Chapter 14
XIV
Chateau d’Ocerne
Gévaudan, France
If I had any doubts about the Beast of Gévaudan, they were dispelled on the first day of the hunt.
The day Lord Bauterne led us in the push.
The new master of the hunt called us to gather at noon on the green slopes outside the chateau, forming a line on the border where the fields met the mountain forests.
There was no talk of the humiliating events of the previous night’s banquet, at least not within earshot of the Lieutenant of the Hunt and the stony-faced Normans.
“Form up! Hold your marks!” came the command, passed from man to man along the line.
Hunters spread out with their hounds, each party a spear’s length apart from the next.
It was a surprisingly orderly process given how many hounds, horses, dialects and hangovers were in play; these men had all been drinking the baron’s wine until well into the small hours.
Antoine was among the worst afflicted. I suspected he had ended up at the brothel in Saint-Julien-by-the-Stream. There was something very endearing about the young lord, cranky and disheveled with wisps of blond hair hanging in his face.
“Sir,” I ventured in the tense silence before the hunt, “forgive me, but I must wonder why I am here.”
“For the push, Professor, which is about to start. For all the good it will do us.”
I understood these “pushes” were a weekly affair, led by the master of the hunt—this would be Lord Bauterne’s debut.
Each Sunday after Mass, the villagers of Gévaudan would gather at assigned rally points in the wilderness with pots and batons, creating a great wall of noise and malodor with which to drive the Beast from hiding.
The hunters waited in a line on the far side of the forest, snaring every startled piglet and badger with the poor luck to be passing through.
“My thanks, young sir, but that’s not what I meant. I don’t wish to seem ungrateful, but I must ask—why did you intervene on my behalf yesterday, at the ceremony?”
“Do you object to being in my employ?”
“Not at all. But—if we may dispense with the ruse for a moment—you roused the displeasure of both your father and the Bishop of Mende for the sake of a stranger. A foreign stranger.”
“Ah. That. Perhaps I simply felt it was unfair to deny you a place in the hunt, after making the journey to help us.” He squeezed his eyes shut, placing a hand to his tender head. “I might have reconsidered had I known you were so fond of talk.”
I laughed and handed him my brandy flask. “Here, this will help—not more than a mouthful, mind.”
Antoine’s eyes snapped open and he accepted the flask with shaking hands. He took a long swallow and then another, his eyes watering.
Sarmodel shared Antoine’s skepticism. What sort of Beast do you imagine will be flushed from hiding by a line of screaming meat-bags banging on pots?
Who knows, my love? I answered. But hopefully we may at least set eyes on it.
I took the flask back from Antoine as a hunting horn sounded across the forested hilltops. A distant clamor rolled through the trees, the sound of shrilling voices and clattering saucepans. The push had begun.
The fastest animals came first. Hares and a few small deer burst from the bracken with their hind legs kicking high behind them.
The hunters let most pass by. Then came the big game.
A furious boar emerged not far from us, attracting a staggering thunderclap of musket fire.
Somewhere to the north, voices chorused “Cérvi!” as an impressive stag fled across the hillside, chased by a keen pack of hounds.
And then came the wolves. Surprisingly large and utterly terrified, there were perhaps a dozen of them in the pack, driven before the throng of villagers. They bolted from the cover of the undergrowth not far from our mark, breaking through the line of hunters in seconds.
“Men! To me!” Bauterne was suddenly there, barely more than a shadow among the trees in his black hunting leathers on his black horse. “For God! For the king!” The hunters turned as one and we followed him in the chase.
I will admit it was tremendous fun to ride with the army of hunters, swooping after our quarry through the creeks and gullies of Gévaudan.
Antoine’s mood improved almost immediately and his mad laughter was audible above the fray.
In the end, the senior Enneval took down two of the poor animals with his musket, Bauterne another, Soeur yet another, and the largest fell to the nine-fingered trapper from Gascony.
It was bloody and exhilarating and, perhaps most importantly, it made everyone feel as though they were doing something.
Afterward, we reserved the stag—a noble creature with twelve points—to be presented to the Baron d’Ocerne as patron.
The hunters who had made kills bloodied their faces and claimed the finest cuts for themselves, and then hunters and villagers alike celebrated over a feast of wild game.
1 We gathered, greasy-lipped, to watch as Bauterne cut the wolves open and examined their stomach contents for human remains.
He was genuinely downcast when the search proved fruitless, and he left the carcasses for the dogs to fight over.
I was disappointed too, of course.
I’m sorry. Perhaps this was a mistake after all, I conceded.
An abysmal waste of time, but we managed to feed, at least, said Sarmodel. He was preening after consuming the anima of the wolves, rich with the energetic bounty of their predatory lives. In my mind they left an aftertaste of black pepper and butter caramel.
A very different sort of hunt began a few hours later, as the villagers returned home to horror.
The Beast had not been idle while we played the great huntsmen in front of the common folk.
The first body was just outside Saint-Julien-by-the-Stream, a stone’s throw from the chateau. A young shepherd was found broken over a hitching post, his head on a nearby rooftop, crushed like a pumpkin.
Next was the toothless Flemish dog handler, raked to ribbons behind the church and then left to be devoured by his own hounds. The animals had to be put down, so wild had they become with fear and bloodlust.
And the last I saw with my own eyes.
Many of the Gévaudanais had come to the push in wagons, stuffing the drays with hay to help make the bumpy ride more bearable.
For two young lovers, one such soft bower had seemed the perfect place for a secret tryst. They had decided to hang back while the other villagers were distracted, beating pans in the forest.
“Professor,” said Antoine. His words failed as we joined the wailing onlookers surrounding the wagon.
They were around sixteen years old, I would say.
The boy had been torn in two; everything below his ribs was gone.
The girl was at least intact, but her wounds were almost too savage to look at.
Their hearts had been taken and the wagon was filled with their blood.
Perhaps worst of all, their hands were still entwined in the crimson-spattered hay between them.
But it was not the gore or the tragedy of their deaths that drew my attention.
Sebastian—there! said Sarmodel.
I see it!
There were enormous bloody tracks leading away from the cart and back along the road. They were similar to wolf prints, but there were five long toes on each paw.
I spurred my horse after them at a trot, eager to follow the tracks before the other hunters arrived. The footprints went a short distance, until they disappeared into the forest again—just over the hill from the place where the hunters and villagers had been carrying out their push.
I dismounted quickly, my heart quickening at the sight of a telltale shimmer in a particularly deep paw print.
“Professor? What is it?” called Antoine, stepping down from his horse behind me.
“A trail, sir!” I answered, my voice cracking in excitement.
Do you see this? Do you see it?! I said to Sarmodel. I knelt in the mud, using my gloved fingers to scoop clear, yellowish slime from the paw print.
Plasma!
I was holding the unmistakable by-product of a supernatural transformation. It dripped off my glove, evaporating rapidly into fumes.
No wonder the Beast has been so elusive. He’s not hiding; he’s changing form, I said. Sarmodel, he must be big—I haven’t seen this much since that lamia in Corinth in the twelfth century!
Sarmodel whooped in my mind.
Spirit made flesh! Sebastian, I take it back—this has been a magnificent day! he crowed.
We were definitely not chasing a minnow.2
1. If you are thinking that this practice would quickly strip the region of its wildlife, you are absolutely correct. Anything that was not eaten or killed for sport quickly learned to avoid the forested foothills in favor of less accessible climes, at least on Sundays.
2. Plasma is the transition phase between anima and biological tissue—think of it like spiritual stem cells.
It disintegrates rapidly in the Mundane world, so finding it in noticeable quantities usually means something powerful has been constructing/deconstructing living flesh, for whatever reason, very recently.
Note that this is a significant undertaking for any Spirit; your garden-variety Arcane nuisance doesn’t just go around shifting phase or shaping flesh.