The Brat's Final Gambit

As Davin entered the foyer, he wrinkled his nose and sprinted past a guard and up the gracefully arched stairway two steps at a time. At the top, he found his wiry friend sitting on the floor weeping at the other end of the balcony. Beside him was an open door. The first impression Davin got was an ominously open door. Every other door was closed. He stopped when he reached Niam. Two soldiers trotted up to wait before entering the room.

“Niam,” Davin said cautiously, “is there anything in the room that we need to worry about?”

Niam looked up at Davin with eyes that were becoming swollen with tears. “How could a man do this to other people?”

Davin had no idea what to say. Joachim and Maerillus topped the stairs more slowly than everyone else, keeping pace with Jolan Kine. “Any nasty surprises for us?” Joachim asked sourly.

Davin glanced down at Niam, who raised his head and said with morbid irony, “About seven or eight surprises, give or take. Joachim looked as if someone backhanded him. His face became as dark as a thundercloud. When the captain stepped toward the door and said, “Sir, let us take a look first for you,” Joachim brushed him aside.

Maerillus left Kine and walked after Joachim, following him into the room. A moment later, Maerillus shot back out and bent over to vomit. Davin watched, alarmed. Jolan Kine gave Davin a nod as he walked grimly inside. Maerillus raised his head and looked back at Davin in stunned disbelief. “They don’t even look like people anymore.”

Lord Joachim walked out and his face was ashen. He looked down at Niam as if he would have liked to deliver a reprimand. Instead, he placed a hand on Niam’s shoulder. “I wish you would have waited, boy,” was all he said.

When Kine stepped back out, Joachim looked at him with a stony expression that was run through with veins of fury. “What did that?” he asked.

Kine shook his head. “Not a man. Not Kreeth.”

“But it was done at his orders,” he said bitterly and turned to his captain. Joachim’s next words rippled with fire. “I want orders drawn up immediately for Kreeth’s capture. He is to be hunted down like an animal. Have two men go to Pallodine and Kalavere as soon as it is done. We will need to have permission from Selvika and Caledon to operate in their territories. Their Hammers will need to be notified. I want him alive if possible. I plan on seeing him executed by my own hands.”

Joachim placed a hand on Davin’s shoulders. “You might as well have a look, too Hapwell. I wish all of my men could, just to see what we’re up against.” Davin braced himself and walked across the threshold and into the room. The first thing to hit him was a stench so ferocious that it went beyond rotting bodies, and the next thing that hit him was the reason why.

The room had once served as a bedroom. Indeed, a bed occupied the far wall, where all of the sheets had been torn off of the mattress, and chains attached to the wall lay open at the edges of the bed. Whoever had been confined to the bed had ruined the entire thing. Urine stains covered the mattress and thick smears of feces mottled its surface and matted the bedside where it had fallen to the floor. Bodies—torsos really, devoid of limbs—were strewn across the floor. Jagged stumps with bones sticking out made the victims seem like life-like playthings that an insane child had ripped to shreds in a fit of temper. Several trunks still wore servants’ uniforms. One still had a head attached. A woman, whose face was blank and expressionless, gazed through cloudy cataracts at the ceiling. Her head lolled to the side and a great chunk of flesh had literally been ripped out of her neck. Davin saw long streaks of clotted blood fanning out from the unfortunate woman’s remains.

No other corpse had an intact head. Most of the dead bodies had been eviscerated in an orgy of slaughter. Thick piles of ropy intestines surrounded by a dense pool of offal comingled with a heavy runoff of congealed blood between corpses.

“What could have done this?” Davin asked, sickened.

Kine surveyed the slaughter and asked darkly, “Can’t you guess, Hapwell?”

Davin groaned. He knew the only thing that could have left claw marks like the ones on these bodies was the same thing that had attacked them on the trail leading back from the Vandin camp the day they met Jolan Kine. A trall. A thing created by the blackest sorcery.

Kine said woodenly, “The contents of the guts speed decay.”

Davin shook his head. “It’s been cold in here. Some days haven’t gotten much above freezing. And since nobody’s been here, the stomachs and abdomens shouldn’t already be turning black and green.”

Kine limped over to the fireplace where he grabbed a poker and jabbed it through the ashes, turning over the blackened embers. One made a popping noise and briefly flared a dull orange as it was exposed to the air.

Alarm shot like a bolt through Davin’s body, and Jolan Kine raised his cane and pulled on the middle of shaft, drawing a hidden blade three feet long from its sheath. His voice rang with urgency and alarm. “Arm yourselves!” From outside came the hiss of men drawing their swords. The fireplace was still hot.

Joachim swore an angry oath and growled, “Search the other rooms!”

The soldiers quickly formed up around the nearest closed door and jerked it open. A thick blanket of darkness hung just on the other side. Joachim pushed Davin back before he had a chance to move forward. From the farthest wall, Davin saw a rim of light peeking through dark curtains. The soldiers’ faces drew up in disgust as a new scent, nearly as powerful as the stink of death wafted out of the room.

Davin nearly turned his head. What came out of the room was a thick and hormonal funk of musk, fear, and rage.

“Wait!” Davin called out. “Maybe we can reason with whoever it is,” he said quickly.

Joachim’s response was hard as iron. “They deserve to be killed.”

“What if they’re one of Kreeth’s victims acting against their will?” Davin let his voice trail off for Joachim to figure out the rest.

“You don’t talk to a trall,” Jolan Kine snapped.

From the darkness, a wet chuckle made everyone stop talking. As Davin pushed closer to the door, he heard Kine whisper to Niam, “There’s too much magic at work here for me to tell anything for sure.”

“I can’t get much of anything, either,” Niam hissed. “Whatever is going on in the basement is affecting everything.”

Davin tried to hide his fear as Jolan Kine cursed quietly then called out, “We want to talk! We know you’re doing this against your will! Tell us who you are and maybe we can find a way to get you some help!”

From the darkness came more chuckling. It held an animal quality that immediately set Davin’s nerves on edge. Niam looked at him uneasily. Joachim gave a frustrated sigh and lowered his sword slightly. Kine looked like a coiled spring ready to be released at any moment.

A rough, feral voice came from the dark, garbled as if its speaker had a mouthful of cotton. “He told me I would be better in a little while. He told me I would feeeel sooooo gooooood,” the thing crooned, drawing its words out in strangely accentuated tones. Davin had the impression that it spoke as if speech were an unfamiliar act.

“Kreeth promises what he cannot deliver,” Jolan Kine told the owner of the voice. More chuckling gurgled out of the beast’s throat. Davin wanted more than anything to think of the being across the threshold as a person, but the bestial scent cloying the air, the stench of rotting victims and offal, and the forced quality of the words made it hard.

“I was so hungry. He told me I could eat as much as I liked.” The eager heat in the creature’s voice repulsed Davin. Its voice drawled with relish, “What do you think of my meals? My master left them or me. The marrow was my favorite.”

Davin swallowed hard, but he stood his ground. As the thing in the room continued talking, he motioned for someone to bring him a lantern. He was glad the guards had checked the other rooms.

“Why has Kreeth done this to you?” Jolan Kine asked, keeping his voice calm and conversational as he stood to Davin’s side just behind one of the soldiers. His voice hid the fact that he held one of the soldier’s bows ready with an arrow nocked.

“Ahhhh, you must be the Wizard’s Hammer. I recognize you, Hammer. My master told me that I might meet you. He said I could eat you if I liked.”

“Nobody’s going to eat anybody else today,” Davin spoke up. “Why don’t you come forward a little so I can see who I’m talking to?”

“Wait until it is a little darker and I promise I will come forward.”

“We can’t get you the help you need if you remain here,” Davin said, raising a hand slightly to warn a soldier to back away. Lord Joachim’s troops were beginning to grow impatient. They wanted this over well before sunset. “We want to try to help you,” he reasoned. “We won’t be able to help if we don’t have any idea what Kreeth did to you.”

“Ooooh Kreeth did exactly what I asked. I wanted to be one of his hounds. Strooong . . . fassst . . . aliiiive.”

Beside Davin, Joachim said, “Stand aside and let my guard go in with the lantern.”

Davin nodded and let the man move forward. From the room, a growl nearly stopped the man, but he gathered his courage, gripping his sword more tightly, and eased his way in.

“Ahhhh, it’s niiiice when people stop by forrrr dinner.”

As the soldier moved forward, the lamp cast a small circle of light across the floor. More men followed. Davin peered into the inky interior, bracing himself for what he was going to see. As the man moved cautiously in, Niam leaned his head around for a better view. That’s when the creature let loose with a piercing howl. Everyone went still.

“I know who you are, Maldies!” the creature bellowed.

Davin grabbed Niam and forced him behind Lord Joachim. In the room, the soldiers fanned out in a semicircle, and he heard the creature shifting toward the back corner of the room. One of the men reached the window, and snatched the curtain away. Light flooded into the room, and the creature in the corner crouched on its haunches and screamed. Its hands shot up to cover its face with long fingers that tapered into vicious claws. Its legs had undergone a profound transformation. Dark, bristly fur grew stiff from its naked waist all the way to its feet, which were large and balanced on two powerfully muscular, articulated pads—each of which ended in three boney sickles. The angle of the beast’s knees was reversed, giving its legs a grasshopper-like appearance.

The creature snarled. Below its upraised hands, Davin saw a mouthful of sharp fangs. When it turned its head to snarl at a soldier, Davin felt like someone punched him in the gut. The shock of recognition coursed through him. “Jalt!”

“Great Lord!” both Maerillus and Niam exclaimed simultaneously.

The thing that was Jalt stared at them through red reptilian eyes. He drew his lips back in a horrible imitation of a grin and leaped across the room. A soldier moved his sword to strike, but the trall let out a savage screech and violently seized the man with one powerful hand. Long talons found a seam where armor segments overlapped and tore through it into the flesh beneath. The soldier cried out in pain. Jalt snarled and threw him aside where he sprawled across the floor. Then he leapt again and crashed through the window, falling with a hail of broken glass to the ground.

The two soldiers ran to the window as the captain hurried to check on his wounded mate. “He’s going for the forest fast, sir!” one of the soldiers exclaimed.

Joachim joined him, cursing angrily.

“Was there anything else like that in the building?” Niam asked in alarm.

“Nothing else,” Joachim’s captain shook his head.

Joachim spun and ordered two soldiers to help their wounded comrade out of the manor and bellowed loudly, “I’m tired of this place. Everyone out!”

“We’ll have to try to get into the basement room soon,” Kine said through gritted teeth as he gripped the balustrade and carefully eased his way painfully down the stairs.

Joachim shook his head. “If you’re not up to it soon, I’m burning this place to the ground.”

The thing that was no longer Jalt ran in great, loping bounds across a grassy field and into the shaded forest savoring the freedom and ease of movement. As the last of his humanity left him, only desire remained—desire to hunt, desire to chase, desire to rend, tear, and gorge. The salty sweetness of marrow, blood, and fresh tantalized his senses. A distant echo of memory lingered in the only portions of Jalt’s mind left. A command he must obey .

Kill. Eat. Feast.

Days later, an old man on the outskirts of Old Flood pushed his rickety wheelbarrow across the uneven pasture behind the one reserved for his cows. The ground sloped until it met the forest a good three hundred paces away, and in the distance, the setting moon shone like a curved blade in the early morning sky. Times were going to be hard this fall. Three cows had given up their calves stillborn, and just this morning he had found four pigs slaughtered. By wolves. The old man managed to heft the remains of one carcass into the barrow, but the next three were going to be too heavy.

Something nagged him, though.

The pigs looked as if they had been torn apart for sport. Legs and even two heads had been pulled from bodies and left dozens of paces away. More, parts of the pigs had been torn and spread all across the ground. Entrails and organs left the ground’s frosty grass saturated in gore. The old man had seen plenty of wolf kills in his time. But what kind of wolf left bloody ribbons of intestines hanging from the branches of several old apples? Not even dire wolves did that. Perhaps they had chased the swine up into the tree’s branches. This thought made the old man laugh.

Pigs climbing a trees!

The man’s laughter stopped abruptly when he heard a low, feral growl somewhere behind him. “Get out of here!” the man shouted. “Go on you devil!”

The animal got quiet and the man stood there for several moments surveying the tree line to see if there were any other wolves skulking about. Wolves rarely attacked humans unless hungry or backed into a corner, and by the sound of it, there only seemed to be one. The man stomped his foot as he shouted in the angriest voice he could manage, “Heeya you rabid sack of fur and guts, get on!”

Silence was his only answer. The wolf had probably been just a straggler eating what the rest of its pack left behind. Wolves were cruel to the weaker and smaller of their kind. The old man shrugged his shoulders and turned to go.

Nothing more than an opportunist, he told himself.

But a soft, frigid morning breeze easing down from the Korse highlands brushed through the trees, and above the wispy crackle of dry autumn leaves, he heard more growling. He nearly turned to yell at the animal again, but stopped.

The morning wind picked up something more than a growling. The air brought with it a smell that made the old man’s hair stand up on the back of his neck. No wolf he had ever been around ever smelled like that before. It held a wild, predatory funk overlaid with something hormonal and unpleasantly mucky.

A bear?

The old man suddenly grew frightened. Some real monsters grew in the highlands. Especially cave bears. The old man let go of his barrow and decided he’d have to come back with his sons later.

The breeze grew stronger, making the dry, barren limbs clack together as they swayed. He no longer heard growling. The smell intensified, though. As the old man picked up his pace, he winced and cursed his arthritis. Behind him, he heard something moving.

Something big.

The old man kept his pace, not daring to look back or trying to run. Predators had an instinct to chase whatever ran from them. He did not want to see it, at least not until he was safely far enough away to look without the thing feeling like he was challenging it. As he limped swiftly over the pasture’s uneven and rocky ground, the sound of heavy footfall made the old man swallow hard when he realized whatever it was had jumped the fence. Now his heart began to hammer. This was no bear.

The old man made it to the cow pasture. Maybe the cattle would distract the thing. As he bent to slip between two fence rails, he caught a glimpse of the thing following him and screamed. The beast staring at him through hungry, savage eyes let out a howl of rage. The old man managed to get one leg successfully through the fence, but jerked his other one in a spasm of fear, catching his foot on top rail. He went sprawling onto his stomach. The thing behind him began moving swiftly toward him in a hopping gait. Its mouth was pulled back in a feral smile, revealing rows of crooked, needle sharp fangs. “No, no no!” the man cried out in terror. With a frantic burst of power, he scrambled to get his stiff legs beneath him. All he had to do was make it to the barn, but before he had a chance to stand, the beast was upon him.

Before the day was out, terrified farmers from all around Old Flood descended on the mayor. He and the small unit of troops passing through the town promised the frightened men and women that they would look into the problem and take care of it.

By noon of the second day, five troops, two farmers, a child, and half a heard of cattle were dead. Word spread, and panic was alive and well in the lake valleys.