Forest Kingdom Trilogy 3 - Down Among the Dead Men

This should be interesting. He’d never killed a werewolf before. He hoped the creature would put up a good fight; it had been a long time since anyone had been able to challenge his skill. Man or beast, sorcerer or shapeshifter, it made no difference to him. He was a Blademaster, and he was unbeatable. He moved slowly forward, listening carefully all the way, but there was only the silence and the shadows. And then he rounded a corner in the passage, and the werewolf came out of the darkness to meet him.
    It was tall, well over seven feet in height, its shaggy head brushing the roof of the corridor. Its thick fur was matted with sweat and blood, and it smelled rank, like a filthy butcher’s shop. The close-set eyes were yellow as urine, and its wide, grinning mouth was full of heavy pointed teeth. The werewolf snarled at the Dancer, and ropy saliva fell from its mouth. The two of them stood looking at each other for a long moment, and then the Dancer smiled and hefted his sword lightly. The werewolf howled and threw itself at the Dancer’s throat. He sidestepped easily, and his sword cut into and out of the werewolf’s stomach in a single fluid movement. The creature howled again and spun around to claw the Dancer, the horrid wound in its gut healing even as it moved. The Dancer slipped the silver dagger out of the top of his boot and drove it between the werewolf’s ribs with a practiced twist of the wrist. The creature screamed in a human voice and fell limply to the stone floor. Its blood was as red as any human’s. The Dancer stepped carefully back out of range, and watched calmly as the werewolf’s panting breath slowed and stopped.
    And as he watched, the creature’s shape blurred and changed, the fur and fangs and claws slowly melting away, until there before him on the floor lay Jessica Flint, with his knife in her heart.
    The witch called Constance stood in the reception hall. A cold wind was blowing from nowhere, and the shadows were too dark. Four men were tying nooses and throwing the ropes over the supporting beam above them. They paid the witch no attention as they worked, and though their mouths were smiling, their eyes were puzzled and confused.
    The first man to finish took a chair from beside the wall and positioned it carefully under the noose he’d arranged. He stood on the chair, slipped the noose around his neck, and then waited patiently while the others did the same. Finally all four men were standing on chairs with nooses around their necks. They pulled the nooses tight, and without looking at each other, one by one they stepped off the chairs. They hung unmoving from the roof beam, slowly strangling. Their hands hung freely at their sides as they choked.
    Constance stepped around them, giving their twitching feet a wide berth, and ran into the main corridor that led off from the reception hall. A guard was hacking a trader to pieces as he tried to crawl away. A lengthy trail of blood on the corridor floor showed how long the trader had been crawling. Neither the guard nor the trader noticed Constance at all. She walked on through the fort, and everywhere she went it was the same: scenes of madness and murder and grotesque suicide. One man sat in a corner and stabbed himself repeatedly in the gut until his arm became too weak to wield the knife. A woman drowned her two children in a hip bath, and then sat them both in her lap and sang them lullabies. Two men duelled fiercely with axes, hacking at each other again and again with no thought of defending themselves. They gave and took terrible wounds, but would not fall. Blood flew in the freezing air and steamed in wide puddles on the floor. All through the fort it was the same; men, women, and children died horribly for no reason that Constance could see or understand. Their eyes were not sane. It was very cold in the fort, and darkness gathered around the shrinking pools of light.
    Above and beyond all the madness and death Constance could hear a continual dull thudding, like a great bass drumbeat that went on and on. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, and it was a long time before Constance realized she was listening to the beating of a giant heart, immeasurably far away.
    She came at last to the dining hall, where hundreds of men and women and children sat at dinner. She entered the hall warily, but still no one knew that she was there. She moved over to the nearest table, and her face twisted with disgust as she saw