Litany of Winter

Hans did not move.

The crimson points held at the bend, low enough that Severin first mistook them for reflections on wet stone. Then one shifted above the others.

Hans raised a fist without looking back. Severin held position.

Severin kept the lantern low. Its light caught the runoff groove at their feet and the broken coffin boards behind them, then reached perhaps twenty feet down the passage. Beyond that, the tunnel turned black.

Something scraped stone near the bend, and a second scrape answered behind them.

Severin started to turn, but Hans caught his sleeve before he could.

”Don’t,” Hans whispered.

The crimson points vanished, and for several seconds only water moved through the groove.

Then a black cord snapped out of the dark.

Severin jerked the lantern aside. The thing struck the iron frame hard enough to ring it and recoiled before he could tell whether it had been a tail or a tongue.

Hans was already moving.

A glossy body came around the bend almost flat to the floor. One hooked limb struck the wall as another reached ahead, hauling the creature through the passage in a low, skittering rush.

Hans met it before Severin had a clean view. Steel hit something hard. The creature folded sideways around the sword, its broad mouth opening beneath a cluster of crimson pits. Pale teeth flashed in the lantern light.

A hard kick drove it away from Severin, and Hans trapped one of the forward limbs under his blade. The joint opened backward.

A second black cord whipped toward his face.

Hans ducked, tore off his glove with his teeth and slapped his bare palm against the creature’s shoulder.

The mark flared green across the back of his hand. White current burst through the contact and raced over the creature’s black plates in branching veins, throwing hard reflections across the wet stone.

The Horror convulsed so violently its hooked limbs hammered the walls, knocking mortar into the runoff. The crimson pits across its face flared bright pink while its jaw spasmed open and shut.

Hans released it almost immediately, and the Horror slammed onto the stone, its hooked limbs scrabbling for purchase before it snapped around the bend and vanished.

Severin stared after it. ”Damn, that sure hurt it.”

”Yeah,” Hans said. ”I’d fucking hope so.”

Hans flexed his marked hand once before picking up the glove. His fingers still obeyed.

”Then why the fuck did you let go instead of killing it?” Severin asked.

Hans tucked the glove into his belt. ”Because I want my fingers to keep working when it comes back.”

The answer had barely left him when the scraping returned, this time from above.

Severin looked up and found two hook-like limbs already spread across the ceiling.

The Horror dropped between them. Hans drove Severin backward with his shoulder as a tendril struck where Severin’s throat had been and slapped wetly across the wall.

The lantern swung, sending light spinning through the passage. For one instant, Severin saw more of the thing than he wanted.

Its body was longer than a man was tall but carried low and folded, dark maroon showing beneath black plates where the joints opened. Several narrow limbs lay tucked over its back like collapsed scaffolding. Crimson pits crowded the front of its head above a mouth wide enough to show two uneven rows of pale teeth.

Then the light swung away, and Hans’s sword flashed.

A tendril fell into the drainage groove and kept twisting after it landed. The Horror recoiled and planted two rear hooks into the wall, using them to wrench its whole body sideways.

Hans turned with it. Severin did not, and something caught the left shoulder of his coat hard enough to snap the world sideways.

He hit the floor on his hip and the lantern flew from his hand. It struck stone, rolled once, then settled against the wall still burning.

The Horror was already dragging him.

Severin’s sword scraped uselessly along the stone. He twisted onto his back and saw the broad mouth ahead, opening and closing as the creature pulled itself backward with its hooked limbs.

He cut at the black cord buried in his coat. The first swing missed, but the second bit deep enough to make the tendril tighten.

Severin planted both boots against the wall as cloth tore at his shoulder. His sword came free, and he hacked again.

The tendril split, and Severin dropped hard onto the wet stone.

A heartbeat later, the Horror changed direction, but Hans struck it from the side before it reached him.

Hans’s short sword drove between two plates and stopped. The creature bucked so violently the hilt twisted in his grip, but he held on and used the trapped steel to keep its mouth turned away.

”Up,” Hans said.

Severin pushed to one knee as a rear hook unfolded over the creature’s back. Hans saw it late.

The point caught him across the ribs and threw him into the opposite wall. His sword ripped free with a wet sound.

The Horror went after him, but Severin reached it first.

He slashed across one of the rear joints. The blade opened the softer flesh between the plates, and dark fluid splashed his sleeve.

The Horror snapped around.

Severin got his sword up just before a hooked limb struck. The impact drove the guard into his knuckles and sent him backward.

Hans came in again, low and fast, and cut across the mouth. Three pale teeth broke loose and skittered along the floor.

The creature retreated, but Hans did not follow.

He backed toward Severin instead, good blue eye fixed on the darkness beyond the lantern.

”Still all there?” he asked.

Severin touched the torn shoulder of his coat. No blood beneath it. ”Think so.”

The scraping stopped, leaving only water moving through the groove. Hans moved two steps forward while Severin listened for it to return.

The Horror came from the bend at full speed, and Hans was ready. He sidestepped the first hook and caught the second on his sword, forcing its point into the wall. The creature folded around him, too many limbs moving at once.

Hans’s bare marked hand shot toward the exposed seam under its body just as one of the rear hooks struck stone behind him.

The Horror yanked itself sideways, and Hans’s fingers missed by inches.

It vanished past him, claws striking sparks from the floor.

Severin understood then. Every time Hans got close enough to finish it, the bastard caught one of its hooks against the stone and ripped itself free. It needed traction.

At the far end of the passage, the Horror turned. Water ran between Severin’s boots, and he looked down.

The drainage groove had overflowed onto the center stones. A thin wash covered several feet of the passage before disappearing beneath broken coffin boards.

Hans shifted his stance as the crimson points gathered again in the dark.

Severin shifted his sword to his left hand and dropped to one knee.

Hans glanced back. ”What are you doing?”

”Make it come straight.”

He pressed his right palm flat against the wet stone.

His attention settled on the blind left eye beneath the patch as green light pushed through the cloth.

Severin pulled heat from the wet stone until the water beneath his palm began to bite.

He pulled harder. A white edge crept across the wet stone beside his hand as the runoff clouded and stiffened into a thin skin confined to the passage’s center.

His fingers stiffened against the stone.

”Enough,” Hans said.

Severin kept going for another breath as the frost reached the far edge of the wet patch.

His fingers answered slowly when he tried to lift them, forcing him to drag his hand free before he could push himself upright. His left leg took his weight a beat late. Fuck.

Hans had already seen it. ”Wall,” he said.

Severin moved onto the higher side of the passage and nearly stumbled when his left leg answered late again.

The Horror launched, and Hans held the center until the last possible moment before stepping aside.

The first hooked limb struck the frozen stone and slid.

Another hook scraped for a grip and failed on the thin ice. Its body skidded sideways at full speed, one rear limb punching through rotten coffin timber as the others folded under it.

Its face hit the wall. Pale teeth cracked against stone, and one spun into the drainage groove.

Hans went toward it and drove his short sword between two plates, pinning the twisting body to the floor for half a second. Half a second was enough.

With the Horror pinned beneath his blade, Hans drove his bare palm against the exposed flesh beside it as the mark across the back of his hand flared green.

”Get back!” Hans shouted.

Severin was already against the wall when the tunnel turned white.

The discharge cracked through the tunnel hard enough to rattle Severin’s teeth. White current raced across the Horror’s wet plates and disappeared beneath them. It burst back out through the joints in snapping forks, bright enough to bleach the stone walls.

Every hooked limb locked outward, two of them slamming into opposite walls at once.

The creature hung braced across the passage, body arched above the floor while current tore through it.

Water in the drainage groove spat under the current as the thin ice beneath the Horror fractured into black lines. Steam burst from the wet stone around its limbs.

The crimson pits across its face flared so brightly Severin could see their color through the white glare. One went dark, and another ruptured with a wet pop.

The broad mouth clamped shut hard enough to crack another tooth.

Hans did not let go, though his arm had begun to shake.

The creature tried to fold around him. A hooked limb moved perhaps an inch before the current seized it again and slammed it into the wall.

Smoke pushed from the seams between its plates, and the smell reached Severin a moment later: burnt meat beneath something bitter and chemical.

A rough sound escaped through Hans’s teeth as he pressed his palm harder into the creature, forcing a second burst through it, shorter and harder.

The Horror’s body slammed into the floor as its muscles seized. Black plating split along the cut Severin had opened earlier, and dark fluid hissed against the stone.

Then everything stopped, and Hans tore his hand away.

The tunnel went dark enough that Severin needed a second to remember the lantern was still burning.

Hans stayed crouched over the carcass, his marked hand hanging at his side.

”Is it dead?” Severin asked.

Hans pulled the sword free and touched the creature with its tip, but nothing moved.

”Seems so.”

Hans tried to stand, using the sword in his unmarked hand for balance. His marked hand trembled at his side, two fingers curled toward his palm and refusing to straighten.

Severin had seen those fingers fail in Blackhaven, beside burning crates, when Hans had still been a stranger.

”You all right? How bad?” Severin asked.

Hans tried to open his hand. The two curled fingers twitched but would not straighten.

”I’ll know when it stops shaking.”

Severin pushed away from the wall, but his left leg answered late again and he caught himself on the stone.

Hans gave him a quick look. ”Not looking too good yourself.”

”I’m fine. It’ll hold.”

”Then stay close to the wall.”

They waited until Severin trusted the leg not to fold. Hans retrieved the lantern, and they moved past the carcass. Beyond the bend, the passage widened beneath a low pocket of collapsed earth.

The smell reached Severin first.

Broken coffin wood had been dragged into the hollow with strips of burial cloth and clotted tissue. A length of intestine lay caught beneath one board, flattened where runoff had passed over it. More of it had lodged in the drainage groove farther back.

Rain had been carrying whatever the creature left behind downhill.

Hans lifted the lantern, revealing narrow gouges in the soil above where hooked limbs had worked upward. Fresh splinters lay among older wet wood, but Severin could not tell how many graves the thing had reached. Nothing else moved.

He looked back at the blackened body blocking half the passage.

Severin saw nothing that suggested human hands had been involved. The creature had found the dead beneath an ordinary village churchyard and fed.

Hans lowered the lantern. ”Come on. We’ll seal the entrance and keep everyone out of the graveyard. Cleanup can handle the rest.”

Severin followed him toward the steps, and sleet was ticking against the stone lip above them by the time they reached the opening.

Hans pulled his glove over the hand that still would not quite close.

”When we get back to the temple,” he said, ”you’re coming with me.”

Severin looked at him. ”Why?”

”Remember the Blackhaven freight I was following?”

”Yeah. What about it?”

Hans climbed the first step. ”They finally recovered enough to start examining what survived.”