by Ty Johnston
I sit in the stench of my cave and watch large drops of rain making the outside world wet.
For some reason I am restless. I feel a bloodlust upon me. It is not as if I have not killed recently.
It is the rain that does this to me. The rain hinders me, keeps me from my freedom. Oh, I could go out into the woods and hunt up something to eat. There would no doubt be some animal somewhere within the walls of my forest. But my skin is mostly bare and the water is cold. It is nothing that could kill or harm me; the rain is merely unpleasant. And it makes my fur stink.
So I sit and brood. I kick a busted skull into the small fire. I make drawings in the dirt and mud at my feet. I have had worse times.
The rain is letting up when I hear the cry. It is sorrowful and distant. If I had been human, I probably would not have heard it.
Boredom frustrates me, so I grab the tattered bear skin I sometimes wear and throw it over my shoulders.
I am in the woods and sprinting through the muddy creek that runs near my cave when I hear the cry again. To the south is my guess.
I run over old, crushed leaves without making a sound. It is a trick I learned long ago from a now-dead wolf king.
At the top of the next hill, I spy down to see what has been making the noise.
It is a little girl, a little human girl.
She is alone, dressed only in a mud-covered tunic. She is not even wearing shoes or sandals. What kind of parents would leave a child thus?
I move toward her silently. I do not wish to frighten her away, and my visage is one of extreme ugliness.
She is standing in the middle of a road. The dust is mostly mud now, and the girl’s feet are sunk into the muck up to her ankles.
As I move closer, I can see the tears stretching down her short, plump face. She has been crying for some time. Lost, perhaps.
At last I allow myself to be heard, stepping on a stiff branch fallen to the forest’s floor.
The girl spins, terror written across her face and bleeding from her eyes.
She does not scream or cry out again. She looks up at my tusked snout and surprisingly some of her fear drains away.
I am hunched over, to appear more fierce and as if I am about to pounce. “What is such a pretty girls like you doing in a woods like these, alone?” I ask, speaking in the voice the humans expect from one of my kind.
I do not understand this one. She seems to grow even calmer at the sound of my hissing voice. Most children would have fled by now. Maybe she realizes there is nowhere to run.
“I … I’m lost,” she says softly, the rain water dripping off her nose. “I was riding on the back of father’s wagon.”
I stand a little taller, baring my chest and showing my muscles. I am huge, nearly ten feet tall and solid. She still does not fear.
“You must have fallen offs,” I say. “Perhaps you shoulds come back to my cave for food and warmths.”
She hesitates, showing the first inkling of fear, or possibly intelligence.
“I … I don’t know.” Her lips tremble. “I’m not supposed to … you know … talk to strangers.”
“I am Unguerth,” I say, giving a short bow.
The little blonde girl stands there in the mud, watching my movements. She does not know what to do.
“What is your name?” I ask.
She hesitates again, but finally, “I am Hildred.”
I smile, showing my rounded fangs. “Well, Hildred,” I say, dropping my false voice, “it really is a nasty day out here. Why don’t you come back to my cave and I’ll get you something to eat and warm you up. When the rain stops, we can go down the road and look for your parents.”
She smiles. “Yes,” she says.
I take her by the hand and lead her back to my home. She is so innocent. No child had ever taken my hand before, but then, I had never offered.
In my cave, I wrap furs around her and build up the fire. When I am sure she is warm, I go back into the woods to find food. I discover a pack of wolves sleeping beneath a ledge near a pool of stale water. Stealthily I take one of them and snap its neck.
I skin the animal and take back only small parts of it. I tell Hildred it is rabbit. I am sure she has never eaten wolf and would not now if I told her what it was.
We talk while we eat. She is nine years old. She has an older brother named Beo who she both hates and loves. He picks on her, throws rocks at her. Her family had been forced to leave their home due to the fortunes of some war in a world far from my dank woods.
When we are done eating, I ask if she would like to sleep for a while. She says, “Yes, please,” and then rests her head on a cow skull I have covered with my bear skin.
She sleeps and I watch her. I reach out once to touch her golden hair.
She is beautiful and young. If she were older, she would break the hearts of many men.
I tear off her head and drink the body dry of blood.
It is a week later when the first warrior comes to kill me.
I am sitting in my cave, telling myself, “I am not such a bad fellow. If it had not been me, it would have been someone else.” I try to give myself reasons for murdering the little girl, but all the while I know it is because I hate them, these humans. These men. For a thousand years or longer they have hunted the forests for my kind, destroying all.
The first one is from the south, a mercenary no doubt. It had been a long while since I had had to kill a true warrior. They now wear metal plates over their weak skins. They carry long weapons of metal where they had once used bones and stones and sticks.
“Come out! I command you, spawn of evil! Come out to me and be destroyed!” the warrior, the hero, yells from atop his trusty steed only yards from the entrance to my cave.
I sit in my own filth and chuckle while swallowing the remains of a week-dead squirrel.
“I can hear you laughing, demon,” the warrior prattles on. “Come out to me or I will enter your foul domain. If I must, I will tear this hillside apart to slay your mortal form!”
I huff and kick away the skull of Hildred. I suppose I should go out to the idiot. No use letting him come in here after me when all he would do is wreck the place.
“What do you want, son of man?” I gurgle as I pull myself to the cave’s entrance. “I am busy! I have no time for this foolishness!”
The idiot in armor steers his horse away from the cave and draws his sword. Turning his steed toward me, he yells, “Too many have died by your foul hand, beast! This very week a young girl has gone missing in this den! You are at fault!”
I stay hunkered down and pull myself out of the cave. “Are not all girls young?” I ask.
I cannot see the fool’s expression because of the helmet covering his face, but the reaction is what I wanted. He backs the horse further away. The helmet turns side to side as if the rider is confused.
“Did you hear me?” I ask.
The helmet keeps turning, looking. “What are you talking about, demon spawn?”
“You said she was a young girl,” I say, “and I asked if not all girls are young?”
I am obviously dealing with someone who has rejected the idea of the higher senses and logical deduction. Oh, to have someone on my level.
“I … I …” the hero stutters, his horse prancing a step or two. I have obviously thrown his mind for a loop.
I charge then.
The horse knows before the rider what is about to happen. It rears and spins, throwing the armored figure to the rocks jutting from the ground.
There is a scream and the horse flees. I watch it for several seconds before turning my attention to the figure at my feet.
“Well, what do we have here?” I ask myself.
The warrior struggles to stand, but he cannot. His back has been broken by the fall. His sword hangs limp in an even limper hand.
“Mercy.” I hear the words whispered from his lips.
“Why should I?” I ask as I sink my dirty claws into his plated chest.
The armor is nothing. The heart comes away freely.
That was only the beginning.
I keep a tally for a year or so. There is an old oak just south of my cave where I mark a scratch every time I kill another human fool come seeking me. I lose interest by the thirtieth or so victim.
Most actually fare better than that first idiot. At least most of them are able to draw their weapons and charge at me.
The results are always the same. I end up with enough meat to last me a couple of nights, a full week if I am able to catch the horse before it trots away. I also accumulate quite a little pile of wealth, mostly armor and weaponry, but a few coins and trinkets are underneath the rest. I have no reason for collecting a horde; I just don’t feel it is right to scatter it all over my forest. Then I would have more fools bothering me.
I am secure in my world when yet another warrior calls on me.
“Beast, I am Hrolgar the Healer, and I wish to have words with you,” a voice booms from outside my cave.
I cuss and spit. I am in the middle of skinning the last fool who had announced himself thus, and I did not want the meat to rot before it can be hung.
“Go away!” I scream, my back facing the cave’s entrance. “I am busy!”
“I will be here when you are ready.”
“The patient sort, eh?” I say to myself. That is fine with me. It is morning, and I have plenty of work to do. Spring had started and I need to sweep out the old cave. Can’t have too many broken bones underfoot.
So I take my time and go about my business as if there is not a man outside my front door waiting to butcher me.
After a while, I smell burning meat.
I stuck my head out the cave. “What are you doing here?”
The warrior is sitting on the ground, his back against a dead tree. A rabbit is on a spit over a small fire near the man’s feet.
“Lunch,” the warrior says, tossing a rabbit leg toward me. “Care for a bite?”
I snatch up the leg and swallow it whole. This man is different than most. He is a northerner, for one thing. He dresses of old, in a chain shirt covered with wolf skins. The sword at his side is heavy and long, not like that of these modern fools with their flimsy blades. A yellow beard covers the lower half of his face.
“What did you say was your name?” I ask with menacing eyes and fangs showing.
“I am Hrolgar the Healer,” he says, “the son of Wrathlyar.”
I stare at the ground, then back up at him. “I have fought Haldrigar the Horrible, Slag the Slayer and Boldred the Beast Destroyer. I even once fought Bairel the Beautiful, but I have never fought anyone calling themselves a healer.”
Hrolgar slaps his knee and laughs.
I growl and hunker even lower, almost on all fours.
Still grinning, Hrolgar says, “I am not known for brave deeds that usually lead to nothing but destruction and death. I am known as a healer because that is what I do. I heal the body, and sometimes the spirit and the mind. I bring peace to all.”
I grimace as a foul oil comes up from my stomach. His words are not common to the warriors I had faced, nor to any human I had met. But then, this was the most I had talked with a human before splitting their skull.
“Soon you will be Hrolgar the decapitated, when I am finished you,” I say, showing more fangs.
The warrior rests a hand on the sword next to his leg. “I am well prepared to defend myself,” he says, “but I hope it will not come to that. I am not here to kill you.”
The venom from my stomach is growing worse. “What do you mean?” I ask. “Every swordsman comes here to kill me. What other reason could there be? Unless you are seeking your own death?”
“I understand you better than you might believe,” Hrolgar says. “I was once much like yourself.”
I think I am going to throw up. “You are nothing like me!” I yell between clenched teeth. “Your depravations are nothing as to mine!”
He just sits there, one hand on his sword, waiting to see if I will attack. I almost do, but the conversation is the most interesting I have had in a hundred years, even if I do hate this man.
“I was once scorned,” he says plainly. “There was a time when many came to kill me. I destroyed hundreds. The blood I washed in was …”
His voice trails off. He chokes and for a moment I believe he is going to shed tears.
“Go on,” I say.
“That is my past. I have dealt with it. There is little reason to bring it up.”
“So now you are trying to make amends by coming after me,” I say.
Hrolgar looks at me with surprise on his face. “No!” he nearly shouts. “I have come to offer you a truce.”
My stomach did not feel any better upon hearing his words. “A do-gooder,” I say.
Hrolgar stands, lifting his sword with him. “No,” he says, “at least not in the manner you mean. I am not deprived of reality. I understand the darkness.”
I glare at him. How can he understand the nights of loneliness and dread? How can he understand the hatred that feeds me, the hatred that has built up over a lifetime of watching my own butchered by the likes of him?
“You are probably the last of your kind,” he says.
I want to kill him for that. “I am the last I know of.”
There is silence for a few seconds. Hrolgar seems to be thinking of how to phrase his next words.
Finally, he speaks. “We do not have to kill one another. I am not here for that. I am here to let you know your kind and man can live together without butchering one another. What has gone in the past has been senseless.”
I think his words over in my dark mind. I truly do. I must say logically his words make sense, but man is a creature of emotion, as am I. There is no way we could survive together.
“It is too late for that,” I say, “far too late.”
The very air seems to grow thick once my words are uttered. Hrolgar’s eyes narrow and his hand grows tight upon his sword. His nostrils flare. There is anger in him.
“I do not wish to kill you,” he says.
I have had enough of his words. I want his blood on my tongue and his liver in my stomach.
I spring.
Hrolgar kicks out, knocking the embers from his fire into my face.
I fall where he had once stood, pain and flames blinding my sight. I cry out and wipe away as many of the embers and coal as I can.
When I can see again, Hrolgar is standing between me and my cave. His sword is before him.
“I do not wish to kill you,” he repeats.
The pain has maddened me. I charge at him, my claws reaching for his chest.
The warrior steps to the side and swats me with the flat of his blade. I go tumbling.
“Your anger is making you foolish,” he says.
I turn toward him, blood crawling down my face and spittle flowing from between my rotten tusks. “I’ll gut you.”
“Think it through,” Hrolgar says with emotion, as if he cares for me. “I will give you one last chance.”
I halt myself, trying to clear my mind. This man is offering me what no other ever had. Peace.
I look at him.
I see his sword and his armor.
His words are a lie.
I charge again.
My claws rake his chain shirt, sending links flying. I pull back a fist to smash his skull.
Then he hacks off my arm.
The pain is enormous, worse than anything I have ever experienced. I fall to the ground screaming as fire and lightning force their way into me, tearing at the bloody stump where my arm had been.
Hrolgar stands over me, watching my life’s blood spraying over leaves and mud. A sad look crosses his face.
If I were human, I would have died soon after, but my kind are strong.
I lay there, bleeding and sweating, and look up into eyes filled with a pain of their own.
“I could not kill you,” Hrolgar says. “There would be no use in that.”
I moan.
“You will live,” he says. “It will be painful for a very long time, but you will live.”
I croak and blood sprays from between my teeth as I try to force a question.
“Do not speak,” Hrolgar says, sheathing his sword. “There is nothing for you to say.”
I watch from a mountain of pain as he stomps out his fire and returns his belongings to his horse. When he is ready to leave, he returns to me.
He looks down on me, kindness bright in his eyes. “You want to know why, do you not?”
I try to speak, but nothing will come out. I nod and grit my teeth as the slight movement of my head brings new levels of suffering to me.
“For my daughter,” he says, “and for myself. My little Hildred disappeared in these woods a year ago, probably a victim of you or some other forest creatures, possibly wolves. But even if you are her killer, her light shines on because I remember her and do her honor. I know that. And as long as you live, now you will know.
“There is hope for all of us.”
With that he climbs onto his horse and rides away. I watch his back until it is gone over a hill.
Years have passed now. I am older and colder and have moved to a new cave further north, away from man.
My hate burned itself out long ago. Hate is often an underestimated emotion, but it is also extremely tiresome. You can burn yourself out from too much of it.
So now I sit in my cave and eat what little food I can gather or hunt with my one good arm.
The other arm has dried, like a timber of wood. I keep it in the back of my cave under my old bear skin.
I keep it to remember.
About the Author
Ty Johnston has been writing fiction for nearly 20 years, though has only become serious about it recently while working on a series of novels. When not writing or reading, he enjoys spending time with his wife, their beagle and three house rabbits.
©2008 Ty Johnston
