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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 52: Slade 268
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 89
“So,” Slade said, “why do they call them fear wolves? What makes them different from ordinary wolves?”
“They’re terrifying, and they attack in huge packs.”
Slade shrugged. Wolves were certainly a challenge, but nothing to fear. “I guess I’ll have to see them. Anyone coming with me?”
The dog cowered in the corner; Rudolph looked like he wanted to join it.
“I’ll come, m’lord,” Shella said. Slade nodded, and walked out the door.
He watched the direction of the noise. The smell of the kill was probably luring them this direction, and even though much of it had been worked into the soil of the garden there would be blood and scraps scattered about. He waited.
He saw one coming into view, and then it was joined by another, and another, until there were five in all. They stared his direction, and he returned the glare.
“My lord, can you handle so many?”
He glanced at his wife. “It’s not so bad.”
“But,” she said, “there must be–there must be twenty of them!”
He looked again.
“I don’t see twenty. I see five. But if there are twenty, and fifteen of them are invisible, that will be an interesting challenge. Let’s see what we can do.”
At that moment, perhaps from a movement of the leader, the wolves began racing toward them. Remembering that the blaster didn’t work, Slade drew his sword and cape. He considered the dagger, but decided that he would keep that in reserve. He heard Shella begin pronouncing some spell behind him, and knew she would be helping as she could.
Two wolves had pulled ahead of the others. One was coming directly toward him, while the other was slightly to his left. He thought either that other was headed for Shella or it was planning to attack him from the flank, but either way he knew what to do.
The one coming directly for him sprang, and he raised his sword to catch its exposed chest even as his left hand flung the cape over the face of the other. The leader was seriously injured and fell to the ground, but Slade was having trouble withdrawing his sword from its ribcage, and having given up his cape he now drew the dagger.
He had only seconds, as more wolves were coming. He turned toward the one he had blinded, and drove the dagger into its side. He saw Shella frantically flailing at the air, looking more terrified but as yet unaccosted. He gave the dagger a twist, and the beast fell motionless; just as abruptly Shella looked surprised, as if something had changed. He had no time to ask, though, and he spun back to meet the next attackers.
The heavy lead wolf was still stuck to his sword, so he swung the entire weight into the upcoming attacker, knocking it aside and dislodging the carcass from the blade. It fell, now lifeless, and he brought both blades up to meet the last two wolves, one of which was now veering toward Shella, but he threw the dagger into the one coming toward him so that he could spin toward the other and slash its side open with the longer sword.
It whimpered and began a retreat back toward the wilderness. Slade thought it unlikely to survive long, wounded like that, but had other problems. His dagger had only nicked the one wolf, and the other that he had knocked aside was back on its feet, and he had only the sword.
A glance at Shella reminded him that she appeared to be unduly panicked, and he remembered that these were called fear wolves. Perhaps they did something to increase fear, something of which he, as a warrior of Odin, was immune. He prayed, “Modi, this brave girl could use some of your courage now.”
He could not wait to see the effect, but instead turned to sweep his sword across the chest of the leaping wolf almost too close to him for him to hit. The impact on the sword shook his arm and knocked him back a step, but it also put the wolf off course and gave him a moment to glance back at Shella. She seemed to have recovered, with a fierce look on her face and a determined movement of her hand. Her wolf appeared to be taking a severe battering from some invisible weapon; Slade assumed she had done this in their previous battles, but he never had time to watch what she did once the fight began, and really didn’t have time to observe now. He barely got his focus back on the beast attacking him, but as he raised his sword toward it, it shrunk back, seemingly trying to find an opportunity to strike.
“So,” Slade said to it, “I think the battle is over, and the question is whether you will be another body on the field to become garden fertilizer, or a wounded escapee returning to the wild?”
It snarled, but Slade’s composure became if anything less concerned, and apparently disappointed that it could not intimidate him, it fled. He watched it leave.
“So,” he said, “what happened?”
“Happened, my lord?”
“You know what I mean.”
Shella seemed embarrassed. “I’m not sure, my lord. I saw twenty of them, and they were all charging toward us. Several were racing at you, but several were coming for me, and when I tried to hit them with my conjured invisible club, it did nothing to them. Then you killed one, and several of the others simply vanished; but there were still more coming, and I was afraid.”
Slade nodded, but Shella continued.
“Then when you prayed for me, most of the remaining wolves disappeared, leaving only two alive and two dead. I was able to focus my club against the one nearest me, while you chased the last one away.”
“So, what do you think happened?”
She seemed to think a moment. “They must use our fear to power mental illusions of copies of themselves, so that if one wolf can frighten you, it looks like several, and since they can do that they attack in packs, because you are more likely to fear several wolves than one, and that fear then makes it so you see more than are there, and the illusory ones can’t be hurt except by killing the one that creates them.”
That made enough sense that Slade simply nodded, and turned back toward the hut.
“Come. Let’s see if Rudolph wants to do something with these bodies.”
As to the old stories that have long been here:
