Terovolas

by Edward M. Erdelac

  Then he pushed himself up and hobbled off toward the canyon.

  Cole watched the old man disappear, then turned to Ranny and ran a hand over the nape of his neck.

  Ranny nodded, suddenly calm.

  Cole turned to us.

  “Let’s go.”

  The Injun was already gone.

  A third scream went up, and beside me, Van Helsing said something that sounded almost like it.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “Glape-near,” he said, and he was nodding his head to himself.

  I didn’t know what in hell he was talking about.

  I opened my mouth to say something to Ranny, but he turned away from Van Helsing and I and took up one of Alkali’s big Dragoons in his off hand and stared across the silent, silver dewed field. Van Helsing touched the boy’s shoulder. I grabbed a hold of the old Dutchman’s elbow.

  “Come on, Professor.”

  Van Helsing pulled away from me, reached quickly into his shirt and pulled out the glittery cross on its silver chain. He slipped it over his head and dropped it over Ranny’s. It hung up on one of his ears, but the old man straightened it. Then he turned to me and nodded.

  We went side by side into the dark.

  As we ran, he said that glape-near word again, as though it was too important to take with him to the grave if that’s where we were running. He had to share it with me first.

  “What?” I said again.

  “Did you not hear? First Lay-ding! Then Droe-ma! Now Glape-near! The three fetters that bound the monster Fenrir! It must be that they break them to attain their change, metaphorically freeing their inner savagery — the wolf!” His face was lit up like a drunkard with a ten dollar gold piece, and he shouted all this to me in between breaths as he ran.

  I vaguely remembered the story from the party, but then I had no more time to spare it any pondering.

  The lip of the canyon came up without warning in its unnerving way, and under the light of the moon it was like the lands of hell down there, ghostly and cold looking in the gloom. The Indian was already over the edge, sliding lightly down the rocky slope, dropping like a nimble lizard from boulder to boulder. Alkali was proceeding more slowly, his false leg giving him a helluva time and sending the loose stones tumbling. Cole crouched on the rim and waved for us to hurry up.

  As Van Helsing and I reached the others, a volley of pistol fire broke up the ominous quiet behind. Ranny’s irons blazed somewhere back there, and I can only hope he gave a good account of himself. No gunfire answered his dozen or so shots, but suddenly his revolvers went quiet. The Indian and the Professor had been right. They didn’t come after us like men.

  I don’t even know if they waited for Ranny’s shots. It might be some of them ran right past him even as he cut loose. All I know is I saw them coming at us across the field, running on their hands like crazy apes. They saw us at the same time, and the whole bunch set up an ugly howl.

  They didn’t see our guns, or didn’t care. We opened up into the onrushing line and still they came in their pointed cowls and hide shirts. They were naked underneath. I expected them to break after the first discharge. Van Helsing and Cole and I were all slinging lead at them, but they didn’t even pause. One of them tumbled to the ground and two others came leaping over him. They moved quicker than I thought a man on all fours could. I saw Cole turn his Winchester around and grip it by the barrel. One of the Scandinavians leapt at him and he stepped aside as if to let him pass, and brought the repeater down on the nape of the fellow’s neck like an axe. The Scandinavian howled and went soaring over the canyon rim into space. His silhouette, more like a bristling animal’s than a man’s, flashed across the white moon for a minute, and then crashed somewhere far down below.

  That was the last good look I had of anybody before two of those damned maniacs got to me. They had their claws strapped on, and my busted arm might have been shorn clean off but for the heavy wrappings. As it was, beating the lunatics away with my pistol was about as effective as pounding on a bull with a lady’s handkerchief and yelling for it to behave.

  I kicked and punched and tore, but one of their heads darted forward and I felt those hellish dentures tear a mouthful of skin and cloth from my shoulder. I think I must have shrieked, but I jabbed the long barrel of my gun like the point of a bayonet into the mess of fur and body that was weighing down on me and pulled the trigger. The son of a bitch that had bit me didn’t slacken, but he did go twisting and snarling off of me, his wolf shirt on fire, I think more mad than hurt.

  The other one grabbed at me and I had to slip my swaddled arm up to keep those devil teeth from snapping down on my throat, even as his claws ripped into my mangled shoulder. My pistol fell from my fingers and landed somewhere in the grass, and I hooked my naked trigger finger approximately where I figured those big black eyes to be and gave a jerk. I didn’t gouge him properly, but I did manage to disrupt the eye holes of the mad fool’s cowl. He roared like an upset lion, and spattered my face with froth, but in the instant of confusion I got away from him.

  The only problem was, I scrambled right over the edge of the canyon. I fell free for about four feet before my neck and shoulders collided with the steep, rocky incline. Down I went, sliding and tumbling, praying I wouldn’t go so fast or so far as to break my fool neck, and only being slowed by the occasional immovable outcropping. I careened off a protruding bush and led a route of rocks and pebbles right into some other poor soul who was making their steady descent, thus rendering whatever care they’d been taking a moot point. Like a rolling snowball, whoever I’d crashed into got caught up in my dangerous fall, and our combined momentum sent us pitching down the slope like a pair of sinful tumbleweeds riding a dust devil down the jagged road to hell. I don’t know when we finally stopped, or if I was even conscious that we had stopped.

  A big hand gripped me by my torn and bloody shirt front and growled, “Get up!”

  It was Alkali I’d ploughed into, and it was a wonder that neither one of us had broken anything. I shouldn’t say we didn’t. Alkali’s wood leg shattered on a rock during the fall. As I got to my unsteady feet and rubbed cautiously at my scraped and throbbing knees, he leaned heavily on me and I saw that only a sharp looking splinter poked through his torn pant leg.

  I could see the old man plain, and he was a mess. His hat was gone and his thinly haired pate was a picture of cuts and scratches. His eyepatch had migrated to the center of his forehead in the scuffle, leaving his empty socket exposed. The good hand that held onto my bit shoulder and made it white hot with pain was bleeding too.

  I didn’t yell for the hurt though, because I was too busy marveling at the spot the Lord had chosen to deposit us. We were but three feet from a cliff that dropped off suddenly for seventy feet or more straight down.

  I said a prayer of thanks that we’d stopped where we had, and Alkali, hearing me, said, “You best thank Barnaby Myers while yer at it.”

  “Who?”

  “The blacksmith that gimme this hook back in Injun Territory.”

  He held it up, and I saw that it was slightly bent. He had thrust it out and used it as an anchor to slow our mutual descent. Back up the way we’d fallen, I could see the long furrow in the stony earth his hook had ploughed.

  “Where’s my damn rifle?” he snarled, looking all around.

  I adjusted his eyepatch, slipping it back over the hole it had previously hid.

  “I think it went over the edge,” I said.

  He cussed and inclined his gaze back up the slope as a clatter of gunfire rang out somewhere many feet above.

  Dark shapes moved up there, and it was difficult to tell who was fleeing down the canyon side and who was pursuing. Those cussed Norgies were having a real time by the sound of their barking and howling. It was like a bunch of bloodhounds had turned around on the hunters.

  Someone appeared to the left of us then, very close, and Alkali ripped at the pistol still hung at his side.

  “He
y, don’t shoot!” It was Plenty Skins.

  We relaxed and let the Injun get closer. He actually grinned at us in the dark.

  “That was some spill you all took. I figured I’d find you dead.”

  “What now?” I mumbled.

  “There’s a quicker way down...” the Injun began, pointing to a narrow ledge trail that clung to the length of the canyon face and seemed to gradually ease downward.

  “Not likely,” said Alkali. “Where’s Cole and the Professor?”

  We heard gunshots then, and saw Cole firing up at the moving shapes. One of the figures ran past him and stopped. Alkali took aim with his gun, but then the shade on the slope produced a revolver and took to firing too. It was Van Helsing.

  They made the remainder of their descent in the same way. One would stop and fire, allowing the other time to move further down, reloading as they ran.

  Alkali waved his pistol back and forth in the air. Cole spotted him, and made for our position, bringing Van Helsing and a slew of wolf-men with him.

  “Awright, let’s git!” Alkali yelled.

  Plenty Skins led the way, racing out onto the thin trail as if he were running across a broad plank walk in Dallas, and not some crumbling ribbon of a ledge with only sheer canyon wall on the right and the last and biggest step on the left.

  I went next, with all the fear of a white man who knows there is no happy hunting ground waiting for him. I dug my fingernails into the rock like pitons and crept along that sliver of firm ground, trying hard not to spare worry to the drop and the horde of madmen speedily catching up with us.

  “Go on, Alvin! Move it!” Alkali hollered. He stopped at the start of the trail and fired at the rolling, furred bodies coming like a wave, while Cole and Van Helsing scrabbled onto the trail and were soon crowding me from behind.

  I found Van Helsing next to me. He was hatless, and his long English coat was billowing out over the nothingness. He’d stowed his pistol and like me, was doing his best to grab hold of the rock wall and sidestep quickly along.

  I begged him not to rush me when his feet started brushing against mine. The Injun had slipped around a bend and was far ahead.

  On the other side of us, Cole was supporting Alkali, and I was glad it wasn’t me. Balancing on two legs was bad enough.

  The Scandinavians reached the cliff we had come from and I thought for certain sense would come to them. But one of them came running on all fours, leaping over the stones and headed right for the ledge. Alkali fired squarely at him, the recoil nearly knocking himself and Cole over the edge. The bullet only grazed the charging wolf-man, but it was enough to upset his precarious balance and send him tumbling over. He bounced a few times off the wall down below and crashed among the rocks, never screaming once.

  The other wolf-men howled and yipped and worked themselves up into a fearful lather. We could see them plain in the moonlight as we made our way around the bend in the trail. It was a bizarre sight. They fidgeted like stymied hounds that had lost the scent of the fox at the edge of the stream. They rushed back and forth on all fours, seeming to sniff at the narrow ledge trail and ran back to their pack to report. They nipped at each other angrily. They began to growl and shout in raging animal tantrums.

  After a bit, one of the huddled figures rose upright and ran to the trail, hunched over like an ape. He shuffled along the same as we were, closing the gap between Alkali and himself.

  Alkali took aim with his pistol, but either he decided against risking a shot that might dislodge him and Cole, or he was short on bullets, for he didn’t fire.

  The wolf-man got closer. His face was livid and his eyes big and black as smooth river stones. His fanged false teeth were bared and a loam of white froth was gushing from the corners of his lips. He growled low in anticipation, and we could hear his artificial claws scraping on the rock like dinner knives on a whetstone.

  I reached the bend in the trail, which necessitated ducking underneath a jutting stone and swinging blindly for a half an instant over open air to get around. I felt my joints freeze up as soon as I crouched down. Had Plenty Skins managed this alright, or had he found nowhere to stand on the other side of this thing and simply fallen without a sound? I hunkered there, too scared to attempt the bend and too scared to straighten up again. Panic was bubbling up in me, and my hands seized up into claws as I fought this crazy urge to push off the rock and be done with it.

  Van Helsing was standing over me, waiting to go, but his head was turned about and he was staring at the beast man about to engage Alkali. Cole too was looking back, his attention torn between finding the right foothold in front of him and keeping the old man up. He couldn’t reach for his gun, which was shoved in its holster.

  Then the crazed Scandinavian arrived and got a hold of Alkali. He seemed to give little thought to his own safety, but swung out with one great arm and raked his claws the entire width of the old man’s chest, all the while hanging on to some invisible hold with one hand.

  Alkali cursed him up and played his game. Gripping the arm that had wounded him, he put all his weight on his good foot and kicked out with the one nearest the beast man. The jagged splinter of wood left of his ruined leg jabbed full into the Scandinavian’s side. The wolf-man’s steady growling turned into a high yell of pain and wrath at the old man’s audacity.

  But with no leg underneath him and the other pinned precariously in the beast-man’s torso, Alkali fell immediately. As he went, the harness around his knee unbuckled and he slipped out, leaving the broken peg protruding from the Scanindavian’s side; a mass of wood and sweaty, writhing leather. Alkali was suspended for a moment by the trapped arm of the wolf-man, whose blood was now spilling down his naked legs in violent spurts from around the broken prosthetic. Then the Scandinavian lost his balance and went with the old man.

  Alkali released his hold and grabbed at the tiny ledge as he fell with hand and hook, and Cole went down on one knee and latched onto his wrist with both hands, nearly somersaulting over the edge with both of them.

  As it was, the wolf-man fell with the ruined leg, and Alkali dangled, hanging on by his will and Cole Morris’ grip alone. Beside me, Van Helsing got a fistful of Cole’s collar, and the three of them made a human chain.

  Gradually and with no small effort they pulled Alkali back onto the ledge.

  Behind us the wolf-men scampered warily back and forth on the outcrop. It was as though they had really abandoned their human intelligence and couldn’t calm down enough to successfully manage the ledge.

  From under the outcrooping over the bend in the trail Plenty Skin’s hand swept up without any warning and pulled me under. I almost fell to my doom, but the Injun steadied me with both hands and pulled me up again. It seemed the trail broadened on the other side—not much, but it seemed like a great deal to me.

  Van Helsing came next, then Cole, and with difficulty, Alkali. We could still hear the wolf-mens’ bestial protests as we cautiously hobbled down the steep but manageable trail.

  The moon was high when we reached the canyon floor and collapsed in exhaustion in the mouth of a short cave in the rock. They didn’t follow us down the way we came, but we were wary, knowing full well they would find a way once they calmed down.

  A long dried up sapling was uprooted to help Alkali hop along, and we built a low fire and counted our ammunition alongside our blessings. We have between the five of us two cap and ball pistols (one the Indian’s and one Alkali’s), and three revolvers of varying calibers, each with what amounts to about three to four shots a piece. Twenty bullets to keep us until dawn, and then what?

  There is no doubt they will come, once they’ve regained their senses enough to reason it out. They’ll find another trail. No one needed to state the obvious.

  Earlier I posed the question as to how many of them were left.

  “There’s no telling,” Cole said. “At least nine. I think there were a dozen working for Skoll, and three fell. I don’t know if Ranny got any or not.”
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  The mention of Ranny Brogan killed the talk for a few moments. Then Alkali rumbled, “We buried two on my place, and we gunned down three outside the jailhouse.”

  “We didn’t see if the ones that were shot outside of the jail died or not,” said Van Helsing.

  “By God we shot ‘em down,” Alkali said angrily. “They’re dead.”

  “He’s right, you seen the way they drink bullets, Aurelius,” Cole said. “There’s just no telling.”

  Alkali mumbled angrily, something about the unfairness of it.

  “And Skoll and Vulmere,” Van Helsing said, “will be the most dangerous of all.”

  “What keeps them up?” Cole wondered. “I know on the way down I put bullets into a few, but they just kept coming.”

  “There are various theories about causes of the berserkergang. Narcotics, is one. A Swedish professor named Ödman theorized the ingestion of amanita muscaria – the fly agaric mushroom – by the Scandinavian warriors. Or it could be bog myrtle, which the Vikings used in grut, a spice in beer they often drank. I maintain it is faith, gentleman,” Van Helsing said. “The berserks of old could sustain any number of wounds. They work themselves into a fury beyond normal ken. Have you noticed their eyes? The pupils seem to dilate more than normal. It is peculiar. Taken into consideration with this moonlight, they must see very clearly tonight. Indeed, moreso than on most nights.”

  “They foam like they’re rabid,” Alkali commented.

  “Yes,” agreed Van Helsing. “They are in a state of spiritual and psychological ecstasy, beyond reason. That is why they run into gunfire without any conscious thought of self-preservation. Belief is their weapon, my friends. They believe themselves possessed of a god’s strength and a wolf’s ferocity. They have convinced themselves of this, and not even a bullet will change their mind. That we have seen.”

  “If they can see in the dark,” Cole said, “could they be blinded, like a frog in the dark with a lamplight in his eyes?”

  Van Helsing shrugged.

  “It may be. There is another chance...when their ecstatic state ends, there must be a period of exhaustion, as the intellect returns and the mind must deal with the damage and stress done to the body. They will feel the pain they ignored this night, and some may die yet from their wounds.”