Roger Taylor: Farnor

The creature’s frustration and anger washed over him even as the thought came to him.

‘Run, horse. Run!’

So much pain!

‘Find him. Find him. He is yours,’ Rannick encour-aged.

Distance. Surely nothing could outrun this charging animal that he was clinging to? The creature had the woods to roam to find his scent before it could begin to pursue him.

Yet Rannick was gloating. He had no doubts about the success of this hunt.

Even before Farnor could ponder the reasons for this, a sudden breeze struck him from one side. The horse veered under the impact, but did not slow down appreciably. To Farnor’s horror, the breeze was redolent with the presence of Rannick.

He had searchers of his own.

Farnor’s stomach tightened agonizingly. He was found!

‘Run, horse. Run!’

The breeze gathered strength and began to tear at him. Farnor wanted to scream his terrifying urgency to the horse, but he knew it would be futile. Besides, the sudden tormenting wind had, in itself, put more fear into the horse. All Farnor could do now was hold on, tighter and tighter.

He caught another fleeting glimpse of the sky. A pattern of stars struck him. They pointed to a solitary star.

North. He was heading north. For an instant, fears mingled. The fear of Rannick and creature, and the fear of what lay ahead in the mysterious land to the north. The Great Forest, whose existence had hovered with an uneasy menace in the background of his childhood years. But that fear was distant, and hedged about by as many years of homely security, and it was as nothing compared to the horror gathering behind him.

The buffeting breeze stopped as abruptly as it had started. Farnor felt Rannick’s will luring it back; he knew that it would be carrying its precious perfume back to the creature.

‘Run, horse. Run!’

And then the hatred about him changed. It changed from being vague and dispersed to being sharp and focused. Farnor could feel the creature pausing to test the scent that it had been given, and then gathering its terrible resources to commit them to the simple, single-minded pursuit of its prey.

The moon still dashed relentlessly overhead, mark-ing his passage.

And the creature was coming!

Even the horse seemed to sense the change in their common danger. Its neck bent low and its pounding speed increased. It occurred to Farnor that the horse was quite likely to run itself to death, but his own terror swamped any compassion. All that mattered was that it outran this dreadful pursuer and gave him a chance to reach some kind of safety.

‘Run, horse. Run!’

Farnor was the creature again. Moving faster now by far than when it had been hunting back and forth seeking his scent. Briefly he tried to use this strange possession to redirect it, to make it stumble, to run it into a tree, a bush… anything. But to no avail. He was himself again on the instant, brushed aside effortlessly by a greater will.

There was no hope for him except speed.

And he was moving downhill now, he realized. They must have passed the head of the valley and be heading down into the land to the north.

He wondered where he would find himself if he survived this chase, but the thought was gone almost before he noted it. He could feel the creature closing the distance between them relentlessly, yet as its presence about him grew stronger, he felt Rannick’s growing weaker. A faint spark of hope began to glimmer in the darkness.

But it fanned into no great blaze. The creature’s presence was as massive as it was baleful. Indeed, as Rannick’s influence seemed to wane so the creature’s savagery grew.

And then he could hear it. Penetrating even into the thunderous tumult of his flight came an intermittent baying, partly a frantic, frustrated screaming, partly a demented roaring.

And the horse heard it too. It missed its footing as its fear began to turn into outright panic. Belatedly Farnor’s concern turned towards his mount. If the horse stumbled at this speed then, if the fall did not kill him, the creature certainly would. With an effort he changed his goading litany to a more soothing one.

‘Easy, easy,’ he whispered.

It had no effect; the sound of the creature was grow-ing louder. Farnor’s instincts overwhelmed his reason.

‘Run, horse. Run!’

Then for the briefest of moments, but with appalling horror, he saw himself, with keen night-eyed vision, draped over the neck of the horse scarcely a hundred paces away, galloping through the trees. As he became himself again he felt an acid, lustful taste in his mouth, and a chilling hint of the ancient and awful emotions now dominating the creature.

He managed to turn his head to peer into the dark-ness behind, to search for his pursuer, but he could see nothing. He had not the vision of this dweller in the darkness.

He closed his eyes and buried his head in the throb-bing neck of the horse.

And waited.

Somewhere in the heart of his terror he knew that he was beyond Rannick’s will. But it was of no conse-quence; his terrible envoy was here to do his bidding, and within a count of heartbeats its dreadful crushing jaws would be upon him.

His whole being filled suddenly and totally with the comforting musty scent of the horse and the rich night perfumes of the trees and crushed forest turf.

But the creature’s presence penetrated this flimsy shield and reached right into him. From deep in the darkness of his inner self, Farnor felt a scream forming. And a knowledge that it was what was needed, it was what the creature wanted. It would appease its dreadful lust; turn its rage away.

Yet the scream would not come. Some other inner resource demanded resistance against this pursuing torturer. It reached out and denied the scream, then ensnared and strangled it. But Farnor was scarcely aware of this dispute. Verging on unconsciousness, his dominant thought was to hold on to the horse and to will it forward still faster.

‘Run, horse. Run,’ he mouthed, but no sound came now.

Behind him, the creature drew nearer with each breathless pace.

Rannick waited, alone in the darkness. Waited for the return of the creature and the knowledge that Farnor was no more. It disturbed him a little to have the creature beyond his influence, but he consoled himself with the thought that it needed no guidance from him to hunt down the fleeing youth, especially after he had given it his scent. And of course, it would return to him. It would never leave him. Brought once again to the world of men by who knew what great upheaval in its deep and ancient lair, it had waited for too long for such as he to abandon him now.

He had not realized it at the time, but the creature had been desperately weak when he had first ventured into the darkness to find it. Perhaps, he mused in his increasingly rare reflective moments, had it not been so, then he might have perished for his temerity in striving to master it. But master it he had. Once again his destiny had guided him truly.

He had kept it silent in its lair as the villagers had first searched for it and then stood guard, waiting for it to blunder into their feeble traps. Then he had nurtured it on sheep he had stolen in the confusion. And, throughout, he had grown with it as its terrible power had burgeoned, their two ambitions feeding one from the other.

But it had only been after the killing of Nilsson’s men that he had come nearer to learning of its true nature. For it drew qualities from the killing of men that it could draw from no other prey – not even the horse it had taken. Qualities other than mere sustenance. Qualities that fed its dark soul.

From wherever it had come, it had not simply been trained to kill men, nor had it accidentally acquired a taste for them. To hunt, destroy and kill men was engrained in the distorted spiralling weave of its very nature. It had been bred for that purpose and seemingly no other, and nothing, save death, could divert it. Yet a deeper purpose had been written into the making of the creature and all its kind, and those with the gift could reach into its depths and unleash that purpose; could be drawn into the places beyond, where the power lay; could bring it here, where its use was unfettered.