"There," said Nils, raising a thick sinewy arm. "That is its home." His big callused forefinger pointed to a small island somewhat more than a kilometer offshore.
"How do you know?" asked the knight.
Nils shrugged.
The knight scowled across the quiet water. "You're probably right," he said. "And before we can get boats enough and go there, it'll be dark."
"If we start across, he might see us and escape anyway," Nils said. "Or it may be that he's good enough in the water to attack the boats from below. But he seems to like this place to leave and enter the water. Maybe we could lay behind the dune and ambush him."
The knight divided his troop. Half lay wrapped in their blankets back of the seaward dune, trying to sleep, while sentinels watched out to sea from behind clumps of dune grass that dotted the top. The other half, with the horses, took cover behind the next dune inland, ready to come in support if needed, or move parallel to the beach if the monster flanked the ambush.
With the ambush plans, the men began to feel more sure of themselves. The beast was big, no question of that, and savage. But most of them had been seasoned in combat and had confidence in themselves. And with bows, pikes and swords, they assured each other, they would make short work of it.
The moon was at the end of the third quarter and wouldn't rise until midnight. When the last light of dusk faded, the watchers could see little by the starlight. And the gentle washing of waves on the beach could cover the sound of anything emerging from the water.
"I don't like this darkness," the knight muttered softly.
"I don't think he'll come until after the moon rises," Nils answered in a whisper. "Last night the moon was well up before he entered the village. He probably likes more light than this himself."
"How do you know the moon was well up?"
"Because, looking through the window, I could see the moonlight."
"Oh yes, I heard about your dream," the knight said. "The story has gone around the castle." He turned to Nils, staring at him in the darkness, then looked back out to sea. Dimly he could distinguish the dark water from the lighter beach. "I don't believe in dreams," he added.
In spite of themselves they dozed now and then. Suddenly Nils jerked wide awake, startling the knight beside him. The half-moon stood above the rim of the sea and the night was light, but it wasn't that that had wakened him. The beast was coming, in the water, with a hunger for flesh and for more than flesh, for the current of life, spiced with terror, was nourishment as necessary to it as food. And Nils was in its avid mind, feeling with its senses. It felt the buoyancy and resistance and coolness of the water as it watched the dunes not far ahead. And it sensed that among the dunes was what it sought.
Nils shook his head and looked about him with his own eyes again. "He's coming," he whispered softly. "And he knows we're here."
The knight said nothing, but rose to one elbow and stared out to sea.
"It's not in sight yet," Nils told him, "but it will be soon." He slid down the back side of the dune and began waking the sleepers one-by-one with a touch and a whisper. They rolled out of their blankets, awake and taut, and followed Nils to the crest.
Nils sensed the knight's rigidity and looked seaward. The beast could be seen now, twenty or thirty meters from the shore, wading slowly in the shallow water. It looked immense, perhaps two-and-a-half meters tall, its proportions resembling those of an overgrown gorilla except that it was longer legged. But its hide, wet and moonlit, looked like chain mail.
It stopped for a moment where the waves washed onto the beach, turned briefly to look over its shoulder at the moon, then scanned the dune as if it could see them. An overanxious bowman loosed an arrow, and a hail of others hissed after it to fall from the beast's hide onto the sand. For just an instant it stood, shielding its face with a massive forearm. Then a line of shouting men charged from the crest, brandishing pikes and swords.
A hoarse hoot came from the beast, and something else. A great wave of something. Men staggered, dropped their weapons, and war cries changed to howls and shrieks of mindless terror.
Some ran, stumbling, rising, back up the dune or along the beach or into the sea. Others simply fell, wrapping their arms around their heads in catatonic helplessness.
Nils felt the waves of terror as on the night before, terror that was not his own but that shook him momentarily. The few arrows that had stuck in the beast dangled as if only the points had penetrated. He picked up a pike and charged down the dune again, the only one now, bulging arms cocked, and at three meters lunged with all his strength at the towering monster, his hands near the butt of the pike, and felt the head strike and break through. His follow-through carried him rolling onto the sand, diagonally and almost into the legs of the beast, the hilt of his scabbarded sword striking him painfully below the ribs. He rolled to his feet, stumbling as the beast rushed at him, bulky but quick, the pike shaft sticking out of its belly. There was only time to grab the shaft before the beast was on him.
The charge threw Nils backward, off his feet, sliding on his back across the sand, his grip like iron on the shaft, his arms and shoulders tensed with all their strength. Great clawed fingers clutched short of him, and the hoot changed to a roar of rage and pain as the beast dropped to its knees. When the pike had pierced its entrails it had been like fire bursting into it. But the collision, with the man grabbing the shaft, and the shock as he had hit the ground, transmitted through two-and-a-half meters of strong ash, did terrible damage.
Nils let go and rolled sideways to his feet, drawing his sword as the beast rose again. It wrenched the pike from its own guts, eyes raging, and charged once more. The sword struck once, into the rib cage, and they crashed to the ground together. One great forearm pressed down on Nils's throat and he grabbed desperately at the scaly neck, straining to keep its fangs from him. His last thought, fading but distinct, was that its blood smelled like any other.
6.
Consciousness came gradually. First Nils was aware of his body, then of voices. After a bit he focused on the voices, and their Anglic began to take meaning.
"So we have a psi who is also deadly," a female voice was saying. "But why does it have to be a filthy, ignorant barbarian?"
Nils opened his eyes.
Raadgiver, in his blue velvet robe, sat beside the cot looking down at Nils and smiling slightly. A young woman, taller than the counselor, stood at the window looking out, her black hair in a braid down her slender back.
"Signe, our patient is awake," Raadgiver said in Danish. He pulled on a velvet cord and somewhere a bell rang. Signe turned. She was not much more than a girl-perhaps no older than Nils-and handsome, but her startling blue eyes bespoke dislike.
"Nils Savage, this is my daughter and apprentice. I need not introduce you to her, for she has shared the job of watching over you since you were brought to the castle earlier this morning. I have been your other nurse."
Nils sat up on the edge of the cot thoughtfully. He wore only his breeches; his other things lay on a nearby bench. "I don't seem to be injured, only weak," he said. "The troll must have died almost as soon as I lost consciousness."
"Troll!" said Signe, turning to her father without trying to hide her scorn of such superstition.
"Do you believe it was a troll, Nils?" asked Raadgiver.
"Not in the sense of the fairy tales," he answered. "But it's useful to have a name to call it. It's not an animal from this part of the world; if it was, we'd know about it, and not by grandfathers' tales but by its deeds and attributes.
"Brave men who saw it and what it had done weren't terrified by the sight. They believed they could kill it. But when it howled, they were filled with terror, and their minds were like eyes that had looked at the sun. And it wasn't the howl that did it, really, at least not by itself. If I made the same sound, no one would panic."