for stealth or subtlety. Its path was marked with scraps of blood, hair, and bone. Its evil was written in the corpses of man and beast alike. It had not made itself difficult to follow.
We haven’t lost it, he thought.
We aren’t following it.
It’s leading us.
Josef looked back and forth, but the woods around them had become impenetrable with the evening shadows. He called out, “Brother Heinrich!”
His mount pinned its ears back and let out a cry of pure terror. Suddenly all the hoses were spooking, and Josef’s mount reared up. With both hands on his crossbow, Josef couldn’t grab the reins or the saddle to keep himself and the crossbow from tumbling backward. Before he fell, his horse whipped its head to the side, showing a foaming mouth and one huge eye, white with terror.
Josef slammed into the ground, momentarily stunned. He heard a growl that seemed to come from everywhere at once, and he realized, It’s here.
He fumbled for his fallen crossbow as, off to his right, he heard a man scream. Around him, the knights gained control of their horses, doing their best to turn outward in the confined space. Josef’s own horse was lost past Heinrich on the narrow game trail.
On Heinrich’s face was a look of surprise that even his normally stony expression could not hide. He hadn’t expected the thing to attack.
Josef found his crossbow and brought it up to face the greatest sound of chaos, but one of his brothers’ mounts was in the way. He saw the hint of something large moving impossibly fast; then the rider in front of Josef tumbled off his mount to fall at Josef’s feet, a large part of his throat gone.
The horse reared at something, and that something howled—a hellish noise followed by a ripping sound that left the horse collapsing to its knees. Josef backed up, looking for a target as the horse fell dead in a pool of spreading gore.
It had moved behind him. Josef spun around at the sound of growling in time to have the body of another rider slam down on top of him. Josef fell under his groaning comrade and screamed at the heavens, “Where is it? Where is it?”
He rolled out from under his brother and came face-to-face with the answer.
A head taller than any of Heinrich’s men, it bore a head twice the size any wolf’s had a right to be. Its muscles rippled under gore-stained blond fur, and it stood on legs crooked like a wolf’s. But it had hands—demonic clawed hands that flexed and reached for Josef as it leapt at him.
With a brief plea to God, he brought the crossbow to bear on the approaching monster. He exhaled and took the extra second to aim, even though every muscle in his body screamed at him to fire now!
He pulled the trigger after aiming square at one of the creature’s glaring blue eyes, knowing he only had the one chance to save himself and his comrades. A bolt though the brain would finish this thing once and for all.
But nothing happened.
He only had a fraction of a second to realize that the bowstring had snapped in the fall from his horse. The bolt rested against the block, inert and useless.
Then the monster was on him, slamming him to the ground, tearing at his armor. The weight of it slammed into his lower body, pressing down on his legs as it buried its muzzle in his stomach. He screamed as if the beast had already torn into his entrails, even though a part of his brain knew that it was still tearing through his mail and the padding underneath.
That cleared his head of panic for a moment. He had to find a weapon, an attack, anything. He whipped his head around, looking at a world blurred by pain and tears. Praying to God for—
The crossbow bolt.
The dead crossbow had fallen next to him, the unfired silver-tipped bolt still nocked. He reached a gauntleted hand toward it as the monster found his flesh under the mail, and Josef screamed as he felt its teeth sink into skin and muscle. Every fiber of his being tried to pull away, his body ripping itself away from the insult as the creature lifted him, raising him partway off the ground. The beast’s muzzle wrinkled as blood flowed, darkening its fur. Even through the pain, Josef felt the heat of its fetid breath against his skin.