THE RISE OF THE WEREWOLF

THE RISE OF THE WEREWOLF (Fragment)

By Roger Vilar

For days now the fever had been burning through Berseker, the werewolf, making him shiver in his restless sleep. He was in the back of a cave, the king's men had wounded him in an almost deadly way. That's why each hour he found himself weaker. Once should he start to drink water from a dirty swamp in the grotto the end would come swiftly, he knew, but all the same he had almost taken that first lethal swallow. Berseker felt that he was dying of thirst rather than fever.

In his dreams Berseker drank human blood, but when he woke up, he wanted at least the blood of a rat, but even that was not within his reach. The werewolf suffered nightmares very often, in these he saw again that dreadful night when the king's men almost killed him. The snow fell and the horns of war rang; ahooo ... ahooooooooo ... ahooooooooooooo ..., they sounded. "To horse, to horse, to horse", shouted the Lord Hunter Leabhar Ghabhala.

Berseker saw two men on a rock, they blocked him to escape. The werewolf jumped on them, but the king's guards ran off through the snow, in opposite directions. He chased one, his breath puffing out his nose, but he could never reach the soldier. After about a hundred yards Berseker realized that he had fallen down in an ambush. From both sides several soldiers pointed to him with bows and arrows; but not all were men.

Among the enemies was a ghostly being, he looked like a bear. The beast was half dead, pale, and rotting, its fur and skin all sloughed off and its right leg burned to the bone, yet still it attack on. Only his eyes seem to live. Bright red. They shone like frozen suns. Berseker charged against the bear, the huge and horrible animal roared and with one claw he tore off part of the skin of the werewolf's snout. However, Berseker was very strong, he bit the infernal bear in the rotten neck, he felt like the great vertebrae were broken.

The bear fell down to the ground, under the light of the full moon. The king's men were amazed, no one had ever defeated their devilish bear. Berseker thought he had won the battle, but at that moment the Lord Hunter appeared on. He wielded a long sword shining all orange and red as if it were made of fire. In this moment the full moon was vanishing, a pale gray light on top of the mountains displayed the dawn. The sun was rising quickly. Touched by the dawn's first light the werewolf turned into a man.

Leabhar Ghabhala and his soldiers saw before them a thin, weak young man with very white skin. He was the son of Lord Hrolfred, Earl of Arne. This aristocratic condition did not matter to the Lord Hunter, and wounded Berseker several times. At that moment something moved among the trees. A flash of gray, quick-glimpsed and gone again, it was enough for the Lord Hunter to know that a pack of wolves was besieged him and his soldiers.

He stopped hurting Berseker, and Lord Hrolfred's son are taken advantage of the distraction of his enemies to flee. Miller went into the forest, dying, and knew nothing about what happened between the Lord Hunter and the gray beasts. He only heard them howl very far away. Berseker was bleeding, stumbled over a stone, he fell down, rolled on like a cut tree, and went to the bottom of a cave. There he fainted. His arms bore slashes where he had tried to block the blades, and red blood still trickled from the stab wounds that covered his chest and back like tongueless mouths.

Berseker was dying for many days. However, one night he intuited that his weakness would be healed up. He had sensed that the moon was growing and growing hour by hour. He crawled to a flat rock. Above him was a hole, no more than a crack about eight inches wide. In his restless dreams he knew that Lord Hunter Leabhar Ghabhala would not be safe for long. The rains had fallen on the mountains like the wrath of God Almighty. He felt it, humid air, gushing water sound in a distance. The reawakening of the beast inside Berseker was coming.

The wind tearing over the tree tops was terrible, the lightning lit the skies. No such rain had ever been known. The entire mountain shook and trembled. It almost seemed that the world would be destroyed while the streams of water fell in the ravines, dragging enormous trunks, stones and mud. Its fury and the noises that the wind made, was affecting Lord Hunter, he thought that the storm was a bad omen. It made him gloomy, silent, morose. The Lord Hunter supposed the werewolf had died, but the wrath of the heavens made him doubt this.

Rain and hail had been hitting the castles and the farms. After this came a great calm, the day was very bright, and the night without clouds. The full moon rose over the trees, and its rays entered through the cave hole. At the bottom, almost dead, Berseker felt the touch of silver rays on his bruised skin. Like he had received something magical, a powerful inner spiritual energy acted through him, and he was quickly healed his wounds. Then, he came back to be a beast. The desire for vengeance gave him an unlimited strength. Berseker howled in a hideous way. In his castle Leabhar Ghabhala knew that this wicked sound did not come out of the throats of common wolves, this howling was that of the werewolf. The Lord Hunter woke up his soldiers, they had to go out again into the dark night and they were to kill the beast once and for all.

Berseker, turned into an unstoppable monster, left the cave. He listened attentively to the mysterious noises of the night. Across the darkening landscape the sound of a distant barking had floated on the wind. Surely Lord Hunter Leabhar Ghabala was advancing towards Berseker accompanied by his soldiers and his pack of hounds. The werewolf was not scared. The scent of Leabhar Ghabhala woke the hunger in him. The werewolf sniffed the air again, turning, and then he was off, bounding along the forest with jaws half-parted. Berseker wanted to climb some rock to watch his enemies better. He soon found a hill, this one was of steep slopes, but he flew sure-footed over stones and roots and rotting leaves, up the slope and through the trees. The scent of the hated Lord Hunter pulled him onward, even faster.

#werewolf #horror #monsters #Literature #danger #nightmares #fear