Clawed feet made a noise like rain on a roof as the child-creatures streamed across the depression. What they lacked in size they made up for in ferocity, mouths snarling and revealing rows of vicious teeth. Dodinal waded into them, slamming his shield into skulls and bodies, relishing the feel of bone crunching and breaking with every blow.
He wielded the sword wildly and to devastating effect, parting limbs from torsos and heads from necks until the ground was soaked with blood. More creatures surged towards him and he slammed them out of his way with the shield and skewered them with the blade. Though the size of children, they were anything but. He showed no mercy.
They came at him from every direction. Dodinal wheeled and struck, turned and struck again, bodies heaping at his feet. His boots crushed the twitching corpses as he drove forward. One of the creatures got close enough to leap at him and his sword met it in mid-air, cleaving it in two. The thing’s entrails unravelled like a banner as its bloody halves fell to ground. Another slipped through his defences, crawling along until it could sink its claws into his ankle. Dodinal barely felt the pain. He rammed the sword down through the back of its deformed skull until the grip on his ankle went slack, and then stepped away and kicked it from him.
They grew wary and kept their distance. A few darted towards him, but fell back before he had the chance to turn the blade on them. They were trying to force him back into the bank, leaving him nowhere to go. If he turned around, he would find more of them at the top of the bowl, waiting to swoop down on him the moment he was trapped. He bared his teeth. Let them try.
He went on the offensive, suddenly lunging forward as two of the creatures came at him, swinging the sword with such brutal force that the blade sliced clean through them both. The rest turned tail and fled, regrouping half a dozen strides away, crouching on all fours, hissing and spitting in fury.
A sudden weight on his back nearly knocked him off balance, and he felt sharp claws digging into his shoulders. Shifting the sword to his left hand, he reached back with his right and grabbed the creature by the throat, squeezing hard. It thrashed wildly, fangs piercing his skin, and he squeezed harder until he had crushed its windpipe. The creature went limp, and Dodinal hurled its lifeless body into the trees.
He strode relentlessly towards the horde, blind anger giving him strength, the stink of their blood driving him on. There was no room in his head for conscious thought, or in his heart for compassion. Maybe half of them were dead, but he wanted them all dead, would not stop until he had cut the life from every last one of them.
They cowered and backed away, sensing his righteous fury, looking around urgently as though seeking a means of escape. One tried to rally the rest by letting out a howl and throwing itself at him, and he spun on his heel and slammed the flat of his shield into its face. It took a few faltering steps back, and Dodinal thrust the sword deep into its eye. The creature went stiff as he pulled the blade free, dead before it hit the ground.
And then the earth shook.
Dodinal felt it tremble under his boots.
It shook again, as if struck a massive blow.
None of the creatures moved. They were no longer looking at him. Their heads were turned, gazing intensely up the bank towards the unknowable dark of the forest. Dodinal swallowed hard.
Another percussive blow, which rattled his teeth and shook his bones, followed by a great splintering, tearing and crashing. It sounded like the trees were being torn up by their roots.
Something was coming. Dodinal edged towards Owain. He had no idea what it was. Surely there was no creature on earth capable of making the earth shake in such a way. Whatever it was, he wanted the child out of the way before it got any closer.
The ground convulsed. Trees swayed and groaned.
Dodinal cut through the vine that held the boy’s foot.
A dark, monstrous shape emerged from the forest with a great clattering of branches, and came to a shuddering halt at the depression’s edge. He saw it well enough in the moonlight to know it was bigger than any living thing he had ever set eyes on before. He cast out his senses and immediately recoiled. What they had touched was ancient and cold, not malevolent but uncaring, like nature itself. Dodinal had sensed it before. It had unnerved him then. Now, when it was almost close enough to spit on, its presence was like fuel on the flames of his anger.
It was unnatural, an abomination, just like the creatures. This was what must have sent them out to steal the children. Judging from the bones on the ground, it had an insatiable taste for human young.
Now the adults swooped into sight, dropping from the trees near the beast and scurrying down the bank ahead of it. There were eight of them, one was badly burned. Another was much smaller, presumably drawn from the ranks of the young to make up for the absence of the adult he and Gerwyn had slain.
They could not have missed Dodinal, his back to the slab only yards from them, yet they paid him no attention. Instead, they waited behind the cowering young, their heads bowed. The forest was as silent as the church where Dodinal had often sought peace.
He frowned. A church…
Understanding struck him like a physical blow.
Whatever it was, these twisted creatures worshipped it.
It was their god. And they had brought it sacrifices.
The monstrous shape juddered; Dodinal saw movement in the darkness around it and had the impression of a long thin neck raised skywards so the beast could peer down at him and the boy. Then, moving slowly and carefully, it lowered itself into the depression, earth and rock cascading as the bank gave way under its weight. With each thunderous step, the very world seemed to tremble. Visions of giants filled Dodinal’s head again, but he shook them off. This was no giant, no mythical beast out of a child’s story.
Whatever it was, it was real.
It stepped beyond the shadow of the forest, into the moonlight.
Dodinal saw it clearly, but he did not believe what he saw.
Its body was that of a leopard, the haunches those of a lion, and the feet a hart’s. It had a serpent’s neck and head, which swayed in time with its leonine tail as it lumbered across the ground, passing the assembled throng of creatures watching its every move. Dodinal stepped cautiously away as it came to a juddering halt before him, his mind struggling to comprehend what he saw. It beggared belief. It challenged everything he had ever known. There was man and there was nature, nothing else. Yet here, standing within touching distance, was living proof that there was something else.
Sir Palomides, the Saracen, had often spoken of such a creature. The Questing Beast,12 he had named it, and dedicated his life to hunting it down. Camelot’s knights, Dodinal amongst them, had humoured him and wished him well, but between themselves had dismissed it as a fool’s errand. Such a chimera could be found nowhere but the realm of myth. If it existed, they argued, why had it not been found?
The beast lowered its sinuous neck and thrust it towards him, its mouth opened wide and its forked tongue flicked out. A sound like the baying of three score hounds poured forth from its belly. Dodinal flinched, remembering the old man’s story. The baying of hounds that long-ago summer had been the harbinger of disaster.
He continued to step away, moving slowly, until he felt the hard edge of the slab press into his back. There he stood, raised to his full height. He held the sword with both hands at chest height, the blade raised to the stars. To reach the child the beast would first have to get past him, and he would cut its head from its body.