BEAST OF THE WOODS

The beast of the woods, slow with his trail, but fast with his kill, many and soon most anyone who used the forest trail, day or night, disappeared, carried off to the creature's lair. soon enough, even cargo's had traveled through, they would discover three or more of their men missing. A dead foot man, his mount cantering along, just bloodstains and bits of skin sticking to the boots. A cobbler gone but for a shredded hat. A few of the richest Town folks hired mercenaries as guards, but when even the strongest men died, silent and alone, the convoys dried up. The Town elder, a man named Horley, held a meeting to decide what to do. It was the end of summer by then and the leaves had begun to disappear from the trees. The meeting house had a chill to it, a stench of thick earth with a trace of blood and sweat curling through it. All five hundred Town folks came to the meeting, from the few remaining merchants to the poorest beggar. Antler had always been hard scrabble and tough winters, but it was also two hundred years old. It had survived the wars of sages and of kings, been razed twice, only to return. "I can't bring my goods to market," one farmer said, rising in shadow from beneath the thatch. "I can't be sure I want to send my daughter to the pen to milk the goats." Horley laughed, said, "It's worse than that. We can't bring in food from the other side. Not for sure. Not without losing men." He had a sudden vision from months ahead, of winter, of ice gravelly with frozen blood. It made him shudder. "What about those of us who live outside the Town?" another farmer asked. "We need the pasture for grazing, but we have no protection." Horley understood the problem; he had been one of those farmers, once. The Town had a wall of thick logs surrounding it, to a height of ten feet. No real defense against an army, but more than enough to keep the wolves out. Beyond that perimeter lived the farmers and the hunters and the outcasts who could not work among others. "You may have to pretend it is a time of war and live in the Town and go out with a guard," Horley said. "We have plenty of able-bodied men, still." "Is it the Preacher doing this?" Trog the blacksmith asked. "No," Horley said. "I don't think it's the Preacher." What Trog and some of the others thought of as a "Preacher," Horley thought of as a crazy person who knew some herbal remedies and lived in the woods because the Town folks had driven her there, blaming her for an outbreak of sickness the year before. "Why did it come?" a woman asked. "Why us?" No one could answer, least of all Horley. As Horley stared at all of those hopeful, scared, troubled faces, he realized that not all of them yet knew they were stuck in a nightmare. Trog was the Town's strongest man, and after the meeting he volunteered to fight the beast. He had arms like most people's thighs. His skin was tough from years of being exposed to flame. With his full black monsterd he almost looked like a monster himself. "I'll go, and I'll go willingly," he told Horley. "I've not met the beast I couldn't best. I'll squeeze the `a' out of him." And he laughed, for he had a passable sense of humor, although most chose to ignore it. Horley looked into Trog's eyes and could not see even a speck of fear there. This worried Horley. "Be careful, Trog," Horley said. And, in a whisper, as he hugged the man: "Instruct your son in anything he might need to know, before you leave. Make sure your wife has what she needs, too." Fitted in chain mail, leathers, and a metal helmet, carrying an old sword some knight had once left in Antler by mistake, Trog set forth in search of the Beast of the woods. The entire Town came out to see him go. Trog was laughing and raising his sword and this lifted the spirits of those who saw him. Soon, everyone was celebrating as if the Beast of the woods had already been killed or defeated. "Fools," Horley's wife Christine said as they watched the celebration with their two young sons. Christine was younger than Horley by ten years and had come from a Town far beyond the forest. Horley's first wife had died from a sickness that left red marks all over her body. "Perhaps, but it's the happiest anyone's been for a month," Horley said. "All I can think of is that he's taking one of our best horses out into danger," Christine said. "Would you rather he took a nag?" Horley said, but absent-mindedly. His thoughts were elsewhere. The vision of winter would not leave him. Each time, it came back to Horley with greater strength, until he had trouble seeing the summer all around him. Trog left the path almost immediately, wandered through the underbrush to the heart of the forest, where the trees grew so black and thick that the only glimmer of light came from the reflection of water on leaves. The smell in that place carried a hint of offal. Trog had spent so much time beating things into shape that he had not developed a sense of fear, for he had never been beaten. But the smell in his nostrils did make him uneasy. He wandered for some time in the deep growth, where the soft loam of moss muffled the sound of his passage. It became difficult to judge direction and distance. The unease became a knot in his chest as he clutched his sword ever tighter. He had killed many monsters in his time, this was true, but he had never had to hunt a man-eater. Eventually, in his circling, meandering trek, Trog came upon a hill with a cave inside. From within the cave, a green flame flickered. It beckoned like a lithe but crooked finger. A lesser man might have turned back, but not Trog. He didn't have the sense to turn back.