Abomination (30 page)

The chain. He could waste no more time in finding it.

The beast’s footprints trampled into the forest floor provided all he needed to find his way back to the clearing. But, spotted along the forest floor and upon the leaves of ferns and other plants thereabouts was also a trail of blood as black as pitch. Wulfric touched his hand to a patch of it and brought it up to examine the rank, viscous fluid that stretched between his fingers like an oily spiderweb.

He had never seen the beast’s blood before, but he had seen the blood of many like it—there could be no mistaking it. Wulfric wondered how the beast could possibly have been wounded, trying to recall but remembering nothing. And then he felt his stomach again, and realized where his scar had come from. It seemed that the beast’s wound, however it might have been sustained, had somehow affected more than just the beast itself. Somehow it had carried over to him.

There was much to think about. He walked on, absentmindedly bringing his hand up beneath his chin and feeling around his
neck where the sword had passed through it, decapitating him. He rolled his head from side to side as though trying to work out a crick. There was no scar, no sign of a wound, but that part of him ached most of all.

Indra was trying to make headway through a particularly wild and overgrown area of bracken.

Last night she had run without stopping or even slowing for a mile or more before her panic finally subsided and she slumped, exhausted, at the base of a tree and fell asleep. When she woke, she realized that she was completely lost. And as much as she hated the idea of returning to the clearing and all that had transpired there, she needed to recover her swords. She felt naked without them. Just making her way through this godforsaken forest would be so much easier with a blade to hack out a path, but she also expected that the abomination was still close by. She had wounded it—not enough to kill it but perhaps enough to keep it from fleeing very far. Why it had not killed her when it had the chance she could not fathom, but she was certain that she could not count on being so lucky a second time. If she came upon it again, she needed to be armed and ready.

When—not if
, she corrected herself, for nothing about their first encounter had deterred her from her mission. If anything, she was more emboldened than ever. The beast had beaten her, yes, but she had been far from her best at the time, already injured and dazed from fighting those drunken brutes. Things would be different next time. The beast was wounded now, and she had learned much about it. She knew now how it moved, how it attacked, where it was vulnerable, how to make it bleed. Next time, the odds would be in her favor.

But first she needed her weapons, and she had no idea where to find them. The forest looked quite different in the daylight, and
she had fled from the clearing in such a panic that she had no idea of her way back. She had been wandering for more than an hour and, for all she knew, was no closer than when she had begun.

She stopped to take a breath and also to gather herself, for she could feel herself growing frustrated with her lack of progress. Part of what was slowing her down, she knew, was her injury. She had been woken by the powerful, throbbing ache in her shoulder, and when she tested the arm was rewarded with a sharp pain that felt like being stabbed with a hot needle. If anything, it hurt worse than the night before; there was no doubt that the shoulder was out of joint and would have to be reset if she wanted use of the arm again.

That, she knew well enough how to do, from watching the procedure performed on initiates who had been injured in combat training, but she had been putting it off. She had been told by those who had endured it that getting the shoulder back into its socket hurt even worse than the initial injury, which at this moment she found difficult to imagine. It was that thought that had kept her from facing what needed to be done, but the persistent, painful ache had been growing steadily worse, as had her frustration at having to make her way through the forest’s dense undergrowth one-handed. She could postpone no longer.

She found a tree, stout and strong. When she had seen it done in the training courtyard back home, it had been against a wooden post, but out here this would have to do. She stood facing the tree, her stance slightly askew, and lined up her lame shoulder against it. Rotating at the waist, she brought her shoulder slowly back then forward to touch gently against the bark of the tree—a practice arc to ensure she would make good contact. Still she hesitated. What if she was remembering this wrong? What if there were some subtle trick to it that she was missing? It had been so long ago when she had seen it done, and not up close but from several yards away. If she did this incorrectly, she might make the injury worse and damage her arm permanently.

She sighed, knowing she had no other option. She looked to the ground, found a stub of broken branch, and placed it between her teeth, biting down hard. Another moment’s pause, then finally she drew back her shoulder and with all her might slammed it against the tree. As the pain shot through her, she bit down on the branch so hard that it splintered between her teeth.

Indra staggered backward, spitting out the broken branch and, finally, letting out a cry that shook the birds from the treetops overhead. Her eyes watered as she leaned forward, breathing heavily and wondering if she might vomit. But the nausea passed quickly, and as the pain too began to subside, Indra tried flexing her arm and found to her great relief that she could move it almost normally, and with only a dull ache. It had worked. She arched her back and looked up at the sky between the wavering treetops, taking a moment to relish this small victory, and to spit out the couple of small remnants of splintered wood still on her tongue.

Now what? She turned, taking in the forest surrounding her. She was just as lost as before, each direction looking just the same.

When she heard the creaking of a branch behind her, she spun, suddenly on guard. The forest was perfectly still. Her first thought was of the abomination, though she was quite sure that a beast of its size and weight could not stalk her undetected across terrain like this. But that was not the only predator that might be found deep in these woods. She would not feel safe again until she was armed. At this rate, it could be dark again before she—

She heard another sound, from above, and looked up. It was Venator, perched on a tree above her. He flapped his wings against the sunlight and Indra smiled for the first time in days. She could not remember ever seeing such a happy sight. Keenly, she raised her forearm for him to land on and called to him.

The hawk took off from the tree but flew right over her, alighting on another tree a short distance away. He looked back at her and uttered a caw that Indra had learned to identify. He wanted
her to follow him. She might have been lost in this wilderness, but Venator would never be. He knew the way back.

The hawk spread his wings and took flight again, sailing away between the trees. With renewed energy in her stride, Indra went after him.

Wulfric arrived back at the clearing after following the trail of blood and trampled foliage for about half a mile. The beast, it seemed, had not traveled far before succumbing to the sleep that would disappear it from the world for another day. Perhaps it had been slowed by its wound, Wulfric considered, only to wonder again who or what could possibly have inflicted such an injury. In fifteen years of nightly horrors, Wulfric had seen the beast scythe its way through countless men and women. Some had died helplessly, while others had tried, hopelessly, to defend themselves. Some had even been armed, but not once could Wulfric recall the beast sustaining so much as a scratch. Over time he had come to wonder whether it even could be hurt. Years of experience had caused him to conclude that it could not, but as he had followed the trail of the beast’s blood, for the first time he found cause to believe otherwise. What that might mean, for the beast, and for him . . .

He thought on it no longer; now was not the time for flights of fancy. He was accustomed to thinking only from one nightfall to the next. His one thought each and every day was to ensure that the beast was secured each and every night. For that he needed the chain.

In the clearing, the pools of blood that had dried into the grass where last night the bodies of the dead had fallen were a grim reminder not just of those the beast had killed, but of those whose lives Wulfric himself had taken willingly, by his own hand. A solemn vow broken after fifteen years. This thought, too, he pushed from his mind. The chain. The chain was all that mattered.

He exhaled, a sigh of relief. There it was, in a coil near the ashes of last night’s campfire, just where he had left it. He made his way over to it at a keen jog and knelt to examine it more closely, further relieved to see that it was untouched and intact. Only now, with the day’s most pressing concern lifted from his mind, did he allow himself to care about the fact that he was still, from top to toe, naked, his body covered only in the grimy black residue of the beast.

He stood again and looked for his cloak, but it was nowhere to be seen. Nor, it occurred to him now, were the bodies of most of the men who had died here last night. There was one nearby, the one who had threatened the girl. He was bled out from a sword wound clean through the center of him. Farther across the clearing was what remained of the big barrel-chested one, torn in two, entrails spilling from each ragged and bloody half of him, a feast for the carrion birds that would come down out of the trees to peck at them. But of the others there was no sign. Wulfric wondered what could have become of them until he noticed the trailing marks in the earth leading from the patches of blood where the dead had fallen and into the trees. Someone had dragged their bodies from here to there. Why, he could not fathom, but he knew now where he might find his cloak.

He followed the trail to the tree line and a few yards beyond, where he found the bodies of the missing men dumped among the bushes. Assuming that his body had been dragged out here similarly, he hunted for his cloak, glancing at the faces of the dead men as he searched, separating those he had killed from those the girl had, and thinking of how surprised he had been by her prowess in battle. Perhaps his own prejudice had led him to not expect much from a mere girl, in spite of the way she spoke and carried herself. Yet for all the courage she had shown, she had the skill to match. She was nimble and fast and precise, and more than anything, she had a true killer’s instinct, much like his own before he had renounced the sword.

There had been no sign of her body in the clearing with the others, only her twin swords on the ground. The beast must have devoured her whole. The thought of that made him ache with sorrow. The knowledge that she was an Order initiate, who had by her own choosing sought out the beast, lessened it none. He tried to remember her name, for he was sure she had told him, and he hated himself that he could not. He was not sure why, only that he knew she deserved better than to be just another of the beast’s—of
his
—nameless victims.

He found his cloak lying in the undergrowth. He picked it up and brushed away the loose dirt and leaves. It was damp from being left overnight on the wet ground, but would dry. The larger problem, Wulfric saw as he examined it, was that it was more tattered and torn than ever. A deep split ran along one side, no doubt caused by the beast’s emergence from Wulfric’s headless body while the cloak was still on it. That would have to be mended, which meant another town or village, another favor to beg. For now, he would make the best of it. He threw the cloak around himself, then made his way back through the trees to the clearing to begin the laborious task of wrapping his body in iron.

He was crouched beside the heap of coiled chain and starting to unravel it when he heard behind him the snapping of a twig and swung in its direction. A short distance away, at the edge of the clearing, stood the girl, just emerged from the trees. As Wulfric looked upon her, her name suddenly came rushing back to him.
Indra
.