Veneficus: Stones of the Chosen (14 page)

Then nothing.

No warm blood, no soft, yielding resistance, no splintering bone.

There wasn’t anything there.

The great death lunge encountered only fresh air.

The simple mind of the killer wolf was way behind his actions. Landing on all fours he instinctively whirled to slash at the boy, thinking perhaps he had somehow missed or the boy had ducked clear at the last possible moment.

Only to find that his feet were firmly anchored in a glue-like mire.

He was stuck.

Slashing in all directions in a deranged spasm of hatred, his white fur standing on end in a frenetic condition of hysteria, the wolf hit maximum, uncontrolled, saliva-flying monomania.

Then suddenly he stopped. Feet anchored in the thick, glutinous mud, slavering jaws dripping, something happened behind the pale blue killer’s eyes deep in the simple recesses of the brain that halted the frenzy for all time.

His entire head exploded into a million minute pieces.

Twilight’s proposition had come true. The ferocious Lupa had indeed lost his head.

As the headless, rooted carcass, stilled of all its frenzy, its anger-stiff white fur settling back gradually on the lifeless back and still mired upright against the afternoon sun, a shadow wafted lazily across the copse as a blue feather settled gently over the gaping, crimson neck hole that had once supported the fierce Lupa’s head.

Later, folklore would celebrate this incident by carving out large effigies of the headless wolf on the white chalk of the rolling Wessex downland. That lore still had much to contend with before these particular legends were over.

The outlying wolves that had seen the instant destruction of what they had previously believed was indestructible set up a howling that had the fair Elelendise there in seconds.

It was her first reversal. In a young life of myriad completions and all-pervading successes, nothing had ever gone against her. Here was her first real setback.

Her full lips quivered for the merest instant before they curled in an expression of disgust at the lifeless, headless, and still upright body of her former devoted guardian. If there was any remorse it was immediately suppressed by disdain.

“Brainless beast,” she muttered. “That’s what you get for leaving my side.”

She looked around. A dry, grass-covered hill climbed away from the copse. On the top of the hill a number of gray wolves, nervous and frightened by what they had just seen, prowled and snapped at each other. She immediately transformed to the hilltop. Suddenly confronted by the close presence of their liege-lord, the wolves milled around her feet whining for attention.

All except one.

An old female that lay on the side of a bank a few paces away.

Who had just given birth.

Exhausted by her efforts the old wolf lay there panting whilst her newborn cub pawed and rolled in joy at the sudden freedom and expression of a life. Even though it was still streaked with birth fluids, it was obvious that the cub didn’t have the gray and black fur common to the species.

It was white. All over.

Elelendise knelt down by the panting old wolf’s side and tickled the cub’s wet ribs. Even though its eyes were barely open and its legs could not yet support it, there was no mistaking the fierce reaction of the cub as it whirled round with a squeaky snarl and tried to bite her finger.

“Well now, mother, it seems that the fierce Lupa left my side more than once, eh?” Elelendise said quietly. “This is his father’s son if ever I’ve seen one.”

The old female wolf nodded with her sad pale eyes.

“Whilst you were giving birth, you saw what happened?”

“All of it. I could not raise the alarm due to my … incapacitation. Also my pain was great,” replied the wolf.

“The pain of Lupa’s death or the pain of the little one’s birth?” Elelendise motioned toward the cub.

“I meant nothing to Lupa, nor he to me. You were the only thing he ever saw. I was just a convenience.”

“Move away. I wish to read the warmth of your resting place. And stay near me until you have suckled the fierce little one here. I will train him to take his father’s place as my guardian.”

“Then his fate will be the same as his father’s.” The old female sighed, dragging her exhausted body away from the spot and picking up the pup by its neck scruff with her teeth.

“Have a care, old mother. There are many who would jump at the chance to suckle my guardian.”

Swinging from his mother’s mouth, his squeaky snarls and kicking legs showing just what he thought of it, the little white pup suddenly stopped swinging as if seeing Elelendise for the first time. His half-opened, pale, watery little eyes locked onto hers. Elelendise addressed him, pointing to the mired body.

“Take a good look at your father’s headless body, little Lupa. Make sure you never forget it. That’s what evil pagans do to those who leave my side.”

Placing her hand on the warm, wet earth where the old wolf had lain in labor, Elelendise watched the events of the previous two hours roll before her eyes. She saw the phalanx of twenty pica take up their positions in a copse of trees on the other side of the road at right angles to the sun and facing the oncoming army. Then the sky suddenly darkened as five hundred pica swooped low over the hill to land in the trees of the various copses dotted along this side of the track. They, too, faced the army at right angles to the sun. Each carried a small object in their strong black beaks.

Then Elelendise knew what was coming.

The objects carried by the pica were small pieces of mirrored glass. On a given signal the first group of twenty turned their mirrors in perfect unison to catch the sun rays and reflect them onto the head of a bowman with a thick head of hair walking on the outside of the column about a half of the way down. Instantly his hair burst into flames. She watched her own reaction to the commotion it caused as she wheeled her horse and galloped back down the column. First, draw her out of position. She also saw the conspicuous apparition of Twilight appear in the copse clearing and how easy it had been to lure Lupa away from her and toward it. Second, isolate Lupa. As he made his ferocious leap, the five hundred pica lining that side of the road began to swing their tiny mirrors to reflect on the spot. As Lupa came to a confused halt, his feet firmly embedded in thick mud, the reflected rays of five hundred mirrors coalesced into one big spot on his white-furred head. He never knew what hit him; the implosion of his entire head was instantaneous.

Third, destroy the ferocious guardian.

It had been clever, very clever. And well coordinated, extremely well coordinated. She would allow the old magus that. She had underestimated him.

Fourth, sow seeds of doubt in her mind and get her in trouble with her king.

Right on cue Penda spurred his horse toward her. He did not look very happy.

Fifth, shake the invading king’s confidence in his counselor. As the angry king approached, the surrounding hills in front and to the side of them suddenly erupted in a wall of glittering reflections. The target this time of the many hundreds of tiny mirror beams was the semicircle of ground along a thou-sand-pace line in front of the column.

The long, dry summer grass burst instantly into flames.

Fanned by the summer breezes the flames quickly spread and began to race toward the stationary army. Panic ensued as horses reared and soldiers ran back in the direction from whence they came, all semblances of order and discipline gone as they scrambled away from the wall of advancing flames. Anything that was an impediment to haste was dropped; weapons, stores, armor, and shields littered the area. In vain the officers shouted for calm and an orderly retreat. More than half of the outlying wolves had been caught as well, and they added to the panic by running through the retreating lines of soldiers. Then a second wave of beams ignited the tinder-dry semicircle of grass across the retreating line. It quickly joined the first wall at each side.

And now they were surrounded.

Twelve thousand panicking men and over four hundred wolves trapped in an amphitheater of roaring flames that was rapidly closing in on them.

When the first wave of flames had erupted across their path, Elelendise grabbed the white wolf cub from its mother’s teat, where it had been suckling contentedly, leapt on her horse, and rode swiftly to the side of her king. As she snatched the cub, the old she-wolf sat up, took a long look at the flames rushing toward her before switching her pale-eyed gaze to the retreating venefica. She knew that the flames approached too fast for her exhausted body to escape. Rolling onto her back the old mother closed her eyes and flung her last words at her newborn cub as it sped away in the arms of its new dominatrix.

“When you are strong enough to kill, little one, be strong enough to kill the right one.”

Reining in her horse and placing a staying hand on the arm of Penda, Elelendise’s blue eyes glowed a deep aquamarine toward the heavens. A loud clash of thunder rent the air, and a torrential downpour dropped on the raging inferno surrounding them. The fires were instantly doused. Raising her hand in the direction of the sun Elelendise caused a thick black cloud to hide its rays.

“That’ll keep their pernicious little fire mirrors quiet,” she muttered.

They watched as the officers gradually reasserted some control over the men as they straggled back through the still smoldering grassland. Uncomfortable with the close proximity of humans, the wolves that had become caught up in the headlong panic, moved back out to the periphery. Elelendise turned to the brooding Penda with a small bow.

“My Lord, please forgive me. I misread the abilities and will of the long magus and his urchin boy and their confounded birds,” she said apologetically. “It will not happen again. By the light of ten guttering candles I will dip a quill in their spilled blood and scribe your Christian epitaph across Wessex for all to see.”

“I hope you are right, counselor … for all our sakes,” replied the all-conquering king ominously. “Especially yours.

The vulnerability and innocence of the material world was the backdrop to an endless game to the gods. A planetary vista of mortal perambulations offering untold opportunities to amuse and conspire. And Zeus, busy with the governance of the entire universe, could not see everything.

Thus, Tiresias, the Seer of Thebes and God of the Domain of the Cowering Dead, amused himself by plotting to bring about the powerful legend that on a preordained Equinox, the tortured inhabitants of his domain would rise up in a mighty swirling protest, overcome the ruling venefical hold, and finally break free from their sarcophagal restraints and pour forth to swamp an unsuspecting world.

The one obstacle to that remained the breaking of the ruling venefical hold. That would require the placement of a flawed, inexperienced veneficus.

Something he had been working on …

The gray shapes came quickly and silently out of the dawn. Driven by a combination of bloodlust for the tearing of human flesh and the ambition of their liege-queen and her merciless treatment of them at the slightest hint of failure, they hurtled into the settlement. With the flimsy mud, wattle, and woven willow walls of the hovels splintering under the onslaught of the big pack leaders, the sleepy inhabitants had their throats ripped out as they groped their way upward from their night pallets. Children had their heads torn from their bodies as they blinked in stupefaction at the sudden interruption of their slumbers; infants, entrails scattering like clods from galloping horses’ hooves, were tossed into the air; mothers, faces ripped to a bloodied maw of indistinguishable flesh as they sought to protect, clawed and fell screaming silently in incomprehensible disbelief at the carnage as their lives and those of their offspring flowed quickly into the blood-sodden earth. Fathers and brothers disappeared under the slavering-fanged onslaught, wielding whatever puny implement they happened to have at hand when the leap for their throat came. Those settlement animals that couldn’t flee were slashed to a bloodied pulp as the long, pin-sharp teeth of the attackers ripped and dismembered bone, feather, hide, and fur from flesh.

Of the four hundred wolves in the attack on the settlement, at least fifty of them made straight for the dwelling of Sam Timms.

Then, fangs dripping still warm crimson, they loped away for the run to their next target, the compound of the long magus himself. High on an overlooking hill, her white wolf pup straining and growling in a slaughter that his sensitive nose and ears could detect but his young eyes could not yet see, Elelendise smiled. Turning she watched the swift flight of a small falcon as it bore the news of the slaughter back to its master.

“Welcome to the wolf-wrath of Elelendise, long magus,” she said quietly to herself, stroking the straining wolf-cub under the chin. “Your father would have enjoyed that, little Lupa … and so will you, my little warrior … so will you.”

Hidee say, hidee say, I’m staying out of the forest today.

Hidee see, hidee see, the Savernake wraiths won’t get me

Nor the Gauls or the Picts,

Cos I’m a freeman,

And I’m free

The words of the rhyme chanted by the settlement children as they played echoed through Twilight’s head
.
Now they were gone, all of them. And his father and all the others who refused to heed Merlin’s warning that danger was approaching.