His father’s blade, though dirty and chipped, was sharp. It cut even through the hard metallic scales as it slipped into the flesh below and opened angry red wounds that gaped like screaming mouths. There were not many chances to try the steel against the creature’s skin, he relished the sensation when the sword made its rare, satisfying contact. It hummed in his hands with each blow.
He took comfort in the fact that the creature had landed few blows of its own, but he knew he was losing the battle. For all that he drew blood, the creature was tireless, while exhaustion dogged Angus’s every swing and dodge. He thrust again, hard at the beast’s face, forcing a momentary retreat, and slipped backwards, seeking time to breathe.
Broken sunlight from the cave mouth drew moving golden beams in the dust, brilliant and nearly opaque against the darkness. He dodged them instinctively, but they were a distraction and a dangerous impediment to sight. -No- , he thought -even worse, they make me feel as if I could hide behind one, use it in defense.-
The monster held its place well back from the sunbeams, watching him. It had not watched his father thus, before killing him. It did not matter, what was past was past. His father gone, half of his village dead, and soon he would add his own bones to the pile that defiled the forest around this place.
The thing lunged, impossibly fast. Sunlight danced across its scaley brown hide, giving it the fleeing appearance of an enormous fawn, but the beams dazzled its eyes as well and it did not see him twist and drop to the side. The enormous arm chipped stone from the wall where Angus had been, iron claws raked his shoulder. There was time for a single puny thrust of his blade beneath the arm, he jabbed wildly and prayed that he might hit a tendon or open a vein. The blade skittered off scales without effect. He rolled hard, not looking back at the monster, but dodging from where he sensed it might spring next. Sheer luck had saved him, it would have to stretch just a bit further. He ran up the dusty slope towards the blinding sunlight. Perhaps he could draw it out of the cave.
The fresh air was shocking after the cloying musk of the monster’s lair, it revived him somewhat, but the clean spring air carried the scent of things lost to him. It, like the sunbeams, was a dangerous distraction. He could run, he knew, could maybe even keep ahead of the monster long enough to see his home before he died. He staggered to the trunk of a massive oak tree before turning to see how close to death he was. The monster had not emerged from its cave.
He sagged against the rough bark and gulped in air. It tasted of green leaves and lilacs, of Fiona and sunlight and life. Of all the reasons he would never return home, Fiona ranked first.
His father’s sword was a deadly weight in his hands. He pushed its point into the soft loam and held the cross-piece with both hands, giving over his weight to it as he had leant on his father just to feel that unbending strength.
His throat was painfully dry. He had not stopped in the night to gather water once his meager skinfull was empty. He had stopped for nothing, and that foolishness made itself known with a heavy aching deadness of mind and body. He pushed himself erect and worked the bloody sword back out of the earth. Old blood, his father’s blood, stained the handle and made it slippery where sweat had reinvigorated the dried liquid.
The cave mouth was almost perfectly round. It was more burrow than cave, the monster had dug the soil from between the stones of the hill and wormed itself into the bones of the forest like maggot. He walked towards the opening, looking hard into the shadows, waiting for the deadly lunge. It did not come. He came as close as he dared, sword in front of him, its weight difficult to keep steady. The sunbeams that now flowed over his shoulder into the gloom revealed nothing but bare dirt as far into the burrow as they went. He would have to go in, one way or another.
The smell brought back images of childhood, he forced them away.
The beast was not visible after twenty paces in the burrow. Angus had taken each step slowly, waiting for his eyes to adjust. At twenty paces, the tunnel reached a low point and began climbing, he stood at the nadir and considered his options. He had no idea how far the creature may have crawled, and here the faint edges of sunlight gave their last feeble illumination. Further progress would be made in darkness.
As he settled his body, his breathing became slow and the roar of blood in his ears quieted. He realized he could hear breathing now, slow and impossibly deep. If the beast was just ahead, it could see him sillouhetted against the faint sunlight, but if it were further in, around a bend or beneath another dip, he could get yet closer and perhaps hide himself in the darkness as well. He took a single step forward before the sound erupted ahead of him, freezing his mind and body. It was a thin sound, a drawn-out kitten-like mew. It, like the smell, generated a fountain of memories that would imobilize him, kill him, if he could not force them back. No, he would die in battle, not lying pitifully on the floor swathed in guilt and loss. He cut off the images with a vicious shake of his head.
He made the decision without giving himself time to think about it. Sword held ahead of him like a lance, he leapt into the darkness. He heard movement ahead after three paces, dropped to the ground in anticipation of the giant arms, then leapt up again, shoving the sword in front of him. Whether the beast had attempted to swat him aside he could not tell, but the sword point made contact and the hilt was nearly ripped from his hands. He struggled to get his feet beneath him and used all the strength in his legs to push the blade further against the thrashing beast.
The arm found him, finally, and slammed him hard against the wall. There was a moment of blackness that swallowed even the dark of the cave, and then he was staggering away, knowing the iron claws would find him any second. The beast seemed to make no sound other than its heavy breathing and frantic movement, but then hatchling screamed and all thought ceased under the wailing onslaught. Angus ran.
He fell just before he reached the mouth of the lair. He could feel as much as hear the beast behind him, rebounding from one wall and then the other as it lumbered unsteady after him. He rolled over to watch death come. In gleaming sunlight, he saw his father’s sword – too long for a boy of fourteen, chipped and bent, caked with blood old and new, but gleaming nevertheless, half buried in the monster’s neck. The thing slowed, focussed it’s large yellow eyes on him, steadied its gait and stalked forward. Angus closed his eyes.
The scent of lilac, faint against the stench of beast and blood, swept the fear from him. He saw Fiona’s face, saw it as she had been, before the beast had killed her, before the desperate losing battle in the town square, before his father had died, leaving a sword and a son on the bloody earth amid chaos and carnage. She was beautiful, and her pale freckled face gave him peace. Perfumed with lilacs, the memory of his first and only kiss played out behind his eyelids, he would die with the taste of that kiss on his lips.
He felt the beast fall. Moments passed in silence. Almost sadly, he let Fiona slip away and opened his eyes to see why he wasn’t dead. An iron claw rested inches from his foot, but the bulk of the monster lay in a rapidly growing pool of blood beyond. The sword still protruded from the creature’s neck, it was all but hidden beneath the flow of thick red blood. The giant body spasmed very slightly, then was still.
In death, it hardly resembled the monster of his childhood, the beast that forever raged against the chain that held it staked in the town square. Once grown it hardly seemed to rest, it would run round the stake until the steel band at its ankle had rubbed the flesh raw and bloody. There had been a time, when Angus was quite young, when it had seemed playful and friendly. It had been a hatchling once.
The sounds of pitiful mewling came from the depths, and seemed to come from the depths of his childhood as well. It had been about the size of a small goat when it hatched from the egg Father had brought home, a curious and exotic animal that brought visitors from far away to see.
He rose to his feet and approached the carcas. He grasped the hot wet handle of the sword and wrenched it free, fresh blood gushed from the wound and covered his feet. The hatchling made its timid way up the tunnel, mewing. Angus watched it as it came to its mother, pressed against the dead bulk of flesh, and began a pitiful keening whimper. He remembered that whimper.
They kept it chained in the square, and as it grew larger and more fierce, they fed it live sheep and chickens. People stood around it to watch, and more people came from far off villages to see it feed. When this sport had gotten dull, they pitted it against dogs, and then bears. Angus grew up watching the monster disembowl and consume and rage against its chain. He had laughed, like all the others. It made him sick now, but he had laughed, had thrown stones, had reveled in the excitement. He had laughed when the chain broke, and the men with their swords jumped to attention and surrounded the beast, thinking to keep it pinned down in fear until the smith could repair the chain.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He brought the sword down hard on the hatchling’s neck and ended its pitiful cry. Then he stumbled out into the setting sun and began the long walk home.
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Angus Kills the Monster by Kenneth Lett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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