The riddle of the three missing Ganik bullies was solved a couple of days later, when Johnny Kilgore and Counter chanced across them camped in the woods and trying to decide what to do with their new-won freedom, where to go now that all of the Ganik outlaw bunches had been dispersed or driven out of New Kuhmbuhluhn.
Corbett simply added them to his command as scouts, under the command of Skinhead Johnny Kilgore and Merle Bowley.
Ravenous as he was, the creature was distracted by the excited voices of men, the poundings of fists and pike butts on the door—which the wet nurse had, as instructed, carefully bolted, after lighting her splint from the wall sconce. Then there was another shriek of a twoleg female from close behind him, whereupon the attacks on the door redoubled, intensified.
Rahksahnah had been awakened from a light sleep by the single scream of the wet nurse. Scrambling across the width of the great-bed, she padded over the thick carpets to the door between the chambers. She opened it and took but a single step into the smaller room.
The wet nurse, nude to the waist, her brown hair disordered, was crouched far back in the bed alcove, her dimpled arms pressing the nursing twins tightly against her body, her brown eyes wide and bulging in an excess of terror, her mouth wide, too, but only a rasping whine emanating from it.
Rahksahnah screamed, even while her mind beamed out a frantic message, “Bili, it is here, the killer wolf is here, in our suite, stalking the nurse and our children!”
Bili had been meditating yet another of those increasingly common, increasingly petty disputes in the royal council, when the telepathic summons reached him. His face suddenly went as white as curds. Springing to his feet so violently that he sent the heavy canopied armchair crashing over backward, his big hand grasped the only available weapon—the heavy, ancient, Royal Kuhmbuhluhn sword of state, which always lay before the king’s chair on the council table during any meeting, whether or not the monarch himself was present.
The sword had once, long, long ago, been the battle brand of a king, but now the blade was devoid of any edges and had, moreover, been inletted for the most of the blade length with designs and lettering inset in gold and silver. But to Bili it was simply a weapon there in a time of need, and it did at least have a good point.
As he half-ran toward the door, he shouted to the councilors, “Gentleman, the killer wolf has somehow got into my suite and is threatening my wife and children. Those of you with arms and the guts, follow me.”
Unlike the peasant wet nurse, Rahksahnah was not the sort of woman to scream once and freeze, shuddering and staring in the face of impending doom. Scioness of a warrior race, a stark, veteran warrior, herself, she backed into the larger chamber. There she found by memory and feel the rack whereon hung her panoply and drew her oiled and gleaming saber from its scabbard with the one hand, while shaking a long, wide-bladed dirk out of its case with the other. Then the still-naked but now well-armed young mother raced back to the defense of her young and the helpless peasant girl.
The creature had been distracted but momentarily—his stomach brought his attention back to his waiting meal—but then there was sudden movement on his right rear and something sharp and hurtful sank deep into his chest, between his jutting ribs, just behind his right shoulder. Snarling his pain and rage, he turned his huge head, snapping toothy jaws at the source of his agony. By happenstance, his second snap closed on something solid, and he furiously wrenched at it. It came free with more pain and a wet, sucking sound, whereupon he let it drop from his jaws and turned back purposefully toward his victims, only to find that now another twoleg female stood between him and them, a long, shiny, curved thing of steel clenched in one of her forepaws.
Bili of Morguhn, bearing the bared sword of state in one big hand, trailed by some two thirds of the Royal Council, armed haphazardly with everything from dress hangers to ancient, rusty, dusty weapons wrenched from wall displays, pounded down corridors and up flights of stairs.
As the party approached the wing that housed the sprawling suite, the noises of the guardsmen furiously attacking the stout door became audible—shouts, grunts, poundings, all so far unavailing. Arrived upon the scene, Bili motioned the men all away and threw his own powerful young body against the unyielding portal; it groaned protestingly, but held firm. Again he hurled himself at the old iron-bound door, but still it stood solid. He wasted no more time or effort so fruitlessly.
“Sergeant,” he snapped to the leader of the guards, “that oaken bench down the corridor there—fetch it back up here at the double. With three of you on each side of it, only a few swings should have that door down or at least open.”
Rahksahnah was horrified when the massive wolf not only did not seem hurt unto death as it should have been by the accurately cast dirk that must surely have pierced its heart but, with seeming sentience, took the hilt of the weapon between its slavering jaws and pulled it out of its chest. Nonetheless, she had gotten to where she knew she must be, where she would make her life—or-death stand, between the hellish beast and her babes.
Snatching a thick, heavy woolen shawl from the nearby crib, she flung it over the head of the charging wolf, then sidestepped and chopped down with all her might, feeling in her very marrow the solid impact of her saber against the dense bone of the beast’s skull ... but still he came on, shaking his head to try to rid it of the blinding, heavy cloth.
Again she struck, but with no more apparent effect. She could feel the edge of the bedstead against the backs of her legs; there could be no more retreat.
She was, in her deadly concentration, unaware of the fact that the thick door had at last been battered in until Bili suddenly was looming there before her, with the lamplight glittering along the length of an old-fashioned longsword, and the room behind him seemingly crowded from wall to wall with armed men.
“ ... dirk through his heart, Bili,” she gasped, forgetting her mindspeak, “... didn’t stop him, he ... jaws, pulled it out! Full arm swing across head, should’ve cracked his skull ... I think ... be demon, witch-beast ... can’t be killed! Beware!”
Huge and unnaturally powerful as the wolf assuredly was, Bili’s mighty two-handed swing of the heavy old sword still drove him belly-down onto the floor, though it failed to crack his spine, as it would have that of any more mundane beast. His head now free of the woolen shawl, his fiery eyes fixed upon this new antagonist, the wolf furiously scrabbled his clawed paws for purchase, making to rise. That was when Bili drove the ancient blade completely through the furry body, pinning it to the floor.
The howl that the beast then voiced was unearthly, ghastly, sounding far less like the death howl of an animal than the dying scream of a man. A terrible shudder rippled the length of the massive beast’s body, it let go its dung and its urine, vomited a great gush of blood, then it’s fearsome head fell into the blood, the eyes lost their fire and began to glaze over.
Bili bore the mercifully unconscious wet nurse into the main bedchamber, while Rahksahnah followed with the fed and now-sleeping twins. He was just striking flint on steel to light the lamps when shouts and cries of depthless horror smote his ears.
“The ... the wolf, Bili. It must be, I told you, can’t be killed!” stuttered Rahksahnah.
“Now, damn it, the beast is dead!” snapped Bili. “You saw it die, we all did.” Nonetheless, he lifted his great double axe down from the wall hooks before hurrying back into the smaller chamber.