Beneath Ceaseless Skies #184 Read online

  Issue #185 • Oct. 29, 2015

  “Demons Enough,” by Ian McHugh

  “Bloodless,” by Cory Skerry

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  DEMONS ENOUGH

  by Ian McHugh

  The woman didn’t look like much. That bothered Thorfinn. The family she had confessed to murdering had been torn to pieces. Six people, including an infant daughter and a near-grown son. He tried not to think of Freydis and Arnora, just the two of them alone on the farm.

  The woman had been found naked outside the farmhouse, covered in gore. Even after she had been washed for the aetheling’s judgment, dry flakes of blood still caked her hair and traced the fine wrinkles on her face.

  Thorfinn had had the ceorls gag her and tangle her fingers with wire. He had been tempted to have her fingers off and her tongue out. At the slightest sign of witchcraft, he told himself, he really would have. But she had been quiet and docile. Her eyes, when she looked up at all, showed only sadness.

  Thorfinn watched unhappily while a pair of ceorls chained her to the execution post on the low hill at the back of the aetheling’s greathouse.

  “Still uneasy, Hauld Thorfinn?” Aetheling Hallveig called as she approached from the greathouse. She was bundled against the evening chill in a quilted satin coat.

  Thorfinn realized he was tapping his fingers on the hilt of his sword, and stopped. “She’s innocent or a witch, Aetheling,” he replied.

  “If she’s innocent, then she confessed because she wishes for death. In that case, we’re doing her kindness. If she’s a witch, and guilty, then she must pay for her crime.”

  A hard kindness, Thorfinn thought. Merciful Lord, he hated that post and all it represented.

  Hallveig looked westward, over the thatched roofs of the greathouse’s rambling wings. The sun was sinking between the hills that framed the mouth of the fjord.

  “Either way,” Hallveig said, “the dark will take her.”

  The ceorls stepped away from the post. The murderess looked up at it, then to Thorfinn and Hallveig. Her bemusement was plain, but she did not seem fearful.

  “If she’s innocent then we still have a killer at large,” Thorfinn said, then amended himself, “Another killer at large.”

  Hallveig returned the chained woman’s scrutiny, a tiny furrow creasing her brow. “If there’s anything good to be said for our neighbors it’s that they’re tidy feeders. The scene that you described didn’t sound tidy. In which case you have further questions to ask, Hauld.”

  “Yes, Aetheling.” If not this perhaps-witch, then what had killed that family? The woman’s accented confessions had said plainly enough that she was a foreigner. Had she brought some foreign demon with her?

  Another foreign demon. Thorfinn shuddered, eying the dark forest further up the side of the valley. God knew the leeches were demons enough. The sun had touched the horizon, and the maids were already shuttering the last of the greathouse’s windows. “Aetheling, it’s time.”

  At the same moment, the chained woman’s head came up. She sniffed the air, animal-like, then seemed to catch herself, wrenching her gaze away and hiding her face between her arms.

  Thorfinn followed the direction of her stare. The gangling man-boy figure of Aetheling Hallveig’s son, Gunnbjorn, hesitated at the house’s nearest doorway. Disturbed, Thorfinn was already striding down the slope towards him before Hallveig said, “Send him back inside.”

  Gunnbjorn must have heard his mother. He retreated back inside before Thorfinn had taken more than a couple of steps.

  Still frowning, Thorfinn turned back. Hallveig stood barely an arm’s length from the murderess.

  “Aetheling, we must go in,” he said.

  “Remove her gag a moment,” said Hallveig.

  “Aetheling, what if she is a witch?”

  She smirked crookedly. “Oh, I think the quantity of iron the men have wrapped her in will be enough to blunt any curse she might spit out, don’t you?”

  Thorfinn reluctantly stepped in to untie the gag. Close up, the murderess stank of blood and sour sweat, along with another, ranker, odor.

  Her eyes flickered up to his face, then settled on Hallveig as he stood back. She was tense, distressed, yet still strangely unfrightened. Thorfinn closed his fingers on the hilt of his sword, ready to attack if she started speaking in tongues.

  “You understand that you’re to be executed for your crime?” said Hallveig.

  Regret washed across the murderess’s face. “I am sorry for that. I do not wish to harm anyone else.”

  “It’s not for me to forgive you.” Hallveig’s tone was matter-of-fact. “You know my son?”

  The murderess flinched. “No!” she said, almost pleading. Then, “Keep the boy safe.”

  Hallveig pursed her lips. She seemed about to say more, then changed her mind. “Hauld, let’s go in.” To the chained woman, she said, “The dark will take you for your crime.”

  “The dark...?”

  Thorfinn saw the light of comprehension dawn as he stepped in to re-affix the murderess’s gag. The last sliver of the sun’s disc slipped away. The murderess sagged against the post, her body quaking.

  He hurried inside after Hallveig, frowning as he set the bar and slid the bolts. The woman had seemed more like she was shaking with silent laughter than sobs of terror.

  * * *

  The commotion erupted while the ceorls were still dicing and drinking in the greathouse’s long hall. Thorfinn hissed for silence. There was a faint wail from outside, followed by a resounding roar.

  “That was no leech,” said Styr.

  Thorfinn didn’t give them—or himself—time to stop and wonder what was outside. “To arms!” he bellowed. “Check the doors!”

  They lunged for swords, axes, spears and shields, racked at the side of the hall. Thorfinn charged down the corridor to the aetheling’s wing, Styr hard on his heels. The pair of ceorls on duty met them at the wing’s external door, Hallveig right behind them in her night robe.

  Styr pressed his good ear against the wood. The door, one of those that faced out onto the execution post’s hill, was still barred and bolted. “Nothing.”

  “It would seem your unease was well founded, Hauld Thorfinn,” said Hallveig, her voice tight.

  He nodded.

  “Whatever it is, it sounds like it’s gone, Aetheling,” said Styr. His hand moved to the bolts.

  “Wait,” said Thorfinn. “Aetheling, please return to your chamber.”

  “I will not.” Her tone left no room for argument.

  Grinding his teeth, Thorfinn turned to the ceorls. “Fetch a prisoner from the cages.”

  The ceorls clattered away, lanterns bobbing.

  “What of Gunnbjorn, Hauld Thorfinn?” Hallveig asked.

  “The ceorls are seeing to him,” he replied. Gunnbjorn’s chamber was on the far side of the greathouse. Thorfinn knew he should have gone himself, really, and left Hallveig to Styr.

  “What do you think it was, out there?”

  He exchanged a glance with Styr, then shook his head. “I can’t say, Aetheling.” Which is why I want you well clear before I open this door.

  The ceorls returned quickly, towing a prisoner manacled at wrists and throat. Thorfinn recognized him as a villager from Ketilsdale, convicted of oathbreaking. He was pale but held himself erect.

  Hallveig’s lips were pressed white together. “Do you expect that to be necessary, Hauld?”

  Thorfinn sheathed his sword and adjusted the set of his shield, then took Hallveig’s lantern. “If there’s anything still out there expecting to be fed,” he re
plied, “I want it to have something to feed on that isn’t us.” The coldness of that calculation sat no better on his stomach than it ever had. He hated giving anyone to the leeches, even oathbreakers and murderers.

  He met the man’s eye. The oathbreaker held his gaze for a moment, then looked away.

  Thorfinn nodded to Styr. “Bring him out behind me.”

  All was still and dark outside. Thorfinn stepped through the door. He took a few cautious paces. Nothing moved. The only sounds came from inside the house behind him. Hushed voices, frightened.

  Metal clinked as Styr and the other ceorls followed him. Thorfinn took a quick glance up at the thatched roof of the house. Clear.

  Scarcely daring to breathe, he made his way over to the execution post’s hill.

  “Merciful Lord.”

  Styr raised his own lantern, then matter-of-factly walked a few paces to the side and vomited onto the grass.

  There were bits of body—torn flesh, spilled guts, splintered bones and parts of limbs—flung all over the hillside. The execution post was snapped off a short distance below the point where the chains had been bolted on. The chains themselves were scattered in pieces around the base of the post

  Bile rising, Thorfinn picked his way up the slope.

  “No bloody leech did this,” said Styr, following him. “Begging your pardon, Aetheling.”

  Thorfinn glanced back. Hallveig hovered at the doorway, much as her son had done hours earlier. She saw Thorfinn watching and stepped gingerly out beside the ceorls.

  A nearby body part caught Thorfinn’s eye. He prodded it with the toe of his boot to turn it into the light. A jawbone, tattered flesh hanging from its sides. The incisors stuck up high above the other teeth, far longer than a person’s.

  “This isn’t her,” he said, at the same moment as Styr said, up by the broken post, “There’s too many arms.”

  “What?” said Thorfinn and Hallveig together.

  “Too many arms, Aetheling.” Styr counted, pointing. “One, two, three.”

  There was a roar and a sound of tearing wood. Shouts followed, and a man’s high dying scream, sharply cut-off. Thorfinn was already sprinting for Hallveig before he registered where the commotion had come from. It felt as if the bottom had fallen out of his bowels.

  The far side of the greathouse. Gunnbjorn’s wing.

  * * *

  The door to Gunnbjorn’s chamber was open. Inside was a ruin. The window was gone, along with the logs to which its iron grille had been bolted. A tapestry was burning, a discarded lantern at its base, casting leaping shadows about the room.

  A dead ceorl lay across the threshold. Or half of him, anyway. There were more bodies, and bits of bodies, inside.

  “God’s mercy,” said Styr.

  Thorfinn heard gasping breaths behind them and moved to block the doorway, catching Hallveig as she tried to push past him.

  “Let me go!” She pummeled him with fists and knees.

  He held firm. “He’s dead. Aetheling, he’s dead.”

  Styr gave a yelp and lurched into Thorfinn’s back. “Leech!”

  Thorfinn shoved Hallveig towards Styr. “Get her away!”

  The leech crouched in the broken hole where the window had been. Its glamour made it hard to discern details. Thorfinn had seen leeches in daylight, knew the ragged, filthy reality. He kept his eyes down, watching its thin limbs for warning signs that it was about to spring. Not that that would do him much good. At night, it would be halfway across the room before he knew it was moving. His gaze flickered involuntarily up to the dark hollows of its eyes. It was an effort to tear away again from the hypnotic stare.

  He looked at its mouth, instead, a red slash across its face, and thought he could make out pale wisps of a beard and moustaches that suggested the creature had once been male.

  The leech spoke. Its voice sounded rusted, as if long unused. “Two of our number came tonight, to take blood for the nest, as the treaty provides. I have seen what became of them.”

  “You killed my son!” snarled Hallveig from behind Thorfinn.

  “The treaty is broken,” said the leech.

  “It wasn’t us,” Thorfinn said, raising his voice. His heart hammered. “The creature who slaughtered your two did this, as well.”

  “We will hunt it,” said Hallveig. “I will have its hide.”

  “You know not what you would hunt,” the leech replied.

  It still crouched on the edge of the shattered window, seeming reluctant to enter the chamber. Thorfinn was sweating, despite the chill night air.

  “But you do,” he said.

  There was a pause before the creature answered. Thorfinn risked a look up at its eyes. “It is the farkasember. The man who becomes a wolf.”

  “Woman,” said Thorfinn. “She was chained to the post tonight.” She killed two leeches at night. What manner of witchcraft is this? “Can she be killed?”

  “Not with your steel.” The leech began to rise, and turn.

  “Then with what?” Hallveig demanded.

  “Edge your weapons with silver,” the leech said.

  And it was gone.

  Thorfinn let out a long breath. Styr started to say something, then stopped. He reached past Thorfinn to touch a set of four parallel grooves, deeply scored in the timber of the doorframe by Thorfinn’s head. Thorfinn held up his hand, fingers wide. He couldn’t reach, thumb tip to little finger, from the top groove to the bottom.

  A wolf? He looked around the room again. What wolf could do all this?

  * * *

  Freydis stopped in the warm sunlight that bathed the farmhouse’s front porch. The breeze brought the tang of the glacier and raised gooseflesh on her arms.

  She stepped down onto the grass. There was a flicker of motion at the upper edge of her vision. Freydis reacted instantly, throwing herself backwards as a shadowy figure dove at her from its perch on the thatch

  Her attacker hit the ground hard. It held a tattered shroud of shadows around itself to hide it from the sun.

  There was something sticking up from its torso. A length of wooden post with broken links of chain bolted to its end. Freydis grabbed the post and leaned on it with all her weight. The leech shrieked and shuddered.

  There was a yell from the house. Her daughter Arnora rushed out, with the wood axe raised over her head, ridiculously outsized on the end of the girl’s skinny arms.

  “Stay back!” Freydis shouted.

  She worked the post back and forth. The leech’s scrabbling fingers caught hold of her ankle. Its claws pierced her stockinged ankle above the top of her boot. Freydis clamped her teeth but didn’t let go of the post.

  Arnora lunged in, missing her mother with the axe by a whisker. The blade struck the leech with a dull thunk, somewhere on the neck or head. Freydis swayed out of the way as Arnora swung again. This time the impact jarred the axe handle out of the girl’s grasp.

  The leech thrashed, trying to get free.

  “Die, damn you!” Freydis snarled. She gave the post a twist. The leech stiffened. It let out a rattling cough. Its heels drummed on the ground and, at last, it lay still. Its shadow cloud began to shred.

  Breathing heavily, Freydis let go of the post. She stooped to pluck its claws out of her leg and stepped back from the body. Blood trickled into her boot.

  “You killed it,” Arnora exclaimed. She had regathered the axe and held it, ready to strike, in case the impossible wasn’t true after all.

  Freydis nodded, no less amazed. A strong adult could overpower a leech in daylight, but the damn things were near impossible to kill, short of getting the head off them—and that, as Arnora had demonstrated, was easier in word than deed.

  The shadows had dissipated altogether now. Freydis looked down at the filthy creature at her feet. Its clothes were grimy rags, its skin the sick color of old bone beneath a patina of dirt. There were shallow cuts across its ear and jaw from Arnora’s axe blows.

  Astoundingly, the splintered end
of the post was stuck straight through the leech’s chest. Freydis’s twisting had evidently shifted it enough to pierce the creature’s heart. Even more remarkable, the post wasn’t the leech’s only injury. It was missing an arm.

  She focused again on the dead thing’s face, frozen in an animal rictus, lips peeled back from its grotesquely outsized fangs. Her wonder drained away into horror.

  “Oh, no. Gudrid.” she breathed, recognizing her eldest daughter.

  * * *

  Freydis brought the cart slowly up the road to the aetheling’s greathouse.

  Arnora huddled beside her, still clutching the axe. Her sister’s abused corpse, wrapped now in a tarred pall in the back of the cart, was a smothering presence.

  There was activity on the execution post’s little hill. As Freydis watched, a woman dashed down the slope and was noisily sick. A ceorl moved to comfort her. Not far from the pair, the silhouette of the execution post caught her eye. It ended in a splintered point. She urged the oxen to greater speed.

  Around the front of the sprawling buildings, Styr and a handful of ceorls were struggling with a pack of the aetheling’s hounds. The animals slunk around their handlers’ feet, heads lowered and tails between their legs.

  Freydis pulled the cart to a halt. “Styr,” she called. “What’s happened here?”

  Styr bared his teeth to chase her off with a curse. With an effort, he gathered his composure. “Thegn Freydis.” He drew a deep breath. “There’s been killing here. Five of ours. Gunnbjorn’s one of them.”

  Freydis felt sick in her belly. “Where’s Thorfinn?”

  “Out on horses with half the men, riding the roads on the off-chance the creature didn’t just take to the forest. We’re supposed to be tracking it, but the bloody dogs won’t take the scent.”

  He aimed an exasperated kick at one. The hound yelped and skipped out of the way.

  Freydis frowned. “You don’t think it fled to the nest?”

  “What? No, it wasn’t a leech. This is some new demon. A wolf-woman. It tore two leeches to pieces before it broke into Gunnbjorn’s chamber.”

  Wolf-woman? Freydis had assumed that Gudrid’s injuries had been inflicted by the monsters that had made her one of them. “Styr, tell me all of it.”