“Here,” said Conrad, holding out the staff to Andrew.
The hermit shrank away. “No, no,” he wailed. “I do not want to touch it. I killed a woman with it.”
“Not a woman. A werewolf. Here, take it. Hold fast to it. You’ll never have another staff quite like it.”
He thrust it out forcefully at Andrew and the hermit took it. He thumped it on the ground.
“I shall always remember,” he pleaded.
“Good thing to remember,” Conrad said. “A blow struck for our Lord.”
Duncan walked out to the edge of the firelight, stood over the wailing man with the broken back, then slowly knelt beside him. The man was old. His arms and legs were thin as straws, his knees and elbows knobs. His ribs showed through his skin. His snow-white hair hung down to curl up at his neck and was plastered with sweat across his forehead. He looked at Duncan with fear and hatred in his shining eyes.
“Tell me,” said Duncan, “who spoke out of the dark.”
The man’s lips pulled back to reveal his yellowed teeth. He snarled and spat.
Duncan reached out to grab him by the shoulder and he flinched away. He opened his mouth and screamed, his head arched high, the cords in his neck standing out like ropes. White, foamy spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth and he screamed and moaned and clawed feebly at the ground to pull himself away. He writhed in agony.
A hand came down and grasped Duncan by the shoulder, hauled him to his feet.
“Here, let me,” said Conrad.
His club came down and there was the sickening sound of a crunching skull. The man crumpled and lay still.
Duncan turned to Conrad angrily. “You shouldn’t have done that. I told you not to.”
“When you kill snakes,” said Conrad, “you kill them. You do not coddle them.”
“But there was a question.”
“You asked the question and you got no answer.”
“But he might have answered.”
Conrad shook his head. “Not that one. He was too afraid of you.” And that was true, thought Duncan. The werewolf had been beside itself with fear. It had screamed and tried to claw itself away. It had writhed in agony.
Conrad touched him on the arm. “Let’s go back to the fire. I have to see how Beauty is.”
“She was limping. That was all. Meg saved her.”
“Yes, I saw,” said Conrad.
“How is Tiny?”
“A slit ear. A tooth mark here and there. He’ll be all right. Just a little sore.”
By the time they got back to the fire Andrew had piled on more wood, and the flames were leaping high. Andrew and Meg were standing side by side. Conrad went off to see about Beauty.
“That was a brave thing you did,” Duncan told Meg. “Running out there to help Beauty.”
“I had fire. Werewolves are afraid of fire.”
She bridled at him. “I suppose you wonder why I helped. My being a witch and all. Well, I’ll tell you. A little magic and some mild enchantments, those are all right with me. In my day I’ve done a lot of that. There is nothing wrong with it. Many times it helps. But I told you I had no real evil and I meant that. Werewolves are evil and I cannot abide them. Mean, downright vicious evil. There’s no call for anyone to be that evil.”
“There was a pack of them,” said Duncan. “A lot of them. I never knew that werewolves ran in packs, although perhaps they do. You were telling me about the camp followers who trailed in the wake of the Harriers. Could that be what accounted for so large a pack?”
“It must be that. They must have come swarming in from all over Britain.”
“And you heard the voice?”
She put her arms around herself, hugging tight and shivering.
“You knew the words? You recognized the language?”
“Not the words,” she said, “but the language, yes. A word here and there. It’s a very ancient tongue.”
“How ancient?”
“That I cannot tell you, sir. Not in years or centuries. It goes deep back. Spoken before any human spoke, perhaps before there were such things as humans.”
“Primordial,” he said. “The words of primordial evil.”
“I do not know.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how she recognized the language, but he did not ask the question. There was no need to distress her further. She had been honest in her answers, he was sure, and that was good enough.
Conrad came back. “Beauty is all right,” he said. “Her leg’s a little sore. We came out lucky.”
The clearing was quiet. The humped bodies of the dead werewolves lay at the edge of the outer darkness.
“Perhaps,” said Andrew, “we should bury them.”
“You do not bury werewolves,” Conrad said. “A stake through the heart, perhaps. Besides, we haven’t any shovel.”
“We’ll do nothing,” Duncan said. “We’ll leave them where they are.”
The chapel stood white in the flickering firelight. Duncan looked at the open door. The firelight did not reach deep enough into the interior to show the reversed crucifix and he was glad of that.
“I’ll not sleep a wink this night,” said Andrew.
“You had best,” said Conrad roughly. “Come morning light, we have a long, hard day ahead. Do you think you can find that trail?”
Andrew shook his head in perplexity. “I am not sure. I seem all turned around. Nothing has looked right.”
A wailing scream cut through the night, seeming to come from directly overhead, as if the screamer hung in the darkness over them.
“My God,” yelped Andrew. “Not more. Not any more tonight.” The scream came again, a moan and whimper in it. It was the sort of sound that squeezed the heart and made the blood run cold.
A calm voice spoke to them from just inside the firelit zone. “You have no reason to fear,” it said. “That is only Nan, the banshee.”
Duncan spun around to face the one who spoke. For a moment he did not recognize him. A little man with a cap that drooped, a pair of spindly legs, ears that were oversized.
“Snoopy,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Hunting you,” said Snoopy. “We’ve been hunting you for hours. Ever since Ghost told us he had lost track of you.”
Ghost came fluttering down and beside him another figure, its darkness in contrast to the white of Ghost.
“It was pure happenstance,” said Ghost, “that I ran into them.”
“It was much more than happenstance,” said Snoopy, “and you wouldn’t understand. We have no time to explain.”
Ghost floated lower until his white robe swept the ground. Nan, the banshee, settled down, hunched herself along the ground toward the fire. She was repulsive. Her deep-set eyes glittered at them from beneath her shaggy brows. Thick black hair flowed down her back almost to her waist. Her face was thin and hard.
“Faith,” she said, “and you were hidden well. It took us long to find you.”
“Madam,” said Duncan, “we were in no wise hiding. We simply reached here and camped the night.”
“And a fine place you picked,” said Snoopy, walking up to them. “You know you cannot stay here.”
“We intend to,” Conrad told him. “We fought off a pack of werewolves. We can handle whatever else comes.”
“We have been looking for you, goblin,” said Andrew. “Why were you not at the church, where you said you’d be?”
“I’ve been out spreading word that you’ll need some help. And the way you’ve been fumbling around, you will need all the help that we can give.”
“You found little help,” Andrew said snappishly. “One beaten-up old banshee.”
“I’ll have you know, you twerp,” said Nan, the banshee, “that I can give you ace and spades and beat you at hands-down.”
“There’ll be others later on,” said Snoopy calmly. “They’ll be there when you need them most. And you know you can’t stay here. No matter what you say, in your ignorance and arrogance, we have to get you somewhere else.”
“We know,” said Duncan, “that this is a pagan shrine.”
“More than that,” Snoopy told him. “Much more than that. A place that was sacred to Evil before there were any pagans who might worship Evil. Here, in the days of the first beginning, gathered beings that would shrivel up your tiny souls were you to catch even the smallest glimpse of them. You desecrate the ground. You befoul the place. They will not suffer that you stay here. The werewolves were the first. There will be others, not so easily beaten off as werewolves.”
“But there is the chapel…”
“They suffered the chapel to be built. They watched it being built by arrogant and misunderstanding men, by stupid churchmen who should have known far better. They lurked in the shades and watched it going up and they bided their time and when that time came …”