Thoughts of an Eaten Sun

by Kyle Tolle

  The wolf lowered himself for a stealthier approach, but the noises the villagers emitted would have likely been enough to mask his movement, regardless. The trees thinned and eventually revealed guards circling the perimeter of the houses in various states of watchfulness. There were many more than any other night. He had provoked quite the reaction. His stomach gurgled. His quarry was right out in the open. In fact, he expected they would come to him when he howled. What ease. A drop of pus fell from his ravaged ear and a jolt flared through his withers. He was eager to bestow upon them some of the pain they had inflicted on him. Patrols covered each side of the village except for the north, which bordered the cove. There were only a few guards near the shore, all focused more on idle chatter than their surroundings. Instinct led him to strike the weakest first, and he stole through the woods toward the cove.

  He entered the water, which lapped right at the forest’s roots, and strands of saliva mixed with the waves that washed over his snout. Paddling to the middle of the cove was quick work but he shivered. Summer’s heat had scarcely touched these depths. A wind out of the north rolled waves into the shoreline, where boats moored at the docks squeaked with each swell. He swam toward these. The cove’s wind-blown surface concealed his position from those gathered at the bonfire closest to the docks.

  His heart rate quickened, as much from the cold as from the excitement of his next attack. Fear-drenched flesh was most satisfying as it screamed in protest, ripped from the bone, and slid down the gullet. He left the water without shaking off and made for a pile of logs just beyond the boats. On the other side sat a man and woman more concerned with stoking the coals than watching their surroundings. Their slack was their ruin.

  He leapt over the logs, which rose over twenty feet high, landed on the opposite side of the fire from the guards, then bounded through the flames. Water ran off his pelt, causing steam and ash to swell around him. The man’s eyes found his an instant before his claws swiped. Pitched backward off his log seat, the guard wailed and bellowed. Such a glorious sound! Intestines bulged through slashes in his abdomen and waves of blood throbbed over his trembling hands. The wolf’s tail wagged as he took the woman by the neck and dragged her, gurgling, to the ground. She flailed at the maw clamping her airway. No words left her, but guards nearby let up shouts of surprise in her stead. He bit, slightly slightly, until a snap ceased her struggles, and then released her. Her corpse crumpled at the end of the burn pit and the stench of singed hair marshaled his focus. Do not feed yet. End them all, stack them high; only then devour.

  Already a wave of reinforcements rushed to the cove. He swallowed several nearby lanterns and darted for the forest once more, the ground shaking under his girth. None of the guards trailed him, however, and he, just yards past the forest edge, observed the whole of the night watch circle the one dying and the other dead. This stroke of luck was not lost upon him. He left the chaos behind and moved through the woodlands. Those brief seconds had taken the edge off the pain traveling through his spine in sickening waves, but relief was not yet his.

  By the time Hantle reached the fire, Yilrouth had already removed his shirt and wrapped it around Doyen’s stomach. He shouted for someone to retrieve his bag. Doyen squinted and huffed, intent on shoving the intestines back into his gut. Off to their left, the woman lay, and two others crouched beside her, but her missing throat made her fate clear. It wasn’t like the wolf to leave them behind. Hantle dropped to his knees and offered his shirt to help staunch the blood. Yilrouth added it to his own, watched the fabric immediately soak through, and focused on talking to Doyen instead. “There, there. Don’t fuss with it. Lie back and count to ten for me.” It would have been better for the creature to finish him instead of leaving him to bleed out. Doyen’s eyes slid back in their sockets and his head lolled about. Fluid leaked from his nose and mouth, running in thick strands to his hands, which ceaselessly clenched open and shut. His breath became more ragged and soon rattled a final time. Yilrouth sat back and wiped a wrist across his forehead, leaving a crimson streak in place of the sweat.

  With the struggle ended, Hantle’s attention shifted to the canine. Where was it now? Rounfil stood a few feet away, scanning the forest with his musket raised, but everyone else was gawking at the bodies. Hantle spoke to the nearest guards. “You two come with Rounfil and me. We’ll check if it’s sitting just inside the trees again.” The muscles in his arm stung as he picked up his weapon—a reminder of its piercing fangs—and he changed his grip.

  Screams. Screams, shouts, curses, and cries for help all went up at once from the south. Hantle’s heart stammered. It was back. A realization broke upon him that nearly every guard was here at the cove. The wolf faced no opposition. Was it picking off another couple of guards? “Founsel’s exposed,” he yelled, “because we bunched up. Half of you come with me, but spread out. The rest of you, stay here and spread out. We must cover all of Founsel’s sides, all night.”

  He led the guards through the street and rounded a building, bringing the wolf into view. Heat bubbled up Hantle’s scalp and rivulets of sweat ran down. Wet fur lent the damn thing a gaunt look, but it was as large as the one-story home it stood beside. Mouth, neck, and chest were coated solid with carnage; portions of its back and sides were less contaminated. Thick scabs covered the gashes in the shoulder and ribs. It sniffed around a window’s nailboards. Villagers fanned out to surround the wolf and it looked across at them, more curious than fierce. Around the fringes of the ear canal now in view, the skin was raw and inflamed; pus trailed down the side of its head. Hantle’s stomach dropped. Not even these wounds seemed to slow the beast.

  Its concern fell back to sniffing the house. Fearful calls rose again, but . . . Were they from inside? It should have been empty. Unless they had gotten cold feet, shirked the night watch, and holed up instead. Between the nailboards on the far end of the home from where the wolf prowled, he saw fingers jut out and grasp the wood. The planks did not budge at their pushes. “Fire,” he ordered. “Kill it!” His musket and pistol joined the volley.

  Undeterred, the wolf burst through the building’s solid side wall, avoiding entirely the nailboards. It hunched down and clawed so its front half disappeared inside. The screams turned primal. It would take time before they could fire another round. Hantle dropped his musket and powder horn, charged the window, and heaved at the edges of the boards blocking the family’s escape. Thrashing at the other end indicated the wolf’s forward movement. Other hands joined his at prying and they loosed one of the boards enough to remove it.

  The father inside shouted, “Please, get the children out!” Behind him, the wolf filled the whole space and inched closer.

  Through the hole, Hantle locked eyes with the man and said, “Help lift them up.” The opening was not large enough for either one of them, though. “One more board ought to do it.”

  Rounfil produced a fighting knife, slid the blade between the board and the home and hauled back on the handle for leverage. Splinters popped and the corner of the plank fell away, leaving too little to work against. “You fucking try,” Rounfil said and handed Hantle the knife. Terrified eyes watched as he worked, but a shearing sound drew their gaze. The wolf’s progress had buckled the front of the home, causing a load-bearing beam to slip and crush the father. Out of his hand fell a lantern that broke and its flame lapped up the oil, which trailed away and pooled about the kitchen table.

  The children recoiled from the fire and retreated to a far corner. Hantle kept working at the board, but it would do no good if they were too afraid to come near. Flames licked up the legs of table and chairs. “Come on, come over here,” he told them. “Once we get this board off, we’ll pull you out. But you have to come here, so we can reach you.” The nails affixing the board to the home squeaked as they slid out. “It’s almost there, so you have to come here now.”

  They took a few hesitant steps toward him, their eyes locked on the spreading flames. The beast barked and the force of it
resonated through the wood and blade into Hantle’s hand. When the roof slumped into the space left by the fallen timber, the wolf snaked forward several feet and got its teeth on the unconscious father. The boy and girl staggered back into the corner and curled into balls. Crackling flames jumped from the chairs to a heap of burlap sacks and crates just below the window, and Hantle’s stomach dropped. He had only a moment before the blaze would block this exit entirely. The beast tugged the father out from under the beam and its eyes reflected the fire. Its eyes! If he could blind one of its eyes, that would give them an immense advantage. Hantle shouted over his shoulder. “Someone give me a gun, now!”

  The chill of pistol’s barrel met his palm and he aimed it through the growing smoke and heat shimmers. Steady, steady, he commanded his arms, but they continued to tremble regardless. He squeezed the trigger until the flint drove headlong into the frizzen. The eruption echoed through the house and each bite mark in his arm seared with the recoil. He took a step back as the smoke from the barrel clouded his view, suddenly afraid teeth or claws would lash through the haze. A yelp joined the children’s screams and the building lurched. The wolf stood, bursting the home open in the process. The fire enjoyed a breath of oxygen and smoke billowed through the collapsing roof. Hantle scrambled back from the sparks rushing out of the window. The children were trapped and helpless. Was there any other way in? Debris followed the creature as he stepped away from the house. In the fraction of a second between the wolf becoming visible and it running toward the guard, Hantle looked for indication of whether his shot had hit the eye, but the lighting was too poor to tell. Then it was moving again. The father hung from the beast’s jaws, yet it was able to scoop up another three of the guards as it made for tree cover.

  Hope welled in his chest. He had kept it from taking the children, or . . . did he have the flames to thank? Either way, there was a chance of rescuing the children. The wall here leaned at an awkward angle but was otherwise intact. He looked to Rounfil and said, “Can we go in through one of the other sides?”

  “Let’s try the hole it left behind.” Rounfil moved toward the missing end of the house. “That’s our best chance.”

  Hantle shouted to the guards nearby, “Be ready for when it returns,” and followed Rounfil.

  Lumber and housewares riddled the opening and Rounfil held his collar over his mouth in order to near the smoke-filled room. He looked back to Hantle, eyes saying there was no chance, but Hantle could not abandon them yet. If he crouched, he could find a path between the wreckage, get to the corner, grab the two, and follow the same route back. He drew in a large clean breath and stepped into the space.

  Rounfil’s hand gripped his shoulder, halting his advance. “Don’t. You’ll end up trapped with them,” he shouted over the roar. “It’s nearly engulfed.”

  Shingles from the fractured roof clattered to the floorboards before Hantle. It didn’t matter. There was still a chance, however remote, he could save them, unlike with his own sons. Wasn’t that their pleas he heard begging for him to grab them? He shrugged off Rounfil’s hand and prepared to leap over the shingles.

  Before he could jump, Rounfil wrapped his arms around Hantle’s chest and lugged him back. “You’ll kill yourself, you bastard.” Off balance, Hantle struggled, but Rounfil had the weight advantage. “We need you alive more than dead.” He kept pulling until they were on the street.

  More framing drooped and the house coughed embers from its wounds. In the few seconds that had elapsed, the flames had embroiled every square inch of the room. He looked up to see others soaring dozens of feet above the roof timbers. The smoke itself glowed red. His legs gave out and Rounfil lowered him to the ground.

  Rounfil took command. “Fetch water,” he shouted. “Wet down anything wooden.”

  Hantle cleared the image of blistering, choking children from his mind and took in the scene before him. The structure’s lean had only worsened, threatening to topple over and ignite the neighboring fences and houses. A line formed and extended to deliver bucketfuls of water from the farm’s troughs. Hantle stood and joined them, to douse first the adjacent exterior of the home that would be reached when the leaning wall gave out.

  They were focused on this task when a howl carried through the air. The hairs on Hantle’s neck stood on end as the sound trailed off. He lowered the bucket to his side and walked toward the forest, aware that he had left his musket somewhere else. At the cove? Or the pistol, was it beside the window of the house? The ground seemed to quiver. He looked to Rounfil and then to the forest. “Do you feel that?”

  “The tremor in the ground?” Rounfil nodded. “Yes.”

  The space between trees was colorless and featureless. As he stood there, Hantle noticed the shaking grow more pronounced. A faint popping noise registered with him, but it was not from the burning house. Then, the flapping of wings succeeded by shrieks, but the flock could not be seen. He stiffened with apprehension.

  “Wolf’s coming,” he cried. “Ready your arms!” He dropped his bucket and looked about for a spare musket.

  Quaking in the tree canopy caught his attention. Colossal boughs burst from trunks and fell to the ground; faint markings in the resulting gaps revealed the wolf’s location. Muskets threw their voices into the night.

  “Wait!” He threw his hands in the air and waved to his guards. “Don’t waste your rounds. Wait until it comes out to shoot. Reload and wait!”

  The woodlands quieted and the ground stilled.

  Then the tree line exploded outward. Leaves, branches, and fur rushed toward the group. The demon closed its jaws over a woman’s midriff and flung her skyward. Her arms and legs splayed and she tumbled two, three times before hitting the ground with a sickening staccato. It leapt toward a group of guards and Hantle dashed for the musket that had fallen from the woman’s hands. He found the hammer still cocked, and, hoping it was loaded, pivoted around and sighted the beast’s stomach. His musket roared with authority and others joined his.

  Shaking with the impact of the rounds, the beast raised his hackles and howled. This deep call pierced Hantle’s resolution; its wavering modulation mimicked an entire pack. Eayol let up a cry of her own and hurled a hand axe, which the wolf saw but did not attempt to avoid. The bit sank into the wasteland clotting its throat but could not reach sufficient purchase, retreating with each inhalation until, finally loose, it fell uselessly to the ground.

  The remaining will of the night watch dissolved, and guards threw down their weapons and fled for the forest themselves. Hantle remembered the need to reload his musket and set to it, keeping an eye on the wolf. A curtain on a house’s second story fell shut, and Hantle knew another family would be trapped in the very home they had imagined safer than standing guard. The wolf suffered no setback as it thrust its head through the window and Hantle closed in, tamping powder with the ramrod.

  Rounfil was beside him, pointing to his stomach. “See how it reacted when we shot its belly?”

  “Yessir. We’ll aim for that again?”

  “Damn right.”

  Hantle dropped the ramrod and opened the flash pan to receive a pinch of powder when the wolf, head inside the house, shook violently to and fro. The structure disintegrated. His snout caught the roof, flinging it up and away. Hantle could not move quickly enough—

  Black.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HANTLE WAS first aware of his breath, how the back of his throat burned with each intake, the wheeze on the exhale, and the shortness of it. His face lay in damp grass and, as he lifted it up, he noticed the wooden cover over him and the shingles strewn about. As if from a lifetime ago, a vague recollection surfaced of the roof dislocating from its house and blotting out the stars overhead. A dense layer of smoky fog floated just above the ground visible through a hole in the gable end ahead of him. Nearby flames, diffusing through the fog, were all that lit it up. So it was still night.

  His left eye was swollen nearly shut; his forehead just above t
he eye throbbed. A tingle in his throat started him coughing and he could not get a full breath. There was pressure on his back. Looking and reaching toward his feet, he found the beam responsible for it. With weak arms, he tried crawling forward, only to find movement impossible. He was pinned. Turning his head to the other side, he saw Rounfil looking at him, face pale and hand outstretched in his direction. Hantle whispered to him, “Are you stuck too?” This single question brought him to coughing again and when it faded his eyes locked on the wooden beam protruding from Rounfil’s chest. Hantle reached out a hand as far as he could, gripped the grass, and tried to pull himself a bit toward his friend, but his hand slipped, leaving his fingers tacky with blood. “Hey, Rounfil. Can you hear me?” He choked back a sob and shouted, “Hey, Rounfil! Damnit, man, say something.” But no reply came. Tears welled in his eyes and he clawed at the ground. Now a little stronger, he slid forward an inch. He pulled again and heard the fabric of his pants rip on a splinter. With agonizing slowness, Hantle extracted himself from the wreckage of the roof.

  Once free, he rested his head on his forearms, feeling relief at finally getting a deep breath, and waited for the pins and needles in his legs to settle. Then he got up, crouched under the rafters, and took Rounfil’s hand. It was cold and limp. Hundreds of pounds of woodwork transferred their weight through the beam that drove through his friend’s chest. He would not be able to move a thing without many others to help. How hadn’t it killed them both? A dim light fell on the spot he had been stuck. As far as he could tell, a small depression in the ground was all that spared him. Another inch, he imagined, and the beam would have snapped his back and trapped him. “I’m sorry, Rounfil.” He gently drew down his eyelids. “I’ll see if I can get someone to help lift all this off. I’ll just . . .” He lost the thought, hung his head, and made his way out from under the roof.