The Werewolf and the Wormlord

by Hugh Cook

  ‘Yes,’ said Alfric. ‘For She has once more ventured from her lair. The Wormlord has sworn to surrender his throne and march forth against Herself as soon as the third of the saga swords has been delivered to Saxo Pall.’

  This drew a rustling murmur of comment and speculation from the assembled Elders. Vampires are not afraid of much, but even they stand in fear of Herself.

  ‘This is true?’ said the Oldest.

  ‘If it were not true, I would not have said it,’ answered Alfric. ‘I am not just a banker. I am also a Yudonic Knight, born and bred. We do not deal in falsehood.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said the Oldest. ‘Very well. If Kinskom is a necessary part of our bargain, then you must have it. But there is a quid pro quo.’

  ‘Speak,’ said Alfric.

  ‘The virgin blood which constitutes our interest must be delivered by agents of the Bank to our very door.’

  ‘That we can do,’ said Alfric.

  Comptroller Xzu had warned Alfric that the vampires would be very reluctant to venture within crossbow range of Galsh Ebrek, either to deposit their gold or to collect their interest. And Xzu had assured Alfric that the Bank would be perfectly happy to purchase virgin females on behalf of the vampires (in Tang, or Obooloo, or wherever the best price was to be had), to bring that livestock through the Door, to smuggle it out of Galsh Ebrek and to deliver it to the bloodfeeders.

  In due course, both Alfric and the vampires were satisfied. Documents were sighted and signed, arrangements were made for delivery of gold and counterdelivery of interest, the brave sword Kinskom was delivered into Alfric’s hands, and then he was led back outside.

  Alfric said goodbye to his hosts, reclaimed his horse, and, with Kinskom sheathed at his side, he set forth for Galsh Ebrek. As he went, he began composing a hero-song to tell of his great battle with the vampires in the echoing underearth halls of horror. He began to sing little bits of it to the night air.

  It was a very exciting song, and Alfric became quite enthusiastic about it as he told of a fierce-voiced encounter in the vampire’s Council Chamber, of the driblets of blood which spilt from a foul and stinking chalice as the Oldest drank, of the beserk rage with which Alfric Danbrog fell upon his enemies, of the swingeing sword-strokes with which he hack-chopped the monsters, of the waters of an underground river suffused with the phosphorescent green of the battle-spilt blood of a dying vampire, of the regal courage with which he hazarded his strength against a foe most fell.

  Oh, it is great stuff, great stuff, this telling of knightly deeds! Doughty weapons clash; blood spurts; and reeking combat-sweat fouls the air. A hero stands solo against the deadly malice of demonic monsters. Dragon-decorated is the hero’s helm, and flame is the blade he wields in the raven-black night as his martial deeds.

  Imagine now the banquet; imagine now the hall. The great are beerdrinking from dragon-wreathed goblets, tossing chicken bones at the untunchilamons which go flirting through the air as the singer bards his deeds. The skop is inspired, knowing he is watched by men wise in years and noble of lineage, men who have tales of their own to tell. Stories of voyages in ocean-roving ships, of the swashbuckling waves of the tawny oceans, of landings on shores destined to run red with the blood of mortal onslaught.

  And when the singer is done, those other tales begin, and so we hear of such ships and such beaches, and then of other things. Battles, swords, dragons, giants, blood, sinew, thigh, thew. Journeys fraught with misery. Kingly men in ample mail-coats striving to secure renown with bloody iron. Battle-honoured heroes ensnared and at last brought down to ruin by the conspiracies of the marriage bed.

  And then, surely, ultimately we must hear of the Wormlord and his quest, of Tromso Stavenger and the way he fought Her son, met him face to face amidst the wolf-infested hillsides, the gloom of the crags. Met him, dared him, fought him, conquered, killed...

  With such imaginings high-singing in his head, Alfric rode his broken-down horse through the forest wilds. The moon was riding high by now, the swollen moon mazed by broken branches as it filtered through the forest, layering mosaics of silver upon the gutteral black of the water of the streams which laced through the forest.

  At last, Alfric’s elation at daring the vampires and winning the brave sword Kinskorn began to wear off. His song-singing ceased, as did his imagining; and he began to take account of his saddle-sore backside, his nagging hunger, the bone-chill of the night, and his own weariness. At least he could do something about the hunger, for he had a loaf of bread in a sack tied behind his saddle.

  Alfric stopped and dismounted.

  ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he said to his horse.

  Then looped the reins around a branch so the animal couldn’t go anywhere. Then stamped his feet, shuddered at the cold, fumbled open the breadsack and took out the loaf, which was wrapped up in a bag of salmon skin where it was safe from rain and mist, and from the sweat of his horse.

  The bread had been hot when purchased but now it was cold. Alfric tore the crust apart with merciless talons and wolfed into the soft and yielding flesh, his teeth savaging its substance as if seeking to tear bones from their anchoring tendons. Eating, feeding, tearing, gullet-ing, he looked like a wild thing; and, in the rage of his appetite, felt like one.

  He chewed too little and swallowed too greedily; and bread lumped into a hard and painful bolus as his muscles worked it slowly down his throat. Then he ravaged the loaf anew, and, without warning, a quicksilver pain agonized through one of his rear teeth. He stopped chewing abruptly. Strange, this pain. He never got it when eating hard things, no, only when masticating sticky stuff like bread. He eased the mulch-mush of bread to the other side of his mouth, stuck a finger into his mouth, and cautiously felt the offending tooth.

  No pain.

  At least: his touch elicited no pain.

  With great care, Alfric began to chew again. Then stopped. For he heard something. What? Unless he was mistaken, what he heard was a horse’s hoof as it went crunch-crack through a crust of frozen mud. Then he heard a scattering of breaking twigs. What would break branches like that? Not a man, surely, for a man would be careful of his face. Unless he was armoured for battle, his helm protecting him from the fingering wood.

  Alfric abruptly lost his appetite.

  He spat out the bread in his mouth.

  Then, as the moon caught them, he saw them, two of them, mounted men in the forest, and they saw him, for the larger challenged him:

  ‘Danbrog!’

  Alfric knew the man by voice. Wu Norn. Muscleman Wu. Swordsman, axeman, fistman, killer.

  Alfric tried to respond. But found himself without voice. It was the shock of the sudden which had done it. He was unmanned as if by ambush. Had thought himself safe, home, successful, victorious, the slaughter-dare in the vampires’ lair nothing more than a bad dream. Was not prepared for this, was not prepared at all, and already the smaller man had swung down from his horse and was coming at the charge, running over the buckle-buck of the ground, weapon out and rage in his throat, and—

  Alfric drew Kinskom.

  And the wisdom of the weapon taught him necessity, taught him in time, and the blade balanced perfectly as it met shadow with shadow, iron with iron. Sparks screamed, ice cracked, a branch broke, and something—

  Something was thrashing on the end of Alfric’s sword, and Alfric drove his weight against the something, drove the sword deep, drove the sword home. And then, panting, sweating, cursing, tried to pull the sword out again. But the blade was stuck, or so it seemed to his sweating hands. But the man was dead, he was dead, was killed, Alfric had killed him, or Kinskorn had.

  ‘Dansbrog!’

  Thus roared Muscleman Wu. Then spurred his horse, crashing the beast through the nightgrowth, heedless of any damage which might be done to the brute which bore him or to himself.

  Alfric waited to hear no more, but flung himself on to his own horse and spurred the beast. Off they went. Then the animal lurched violently as th
e reins restrained it.

  ‘Stroth!’said Alfric, tugging at the reins.

  But they would not come free and the branch would not break. So down from the horse he leapt, meaning to unknot the leather, remount and respur. But there was no time. Wu Norn was almost upon him, his sword already out for a slaughter-spree. Then Alfric screamed in frustrated rage, then punched his horse, then swore in blubbering panic and fled.

  Bent low he ran, bent low, stooping at speed into the thickest of the forest, running, panting, running through the lowgrowth undergrowth, the snaggle-hook trees too thick for pursuit, too thick for Wu to follow unless Wu dismounted.

  Wu did dismount.

  When Alfric stopped, he heard Muscleman Wu. The killer of men was not far behind. Alfric was weaponless, had no way to fight. But could not run, could run no more, for he was unfit, out of condition, that was the truth of it. He sobbed for fear of his death, then—

  —Mud.

  So thought Alfric, and grappled with a handful of the stuff, hissing with the pain as ice-splintered muck packed into his palm. But the pain was good for the pain steadied him, sobered him, and he began to think, it might be a little late but he was thinking at last, and he eased his breathing as best he could, and sank low, and sheltered himself in the shadows, and heard Wu Norn swear, and remembered.

  Moon was the night, but still the shadows were many, yes, many many, here in the forest, the forest all stilts and crutches, all masts and fishing rods, and he was crouched in the thickest of those shadows, and the bafflement of the dark was sufficient to hide him, at least for the moment, yes, surely this man had lost him. Yes. But.

  —But keep back!

  Yes, he must keep back in the deepest of the shadows, for it was all too easy for the moon to catch the lenses of his spectacles and betray him by a splinter-flash of a light brighter than starlight. If he kept to the shadows, he would be safe, safe, at least for the moment.

  —But.

  But Muscleman Wu was not going to give up that easily. Wu began to quarter the ground, stabbing at logs lest they have livers inside them, kicking at softbogs in case lungs be laired within. Often he stopped. To listen.

  So.

  —What now?

  —Retreat?

  But this was no night for shadow-sneaking, no night for silent withdrawals. It was a night of frost-sharpened sounds, of sticks awaiting their rupture, of ice crusted that weight might break it. Alfric heard a night-hunter clitter through a litter of undergrowth rubbish a good two hundred paces distant. Wu Norn’s head swung round, and moon spiked briefly from the warrior’s eyes as he considered the sound and the distance.

  Then Wu resumed his quartering-hunting.

  ‘Danbrog!’ roared Wu.

  Then:

  ‘Grendelson!’

  Then:

  ‘Come out, you whore! Iz-boliks, you banker-slut! Come out!’

  But Alfric answered not to Iz-boliks, or to whore, or to Danbrog, or to Grendelson. However named, he would not answer. Instead, he lay still and thought.

  Wu was formidable.

  The warrior was wood-wise, could tell man from animal, and had hearing good enough to alert him to the need to tell. And Alfric, despite his thinking, had no bright ideas at all, and so was still lying there, still waiting, the cold of the mud hurting his hand, and he had no ideas, no ideas at all, for the mud was but a whim, for what could it do for him?

  —Blind him.

  But Muscleman Wu would kill him even if blinded by a faceful of mud. With sword in hand, Wu would kill him. Blade describing whirlwinds as it chopped through the night, slaughtering, fractioning, seeking, finding. At close quarters, a blinded man is still a killer if he knows what he’s doing. And maybe Wu would blink at the right moment, or the mud would go wild, or the mud would find its mark but would blind the enemy for no more than an instant.

  —No hope.

  —No hope without weapons.

  —A stick, then.

  Alfric reached for the nearest branch which looked weapon-weighty. But the thing was stuck to a tree, was growing out of a tree, and he could not pull it free, not without filling the air with the sound of wrangling wood, of warp-woe and tree-splinter.

  Alfric paused.

  Momentarily defeated.

  Then rage possessed him.

  No! He would not fail! He would not die! Not now, now, when he was triumphant, victorious in questing, and close, yes, close to the throne, very close, to ride to Galsh Ebrek was all it would take to make himself king, and to ride he must kill, and to kill needed weapons, and weapons he had, yes, teeth and claws, claws and teeth, and the weight of his haunches, the strength of the moon.

  And the moon.

  And the moon—

  And the moon was swelling, girthing, growing, becoming hot, yes, hot, and tumescent, yes, misting from silver to blood, and a prickling sensation thrilled through Alfric’s arms as he willed the Change, his hands becoming clumsy, hairs thickening and darkening on the backs of his wrists, and already the moon was silver no more, but, rather, a smouldering fire.

  The smells deepened, thickened and became more dangerous, their range increasing by several octaves. Hearing likewise prospered, so Danbrog Grendelson heard the thin whistling of the high-pitched bats, and heard too the whispers of the men who thought themselves stalking him.

  —Quick, quick!

  He tossed his spectacles aside, then tore free his boots and shuddered out of his clothes before his flesh could burst those accoutrements, then the pain took him, the spasms, the agony of the full force of the Change, and he thrashed in the shadows, heedless of the noise, helpless to save himself.

  A voice:

  ‘Gralaag?’

  Unintelligible that voice, a question lurching across the octaves.

  Then Alfric kicked away the last spasm and lay still, lay on his back and stared at the bloody moon, and when the voice spoke again he understood it, yes, though the voice was warped and distorted, deepened and thickened, made barbarous by ears atuned to a different blood:

  ‘Grendelson? Is that you?’

  Alfric rolled on to all fours and lurched across the forest floor. He was clumsy, finding four legs momentarily harder than two. But he was remembering, oh yes, remembering swiftly, remembering what he had learnt from a full three months spent running wild in the Qinjoks, and he hit his stride in less than a dozen paces.

  ‘Maf!’

  Thus Muscleman Wu, swearing in strangled shock as the huge wolf charged toward him.

  Then:

  ‘Norn for ever!’

  Alfric heard the battlecry, saw the sword, and swerved, jinked, and ducked into the undergrowth, then was running full tilt, and thinking as he ran, thinking.

  —Iron against bone and iron must win.

  —But the man has a horse and no horseman will walk.

  Thus thinking, Wolf Alfric ran at full pace, careless of noise. Then stopped abruptly and began to ghost through the forest, slinking from shadow to shadow, making for Wu Norn’s horse. There was no wind to carry wolfsmell or othersmell, no wind to warn or make the beast uneasy, so Alfric feared not discovery as he went into hiding barely fifty paces from Muscleman Wu’s abandoned horse.

  Then Alfric lay still.

  Wolf Alfric waited, a shadow hidden by shadows. Black, he was black, a beast of the night and hence hidden by the night, the underdepths of trees concealing him completely, all but for the eyes, the eyes as bloody as the moon which ruled him.

  At last, as Alfric had expected, Muscleman Wu came shifting through the forest. Delicately went Wu, yes, as quietly as he could, but still he was noisy, for it is nearly impossible to move without sound on a night both still and icy-clear.

  Alfric slitted his eyes, and then - it took an effort of will, but he managed it - closed them entirely to mask the moonbuming fire.

  Then he waited.

  Listening.

  Let the man walk past him.

  Then—

  Opened his eyes.


  Then—

  Moving with scarcely more sound than a vogel makes as it eases itself from one tree to the next, Alfric slipped out of the shadows in which he had been hiding. And fell in behind Muscleman Wu. The footsteps of the man masked the stealthy-stalking of the wolf. A moment to savour, this, yes, a moment to savour.

  ‘Ya, Fom,’ said Wu, greeting his horse.

  Alfric caught the relief in Wu’s voice, knew the man was glad to be back with his beast, knew the warrior Norn had no appetite for stalking a gigantic black wolf through this forest of ice and shadows, knew Wu wanted only to be gone, yes, gone, and quickly, to run back to Galsh Ebrek and settle his fears with a mug of good ale in company.

  Then the brave horse Fom caught a whiff of something alien, threatening, and snorted, and pawed the ground. And Wu, alert to the nuances of such behaviour, guessed at what was behind him, and turned, but turned too late, for the weight was launched already, and Wu turned in time—

  In time to be met, thrown back, thrown down, and—

  Bone to be jaw, jaw to be teeth, teeth to be blood—

  And Wu was struggling, wrestling, fighting the wolf which ravaged for his throat, and trying to Change as he fought, but he was too slow, too slow—

  For Wolf Alfric tore his throat apart then rolled free—

  Rolled free in time to watch.

  Muscleman Wu was strong, as were all the Noms, and even in his death he found the time to Change, his clothes bursting and breaking as his Shape fought against them, jerkin ripping, belt snapping, chain mail coming apart.

  And Alfric knew, then, that Wu had known his own nature, must have known. For chain mail will not break during a Change, not unless its web has been especially weakened to accommodate such an emergency. The mail worn by Muscleman Wu did so break, meaning that the Norn had always been prepared for this.

  But—

  It was too late.

  For, as Muscleman Wu became wolf, the last of his strength left him, and he died.

  Wolf Alfric sniffed around the corpse of his fallen foe, making sure. The wolf-corpse was more than a little ludicrous, lying there with its hind legs loose in a warrior’s battle boots, lying in a raggage of clothes variously tight or torn, lying there very much dead.