In The Shadow Of The Beast

by Harlan H Howard

  The ravening boar would be forced to choose one of them to pursue, thereby leaving the other man to flee into the safety of the deeper forest. A fifty fifty chance that Sigourd could more than live with.

  Glancing over his shoulder Sigourd cursed the god’s for his rotten luck. The boar was heading straight at him, bearing down on its chosen target with what Sigourd was convinced was an expression of impassioned determination. Mummy was pissed indeed.

  Cutting suddenly left and then diving to his right was the only thing that saved Sigourd from getting one of those tusks up the arse. The boar missed him narrowly, passing him on the left it careened into an outcropping of closely grown young trees, its unstoppable bulk splintering the saplings like matchwood.

  Sigourd looked up in time to see the boar wheel around, shaking its head in mild confusion at having ploughed the saplings instead of its intended target.

  He scrambled to his feet as the boar sprang again, moving with a quickness that seemed impossible for a creature of its massive dimensions.

  Meanwhile, the wild man had had foresight enough to escape the boar’s wrath by scurrying up the trunk of a listing oak, its gnarled and crooked form providing a convenient means of escape.

  He watched with some fascination the proceedings below, but was not inclined to jeer or scoff at the predicament of a man he’d tried only moments before to kill. He realized full well that his efforts would be better spent trying to figure out a means of shaking the boar once it had trampled the clumsy toff beneath him to death. Something that was easier said than done given that said man was now being chased by aforementioned boar in the very direction of the listing oak up which the wild man now huddled.

  Sigourd marveled at the speed of the boar, and regretted immensely that it did not seem the least inclined to give up the chase. He knew that he would have to do something soon to get the thing off his tail before it eventually ran him down and gored him into the soft earth.

  The creature was only feet behind him, the thunderous pounding of its heavy, powerful feet churning up the forest floor, kicking up great wads of dark earth and soil. It was so close that Sigourd could smell its noxious sour odor, like off milk mingled curiously with the scent of damp moss. Far too close for comfort.

  Ahead of Sigourd lay another thicket of the sapling trees, densely packed but not so that he wouldn’t be able to nimbly duck between them and put a natural barrier between the beast and himself. It might obliterate the first few saplings with the momentum of its charge, but there were far too many of the young trees in this part of the clearing for it to get through them all. At least without slowing its charge.

  Reaching the thicket, Sigourd slipped quickly between the branches of the trees, cutting left and right to negotiate his way between their dark trunks, as an instant later the boar crashed into the trees behind him. As before, the trees were no match for the irrepressible driving charge of the boar, and were shattered before it.

  Sigourd ducked as bark and branches whipped about his head, the trunks of surrounding trees swaying precariously in the aftermath of the terrible impact.

  High above, the wild man was caught squarely in the face with a branch as it whip lashed viciously. The blow catching him totally by surprise he only had the wherewithal to yelp ineffectually before toppling backwards off his perch amongst the branches of the sturdy oak. He hit the ground beneath with a resounding thud that knocked him insensible, if not entirely unconscious.

  That thud instantly drew the attention of the boar, who was indeed by now struggling to negotiate its hefty bulk between the remaining sapling trunks in an effort to get at Sigourd.

  The creature swung around, leveling its dirty tusks at the prone wild man, who was groggily struggling into a sitting position, and was in no state whatsoever to offer any chance of resisting the boar and saving his own skin.

  Seeing an opportunity to claim a far easier prize than the one it had originally pursued, the boar sprang again into a leaping charge, its baleful eyes glaring death at the hapless form before it.

  The wild man looked up, and even through the fog of pain that dulled his senses, he realized that he was bearing witness to his own imminent doom.

  He struggled to rise, but his legs would not obey him, and gave out before he could find his feet.

  The boar was only meters away, its thickly muscled and hirsute form growing larger and larger as each moment passed.

  The wild man had heard tales of people at the moment of their demise bearing witness to the entire course of their lives flashing before their eyes. From birth to the very moment of their death, the saw it all. Every deed and action committed, good and bad.

  The wild man experienced no such transcendental phenomena, and in truth the only exceptional occurrence he could honestly lay claim to in these final moments was a slight loosening of the bowels, and a twinge of regret that filling his pants was the final and perhaps most telling statement in this life.

  The noise of the approaching boar was shockingly loud, like rolling thunder breaking open the heavens above, and the things brutal stink filled his nostrils.

  The wild man closed his eyes, shut them tight so that he would not have to see his doom befall him. He raised his hand out before him, as if he could fend the beast off, as if that futile gesture might indeed save his own bacon, as if...

  There was a crunching, thudding, thundering crash, and a tremor in the ground that jolted the wild man causing him to fall back once more, his legs kicking up before him, the soles of his bare feet facing the forest canopy above.

  And then silence.

  Slowly, he cracked open an eye, squinting to sneak a peek at what fate had actually befallen him. Apparently death was less painful than he’d imagined. In fact it had been entirely painless, which came as no small surprise.

  Slowly, tentatively, he cracked the other eye, entirely reluctant to spy the mangled wreckage that his body now resembled.

  What he saw then was as big a surprise as the wild man had ever received in all his many summers.

  The boar lay face down in the soft earth, its forelegs collapsed under it with the hind legs splayed and upright at the rear, so that its ample posterior pointed absurdly toward the sky.

  The creatures snout had ploughed deeply into the ground before it, part of its face and one tusk buried in the black soil of the forest floor.

  The wild man was even more surprised to see his very own sword staff, the device standing erect straight out of the top of the creatures skull where it had been used to skewer the brutish animal’s undoubtedly tiny brain, and standing over the fallen beast the arrogant young toff , a look of snarling determination carved into his face as he stared down at the limp corpse at his feet.

  Slowly, Sigourd looked up from the boar, his eyes fixing upon the wild man who looked upon him now with no small measure of weary respect.

  ‘Still in the mood for that bacon?’ he asked of the wild man, and with a quick yank and a sound like the sucking of pulp from a garana fruit, he jerked the sword staff from the skull of the beast.

  The small fire crackled quietly, its low flames dancing hither and to as boar meat cut into strips and suspended above the open flame spat and fizzed.

  The wild man reached into the fire with a blackened stick, turning the charred wood so that it might burn more effectively. After a moment he inhaled deeply of the aromas of burning wood and roasting boar meat, sat back with a satisfied smile upon his face.

  ‘So this bird of yours...’ he said.

  ‘Isolde,’ said Sigourd.

  ‘That’s the one. You’ve got no clue as to who took her and why, and all you do have to go on is the ramblings of some old bat that works for your rich oldsters?’

  Sigourd considered this sparse evaluation of his quest, sighed to himself, ‘Yes, that’s about the size of it.’

  ‘Sounds like a fools errand to me. Leaving behind the safety of your home, a castle no less, to go sniffing around out here after a bit of old hears
ay.’

  ‘Nevertheless, here I am,’ smiled Sigourd.

  The wild man grunted at this, continued to poke around in the fire as if he had no more to say on the subject.

  ‘And what of you,’ asked Sigourd, ‘what gave you cause to hide out here in these dark forests, away from the sight of your fellow man? You search for your own demons. Or perhaps they hunt you?’

  ‘I’m not hiding from no one or nothin’ if that’s what yer getting at!’ snapped the wild man, ‘I choose this life because it suits me.’

  A distant look came over his face then, as if remembering some long ago angst that he had not managed to wrestle into submission perhaps as well as he’d liked to imagine, ‘this is the only place I’ve ever known. These forests are my home now and forever. I’ve seen how the rest of you live, stuck inside your stone hovels sealed off from the sky. I’d find it a damn sight difficult living in a house, or even a castle. In, in, in. No thanks not for me.’

  The wild man looked up then, up at the endless dark of the night sky with its blanket of twinkling stars so distant, ‘This is the life for me. Out here under the open sky I’m free, I’m at peace.’

  Sigourd studied the other man for a moment, weighing the merit of this statement.

  ‘And what do you do when it rains?’ he asked of the wild man, who looked up at him in surprise.

  For a moment, the wild man considered the question, and then a broad grin crept over his face before he and Sigourd both burst out laughing at the same moment.

  ‘I go and sit under a bloody tree, don’t I!’ bellowed the wild man through his laughter as he leaned toward the fire and skewered a piece of the sizzling boar meat with his blackened stick. He gingerly blew on the morsel to cool it, before deciding it was safe to eat and clamped his jaw down to tear half the strip off with his mouth.

  ‘Bacon’s done!’ he threw the other half of the strip to Sigourd, who caught it, his face twisting with mild disquiet as he studied the half chewed shred between his fingers.

  Sigourd suddenly looked up as if something of great import had just occurred to him, ‘I have introduced myself, but you have yet to reveal your name to me sir.’

  ‘You can call me Jonn Grumble’, said the wild man matter of factly between chewing.

  ‘That’s it, just ‘Jonn Grumble’? You have no family name?’ inquired Sigourd.

  ‘Families are like yer average hovel. Who needs either of ‘em. Besides, I never knew mine.’

  Sigourd was quiet as he considered this information. He studied the wild man, and realized that despite his fearsome appearance and rather noxious odor, there was a vulnerability and an honesty to him that Sigourd found greatly endearing. Jonn Grumble was like a lonely child trapped in the body of a feral man, surviving out here in the wilds either by choice or by design.

  A great pity swelled in Sigourd at that moment, for the unknowable hardships he had no doubt Jonn Grumble had had to face.

  ‘Say, that was a fancy bit of footwork you got me with before,’ said Jonn Grumble, chewing as he spoke, flecks of spittle and bacon falling into his beard in a manner that was rapidly causing Sigourd to loose his own appetite.

  ‘Footwork?’ Sigourd asked.

  ‘After we took that bloody great tumble through the bushes. How the hell did you know I was creeping up behind you? I’ve been tracking animals in these forests my entire life and I’ve got a bit of a talent with that sort of thing. But it was as if you knew I was there. I’ve never seen nothing like it!’

  In all the excitement of the boar’s sudden attack, Sigourd had entirely forgotten about the strange feeling he’d experienced during his struggle with the wild man. It had been so surreal. The heightened sense of hearing, the heightened awareness. How was it possible that a normal man could hear the beating heart of another from twenty paces away?

  Sigourd was dread to consider the implications of such strange phenomena, and was loathe to think about them further. He had more pressing concerns to attend and pushed his worries down into the pit of his stomach where he hoped they would not trouble him further.

  He managed a weak smile, ‘I got lucky I suppose,’ he said finally, trying to make light of the strange occurrence.

  The wild man took another piece of the blackened meat from the fire and bit into it, chewing away contentedly as if the matter of Sigourd’s uncanny reflexes had been explained to his satisfaction. An overwhelming sense of foreboding had caused Sigourd’s appetite to disappear entirely.

  The next morning Sigourd awoke to find that the little fire had died down. Only white ash lay piled in shapes suggestive of the twigs and branches they had used to keep them warm through the night. A thin whisp of smoke coiled lazily up from the fire.

  The morning air was crisp, and despite the brightness of the day Sigourd could not help but shiver at a chill that was set deep in his bones. His flesh stood up like that of a goose, and he pulled his simple cloak about him to shield him from the cold.

  The pair gathered up their belongings and erased all trace that they had passed this way. Sigourd was only too aware that his father would have sent search parties after him, and wanted to lend them not a jot of assistance in locating him before he’d had a chance to rescue Isolde.

  The little nightingale flittered in the trees above their heads, apparently eager for their journey to resume. It had returned that morning, chirruping pleasantly and adding its own sweet voice to the chorus of other birds that chittered and sang throughout the forest.

  ‘Friend of yours?’ said Jonn Grumble, looking up at the bird with some curiosity. It didn’t take a person with an exceptional understanding of the habits of birds to see that the little creature was tethered to Sigourd by choice.

  ‘The bird belonged to Isolde. It followed her everywhere and I believe it’s trying to lead me to her now,’ he said. The wild man looked at Sigourd incredulously, ‘It sings and it doubles as a compass? You rich folk get all the good stuff don’t ya?’

  Sigourd smiled politely as he hoisted his pack onto his shoulder, ‘It was a pleasure to meet you, Jonn Grumble of the Velvet Forest. Perhaps some day our paths will cross again?’

  ‘Sooner than you think me old mate. I’m going with you,’ said the other, ‘I think I’ll join you for a while. Make sure you and your little feathery friend don’t get into too much bother.’

  Sigourd was more than a little taken back by the wild man’s offer.

  ‘I appreciate your gracious intentions, but it’s really not necessary. I am more than cap--’

  Jonn Grumble raised his hand, shaking his head to cut Sigourd off, ‘I’m not havin’ any of that. You saved my life yesterday, and we got a bloody good feed out of it to boot. I owe you there’s no doubt about that, an’ I’ll not have anyone say that old Jonn Grumble doesn’t pay his debts.’

  Sigourd considered for a moment before answering, studying the wild man to gauge the firmness of his intent.

  ‘The path I intend to travel is only just beginning,’ he said, ‘I have no doubt that along the way there will be hazards and dangers aplenty.’

  ‘Exactly!’ exclaimed Jonn Grumble, ‘you need a big malodorous brute like me along for the ride to show you the way of things. Tell me, how often have you been beyond the walls of your fair city?’

  Sigourd did not have to think too long to tally up the count, ‘This is the first time,’ he said.

  ‘Well then it’s settled. We’ll travel together until such time that your lady friend is returned to you safely,’ a feral grin split Jonn Grumble’s face, ‘or until death takes us.’

  Sigourd frowned, uncertain that drawing another soul into his concerns was something he wanted to do, but Jonn was right about the dangers, and having a companion by his side, especially one as able bodied as Jonn Grumble, might prove to be the difference between rescuing Isolde or not.

  ‘Besides,’ said the wild man in a jovial fashion, ‘at the very least we’ll both have a bit of company for a while. I’ve been out here whisperin
g to my own shadow for too long.’

  After another moment’s pause, Sigourd held out his hand and Jonn Grumble took it. They clasped firmly each others forearm in the old manner.

  ‘It would be an honor to have you by my side, Jonn Grumble of the Velvet Forest,’ said Sigourd.

  ‘And it would be great if we could get a bloody move on. I’m mad for a bit of strong mead and I’m as thirsty as a dog without a tongue!’ replied Jonn Grumble.

  With that, the two companions shouldered their packs and set off from the tree line after the little nightingale, leaving the Velvet Forest behind them.

  Huron watched from the deeper shade of the forest as the young lord and the wild man shook hands, threw their packs upon their backs and broke with the cover of the trees. They moved off at a jog across open grass plains that rolled hypnotically in the gentle breeze, bearing south east.

  Huron had tracked Sigourd into the forest and come as close he might without giving away the fact of his presence.

  He had been able to maintain his surreptitious pursuit over an even greater distance than might otherwise have been possible thanks to the far sight of his hawk. Even now the winged predator circled high above, keeping constant vigil on the young lord’s progress.

  Huron knew that despite his innocence of the greater world beyond the walls of the city, Sigourd was no fool, and to stray too close to one as well trained as he might risk the knight’s entire endeavor.

  If he had ever doubted the youngster’s competence, he no longer did so after having witnessed the contest between himself and the wild man, who had himself proven to be a skilled and resourceful fighter, if a little hectic with it. Not to forget for one second Sigourd’s dramatic slaughtering of that maddened boar.

  The young lord had indeed been schooled excellently, and his survival was a testament to his own abilities and those of his instructors. He would make a testing opponent if it came to it, even for a killer as efficient as Huron. Although the knight had no doubt about the eventual outcome of such a contest, he would be reluctant to put the lad to the sword as The Baron had implied that he should.