Of the Crooked Man’s Act of Betrayal

DEEP BELOW THE GROUND, the Crooked Man watched the sands of his life trickle away, one by one. He was growing steadily weaker. His system was collapsing. His teeth were coming loose in his mouth, and there were weeping sores on his lips. Blood dripped from his twisted fingernails, and his eyes were yellow and rheumy. His skin was dry and flaking; long, deep cuts opened upon it when he scratched at it, revealing the muscles and tendons beneath. His joints ached, and his hair fell from his head in clumps. He was dying, yet he did not panic. There had been times in his long, dreadful life when he had been even closer than this to death, when it had seemed that he’d chosen the wrong child and there would be no betrayal and no new king or queen for him to manipulate like a puppet upon the throne. But, in the end, he had always found a way to corrupt them or, as he preferred to think of it, for them to corrupt themselves.

The Crooked Man believed that whatever evil lay in men was there from the moment of their conception, and it was only a matter of discovering its nature in a child. The boy David had as much rage and hurt as any child that the Crooked Man had yet encountered, but still he resisted his advances. It was time for one last gamble. For all he had achieved, and for all of the bravery that he had shown, the boy was still just a boy. He was far from home, separated from his father and the familiar things of his life. Somewhere inside, he was frightened and alone. If the Crooked Man could make that fear unbearable, then David would name the infant in his house and the Crooked Man would live on, and in time the search for David’s replacement would commence. Fear was the key. The Crooked Man had learned that, faced with death, most men would do anything to stay alive. They would weep, beg, kill, or betray another to save their own skins. If he could make David afraid for his life, then he would give the Crooked Man what he desired.

So that strange, hunched being, old as the memory of men, left his lair of mirrored pools and hourglasses, of spiders and death-filled eyes, disappearing into the great network of tunnels that ran like a honeycomb beneath his realm. He passed below the castle buildings, under the walls, and into the countryside beyond.

And when he heard the howling of the wolves above him, he knew that he had reached his destination.

David had been reluctant to leave Anna, so weak did she seem. He was afraid that if he turned his back on her, she might disappear altogether. In turn, she who had been alone in the dark for so long was grateful for his company. She spoke to him of the long decades spent with the Crooked Man, of the awful things that he had done and the terrible tortures and punishments he had visited on those who had crossed him. David told her of his dead mother, and of the house that he now shared with Rose and Georgie, the same house in which Anna had once briefly lived after her own parents died. The little girl’s aura seemed to grow brighter at the mention of her former home, and she quizzed David about the house and the village nearby and the changes that had occurred since she had left it. He told her of the war and of the great army marching across Europe, crushing all in its path.

“So you left behind one war, only to find yourself in the midst of another,” she said.

David looked down on the columns of wolves moving purposefully across the valley and the hills. Their numbers seemed to swell with every passing minute, the ranks of black and gray positioning themselves to surround the castle. Like Fletcher before him, David was most disturbed by their order and discipline. It was a fragile thing, he suspected: without the Loups the wolf packs would scatter, fighting and scavenging their way back to their own territories, but for now the Loups had corrupted the natures of the wolves, just as their own natures had been corrupted. They believed themselves to be greater and more advanced than their brothers and sisters who walked on four legs, but in reality they were much worse. They were impure, mutations that were neither human nor animal. David wondered what the minds of the Loups were like as the two sides of their being fought constantly for supremacy. There had been a kind of madness in Leroi’s eyes, of that much David was certain.

“Jonathan will not surrender to them,” said Anna. “They cannot gain entry to the castle. They should simply disperse, but they won’t. What are they waiting for?”

“An opportunity,” said David. “Perhaps Leroi and his Loups have a plan, or maybe they’re just hoping the king will make a mistake, but they can’t turn back now. They will never assemble another army like this, and they won’t be allowed to survive if they fail.”

The door of David’s bedroom opened, and Duncan, the Captain of the Guard, entered. David closed the window immediately, just in case the Captain might spot Anna on the balcony.

“The king wishes to see you,” he said.

David nodded. Even though he was safe within the castle walls, and surrounded by armed men, he first removed his sword and belt from where they hung on a bedpost, then cinched the belt around his waist. Doing this had become a routine with him, and now he did not feel properly dressed without the sword by his side. He was especially aware of his need for it after his foray into the lair of the Crooked Man. Down there in the trickster’s chambers of pain and torture, he had realized how vulnerable he was without a weapon. David also knew that the Crooked Man was bound to notice that Anna was missing and was sure to come looking for her when he did. It would not take him long to work out that David was somehow involved, and the boy did not want to face the Crooked Man’s anger without the sword to hand.

The captain did not object to the sword. In fact, he told David to bring all of his belongings with him. “You will not be returning to this room,” he said.

It was all that David could do not to glance at the window behind which Anna was hidden.

“Why?” he asked.

“That’s for the king to tell you,” said Duncan. “We came for you earlier, but you were not to be found.”

“I went for a walk,” said David.

“You were told to remain here.”

“I heard the wolves and wanted to find out what was going on. But everybody seemed to be rushing around, so I came back here.”

“You need not fear them,” said the captain. “These walls have never been breached, and no pack of animals is going to do what an army of men could not. Come, now. The king is waiting.”

David packed his bag, added the clothing he had found in the Crooked Man’s room, and followed the captain down to the throne room, casting one last look back at the window. Through the glass, he thought he could still see Anna’s light shining faintly.

In the woods behind the wolves’ lines, a flurry of snow shot into the air, followed by clumps of dirt and grass. A hole appeared, and from it emerged the Crooked Man. He held one of his curved blades at the ready, for this was a dangerous business. There was no way that he could strike a bargain with the wolves. Their leaders, the Loups, were aware of the Crooked Man’s power and trusted him just as little as he trusted them. He had also been responsible for the deaths of too many of their number for them to forgive him so easily, or even to let him live long enough to plead for his life if one of the packs trapped him. Silently, he advanced until he saw a line of figures before him, all of them dressed in army uniforms scavenged from the bodies of dead soldiers. Some were smoking pipes while they stood over a map of the castle that had been drawn in the snow before them, trying to work out some way to gain entry. Already scouts had been dispatched to get close to the castle walls in order to discover if there were any cracks or fissures, any unguarded holes or portals, that might be of use to them. The gray wolves had been used as decoys and had died almost as soon as they came within reach of the defenders’ arrows. The white wolves were harder to see, and although some of their number had also died, a few were able to approach close enough to the walls to conduct a minute examination, sniffing and digging in an effort to find a way through. Those that had survived to report back confirmed that the castle was as impregnable as it appeared to be.

The Crooked Man was close enough to hear the voices of the Loups and to smell the stink of their fur. Foolish, vain creatures, he thought. You may dress like men, and take on their manners and airs, but you will always stink like beasts and you will always be animals pretending to be what you are not. The Crooked Man hated them and hated Jonathan for conjuring them into being through the power of his imagination, creating his own version of the tale of the little girl in the red, hooded robe in order to give birth to them. The Crooked Man had watched with alarm as the wolves began to transform: slowly at first, their growls and snarls sometimes forming what might have been words, their front paws lifting into the air as they tried to walk like men. In the beginning it had seemed almost amusing to him, but then their faces had begun to change, and their intelligence, already quick and alert, had grown sharper yet. He had tried to get Jonathan to order a cull of the wolves throughout the land, but the king had acted too late. The first party of soldiers that he sent out to kill them were themselves slaughtered, and the villagers were too afraid of this new threat to do more than build higher walls around their settlements and lock their doors and windows at night. Now it had come to this: an army of wolves, led by creatures who were half man, half beast, intent upon seizing the kingdom for themselves.

“Come then,” the Crooked Man whispered to himself. “If you want the king, take him. I am done with him.”

The Crooked Man retreated, circling the generals, until he came to a she-wolf who was acting as a lookout. He made sure to stay downwind of her, judging his approach from the direction in which the lighter flakes of snow were blowing off the ground. He was almost upon her when she registered his presence, but by then her fate was sealed. The Crooked Man leaped, his blade already beginning its downward movement. As soon as he landed on the wolf, the knife sliced through her fur and deep into the flesh beneath, the Crooked Man’s long fingers closing around her muzzle and snapping it tightly closed so that she could not cry out, not yet.

He could have killed her, of course, and taken her snout for his collection, but he did not. Instead, he cut her so deeply that she collapsed upon the ground and the snow around her grew red with her blood. He released his grip on her muzzle, and the wolf began to yelp and howl, alerting the rest of the pack to her distress. This was the dangerous part, the Crooked Man knew, riskier even than tackling the big she-wolf to begin with. He wanted them to see him, but not to get close enough to catch him. Suddenly, four massive grays appeared on the brow of a hill and howled a warning to the rest. Behind them came one of the despised Loups, dressed in all of the military finery he could muster: a bright red jacket with gold braid and buttons, and white trousers only partly stained by the blood of their previous owner. He wore a long saber on a black leather belt, and he was already drawing it as he stood and looked down upon the dying wolf and the being responsible for her pain.

It was Leroi, the beast who would be king, the most hated and feared of the Loups. The Crooked Man paused, tempted by the nearness of his greatest enemy. Although he was very ancient, and weakened by the dying of Anna’s light and the slow slipping away of the grains of his life, the Crooked Man was still fast and strong. He felt certain that he could kill the four grays, leaving Leroi with only a captured sword with which to defend himself. If the Crooked Man killed Leroi, then the wolves would disperse, for he held their army together with the force of his will. Even the other Loups were not as advanced as he was, and they could be hunted down in time by the forces of the new king.

The new king! The reminder of what he had come to do brought the Crooked Man to his senses, even as more wolves and Loups appeared behind Leroi and a patrol of whites began to creep in from the south. For a moment, all was still as the wolves regarded their most despised foe standing over the dying she-wolf. Then, with a cry of triumph, the Crooked Man waved his bloody blade in the air and ran. Instantly, the wolves followed, pouring through the trees, their eyes bright with the thrill of the chase. One white wolf, sleeker and faster than the rest, separated itself from the pack, trying to cut off the Crooked Man’s escape. The ground sloped down to where the Crooked Man was running, so that the wolf was about ten feet above him when its hind legs bent and it catapulted itself into the air, its fangs bared to tear out its quarry’s throat. But the Crooked Man was too wily for it, and as it jumped he spun in a neat circle, his blade held high above his head, and sliced open the wolf from below. It fell dead at his feet, and the Crooked Man ran on. Thirty feet, now twenty, now ten. Ahead of him he could see the tunnel entrance, marked by earth and dirty snow. He was almost upon it when he saw a flash of red to his left and heard the swish of a sword slicing through the air. He raised his own blade just in time to block Leroi’s saber, but the Loup was stronger than he had expected and the Crooked Man stumbled slightly, almost falling upon the ground. Had he done so all would have ended quickly, for Leroi was already preparing to deliver the death blow. Instead, the blade cut through the Crooked Man’s garments, barely missing the arm beneath, but the Crooked Man pretended that a grave injury had been inflicted. He dropped his blade and staggered backward, his left hand clutched to the imaginary wound on his right arm. The wolves surrounded him now, watching the two combatants, howling their support for Leroi, willing him to finish the job. Leroi raised his head and snarled once, and all of the wolves fell quiet.

“You have made a fatal error,” said Leroi. “You should have stayed behind the castle walls. We will breach them, in time, but you might have lived a little longer had you remained within their confines.”

The Crooked Man laughed in Leroi’s face, which was now, except for some unruly hairs and a slight snout, almost human in appearance.

“No, it is you who are mistaken,” he said. “Look at you. You are neither man nor beast, but some pathetic creature who is less than both. You hate what you are and want to be what you cannot truly become. Your appearance may change, and you may wear all the fine clothes that you can steal from the bodies of your victims, but you will still be a wolf inside. Even then, what do you think will happen once your outer transformation is complete, when you start to resemble fully what once you hunted? You will look like a man, and the pack will no longer recognize you as its own. What you most desire is the very thing that will doom you, for they will tear you apart and you will die in their jaws as others have died in yours. Until then, half-breed, I bid you…farewell!”

And with that, he disappeared feet first into the mouth of the tunnel and was gone. It took Leroi a second or two to realize what had happened. He opened his mouth to howl in rage, but the sound that emerged was a kind of strangled cough. It was as the Crooked Man had said: Leroi’s transformation was almost complete, and his wolf voice was now being replaced by the voice of a man. To hide his surprise at the loss of his howl, Leroi gestured at two of his scouts, indicating that they should proceed toward the tunnel mouth. They sniffed warily at the disturbed earth, then one swiftly poked its head inside, quickly pulling it back out in case the Crooked Man was waiting below. When nothing happened, it tried again, lingering longer. It sniffed the air in the tunnel. The Crooked Man’s scent was present, but it was already growing fainter. He was running away from them.

Leroi got down on one knee and examined the hole, then looked toward the hills behind which the castle lay. He considered his options. Despite his bluster, it was looking less and less likely that they would be able to find a way through the castle walls. If they did not attack soon, his wolf army would grow restless and hungrier than it already was. Rival packs would turn on one another. There would be fighting, and cannibalization of the weak. In their rage, they would rebel against Leroi and his fellow Loups. No, he needed to make a move, and make it quickly. If he could secure the castle, then his army could feed on its defenders while he and his Loups set about making plans for a new order. Perhaps the Crooked Man had simply overestimated his own abilities in using the tunnel to leave the castle and had taken an unnecessary risk in the hope of killing some wolves, maybe even Leroi himself. Whatever the reason, Leroi had been given the chance he had almost despaired of receiving. The tunnel was narrow, wide enough for only one Loup or wolf at a time. Still, it would allow a small force to enter the castle, and if they could get to the castle gates and open them from within, then the defenders would quickly be overwhelmed.

Leroi turned to one of his lieutenants. “Send skirmishers to the castle to distract the troops on the walls,” he ordered. “Begin moving the main forces forward, and bring my best grays to me. Let the attack commence!”

XXXI

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 771