Kill The Beast

by Graham Bradley

  He had just gone over to the stables to retrieve his horse when Danielle cut him off, fixing him with an intense look.

  “Give me a horse, I’m coming with you,” she said flatly.

  He balked at her. “What? No. You’re a…” he trailed off when he saw an intense flicker in her eyes.

  “A what, monsieur woodsman?”

  “A…well, you know…”

  “A woman? You were going to say that, weren’t you?”

  “Well, yes. I mean no, I was going to say ‘girl,’ but you get it.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t. Spell it out for me, would you?” She might have been daring him to say more, he couldn’t tell.

  Gautier sighed. “Look, it’s just that, we’re going on a hunt, you know? But it’s more than a hunt. There will be fighting, and such. Stuff better left to the menfolk. You understand, don’t you? None of the girls here want to go, surely you have noticed.”

  She glared at him. He didn’t want to admit it, but it occurred to him that he should not have spelled it out. Then her expression softened, and she licked her lips.

  “Oh, Gautier, my Gautier,” she breathed, stepping in a little closer, her eyes never breaking contact with his. He paused, unsure of this sudden change as she flattened her palms against his taut stomach. Her soft fingertips slid under the folds of his winter coat, making his heart flutter involuntarily at her gentle touch.

  What is happening? He hadn’t been this close to a woman since just before proposing to Robinette. Was Danielle…interested? Well of course she would be, but she was moving rather fast, having just come into town an hour ago, but her eyes were so blue, her lips so full and tempting, and why not admit it? There was an inviting warmth to her that pulled him forward. She slipped her hands around his sides…

  …And then she yanked them free from his coat, shattering the moment as his heart jumped into panic mode, switching from romantic passion to battlefield readiness in an instant. He blinked in the dark, saw Danielle brandishing something in each hand, and that was when he noticed he had two empty holsters on his belt, one on either hip.

  “Hey! Give those back!” he said.

  “See that barrel by the lamp?” She pointed with the gun in her left hand. Gautier looked, spotting the barrel at the corner of Madame Ésprits’ tavern, the one she used for food waste. Rats climbed all over it, foraging through the refuse.

  BLAM!

  Danielle fired. The close crack of powder stung his ears and filled the air with acrid smoke, and one of the rats went flying off of the barrel, its hips nowhere near the rest of its body.

  And this, at twenty paces away.

  “Bon sang!” Gautier exclaimed.

  Some of the villagers shouted in alarm and drew their own guns, but thankfully nobody fired. Gautier waved them off, never taking his eyes off Danielle.

  “I wanted to shoot his head, but you know how these muzzle-loaders are.” Danielle just shrugged. “Look, Gautier, it’s my brother who’s missing. My mother is gone and my father is ill. Philippe is soon to be the only family I have left. I know how to handle a gun, and if it were your brother out there, you wouldn’t leave his rescue to strangers. Ça va?” She tossed him the spent, smoking flintlock, twirling the other one in her right hand. “I wasn’t asking you if I could come. I’m coming. And I’m keeping this one.”

  She spun on her heels and went into the stables, untied one of Madame Ésprits’ horses, and left her own in exchange.

  Gautier could only stare, dumbfounded and impressed, maybe even a little…smitten? No woman had ever been so bold with him, so fearsome, fearless…what was this feeling inside him? He wasn’t sure. He continued to stare as Leroux appeared at his elbow, chuckling deeply like a man who resisted his impending sobriety.

  “You know, Gau, nothing gets you over the last one like the next one, and she’s got a fire to her.”

  Gautier snorted. “Tais-toi, Leroux. Grab your things, we’re going.”

  He led his horse, Foudre, out of the stables and to the road in front of the tavern, checking the straps on the saddle to make sure that they hadn’t loosened too much. As Gautier fiddled with one stubborn buckle, Madame Ésprits came along with a tray of coffee cups that she had been handing out.

  The smell hit him and nearly brought him to his knees in relief. She held a mug out to him and he greedily accepted it, raising the stimulating brew to his lips and inhaling deep.

  “You know, you’re as dense as an ox up here, Gautier,” Madame Ésprits said, tapping her head with her finger. “And yet, that one’s got you pegged.” She indicated Danielle who was a ways off, readying her own new horse.

  “She’s just a firebrand, Madame,” Gautier grumbled. “Hasn’t had it hard enough yet. This trip through the woods will cure her of it, where there’s no road to pamper her tender feet.”

  “If you say so, you big oaf. Drink that, it’ll sober you up.” She trundled off, muttering something under her breath about stubborn bachelors. Gautier took a sip of the coffee and almost coughed it out through his nose, except it was too thick to go that way, having been double-brewed to a stout consistency. Black as the night and bitter as his first taste of defeat, Gautier choked down a mouthful and let it warm him. Immediately his skin buzzed, the sensation amplifying with each sip. He set the mug on Madame Ésprits’ platter as she walked by again, and he climbed up into Foudre’s saddle.

  Strong booze one hour, strong coffee the next. He was going to be a wreck in the morning. For now, it was time to hunt a monster. He spurred his steed into action. The village men followed, heading for the woodland path.

  ~4~

  The newly fallen snow whispered under the horses’ hooves as the villagers rode up the mountain. The partial moon peeked through heavy, dark clouds from time to time, allowing Gautier to see the forest without using a lantern. He told the men to conserve their wicks and oil, for they didn’t know when next they would need them.

  He had been to the castle before. Finding it in these circumstances wouldn’t be hard, just slow. The men were anxious, and the horses could smell it. They let out a nervous whinny here and there, eyes darting after a changing shadow, but Gautier pressed Foudre on.

  Two miles into the trek, the trees closed in around the trail, and the villagers fell into a single-file line. The snow was older here, thinner on the ground because of so many branches overhead, and so the tracks in it were still clear. Gautier stopped, lit his lantern, and knelt down to inspect the patterns.

  Sharp claws with spiked heels. They were still on the trail of their quarry.

  One other thing interested him: a footprint about the size and shape of a woman’s, heading back toward the village. It could only belong to Danielle, who must have camped in the clearing not far ahead.

  Before he could call back for her, Danielle’s horse appeared at his side, navigating an even tighter path between trees so she could advance. “This was it,” she whispered to Gautier, unsure of the darkness surrounding them. “My cart and my brother’s carts are somewhere in there. What’s left of them, that is.”

  “Anything useful in them?” Gautier asked.

  She shrugged, and he heard a smile in her tone that irritated him. “Could be. A girl will keep secrets, you know.” She clicked her tongue and the horse trotted onward into the clearing. Grumbling to himself, Gautier bade his men to likewise advance, until they filled the little clearing, where they dismounted and gave their horses a brief rest. Members of the party at the edge of the clearing kept looking nervously into the dark woods—both horse and rider alike.

  For almost ten full minutes, Danielle poked around in the wreckage of the two wagons that had belonged to her and her brother. Gautier watched but said nothing, growing ever more irritated as the time passed.

  “Question, Gautier,” said François Jarnier, a poultry merchant who had brought a rifle with him. “How long are we going to stand out here in the cold and dark, exposed, in a spot where these enemies
have already been before?”

  The question angered Gautier more than he might have thought. Why were they standing out here? He wanted Danielle to hurry. In fact, he didn’t want to stop at all. What was holding him back, then? What…what pull did she have on him that nobody else did? So far she had only given him orders, rejected his commands, and generally mocked or ignored him. And he, well, maybe in some small way…

  …liked it?

  “Bah,” he said aloud, willing the words to banish those thoughts. “Danielle, we’re leaving.”

  “Don’t know why you’re checking in with me, woodsman,” she said disinterestedly as she tugged at a section of shredded canvas on one of the wagons. “Aren’t you in charge?”

  Three of the nearest villagers dared to chuckle. Gautier’s face actually flushed hot—was that real? Did that feeling actually happen to people?—and he tried to keep the snarl out of his voice, tried not to let her know that she was getting to him.

  “You made such a stink about coming up here, I just figured you needed someone to hold your hand for you,” he shot back.

  She emerged from the wagon with a large, heavy satchel of no sleek shape. It bulged, and something inside it clanged and tinkled like metal. “No, I’m set. Do what you will, I’ll follow or I won’t. Does that work for you?” Danielle strode back to her horse and, with great effort, tugged herself up into the saddle with the weight of the heavy satchel.

  “What the bloody devil is in that thing?” he demanded.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said flatly.

  “I’m worried about it if it will slow us down,” he replied.

  “Then leave if you’re in such a hurry! I’m bringing this.”

  He wanted to rebut her right there, but he felt too many eyes on him, nervous eyes that needed a steady leader, and getting ensnared in a verbal struggle with this female firebrand didn’t seem to be going too well.

  “Catch up if you can. I was only resting the farmers anyhow. Men! Forward!” Gautier said, hoping that did the trick. The horses kicked into motion, and they finished the sojourn up the mountain.

  When the woods thinned and the road improved in quality, Gautier knew the castle grounds were close. He wasn’t prepared for how silent it was, or how dark. There were no groundskeepers out, which he didn’t expect, given the hour, but there were no torches lit, no footmen at the gate, and the drawbridge was down. The statues in the garden did nothing to soften the eerie mood that hung in the prevalent silence.

  “I’m no military expert,” Leroux said, keeping step beside Gautier, “but this seems strategically unsound, leaving the doors open.”

  “That’s because it’s a trap.” Gautier halted the men, dismounted his horse, and nocked an arrow. No sense prepping a weapon that would make unnecessary noise if he had to use it.

  The castle sat on a huge plot of land at the edge of a cliff made of solid rock. A stream farther up the mountain had been diverted to feed into the moat, and somewhere around the rear of the building, a small waterfall poured the excess water down a few thousand feet to the base of the cliff.

  The other men, ever following Gautier, likewise dismounted and drew their motley arsenal, bringing it around to bear.

  “Everyone be quiet,” Gautier hissed. This was why he didn’t take hunting parties into the woods; there was always some damned fool making noise, dragging his feet, breathing too loud or whatever else, and Gautier needed his senses in tune with his surroundings. Any trap would reveal itself to him—there would be something, always something, out of the ordinary.

  Leroux came up behind him and tapped his shoulder, then pointed at the moat emphatically. Gautier couldn’t tell what he wanted, but Leroux insisted, so finally Gautier stared until he saw it.

  There were grates at the base of the castle ramparts, right over the bank of the moat on the opposite side. They allowed rainwater to flow out of the inner courtyard and into the moat. In the dark, Gautier saw strange hoses or cables of some kind flowing out of them and under the darkened surface of the frigid water.

  Mulling his options, Gautier signaled to the others to take twenty steps forward, stop, and hold their position. Then he listened and advanced again, repeating the process four times until they were closer to the moat. As he studied the hoses going under the water, he was stumped. Their purpose was entirely unclear.

  Then the monster attacked.

  Something huge, huge, exploded out of the water like a mad cow, only twice as large and not as quiet. Gautier only caught sight of a bulbous body and a wide gaping maw full of carnivorous teeth. The whole thing was covered with tentacles that waved through the air like whips. A wall of oily flesh and dirty water came at Gautier, and he instinctively loosed the arrow on his bowstring.

  Chaos ensued. Between the darkness and the fog of sudden combat—to which Gautier was no stranger, having fought bears and boars alike in the woods—he couldn’t tell who had stayed and who had run, only that about half his men had scattered, the monster was out of the water, tentacles were everywhere, and he was probably going to die.

  Then the Frenchmen gathered their courage and, seeing their champion in the thick of the fight, came at the creature with everything they had. Someone even hurled a lantern which shattered against it, immediately spreading fire and light, allowing the others to see the monster better.

  Tentacles whipped about. Weapons were lost. Men screamed, others roared, and the stench of blood took flight on the wind. All through this, Gautier wrestled under the bulk of the monster, reaching for his knife, for another arrow, for anything…

  …there it was. He grabbed the short, double-barreled flintlock and jammed it against the monster’s side. One long finger hooked both triggers and squeezed. CRACK! A cloud of smoke told him it had gone off, and the monster keeled over, its tone changing from a snarl to a scream as Gautier pulled himself free.

  The villagers finished doing the work of death upon the beast, hacking at it with swords, axes, hatchets, and whatever else they had brought with them. When a finishing blow from a pitchfork penetrated the place where Gautier assumed its brain to be, the creature grew still and sagged to the ground, breathing its last.

  Though Gautier knew that every man present was experienced when it came to slaughtering animals for food, he could also tell that this was the first episode of savagery for many of them, that they had never had to resort to barbarism in that degree before, drawing on the basest natural instinct for survival. It had been that way for him once, long ago, when he was still but a boy, and had needed to choose between his own life and that of a rogue wolf that was keen to keep him from going home.

  With the help of a fist-sized rock, Gautier had chosen his own life, and still had the scars to prove it. Anxious as he was to penetrate the castle wall and put an end to the threat inside it, he allowed these first-timers their space to catch their breath after killing the moat-monster. When the last of them stood up and stared into the distance at nothing, their backs straight and their shoulders square, he knew they were ready.

  And then there was Danielle. Petite, comely Danielle, a wisp of a thing that came out of the dark and upended the whole town with a few words. Here were four dozen of the village’s best men, armed, bruised, shaken, and ready for a fight, all because of her—and she had intended to come here in search of her brother without them.

  Gautier watched as she searched the monster curiously, lifting up the tentacles here and there, until something caught her eye, and she reached down to grab something where Gautier couldn’t see. When she came up, she was holding a knife with a six-inch blade that dripped in the moonlight. She wiped it off on her cloak and sheathed it at her hip. Then she looked around, annoyed and a little rushed, anxious to get moving again.

  It was time for Gautier to admit that he truly didn’t understand this woman.

  Yes, woman. Not a girl. No child of either sex could stand by and witness the end of a life (even a savage one), to say nothing of participate in it
s end, with so little affectation. He’d underestimated her.

  “We’re going inside. Leroux, Jean-Claude, Edmond, Jules, and Danielle, we’re the front line. The rest of you, form groups of four to six. We don’t know how many of the metal men there are, but beating them one-on-one isn’t an option, d’accord? You stick together,” Gautier said.

  “But you beat one by yourself,” said Edmond, a boy of seventeen. Jean-Claude and Jules both swatted the back of Edmond’s head.

  “That’s because I’m me, and not you,” Gautier replied flatly.

  “That’s right! No one fights like Gautier!” Leroux chided.

  “Oui, he’ll put your lights right out, kid,” Jean-Claude said.

  “I was just saying,” Edmond muttered.

  “And when you’re as brawny and burly as Gautier, maybe we’ll hear what you’re saying,” said Jules.

  “Oh yes, what a reason to listen to someone.” Danielle snorted and headed across the drawbridge, leaving the villagers behind. Gautier turned and hurried after her, though he tried not to look like he was doing just that.

  “Hey, I gave you an olive branch just now, putting you up front with us. Don’t go poking my men in the eye with it. Many of them have never had to kill something before,” Gautier said.

  “Bah. They’re farmers, are they not? They kill livestock and such.”

  “You slaughter livestock. You kill predators. It’s different. If you’re with us, you’ll do as the others do, understand?”

  “Help me count, Monsieur Lesauvage: how many of your orders have I taken tonight?” She looked thoughtful and started counting them off on her fingers, only to keep restarting and ending at zero. Then she shrugged. “I guess you’ll catch on sometime.”

  The villagers had caught up to them, making it counterproductive for Gautier to argue the point further, as he didn’t want the men to see how Danielle so easily got under his skin. So he let it slide, silently, fuming all the while, his fingers clenching and unclenching the whole time they crossed the bridge.