by Matthew X. Gomez
in Issue 151, August 2024
Brais sat huddled in his cloak, the rain beating a tattoo on the stone floor around him through the holes in the roof. Flashes of lightning brought brief illumination to the interior of the ruined tower he had taken shelter in. His knuckles were white around his clutched scabbarded sword. He could not keep from shivering against the chill late autumn air.
Not for the first time, he ran his fingers against the iron pendant hanging from a leather cord around his neck. It held no special power, merely marking him as a monster slayer, one that could accept commissions with those with the coin to spare. It is what gave him license to carry a sword in the kingdom despite not being sworn to any noble, what gave him the right to travel freely, and the right to die a hopefully glorious death.
If he did not catch his death of cold first.
The crashing thunder masked the sound of the men entering the tower until they were already inside. All four wore heavy travelling cloaks and the kind of boots designed for long treks along roads. All were armed, two with stout cudgels, one with a wicked looking axe, and the last with a black iron war hammer. The one with the axe carried a hooded lantern, a beacon in the gloom.
“Saints blast this weather,” one of them growled. “Turned the roads to mud, hasn’t it?”
“Tends to happen, what with the rain and all,” a second voice replied.
“Aren’t you just the master of the obvious, Xavi,” the third said. “Whatever would we do without you?”
“Ahh shut it all,” the one with the war hammer said. “We aren’t the only ones seeking shelter here this night.” He gripped the leather wrapped haft and pointed the spiked end at Brais. “Seems we are in the presence of nobility.”
He leaned closer. A flash of lightning revealed a crooked nose, an unshaven face, and narrowly set eyes.
“Where’d you get the sword, boy?” the one with the axe growled. He lifted his lantern higher.
Brais found his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. In response, he dug the iron pendant out from his tunic. The axe wielder grunted.
“Bit young to be a monster hunter,” one of the cudgel wielders remarked.
“Aye, and we’re a bit old to be out in the woods, yet here we are,” the one with the warhammer replied. “But it seems you were here first, and to show that we haven’t completely forgotten our manners it would seem introductions are in order. I’m Bernardo. The one with the axe is Seve. And those two brothers are Xavi and Edgar.”
“Brais,” he replied after a pause.
The four settled themselves around the tower, out of the rain, but giving Brais his own space. He watched them in the way he was trained, keeping them in the corner of his eye without staring at them. Seve pulled a wrapped loaf of bread and a block of cheese out from his pack and split it among his companions. He did not offer any to Brais, but that was neither unusual nor a breach of hospitality. The companions chatted in hushed voices among themselves. Brais could have eavesdropped on their conversation, but as it was none of his business, he left them to it.
After a while the conversation died down and Brais found his eyes drooping.
“I figure you are here for the same reason we are,” Xavi said. He ran his hand over the iron bound head of his cudgel. He peered out at the rain drenched night, his tongue licking his lips nervously. “Any luck trailing the beast?”
“No,” Brais replied. He kept his misgivings to himself, that simply being in this area made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, turned his guts to twisting with a general sense of wrongness. Unless you were trained to it, however, it would be easy to brush the eerie feeling off as a chill in the air or a momentary twinge in the stomach.
“You being here means there must be something to the rumors of an ogre in the area,” Bernardo said. “I almost did not believe it. Not so many monsters left in the world. With militias and walls and farmsteads, what childhood nightmares could stand up to that? Why, you would be hard pressed to find four people that could even say that they’ve seen a monster.”
Brais frowned. “They are still there,” he replied with a frown. He did not take his eyes off the entrance. “They’ve gotten better at hiding.”
He knew all too well what a monster looked like, what they could do, and how few witnesses they might leave.
“You know how to use that thing?” Edgar asked, pointing at Brais’s sword.
“Course he does,” Bernardo answered for him. “They don’t hand out those medallions to just anybody. You had to train for what, a year?”
“Three,” Brais replied.
“Hmm. Ok. No armor though?” Seve asked. “Seems foolhardy.”
A shy grin spread across Brais’s face when he remembered his master’s words. “Armor admits the possibility of getting hit. And I will tell you now, the monstrosities you face can slice through metal as easily as flesh and bone. All you will do is slow yourself down.”
“Something funny?” Seve asked.
Brais shook his head. “Sorry. Was thinking about something else. The Lord Mayor requested my presence here, to answer your question. He seems to think there is something in the area. Children have gone missing. A few patrols as well. A lone farmstead was found abandoned, the cattle slaughtered in the fields.”
“We heard the same. Might be a monster. But could be brigands as well.,” Bernardo said. He settled back against the wall and closed his eyes. “Scratch the surface of any local monster story and you find bandits. Or a corrupt noble. Sometimes both. Don’t know that we have to worry about the bogeyman. Doesn’t matter what it is, really. We get paid as long as the problem is solved.”
“We should post a watch,” Seve said. “Even if it is just bandits, don’t need them surprising us in the middle of the night.”
Bernardo grunted. “If it makes you feel better, then fine. You take first watch then.”
“Best to stay in the tower though,” Brais offered.
“Oh?” Seve asked.
“I set up some protections.” He pointed at the assorted wood and bone charms he had attached to the crumbling walls. “Not much use against bandits, but it will protect you from anything else that might be out there.”
Bernardo snorted. “Like a troll or ogre?”
Brais nodded. “Yes. Some other things as well.”
“Sure,” Bernardo said. “Wake me up in a few hours,” he addressed Seve. He pulled a candle with markings on the wax and set it on the ground. He lit it with a firestarter from his pack and passed it over.
“Yeah, yeah,” Seve replied. He rubbed the grit from his eyes and went and sat near the entrance, peering out into the rain and the dark.
Brais woke up to Bernardo shaking his shoulder. His hand closed over the hilt of his sword and had already exposed a hand’s breadth worth of steel.
“Seve’s missing.”
Brais blinked, his mind still foggy from sleep.
“We need to go looking for him.”
Brais peered around Bernardo’s bulk. The inside of the tower was impenetrably dark, but the outside held the bluish tinge of the middle of the night, stars shining down in a clear sky.
“Maybe he wandered off to relieve himself,” Brais offered.
“Already checked that, and if he did, he should have woken one of us up first. No. Something’s wrong.”
Brais stood up. Edgard and Xavi were already outside, wrapped in their cloaks against the biting cold of the night. Xavi was crouched down, holding a burning torch, studying something on the ground.
“Any ideas?” Bernardo asked.
Xavi stood up and scratched his stubbly beard with his free hand. “Looks like he wandered off. No blood. No struggle. Weird though, yes?”
“I would agree.” He stared hard at Brais. “Well, monster hunter? What do you say?”
Brais stifled a nervous laughter that threatened to bubble up. “I would say a monster, but it could have been brigands.” Brais did not believe it was brigands. “There are two paths. I suggest we split off and check each one. By dawn, if we haven’t found anything, we should come back here.”
“Hmm. Fine. You come with me then,” Bernardo said. “Xavi, Edgar, you run into any trouble you don’t try and handle it yourselves, okay?”
“Yeah, boss,” Edgard replied. “You know us. Always careful.”
Bernardo lit his own torch. “Well, monster hunter? Just us two then.”
The path they took led deeper into the woods, the branches of the trees overhead intertwining into a boreal arch thick enough to block the stars. Brais kept his sword scabbarded even as Bernardo walked with his warhammer resting on his shoulder.
“Ever killed a man?” Bernardo asked, his gravelly voice breaking the silence like a hammer striking glass.
“Hmm?” Brais shook his head. He had been focused on the trail and the woods to either side. It was a bit more developed than a deer track, but only just. A skilled woodsman could probably have navigated it without leaving much of a trail, but in the middle of the night? He did not find it likely. “A man, no. A few monsters, however.”
Bernardo shook his head. “If you say so.”
Brais nodded silently and stepped forward. Something wet fell from the trees above, splattering on his shoulder. He paused and took a step back. He peered up. It was hard to tell in the dim light as Bernardo’s torch did not cast much illumination, but a dark mass looked lodged among the branches.
“What is it?” Bernardo asked.
“Bring your torch here,” Brais said. He walked where he had felt the liquid splash. The forest floor held a slowly spreading dark stain. More liquid dripped from above.
“Seve,” Bernardo turned his head and heaved.
Brais frowned. Revulsion filled him, but he forced that part of it into a closed room in his mind and locked it off. He needed to see this. “Bandits did not do this.”
“What then?” Bernardo asked, wiping the back of his mouth off with his hand.
“You don’t like the answer. We need to keep moving. It isn’t here any longer,” Brais stood. He could feel his knuckles tighten around the hilt of his sword. He consciously relaxed his body, letting his muscles go loose.
“Where then?” Bernardo asked.
“Back to the ruins.” Brais stared out into the distance for a moment, old folklore and rumors coalescing into a theory.
“Wait – what about Seve?”
Brais spared a look back up into the trees. “I am sorry about your friend, truly. But he is beyond saving now. Come daylight we can see about retrieving his body. Right now, we need to find your friends.”
Bernardo’s face darkened and he half raised his warhammer before shaking his head. “Let’s go.”
The sun was cresting the horizon by the time the two returned to the ruins, sunlight chasing away the last of the gloom. The air smelled wet and heavy, the way it does after a long storm. There was some other stench, however – the rich, cloying scent of vegetation in decay. The ruined tower was much as they had left them, except that Brais thought he saw a red-tailed hawk perched on one broken bit of masonry. He blinked and it was gone. He could not tell if he had imagined its presence.
“Edgar? Xavi?” Bernardo called out. The muted echo of his voice off the ruins was his only answer, the tone almost mocking as it returned to them.
Brais caught a whiff of something foul. He stepped forward, sword in both hands. He stepped back as a cloud of flies rose from the interior, rising from something red and slick and featureless.
“What?” Bernardo asked, pressing past him.
“They are dead,” Brais replied.
“No!” Bernardo stepped back, eyes wide in horror. “But, how? What man did this.”
“No man,” Brais replied. His stomach twisted at the sight, and he knew the two men had not died quick or clean. Something had taken their time with this, made a sport of it.
He heard a scraping sound come from behind him. He turned, sword up in a guard position.
“More trespassers.” Whatever it was, it wore the shape of a young woman, a diaphanous blue gown hanging loose off bony shoulders. The woman’s feet were bare and caked with dirt. Her blonde hair hung down in front of her face, obscuring her features. The voice though, sounded like metal scraping bone. Her hands were curled like claws and were caked with blood and gore. Flies buzzed around her head, thick enough to fashion a living crown. “More uninvited guests.”
Bernardo gave a wordless scream and charged forward. His axe met empty air, the woman now appearing twenty feet to their left.
“Bernardo, wait!” Brais shouted as he charged after the warrior.
The woman laughed, a buzzing, cackling sound that Brais felt in his bones. Bernardo would charge at where the woman was, but then she would be gone again, just out of reach. Each time, she would lure them farther into the forest. They never grew closer but kept the same distance each time. Brais finally managed to grab Bernardo’s shoulder and slow him down, but they had already gone about a mile deeper into the woods by that point and had long departed the trail. Both men bore various scratches and cuts from pushing through the undergrowth. Bernardo rubbed the blood away from one cut under his eye.
“Where is she taking us?” Bernardo growled, his warhammer clutched tight in both hands.
Brais rubbed his own eyes and blinked. In a clearing stood a simple stone hut with a thatch roof. A fenced-in garden was staked out along one side and a simple dirt path led to the door.
“Is that it?” Bernardo asked. He went to take a step forward, but Brais grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“Wait.” Brais said. He grabbed a handful of dirt from the ground, whispered words of power and revelation over it, then flung it into the clearing. The image broke like a mirror, shards of illusion spinning and shrinking to reveal the truth.
The dirt path was lined with stakes, each decorated with a bloody skull. The orderly plotted garden was a mass of twisted, poisonous vegetation. The hut remained mostly the same, save hides of pale stretched leather replaced the thatch roofing.
Bernardo’s face took on a sickly pallor, but he shrugged off Brais’s hand. “No matter if it be a man or monster,” he said. “That thing killed my friends. There needs to be a reckoning.”
“A reckoning?” The voice came from their left and made both jump. Crouched on a low, jagged stone wall was a youth who could not have been more than sixteen years. He was naked to the waist, his only clothing a pair of torn and muddy breeches. He held something in his left hand. “Is that what you think this is? You men come with axe and fire and civilization. You think to beat the horrors away. But we remain.” He gestured with the item in his left hand and Brais realized it was a bone, scraps of bloody and raw meat still clinging to it. Blood smeared the boy’s mouth.
Bernardo gave a wordless scream and charged, his warhammer raised high. Brais had no chance to grab him, to warn him. Bernardo closed half the distance to the youth. The youth grinned, his mouth splitting wider and wider to reveal impossibly long and sharp teeth. The youth pointed the bone at Bernardo and spoke a string of syllables. Brais felt his legs turn to jelly and he felt the base primal urge to freeze, the idea if he just held still then the predator hunting him would pass him by. Not because it could not sense him, but because it wanted more sport.
Bernardo stumbled, his warhammer dropping from numb fingers. He gave a frightened whimper, shutting his eyes tight against what horror Brais could only imagine. For his part, he drew his sword. His medallion felt cool against his chest.
As Brais watched, the youth hopped down from the wall, tossing the bone into the deadly garden surrounding the hut. The youth’s body shuddered and bulged, his skin splitting open to reveal glistening muscle beneath. The monster shed the skin of the youth, its form growing large and terrible. It’s body was covered in thick, coarse hair. Arms thick as tree trunks ended in curved claws as long as daggers, and a blackish green bile dripped from the oversized fangs in its mouth. Baleful yellow eyes glowed from underneath a sloping brow. It reached one impossibly long arm out, its clawed hand engulfing the man’s head. Seeming to snap out of his stupor, Bernardo reached out both hands to grab the monster’s wrist. Bernardo’s muscles bulged as he strained against the appendage latched onto his skull. Blood leaked down from where the claws dug in, and Brais heard him screaming. Finally, the monster grabbed him around the torso and gave a sudden sharp twist to Bernardo’s head. Bernardo collapsed in a heap, his head twisted around, his eyes open wide in frozen horror.
The beast turned its baleful gaze at Brais. Brais, for his part, held his sword in both hands, the tip held steady and aimed at the beast’s eyes. He felt his bowels turn to ice, felt the overwhelming urge to run. He wondered if this is what a rabbit felt like when confronted with a wolf. But Brais was no rabbit.
“You haven’t run,” the monster said. It almost sounded disappointed. “Too afraid? Or you would rather not die tired?”
“Who said I am going to die?” Brais said, forcing confidence he didn’t feel into his voice.
The monster snorted. It placed a clawed hand on top of Bernardo. As Brais watched, the vegetation grew thicker, covering the corpse until nothing remained but the haft of the warhammer sticking out.
“Do you know how long I have been here? Dwelling here? Killing here? And here come you, with fire and steel and seem to think you can ignore the nightmares in the dark.”
Brais shook his head. “I am not ignoring you.”
“No,” the monster replied. “You are not.” Its mouth split wide in a horrific parody of a grin, and it leaned down closer, peering at Brais with new interest. “You are a brave one. Their marrow is always so sweet, sweeter even then the ones that die pissing themselves in fear.”
It spoke the same syllables it had used to freeze Bernardo in place. Brais felt them hit like a blast of northern wind. He kept his eyes open, however, even as ghostly apparitions erupted from the ground and swarmed around him. Each was more horrible than the last, bearing horrific wounds and echoing the screams of their dying torments. Among the spirits he saw Bernardo and Edgard and Xavi, the three giving a mournful howl as they stared accusingly at Brais. The children though… those were the worst. All the small bodies, mutilated almost beyond recognition, all yelling their accusations at Brais. At how he had failed to protect them from the nightmare in the forest. How they rotted in the monster’s garden because of him. Brais felt his knuckles tighten around the hilt of his sword. So focused was he on the apparitions that he almost missed the monster’s approach.
He slipped under the grasping claw, as his sword slashed against its wrist. His blade bit deep. Blood, a deep blackish red color, oozed up from the cut. The monster growled and lashed out with a backhanded blow. Brais jumped backward, careful to stay on the path. The skulls on the stakes turned, watching him. Blue-white flames flared in the empty sockets.
“Go. Run.” Brais felt the force behind those words. His instinct was to obey, to turn and flee. To hope the monster would be satisfied with the death already wrought. But he knew to run was to ensure his own demise. Instead, he swept his sword down at one of the skulls. The bone split and the flame dissipated into the air. The monster flinched, taking a step backward toward its hut. Brais still felt the urge to run, but it felt lesser somehow.
“No!” the monster howled as Brais swept his sword down again. A bit of flying skull gouged a shallow cut across his cheek. The pain cut through the fear, and he held on to it like a drowning man might grasp a bit of driftwood.
“I warned you!” The monster leapt. Brais rushed in, diving under the sweeping claws, inside its reach now. He braced his sword, left hand on the hilt, right hand cupped on the pommel as he drove it deep into the beast. Black blood erupted from the wound. The creature wrapped its monstrous limbs around Brais, pulling him tight. Its fangs snapped shut inches from Brais’s face. The fetid smell of rotten meat on its breath caused him to gag. He kept a strong grip on his blade, however, twisting it hard. The beast thrust Brais away, sending him sprawling into a tree. Pain exploded down his back. He regained his feet, swaying unsteadily.
The shifter seemed to collapse on itself, shedding mass as it retreated. Brais followed. His arms felt leaden, yet he found the strength to bring down his sword on each skull as he passed it.
“Why? Why do you torment me so?” the monster said. As Brais watched, its form shifted time again and again. Now it resembled a small boy, no older than five. He blinked and it was Bernardo, his face a mask of blood. He blinked again and it was an old woman, stooped and bent. Another blink and it was a formless mass of flesh, with too many mouths and eyes and repulsive pink appendages that grasped fruitlessly along the ground. Its mouth gibbered with a multitude of different voices.
Brais did not answer. He brought the blade up one last time, spearing the shifting mass through its approximate center. It writhed and convulsed around the sword, nearly wrenching it from Brais’s hands, but he pulled it free. After a moment, the thing lay still, its eyes staring unseeing at the light starting to filter through the trees.
He closed his eyes for a moment, swaying on his feet, fighting the urge to sink to his knees. It was a long walk to the nearest town, and he still had his coin to collect.
©August 2024, Matthew X. Gomez
Matthew X. Gomez can be found at mxgomez.wordpress.com as well as on twitter @mxgomez78. He currently wrangles two kids, three cats, and a day time job and wonders how his wife puts up with him. He carves out time to write with a butcher’s knife. He is the author of the short fiction collection God in Black Iron and Other Stories and the novel PROJECT PROMETHEUS. His work has appeared previously in Swords & Sorcery Magazine.
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