Hugh Cook - The Werewolf and the Wormlord

But, when Grendel unbuckled the bag, no smell of dead meat issued from within. Instead… was that cheese?

‘Cheese,’ said Grendel, as if he had been reading his son’s mind.

Grendel took a big fat wheel of the stuff from his satchel and passed it to his father. Tromso Stavenger pulled out a dirk and started to cut slices for the three of them. He then produced three small cups and a skin which yielded rough red wine. Then — miracle of miracles — a loaf of crusted bread.

The wine was good, and the bread likewise, and Alfric was soon tearing into the goodness of the breadflesh. His terror began to ease, and he sat back on his pack, relaxing somewhat. Then Where were his spare spectacles?

For a moment, Alfric feared he might be sitting on them. Then remembered they were in the top of his pack, inside a hardwood casket.

‘Maybe we should put up a tent,’ said Tromso Stavenger.

‘A tent?’ said Alfric in amazement.

‘Well, yes, we have to sleep sometime,’ said the king.

‘You can sleep now if you wish,’ said Grendel. ‘Both of you. I’ll keep watch.’

This declaration stirred Alfric’s fear to life. While his eyelids had been nodding, now he was wide awake indeed.

‘No,’ said Alfric. ‘No thank you. We’re all right.’

‘Speak for yourself!’ said Grendel. ‘Your grandfather may not be so ready to wait out the night.’

‘I’m fine for the moment,’ said Tromso Stavenger.

But Alfric suspected it was pride which did the speaking, for the king’s voice was weary. Certainly they would both of them have to sleep sooner or later. And then — then they would be utterly at Grendel’s mercy.

Alfric straightened his back and concentrated his efforts on staying both awake and alert. He was helped by the cold of the night and the occasional menacing sounds which stirred in the poolside grass. Living indoors, one always forgets how very large the night actually is, and how menacing.

Once, a nicor raised its hideous head from the blue-burning waters of the mere then slipped beneath the surface again. Could the things crawl out of the water? Maybe they could. As Alfric was thus thinking, a ripple spread across the pool. Alfric’s hand dropped to the hilt of Bloodbane. He glanced at his father and grandfather. They appeared to have noticed nothing.

Then, without warning, a head broke free from the water.

Alfric was so terrified he could not speak.

The head was huge, hideous, armed with teeth. Shaggy was the hair which clothed it. And And it was making for the shore!

To the shore came the head, then the body which supported it dragged itself from the water, revealing itself to be a rat, a huge and hideous rat some four times the size of a dog. The rat swaggered toward the three men.

Alfric got to his feet.

‘Ho!’ he cried.

The rat paused.

It was a monster, yes, but it was only a rodent when all was said and done. Alfric drew the deathsword Bloodbane and advanced upon the rat in a mood of marauding murder. For a moment, the thing stood its ground. Then it fled, scuttling back to the water. Alfric swung at it once, but missed. Then the brute splashed into the water, dived, and was gone.

Alfric stood by the side of the mere, panting. He stared into the dark waters, trying to see where the rat had gone. If rats grew to such size in these dominions of darkness, what else might have obtained monstrosity?

Behind him, his father and grandfather laughed.

‘Bravo,’ said Grendel softly.

Alfric turned.

The rage of Bloodbane possessed him.

Driven by the murder-lust of the weapon, Alfric Danbrog strode toward his father and grandfather, his sword ready for the kill.

‘Ho,’ said his father. ‘He walks like a hero.’

Then both Grendel and Tromso Stavenger laughed at what they took to be Alfric’s posturing; and their laughter deflated his anger; and he felt somewhat sheepish.

His sword was angry.

Murder-thoughts from the weapon stirred to life again in Alfric’s mind.

But he could not kill his father, not yet, for as yet the man had made no move against them, and they were family, were they not? And it was possible, was it not, that Grendel might spare them because they were family?

Alfric resisted the claims of the weapon, sheathed it, released his hand from the hilt, and felt easier.

He returned to his pack.

A twinge of pain stabbed through Alfric’s right hip as he settled himself. This pain he had felt often over the years; and, though he did his best to ignore it, every year it got worse and more frequent. Though he was only thirty-three, arthritis was already making claims on his health. As Alfric tried to get comfortable on his pack, his back protested. He had sudden visions of putting his back out. He imagined himself lying on the ground, writhing in helpless agony, while Grendel went through his Change and became Herself, devoured Tromso Stavenger then turned his attentions to Alfric himself.

— No!

So thought Alfric, strenuously, wilfully, denying the validity of this vision, and denying too that his father was actually Herself.

But Alfric did not believe his own denials.

He kept glancing sideways at his father, expecting to see some sign of a monstrous Change.

As Alfric waited for the moment of disaster, Grendel said:

‘I want you to know something.’

Alfric was about to ask ‘what’ when he realized his father was not speaking to Alfric but to the Wormlord. ‘Speak,’ said Tromso Scavenger.

Perhaps it was the water he had drunk, or perhaps it was the wounds inflicted by Her claws. Whatever the cause, Alfric was feverish long before he reached the Stanch Gates. And whatever his fever, such was the virulence of its onset that he collapsed in the muck scarcely a hundred paces from those Gates, and was picked up and taken to the city hospital by the gate guards.

A hospital bed claimed him. The sheets of the bed were stiff with the blood of whoever had died in it last, but this did nothing whatsoever to discourage the lice and bedbugs.

Alfric paid no heed to insectile assaults, for fever was the world in which he lived. He grappled with demons which strove to pulverize his liver with starhammers and dragon gongs. The dead came to him, and the unborn, their animating spirits stirring through the jaded air. Often he talked with them, or listened to politicking ghosts bickering in his nostrils, or to the worms which he imagined to be hollowing their way through his bones.

In lucid moments, Alfric listened to his neighbour, a demented old man who, believing himself a historian of the ruling oligarchies of the universe, lectured the world at length on the cornerstones of time itself and the flamboyant mysteries of the sun.

But always fever returned.

Living in a world which owed more to hallucination than to anything else, Alfric began to believe that the air itself had turned to liquid fire, and he made frantic efforts to brush it away with his hands before it could flow into his lungs.

But always the air got in, and the pain of breathing suggested the air was fire indeed. This agony was part of the ever-accumulating evidence which suggested to Alfric that he was going to die. His symptoms were so various that, in time, he accumulated encyclopedic evidence to that effect. His hands crabbed; his joints ached; his intestines writhed; his muscles cramped; and he had visions of Herself, Her flesh swollen to corpse-green yellow, and flickering fire kicking in dragon-spasms from her ears.

In time, Alfric recovered, after a fashion. But he was still weak and slightly feverish when agents from the Bank arrived without warning and removed him from the hospital. Since Alfric was barely recovered from his hallucinations, he was too sick to argue against this abduction; and, lack of argument being taken as health sufficient, he was put aboard a cart and conveyed through the streets of Galsh Ebrek to the slopes of Mobius Kolb.