CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

 

 

Anywhere else, and the herd that picked its way through this twisted land would have been slaughtered. The carcasses would have been burned and, beneath the incantations of priests, the bones would have been ground to dust. Then, perhaps, they would have been burned again.

Had the things once been goats? Jubska wondered about that as he watched them graze. Somehow, he doubted it.

Most of them were more or less the right size, it was true. Some had fur that was coarse and black, just like the animals he remembered from his childhood. The herd had even retained horns, although they had grown into grotesque shapes, razored and lumpy.

Even as he watched the things graze, he realised that their mutation went deeper than their appearance. It wasn’t the sparse vegetation that they nipped at, but the scurrying things that lived amongst it. Needle teeth snapped after insects and rodents, and even at this distance, Jubska could hear the occasional squeal of pain.

Not that he cared. It had been so long since he had a full belly that he would happily have devoured the rats himself.

The rest of the column had come to a stop behind him, and he waved them back. No point having the whole group outlined on the ridge. He dismounted as they fell back, and studied the animals more closely. They were feeding in a circle that got gradually smaller so that the creatures that fled were trapped between them, victims of a thousand toothed noose.

Clever.

“Are those the animals you’re after?” Grendel called out, and Jubska turned to hush him.

“Yes, they are indeed,” he whispered. “Best not to talk too loudly, though. Don’t want to spook them.”

Grendel nodded and studied the animals. After a moment, his brow furrowed and he frowned.

“I don’t see their owners anywhere,” he complained. Despite the fact that he spoke in a hoarse whisper, the volume still made Jubska wince. Even as he watched, one of the herd lifted its misshapen head and turned its three beady eyes towards them.

“No,” Jubska met the animal’s gaze, “there don’t seem to be any herders. Strange, or maybe not, they must be wild; a gift from our lord, perhaps?”

He forced himself to look into the glowing pits of Grendel’s eyes, but there was no answer there, far from it.

Grendel frowned.

“This is not good. It would be well to pay our lord his due sacrifice. If he gets impatient…” the sorcerer trailed off, suddenly a little nervous himself. Last night’s dreams had been full of the need for sacrifice. Quite insistent about it, in fact.

He glanced back over his shoulder to the men who were waiting patiently behind, and his look of anxiety became one of speculation. Jubska hastened to stop whatever idea was forming in Grendel’s head.

“We will find plenty of captives soon enough,” he promised. “With your powers, we can go south and take a caravan, perhaps even a village.”

“No, I want to go north,” Grendel said, his voice brooking no argument.

“We all value your judgement, oh chosen one,” Jubska said, shifting uneasily, “but let’s kill some of these things first. We can eat, and talk.”

Grendel shrugged.

“As you like,” he said.

“Would you like to help in the slaughter?” Jubska asked, nodding towards the herd. Animals or not, he wasn’t fool enough to think that this hunt was going to be easy.

“No, no. I won’t interfere in your sport,” Grendel said.

Jubska thought about telling him that sport was the last thing slaughtering these things was going to be, but to the hells with it, he decided. He would rather face those razored horns than look again into the burning pits of the sorcerer’s eyes.

He returned to his men and gave his orders. Just as the herd was circling its prey, so the horsemen would encircle it in turn. Jubska returned to watch the herd as two flanking parties trotted back the way they had come, getting ready to slip away and gallop the miles needed in order to achieve surprise.

Surprise, he knew, was the key to any victory. It was a lesson he understood as well as any general. The brutality of his hunted life had taught him the truth, over and over again: surprise and aggression.

He was still contemplating these harsh lessons when his comrades drew back in towards the herd. Jubska waited until they had paused, perfectly positioned for the charge, and then vaulted onto his mount. He signalled the charge, and with a last look towards Grendel’s sulking figure, he hurled himself towards the herd.

A moment later and he realised, with a feeling like a knife in the guts, that he wasn’t the only one in this cursed land to understand the value of surprise.

By then it was too late, and all he could do was watch in horror as the trap was sprung.

 

It wasn’t that Vaught or his pack had thought of a plan, they hadn’t. They didn’t think of anything much anymore.

This, Vaught knew, was good. It showed that, as their bodies had grown stronger, so had their minds. The pointless chatter of human consciousness had withered and died. In its place there remained only instinct, a killer instinct that was driven by a rage that throbbed as constantly as the pain of a broken limb.

When they had found the herders in their path, they had known what to do. The slaughter had been sudden and complete, the weapons of Vaught’s victims no match for his followers feral strength.

After the feeding frenzy, the victors had instinctively burrowed into the frozen steppe, acting with all the idiot wisdom of ticks on a hound. The fire in their blood kept them warm, even when the hard frost bit, and when the night grew blisteringly cold they remained as comfortable as the herd that grazed amongst them.

Then, as they had known he would, the man they were hunting had come to them.

It was a joyful moment. Vaught and his followers burst from their hiding places, as eager as some terrible spring. Their fangs were bared in glee and their claws were outstretched. After so long spent buried, their eyes watered in the sunlight, but that was all right.

They could see the bulky shapes of the galloping horsemen easily enough.

Vaught gurgled with joy as he loped forwards to meet the first of Grendel’s new allies. The man started with surprise. Then instinct took over and he levelled his spear at his attackers chest.

He was too slow. Vaught was already past the tip of the spear, and as it jabbed past him he grabbed the haft. He leapt up, using it to swing himself up behind the rider. The man yelped as his head was pulled back. The yelp was silenced by the talon that sliced through his jugular.

Vaught gurgled with unholy joy as the rider’s life splashed out in a fountain of red. When the body went limp, he let it fall and snatched at the reins. The horse was bucking hysterically, desperate to be free of the thing that had killed its rider.

Vaught instinctively tried to hold on, his claws burrowing into horseflesh. The animal screamed and bolted, its hoofs blurring as it thundered through the scattering herd of goats. Snarling with rage, Vaught leaned forwards to claw at the animal’s throat and, slavering with a sudden hunger, bit down into its spine.

Even as the horse died it ran, adrenaline fuelling its dying stampede. By the time it finally collapsed, it had carried its savage rider perhaps half a mile from the atrocities that his followers were committing.

Vaught, bruised from the fall he had taken, dragged himself from beneath the carcass of the animal and sprinted back towards the carnage.

To the yellow slits of his new eyes, it was a beautiful sight.

A horse lay crippled on the ground, blood spurting in time with its heart.

A rider, his skull cracked open as neatly as the top of a boiled egg, thrashed around on the ground, dancing as he died.

A rally and a charge disintegrated amongst the leaping bodies of Vaught’s brethren. The ambushers leapt nimbly, fangs and claws tearing riders from saddles.

By the time Vaught, his bare skin slicked with blood and sweat, reached the battle, it was virtually over. The torn remains of the horsemen and their mounts lay scattered about, and only three survivors remained. They were on foot, and they huddled together so tightly that even their bloodied weapons couldn’t stop them from looking like a flock of sheep.

Vaught counted his brethren as he joined them. They were all there. One was sporting an arrow, the feathered shaft growing from his shoulder like an extra limb. Others had been hacked open. Their wounds smiled as their muscles flexed.

Nothing serious.

“So you are the herders,” one of the surviving riders sneered at him. Although he was speaking to Vaught, his eyes kept turning towards a nearby ridge, as if he was looking for some new dawn.

The man managed to drag his eyes back to Vaught.

“You would do better, herder, to follow your animals. You have no idea of who our lord is, or of the proficiency of our shaman. He is a great man, a chosen…”

Vaught had tired of such pleasantries, and his only reply was a guttural snarl and a blur of movement. His brothers closed in around him, their fangs tearing the three men to pieces even before their hearts had stopped beating.

It was in the midst of this joyful frenzy that Grendel, the noise of battle finally penetrating the fog of his own thoughts, found them. He peered over the top of the ridge that he had been waiting behind, blinking blue fire as he started to work out what he was seeing on the ground below.

When he did understand what had happened, he smiled. Although twisted, the creatures that were feeding on his erstwhile comrades would make excellent sacrifices.

His fingers twitching, he began to chant.

 

In spite of himself, Kerr couldn’t take his eyes off the stream. Although the edges were rimed with ice it still flowed, gurgling merrily along through the tundra.

That was all right. For a while, he had even taken comfort from the sight. In a world of burning skies and living stones it was reassuringly normal. Then he had noticed how the water flowed, how it always raced exactly north, even when that meant running uphill.

As the carriage rattled and bounced its way over the carpet of frozen heather, he found himself wondering if it always headed north. Perhaps it changed direction from time to time, the serpent of water turning hunter, and writhing across the landscape in search of prey.

Kerr tried not to dwell on such thoughts. There was no point in worrying about things like that. Even so, he had found his imagination growing increasingly morbid over the last week. The sickness that blighted these lands had also, it seemed, blighted his imagination.

As for what was happening to Titus… Well, he didn’t want to think about it. He would rather watch the stream as it wriggled its way up and over a tumble of boulders than contemplate what that might mean.

“Know what?” he asked the horses as they plodded along. “For the first time, I’m actually looking forward to meeting Grendel, just to get it over with, you understand, and get back home.”

The horses whinnied with what Kerr was sure was agreement.

“Why shouldn’t you understand?” he asked bitterly. “Boulders that spring to life, clouds that burn, water that won’t behave itself—why not talking horses too?”

But if the horses had an opinion they kept it to themselves, and Kerr was left to face this horrible new world all by himself.

 

Any doubts Kerr might have had about his master were dispelled that evening. The wizard had staggered out of the carriage and, his mouth open, but his eyes closed, he had walked straight past his apprentice and towards the flaming skies of the north.

Kerr had watched him go, and for a moment, a single heartbeat of a moment, he had considered leaving him to whatever insanity had gripped him. It would be easy enough. He could kick out the fire, climb back up onto the carriage, and just go.

Of course, Titus might try to pursue him, but somehow he doubted it. In fact, he more than doubted it. He knew that the wizard would no more turn away from his goal than a moth would from a flame. Until they had left Praag, this had been a pursuit, but now things were different. Now it seemed that Titus wasn’t a hunter so much as a fish on a hook.

“Not that that’s a reason to stay with the old fool,” Kerr told himself, but it was no good. Ignoring the horses’ look of disgust, he trotted after Titus.

“Hey boss, boss!”

He caught up with the wizard and placed a hand upon one hamhock of an elbow.

“Boss, it’s me. Wake up. You’re sleepwalking.”

Titus’ eyes flickered open, and Kerr recoiled. They were as dead as the coins he had stolen from the dancing corpses that had begun this terrible journey.

Then the flash of conscience was gone and Titus was blinking, scowling with confusion as he looked around.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“You were sleepwalking. Look, there’s our camp, see?” Kerr spoke softly, as if to a child or a fool. Titus recovered enough to resent it.

“Yes, I can see that. Well get back to it then. I was just stretching my legs.”

Liar, Kerr thought.

“My mistake,” he said.

“Put that fire out.” Titus grumbled, and wiped a sleeve across his brow. For the first time, Kerr noticed that, despite the chill, he was sweating. “We’ve wasted enough time already,” said Titus. “He is close, now. I can feel it.”

“The horses need to rest,” Kerr argued. “If we push them any harder…”

“Silence!” Titus roared, and raised his hand. Kerr dodged to one side and the two men looked at each other in surprise. Titus looked at his fist as if amazed to find it on the end of his arm. Then he dropped both his hand and his eyes.

“Just get the horses ready to go,” he muttered, and sighed, “I can’t stand to waste any more time.”

“No,” Kerr said. “I don’t suppose you can.”

 

This far north, the aethyric winds were strong enough to outshine even the blue sky above. For a while, Kerr had taken to wearing a hood, the thick cloth shielding him from the sight of the sickly colours. They made his head throb and his heart ache. He also kept almost seeing things from the corner of his eyes, scurrying things that hadn’t been there before he’d looked.

Eventually, he’d thrown the hood back again. However nauseating, it was better to see this sickly world than it was to wander blindly through it. Safer, at least.

That was why he saw the first signs of the battle ahead, even while it was still a mile distant. There were flashes, dazzling arcs of energy and distant rumbles of energies. In the south, he would have dismissed the commotion as lightning, perhaps even fireworks. Here, he had no such illusions.

A minute after he had seen the first flash, Titus thumped on the carriage. Kerr reined in the horses, and the wizard leapt out. He lost his footing in his eagerness, and tumbled into the frozen sand of the place. Bouncing back to his feet, he staggered to a halt and looked at the lights.

“Look at that,” he exulted, gesturing towards a column of purple flame that suddenly shot up. It left after-images dancing in Kerr’s eyes, and he blinked away tears. Titus, wide eyed with excitement, let tears run down his chubby cheeks.

“Such power!” he cried as happily as a child. “Isn’t it splendid? Isn’t it magnificent? With power like that a man could remake the world. What do the colleges have to offer by comparison?”

Kerr had more practical concerns than Titus’ rhetoric.

“Is it Grendel?” he asked, “or something else?”

Titus seemed not to hear. Then he shook himself and started to hoist himself back into the carriage.

“Come, let’s go. Straight ahead.”

“Straight ahead!” Kerr yelped. “Isn’t that a bit dangerous?”

“Nonsense. You seem to forget that nobody can see us. Now stop talking and go.”

Kerr cursed himself for not having deserted when he had the chance. Then he snapped the whip above the horses’ heads and sent them trotting towards the lights.

 

Grendel hadn’t enjoyed himself so much since Praag. The creatures that had slaughtered his companions weren’t men, it was true, but he thought that they might once have been, and, as he remade them, he became sure of it.

Apart from anything else, only a human will could have resisted the paralysing magic he had enveloped them with. Even as their blood had fermented into rivers of crippling ecstasy, and even as their consciousness had disintegrated beneath pulses of pure bliss, the creatures had tried to retaliate.

One of them, its snarl melting into a grin of idiot joy, had even made it to within six feet of where the sorcerer stood.

Grendel watched the muscled bulk of the creature as it rolled on the ground, grimacing with pleasure. Its companions were scattered behind it, as helpless in their bliss as the bodies of their victims.

It was a shame about them, Grendel thought, his eyes flickering across the ruin of Jubska’s tribe. Then he shrugged. After all, what were a dozen lives, more or less? What were a million? An artist doesn’t mourn over used paint, and neither would he.

The creature that lay at his feet tried to say something. Grendel watched it curiously. What strength it must have to be able to do even that much. He would save it until last.

In the meantime, he had a celebration to attend. Lips moving with whispered syllables, the sorcerer stalked amongst his victims, fingers dancing in strange patterns. Slowly, painfully, Vaught’s followers began to change into the things that inhabited Grendel’s imagination.

 

By the time he had finished his masterpiece, night had drawn in. Grendel remained as oblivious to the pulsating stars as he had been to the boiling skies of the afternoon.

Although sweat was freezing to his body, although his fingers trembled and although his throat hurt, he was a happy man. The things he had created were truly worthy offerings.

“Beautiful and functional,” he whispered, his voice hoarse after the day’s efforts.

He ran his trembling fingers over the head of one of them. It responded with a sob, which its remoulded physiognomy caught, amplified and honed.

“Perfect,” Grendel gloated as the creature’s misery rang out in a perfect key. The note was so clear that it would have made any human piper cringe with jealousy.

The sorcerer strolled to the next of the creatures. Its belly was hugely distended and its snout tapering out into a wide mouthed tube. Grendel tapped the thing on its shoulder, and a melancholic bagpipe sigh breathed out of it.

The sorcerer chuckled with delight. He could feel his god’s approval washing over him, a crippling pleasure. For a moment, he teetered on the brink of an abyss, and although it beckoned with sweet seduction, he dragged himself away. There would be time for that later.

For now, he had a ceremony to arrange. It wasn’t just the instruments he’d created, it was the dancers as well. Compared to their fellows, these three had escaped lightly. Although their skin glowed with a dragonfly’s iridescence, they retained their forms.

Grendel resisted the temptation to improve upon them. They would need all their strength for the ritual ahead. So would he. It would be madness to start it now, when he was still exhausted from the day’s creation, absolute madness.

He smiled at the thought, and rubbed his shaking hands together. Then he swallowed, and began to chant.

As he prowled amongst them, his creations began to howl and to sob, and the dancers began to dance to the terrible harmony.

At first, they were clumsy, still sluggish after the hours of paralysis, but as the tune quickened so did their feet. Soon they were dancing a lively jig, knees high and heads lolling about. Grendel waved his hands as they did so, feeling more like a conductor than a sorcerer.

His victims leaped and pranced, and spun through the air, as lively as fish on a line. Grendel watched the rippling muscles and the flash of their skins with approval. Then he saw the faces and frowned. They were slack with misery, the tears spinning from their yellowed eyes as they gyrated around.

That wouldn’t do. With a twitch of his fingers, Grendel spoke half a dozen words and three identical rictus grins starched the dancers’ faces.

The sorcerer laughed with delight, and turned his attention to the dancers’ feet. They were already starting to bloody the jagged rocks. Grendel sucked his teeth as he tried to calculate how long it would be before his victims were dancing on ankle bones. Not too soon, he hoped.

He was still lost in the thought when a voice shattered his world.

“It’s Grendel isn’t it?”

The sorcerer sprang backwards, as lithe as one of the dancers. He peered through the confusion of their thrashing limbs, but even though the world was alight with aetheric fire, he couldn’t see where the voice had come from.

Then there was a twist of air, a shimmer of heat, and a man waddled from the shadows.

“Stand back!” the sorcerer shrieked. It was the sight of the stranger’s robes that filled him with such panic. Their cut and hue were horribly familiar, and they filled him with the memories of his former colleagues. More to the point, they filled him with memories of what his former colleagues did to defectors.

Grendel stumbled backwards, fingers twitching as he tried to think of the most devastating spell he knew.

The dancers and musicians played on, buffeting Titus as he walked through their midst.

“It is Grendel, isn’t it?” he asked again, and held up his two palms.

“I won’t go back,” Grendel whined, as petulant as a child who doesn’t want to leave the carnival. “I didn’t try to get those damned corpses to walk. They just did. Anyway,” he was suddenly defiant, “the power here. It’s too… too…”

“Wonderful?” Titus suggested.

“Yes.”

The wizard and the sorcerer looked at each other, calculating. The only sound was the horribly tuneful playing of Grendel’s creations, and the soggy stamp of his victims’ disintegrating feet. Titus turned to watch them. He saw the misery that was pummelling their frozen smiles, and the agony that sounded beneath the notes of the living instruments.

He lifted one podgy hand and, as Grendel raised his hands in defence, snapped his fingers.

Dancers and musicians both exploded into fountains of silver light. They shrieked, although only for a second. After that the only sound was the sizzle and hiss of burning bodies, and the stamp of feet as the burning dancers danced on.

“They’re very beautiful,” Grendel muttered as he watched them spin past. As they moved, the flames shifted colour, darkening as they ate deeper into the melting flesh. Titus accepted the compliment with a nod.

“They are beautiful, aren’t they? But I don’t even know how I did it.” He shrugged with unusual modesty. “Ever since I left Praag things just…”

“Just happen,” Grendel finished for him. The wizard and the sorcerer looked at each other, and in the pulsing light of the dancing victims, they smiled.

“I can see why the fools from the colleges don’t want us up here,” Titus said. “Imagine what would happen to their pathetic rules and hierarchies when men such as us found such mastery.”

“Yes, exactly!” Grendel beamed, delighted to have heard his own thoughts echoed. “Imagine what knowledge we will find up here.”

Titus nodded, and tugged thoughtfully at his beard.

“We were the greatest of our generation already,” he said, generously sharing the accolade. “In centuries to come, we will be gods.”

“You think there is a cure for death up here?” Grendel asked, but even as the words left his lips he knew that yes, there was a cure for death. There was a cure for everything, just so long as he kept following his god’s voice to the north.

“There must be.” Titus was equally sure. “There are certainly enough cures for life.”

The two men were still laughing when Kerr stepped into the light of the burning bodies. Grendel raised a finger, but Titus waved it away.

“That’s all right,” he said. “He’s my servant.”

For a moment, Kerr’s eyes showed his surprise as he looked from the wizard to the sorcerer. Despite the contrast between Titus’ rounded face and Grendel’s gaunt cheekbones, and between Titus’ flowing robes and Grendel’s rags, and between Titus’ booming voice and Grendel’s hoarse squeak, he saw that they were both the same; both exactly the same.

Amongst these men, there might be hunter and hunted, victor and victim, but compared to that which separated them from the rest of the world, they were all brothers.

Kerr smoothed the expression from his face as he watched the dancers. The burnt pork stink of roasting flesh filled the air, sharpened with the sulphur smell of the flames. Kerr noticed how the fire blossomed from the pits of the dancers’ eyes, and how it had fixed the insanity of their smiles into clown’s grins of melted skin.

He also felt the pins and needles that itched for release in his own fingers. All it would take would be a look, a word, and perhaps he too could add to the spectacle.

He felt a fist of nausea turning within his stomach.

“Stood too close to the fire did they?” he asked. Grendel was, as ever immune to sarcasm.

“Not at all. Your master used them to light our new friendship.”

Titus was touched.

“The real art was in the making of them,” he said, “after all, who to thank, the candle maker or the match?”

Kerr watched one of the bodies lurch as a foot broke away from the crisped ankle. It danced on anyway, doddering on stumps.

“You truly are the greatest wizard in the world, boss,” he said, awestruck.

Titus preened.

“It must be an honour for one of the college’s lesser wizards to work for you.”

The look of contentment left Grendel’s face. Titus didn’t notice. Instead he made an effort to sound gracious.

“He was lesser only whilst we belonged to the same order,” he explained. “His art was never as great as mine, but up here we both have things to learn.”

“What do you mean my art wasn’t as great as yours?” Grendel asked, his voice cold.

“Only that you didn’t have as many discoveries,” Titus soothed. “I’m sure that, in time, you would have done better. Look at the way the fat bubbles into flame. That violet colour is very difficult to achieve, you know.”

Grendel, his bonhomie replaced by a look of suspicion, licked his lips.

“Imagine how fast he will learn now, boss,” Kerr said, and then flinched beneath Grendel’s glare. “No offence, sire, but we are both here to learn from the master.”

He looked at Titus who puffed himself up.

“It is a real pleasure to serve such a master,” he carried on encouragingly. “I am sure you will find it as… as congenial as I have, and as rewarding.”

Titus nodded approval. Grendel thought about serving the fat man. About degenerating back into being under somebody’s discipline, and in the silence of his thoughts the voice of his god spoke.

If he hadn’t tried to be surreptitious, he might have been successful. As it was, he moved with such a look of hangdog guilt that even Titus, lost in the pleasant haze of a glorious future, noticed that something was wrong.

The remaining seconds of Grendel’s life ended in a blur. Even as he locked his fingers into the horned sign of his god, Titus was speaking, the catechism bursting from him as easily as a sneeze.

Years on the battlefield had taught him the virtue of simplicity, and even as Grendel dithered over his words, Titus’ shadow was racing forwards to engulf him. It rushed unnoticed up Grendel’s legs, as dark and as deadly as a rip tide, and when he began to speak, the darkness slipped hungrily into his mouth.

Kerr watched as it pooled between his teeth, choking his words and filling his eyes with terror. The sorcerer gagged, his throat shuttling back and forth desperately, and clawed at the nothingness that filled his mouth.

He didn’t stand a chance. Even as Grendel dropped to the floor, his flesh was blackening. Kerr, safe behind Titus’ back, watched him writhe in agony.

“What’s happening to him?” he asked.

“Wait and see,” Titus said.

Grendel was already beginning to collapse. The corruption spread beneath his skin and, piece by piece, he began to disintegrate. His fingers were the first to go, turning to ash before grumbling away.

Kerr watched the terror in the dying sorcerer’s eyes. It almost made him feel pity. Almost, but not quite.

“See how fast the flesh corrupts?” Titus instructed. “That is because I have not added to his form, but taken away from it. It is always easier… Oh.”

From amidst the writhing mass of Grendel’s body something gleamed: something as fresh and vigorous as the first shoots of spring.

Its arms were the first things that tore free. They were as long as an orc’s, although skinny, the bones impossibly long and thin. The talons buried themselves into the burnt ground, and the shoulders flexed as the thing dragged itself free of the human remains.

Titus’ fingers twitched, and a fresh wash of sweat glistened on his pale features as the horror wriggled its way out of Grendel’s ruined body. It had no neck, nor any distinct body. Its head was elongated, a snout with two bulging blue eyes growing on either side, and its body was serpentine. It rose from the skin that it had shed, like a cobra from a snake charmer’s basket, although it was Titus and Kerr who were mesmerised.

“Grendel?” Titus asked as the thing turned its elongated head towards them. Its tongue whipped out as if to taste the air, and as it moved towards Titus and his apprentice, a sweet scent filled the air.

Titus swayed on his feet, eyes half closed as he inhaled the perfume. It reminded him of bougainvillea, of honeyed pancakes, of fresh sheets after a hard day.

With an effort, he opened his eyes in time to see that the thing was sliding towards them.

“Grendel? Is that you?”

The thing that had been Grendel had neither the will nor the ability to reply. Instead, it rose up on its sinuous body and prepared to strike, and for the first time, Kerr spoke.

“Kill it!” he shouted, “or it will kill us.”

“Yes,” Titus said vaguely, although he seemed in no hurry to move. “It smells wonderful.”

Kerr looked at his master’s dazed expression and at the thing that towered above them. He reached up to Titus’ ear, grabbed it, and twisted, hard.

The wizard pulled away, startled.

“Kill it,” Kerr repeated, and Titus looked up in time to see the horror’s tongue lash out towards him. It gleamed a poisonous green, and even as it blurred forwards, Kerr could see the teeth that serrated its edge.

Titus spoke a syllable before it connected, but that syllable was enough.

Before the tip of that lash of a tongue connected, it had grown transparent, and when it did brush against one of Titus’ jowls, it was scarcely more than a shadow. Even so, the touch was almost lethal, burning a furrow through the wizard’s fat that would have reached the arteries of a slimmer man.

Titus rolled backwards, fingers already twitching as he readied a fresh incantation, but his work was already done. The thing that had become Grendel was fading, flickering in and out of existence as its substance dissolved.

Soon, there was nothing left of Grendel at all, but for the dying light of the human torches. Even with their creator gone, they still writhed and twitched, enslaved by the remains of their own lives.

“Stupid fool,” Titus said, picking himself up and touching his wounded throat. It had been cauterised as neatly as if by burning pitch, the wound closed behind the thing’s touch to seal it into his flesh.

He cast a quick, disinterested glance back towards Grendel’s victims as the first of them fell over. Then he turned to Kerr.

“Bring the carriage up,” he said, that flat, mesmerised look already back in his eyes.

“Yes,” Kerr said, relief soothing his horror. “Time to go home, hey boss?”

“Home? No. No, we are going north. Look at these wonders, boy. Imagine what else lies in store for us.”

Titus turned to gesture to the field of ruined bodies, the living and the dead equally damned.

“All this,” Titus promised him, “is only a taste of what lies ahead.”

Kerr stood behind his master and looked at the promised land. Then his dagger was in his hand, and even as Titus spoke again, he struck.

The dagger bit deep, slicing through fat and between the ribs that lay beneath. When it had driven home, Kerr twisted.