Crooked Streets Read online

  Meanwhile the girl, wide-eyed and giddy with fright, had managed to scramble up and away from the creature. All the other hall-sleepers had been promptly roused by her shriek, and with great noise and commotion they leapt from their pallets and scrambled about. There was a weapon-rack nearby, and the men and older boys hurriedly took up swords and spears. One servingman was able to quickly throw a bundle of firewood into the nearest hearth and stoke the fire, giving the mercenaries more light to fight by.

  Cainen examined the creature’s horrible head as best he could in the trembling red light. Surprised by all the sudden commotion, its eyes were wild and its slavering jaws were agape. It strongly resembled the beast they had battled in the cave, but it was not the same: its face-markings were subtly different, and it’s head and neck and shoulders slightly narrower. It was a female, perhaps – but more than likely from the same litter as the first creature.

  Kozef and Cainen began a careful game against their beastly foe. Kozef – holding his shield steadily and flourishing his hammer towards the wolf – tried to goad it into making a frontal attack on him, so as to allow Cainen an ideal opening to deliver an axe-strike to the beast’s neck or ribcage. The wolf was cunning, however, and quick despite its great size. It did not fall prey to the stratagem: rather it backed away steadily, making snapping overtures at the less-well defended Cainen as it went.

  Before long, they had the beast cornered. There was a veiled passageway to Kozef’s right, and the thick broadcloth curtain began to part just as the men had drawn near. Kozef spared the ornate drape a quick side-glance.

  Another great grey head – furred and monstrous and with bright eyes and bared teeth – pushed itself through the curtain.

  Kozef met the feral gaze, and immediately the new beast cast itself upon him, with gnashing teeth leading the way. The Kaszian heaved his shield about to guard against the attack. The full force of the creature fell upon him and he was thrown back, stumbling.

  The first beast then seized the opportunity to launch its savage assault on Cainen, lunging for the Fennishman’s knee. Whip-quick, the Fennishman sprang back a stride, swinging his axe down at the beast’s neck.

  To Cainen’s surprise, the steel axe-blade met its mark too well – it tore into the thick fur and buried itself in the beast’s flesh near the base of the neck, delivering a grave wound. It was not grave enough, however, to bring about the creature’s end – the beast yowled at the pain, and quickly bounded away. The bit of the axe was lodged amidst bone, muscle and matted hair – Cainen, gripping the weapon’s shaft tightly, was swept away on a furious ride, not unlike Boero.

  Clinging precariously to great tufts of grey fur, the Fennishman managed to pull himself onto the back of the darting creature. He wrenched his axe free, and struggled against the beast as it attempted to deal with him: striving and straining, trying to twist and turn itself about so as to bring some part the hanger-on within range of its ravenous teeth, or trying to dash him upon stone walls and timber furniture.

  They left the baron’s hall, charging through dark hallways and down a twisting stair to the lower level of the great keep. Amidst this struggle, Cainen, with his legs locked firmly about the beast’s well-muscled flanks and one side of his face buried in the bristling mane, managed to apply the shaft of his axe to its throat. Grunting from the effort, he pulled the weapon upwards and inwards with all the strength he could muster, throttling the wolf as it fought violently to reach him or dislodge him.

  Before long the beast, heaving and panting and shuddering, began to slow. Cainen held fast, however – not allowing his grip about the creature to slacken. He felt the straining breath, the strength leaving the strong muscles and the life gradually draining from the great body. Only when the beast was completely still did he dare to disengage himself.

  Cainen stood up and studied his surroundings. He was in a dark and cold hallway, lit by dimly-burning lamps ensconced into the stone walls. Long, fraying tapestries hung between the lamps and the heavy oaken doors leading into adjoining chambers.

  Soon later, Kozef and a three-man squad of guardsmen appeared. Kozef was splashed with wolf’s blood, and Cainen, feeling his face, realised that he, too, was wet with the stuff.

  “The other wolf, big fellow? Did you deal with it?”

  “Yes, but he put up a fierce fight! We danced together at one point – his paws on my shoulders, his muzzle at my face – but I threw him into the hearth-fire, where these guardsmen delivered the killing blow.”

  “So it’s two wolves, then,” Cainen said, looking down at the carcass at his feet. “Where there’s two wolves, I think it stands to reason that there’ll be a few more. We’ve come across a pack of ‘em.”

  Kozef nodded grimly. “I would have preferred a single monstrous wolf-man over a team of these brutes. But what are they doing here, in this castle?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” Cainen said. He turned about then, and noticed something lying further down the hallway. Somebody’s body, slumped in a pool of dark blood.

  The mercenaries and the guardsmen approached the form. It was torn, bloody and altogether ravaged.

  “It is our baron’s steward,” said one of the guardsmen. Kozef and Cainen both nodded grimly, recognizing the shreds of the man’s faded blue doublet.

  “And this door leads to the dungeon,” the guardsman said. They turned to the nearby door. It stood ajar, and was smeared with blood. He pushed at the door tentatively with the butt of his poleaxe shaft and it swung open slowly, with a loud and whining creak.

  The dungeon was a long, dank hall of stone, with barred cells lining either side. In the midst of the chamber they a figure, thin as a post, crouching over a bloody, mangled form sprawled on the stone floor. As the men entered the chamber, the figure slowly rose up to his full height.

  Cainen heard the sharp intake of breath as the guardsmen standing beside him realised who he was seeing. “It cannot be,” the man uttered. His voice quivered with dread.

  They were looking at someone, it seemed, who was not supposed to be alive.

  The man before them resembled the baron in terms of countenance and facial features – he had the same dark, sunken eyes, long nose and severe jaw – but that was where the familial resemblance ended. He was not burly, like the baron, but was wiry, being all bone and knotted sinew and with sharp, jutting shoulders and elbows. His grey-streaked black hair was a shaggy mess. His clothes appeared to be composed mostly of dirty rags and matted, stinking wolf-pelts. A necklace of lupine teeth threaded with cord hung about his neck, and stark-white mandible bones were lashed to his wrists, serving as rudimentary armour. His hands, his face and his chest were bloody – but not with the blood of wolves.

  “Harquen de Vaudain, I presume?” Cainen said, suddenly feeling grimly vindicated. He was not surprised at all to learn that a man was behind the monstrous beasts. Only man, he knew, could be the cause of such a heinously aberrant thing.

  “Harquen de Vaudain?” came an echo. The figure turned to face them and took a tentative step forward. He then stepped forward once again, baring bright white teeth that had been filed into sharp points. His dark eyes were rabid and menacing. “I had a name, once ago before. And that was it, I think.”

  “I abandoned it, like a winter coat in the spring warmth,” he continued. His words were halting and strange, as if he had not spoken in a very long time. “‘Harquen de Vaudain’. It is strange to say, and strange to hear it said.”

  “We have heard of you, friend,” Kozef said. “These people abhor you, and gladly thought you for dead.”

  “Dead?” Harquen echoed, his eyes wide. “No, never dead. Not quite. I lived, but it was a wretched life. Only my hatred – my hatred for my usurping fiend of a brother, for this castle and this barony – sustained me. I found new life in these beasts. They are my family; my brother-sons and sister-daughters. I live among them and I rejoice in them. I am the chief of their pack.”

  “They are mine,” Harquen continue
d, with a growl and a snarl. He was becoming more confident and vehement in his speech. “I engendered them. I brought them about. The first pair were pure lupine; pups taken from the hills. These beasts of mine are monstrous because I made them thus. I bred litter-mate to litter-mate and sire to whelp. I fed litter-mate to litter-mate, and sire to whelp. I mixed into their line the blood of the mighty hunting and fighting hounds. They were kept in dark places, and did not come to know the moon. I was their moon! I made them strong and fearless and hateful, and under my hand only the most hateful were allowed to live and propagate. They are all my malice for this world, made manifest.”

  “I swore to my brother that I would work my vengeance upon him and his court,” Harquen said. He took a step to the side, and indicated the slumped form laying near his feet. It was the almost-unidentifiable body of the Baron Hanre de Vaudain, ravaged and torn asunder. Harquen, it seemed, had been eating of his brother’s flesh, as a predator might eat of its prey. “It has been long in the making, and it has only now just begun. I will not allow it to be thwarted.”

  At that point they began to hear sounds out in the dark places of the chamber, and saw signs of movement. Kozef, Cainen and the guardsmen were not alone in the chamber with Harquen de Vaudain. One of the man’s wolves, growling and bearing bloody fangs, emerged from the darkness of an open dungeon-cell. It was soon joined by one of its pack-mates, then another and then yet another.

  With a snarl Harquen drew his rusty sword and assumed a fighting stance. The wolves crept forward, ready to do battle on behalf of their master.

  Only one of the terrible wolves, Cainen knew, was a challenge enough. Contending with four at once – even accompanied by well-armed and armoured guardsmen – would be an utter nightmare. With scarcely a conscious thought, then, Cainen made his decision to do something very foolish. With a stride and a mighty heave of his arm, hip and shoulder, he cast his axe forward. It span about furiously as it hurtled across the room, quickly closing the distance between Harquen and himself. The former baron tried to bring his sword up in an attempt to guard against the wildly reckless and unanticipated attack, but was far too late – the axe-blade struck him hard, cleaving deeply into his torso above the right shoulder.

  Harquen, eyes wide with disbelief, slumped down to his knees. He put a shaking, faltering hand to the axe shaft and examined it by touch, as if he could not believe what he was seeing. He looked up at Cainen and Kozef, and attempted to speak. Instead, he only slumped forward slowly, into a pool of his own – and his brother’s – blood.

  Before Harquen’s head hit the floor, however, the wolves advanced. At that moment they were a dozen times more terrifying: they were snarling savagely, their manes bristled and their eyes burned with unquenchable rage and torment. The sudden slaying of their master had stoked a direful fire within each of them.

  To Kozef’s great astonishment, then, Cainen took a careful step forward, binging himself closer towards the beasts and their slavering jaws. He was empty-handed, and had assumed an attitude of supplication: his left hand was extended out towards the creatures, as if offering it as a sacrifice.

  With his right hand, meanwhile, he gestured towards Kozef and the guardsmen: urging them to keep their distance, to not attack or interfere for any reason.

  Kozef could see that the small man was altogether very still, save for his right hand, which quivered with unconcealed dread.

  The beasts drew in closer towards Cainen, snarling, growling and barking like demons spawned from the Abyss. They were terrible to see and hear. The animals had formed a half-circle about him, and he could feel the flecks of their spittle and the hot, foul warmth of their breath batter his face. The largest of the four beasts, a great male – as large or larger than the beast they had fought in the cave – was closest.

  Kozef was unsure of what to make of his comrade’s life-endangering stratagem, but lowered his shield and his hammer all the same. The guards, likewise, eased their own stances somewhat, even though they were clearly unnerved at the terrifying display.

  It was then that the wolf closest to Cainen struck out. The flashing jaws closed the gap in an instant, and seized onto the Fennishman’s left arm above the wrist.

  Cainen could feel the terrible teeth penetrating skin and flesh, burying into the muscle of his forearm. The blood welled up and dribbled down, wetting the wolf’s jaws and dripping down to the dirty floor. He kept his right hand behind him still, maintaining, despite the pain, his signal to Kozef and the men to keep their distance. It took every ounce of his resolve, however, to keep himself from calling for their aid.

  Through the excruciation, amidst the snarls and growls and barks, the Fennishman held his arm firm and steady. He clutched his teeth together tightly and set his mouth into a hard line, and kept his eyes locked onto the wolf’s harrowing gaze. He did not allow his eyes to divert, even for a fraction of a second.

  At that moment the great wolf could have easily ripped the Fennishman’s arm into bloody ribbons, or crack the wrist-bones into shards. But it did neither of those things, for whatever inscrutable reason – it only gripped the arm between its jaws, with its eyes fixated upon Cainen’s.

  He looked deep into those gleaming eyes, unblinking, for what seemed like an age. They were wells of profound hatred, pain and anguish: in them he saw generations’ worth of torment at the hand of Harquen de Vaudain.

  Then, finally, something deep within them changed – Cainen could not be sure what. He felt the keen clutch of the jaws lessen somewhat, and the great beast’s growls began to ease.

  It was not long later that the teeth came free altogether from the Fennishman’s forearm, and the wolf took a back-step away.

  As for the three other wolves, the thunder-peal barks had become groans and grunts; their snarls and growls lessened, becoming angered mutterings. One bristled mane was smoothed, then another, and then two more. Upright ears were gradually turned down. The animals had stood tall and erect not long before, but now they were slowly sinking low, trying to make themselves as small and unobtrusive as possible. Here and there fangs were being sheathed, and bushy tails were being tucked away between hind legs.

  Cainen remained still. His left hand, sodden with blood and trembling, was still extended towards them.

  With whines and whimpers the beasts began to look about through narrowed eyes – to Cainen before them, to their felled master, to each other – as if unsure of what to do with themselves now that they were leaderless. The biggest one sidled over to Harquen’s corpse and gave it a tentative sniff and a lick. It looked back one last time to Cainen, and made its decision to take its leave of the place – it turned about and loped away into the darkness.

  It was not long at all before the three others followed.

  Once the last grey, bushy tail was out of sight, Cainen let out a mighty exhalation.

  “God of Woe, Cainen!” Kozef exclaimed, springing forward. “Your arm!”

  “My arm?” Cainen echoed. “Sure, it looks frightful, but it’ll heal. And it’ll leave a bloody fine mark. He didn’t get to the bone, I don’t think – he was only having stern words with me, in his way. Not trying to do real harm.”

  “How did you know that felling Harquen would take the fight out of the wolves?”

  “Sure, I only guessed at it,” Cainen said, stepping over to Harquen’s corpse. He took tight hold of his axe-shaft with his good hand, and, with the help of his foot, wrenched the weapon free from the man’s torso.

  “You brazen-faced dog-brother, I thought as much!” Kozef bellowed. “Throwing your axe like that! What! There was no telling what could have happened!”

  Cainen had not thought overly-much about it before the fact, but he thought about it then. There had been a myriad of possible outcomes, he realised; none of them very favourable for him, Kozef or the guardsmen. Such thoughts, though, served little purpose – so he decided to entertain them no longer.

  “Coulds and shoulds, big fellow,” he replied. “Co
ulds and shoulds.”

  “Ah, but your stratagem paid off,” Kozef said. “That would have been a tough fight, even with these three good guardsmen here, and I am glad to have avoided it.”

  8 – Aftermath

  After Cainen’s incident with the wolves, the guardsmen proceeded to search the dungeon and discovered a low, narrow breach in the dankest and darkest corner – the gap through which the wolves had entered and left the castle. An investigating team of guardsmen squeezed themselves through the opening in the stone, passing through a rough tunnel and emerging beneath the castle’s foundations, deep inside the hill. What they found below the castle defied their wildest expectations: a sizeable cavern, likely Harquen’s dwelling place for the past several years. A dark, bloody and squalid underground space, fitted with pens and cages to accommodate the keeping and breeding of wolves. Another roughly-hewn tunnel joined with the castle’s simple sewerage system, providing an opening to the world outside the castle. The Beast of Vaudain itself, the guardsmen surmised, had been an upstart male who had escaped from Harquen’s den – the place where, in darkness, it had been born and reared – in order, perhaps, to assert itself and found its own pack.

  That evening, the people of the castle set about burning the corpse of Harquen de Vaudain and his two felled wolves, and consigned the ashes and remaining bone-fragments to the cesspit without delay. They agreed, after some debate, to inter the body of Hanre de Vaudain amongst his forefathers at Vaudain burial ground, with more-or-less all the proper rites.

  In the hours and the days following Harquen’s attack, there was a storm of strong, conflicting feeling throughout Vaudain’s town and castle. The news of the events surrounding Harquen’s apparent return from death spread swiftly, and the people of the barony were not sure whether to react with sadness, joy or fear at all that they had heard. Kozef and Cainen could see as much themselves.