In The Shadow Of The Beast (40 page)

As Sigourd looked down at his blood dripping
from the length of steel protruding from him, he marveled at how
odd the ornate weapon looked clutched in the rough, taloned hands
of a creature like himself.

Standing over his enemy, Bael was exultant
in this reversal of fortunes. He dropped to a crouch over his
fallen prey, savoring these precious last moments. Bael reached out
slowly with his taloned hand, clutching a handful of Sigourd’s hair
and jerking his head back to expose the young lord’s throat. Once
more, the dark, wet meat of Bael’s lips peeled back to reveal that
rictus grin of dagger sharp incisors. His jaw yawned slowly open,
impossibly wide, and he threw back his head to dive upon Sigourd
and tear out his throat.

There was a
click
,
snick
an instant before
Bael’s mantrap of a mouth could clamp around Sigourd’s neck as the
prince punched his fist up into the soft meat under his cousin’s
exposed chin. This time it was Bael who seemed to be frozen in
place, his mouth pinned open, his eyes betraying deep
surprise.

Sigourd jerked his fist back, sliding free
with a wet sucking the long, curved blade that had been spring
loaded into the polished vambrace upon his wrist.

The puncture wound in Bael’s throat welled
and glugged with dark blood. His shoulders sagged as he slumped
backwards, clutching at his neck. The blood flowed unendingly, like
spilled wine, cascading down his chest and stomach to pool beneath
him. The polished mirror surface of that blood grew ever larger
across the cold floor even as Sigourd dove upon Bael, driving his
own dagger sharp bite deep into his wayward cousin’s neck. There
was a noise like the tearing of meat from bone as the White Wulf
suddenly wrenched his head up, ripping free the grisly flesh and
cartilage of his cousins throat.

Bael, his black eyes bulging in surprise,
dropped dead to the floor of the throne room. Sigourd threw back
his head and howled triumphantly, shattering the silence that had
descended upon the throne room, the sound caught like an ethereal
thing in the great empty spaces of the high roof.

First Nartaba and then the other wulfen in
the camber joined Sigourd in chorus, their voices coming together
in one long ululating, primal cry.

As the cry died down, Sigourd looked to the
remaining wulfen, and a mutual understanding seemed to pass between
them in silence. They stepped back a pace to allow Sigourd to pass
through their number so that he might climb the steps of the dais
to where his mother knelt. Sigourd, The White Wulf, crouched before
Veronique. She reached up to tenderly stroke his scarred face as
Isolde and Jonn Grumble looked on uncertainly.

‘
My beautiful boy...’ said
Veronique, as she marveled at her sons miraculous new
form.

Tears welled in her eyes, and she spoke once
more, her voice a whisper for her son alone.

‘
I have failed you,
Sigourd. Failed you because I was to cowardly to come forward with
the truth as I should have.’

Her hands brushed the side of Sigourd’s
face, and again there was a flash in his minds eye. Just as when he
had witnessed the nightmare vision of a future where there was only
unending war, Sigourd was propelled through time and space,
traveling lifetimes in the beat of a heart. But this time,
hetraveled backwards. He saw events through his mothers eyes, as
they had been before his birth.

A young man, perhaps a little older than
Sigourd, and bearing a startling likeness to him. His handsome face
is smiling as he lays with Veronique who is herself only recently
risen to full womanhood. Their laughter is full, carefree.

They make love amongst crumpled sheets in
the dim, soft light of flickering candles. Beyond those candles the
pale light of a full moon falls through tall windows.

The face of the young man begins to shift as
he writhes in ecstasy, his brow thickens, his canines lengthen as
his jaw begins to slide forward into the distinctive snout of the
wulfen. It is The Change.

The vision shifts, melting and coalescing to
take the form of a serving girl standing in a doorway. The girl is
screaming, screaming so loud! She is pushed aside by a guardsman
resplendent in the colors of House Mortaron. The guardsman and the
young wulfen engage in battle, steel against talon.

Ere long the image fades to that of...The
Baron Mortaron, standing before Veronique who sits weeping in her
brother’s study chambers. The Baron speaks; ‘The creature that
attacked you is dead!’ Mortaron’s tone is stern, without pity or
compassion.

The image shifts once more, Veronique stands
upon a cliff top overlooking a dark sea. She weeps still, her eyes
red with tears that will not stop, and after only a few moments she
throws herself from the cliff, the calm surface of the sea rushing
up to meet her. She speeds toward the water, closer and closer
until....

Veronique awakes in her bed. Her brother
stands before her, his expression as dark as the nameless sea she
had flung herself into. Beside him is a meek little man, twitching
nervously in the presence of his liege lord. His voice is reedy and
thin, ‘She will live lord. As will the baby in her womb.’

Mortaron’s face twists with undisguised
disgust. He bids the little man keep his silence before dismissing
him. Alone with his sister, The Baron steps forward and leans close
so that he might whisper in her ear, ‘Your wedding to The Regent
will go ahead as I have decreed. You will say nothing of your
encounter with the beast, or of the child growing in your
belly...’

Sigourd is wrenched back to the present as
the vision dissolves before him. He was kneeling once more upon the
dais, staring into the watery, red eyes of his mother. Her face
still twisted in anguish, ‘I allowed the death of your true
father,’ she said, the tears falling afresh from her eyes. ‘I did
not speak up in defense of the man I loved for fear of judgement. I
did not confess to The Regent the origins of a son that was never
truly his. I obeyed my brother because I was weak, and I have lived
with the shame ever since.’

Sigourd had no words of comfort to ease his
mothers suffering. Rather than hate her for all of her failings, he
found that his heart was breaking for her. To imagine his mother
suffering alone under the weight of all these terrible troubles for
all these many years caused him more sadness than he could have
thought possible. His instinct was to hold her close despite all of
the wrongs she had confessed to, and that is what he did as she
wept into his arms.

Sigourd was still holding his weeping mother
when the heavy oak doors of the throne room were ripped from their
hinges in a blinding flash and a deafening thunderclap of an
explosion.

The force of the detonation shredded several
of the wulfen who had been standing too close to the doors. They
came apart in a puff of superheated blood and viscera as the
unbridled energy of the blast ripped into them. It laid the rest on
their backs, their ears and noses bleeding from the shockwave.
Isolde and Jonn Grumble were likewise flattened, stunned into
insensibility. Saved only by virtue of the distance between the
dais and the grand entrance to the chamber.

Sigourd instinctively covered his mother,
his size and bulk providing barely enough counter balance to the
blast to keep them both upright while simultaneously shielding
Veronique from the worst of it.

Sigourd was peppered with fragments oak and
stone, many of those burying themselves in the thick meat of his
back and arms. From the depths of the billowing black smoke that
filled the great entrance, streamed a sight both wondrous and
terrifying.

The soldiers of The Regent, their colors of
claret and gold muddied and bloodied from intense combat, poured
into the chamber. Galloping into the throne room at the vanguard of
his forces was The Regent himself, sitting atop his magnificent
steed, his armor riven and buckled he held an ornate hand pistol of
most intricate design in one hand, and swung a tri star mace with
the other.

Even as he stormed the chamber, The Regent
Fellhammer had already found and sighted the target upon which he
would unload the single lead shot of his deadly musket. The most
compelling threat in the chamber was that of the hulking white
monster leering over his terrified wife, and the beast could not be
permitted leave to continue to draw breath.

Sigourd saw the look of
determination in his foster father’s eyes, and before he even had
time to react there was a
flash,
pop
as the weapon in The Regent’s
gauntleted hand discharged.

In that moment there were no sudden gifts of
insight to save Sigourd. No more moments of pure clarity where he
shared a primordial link with the All-mother. There was only the
beat of a hummingbird’s wing between the musket ball leaving the
weapon’s breach and the projectile finding its target. For Sigourd,
that one moment was frozen in time, immediately preserved in the
amber of eternity. His life was at an end.

Suddenly, Veronique was
there before him. She had thrown herself across her son to shield
him from the lethal musket round. That lead round
cracked
into her back,
and even as her son reached to hold her, Veronique was
falling.

Sigourd caught his mother, a howl of
bewildered horror escaping from him. He lowered her as gently as
her could to the floor of the chamber, his eyes searching her face
imploringly for a sign that she might transcend death and survive
the shot.

The Regent, aghast at what had occurred,
threw the antique pistol to the ground as if it were cursed. He
swung himself down from the saddle of his horse to rush to his
beloved wife’s side.

Kneeling there beside her, The Regent took
Veronique in his arms and held her close as the life ebbed out of
her.

‘
My love,’ he exclaimed in
anguish, ‘what have I done!?’

Veronique had not the strength to talk,
instead taking her husbands hand, she squeezed it once,
reassuringly, before placing it between Sigourd’s bloody talons. So
taken with grief The Regent at first barely registered the creature
beside him, The White Wulf, his once pristine coat awash with the
blood of battle.

When The Regent finally looked up, he was
stunned to see that in place of the monster he had tried to lay low
with musket and gunpowder, there now knelt his son. The impetuous
young man whom he had always known, whom he had raised from birth.
In whom he had instilled the noble virtues of his lineage, was
before his father once more. The Regent could scarcely believe his
eyes.

Sigourd placed a comforting hand upon The
Regents shoulder, ‘I will explain all in time, father,’ he said,
before turning once more to his mother.

Veronique struggled to fix tearful eyes upon
her son, ‘Follow your heart, Sigourd,’ were her final words, and
with that whisper the life passed from her.

In death her features were gaunt and hollow,
but there was the faintest hint of a smile upon her lips, as of
someone who knows the joyous release of final redemption.

The Regent fell forward, sobbing into the
breast of his departed love. Isolde and Jonn Grumble moved to stand
beside Sigourd, who looked up to cast his eyes upon the great
throne on the dais. It was bathed in the light of the morning sun
as it lanced down through the great shattered window high above
them. A new dawn was breaking.

–
THE END –

ABOUT THE
AUTHOR

Harlan was born into a decidedly middle class
family and raised amongst the leafy suburbs of South West London.
From an early age he was an avid sci-fi and fantasy enthusiast,
collecting comics and reading voraciously whatever fiction he
could.

He later went on to study theatre at the
University of Plymouth, before deciding that he’d rather try his
hand at film making, at which time he jumped to The Surrey
Institute to study on their prestigious film course. Harlan lasted
precisely three months before dropping out to pursue a career as a
professional wrestler. For the next ten years he traveled the world
wrestling all comers before settling in Los Angeles to focus on a
burgeoning acting and writing career.

He now resides once more amongst those leafy
South West London suburbs, drinking copious amounts of Earl Grey
tea, while pondering his next literary jaunt...