Old Dark Things

OLD DARK THINGS

  By Hob Goodfellowe

  copyright (Story & Art), 2017

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Old Dark Things was written some time ago, and is a story I haven't quite known what to do with. After thinking over my options, and given that this novel is set in the same world as The Winter King, I have decided that I might as well upload it for the same readership (although I should point out, this book is not part of The Winter King story, being stand-alone, and set in a corner of the world that is quite some distance away from anywhere Caewen is likely to find herself).

  There are a couple things perhaps worth noting here. Only after the fact did I realize there are some thematic echoes between Old Dark Things and The House of Snow and Apples. They both take place in Autumn getting into Winter, both centre on a small fortress in the wilds, and both involve wolves. That is more or less where the similarities end, I think, but they are there. The wolves in the two stories are of a very different sort, and the fortress too, and the people in the stories are quite different across the two tales. Old Dark Things is also, obviously, longer, and more involved. I think, if I remember right, that when I started this story I wanted to try and merge together a little of Tolkien and Shakespeare. In particular, I wanted to try and bring the fantastical more clearly into a story that was full of the sort of claustrophobic schemes and counter-schemes that Shakespeare liked so much (well, in his tragedies anyway). Chapter Three is clearly a (rather poor) tribute to Shakespeare, and the passage involving Skadi is an obvious pastiche of a particular event in one of Tolkien's works. I considered cutting or extensively rewriting the Skadi passage to make it less obviously a product of influence, but in the end, I think it fits, and so it remains.

  There is not much else to add. I can be emailed at [email protected] or you can find out where I am at in the general scheme of these stories at hobgoodfellowe.com.

  Thanks for downloading this. I appreciate it.

  Hob

  A BEGINNING

  His name in the old tongue was Kveldulf.

  And he was dying.

  The snow in the pale cast of the moon was stained deep and crimson-black wherever he touched it. His fingers, trembling and sticky with blood, clawed at the air and closed on nothing. Shuffling forward one last step, he found his legs unwilling to bear weight any farther, and he sank to the ground. Numbing cold enveloped him.

  He thought how strange it was that the whole world was silent. Not a squirrel or snow-jay stirred. It was as if the forest was withholding its judgement, watching as he lay in wet red snow. In the heavy stillness the curling phantom of his breath might have been the last warm issue of any living thing. But he was not the last.

  There was one other, and it was following close behind.

  He heard the swift whisk-whisk of the paws through snow. The sound sapped the last of his hope. By dying strength and final will, Kveldulf heaved his body upright. His heart was pounding in his chest and shivers were passing through his skin as he crawled about to face it. He could run no more.

  It loomed through the thin flurries of snow, great, black and shadowy. In Kveldulf's swimming vision the thing seemed to swell to unnatural size as it stalked closer. Now certain he was dying, Kveldulf gazed up at the creature without fear. The mist of their two breaths mingled in the cold air.

  Could it truly be called a wolf, this creature of black and silvered fur? No. Better to call it an enemy of the gods, he thought. A begotten of Old Night and Chaos--for that was what it must be. With that thought in his head, Kveldulf was not surprised when the enemy of the gods of mortalkind fixed its eyes of frozen gold on him, licked its waxy black lips and spoke.

  "I shall eat you now, I think." The breath was not rank with offal, but sweet, almost perfumed; and the voice not merely female, but feminine, filled with secrets and hints and subtlety. "But you have one last right," she said, "there is nothing like the memory of my kind. I will go walking in dreams where I recall of the taste of your flesh and the crunch of your bones when the world has turned to ash and dust. So tell me, little one, mortal one, what is your name? Tell me, so that I may say to other wolves that I grew fat and sleek off your flesh, and you were a dangerous and crafty prey."

  Mouth clotting, the answer was a labour. "Kveldulf."

  There was no sound but the heave of wind through the snowy boughs of the woods. The wolf blinked--just once--ponderously, slowly.

  "Kveldulf," she said, and rolled the sound about her throat as if it had some meaning. "I know that name. You are he who hunted and murdered my sisters a year ago. How many times have I cursed that name? My sisters were beloved."

  Kveldulf was beyond thought now. Beyond understanding. The words of the wolf fell from the air as cold and meaningless as motes of snow.

  "So this is the night of revenge. This is the hour of justice." She grinned and showed sharp, glistening teeth. "You killed them with that knife of yours? That weapon that bit me too, but an hour ago. It was made from the bone of a thing of elder power, I think. It hurt me. You hurt me. No one has caused me pain in a dozen lifetimes. But that hateful thing is gone now. I have ridded the world of it. And you cannot harm me now. You are a child. Without weapons. Without runes. Without hope."

  The blood in Kveldulf's throat was making it difficult to breathe. "Be done with it."

  She laughed and it was the sound of shadows laughing, of mocking snow and storms at play. "You misunderstand me, Kveldulf, sister-killer. No, no, my revenge is not so easy, nor so simple. My revenge shall be much finer, more beautiful, for I shall let you live."

  She got up from her haunches. A ripple of movement passed down her spine as she shook the snow from her black and silvered fur, and then lazily, silently she padded away and disappeared into the everlasting gloom of the forest.

  Kveldulf was only dimly aware that he was alone. He did not stir for a long time. Then he let himself down into the snow and allowed the falling flakes to cover him.

  He was as close to death as the living can be when the snow-hunters found him. He should have been dead. He did not understand why he was not. The hunters would have left him to the winter night if they had known it was the wolf of black and silvered fur who had left him there, for they worshiped her and feared her.

  But they gathered about him and spoke their strange song-tongued language, and bound his worst wounds and bore him away on a sledge drawn by reindeer.

  And so it was that he lived that night in the care of snow-hunters.

  And he lived a week.

  And he lived a year.

  And then he simply lived.

  And lived.

  And lived.