THE DOOM THAT CAME
TO WULFHAFEN

C.L. Werner

 

 

“It is time,” Gastoen said, his voice deep and commanding, brooking no question. Karel rose from his bed, his head turning towards the open doorway of his room. Gastoen had already withdrawn, however, satisfied that his son would rise from his slumber and hurry to join his father outside.

Or, perhaps, thought Karel, his father knew that he had not been asleep. His body cried out from fatigue, the weariness of long hours spent before dawn hauling lobster pots and fishing nets from the chill waters of the Sea of Claws, a labour which had only ended late in the afternoon, as the small fleet of tiny fishing boats returned to Wulfhafen, their occupants grumbling about the meagre catch. It was not yet late enough in the year for the lobsters to be numerous, and many of the pots went without an inmate, or yielded such miserable specimens that the clawed creatures were summarily tossed back into the sea. Still, the grumbling was not so very serious as it might have been amongst the fishermen of the many other coastal villages scattered across the Empire, for even if the lobster season was still months away, a far more profitable season was about to begin for the men of Wulfhafen.

Karel quickly dressed himself, emerging from his tiny room into the much larger common room of his family’s home. He could see his mother standing calmly in the centre of the room, a clay mug gripped firmly in her tired, wrinkled hands. She smiled at her son, a warm, loving expression, yet with the thread of worry mixed in to tarnish the reassurance the old woman hoped to bestow. When Karel stepped towards her, she gave him the clay mug, its contents steaming; he gratefully accepted the cup and sipped away at its contents. He was not surprised to find that she had mixed some rum into the tea. The alcohol would keep him warm far longer than the tea. His mother was always so very practical.

“Your father is waiting,” the old woman gently prodded as Karel lingered over his tea. The youth nodded and slugged down the remainder in a single gulp, wiping the excess from his chin with the sleeve of his jerkin. Karel handed the mug back to the care of his mother’s wrinkled hands and stooped downward to kiss her cheek. He was surprised when his mother tried to slip an object into his hands as he hugged her.

“What is this?” Karel asked, staring at the tarnished steel kitchen knife. His mother pushed his hands and the knife they gripped against his chest.

“You can never be too careful,” she explained. “Slip it beneath your clothes. Better to have it and not need it, than to be without.” With those last words of warning, Karel’s mother manoeuvred him to the door and into the cold night air.

 

Karel found his father leaning against the side of their hut, staring down the narrow lane that made up the village of Wulfhafen. It was nothing much, as villages went. A scattered mass of simple huts, perhaps two score in total: a large wooden meeting hall, where the village men would spend long summer nights drinking and carousing; a mass of ramshackle boat houses closer to shore; a small warehouse where food would be stored, kept in a community trust; and a small coach house, the domain of Wulfhafen’s only wagon and four horses. Gastoen looked up as his boy joined him, smiling and gripping Karel firmly by the shoulder.

“Tonight you officially become a man,” Gastoen said, smiling into his son’s face, his tobbaco-stained teeth broken and pitted. Gastoen stared at Karel, reading the youth’s features. He thumped his son on the back and began to walk slowly down the lane.

“Everyone is nervous their first time,” Gastoen explained. “You will do just fine. Why, when I was your age, I was probably even more anxious than you are now.” Gastoen punctuated his remark with a short, cough-like laugh.

Karel looked hard at his father, considering his words. He seemed older now than he had been only this morning, helping his son pull empty lobster pots back into their boat. Karel idly wondered if his father had also been unable to sleep, if he was having problems adjusting to the new nocturnal habit demanded by the long autumn nights. He would have thought that after these many years, his father would have adjusted to the yearly pattern. Perhaps it was something besides the alteration in routine that had upset his father.

“Are you certain that what we are doing is right?” Karel muttered, almost under his breath, as he pursued this last train of thought. Gastoen stopped, turning to face his son, both men, old and young, shrouded in the shadows of the huts to either side of the lane. Gastoen opened his mouth to speak but waited until a figure that had been advancing upon them from further down the lane passed them by, the last chords of the sea shanty the man had been whistling drifting away into the night. Only when the tune could no longer be heard did Gastoen speak.

“I myself asked that question of my father when I was your age,” Gastoen confessed. “We stood, perhaps, in this very spot. He explained to me the way this wretched world of ours works. He said that in the sea, for the shark to grow big and strong, it must devour thousands of smaller fish. For the kraken, it must consume numberless whales to survive. As it is in the sea, so it is on land. For a man to prosper, he must have prey. It is the way of things, Karel. To have joy, yourself, another must suffer.” Gastoen sighed and put a gnarled hand on his son’s head. “Believe me, we have things much better here than in other places. If what we do brings us such prosperity, can what we do be wrong?”

The question seemed genuine to Karel, as if his father was not certain of the answer himself. The youth would have challenged his father’s reasoning further when, suddenly, the shadows in the narrow lane danced away from them, retreating away from the beach. A bright light glared from the shore, dazzling in its brilliance, far more wondrous than the pale, feeble light of the tiny sliver of Mannslieb hanging in the night sky. Karel shut his eyes and flinched away from the sudden brightness, but Gastoen had already gripped the youth by the shoulder and pulled him into sharing the accelerated trot the old man had adopted.

“The beacon fire has been lit!” Gastoen exclaimed as the two made their way toward the shore. “Our place is on the beach.” Gastoen paused as they passed the last of the thatch-roofed huts. He removed a heavy boat hook from his belt and pressed it into Karel’s hands.

“Keep this ready,” Gastoen ordered, his voice heavy with concern. “Stay close to me. Perhaps nothing will happen tonight, but as your grandfather always used to warn ‘expect every storm to be a hurricane’.”

 

The men of Wulfhafen were gathered around a roaring, blazing fire. The mound of wood rose several feet above the rocks, promising to spend hours before burning out. Karel could make out the figure of Veytman, Wulfhafen’s chief citizen, ordering men to stack the empty kegs of oil they had used to douse the wood with into an orderly file some distance from the advancing surf. Veytman spotted Gastoen and Karel as they advanced onto the sand and broke away from the bonfire crew to meet them.

“You are late, Gastoen,” Veytman reprimanded the older man. Thin and powerful where Gastoen was paunchy and frail, Veytman cut an imposing figure. The man’s dark hair and rakish looks marked him out as the direct descendent of Wulfhafen’s founder, the pirate Wulfaert. The narrow, elegant blade sheathed at Veytman’s side was the finest steel in all the village and had been the pirate’s when he had plied the coasts of Bretonnia in his sloop The Cockerel. “We should have been glad for your help in setting the bonfire.”

“I am sorry,” Gastoen began, trying not to meet Veytman’s gaze.

“I see you brought your son along,” Veytman observed, focusing his cold blue eyes on Karel for the first time. Veytman studied the boy for a moment and they looked back at Gastoen. “Are you certain that he is ready for this?”

This time Gastoen did not avoid Veytman’s gaze. “He will do what is expected of a man of Wulfhafen,” the old man snapped, fire in his voice. Veytman nodded and clucked his tongue.

“We shall have to see about that,” the rogue said, running a smooth finger through the slight brush of moustache upon his lip. “Just be certain that he knows the rules. No hiding anything. Everything that washes ashore must be valued and appraised before it can be distributed equally amongst the village.” Veytman let his face soften, and winked at Karel. “Then, there is always the Captain’s share to consider,” the man laughed.

“Do you think we will catch anything tonight?” Gastoen asked Veytman. Veytman turned, casting his eyes out to the darkness of the nighttime sea. There was motion there, the ceaseless undulation of the waters. But of what might be lurking above or below that undulating mass, there was no clue.

“No,” Veytman shook his head, “it is early in the season yet. The fog is just now starting to become thick, the wind only now beginning to sound with Ulric’s howl. I don’t think that we will catch anything tonight. But it is useful to keep everybody in practice. We must let the indolence of summer be forgotten.” Veytman turned away from Gastoen and his son and walked over to the roaring fire, warming his hands before the flames.

“Come along, boy,” Gastoen said, gripping Karel by the shoulder. “He has the right idea. It will be a long night, and we may as well be warm.”

 

“Lights on the water,” the keen-eyed villager said. Karel was immediately roused from his napping by the sudden activity all around him. He looked away towards the roaring bonfire for a moment, then turned his gaze to Veytman. The rakish hetman of Wulfhafen removed the long, slender tube of his looking glass from within the breast of his coat. Like his sword, it was an heirloom from the pirate Wulfaert, a rare and valuable device looted from an elven ship, if the legends of Wulfaert held any truth in them. Veytman placed the tube to his eye and gazed out at the black expanse of the sea.

“Fortune smiles upon us on our first night!” Veytman laughed, replacing the looking glass within his coat. “She looks to be a merchantman, a fine prize for so early in the season!” Veytman looked over at a burly villager standing nearby.

“Emil, encourage our friends to come ashore,” Veytman said. Emil took the long, curved horn from his belt and put it to his lips. Soon, the man’s bellows-like lungs sent a loud, mournful note echoing into the night. Gastoen and the other men of Wulfhafen stared at the distant lights from the ship expectantly, even Karel becoming caught up in the excitement. The men watched and waited. When the lonely bellow of an answering horn sounded from the ship, the men of Wulfhafen turned to one another, their wide, cruel smiles bespeaking their silent glee.

Karel watched as the lights of the ship came closer towards the shore. The youth understood what was happening, and his excitement abated as his mind made the leap from the scene he was witnessing and that which must surely follow. Emil blasted the horn once again as the ship drew still closer, drawn through the night and the fog towards the promising light of the beacon. Like a moth to the flame.

A captain wise in the ways of the north would never have fallen for the trick. The best charts of the northern coast of the Empire, that neglected, shunned region beyond the Wasteland and the Drakwald, described a craggy stretch of shore as Wrecker’s Point. It is a place riddled with sharp fangs of rock, submerged shoals and razor-sharp coral reefs. The refuge promised by dozens of tiny harbours is like the call of the siren, luring ships to their doom and no practised captain would accept their lethal charms. An experienced mariner would take his chances with the sea’s doubtful mercy in even the most vicious storm than accept the certain destruction of a landing on the treacherous coastline of Wrecker’s Point.

But the evils of geography are not the only dangers to menace the ships sailing the route between Erengrad and Marienburg. A wicked place will often find wicked men all too willing to put to use such a blighted site. Several villages exist amongst the craggy rocks and fangs of the shoreline, tending their small fleets of fishing boats until Ulric’s Howl, that terrible, chill wind which heralds the coming winter, brings a more profitable catch to their shores. But the best charts are expensive, and experienced captains in short supply. Far more numerous are the maps produced by cloistered scribes in the cartography shops of Altdorf and Nuln, drawn by men who have never seen the sea or heard the warnings of Wrecker’s Point.

The ship continued, Emil and his counterpart on the vessel sounding their horns above the soft roar of the tide. It drew so close that Karel fancied that he could see the bonfire reflecting off the white canvas of the ship’s sails. His young eyes tried to pierce the veil of night to ferret out the shape of the ship from the darkness that enshrouded it. A part of him wanted to look away, but he could not. It was not the fear that his elders would think him not ready to become a man that prevented him. It was because the drama was too compelling, too awful for Karel to turn from.

The sound of the ship striking the jagged fangs of rock that lurked just below the waters of the inlet tore the night asunder. It was like the bellow of some bestial god betrayed, a cry of pain and wrath. The cracking snap of the wooden hull as it split upon the rocks was the most horrible sound Karel had ever heard in his life, more terrible even than the cries and screams of the men onboard the ship that followed the death cry of their vessel. Karel focused upon the lights of the ship, trying again to pierce the veil, trying to see the conclusion of this terrible drama he was a part of. He could hear the screams; the cries of terror as the black waters flooded the ruptured hull, as the sea reached up with its amorphous claws to pull the dying ship down to its watery grave.

Long minutes passed and the cries and screams faded away. The men upon the shore watched as the last of the ship’s lingering lights was extinguished by the devouring waters and all sign of their victim was lost to their view. Veytman was the first to turn from the beach, striding toward the bonfire and putting flame to the torch in his hand.

“The first will be making shore any time,” Veytman said as the other men of Wulfhafen marched toward the beacon light and ignited their own torches. “Break into pairs.” The descendant of Wulfaert let a cunning look enter his eyes. “You all know what must be done.”

Gastoen handed Karel a lit torch, pressing the boy’s fingers tightly about the firebrand’s grip. “You come along with me and Enghel.”

Gastoen did not wait to see if his son would obey, but nodded to the grizzled, weather-beaten Enghel and the two men made their way away from the bonfire, holding their torches high to illuminate the incoming tide and the sandy beach.

 

Karel walked several paces behind the two older men, his face pale and bloodless. He had heard the terrible shouts of discovery echoing from other searchers, only their blazing torches visible to his sight. He had heard the terrible screams that followed upon their findings, sometimes preceded by desperate, babbled pleas for mercy. Karel did his best to shut out the sounds of the drama’s murderous epilogue, but try as he might, he could not block out the terrible sounds.

Ahead of him, Karel could see a dark object floating upon the white foam. Only when it was deposited upon the sand and rolled onto its back did he recognise the object as being a man. The youth ran towards the body that had come ashore. The ragged figure was tangled in a mass of weeds. Indeed, had he not seen the body wash ashore, Karel might never have noticed the object for what it was. The boy hurried over to the brown mass of vegetation and found himself staring down at a dishevelled shape that had lately been a man.

Who he was, Karel had no way of knowing. Certainly he was no simple sailor, given the extravagance and finery of his clothes. There was a foreign look about him, a darkness of skin that instantly sent Karel’s mind wandering to Tilea and Estalia, places that were nothing more than exotic fables to the simple people of Wulfhafen. Karel noticed the man’s slender, patrician fingers, locked in a death grasp about a soggy, leather-bound book. Karel bent down towards the body and forced the cold fingers apart, relieving the body of the slender folio.

Karel opened the book, holding it upside down to allow some of the excess water to drool away. The ink had smeared and run in many places, but there was still enough that was intact for the boy to be astounded. The slender tome had been a sketchbook, it appeared, its pages crammed with fantastic drawings of strange creatures and impossible plants. Karel gasped as he saw a drawing of an ugly brutish creature with a warty hide and great horns protruding from its face. He saw weird things that were like bats with the heads and tails of serpents. Karel found that the last pages of the book were missing altogether, lost in the violence of the wreck, denying him the pleasure of whatever sights were depicted upon them. The boy found himself gazing again and again at the drawings. Where had this ship been to see such things? Had they truly been to the terrible Chaos Wastes he sometimes heard his father mention in hushed tones? Or had some other, even more distant shore been the focus of their journey? A wave of guilt swept over Karel. These men had gone so far, and survived so much, only to find their doom on the wasted shore of Wulfhafen, victims of a hideous deception.

The sigh that rose from the mound of weeds caused Karel to nearly leap from his skin. The youth cried out in fright before he saw what had so alarmed him. The man he had thought dead was staring at him, his eyes pleading for help, his slender hand reaching out towards him. Karel bent down towards the man, his hand reaching downward to meet that grasping for him.

“Stand back, Karel,” Gastoen said, his voice strange and heavy. Both his father and Enghel were now looming over the survivor from the ship. Karel did as his father ordered and stepped away from the wounded man.

The youth watched in open-mouthed horror as Enghel crushed the survivor’s arm with a savage downward swipe of his axe. The man’s arm snapped, hanging limply at a twisted, unnatural angle. All the same, he struggled to raise it to ward off the second blow. He did not see Gastoen come upon him from the other side, a wooden belaying pin in his hands. Gastoen struck the passenger’s head a brutal blow with the wooden cudgel, sending a rush of blood seeping from the man’s scalp. Gastoen did not pause to see what effect his first attack had accomplished, but struck his victim’s head again and again. After what seemed an eternity, Gastoen and Enghel withdrew from the pathetic, butchered thing that had once been a man.

Karel was frozen to the spot as his father walked over to him. His father reached out and took the boat hook from his son. The contact snapped Karel from his horrified stupor and the boy looked away from his father.

“You are tired,” Gastoen said, laying a hand slick with blood upon his son’s shoulder. “Hold the torches. Enghel and myself will attend to the body.” The old fisherman turned to the body of the murdered man, sinking the boat hook beneath the corpse’s ribcage. Enghel followed Gastoen’s lead, sinking a second hook into the body’s ribcage. Wheezing from the effort, they began to drag the body back towards the bonfire. Karel followed after the grim procession, both men’s torches held in his hands.

The boy’s mind was in turmoil, reeling from the horror and barbarity of what he had witnessed. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the horrible scene upon the beach: the murdered man’s eyes staring with terror at his father as Gastoen sent the belaying pin crashing against his skull. Karel could not believe that his father was capable of such actions. The same man who had raised him, the same man who had so tirelessly instructed him in the skills of a fisherman, the same man who only the day before had jovially joked with him as they retrieved their lobster pots. How could such a man be capable of doing what he had seen him do? For most of his life, Karel had known what Wulfhafen’s trade was, but he had not understood what that trade really was until a few minutes ago. Now, more than ever, he thought about the virtue of such a trade, and was unable to reconcile himself to it. How had his father ever been able to embrace so cruel a vocation?

 

As they made their way down towards the bonfire, Karel could make out the figures of men from the village drifting through the feeble light. He could see them linger before dark objects lying upon the beach, debris from the ship left stranded when the waters retreated back into the sea. Nearer, he could see Veytman and several others standing before a pile of barrels, clothing, and sacks. The men were laughing as Gastoen and Enghel hauled the body towards their position.

“What have we here?” the firm, authoritarian voice of Veytman made Karel stand straight, a look of guilt coming upon his face, as though he had been caught in some mischief. Veytman met the gaze of the men dragging the body. “Ah, loot,” the hetman of Wulfhafen declared. The hetman walked over as Gastoen and Enghel withdrew their boathooks from the carcass. Veytman stared at the corpse, then reached down towards him. The wrecker’s fingers closed around a silver object dangling from the man’s throat. With a savage yank, Veytman snapped the pendant’s chain and tore it from the man’s neck.

“My son found him,” Gastoen stated, looking over at his boy, favouring his son with one of the strange, curious gazes that he sometimes directed upon Karel.

“Congratulations, boy,” Veytman said. “You have found the best plunder yet.” Veytman turned the pendant about in his hand, allowing the little light penetrating the fog to play across its surface. In shape, it was like a crescent moon, a thin, wisp-like tendril rising from the upward tip of the crescent. Centred upon the crescent was a sphere or circle, as though Mannslieb had been impaled upon the waning Morrslieb. Veytman did not know what the symbol might be, whether it was a talisman of good fortune, a badge of rank or office, or the charm of some foreign god. It did not matter him; it was made of silver, and that was enough for the descendent of a pirate.

 

The night passed slowly, and the morning fog was thick upon the beach. In the aftermath of the night, most of the men were gathered around the reduced flame of the bonfire, though a few still prowled the sands, looking for any plunder that might have escaped their notice the first time. Others were gathering broken planks and shards of deck or hull that had been cast ashore, intending to use the wood to bolster the frames of their homes and boathouses. Like the captain of a pirate vessel, Veytman made no move to aid the beachcombers. He stood with some of his closest cronies and examined what had already been collected, principally the salted meats contained within a waterlogged sack and the golden-hued rum within a slightly battered cask.

“We had best keep this away from Una,” Veytman joked as he tasted the rum. “I don’t fancy another night listening to Enghel’s wife screaming at invisible goblins.” The comment brought laughs from all, and Veytman turned his attention to the salted meats, lifting a weird creature from the bag. Gastoen reached towards Veytman and took the strange salted carcass from the hetman’s hands.

“Hopefully they were carrying something more useful than this,” Gastoen said, allowing the weariness to strain his voice. He turned the strange salted carcass in his hands, holding it by its tail. In size, it was akin to a squirrel, but in shape it was like a salamander. Altogether, Gastoen doubted if he would trust the thing’s meat to a dog.

“The rum is good, anyway,” Veytman defended himself. “And they had some very fine clothing, as well. In fact, Emil found himself a fine set of boots.”

“A wondrous haul,” Gastoen groused.

“There might be more to recover,” Veytman replied, already turning away from the old man and returning to his conversation with the other men.

 

The small fire continued to burn, fed by dry wood brought down from the village. Much of the kindling was wood salvaged from last season’s victims. It was a cruel jest that the same timber should be employed to consume the first victims of the new season. The men of Wulfhafen watched as the blaze devoured all traces of their prey, removing the last vestiges of their crime. It was rare, but not unknown, for a road warden or witch hunter to pass through the village and Veytman was taking no chances that the true nature of their livelihood might be discovered.

“Has everyone come back?” Veytman asked Emil, eager to get to the business of splitting up the loot.

“All except Claeis and Bernard,” replied the grim faced Emil, obviously disgusted by the smell of cooking flesh. There were things even a cutthroat could not get used to.

Veytman rolled his eyes and began to mutter a curse against the laziness of the men in question when, as if on cue, a horrified scream rang out from the beach. As one, the men withdrew from the pyre and ran towards the sound. The fog had still not entirely dispersed from the shore, yet it had thinned enough that Bernard could be seen, kneeling in the sand, staring at the sea and sobbing hysterically. Veytman was the first to reach the terrified man.

“Get a hold of yourself,” Veytman snarled, grasping the front of Bernard’s shirt and shaking him roughly.

“What happened?” Gastoen asked, his voice more calm and even than Veytman’s savage tone. Bernard turned his face towards the sound of Gastoen’s voice.

“Claeis… Claeis,” was all the man could stutter.

“What about Claeis?” snapped Veytman, pulling Bernard to his feet. “Where is that idiot brother of yours?” Veytman slapped Bernard with his open hand, trying to beat sense back into the frightened man.

“Gone!” Bernard shrieked. “A daemon rose from the sea and grabbed Claeis in its claws! It dragged him screaming into the sea!”

The men of Wulfhafen cast apprehensive looks about them and fear began to crawl across their faces as they heard Bernard’s frightened tale. Only Veytman was unperturbed. Far from fear, the hetman broke out into laughter.

“You expect me to believe that?” Veytman buried his fist in Bernard’s belly, knocking the man to his knees. “A daemon, eh?” A savage kick to Bernard’s face sent the man sprawling. “You and your brother must have found something very choice to concoct that ridiculous tale!” Veytman sent another booted kick into Bernard’s ribs.

“I tell you, we were searching the beach and a huge daemon rose from the fog and grabbed my brother!” Bernard shrieked. Another brutal kick silenced the man. The men of Wulfhafen watched as their leader turned away from the unconscious Bernard, uncertain what to make of the situation.

“Two of you drag this thief to the meeting hall,” Veytman ordered. “And keep him there,” he snarled as an afterthought. “The rest of you try to find his idiot brother. I won’t stand for any man trying to cheat this village of what it has earned!” The gathered men began to break away into small groups to search for the missing Claeis.

It was with great reluctance that Karel joined his father and Enghel in the search. Despite Veytman’s contempt for the story Bernard had told, despite the hetman’s claim that this was nothing but a plan to cheat the people of Wulfhafen, the boy was not so very sure that something had not in fact risen from the sea and taken Claeis. More than ever before, Karel understood that Wulfhafen was an evil place and that perhaps the Darkness had at last reached out to claim its own.

 

The search was called off after only a few hours. There was no sign of Bernard’s missing brother, but neither was there any trace of the sea daemon that had supposedly made off with the man. A furious Veytman had returned to the meeting hall, a murderous look in his eyes. He was quite vocal in his determination to beat the whereabouts of Claeis and the hidden plunder from Bernard and it was not too long after Veytman had entered the structure that the first screams of agony sang out across Wulfhafen.

The other men returned to their homes for the most part, although a few chose to watch the proceedings in the meeting hall. Some, no doubt, did so out of sheer sadistic urges, but Gastoen privately wondered how many did so because they harboured doubts about the honesty of their hetman and desired to be present to hear for themselves what Bernard had to say.

Gastoen and Karel returned to their home, Karel’s mother already preparing a stew from one of the lobsters they had captured the day before. Karel, for his part, fell asleep awaiting the preparation of the food, slumping down in his chair. Gastoen smiled, knowing how little sleep the youth had had over the last few days, excited about his trial of manhood. Gastoen rose from his chair, prepared to rouse his boy and usher him to the greater comfort of his bed when he noticed the soggy, leather-bound book tumble to the floor from its resting place within Karel’s shirt. Curious, Gastoen picked up the book and returned to his chair.

It was nearing dusk when Gastoen finished his examination of the book. He had scanned every page, trying in vain to decipher the smeared script, a task his own feeble reading skills were not equal to. The drawings were in better shape, and Gastoen gazed at them with a thrill of wonder he had not felt since he himself was a young boy. He stared at the strange pictures, likening them to a curious creature he had once seen in a Marienburg shop: a beast the shop owner had called a lizard, claiming it came from far off Araby. Gastoen could discern no scale for the animals depicted in the drawings, but he could not shake the feeling that the subjects of these pictures were massive, resembling the lizard he had seen in the same way an ogre resembled a man. It was not until he saw the strange plants that a frightful thought occurred to Gastoen. The fisherman and ship wrecker shook his son back into awareness.

“Come along, Karel,” Gastoen said, rising from his chair once again and grabbing his hat from its peg beside the door. “We are going over to the meeting hall.”

 

Bernard’s screams had long since stopped. As Gastoen and Karel entered the large building, its floor composed of looted deck planks, they could see their former neighbour lying hunched in one corner of the main room. The man was unconscious, his chest barely rising. One of his eyes was a darkened hole, the flesh about the burned socket blackened and charred.

“He didn’t say anything,” Veytman said when he noticed Gastoen enter. Emil and a half dozen other men stood near the hetman, drinking some of the gold coloured rum. “He stuck to that idiotic daemon tale of his.” Veytman paused and took a deep swallow from his own leather mug. “We’ll try again when he comes around.”

“I want you to see something,” Gastoen said, walking towards Veytman, the book in his hands. Gastoen opened the volume to a page he had marked and showed it to the hetman.

“Do you see this?” Gastoen asked, pointing to one of the drawings. Veytman glanced at the picture of a strange looking plant and shrugged his shoulders. A few of the other men gathered around to see what was being discussed, staring at the book from over Gastoen’s shoulders.

“What am I supposed to see in that?” Veytman sighed, taking another pull from his mug.

“We found a plant just like that washed ashore,” Gastoen answered, one of the other villagers nodding his head in affirmation.

“So? Is it valuable?” Veytman remained confused. Gastoen turned the pages to where the drawings of the animals were.

“Don’t you see? If they had some of the plants in this book on the ship, perhaps they also had some of the animals,” Gastoen’s voice was on edge, frustrated that he was not getting through to Veytman. Before he could press the point and try to remove the look of confusion in Veytman’s eyes, the door of the meeting hall again opened.

“The daemon!” wailed the grizzled, toothless face of Una, the wife of Enghel. The woman closed upon Veytman, beating on the hetman’s chest and wailing hysterically. “A sea daemon, as big as a house! It rose out of the fog and killed my husband!”

Every man in the room except Gastoen, Karel and the unconscious Bernard broke into laughter. One of the men grabbed Una and pulled her off of Veytman.

“Enghel should not have told you about that,” laughed Emil. “You see enough monsters in your cups without him providing you with more.”

“I shall have to see if all of the rum is accounted for,” joked Veytman, draining his mug.

“I tell you, a sea daemon killed my husband!” the woman shrieked again in protest. A fresh round of laughter broke out.

“As big as a house?” mocked Emil. “I remember the time you said there was a wolf living in your boathouse and all we found was a marmot! This daemon of yours is probably just a big ship’s rat and Enghel is sitting in his home right now with a bitten finger!”

Una began a fresh tirade of shrieks and curses causing Veytman to look across the room at Emil.

“Better go and have a look at it, just to shut her up,” the hetman declared. Emil stomped across the room and gathered up a wicker lobster trap. He marched toward the door but paused on the threshold to stab a finger at the sobbing woman.

“When I catch this damn thing, whatever it turns out to be, I am going to make you eat it, you wailing harpy,” the man warned. With that, he was lost to the growing shadows in the lane outside.

 

It was about fifteen minutes later when the door of the meeting hall opened again. The pale, drained figure that entered bore little resemblance to the jovial, half-drunk Emil they had last seen. The ship wrecker dragged the lobster trap across the room, dropping it midway. A stunned silence gripped everyone in the room, even Una, as the apparition crossed to the elaborate weapons rack that rested against one wall. Looted from the countless ships that had smashed upon the reef and rocks, the armoury of Wulfhafen was a haphazard, but impressive affair. As Emil strode to the weapons, the others in the room could see the huge, gaping wound in the man’s back, as though the flesh had been peeled away, leaving the wet muscles to glisten nakedly.

“We’re going to need bigger traps,” he stammered before staggering for a moment, then falling to the floor.

That life had remained in Emil for so long that he had been able to walk as far as the meetinghouse had been a testament to the hardened shipwrecker’s brutal vitality.

“Sound the alarm!” ordered Veytman, the hetman being the first to shake himself from his shock. The command brought a fresh wail of terror from Una, but one of the men hurried to set the alarm bell ringing. Veytman scrambled over to the weapons rack so recently visited by Emil and began handing some of the carefully hoarded armaments to those men in the room. Even the choice armaments, like the heavy Bretonnian broadsword and the finely crafted battle axe that one visitor to Wulfhafen had sworn was dwarf-made were doled out. Now seemed to be no time to hoard the more elegant weapons.

“What good are these against a daemon?” protested a wide-eyed fisherman as he was handed a spiked mace.

“It is no daemon!” declared Gastoen, pushing his way to the front of the group. Already men were rushing into the meeting hall, summoned by the alarm bell. Gastoen raised his voice for the benefit of the men who had just arrived. “It is some strange beast from whatever foreign shore that ship visited!” Gastoen repeated, trying to calm the superstitious dread slinking into the mob.

“Alright,” Veytman snarled. “Everyone arm themselves, every third man get a torch, and let us see what manner of beast has chosen to die in Wulfhafen!”

 

The mob was strangely silent, for all of its numbers, as every able bodied man in Wulfhafen crept through the darkened lane, creeping like a band of thieves toward the all too near row of boathouses and fishing shacks. The fog hung thick about the village, clogging the streets with a misty grey shroud that the torches could pierce only partially. The men kept close to one another and even Veytman could not bring himself to enforce his earlier command that the men break up into teams of five. The sound of the surf striking the beach grew louder as the men pressed on, ignoring the fearful visages that peered at them from behind the windows of the huts they passed.

At last they reached the site where the long row of boathouses and shacks had once stood. The ramshackle structures were in a shambles, looking for all the world like victims of a hurricane. But no gale had blown upon Wulfhafen, for the fog lay thick and unmoving all about them. A strange sense of dread fell upon the armed mob. Veytman and a few of the braver villagers crept towards the nearest of the shacks, staring with horror at the gaping wounds torn into the wood, bespeaking tremendous strength and lengthy claws. In hushed tones, the men discussed the ruin, concluding that whatever had dealt such damage was no such creature as they had ever heard of. Once again, Gastoen said that it was some weird creature captured by the crew of the lost ship.

As the talk continued, more and more men stalked forward, deciding that if Veytman and the others could linger for so long amidst the devastation, then it must be relatively safe. The men spread out, slightly, examining the destroyed boathouse next to the shack. One of the men at once came running back, his hand smeared red with blood.

“It must be from Enghel or Emil,” Gastoen gasped. He rallied several men to his side and ran towards the boathouse. Veytman was quick to follow the older man’s lead, bringing the bulk of the mob with him.

A ghastly sight greeted Gastoen’s group as they rounded the corner of the partially collapsed boathouse. Looming out of the fog, only a few feet away, was an immense shape of scaly grey and black flesh. The man to Gastoen’s right let out a cry of horror as he saw the massive scaly back and tail revealed in the flickering torchlight. The creature turned around slowly, facing the crowd just as Veytman and his followers rounded the corner.

It was huge, easily twice the size of a man. Because it had been hunched the beast’s head not been visible over the boathouse, Now it rose to its full height, towering over the structure. Indeed, Una had not exaggerated when she said the monster was as big as a house. In shape it was roughly like a man, though only roughly. Its entire body was covered in grey scales, which faded to white as they came to its belly. Stripes of black, thicker scales criss-crossed its back and shoulders. The head was also scaled, a brutish snout protruding from a thick skull. Dangling from the monster’s powerful jaws was the body of Enghel, his head completely within the creature’s mouth. Yellow, snake-like eyes gazed indifferently at the mob while thick, muscular arms swayed indolently from the monster’s broad shoulders. The reptilian horror worked its lower jaw and the skull of Enghel cracked like a walnut, the loud snap echoing into the night.

 

The sight of the fiend so casually feeding on one of their own snapped some of the men out of their horrified daze. One bold fisherman lunged at the monster with a boat hook, the makeshift polearm sinking into the thick flesh of the monster’s shoulder. Another lashed at the creature with a broadsword taken from the armoury, cringing back in fright as the weapon impacted harmlessly against the thick scaly flesh of the brute’s leg.

The monster was slow to react. At first it just stared stupidly into the night. Then its lower jaw opened, letting Enghel’s body drop to the ground. A thin, purple tongue whipped out of the scaly mouth, flickering in the air for a moment before withdrawing. Then, the seemingly lethargic beast became a blur of carnage.

A huge clawed hand dropped down upon the man who had so ineffectually struck at the creature’s leg, the blow crushing the man’s collar bone and battering him into a heap of broken bones, a twisted pile of meat recognisable as human only by the screams it still cried. The brute spun about, his powerful tail slamming into the villager with the boathook, knocking him some fifty feet away. The man landed in a crumpled pile on the beach, his head lying at an unnatural angle on its snapped neck. The beast paused, focusing its beady eyes upon the main body of Wulfhafen’s defenders. It opened its jaws and from deep within its massive form came a grunt-like bellow that had several men dropping their weapons to shield their ears from the sound.

Before the mob could react, the monster was in their midst, lashing out with its powerful claws and snapping jaws. Swords and axes struck again and again at the brutish reptilian abomination, more often than not failing to sink into the tough leathery hide. The few wounds that did draw blood from the beast seemed to go unnoticed, as the monster continued to deal death and mutilation to his would-be killers. In that same amount of time, the monster had killed or maimed over a dozen men, their dead or broken bodies lying strewn across the beach.

Veytman swiped at the huge beast with his elegant blade. The finest sword in the entire village impacted against the scaly flesh, sinking deep into the reptile’s thigh. The brute turned, swiping at Veytman. The hetman dodged the crude attack, but the combination of his manoeuvre and the monster’s assault snapped the steel blade. Veytman stared in horror at the broken sword, and the three inches of steel sticking out from the beast’s leg, the creature seemingly oblivious to the injury.

It did not take long for the struggle to become a rout. Nor did it seem that the monster was content to allow its attackers to escape. Bellowing its awful roar once again, the huge scaly giant lumbered after the fleeing men, pursuing them into the village. Despite its bulk, the beast was unbelievably fast. Only the fact that it caught some of the slowest early on and stopped to reduce them to mangled piles of meat gave any of the villagers a chance to reach the supposed safety of Wulfhafen’s buildings. The feeble structures did nothing to stop the reptile’s rampage, however. As the grotesque creature entered the narrow lane, it turned to face the first of the mud and wood huts. The beast’s tongue flickered from its mouth, tasting the air, sensing the people cowering inside. The beast bellowed again, battering the wall of the hut with its immense bulk. Two hits were enough to collapse the wall and bring the thatch roof crashing down upon the inmates of the building. The monster paused for a moment, staring stupidly at the destruction it had caused. Then its eyes detected the squirming forms struggling to emerge from the ruins. The beast descended upon the rubble and screams again filled the night.

Gastoen and Karel remained with Veytman throughout the terrified retreat, following their hetman into the more solidly constructed common house. The woman Una gave a cry of alarm as the enraged men entered the meeting hall. A withering glare from Veytman silenced the half-soused biddy.

“It is a daemon!” sobbed Gastoen. “It has come to punish us for our evil ways!” Veytman ignored the incoherent ramblings and made his way to the stack of tiny kegs piled beside the now empty weapons rack. The hetman lifted one of the kegs removing its stopper. Normally employed to light the evil beacon fires, Veytman now had a very different purpose in mind for Wulfhafen’s supply of lantern oil.

“Beast or daemon, I am going to send that thing back to hell!” Veytman growled.

“You cannot kill it! It has been sent by Manann to punish this town for preying upon the sea! No one can defy the judgement of the gods!” Gastoen broke into a trill of mad cackling, his mind crumbling under the years of guilt that now fuelled his terror.

“Karel,” Veytman snapped, ignoring the boy’s mad father. “Help me with this! Grab that torch and follow me! Tonight we will see what kind of man you are!”

Karel withdrew his arms from his father’s shoulders and raced to remove the torch the hetman had indicated from its wall sconce. The two men hurried toward the door, determined to put an end to the sounds of death and destruction rising from the street outside, vowing to find the monster preying upon their village and destroy it.

They did not need to find the beast, however. The beast found them.

The front door of the meeting house burst inwards, as if a fully laden wagon had crashed into it. Splintered wood flew in all directions, the shrapnel opening a gash in Karel’s cheek. The great grey and black hulk lowered its head and slithered through the gaping hole in the wall. Once inside, the hissing beast rose to its full height, seemingly oblivious to the dozens of wounds bleeding all over its body. The head of the dwarf axe was buried deep in the creature’s back, and still it showed no sign of injury. The monstrous brute let its head oscillate from side to side, surveying the room with its reptilian eyes, tasting the air with its slender purple tongue. Then the mighty beast roared, the tremendous sound deafening within the close confines of the room.

The effect was immediate. Una shrieked again, scrambling for the rear door of the meeting hall, disappearing through the portal with a speed and agility that should have been impossible for a woman of her age and health. Roused from his pain-filled slumber, Bernard focused his remaining eye upon the hideous reptile. At once, the man was crawling across the floor, hurrying after the departed Una. The creature made to pursue the fleeing wretch, but a much closer victim gave the enraged brute pause.

Karel could not hear what his father was saying, his ears still ringing with the monster’s mighty roar. Gastoen had run forward as the beast broke into the meeting hall and had fallen to his knees before the hulking brute. To Karel, it appeared that the man was actually praying to the huge reptile, a look of insane rapture on Gastoen’s wizened face. The creature looked down at the figure bowed down before its knees. The great brute brought one of its enormous clawed fists crashing down into Gastoen’s head, the force of the blow making the man’s skull and neck sink between his shoulders. Barely ten feet away, Karel watched as his father expired, as his world was rent asunder. The man he had loved, respected and admired was no more. The man he had looked up to all his life had been taken from him in one instant of madness and carnage.

Karel gave voice to an almost inhuman cry of rage and loss and charged the huge beast, the knife his mother had pressed upon him gripped firmly in his hand. The knife impacted harmlessly against the reptile’s leg. With an almost dismissive gesture, the hulking brute swatted Karel with the back of its hand, sending the boy flying across the hall. He landed against the far wall, the wind knocked from his lungs. The boy dropped to the floor, groaning the mixture of anguish and agony that wracked his form.

Veytman yelled in fury and ran at the huge monster. The hetman hurled the keg of oil at the beast with his left hand. The object flew lethargically across the room, missing its intended target and breaking apart against the wall behind the creature. The failure of the missile to strike its target did nothing to stop Veytman’s attack. The man lashed out at the huge beast with the torch he held, thrusting the flame upward into the monster’s face.

The creature hissed angrily, flinching away from the flame. Veytman cackled triumphantly, pressing his attack. But he grew too bold, too certain of the beast’s fear. The reptile bellowed again and lashed out with a massive clawed hand. The claws tore through Veytman’s stomach, ripping his intestines from his body. A river of blood fountained out of Veytman’s butchered flesh, sickly yellow stomach matter staining the crimson cataract. Veytman fell to his knees, blood filling his mouth. The last sight his dying eyes focused upon was that of his own innards dangling from the creature’s claws.

As Veytman died, the torch fell from his nerveless fingers, rolling across the floor to meet the spilt oil. Even as the lizardman stomped toward Karel, the flammable liquid caught fire, turning the entire wall into a fiery blaze. The monster turned away from the youth, staring with fear at the blaze behind it, croaking its own terror.

Karel had only moments to act, seconds to overcome the fear gripping his frame, the pain wracking his body. It was a moment to transform a boy into a man. Karel turned towards the rest of the supply of Wulfhafen’s oil, smashing the stoppers from the kegs with the end of the knife still clutched in his hand, pitching the ruptured contents to the ground. The incendiary liquid splashed across the floor, rushing to meet the flames on the other side of the room. The creature turned, perhaps sensing what the boy had done, or perhaps merely looking for another way to leave the building. Whatever its purpose, Karel did not wait to find out. Hurling the torch at the pool of oil gathered about the reptile’s feet, the young man leapt through the rear door of the common house.

The oil ignited at once, transforming the meeting hall into an inferno. The monster tried to flee from the flames all around it, its primitive brain taking long minutes to realise that its own flesh was on fire. The lizardman’s bellows of agony rose from the blaze as the fire seared its scaly flesh.

Outside, the survivors of Wulfhafen emerged from the shelter of their homes; gathering about their burning common house, watching the consuming flames lick into the night sky. The huge beast trapped inside was a long time in dying, its anguished cries ringing into the night for nearly a quarter of an hour. The crowd remained through it all, silent and stunned. There was no sense of triumph in the people of Wulfhafen as the flames consumed the horror that had descended upon their tiny village. Survivors they may be; victors they were not.

 

Karel gathered the last of his possessions together and kissed his mother one final time. The morning sun had barely peaked above the horizon; the first birds were only just emerging from their nocturnal sanctuaries. Karel shouldered his pack and made to leave the only home he had ever known. He could almost see Gastoen again, sitting at the table, his weathered, cracked hands resting in a cool bowl of fresh water, trying to soothe the pain from his tortuous labours on the sea. He could almost see his father making ready to join the ship wreckers, with all the guilt and shame that had shrouded the evil things he had done to support those he loved. Karel could now understand the strange and frightened looks his father had sometimes favoured him with. It had been the closest Gastoen had ever come to voicing his truest fear, the fear that his son would become himself one day, that the dark practice of Wulfhafen would live on through his own blood.

“Where will you go?” his mother demanded, trying to fight back her tears. Karel paused and caressed her tired, worn hand.

“I am going to go down to Marienburg,” Karel declared, looking away from his mother for fear that tears would well up in his own eyes. “I shall go to the temple of the sea god, see if the priesthood of Manann will have me for one of their own. See if they will allow me to atone for the crimes of my fathers, and my home.”

Karel kissed her again, and stepped out into the narrow lane that wended its way through what was left of Wulfhafen.

Perhaps the village would fade away now. Perhaps it would somehow rebuild and endure. Perhaps it would even return to its evil ways. For Karel, it did not matter. He had found the answer to the questions he had asked his father. The beast had not been a daemon, but could it truly be said that it had not been sent by the gods? Had the terrible doom that visited the village not been brought about by their own avarice and greed? Karel could not lead any of his family or neighbours to atone for their misdeeds, for each man was steward of his own soul.

So, the last son of Wulfhafen strode away into the morning light, taking the first steps on the long road of his penance.