Robert Adams - Champion of the Last Battle

The creature had been distracted but momentarily—his stomach brought his attention back to his waiting meal—but then there was sudden movement on his right rear and something sharp and hurtful sank deep into his chest, between his jutting ribs, just behind his right shoulder. Snarling his pain and rage, he turned his huge head, snapping toothy jaws at the source of his agony. By happenstance, his second snap closed on something solid, and he furiously wrenched at it. It came free with more pain and a wet, sucking sound, whereupon he let it drop from his jaws and turned back purposefully toward his victims, only to find that now another twoleg female stood between him and them, a long, shiny, curved thing of steel clenched in one of her forepaws.

Bili of Morguhn, bearing the bared sword of state in one big hand, trailed by some two thirds of the Royal Council, armed haphazardly with everything from dress hangers to ancient, rusty, dusty weapons wrenched from wall displays, pounded down corridors and up flights of stairs.

As the party approached the wing that housed the sprawling suite, the noises of the guardsmen furiously attacking the stout door became audible—shouts, grunts, poundings, all so far unavailing. Arrived upon the scene, Bili motioned the men all away and threw his own powerful young body against the unyielding portal; it groaned protestingly, but held firm. Again he hurled himself at the old iron-bound door, but still it stood solid. He wasted no more time or effort so fruitlessly.

“Sergeant,” he snapped to the leader of the guards, “that oaken bench down the corridor there—fetch it back up here at the double. With three of you on each side of it, only a few swings should have that door down or at least open.”

Rahksahnah was horrified when the massive wolf not only did not seem hurt unto death as it should have been by the accurately cast dirk that must surely have pierced its heart but, with seeming sentience, took the hilt of the weapon between its slavering jaws and pulled it out of its chest. Nonetheless, she had gotten to where she knew she must be, where she would make her life—or-death stand, between the hellish beast and her babes.

Snatching a thick, heavy woolen shawl from the nearby crib, she flung it over the head of the charging wolf, then sidestepped and chopped down with all her might, feeling in her very marrow the solid impact of her saber against the dense bone of the beast’s skull ... but still he came on, shaking his head to try to rid it of the blinding, heavy cloth.

Again she struck, but with no more apparent effect. She could feel the edge of the bedstead against the backs of her legs; there could be no more retreat.

She was, in her deadly concentration, unaware of the fact that the thick door had at last been battered in until Bili suddenly was looming there before her, with the lamplight glittering along the length of an old-fashioned longsword, and the room behind him seemingly crowded from wall to wall with armed men.

“ ... dirk through his heart, Bili,” she gasped, forgetting her mindspeak, “... didn’t stop him, he ... jaws, pulled it out! Full arm swing across head, should’ve cracked his skull ... I think ... be demon, witch-beast ... can’t be killed! Beware!”

Huge and unnaturally powerful as the wolf assuredly was, Bili’s mighty two-handed swing of the heavy old sword still drove him belly-down onto the floor, though it failed to crack his spine, as it would have that of any more mundane beast. His head now free of the woolen shawl, his fiery eyes fixed upon this new antagonist, the wolf furiously scrabbled his clawed paws for purchase, making to rise. That was when Bili drove the ancient blade completely through the furry body, pinning it to the floor.

The howl that the beast then voiced was unearthly, ghastly, sounding far less like the death howl of an animal than the dying scream of a man. A terrible shudder rippled the length of the massive beast’s body, it let go its dung and its urine, vomited a great gush of blood, then it’s fearsome head fell into the blood, the eyes lost their fire and began to glaze over.

Bili bore the mercifully unconscious wet nurse into the main bedchamber, while Rahksahnah followed with the fed and now-sleeping twins. He was just striking flint on steel to light the lamps when shouts and cries of depthless horror smote his ears.

“The ... the wolf, Bili. It must be, I told you, can’t be killed!” stuttered Rahksahnah.

“Now, damn it, the beast is dead! ” snapped Bili. “You saw it die, we all did.” Nonetheless, he lifted his great double axe down from the wall hooks before hurrying back into the smaller chamber.

In the wavery light of the dim and flaring, flickering lamp, Bili did not at first recognize what the men all were staring upon with such fascinated horror. The great sword still stood up from the hairy body it pinioned, lamplight setting the golden hilt and crossguard, the jewels of the pommel and the gold and silver insets of the exposed portions of the wide blade to flashing like bits of fire.

But then Bili moved to where he could better see the focus of the others’ attention ... and the mighty axe dropped from a suddenly nerveless hand, while his bemused mind whirled with a chaos of half-formed thoughts.

That body pierced through with the royal sword of state of the Kingdom of New Kuhmbuhluhn, that huge, big-boned body, covered almost entirely with thick, curly, dark-red hair, that body lying dead in its own dung and blood, pinned to the floor by Bili of Morguhn’s single, powerful thrust, that body was not the body of the monstrous wolf Bili had slain. That body was the dead body of Byruhn, King of New Kuhmbuhluhn!

Two hours later, the sword of state had been cleaned and once more lay in its accustomed place, but now serving as the surrogate for a monarchy permanently extinct in the original line of succession, representing a dead dynasty. Thoheeks Sir Bili of Morguhn sat once more in the tall, canopied armchair, and the still-shaken councilors, white-faced and dumb, for this once, ranged both sides of the long walnut table. At the opposite end of the table, occupying a specially crafted, outsized seat, towered the hairy bulk of Pah-Elmuh, the Kleesahk.

“The ... the body,” Bili informed the council members, “is back on its couch in the chamber above. None saw what was borne from my suite, and as the guardsmen who did it are all Freefighters of my own squadron, none will ever know.

“Up in that chamber, the guardsmen and I found the corpse of poor Oodehn, the Kleesahk whose turn it was this night to bide with the late king. Oodehn still lay upon his pallet—his throat had been torn out, apparently, whilst he slept, for there was no slightest sign of any struggle or combat.

“New Kuhmbuhluhn is not my land and people, New Kuhmbuhluhnburk not my city, yet I feel strongly that those outside this chamber be told only that King Byruhn, after lying long near to death, finally succumbed of his fearsome head injury, on this night. Then let us get the body encrypted as soon as is decently possible.

“Insofar as the war and the siege and the impending set battle are concerned, since both of the monarchs to whom I swore my oaths now are deceased, I could—both legally and morally—march out with my squadron. But I shall not. I shall continue in my present capacities, if that is agreeable to all of you gentlemen, until the battle be won by our combined arms, the siege be broken and the Skohshuns put to flight.

“Meanwhile, I strongly urge that you all forget, forgo your rivalries and senseless grievances long enough to choose a successor to King Byruhn. Well, have not one of you a suitable candidate in mind?”

Archcount Sir Daifid Howuh cleared his stringy throat. “Actually ... no, your grace. With the ... the, ahhh, demise this eve of our lamented King Byruhn, the House of Mahrloh, the ancient, royal house of New Kuhmbuhluhn, be extinct.”