Chapter XLI
XLI
Margeride Mountains
The December nights belonged to the Beast.
Antoine and I felt increasingly alone as we tracked it farther north into the mountains, and then east, toward the border again. We were going in circles.
Most of the hunters had gone. It was not only because of the snow.
The hounds were never the same after the massacre at Saint-Julien.
Many had gone utterly mad, becoming feral killers that had to be put down.
Entire packs had run off to join the wolves in the forests, and now they hunted their former masters through the wilds of Gévaudan.
Fear was a constant guest at the few campfires that remained.
Fear told the hunters of France that even with all their hounds and all their skill, they were no match for the thing they hunted. Fear whispered not that they would fail, but that they would die there in Gévaudan. So gradually, quietly, they left.
The Beast struck again and again, sometimes so close that we heard the screams. Once I was even close enough to feel the dizzying shift of his Incarnation, as though the ground had suddenly canted beneath me.
He devoured travelers on the roads and shepherds in the fields.
He pulled apart farmhouses like a bear breaking into a honeycomb, and in the morning the floors were slick with crimson ice.
I cannot say how many hearts Avstamet ate in those terrifying nights, but he never came for mine.
I do not doubt that he knew we were still there. It was possible that he was wary of us, after our encounter at Saint-Julien.
But it was more likely that he was simply dancing around us, as he had danced around the soldiers, the Church and the hunters for over a year.
There was plenty of prey for him in Gévaudan—whole villages increasingly exposed and isolated as the winter advanced.
He was restoring himself and building his strength.
Perhaps he would come for us when he was ready.
In turn, we did our best to catch him first, but we were never quite fast enough.
I did find a few critical clues about his identity.
Once, close by the site of a fresh slaughter, I found his tracks in the snow.
The Beast’s footprints were filled with plasma, and they changed from one step to the next.
Next to the farm gate, where the corpse of his last victim was not yet frozen into the ground, the impressions were monstrous paw prints, befitting the creature we had seen at Saint-Julien.
Antoine rubbed nervously at the scar on his hand as we began to follow.
The tracks changed as they moved onto the road, until they were human footprints we followed, and then the unmistakable tracks of horseshoes.
On the roadside, I found a single, heavy pewter button.
“He had clothing ready here, and a horse,” I said. My Guest was busy running his supernatural senses over both the trail and the button.
Woodsmoke. Traces of blood. I felt his shrug as a short ripple in my mind. We would find the same anywhere in Gévaudan.
“He rode away? On a horse?” asked Antoine. “My God, we could have passed him on the road and never known.”
“Not quite. Look there.” The horse’s tracks left the road not far from us, disappearing into the woods. We followed them but lost the trail after hours of fruitless searching; whoever the Beast’s host was, he knew how to disappear in the wilds.
“How?” demanded Antoine. He kicked at the snowpack in frustration. “How does he elude us every time? Is there any point anymore, Sebastian? Are we simply to wait for him to come and take us in our beds?”
“Come now. We have gained valuable knowledge,” I replied.
“What do you mean?”
“First—we can confirm that we are looking for a man.”1 I held up the button.
“This is from a gentleman’s garment. I doubt he took the time to dress completely, so it’s probably the fastener from something large like a greatcoat.
And second—he is wealthy enough to own a decent horse.
Look at the shoe prints and the gait. These are not the tracks of a farmer’s nag. ”
Antoine seemed impressed with my sleuthing, though he was far from reassured. He raised his wine flask with a nervous smile and drank a long draft.
I smiled in return and kissed the wine from his lips.
I was gradually allowing myself to believe that he was completely free of the Beast’s curse.
The wound was healed and he was back to his old self—no more strange moods or nocturnal wanderings.
I wondered again what the price of Dayane’s bargain would be, and if he even remembered it.
“Have faith, my friend,” I said to him. He only winked and made an obscene gesture in return.
In truth, I suspected that our efforts meant little. I feared that Avstamet was directing us like pawns in a great campaign. Footprints and fragments of clothing would not lead us to an ancient killer like the one we chased. We would meet him on his terms, and not before he was ready.
Antoine and I stayed in the woods as long as we could.
Though the nights were cold and the game ever scarcer, we were loath to relinquish our solitude.
Antoine’s family would expect him to return to the chateau for the winter, and I doubted I would be welcome to stay there.
So we prolonged our wandering, finding always another trail to follow.
Each night, Antoine would light the fire with the “magic” words I had taught him and then I would tell him tales about other hunts and other monsters.
He fell asleep in my arms, believing me to be the great hero of my stories, just as he believed in the magic of Sim Sala Bim.
The mountains of Gévaudan had become a secluded world just for us, where I could live out a fond dream with my young lover. I was not ready to leave, not just yet.
Sarmodel humored me, partly because the object of our search was clearly still within range, and partly because he was being very well fed. Between the animals we killed and the regular harvest of my lovemaking with Antoine,2 my Guest was receiving ample nourishment.
But we could not pretend forever. There were other threats in Gévaudan besides the Beast, and they were already breaching the edges of our private domain.
We found ourselves early one morning enveloped in a choking cloud of smoke. We hurried to break camp and rode as fast as we dared in the snow, covering our mouths. Smoke by itself was no great anomaly on winter mornings, but this thick, stinging haze was not coming from a cozy hearth.
Burning bodies, Sarmodel informed me.
I called to Antoine and directed us upwind, toward the source of the smoke.
“A short diversion? I would like to know where this is coming from.”
His gray eyes above the scarf were suspicious. “As would I. There have been too many fires in Gévaudan of late.”
We had passed numerous blackened homesteads on our travels—whole farms razed to the stumps. Never once had we seen who was doing the burning.
It soon became clear where we were heading. Madame Pradels’s orchards, which had yielded her prized yellow apples, were now a boiling inferno. The smoke was a shroud climbing the snowy mountainside, visible from the foothills for miles around.
Antoine swore. “The Pradels children are orphans since their mother was killed at Saint-Julien. They have seen trouble enough without this.”
I didn’t answer; my attention was on the indistinct figures moving around the edges of the flames.
I avoided the road and took us instead through the woods that bordered the Pradels farm on the southern side. It was the longer path, but it took us away from the smoke, and we would hopefully not be seen by the mysterious arsonists.
We left our horses concealed in the trees and took cover behind a woodpile.
A group of men was systematically setting fire to every apple tree on the Pradels land.
The huge figure of the elder Enneval was there with his impressive military mustache, with the comparatively tiny Bauterne beside him.
Nearby, with his back to us, was a large man watching them, mounted on an impressive charger.
He wore a plain, shapeless woolen coat, a gray wig and a tricorne hat, in an ensemble that fairly screamed “incognito.” The Lieutenant of the Hunt shouted orders to other men, who I assumed were recruits from Ocerne’s standing army, or what remained of them. He stood beside a grim bonfire.
“Why?” Antoine demanded, whispering. “Why burn the farm? It makes no sense.”
“Look closer.”
Antoine squinted through the smoke and fire until he saw what I had noticed from the first. The pyre was built of bodies.
The Beast had ended the poverty of Madame Pradels’s many children by taking their hearts.
The Master of the Hunt had piled them up with their livestock and burned them all together.
Bauterne approached the portly man on the horse.
“Antoine, please be quiet for a moment. I’m going to do something unholy.”
“Of course,” he said, smiling eagerly.
I spoke a Litany of Reaching, which Sarmodel granted with minimal complaint.
I ignored the sudden roaring of flames that filled my hearing, concentrating instead on the two men conversing on the other side of the orchard.
My senses aligned after a few seconds and suddenly I could hear them clearly, as though they were standing right in front of me.
More, I could feel the warmth of the fire around them and smell the burning bodies at their feet.
“—almost finished.” Bauterne seemed weary and resigned. “The Beast left none of the children alive and the animals were crazed, just as they were on the other farms. The bodies have been consecrated and set to the flame, as you requested, Monseigneur.”
“Bishop Fontaine of Mende. Interesting,” I murmured.
“Mende? By the Christ, what is he still doing here?” Antoine whispered. “Is he the one who’s been burning the farms?”
“It appears so,” I replied.