Gray Wolf: The Demon-Haunted Forest (Part I)

The Bloody Sword

Ulf the Fatherless stood with bloody sword in hand, unhurt save for the grazing wounds inflicted by the balls of his adversaries’ flintlock rifles. He paused, adjusting the chainmail that covered his torso. The bodies of four dismembered men lay about him in a semicircle, and a half-dozen more dead rested a mile to his rear, killed with arrows as they struggled to reload their weapons in the cold. It began to snow again as he wiped the broadsword clean with a dead man’s tunic and stretched to ease the ache in his long limbs, and the wind whipped at his silvered mane as he contemplated the footprints that led downslope toward the demon-haunted forest. It beckoned, its evergreen boughs weakly illuminated by the setting sun.

Photo by Barnabas Davoti on Unsplash

They had arrived in his village the previous week, two noblemen, a woman, and the hard-looking retinue of guards whose blood now lay spattered in the snow. “The forest to the north,” they asked, “guide us there, and tell us what lies at its center.” They offered gold, which every man of the village had refused, for to speak of that place aloud, of the haunted space where their ancestors made sacrifice in the days before time began, was worse than death itself – death brought only the end of mortal flesh, while the forest was an abomination to the cycle of life bestowed upon them by the Creator. They departed the following day with no guide, and Ulf waited for two more days before following. He lay with his wife on the night before his departure, and as they huddled in the darkness, bare flesh against bare flesh, Tyra had whispered into his ear.

“How long will you be gone?”

“Five days at the most. They’ll return – or get lost in the forest – long before then.”

“All right.” As a callused finger traced light circles along the length of his spine, he had touched her face and found tears. “Five days, and if you have not returned by then, I will set out in search of you.” Tyra was a remarkable woman, even among the hardy folk that lived on the fringes of the Northern Sea, and he had no doubt that she would keep her word. With any luck she’ll return my bones to the village for a proper funeral.

“By the gods, will this snow ever end?” Luca shivered and drew the woolen cloak about his shoulders. “I’m forgetting what it’s like to be warm and dry.”

“Have patience.” Sir Robert Thorne drew his own garment a little tighter. “A few more miles, and if the gods look upon us with favor, you’ll never lack for warmth again.”

If the gods look upon us with favor. The thought was tinged with irony, for though his left arm was inscribed with the sigil of the twin goddesses, Fortune and Glory, Thorne had always counted himself as singularly luckless. His last venture had been an ill-starred expedition to the coast, a military campaign that quickly devolved into piracy and murder, and he had spent a half-year imprisoned, rotting away on the fringe of the southern lands as the authorities dithered over an appropriate ransom. Fortune had eventually smiled on him in a backhanded way, for he had been tossed into a cell with Luca (imprisoned for bigamy, Thorne remembered), and the dissolute Baronet had ultimately saved his skin, but the favors of Glory remained firmly beyond his reach. The days of his imprisonment grew into weeks, then months, and he had given in to despair, certain that the best fate for which he could hope was a quick death at the end of a hangman’s rope. But then, they tossed another man into our cozy abode. The stranger declined to give his name, and his left arm was a mass of scar tissue where the sigil had been burned away (Thorne wondered what blasphemy warranted such a harsh punishment), and it was through him that Thorne’s luck began to turn at last.

“My execution is tomorrow, and they say that a dying man can see the future. Give me your left arm.” The stranger traced the runes of his sigil as he recited a long discourse on the devils who lay chained in the darkness of the northern lands, who could touch neither sunlight nor blue skies but granted wishes to those who performed the proper rituals. “The enchanted places are forgotten by civilized men, but there is one such place, five days’ journey up the forest road. Go there, and you will find what you are seeking.” The stranger had been hanged at sunrise, and when Luca was paroled by the grace of a wealthy relative, he paid for Thorne’s own release from prison. A month into their journey, they had fallen in with Camille as they passed through the lands of the Western Plowmen, and while Luca had allowed her into their company with a knowing wink, Thorne found the girl intriguing for other reasons.

Such a small, frail thing. Camille was little more than a child, yet she bore the discomfort better than most men, and he found her silence a welcome relief from Luca’s blathering. The mercenaries had cast lecherous glances in her direction, but Thorne warned them away upon pain of death, and as the fertile fields of the Western Lands yielded to the brackish swamps of the seacoast, they largely ignored her presence. Thorne never questioned their change of heart. If none wish to carry her away, I am less likely to have my head bashed in as I sleep…

“How much farther?” Luca asked, interrupting his reverie.

“Not far now,” Thorne replied. The northern road existed on no map, and the forest could be a hundred leagues deep for all he knew, but he found the answer comforting.

Luca turned, watching their backtrail. “Strange that the others failed to join us. Do you suppose everything is all right?”

“Everything is fine,” he snapped. By the gods, this man was tiring. “We sent ten armed men against one peasant – every general wishes for such odds. And I’m just as happy if they tarry, for I want privacy when we reach our destination.”

“Ah yes, privacy.” He pointed to the girl, who walked just out of earshot. “Perhaps we should entertain ourselves before –”

The slap was not especially loud, for the noise was muted by the boughs that lined the roadside, but Luca took a stumbling step back, surprised by the sudden insult. Camille looked over one shoulder, watching them with wide, innocent eyes, and Thorne smiled, a vapid grin that signaled that all was well. Pay no attention to the fools behind you, he thought, but something in those eyes made his arms break out in gooseflesh. Camille was as handsome as any peasant girl, but the thought of her soft flesh, of the curves that filled out her woolen dress, made his skin crawl. The slap, he realized, had been delivered in response to his own revulsion as much as Luca’s intemperance.

“So that’s how it’s going to be, eh? I suppose I can’t blame you.” Luca drew nearer and whispered in his ear. “Easier to cut her throat when you haven’t had your prick in her.”

The forest road grew wider, and when he could not feel the roots beneath his feet, Thorne brushed aside the snow to reveal the cobblestones that marked their path. He peered into the fading light. A hundred paces to his left, the trees were broken by a line of stone, its edges weatherbeaten but still regular after a millennium of winters. An old foundation. He whistled, and both Luca and the girl froze in their tracks.

“We’ve made it to the old city,” he growled. “The temple will be at its center.”

At the forest’s edge, Ulf stared at the trio of bootprints that disappeared into the gloom, and the sight of those tracks froze his blood. The Lost City, he thought. The place of sacrifice, where the Gray Wolf of old brought down the wrath of the gods, of the Creator himself, upon the tribe. He had fought in a score of battles and a hundred smaller skirmishes, and old man Death had shaved his skin with a razor’s closeness, yet it was in that moment that he felt the first quivering of true fear. For an instant, he was tempted to take the coward’s path and return to his own hearth, his quest unfulfilled. No one needs to know the truth, a voice whispered in his ear. Leave them, and let them tempt the gods as they will. Steadying himself with a deep breath, he began to trot downhill, moving with haste before his courage could fail him again.

Behind him, the She-Wolf crested the rise and made her way through the assembled dead, ignoring the smell of blood that lingered in the air. The fox and lynx would follow in her wake, or the brown bear that wandered the open country, but she was no scavenger, and the bodies that lay cooling in the snow held no interest – she was after living prey, and her eyes were fixed upon the vanishing man, on the footprints that led into the trees. She waited for several minutes, then followed, moving quickly along the trail as the sunlight faded in the west.

To be continued…