The Seven

by Robert J Power

  Destroying the beast was all he allowed himself to desire. Though his master would have shaken his head in disappointment at his plan, with every step he took, Denan felt more and more assured.

  41

  Mallum’s Gift To The Royals

  Denan slid gracefully down the slope and came to a stop at the bottom. He dared a glance to the shocked weaver far above, and a weight fell from his chest. He didn’t stop moving. His chest was loose, and his head was free. He would die this day in the claws of the crustacuus, but he didn’t care anymore.

  All fear ebbed away like the afterthought of a horned demon after waking from a dream. He gripped his sword. The light was fading, and he would never see dawn again, but there was more than enough light to kill the beast. All that mattered were these last few moments. This was an unexpected freedom from a prison he had been oblivious to.

  His feet left damp grass and met the bloodstained foundations of a destroyed stronghold. He climbed a mound of debris as a free man and wilfully leapt through the large break in the wall, into the place of his birth. He was no longer afraid of anything in the world. He was Denan of the Green, proud second in command to Heygar’s Hounds. He had his mind back, and he would be reckless one last time.

  Mallum might well be hidden in this fallen place somewhere, slithering like the vile serpent he was. Even with his sword, Denan could not best the dark weaver, but he could take on this behemoth. He would die, but better with a sword in hand than unarmed and helpless.

  As dreadful as it was to view the carnage from atop the cliff, nothing prepared him for the devastation once he stepped into the district of the Hundred houses. He’d had the misfortune to come upon several slaughtered villages during wartime—horrors were tragically common in those dreadful periods. Denan fruitlessly imagined this some arbitrary location on a battle map, unfortunate enough to be in the way of an invading army’s march, and not the place he had loved at one point in his youth. He tried to separate himself from the anguished, crushing sorrow he felt for his people strewn at every corner, down every alley, lining the streets in crimson collections of ruined remains.

  Massacre was never a tasteful sight. Many of his brethren had been crushed as they climbed from their beds. Many others made it to the street in a shameful state of undress, and they had fallen to the indomitable beast as it charged through, stamping and swishing through any bodies, battlement or building in its wake. Some poor fools had attempted to retreat through the far gates or even through the grand oak doors of the palace, but they had died long before reaching either.

  An attack by a frenzied crustacuus was as ferocious as an army of night hunters. It had been swift in its dreadful execution of an entire race. The beast had been wily enough to corral its victims from all four outer corners towards the centre, where the bodies were most plentiful. Even in the dark, Denan could see the grey stone at his feet, cracked and fragmented where the monster had taken every step, and its tale of merciless invasion.

  To reach the beast, he had to climb greater mounds of rubble the nearer he ventured. Each mound was vast and reminded him of running through a sand dune in warmer seasons as a child. They were unsteady, precarious, and each told their own miserable story.

  His resolve and anger were tested when he tripped over a child’s half-buried hand, which he had perceived to be nothing more than a jutting root between brick and beam near the pinnacle of one rise. A few steps on, he discovered the frozen features of a parent as they reached for the child. He couldn’t tell if it was the mother or father because of the decomposition, and this thought made him feel even worse. How long would they lie in this state before receiving a suitable send-off into the source?

  Eventually, Denan reached the slumbering beast. Without hesitation or cause to question, he scaled one of its long, spindly legs, took a careful foothold at its back, and hoisted himself atop. The monster was too large to notice a waking threat as small as he was and continued its sated sleep.

  In some parts of Dellerin, the richest of people frequently dined upon a similar-looking beast, though the delicacy was far smaller. Admittedly, at first, he had prejudicial misgivings when offered some, but when he tried it, he had discovered its pink meat softer than a good rat’s and perfect with a little seasoning of lemon and salted butter. Perhaps, in this world, the greater predators should dine upon their prey. Perhaps if he dined upon this dead monster’s flesh as the true act of vengeance, he might compare flavours.

  His feet echoed loudly on the hard shell, and he slowed his charge and caught his breath. “I’m breathing better than I have in years,” he whispered to himself and thought this strange before the silent, precarious world turned to bedlam.

  From almost three stories in height, Denan took a moment to enjoy the taste of pure air in his lungs, and he wondered if Iaculous were powerful enough to heal something as severe as his particular ailment. At least his last few breaths would be with eyes wide open and a fate of his own. It didn’t matter that he knew he would lose. It didn’t matter that he heard Iaculous screaming for him from far away. It didn’t matter that the young weaver would be the only Hound left to finish the task. It didn’t even matter that Mallum would not die at his hand. What mattered was giving Iaculous the chance and trying to kill Mallum’s brutal monster. It was a fitting last chapter to this life.

  Denan saw the many signs of failed warfare upon its shell. It had met countless strikes and survived all skirmishes it faced. Brave warriors had struck with blade and fire, and none had struck it down. None had caused any significant damage, and Denan knew why. For a moment, he wondered if the Hundred Houses would still be standing were he part of its great defence. For all his master’s eccentricities, he had taught him more than all the dead warriors had learned. Perhaps they’d only had duck eggs to pay with.

  With renewed breath and a will of his own, Denan crept along the monster’s back until he reached its head. He wondered if there was a certain nerve he could sever along the neck to paralyse it or a collection of thick, bulging veins beneath the neck joint, which might cause some splendid cardiac arrest to all three of its hearts. Few men had ever been this close to try.

  Denan slid across to the beast’s sleeping head, which rested upon a large mound where his father’s personal afternoon suite had been. He drew his sword.

  “Come back, you fool!” roared Iaculous in his mind, and Denan almost slipped from the precarious edge from fright. He looked out into the darkness and saw the young weaver still scrambling down the hillside. “Don’t kill yourself so foolishly.” There was a terrible anguish in his tone. It was as though it wasn’t Iaculous at all but instead a demon of nightmares he couldn’t remember.

  “This is what Hounds do!” Denan cried out and plunged down. If he couldn’t kill the beast in one blow, he would make it easier for any warrior thereafter.

  Pop.

  It was a strange sensation to feel the black, gelatinous eyeball explode in such a way. It was as large as a frying pan, and Denan smelled bitter fish as the disgusting globules burst over his sword, hands, and clothing. He wrenched the blade free as the creature woke and screamed deliciously. It vibrated through Denan’s body and infused him with hatred and a renewed desire to do deeds worthy of a freethinking hero.

  “Thurken fool!”

  The beast raised its head and roared loudly again. The world beneath Denan’s feet shuddered as it clambered to its dozen feet. It spun around swiftly, and Denan fell back down its jagged back. Only reflexes stopped him from falling to the ground and losing his life beneath the thundering legs as they trampled around, searching for whatever attacked. It shuddered and charged in wild agony, smashing mounds and structures around it. Denan moved with the swaying charge, hoping to catch the beast one more time and deliver a second strike to its head. He moved desperately with its thunderous sway until, eventually, the monster suddenly whipped its neck backwards and sent Denan flying into the night sky.

  Flying. It was a strange feeling to
know he was to die. A fall from such a height would be fatal to any man, but being thrown with the brute force of a crustacuus’s rage was likely to leave him little more than a pulped ruin of royalty. He had tried; he had failed.

  Denan felt the wind in his hair and a cold gale of pure air rush down into his lungs, then something else. It was the crashing through of glass, followed by an awkward landing upon a lavish, four-poster bed. He tumbled, rolled, and took half the bedding with him before he came to a painful stop at the foot of an impressive wooden door. He might have knocked himself out for a pulse, but he couldn’t be sure.

  He allowed himself a moment to gather his wits before taking in how impressive the bedroom he found himself in was. Through the broken window he had been flung shone a bright light, and Denan climbed to his feet, expecting to discover broken bones or severed arteries. Miraculously, he was unhurt but for a few gashes and bruises. He scrambled out into the upper hallway and down the three flights of stairs of the abandoned house. Without taking breath, he charged out into the night to meet the beast in one final battle.

  He wasn’t alone. Iaculous had joined the fight, and he had joined it spectacularly. He fired sphere after sphere of black fire at the beast from atop a mound of brick and rubble, with glowing blue hands of flame. He was magnificent.

  Denan charged forward with sword in hand. He roared threats of battle, but they were lost in the thundering screams, the explosions of fire, and the crack of the ground where the monster shattered and broke through stone from its impossible weight. Fireballs crashed against its shell but made no impact apart from lighting up the battlefield and dazzling the frenzied creature. Iaculous was not killing but was merely holding the beast in position.

  Denan ran beneath the beast as it staggered awkwardly towards the bringer of unnatural fire. With an outer shell as thick as stone in some parts, the beast was almost invulnerable to assault, apart from the underside, where long legs crushed indiscriminately. Denan attacked there once the beast got the better of Iaculous.

  The crustacuus spun around with flailing tail. Iaculous ran clear of the unexpected attack easily enough, but the small break in bombardment allowed the beast to track him down despite its failing eyesight. It swiped with all four claws. Iaculous dodged the first, leapt clear of the second, rolled under the third and met the fourth claw directly head-on. The dreadful sound of torn flesh and broken bones echoed as the young man’s body flew thirty feet before coming to an unsettling stop among some ruin across the street from Denan. The crustacuus immediately screamed triumphantly and, like a giant meeliopede, scuttled over to finish its task.

  It would have crushed Iaculous in that moment had Denan not intercepted the beast and sacrificed himself for the broken young man. It’s what any Hound would do, for they were kin, they were comrades, but more than that, Iaculous was the only man capable of defeating Mallum. This thought repeated in his mind, again and again, like a mantra.

  Denan leapt through the legs and held his nerve as they stamped down all around him. It was only when it lowered its abdomen enough to eat what remained of Iaculous that Denan took his chance. With both hands, he plunged his blade deep into the fleshy underparts of the beast and held tightly as the crustacuus skewered itself in his hold. He pulled the blade across, like gutting a swine for the roast. Viscera and blood fell freely from the creature and drenched Denan through.

  The beast roared, reared, and rushed away from the fallen healer, tearing itself further as it did, allowing Denan to tend to his companion, who was lying deathly still among the ruins of his home. His torn chest leaked a seeping river of blood. His arms and legs were shattered like a body thrown through a bedroom window. Denan knew the young hero would not survive.

  He took hold of his arms and dragged him across the ground, doing his best to ignore the terrible stream of crimson he left behind.

  “I will not leave you like this, little one.”

  42

  The Coming Of Allies

  Somewhere off in the distance, Denan heard the slow movements of the crustacuus retreating to tend to its wounds. His master would have suggested he pursue injured prey instead of tending to a comrade, but Denan refused to leave the dying boy to his unconscious demise. He’d seen him recover from burning alive before. This was more severe, wasn’t it? It would be, if the young man didn’t wake up to heal himself.

  Whatever the severity, Denan pulled him from the ruins of the battlefield towards the house with the nice bedroom and the broken window, leaving a river of blood behind. Instinctively, he bolted the door behind him, and then he dared a smirk at the thought of a closed door stopping such a monster. He kept it locked and turned to his patient.

  “I’ll do all that I can, my friend.”

  Denan set to work on the ruined Hound. The problem was that Iaculous’s wounds were so great, he didn’t know where to start. The claw had obliterated his chest, and Denan was amazed that even now, the young man still took weak, gargling breaths. He pulled the cleanest linen from the beds and stripped, ripped and cut to make suitable tourniquets. He applied them to each limb before strapping the thickest around the crevice of what should have been a torso. When he finished, he wasn’t at all certain he’d done an adequate enough job, but the young man still took a breath, and he’d plugged the holes. Whether there was enough blood inside him would soon be answered.

  “Open your eyes. That’s all you have to do,” he whispered, and he willed the young man to save himself.

  He didn’t know how long he sat with the unconscious boy. The only light in the house was the eerie glow from the bandoleer, which remained undamaged despite the surrounding carnage. From his bed of wooden floor at the foot of the stairs, Denan covered his companion in some blankets to warm his freezing skin, and the delicate rasp of breathing suggested the child fought for life. Denan never left his side—until the crustacuus returned.

  It started as a low cracking sound. The ground shook once more, and Denan crept upstairs to look out through the shattered window, into the night. It moved slower than before. From behind the cover of a mouldy curtain, he watched the beast walk past their building as it hunted its attackers down. It lowered its spiny head near the front door, and Denan ducked away, lest it spot him. The monster tracked the blood and followed the route Denan had taken from the battlefield, walking further into the darkness. Who knew how long it would be before it realised its mistake?

  “Not too smart.”

  In the falling silence, he thought of miserable things. He wanted to cry once more for his people and all he had lost these past few days, but he was an empty shell.

  The crustacuus’s cry pierced the night, and with a heavy heart, Denan prepared himself for war. He had another lunatic plan. It wasn’t dissimilar to the plan he’d had before. When the beast passed by next, he would take one more leap of faith and attempt to finish what he started.

  In the main hall below, he saw the growing illumination of Iaculous’s bandoleer once more, and he worried the glow would alert the beast before he was ready. There came another shriek from the darkness. Denan steeled himself, and then he saw the reason for the crustacuus’s cries.

  It was not hunting. It was being hunted.

  He thought them heroic. He thought them terrifying. He thought them the end of all things.

  The Venandi night hunters streamed through the break in the wall. Their frenzied squeals of primal rage soon overcame the crustacuus’s war cries, and Denan watched both factions meet in a terrifying melee. There were at least sixty of the snapping, brutal hounds by his guess before their swarming numbers became too many to count as they charged. Denan thought it frightening how well organised they were. They behaved as one entity again, moving in a tightly controlled pack.

  He watched in amazement for a few wonderful breaths until Iaculous stepped into the room. His face was pale, and he appeared fragile, but there was a purpose to his movement. His chest shone brightly, and his torn skin appeared no more worrying than bruis
ing after a tavern brawl. Once more, Iaculous’s healing abilities unsettled him, even if he welcomed the young man’s sudden resurrection.

  “Thank the gods of the source you woke.”

  “I slept too long.”

  The crustacuus fought ferociously. With every strike from its monstrous claws, two or three attackers went to the source. However, they drove it back with vicious bites to its many legs, through shell, through membrane, until they hobbled it. Stumbling away from the building, the creature swung its tail along the ground in one last attempt to save itself. It knocked away a dozen Venandi, but just as many took their place.

  Enraged from the loss of their own brethren, the night hunters leapt upon the beast’s tail before it could swing a second time. A few scrambled atop its back, biting and striking whatever they could, and their jagged fangs and fierce claws soon broke impenetrable shell and more.

  “Who needs an army of men with an army of demons?” Denan said wistfully.

  The massive beast reared wildly in primal panic, screaming loud enough to cause Denan to wince, before it fell to its vanquishers. The great battle had taken place in mere moments, and after that, they set about tearing their prey apart, mouthful by savage mouthful. So much for Denan himself dining on the creature in vengeance.

  “They deserved their feed after that,” Iaculous said from behind him.

  Below them, the beasts tore the monster apart quicker than a human army. Denan wondered again what a force wielding such animals as weapons could be.

  “They will still come for us after they feed, regardless. I would rather have died at the hands of the crustacuus,” Denan said, wincing at the beasts gorging themselves upon the fleshy pink meat. The locked door would hold them at bay for a few moments and nothing more.