Page:Weird Tales Volume 4 Number 2 (1924-05-07).djvu/89



HE long European twilight was dying, and darkness crept stealthily across the fields and pasture lands as three horsemen trotted slowly along the forest road of St. Bonnot. Two of the riders carried lutes slung across their shoulders, which marked them as trouveurs—ballade singers—while the third rode slightly to the rear, balancing a portmanteau on his saddle how, by which token he was labeled attendant of the other two. All three jangled long swords from their hips, for France was under the reign of the weak and vacillating Charles IX, and he who would bring his life and property safely to his journey’s end must needs travel prepared to defend them.

S'wounds," swore one of the minstrels, drawing his scarlet cloak more tightly about his shoulders, "but this abominable wood is colder than the tomb of the blesséd Louis! With winter a good two moons away, methinks this chill i' the air hath more o' the Devil's flavor than of God’s good weather."

His companion grunted a reply and sunk his chin deeper in his tippet. The speaker looked right and left at the pale, new moonlight sifting eeriely between the tree trunks, and continued, "A flagon of the Count's wine would like me well enough the now. What with a twenty-mile ride, and no provender for man or beast along the way, I'd sing of Alexander the Greek and Arthur the Briton from now till sunup for a single stoup of wine and a morsel of bread and cheese."

Again an inarticulate reply from his mate.

S'death," the conversationally inclined singer went on, "didst ever see such a lonesome, uncanny place as this accursed bois? Methinks Monsieur Loup-Garou himself would like no better place for his questing."

He flung back his bearded chin with a ringing laugh and began the opening lines of Bisclaveret in a deep baritone. The poem, one of France’s oldest, dealt with "the multitudinous herd not yet made fast in hell"—the people of the loup-garou, or werewolf, who had sold their souls to the devil in return for the power of transforming themselves into wolves, to kill and devour their enemies. All Europe trembled at the very name of these men-monsters, but no country was more plagued by them than France.

"Hush, hush, Henri!" the taciturn minstrel suddenly broke his silence as the singer expanded the theme of his terrible song. "Pour l'amour de le bon Dieu, cease that singing. Suppose a werewolf were in this twenty-times-damned wood—" he glanced fearfully among the shadows—"we should all be torn to bits!"

"Bah!" the other replied. "The loup-garou would be lucky if I did not eat him, famished as I am.

"Hola, Monsieur Werewolf," he cried mockingly, "come out of the forest. Come out and be eaten by the hungriest song-singer who ever kissed a tavern wench or drank a gallon of Burgundy at a draught!"

It was as if his challenge had been waited for. From a low clump of bracken beside the road rose such a marrow-freezing howl as no man had heard before, and a huge, gray, shaggy form, larger than any wolf that ever fought a pack of hounds, launched itself straight at the astonished trouveur's throat.

The horses reared in sudden terror, plunging futilely to beat off his assailant. "A moi, Louis; a moi, Francois. Quick, for the love o' God, or I perish!"

But the other singer and the servant could give no aid. Encumbered by their cloaks and trappings, their horses plunging and rearing in panic fear, they could but fight desperately to retain their saddles and cry supplications to the Virgin.

"Help, help!" the attacked man called again, then, with a shout of desperation, he fell from his saddle, the great, gray thing's teeth fastened in his shoulder near the base of his neck.

For a moment he thrashed among the underbrush, unable to draw his long sword and powerless to thrust back the creature with his bare hands. In the struggle his hand brushed against the hanger in his girdle. He dragged the short cut-and-thrust blade from its scabbard with frantic haste and struck once, twice, three times at the foul creature snarling at his throat. A cry of rage and pain sounded amid the monster's growling, and with a deep, angry bay it rushed off into the forest depths.

"Mon Dieu!" gasped the minstrel as he regained his saddle. "Would that I'd heeded thy warning, Louis. Never again will I challenge one of those tailless hounds from the Devil's kennel. Tomorrow morning, if it please our Lady we see the light of another day, this matter goes before my Lord Duke. Holy Church and the secular government must combine to rid the province of these changeling wolves."

The three riders set spurs to their mounts, nor did they slacken rein till safe within the fortifications of the city of Dle.

EXT morning the two singers and their lackey appeared before the provincial officials and made formal complaint that they had been set upon, and one of them all but killed, by a loup-garou, or werewolf, in the forest of St. Bonnot.

The officials looked grave when they had heard the complainants through. This was not the first account of were-wolf depredations to come before them. Farmers living in the territory contiguous to the city had brought in accounts of sheep stolen from the fold at dead of night, of dogs killed as they watched the flocks, even of little children found dead and horribly mangled along the roadside and beneath the hedges. Now came these three wayfarers, all of them veterans of the wars, and two of them men of learning and respect, to tell of being boldly attacked on the royal road as they journeyed through the wood. This thing must not be. The "power of the country" must be raised, and the werewolf, or werewolves, responsible for the outrages sent forthwith to the fiery hell where their master, the Devil, waited the coming of their forfeited souls.