotten fish. It greased the air so thickly that Vaught, already winded, felt a fist of nausea clench inside his stomach.
He was still fighting the urge to vomit when Peik shouted the first warning.
“To the left!” he yelled, his voice breaking. “To the left!”
Vaught followed the sword that the young man was waving towards the darkness of the forest. At first, he could see nothing, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t have to see anything. He could hear the unseen enemy as, with the sudden speed of an avalanche, they stampeded from out of the depths of the forest.
Vaught, his discomfort forgotten, vaulted into the empty saddle of somebody else’s horse and called his men to order.
“Face left,” he bellowed at them. They turned as neatly as if this rutted track had been a parade ground. Vaught turned to the nearest of them.
“Cut that rope,” he said, pointing to the hawser that had been stretched across the road.
“Yes, captain,” the man said, and drew a knife.
The noise of the approaching enemy had grown to a storm of thundering hooves and crashing branches. Birds rose screeching above the forest canopy, their panicked flight marking the extent of the enemies’ line.
“Rope’s cut, captain,” a voice shouted.
“Good,” Vaught said, eyes narrowing as he peered into the darkness that lay between the t
rees.
“Shall we withdraw?”
Back in the saddle, steel drawn and his face to the enemy, Vaught hadn’t even considered the option. Now he did. Their mission was more important than dealing with forest bandits. What price a few brigands’ scalps compared to a wizard’s head?
Before he could make a decision, the first of the attackers appeared from between the trees. At the sight of them, all thoughts of retreat vanished from Vaught’s mind. There could be no running, no compromise or withdrawal.
There could be no conclusion at all, except complete annihilation.
The horrors that were erupting from the tangled forest were no mere bandits. They were something infinitely worse. Their forms were a grim parody of the human, but there was no humanity about them.
Nor was there the honest appearance of true animals. Although their faces were as thickly snouted as those of bulls, no bulls Vaught had ever seen sported such fangs. Neither did true animals run on two legs, or have eyes that glimmered with such an insane intelligence.
And no animals, Vaught decided, had ever stunk of such abomination.
For a moment, he was blinded with rage at the blasphemy of their very existence. Shaking the emotion off, he turned to his men, listening to their muttered curses and whispered prayers. Here and there, a horse whinnied with fear, and the riders shifted uneasily.
“Wait for my signal,” Vaught snarled, and turned his attention back to the nearest of the things. Despite the undergrowth, it was charging forwards at an incredible speed, the massive axe it bore slashing through any obstructions it couldn’t vault.
Vaught had no doubt that this monstrosity was their leader. The spread of its horns was wider than his own chest, and when it threw back its head to roar its challenge even the trees shook.
Then, with a sound that was as chilling as the snap of a hangman’s noose, the cry was answered from behind the witch hunters.
Vaught turned in time to see the second wave closing in from their rear, and from the corner of his eye he could see more dark shapes pouring onto the road ahead to block their escape.
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