Epilogue

Erikson lay outstretched on the thin mattress that covered the camp bed. For the first time since he could remember he was neither tired nor hungry, nor desperate nor frightened nor enraged. His purse was full of enough gold to buy even the fattest of farms, a jug of wine lay at his elbow and his wounds were bandaged so expertly that he felt no pain.

As he looked idly upwards to the canvas roof of the tent he was a man completely at peace.

The rest of the company’s injured lay around him, their wounds bandaged as expertly as his own. In the hours after the battle the baron had insisted that they be given priority, and it was thanks to this that so many had survived.

The dozen men who had died would be mourned in time. Erikson had given Porter, one of the few men to have emerged from the battle unscathed, the mission of finding any of the bodies he could. However, in the aftermath of the battle that had proved a hard task. As soon as the bodies were untangled the men had been laid in one of the great funeral pits and the beasts had been tossed onto great pyres that still roared with burning fat and bone.

Not that Erikson wanted to think about that now.

He listened as, from outside the tent, Sergeant Alter’s voice barked out a series of commands. He had pushed the baron’s blessings to include a hundred halberds and harnesses from the state armoury, and ever since he had accoutred the men with them Alter had been like a child with a new toy.

“Halt, who goes there?”

Dolf’s voice cut through Erikson’s reverie, and he sat up on one elbow to see who had come to visit.

“Provost Marshal Steckler,” a familiar voice said.

“Pass, friend,” Dolf said, and Erikson smiled. What couldn’t he do with a few dozen more like Dolf? What sort of company could he build this into?

But no. No, he had retired.

“Captain Erikson,” Steckler said as he prowled over to the bed.

“Provost marshal.” Erikson nodded as the man pulled up a stool and sat down.

“Thought you might like to keep a hold of this,” Steckler said and handed Erikson a leather tube. Erikson popped the cover off one end and slid out the company’s pardon. At the bottom, the great flourishing signature of the baron had been written. Erikson returned the parchment to the case, pressed it to his chest and smiled.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t thank me, thank the baron,” Steckler said. “He’s even decided to keep your company under arms, so you’d better get well soon. I want you to find enough men to fill out your company to full strength. Say, four hundred men.”

Erikson shook his head.

“Talk to Alter,” he said. “Or Gunter perhaps. I haven’t decided who will take over, but I am retiring. Going to raise nice plump cattle and a nice plump wife. Have sons. Sit in the shade and drink beer and tell lies.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Steckler said. “You can’t retire. The men are under your cognisance for the next three years.”

Erikson opened his mouth to argue, and then decided not to. What was three years anyway? He listened to Alter’s voice and already he was wondering how the company should be organised. There would be three sections of a hundred and twenty apiece, of that he was sure, but who would command them? He wanted Alter as company sergeant, so apart from Gunter who was there to…

“Oh, and another thing,” Steckler said, interrupting his train of thought. “Your friend Viksberg. Seems he’s gone and deserted.”

“Deserted?” Erikson asked. “But why would he desert now? The battle’s over.”

“For the most part it is,” Steckler agreed. “But there are still bands of the beasts straggling back to their lairs. I put Viksberg in charge of a patrol which was to follow them into the forest and hunt them down. It seems his martial spirit failed him somewhere between receiving the order and reporting for duty.”

“Did it now?” said Erikson. “Oh well. The military life is not for everybody.”

* * *

Over the course of the summer the emptied lake had dried into a hard pan of cracked mud. The rotting fish had long since been devoured, and nothing moved across the dried earth but dust.

Dried dust and a single, limping figure.

There was little left of the Hofstadter who had slunk away from his companions all those weeks ago. The nubs which had formed on his brow had sprouted into two thick horns, blunt-tipped and solid. His face had lengthened beneath them and his jaw had grown thicker so as to support the fangs that had burrowed up from beneath his old teeth. His frame, always wiry, had grown more heavily muscled and his legs had grown into those of a goat.

Over time the ragged remains of his clothes had rotted off his frame, although even in this burning sunlight that hardly mattered. The thick pelt of fur he had grown had seen to that.

But if he had changed physically, Hofstadter had changed even more within the tormented dimensions of his mind. The old human chatter of thought and calculation had gone, and in its place was the immediacy of animal instinct.

It was that instinct which had led him to this place. He did not know why he had been chosen. Nor did he care. All that mattered was that the throbbing voice in his head was telling him that his dark pilgrimage was almost at an end.

The stone was black beneath a covering of sunbaked filth. It stood before him like some terrible promise and, as Hofstadter drew nearer he realised that he would die there. The thought didn’t particularly disturb him. Even when he drew close enough to see the pulsing green glow of the stone he felt something approaching bliss.

It was the only time he had seen anything as beautiful as the amulet he still wore around his thickened neck.

Soon he felt the light glowing within him, coursing through his blood and muscle and bones and oh, oh the pain.

If his first transformation had been agonising, this was unbearable. It tore at every part of him, a screaming agony as his body melted and re-knit itself. The sun and the moons chased each other around the world. Flies buzzed towards the stone, settled on it, then dropped dead to the ground. Hofstadter noticed none of this. His world had become one of endless, unendurable agony.

Then, on the third day, it stopped and he climbed to his feet, reborn. When he did so he knew two things.

The first was that the voice which had called him here was his own, and had been all along.

The second was that he was going to destroy the world.

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