Shadow of the Wolf by Newton Webb
A Medieval Folk Horror Short Story: A starving village. A forbidden sacrifice. A savage monster.
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Shadow of the Wolf
By Newton Webb
Chapter One
Archenfield, Welsh Marches, 1182
“I thought Templars had horses.” Barnabus trudged along the dirt track Angel had graciously described as a road.
Rain slid down his hood and found the back of his neck. The path beneath his feet was scored by cartwheels and churned by hooves. The rain had turned it into a sucking slurry that his pudgy legs had to battle against. Beyond the ditches, the oppressive forest canopy pressed close, its branches netting the grey sky.
“We do. Granted to brothers of the Temple when they swear to the Rule.” Angel was unaffected by the mud, crossing the ruts with a relentless stride. The leather-covered shield on his back made his already massive frame look larger.
“Then why are we walking?”
“I sold Justice.”
Barnabus stopped. “Sold?” he squeaked.
Angel didn’t stop. He never seemed to stop. His white mantle hung dark with rain over his mail. The red cross upon it looked almost black in the wet.
“I paid the restitution owed, and the bishop’s clerk persuaded the sheriff to accept penance in place of rope.”
Barnabus stared at the broad back ahead of him. “That was ill considered.”
Angel looked over his shoulder. He was a huge man, scarred across one cheek, with close cropped hair. His eyes held the terrible peace of a man who had never doubted himself. “The blessed virgin whispered to me in my dreams. She said I would find a fallen man who would become my right hand in the battle against sin.” He motioned for them to continue walking. “I paid your debt to the sheriff. God be praised.”
Barnabus winced. Just hours before, a large Saxon mercenary called Alfric had been hanged.
You got the wrong convict.
“This endless walking could be seen as worse torture than the rope.” Barnabus watched as Angel strode through a broad puddle and shook his head, walking around it.
Angel sounded almost happy. “It is good for your soul.” The grim faced brother found pleasure in the most hateful of activities.
Barnabus resumed his miserable trudge. His legs ached. The mud sucked at his shoes with every step. His cloak was good wool, but no wool, even when treated with tallow, stayed good after a day under English rain. “I do think I could do more good in a monastery. I’m a clerk, not a soldier.”
“When the Lord calls, we obey.”
Barnabus sighed. “See, are you sure that is what your dream meant? I’ve had a few dreams about virgins and if I were to…”
“It was a vision.” Angel’s voice dropped to a growl. “Do you doubt my faith?”
Barnabus touched the sword at his belt. It was the length of his forearm, plain, single edged, but mostly heavy. It bruised his leg where it bashed against his thigh. Angel had given it to him at the prison gate, along with a dagger and a cloak.
They were travelling west under letters from the bishop’s men into the borderland of Archenfield. Another of Angel’s blessed visions had sent them west, cold, wet and hungry, away from civilisation and into the depths of the forest.
A wolf howled somewhere beyond the trees. Barnabus reached for the hilt of his sword. “They don’t come near the king’s road, do they?”
“Only if starving.”
“Wonderful.” Barnabus looked down at his own soft belly beneath the soaked wool. “Then I hope they are eating better than I am.”
The road bent between two banks of thorn hedge. The land dipped, and through the rain Barnabus saw a handful of lights below. A wooden church tower stood black against the evening sky. Around it crouched a scattering of timber houses, byres, and thatched roofs. A stream ran beyond them, swollen by rain, and beside it stood the broken wheel of a mill.
The village was enclosed by a moss covered palisade of rotting stakes.
Pottage, let there be pottage.
“Praise God,” Barnabus muttered.
Angel glanced back. “That’s the spirit.”
For shelter, not in general.
Chapter Two
They reached the gate as dusk thickened into dark.
“No entry after sunset,” a voice called from behind the palisade.
Angel walked to the gate and stopped close enough for the men behind it to step back.
“I am Brother Angel of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. This man is Barnabus, a penitent under ecclesiastical correction. We travel under the bishop’s seal. Open.”
Penitent? Thanks for that.
Barnabus raised his hand. “Hello.”
Two guards stood beyond the gate with spears. One wore a rusted iron cap, the other relied on the dubious protection of boiled leather. The first guard had a hare’s foot tied beneath the sleeve of his tunic. Barnabus could sympathise. They looked wet, cold, and utterly miserable.
“No entry,” said the guard with the hare’s foot. “Not while the moon is full.”
Brother Angel looked at the charm on the man’s wrist. “You deny shelter to Christian travellers while wearing heathen charms.”
“It’s for luck.” The guard looked at his comrade, who shrugged back at him.
“There is no luck, only the light of the Lord.”
The two guards edged closer to each other. The second one spoke up. “Brother, you should pass on. This village isn’t for you.”
Angel stepped closer. “Our Lady herself guided me to this village. God’s law surpasses the rule of man. Open the gate, or I will open it for you.”
Silence met the threat. Barnabus wished one of the guards would speak up. He had ambitions involving a hearth, a bench, and a bowl of hot food.
Angel’s voice dropped. “I won’t repeat myself.”
The man with the hare’s foot looked towards the village. Nobody came to help them.
“I wouldn’t want to be the person who had to fix the gate after my friend here smashed his way through.” Barnabus gave them an apologetic look.
They looked at each other and lifted the bar, opening the gate.
The village smelled of smoke, pig dung, and wet straw. Nobody was outside in the street. A woman pulled a child away from a shutter. A dog barked somewhere in the dark.
The alehouse stood near the churchyard wall. Its sign showed half a boar. Rain and age had gnawed away most of the paint. Brother Angel struck the door with his fist.
A bolt scraped and the host opened the door a crack.
Angel nodded to him and walked straight into the common room, which promptly fell silent.
Barnabus stepped inside behind him and nearly sagged with relief. Heat struck his face and smoke curled under the beams. At that moment, he didn’t care about the men and women staring at the red cross on Angel’s mantle, wooden cups in their hands.
Then they stared at his sword, strapped to his belt.
Barnabus didn’t care. His eyes had already found a large cauldron simmering over the hearth.
Angel chose a table near it. Barnabus, for once in complete agreement, sat with him.
“Pottage,” Angel called to the host, motioning to the table. “Bread. Ale. Water for the penitent.”
“Perhaps you could address me as Barnabus, or preferably, your clerk,” Barnabus muttered.
“Be proud of your title. You are redeeming your soul.”
Angel placed coins on the table.
The host’s expression softened at the sight of coins. “I’ll bring it over for you.”
Barnabus shut his eyes.
Maybe the Blessed Virgin was looking over them.
In the corner, a drunken priest with red eyes sat with both hands around a cup of ale. His dark robe was patched at the elbows, his tonsure a stubbly mess, and he was struggling to keep his head up.
Brother Angel studied him. “What fear shuts a village gate when Christians call?”
The priest lifted his head. “These people don’t fear anything. Not the King. Not God.”
The host stiffened. “Father Osric has had too much ale.”
Father Osric laughed. “Father Osric wants much more ale.”
Brother Angel crossed the room and sat opposite him. The bench groaned beneath his weight.
“It is your job to guide your flock to the light of the Lord.”
The priest looked at the red cross on Angel’s mantle. “My flock?”
Angel’s jaw tightened. “Priest, you speak as someone who has turned from the light.”
“I do my bit.” The priest looked around the room. Several villagers looked away. “But it isn’t the Lord they pray to.”
The host slammed a cup down. “Enough.”
“Ask Leofric where they kneel,” Father Osric said.
A young woman with stained sleeves brought over steaming bowls of pottage, ale for Angel, and water for Barnabus.
Barnabus lifted his spoon, smiling gratefully at her. The pottage was thick with beans and barley. There was even a scrap of mutton floating near the edge.
“What does he mean?” Angel had lost all interest in food. “You speak of heresy, Father.”
A thickset man rose from a table near the wall. His beard was grey, his face was weathered, and a reeve’s staff leaned against his bench.
“He means nothing,” the man said. “Just a drunk, babbling priest.”
Father Osric pointed at him. “Leofric has led them to the stone since his father died.”
“We feed you as an act of charity.” The reeve’s face darkened. “Hold your tongue, priest.”
Angel stood. “By warrant of the bishop, and by the duty of every Christian soul in this room, you will answer.”
Leofric took his staff. Benches scraped across the floor as men shifted their hands towards knives, axes, and belt knives.
Barnabus dipped his spoon into the stew and blew on it while the alehouse erupted.
Angel looked at the reeve. “I asked a question and I will get an answer. What stone?”
Leofric spat into the rushes. “You’ve no authority here.”
Angel’s hand rested on the cross shaped hilt at his belt. “I won’t ask again.”
“Who are you to lecture us? Where was your Temple when the foresters took our pigs? Where was your bishop when the sheriff’s men fined us for deadwood? Where was Christ when my brother lost his hand for a snared deer while his children starved?” Leofric stared at him.
Angel was completely still.
Behind Leofric, a villager bit his tongue, clawing at his arms. He looked at Leofric, then at Angel.
The barmaid watched him. “Jakob… Come back with me, I’ll pour you a jug of ale.”
He looked at the barmaid, then, when Leofric reached for him, he broke ranks and ran behind Angel. The shouting jolted Barnabus’s hand, and his pottage slopped across the table.
“Get back here, Jakob!” The reeve’s face reddened with rage, and he drew his dagger.
Angel’s blade sang out, gleaming in the firelight, and he set himself between Jakob and the room. “Perhaps you will tell me, Jakob.”
Barnabus refilled his spoon and blew harder on it. He stared at the food, trying to ignore the rapidly collapsing situation.
“I drew the devil’s straw!” Jakob’s voice broke. “They took my baby, my little Ethrel, to the stone.”
“How long ago?” Angel growled.
“Just before nightfall, but the beast won’t come until the moon is at its height.”
“Then the child may yet live.” Angel turned to Jakob. “Take me to this stone. I would see what manner of beast compels a village to lose its faith.”
Jakob nodded.
Father Osric began to weep into his cup.
“We move to retrieve your child. Barnabus, with me.”
Barnabus took one lingering look at the pottage and then swallowed the spoonful, stepping up regretfully.
Leofric lowered the dagger. He whispered to another villager, who disappeared out the back of the alehouse. Then he smiled at Angel. “Be careful, Templar, the woods are very dark.”
Angel’s eyes gleamed as he stared at the reeve. “My faith shines brighter.”
Barnabus slid past Angel with Jakob through the door, as the Templar remained facing the villagers.
“Quick, I can show you the old mill path.” Jakob paused. “Thank you, Templar. I prayed, I did, but I never expected a knight to answer.”
Angel backed out after them. He removed the leather cover from his shield, tossing it to Barnabus to carry. “Fear not, Jakob. I now know why my dreams brought me here.”
Barnabus looked back through the open door. The villagers watched them in silence. Not one of them looked ashamed.
Barnabus remained silent as he turned away from them.
He’d burnt his tongue on the pottage.
Chapter Three
An owl hooted as they descended into the night. The moon glimmered down upon them as Jakob led them past the churchyard. The church itself was a mean little building of rotting timbers, with a small bell hanging beneath a squat shelter. Its door was marked with a cross. Beneath the cross, someone had nailed a strip of wolf skin.
Angel stopped before it.
Father Osric had followed them from the alehouse. Now he made the sign of the cross with shaking fingers.
“I tore that down twice,” the priest said. “It always returns by morning.”
Angel ripped the strip from the door and threw it into the mud. “Ring the bell. Let the people know that God’s law has returned to the village.”
“They won’t come.”
Angel narrowed his eyes. “Shepherd your flock, priest. I will do the rest.”
Jakob took them through the dense forest. They passed the broken mill. Its wheel had collapsed into the swollen stream. Beyond it, a narrow path cut through the trees.
They could hear chanting in the distance.
“Go back to the church, Jakob.” Angel drew his sword and raised his shield. “We’ll find your child.”
“I can help.” The man’s voice shook as he spoke.
“Help the priest. Help him find his faith and join him in prayer.”
Barnabus drew his sword and held it forward. “Don’t worry, Angel. I’ll escort him to the church. He’ll be safe with me.”
“A noble thought, but you’ll be needed to hold the child if I have to wield my sword.”
Damn.
Jakob looked relieved. “Follow this path to the split ash, then west by the ditch. You’ll see the stone in the clearing.”
Behind them, a bell tolled.
For a moment, Angel smiled. “The priest has found his courage.”
Rain pattered through the branches, and thorns caught Barnabus’s cloak. The path was barely a badger track between questing roots and thick brambles. The moon appeared in pale fragments through the moving cloud.
The path bent around a black pool clogged with reeds. Something moved beneath the surface.
The split ash appeared ahead, its trunk cleft by lightning and black down the middle.
Angel turned west.
“Wait,” Barnabus whispered.
Angel stopped.
Barnabus crouched, wincing as his knees protested. He touched the mud. “Look at all the footprints.”
“Yes, a good many men trod this path recently.” Angel gave a grim nod. “Your clerk’s eye is improving. We shall be doing the Lord’s work tonight.”
That wasn’t supposed to be encouragement.
Music reached them through the trees. A discordant hymn in the old tongue. Barnabus recognised enough Welsh to understand the blasphemy. The rhythm was a holy metre he’d chanted a thousand times in the scriptorium, but the Latin had been replaced, subverting the mercy of the Lamb of God and turning it into the justice of the Wolf in the Wood.
Barnabus felt his stomach twist. He didn’t translate for Angel. He could already feel the knight’s anger in the silence beside him. Since Angel had taken him as a penitent, his duties had mostly involved traipsing around the country, dreaming of food and warm beds.
His throat felt dry.
There will be death tonight.
Angel drew his sword. In the dense woods, the sound of steel leaving leather seemed louder than it should.
“Stay behind me.”
“I was planning on it.”
An arrow hissed out of the dark.
Angel seized Barnabus by the cloak and hurled him sideways.
Barnabus crashed into nettles. Pain flared across his face and hands. He gasped, rolled, and came up spitting leaves.
His bladder almost failed him as he saw an arrow quiver in a tree where his chest had been.
Angel was already moving. A man lunged from the brush with a spear. Angel knocked the point aside, stepped in, and opened him from belly to breast. Another arrow was caught on Angel’s shield. Stabbing his sword into the earth, Angel flicked his hand forwards, and his dagger struck the archer in the throat even as he drew his third arrow.
The bodies fell to the ground with wet, heavy sounds.
“They set guards.” Angel pulled his dagger free and wiped it on the dead man’s cloak.
Barnabus looked for dock leaves to salve his stinging face. His hands shook. “You make it sound like a good thing.”
“It is. It means they wanted us dead.”
And that’s good?
When Barnabus didn’t reply, Angel explained anyway. “It confirms their guilt.”
The trees opened into a clearing.
A smoky fire burned in the centre, fed high with dry wood despite the drizzle. A cross burned in the centre of the fire, causing Angel to growl. Around it stood villagers with their hoods pulled low, faces smeared with ash. Some carried church candles. Another, wearing a wolf’s skull as a mask, held Father Osric’s brass aspergillum, a perforated metal ball on a chain.
At the far side of the clearing stood an old stone. Someone had carved a crude cross into it, but older marks showed beneath. At its base lay bones, ribbons, crusts of bread, animal skulls, and a bowl of blood.
On the stone lay a wicker basket.
The basket moved. From it sounded a baby’s cry, lusty and indignant.
Brother Angel stepped into the firelight. His white mantle shone red, gold, and black. He lifted his sword. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, give me the child.”
The singing stopped, and the villagers turned.
The man with the wolf’s skull mask stepped forward. “You should have stayed by the hearth, Templar.”
“I know your voice. You should have stayed in the inn.”
Leofric pulled away his mask and shook his head at Angel. “You’ve seen our village. What choice do you think we had?”
“You chose to surrender your children, your souls, for... what?”
Barnabus watched the villagers spread around them. “Angel, they are...”
“Protection,” the reeve said. “From the King’s men. We follow the wolfshead.”
“An outlaw?” Angel sneered at them.
A bitter laugh moved through the villagers.
“Before the Great Wolf, we starved. The king took,” Leofric said. “The sheriff took. The abbey took. The Wolf protects us.”
“Your Wolf takes children.” Angel stepped forward, his voice booming in the night. “You sacrifice innocents!”
Leofric’s face twisted. “The Wolf takes one child a year. Before him, winter took dozens.”
Angel lowered the sword point towards him. “It ends tonight.”
The reeve looked past Angel to Barnabus. “And you, clerk? Will you die for a child? Or would you like to stand with us?”
Barnabus opened his mouth. No answer came.
“You think my brother would turn against Christ for you?” Angel chuckled, a dark and angry sound. “We are destined to die against a far greater foe than the likes of you.”
Barnabus looked at the basket. The baby cried again. He gripped his sword handle tightly as he made his choice.
No one moved for a heartbeat, the only sound being the constant hissing of the rain as it hit the fire.
Then Leofric shouted, and the villagers charged, a ring closing around the Templar. Angel didn’t give an inch. He split their frantic charge with the disciplined savagery of his blade. A billhook rang against his mail. He broke the wielder’s arm with his pommel. A wood axe bit into his shoulder and stuck in the rings. He cut the man down before the axe fell free. Someone thrust a spear. Angel turned it aside and drove his blade into the man’s chest.
Barnabus stepped back.
A hooded figure slammed into him.
They hit the grass together, and Barnabus lost his sword in the fall. A knife flashed above his face. Barnabus caught the wrist with both hands. The blade shook closer. The breath above him smelled of onions and sour ale.
“Please,” Barnabus gasped.
The figure kneed him in the belly. Air burst from his lungs. The knife point touched his cheek. Barnabus twisted, and they rolled together. Mud filled his mouth. He clawed for his sword, finding instead a stone. Plucking it from the sucking earth, he smashed it against the side of the figure’s head. It crunched with a wet sound. Reaching for his belt, he found his dagger and thrust it into his foe’s stomach.
The body jerked as he stabbed again, then again.
The weight collapsed onto him.
Barnabus shoved it aside and crawled backwards, panting, his clothes soaked in blood and gore, and matted with soil. His sword was gone. His dagger remained in the body.
The hood slipped back. Firelight touched the face beneath, and he saw the serving girl who had smiled at him over the pottage.
Barnabus stopped.
Her mouth opened. Blood ran over her lower lip. Her eyes fixed on him with a look of surprise.
“No,” Barnabus whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Her hand twitched.
Panic took him, and the clearing spun.
He vomited on the ground.
This didn’t feel like justice. He’d been spared the gallows to become something worse than a thief.
The dead woman’s knife lay in the grass beside her hand. Barnabus snatched it up, trying not to look at her face.
A howl sounded from the treeline.
The villagers attacking Angel broke away from him and fled from the altar. He turned to face the new threat as the baby on the altar continued to scream.
The foliage at the far edge of the clearing bent aside.
The Wolf came through, walking on two legs.
It was taller than any man, taller even than Angel. Its body hunched beneath a pelt black as wet earth. Its arms were too long. Its claws trailed through the grass. Its head was lupine, vast and scarred, with yellow eyes that held a very human look of rage.
Around its neck hung an iron collar.
The creature looked at the dead villagers, then at Angel.
Angel made the sign of the cross with his sword. “You who were once man,” he said. “Now beast. I will send you to your judgement.”
The Wolf growled, a low, deep sound that Barnabus could feel in his bones, then charged.
“Saint Michael, defend us.” Angel raised his blade in a salute. “Christ, receive us.”
He raced to meet the monstrous creature.
A sudden, shameful warmth flooded down Barnabus’s leg as he stared at the beast. His lungs tightened. He couldn’t draw breath as the massive thing advanced.
The Wolf struck with one clawed hand. Angel took the blow on his blade and slid back through mud. The second blow smashed into his shield and split it from rim to boss. Angel cast the broken shield aside and cut deep into the creature’s thigh.
Black blood steamed on the grass, and the Wolf howled.
Barnabus stood and watched, frozen to the spot. He wished the rope had taken him.
The Wolf’s claws tore across Angel’s mail and opened it. Blood darkened the white mantle.
Angel drove his sword into the beast’s ribs.
The Wolf cuffed him, sending him sprawling to the ground, the blade still stuck in its body.
For the first time since Barnabus had met him, Angel didn’t rise.
Barnabus looked at the basket and heard the baby’s torment.
The Wolf took a step towards it.
Dammit.
He took a step towards the Wolf, raising the dead woman’s knife high. Its hilt was slick with her blood.
The Wolf turned its head to regard him through its yellow eyes. Then it turned away, dismissing him.
Barnabus screamed a war cry, mostly for his own sake. It was high pitched, cracked, and ugly. But it gave him the strength to charge towards the creature.
The Wolf turned and raised a claw, swinging it at Barnabus.
Barnabus tripped over a corpse, and the claw passed above him.
He struck the ground face first, slid through mud and blood, and collided skull first with the old stone beneath the basket.
Light burst behind his eyes.
The last thing he heard was Angel roaring the name of Christ.
Then the world went black.
Chapter Four
Rain woke Barnabus. He opened one eye and immediately regretted it as the pale morning sun shone down on him. Pain filled his skull, his tongue felt swollen, and his side was bruised. Mud and blood were black beneath his fingernails.
He remembered the serving girl.
Then he remembered the Wolf. He sat bolt upright, too fast, turned to one side, and vomited into the grass.
Angel sat on the old stone. His left arm was bound tight against his chest. His mail was torn. “You live.” His face had been opened from brow to jaw and stitched together with black thread. When he smiled at Barnabus, the attempt at warmth looked grotesque. “Good. Our Lord still has work for you.”
Barnabus flinched.
Morning had come grey and cold. The fire was ash. Bodies lay across the clearing, some covered with cloaks, most not. Father Osric knelt beside the dead, murmuring prayers in a broken voice.
The Wolf’s head stood on a spear at the edge of the clearing, its yellow eyes dull. Stripped of its malice, the thing had shrunk into a pitiful thing, just the grey snout of a mangled hound on a spike.
“What happened?” Barnabus croaked.
“You saved the child.”
Barnabus stared at him. “Me?”
“I’ve never seen anything so heroic. When the child was vulnerable, you charged the beast with no armour and nothing but a knife.”
“I did what?”
“Then it knocked you out, of course, but that doesn’t detract from your courage.” Angel looked up at the pale morning sky. “The Blessed Lady chose well when she guided me to you. You bought me time to retrieve my sword from its belly. I couldn’t have defeated it without you.” He stroked his ruined face. “Though not without cost.”
Dammit.
A thin cry rose from beside the stone.
Barnabus turned his head.
The wicker basket rested near Angel’s feet. Inside, wrapped in a torn cloak, the baby squirmed and wailed.
“Where is Jakob?” Barnabus looked around. “His child needs him.”
“He didn’t make it back to the church.” Angel’s hand curled into a fist. “They hanged him in the trees.”
“The child’s mother?” Barnabus asked.
“Dead. Father Osric says she died in childbirth.”
Barnabus stared at the child. “I am not carrying a baby.”
“Of course not. Father Osric brought a shovel. My arm is wounded. I need you to dig graves.” Angel pointed at the shovel. “Then you can carry the baby. We can’t return to the village, and there is no one left here I would trust with him.”
Dammit.
A long silence hung between them. “I killed a woman last night.” Barnabus turned to the priest. “Father, what was her name?”
“Don’t answer that, priest. Barnabus, you did a good thing last night.” Angel gave him a look that teetered on the verge of being sympathetic. “The burden of Justice weighs heavy, but it is up to strong men to fight for it.”
Wasn’t Justice the horse you sold?
“Kneel when you can.” Angel rose with difficulty and came to his side. “You can confess when Father Osric has finished with the dead.”
Barnabus’s throat tightened. “I don’t want this life.”
“Once you were a thief doomed to Hell.” Angel patted him on the shoulder. “Now, each day you are a step closer to redemption.”
Barnabus closed his eyes.
And if I prefer Hell, you’ll send me there yourself.
Father Osric’s prayers drifted across the clearing.
“Father, you should leave with us, it isn’t safe for you here any more.” Barnabus retrieved the priest’s shovel from the earth with a wrenching sound.
“I’m needed.” His eyes were hooded with sorrow. “The villagers have nothing left now.”
Angel nodded at the priest with agreement.
As the rain came down harder, Ethrel cried louder.
His last thought as he started digging was of the pottage, less than a mile away, beside the hearth of the Wild Boar, in a village that he could never return to.
And the fact that somehow, he now had a baby.
THE END
Tales of the Macabre
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“By warrant of the bishop, and by the duty of every Christian soul in this room, you will answer.”
If he tried that threat in anywhere now except the American Bible Belt, he'd get his ass kicked.