Fable: The Balverine Order (Fable)

  James staggered out the front door, bracing himself against the frame since the world was still spinning around him a bit. “And it should further tell you to stay the hell away from my dog,” he added defiantly.

  “It’s evil,” she said with a snarl, clutching the shaft of the spade so tightly that her beefy knuckles were turning white.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because all dogs are evil. They’re cousins of balverines.”

  “That’s utterly ridiculous.”

  “Ayuh?” she grunted. “That beast . . . it’s waiting. Waiting for ye to lower yer guard so it can tear yer throats out in your sleep.”

  “She’s been with us any number of times that we’ve been asleep,” James said, “and our throats are just fine. Why didn’t she kill us then since she had the opportunity?”

  She fixed her angry gaze upon Poxy, who backed up with her tail between her legs and a faint whimper. “She’s verrrry crafty,” said the woman.

  “Look, I don’t mean to be rude here,” said Thomas, “but we really don’t have to put up with this kind of abuse and suspicion. We came here because we thought you needed help. Not to be assaulted or to have our dog—”

  “She’s my dog,” said James.

  “—or to have his dog maligned.”

  “Then why do you travel with the creature in the first place?”

  “Because . . .”

  “Because,” James said abruptly, “we are balverine hunters from a far western land. And this dog, whom you would so readily try to dispatch, is one of our greatest weapons in that endeavor. She’s a tracker. She helps us track balverines. And we have tracked them here, to this land. Fate and our four-legged ally have led us here, but if you have no interest in our services”—he shrugged in what seemed a significant manner—“then we will be on our way. Isn’t that right, Thomas?”

  “That is indeed right, James,” Thomas said, nodding. He backed up, keeping the crossbow aimed at the woman. James followed suit.

  Abruptly, the woman dropped the spade. “Wait,” she said sharply, and the boys both held their places. “I might have been . . . hasty.”

  “At the very least,” said James.

  “I am a woman alone, of limited means. But if ye can help me, I’ll pay whatever I can.”

  “This is not about payment,” said Thomas. James looked at him in a surprised way that said, It’s not? Thomas quickly shook his head, and continued, “This is about trying to aid your daughter . . . although if I understand your flyer correctly, I’m not sure how much aid we could provide. Not if she’s really been kidnapped by balverines. I hate to sound cold, but she’s probably dead by now—”

  “That isn’t what concerns me.”

  “It’s not?” Thomas and James exchanged confused looks. “Then what . . . ?”

  “If yer truly hunters,” said the woman, “then ye’d understand.”

  It took a moment for comprehension to dawn upon Thomas, but then it did. “You’re afraid,” said Thomas, “that they’ve transformed her into one of their own. That they’ve made her into a balverine.”

  Slowly, she nodded, and then, to their astonishment, thick tears began to roll down her blubbery face. “I can’t have that for my little girl. I can’t have her live like that. Ye understand what I’m saying.”

  “You’re saying that if we find she’s been changed ...”

  “Ye put her down as ye would any rabid animal. As we would a dog.” And she looked distastefully yet again at Poxy, wiping the tears from her face with the back of her arm. “As we have all dogs hereabouts, lest they turn out to be agents of the balverines.”

  Thomas could scarcely believe what they were dealing with. It was almost literally a case of night and day. They had departed a land where balverines were considered nothing more than fables that were used to scare recalcitrant children, and arrived on foreign shores where balverines were taken so seriously that innocent animals were slaughtered lest they prove to have some sort of tenuous connection.

  “If this is not an indelicate question,” James said, “what is your husband’s opinion about this?”

  “He’s dead,” she said flatly. “Robert is dead, the useless fool. Come inside. I’ll tell ye about it.” She turned her back to them and headed back into the house with the manliest stride that Thomas had ever seen in a woman, not to mention a few men. She left the spade lying on the ground, which might have been her way of conveying that she no longer intended to pose a threat to them. On the other hand, Thomas had a feeling that—were she so inclined—she could likely beat them to death with her bare hands. His gut instinct, though, was that they would be safe enough. It was only at that point he realized he still had the crossbow armed and leveled. He unnocked the bolt and hung the crossbow back on his belt.

  “You sure that’s wise?” James muttered.

  “We handled a boatload of pirates. We can handle her.”

  “We barely escaped them,” James corrected him, “and only with the ‘help’ of a kraken, and something tells me the kraken would take one look at her and swim in the other direction.”

  Thomas chuckled softly, unable to disagree.

  THE WOMAN GAVE HER NAME AS “MRS. MULLINS” without providing a first name. She offered to brew some tea and prepare them a meal, but Thomas very quickly said that it was not necessary since neither of them was hungry. The haste with which he spoke surprised James, but then he realized the reason for it. Thomas still did not trust the woman: For all he knew, she might try to poison them or at the very least knock them out so that she could take another pass at the dog without having to contend with them. This seemed a reasonable cause for concern, and so James simply nodded his agreement with Thomas.

  “My husband and daughter were in Underwood, the forest not far from here, gathering herbs for my medicines. I brew up home remedies, y’know,” she said. Thomas, of course, had no way of knowing that, but he simply nodded as if it were a matter of general information. “They thought they were safe because it was during the day, and the balverines only come out at night. But this particular day, the full moon was high in the sky as sometimes happens. And I guess that’s all the balverines need to do their . . . their hideous deeds.”

  Thomas was sitting on a rickety chair, and he leaned forward carefully lest it shatter under him. “Have you ever actually seen a balverine with your own eyes?”

  “Seen? No. But every so often we hear them howling deep in the woods. They wouldn’t dare venture into town because they know that we’re ready for them. Balverines don’t have the stomach for direct confrontation with those who are prepared to battle them.”

  This didn’t sound exactly right to Thomas. From all that he had read, balverines weren’t exactly shy when it came to attacking, especially if there was a pack of them. But who knew for certain? Perhaps there was only a single balverine making his presence known in the town, or—if there was indeed a pack—they tended to range away from the town and content themselves with preying on forest creatures. Anything was possible when dealing with creatures of the supernatural.

  “There is a path that leads deep into Underwoods, and a crossroads about a mile in. It was at that crossroads that Robert and Hannah—that’s my daughter’s name, Hannah—that they had their . . . their encounter.” The woman’s beefy hands were clamped together, the fingers interlaced, fidgeting with each other. “There were three of the creatures. Robert tried to put himself between them and Hannah, but he had no chance. They just . . . they tore into him, ripped him to pieces, tore him apart, and devoured him right then and there, right in front of Hannah. Flesh, muscle, bones, made no difference to them. They just ate it all. The only thing left of him was some blood-smeared tatters of clothing. And Hannah they dragged away, screaming the entire time. I ...” She paused, and then pressed on. “I figure either they wanted to save her to . . . to eat her later . . . or else they wanted to make her into one of them. It’s been two weeks, and I want to know either way. I
want them killed either way.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Thomas. “How do you know what happened? Your husband, dead, your daughter, dragged away. That doesn’t leave any witnesses.”

  She thumped the side of her head. “Aye, of course. I forgot t’mention: that boy.”

  “What boy?”

  “Young Samuel.” Her face twisted in disdain. “He’s been sniffing around my Hannah ever since she started growing breasts. He was following after her that day, hanging back a distance. He comes from fair hunting stock, so he has some measure of woodcraft, I’ll give him that. He saw it all happen, hiding behind some brush. Hiding! Little gibbering gnat. Ye’d think that he’d have tried to intervene instead of just cowering and letting her be dragged off ...”

  “If he’d have done that, he’d most likely be as dead as your husband,” James said. “And you’d have no firsthand account of what transpired.”

  “That’s no excuse for cowardice,” said Mrs. Mullins, “and don’t think I didn’t tell him so. He comes here, tells me what happened, and brings me to the crossroads to show me. There’s blood everywhere, on the ground, on the trees. But none on him, that was for sure, because he kept himself good and hidden. I reamed him right and well, don’t think I didn’t. I reamed him and told him he had no business standing by and letting them do that to my husband and little girl. He cried,” she said in disgust. “Cried like a wee baby, he did. He ran off, and no one’s seen him since. I may well have shamed him into heading off after them.”

  “You mean,” Thomas said slowly, “that you ‘shamed him’ into setting off after balverines and very likely going to his death?”

  She shrugged. “It’s of no never mind to me what happened to him.”

  Thomas bristled at that. “Perhaps it’s of a never mind to his own parents. Did you stop to consider that?”

  “All I considered is my own kin. I don’t give a damn about him and his.”

  “Yes, that’s pretty obvious.” It was at that point that Thomas was starting to feel disinclined to do a damned thing to help this woman. Let her stew in her own juices for the rest of her life. Her husband and daughter are better off dead than having to live with this creature. But he then dismissed such thoughts as uncharitable. He was hardly seeing Mrs. Mullins at her best. Furthermore, he remembered all the anger, all the hostility that had permeated him for so long after the death of his brother. It was anger that he carried to this day and had been partly responsible for fueling his departure from home in the first place. If that cold fury still burned so brightly within him even after all these years, how much more furiously did it sizzle within the breast of this woman, who had lost them so relatively recently? It was difficult for him to do, but he needed to dig down and find compassion for this woman.

  Besides, she wanted them to seek out balverines, and that was their mission objective anyway.

  And then James asked a question that seemed a complete non sequitur. “Has it rained?”

  “Rained?”

  “Since she was taken. Has it rained since that day?”

  She frowned, obviously having to bring all her limited mental capacities to bear on the question. Then, slowly, she shook her head. “No, as a matter of fact.”

  “Do you still have them?” James said suddenly.

  “Them?” Now she was completely lost. “What them?”

  “The tattered remains of your husband’s clothing.”

  “James,” said Thomas, regarding him skeptically, “why in the world would she still have—?”

  “Ayuh. In a box out back.”

  Thomas shifted his astonished gaze from James to Mrs. Mullins. “You kept it? Why would you keep something like that?”

  “I waste nothing. It’s the way I was brought up.”

  “Okay, then,” said James, who didn’t appear to think that was at all unusual. “I’d like that, and also anything that your daughter wore. Anything that might still have her scent.”

  “How are you going to follow her scent?”

  “I’m not”—and James pointed proudly to Poxy—“she is.”

  “She?” Her voice dripped with distaste for the very notion. “You expect her to lead you to her own kind?”

  “She’s a dog, not a balverine. They’re not her own kind. It hasn’t rained, so with any luck, the spoor—although hardly fresh—won’t have been washed away. And,” James went on, becoming increasingly heated, “if you people hadn’t been so stupid as to make sure to dispose of every dog in the area, you could easily have used one of them to track down your daughter. Your superstitiousness only crippled your ability to help them. So you think about that while you’re getting us what we need.”

  She glowered at him, but he failed to burst into flames or transform into an oversized icicle or simply drop dead as a result. Having failed to accomplish that, she turned on her oversized foot and waddled out to get the required items.

  The moment she was out of earshot, Thomas turned to James and gave him a look that did not radiate confidence. “You’re going to use Poxy as a tracker?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “James, come on. I know you think highly of this animal, and she certainly has her talents as a rat catcher. But training a dog to follow scents takes a long time. Just waving something under her nose and then expecting her to follow the scent . . . especially when several weeks have passed . . . I just don’t see it working.”

  “We know nothing about her pedigree, Thomas. Who she belonged to or anything like that. For all we know, she is trained to do what we need her to do. So I say we give it a try. Besides, do you have a better plan?”

  “Not really,” he admitted.

  “All right, then.”

  Mrs. Mullins returned a short time later with the bloodied, shredded remains of a tunic that Thomas safely assumed had been her husband’s. In her other hand she was holding a hairbrush. “This was my daughter’s,” she said, waving the hairbrush. “Got strands of her hair still in it, so I’m figuring this might be exactly what ye need.”

  “That could be of use, yes.” James took the hairbrush and the cloth, making a face as he handled it, and carefully put the two of them into separate pouches of his pack. “A crossroads, you said?”

  “Yes. The main road leads right up to Underwoods. Follow it in, and you’ll get to the crossroads.”

  “Okay, then.” Thomas bowed slightly since that was what the situation seemed to call for. James did not. Clearly, he was still steamed over the way in which the burly woman was regarding his dog. It seemed to Thomas that James had a good deal invested in a dog that he had only acquired scant days earlier.

  They emerged from the house into a day that had become overcast, but otherwise the weather appeared to be holding up even though there was a nip in the air. “So now we head to the crossroads?” said James.

  “We head for the crossroads,” Thomas nodded. “And we see what happens next.”

  Chapter 9

  “MAIN ROAD ” WAS SOMETHING OF AN overstatement. There was in fact only one road through Blackridge, and they were able to follow it readily enough toward the Underwoods. They were relieved to get out of town because the glares they were receiving from the townspeople they passed since they had a dog in their company were becoming tiresome. In several instances, some of the men stopped and turned and looked as if they were ready to try and assail Poxy, but Thomas would have his hand resting with significance on his rifle while James kept his on the pommel of his cutlass, and that was generally enough to send a mute warning to anyone who was even thinking about trying to start difficulties.

  “This whole thing with the dog reminds me of something I read about in a history text,” said Thomas, as they walked the main road. “An outbreak of disease about a century back, in a seaside city called Port Manteau. It swept through the city, killing one person in three. And Port Manteau had a fairly high cat population. So a group of superstitious idiots decided that the cats were avatars of demons and starte
d killing all the cats. In no time at all, every single cat in the entire city had been executed in the belief that it would rid the city of the disease.”

  “Did it?”

  “Actually, it aggravated it. Turned out that the disease was actually being spread by wharf rats, and the cats were the only thing keeping the rats in check. With the cats gone, the rat population exploded, and people started dying faster than ever.”

  James shook his head. “Amazing sometimes what people will and will not believe in. They think balverines and krakens are the stuff of legend, and in the meantime slaughter harmless animals out of fear. Did they ever finally manage to bring the disease under control?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Meaning?”

  Thomas stopped and looked glumly at his companion. “The local governor had his soldiers surround the city so that no one could leave, and then they fired flaming arrows at it by the hundreds.”

  “They torched the place?” James could barely speak above a whisper.

  “They did. Houses, women, children, everyone. It was said that the stench from the burning flesh could be smelled from ten miles away, and the tower of black smoke was visible from twice that distance. The city was never rebuilt.”

  “No surprise there. Who would want to live or do business in something that had once been a huge charnel house?”

  “No kidding,” said Thomas. “And there are some who believe that to this day if you walk around the area where Port Manteau used to be, you can hear the terrified cries and agonized screams of the once-living residents, howling for help that would never come.”

  “By contrast with that, the occasional balverine assault would seem like no big deal. And yet”—and James scratched behind the dog’s ears—“the people here still felt the need to try and get rid of the very animals who might have helped them fight the monsters they were so afraid of. Astounding how shortsighted people can be sometimes.”