Chương 230: Hunting Grounds

Ch. 230 - Hunting Grounds Away from the castle for that first day, Simon slept worse than ever. None of his days as a deathless abomination had been pleasant, but between the smell and the constant feeling that he'd missed some of the goblins and they'd come back to devour him, he was in a sort of waking nightmare the whole time while the sun kept him down by the throat in a terrible sleep paralysis.

Once, when he was convinced he heard the little green bastards coming for him, he managed to turn his head to look, which was the most he'd ever managed to move in a state of torpor, but there was no one there. It was just his imagination tormenting him. For so long, it had been a valuable resource. He used it for art and magic, but now, it was an enemy, and it filled those hours with ever more creative monstrosities.

In the morning, Simon decided that he would need to find another place to sleep before he did anything else unless the situation was truly dire. Fortunately, when he burst apart into a flock of ebon crows and surveyed the scene, he found that it had improved, if only marginally. The entire camp had pulled back a hundred yards, choosing the cliffs that held back the rocky slopes as a better point to hold than the boulder dotted scree slopes further on.

That was true, of course, so he couldn't say if it pointed to a wise commander or a nervous one. Either way, it made Simon's job of inflicting pain on them ever so slightly harder, but a retreat was a retreat, and he would take it. It wasn't hard to see why. Even after they'd almost certainly attempted to collect their wounded and bury their dead, he could still spot crushed limbs and shredded canvas amongst the rubble of the landslide he had caused.

That boulder did some real damage, he thought approvingly, before he traced the scar it left on the slope back to its origin and noticed that they'd never found the sentry he'd torn to pieces. That annoyed him. Killing was one thing, but killing needlessly still rubbed him the wrong way. As he passed over the main body of the camp, Simon felt his hunger gnaw at him. He couldn't smell their blood or hear it, but his hunger still knew it was there.

Eventually, it got strong enough that Simon was forced to wheel away from the group and seek out his breakfast. He found a second goblin lair easily enough, as well as a third, eventually, but his stomach revolted against those choices. He found a troll lair, or perhaps an ogre lair as well, further down the mountain, closer to the river, but eventually, he decided to try devouring a bear instead.

Simon hadn't tried to consume animal blood yet, but presumably, if Freya had tried to feed him rats after she'd turned him, then such things could sustain him to at least some degree. Fighting a grizzly bear, as it turned out, was harder than Simon would have thought. It wasn't that the thing was ferociously strong, though that did hurt.

The one time the thing had landed a solid blow, it not only knocked him back twenty feet, but it also shredded his chest and stomach, sending black blood and shriveled viscera in all directions before he healed. The real problem was the hide. It was so thick that even when Simon got the chance to bite it, he could barely penetrate it to the arteries beneath.

When he finally won, it was only by jamming his knife into the thing's spinal column, a few vertebrae below the spine, paralyzing it enough that he could finally latch onto one of the beast's femoral arteries and drink deeply. In the end, it was largely a wasted effort. The blood would sustain him, of course, but it was like muddy ditch water compared to the fine wine of a human victim.

Simon would not be dissuaded by that, though he vowed to give goblins, or some other monster, another try on the following day; the further down the food chain his victims drifted, the less appetizing they became. After that, he spent the rest of the evening prowling the woods on the far side of the pass from his current sleeping place as he looked for a new one. He didn't find anything he liked better than his current filthy warren, unfortunately. He did find a few sentries on patrol, though.

These he murdered and impaled on snapped-off tree branches several feet above the ground so that future patrols wouldn't miss them. Losing a man or two wouldn't do anything to a host of about four thousand, which was his best guess about the size of this army. It wasn't about whittling them down, though. It was about making them afraid. Every soldier that deserted was one less man he would have to kill, and if he could make the entire army do so, even better.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. That was what Simon did for the next few nights. Other than a brief visit with Ara to inform her of what he was doing now and then, as well as a check on the progress that her tiny army was making in their drilling, he spent the entire time terrorizing the Murani army. He had to. It was the only chance her 300 farmers had.

They were outnumbered by their better-trained, better-armored opponents ten to one, and no amount of fervor or desperation would affect those odds. So, each night, he lurked in a different place along the lines of the enemy as they coiled into an ever tighter ball. He cut tether lines and spooked horses, sending them galloping through the camp, set fires in supply depots, and murdered. The last one was ever-present, no matter what he did.

He left bodies in his wake at every turn, no matter what the goal of the night was. He could hear soldiers whispering about it around the campfires. They attributed all of his misdeeds either to the Widow or to the cursed man wolves that were said to haunt this region. Others disagreed, arguing that "The cursed lady can't leave her valley, and those wolf monsters only emerge by the light of the full moon!"

Simon listened to them discuss it sometimes, gathering intel and learning more about what the men who made up the army thought before he slaughtered the groups. Unfortunately for them, he rarely left even a single survivor, and the mixed accounts that followed in his wake didn't even get a good enough look to decide if he was man or beast. He understood that, too. Even as he continued to gain weight and mass as the days passed, the longer he went without human blood, the less human he became.

His skin took on a dark and mottled hue that wasn't quite green, and he grew ever hairier. In time, his claws grew thick enough that using weapons became challenging with certain grips, but that didn't really bother Simon. Mostly, he murdered things with his bare hands now. Instead of devouring the soldiers, he left them in pieces as he slowly but surely cleansed the mountains of green skins. He never did find a better place to sleep, but somehow, he always found more goblins to devour.

They were a pestilence, but one that he was almost grateful for in this life. He could see the changes that his foul diet was causing in his body, but he could see it even more clearly in Ara's eyes. She had an excellent poker face, but each time he visited, she could see her struggle to restrain her surprise and revulsion. It didn't bother Simon nearly as much as it should. That was almost certainly because he knew it was temporary.

Better to look like a monster for a little while than be a monster forever, he told himself. As it was, he was getting far too comfortable with ripping people to pieces. Even that, monstrous as it was, was still better than developing a crippling addiction to human blood. Still, despite all of these problems, he could see the army growing ever more defensive. He'd dispatched two more small scouting parties that hadn't quite made it back to their camp before sunset, making it very clear the valley was off-limits.

They adapted in time, giving him a growing respect for whoever was in charge of the thing. They sent out raiding parties, but only as far as they could go and return in a single day, set traps for him by baiting ambushes with only one obvious soldier on patrol, while archers and mages lay in wait just out of sight, and reinforced their sentries, making sure that men were never alone again after that first week.

Simon's response was to slaughter the larger sentry patrols, skip the ambushes, and murder any mages that were dumb enough to leave camp on sheer principle. He was not a hungry beast, well, not just a hungry beast; he was the veteran of a dozen conflicts, and with his obscenely powerful sense of smell, it was impossible to hide from him, even with illusion magics. Still, despite all of his efforts, the Murani eventually got reinforcements, which counteracted Simon's efforts to some degree.

That was when he decided it was time to end this. He'd waited long enough to damage morale. If he delayed any further, they were going to move in force. He could feel it. It was more than just gossip around the campfire. It was the way the layout of the camp changed, and the drilling fields increased in size. They were getting ready. So, one night, before that happened, Simon warned Ara, and told her to prepare her men.

Then while he lurked near the edge of the camp, he did something he'd been trying hard to avoid until now. He willed himself to transform into a fine gray mist, just as he'd seen Freya do several times before. He'd grown somewhat used to taking himself apart as he became an ever larger flock of crows, but this was something different entirely. As a bird, he still felt alive, if a bit scattered. As a mist, though, he felt like he was dying.

He was reducing himself to such a degree that he felt as though he were on the verge of death. Still, it needed to be done, and he pushed through it. Then, when he had dispersed into almost nothing, he snaked through the shadows of the outer pickets and between patrols as he made for the center of camp. There was more light as he went, but paradoxically fewer guards. The fact that Simon never attacked deep into the camp worked to his benefit here.

Everyone was looking for him at the edges, near treelines and suspicious boulders; no one suspected that the ravening beast that had been tormenting them would move into the heart of their camp undetected. That would be their final mistake.