This is the third chapter of the Fang & Bone serial; click here to visit the previous installment of Fang of Triseria. Please share your thoughts on the story in the comments, or visit the project hub for more information.
Fang’s lycanthropic sense of smell was sharp and Erryl, the Barber of Fools’ Errand, knew to trust it.
At the sound of Fang’s warning, Erryl’s rapier flicked through the cool evening air. He did not quite ready himself to a stance, but he did rock on his heels.
“What do you smell? From where?”
Fang continued to take in the scent for a few moments. Again, the heavy rumble: “Undead, I think. Rot. Growing closer. East.”
Erryl crept toward his road companion, flicking his rapier’s tip to the ground, loosening his arm muscles for the work ahead. Fang threw his heavy cloak over his back, and where there was once what appeared to be a misshapen lump, was the pommel and hilt of a tremendously large and heavy sword. With little effort beyond the unwieldiness of the size, the wolf drew the blade and rested it upon his broad shoulder.
Erryl couldn’t conceive of the weight of the thing. He favored the thin, delicate blade of the duelist and the accuracy that only a needle could provide. “Swordplay like surgery,” he often boasted. And when the rapier was not enough, his dagger was there to finish the job.
Fang’s blade, more a cleaver than a sword, was at least a few feet long – four or five by Erryl’s count – with a blade about an eight of that width. By all reason, a strike from his blade killed not by cutting, but by sheer, crushing weight. The Wolf would split foes in twain not from an edge, but a primal force. Force that would be seen again in mere moments.
The Wolf was exposed now – beneath the cloak was a body at least 7 feet, though he typically hunched. With broad shoulders and dense muscle beneath the fur, Erryl wondered if Fang had secretly been one of the giant men in the northern reaches of Skolos. Perhaps an unwary traveler caught up in the incident of the fallen kingdom. But Fang never spoke about his past life and Erryl would have little else to do but theorize on it otherwise.
The reddish hue of the evening that had lit the forest was fading now, and a gentle breeze danced between the woods that surrounded the trail. The sounds of the woods gradually faded over the next minute until the only sound was the rustling of leaves in the breeze.
Then came the rasping moans, accompanied by a cacophony of leaves and brush shuffled and crushed underfoot.
Erryl watched Fang’s pointed ears twitch and shift toward the direction of the incoming undead. Erryl followed suit, taking up a position in the same direction, a few feet from the beastman, out of range of his giant swings. Erryl glanced again as Fang’s nose rankled and he started shifting on his large feet – or were they paws? He hadn’t dared ask his companion.
The sound of the ghouls approached the tree line on the side of the trail, and the first of them stumbled out through a bush, nearly collapsing. The sudden lurch gave it a burst of speed that unsettled Erryl, but he urged himself to remain calm. When it comes to the undead, haste makes for mistakes.
Fang lifted the sword from his shoulder and held it forward. The sheer weight of it would have been impossible for most men to consider wielding it; even the Wolf held it up with two hands on the hilt.
The ghoul lurched for the first target it saw, which just happened to be Erryl.
“You’re up,” said Fang with a deep rumble.
Erryl nodded and adjusted his stance, one leg extended and bent ahead, the other outstretched behind. His needle-like blade held back, horizontally, level with his shoulder. His left hand extended outward, palm held flat with the thumb held perpendicular to the outstretched fingers. The rudimentary corner created by his left hand served to let him know when to strike.
After a few seconds, the ghoul stumbled into range, the head occupying the ideal spot in the frame made of Erryl’s hand. The ghoul seemed relatively new, for a dead thing. The eyes, specifically, were beginning to grow cloudy from an unblinking gaze, the lens rubbed raw by insects, dust, and twigs. The ghoul looked like some poor peasant, his simple clothes torn, bloodied, and muddied. His lurching, jerky steps indicated he was a lesser ghoul. Whatever enchantment on him was basic and a bite would be enough to make anyone sick with fever.
Erryl leaned back on his rear leg and then rocked forward again onto his front leg. With a quick jab, Erryl jammed the rapier blade forward, less like how he would duel, and more like slotting a needle into a button-hole. The tip of the blade pierced a cloudy eyeball, and the resistance was minor. The blade pierced the jelly, and deeper still into the brains of the poor bastard. With a flicking motion, Erryl swirled the blade’s tip around whatever was left in the skull, scrambling grey matter. He drew out the tip of his rapier just as the ghoul dropped, returning to lifelessness, where it would remain. He returned the blade to his side with a quick flick, sending rotting matter spilling onto the dirt of the trail.
He returned to position, ready for the next ghoul, just as another pair crashed through the tree line. The pair sighted Fang and stumbled forward.
Erryl shot him a pointed glance, but the Wolf simply stared toward the ghouls that crept closer to him. He raised his gigantic sword above his head and stepped forward, bringing the blade town on the closest ghoul. The blade pressed through the collarbone and cut a jagged path down and off the hip, severing the undead body in two. The pieces crumpled into the dirt. The remains still attached to the head continued to thrash on the ground and grasp toward its assailant.
Fang took a step back, readying for another overhead strike as the second ghoul pushed forward and passed the remains of his companion. This time the wolf’s blade smashed through the rotting skull, shattering the bone into jagged chunks with bits of blood and brain trailing off each little piece. The brain destroyed, the body collapsed into a heap near the thrashing torso of the other ghoul.
Fang placed his foot on the remaining assailant and pushed all his weight down. The crunch of bone a testament to his strength. As the feeble ghoul tried to claw through the thick fur, Fang lined the tip of his blade in a downward strike over the gnashing face of what was once a poor villager.
Shunk.
There was silence. Fang sniffed. Satisfied, he drew his sword from the skull, and the dirt road beneath it.
“Clear now.”
Erryl studied the remains. All of them appeared to be mere peasants or farmers at most. That meant homesteads at the least and a town or village if he and The Wolf were lucky.
Erryl glanced at his companion, who was scraping viscera from his sword off the surface of a thin, sickly tree. Erryl slid the rapier between his trousers and belt as continued to study the conditions of the corpses.
“Doubt we’re far from a village now, friend. What say we grab some proof of our work and see if we might get some coin for our efforts?”
Fang glanced over. “Won’t carry them. Smashed ones are too messy.”
“What did you expect, swinging that iron bar about?”
“Not a pack hound, Barber.”
“These are a trifle for you.”
Fang said nothing as he sheathed his sword and then slung it back over his shoulder. For emphasis, he wrapped himself in his cloak. It was like throwing a tent over a tree.
“Please, friend, don’t make me use my cloak. It reflects poorly on me if this beautiful fabric is used to bundle bits of brain.”
Fang stepped over to the skull of the ghoul whose head had shattered. He glanced down for a moment and then stomped on the jaw, shattering the skull further. Bone shards and teeth scattered under patches of fallowed skin and muscle.
Erryl sighed and opened a pocket in his bag. “Ghoul’s teeth it is then. I still feel the heads are the easier sell to the locals. Have you seen the teeth of an average farmer?”
The Barber began picking at the teeth with a small pair of hand tongs, separating them from the gore and tossing them into a scrap of linen. He held a rotten tooth aloft in the encroaching moonlight, studying it as best he could. The tooth was jagged and broken, but not necessarily identifiable as a ghoul to the untrained eye. He only hoped there was a trained eye nearby to verify the veracity of their find.
He tucked the tooth into the linen. “Honestly, I can’t see a difference,” he muttered.
Fang stood ahead on the road, his ears twitching and picking up the sounds of emerging nocturnal critters. Erryl muttered as he moved on to the next skull with his small tongs.
Click here to visit the project hub for Fang of Triseria; click here to read the next installment of Fang & Bone.
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[…] is the fourth chapter of the Fang & Bone serial; click here to visit the previous installment of Fang of Triseria. Please share your thoughts on the story in […]