Werewolf the Podcast: There are not just Soldiers in the Trenches. (Episode 225)

Major Simon de Montfort is again in the frist world war doing his Supernatural expert thing. He stumbles on a conversation between a group of Soldiers. They are talking about some strange creature that they captured and killed. The Major wants to see what it is and help the war effort in his way. Let's find out what happens in this weeks exciting episode of Werewolf the Podcast: A Serial (Killer) Drama.

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Transcript

Major Simon de Montfort

I've eaten more bland breakfasts than any man has a right to stomach. 

That's one of the nasty little side effects of immortality: you can't just sit there looking smug and eternal. 

You've got to keep up appearances. Men don't trust someone who doesn't eat porridge. So here I am again, staring down the barrel of another bowl of the Army's corrupted oats.

Porridge. Proof that humankind looked at the infinite bounty of the earth and decided boredom was a perfectly acceptable staple diet. 

I've eaten it in every century it's been ladled out, and I'll tell you: it has never once improved. 

Well, that is a lie. Sugar and honey make it a little better if that is a possibility. 

The Scottish thing with Salt? Some sort of masacism, me thinks.

I stir it slowly, as though I might conjure something else out of the grey sludge if I were just to whirl the spoon the right way.

It doesn't work. It never does.

I am always thinking at this point that I need to create a spell to make porridge tasty, but by the time I have finished eating it, my mind has moved on from the goopy dullness, so I never create that spell.

'No, can't do it.' I tell an uncaring world, sitting back in my seat with exasperation. 

I put the spoon back in the mess tin and watched it slowly sink, like my heart does. When shown... porridge... again.

I sigh and look at the dullness of the tent. 

The lack of newspapers available for me to read leads to more dullness. Every civilised man should have a broadsheet like the Telegraph with breakfast, not only for reading in this particular situation.

Useful for so many things on a war front. Fires... insulation in the great coat on very cold days, and of course, wiping. You know the score. 

I suppose I could have a conversation with... I look around for... No, that would not be worth the effort. 

I shake my head, trying to shift a memory.

Clarence Smith still refuses to leave it. 

I can see his face in the bowl if I look too long. Poor sod. Walked right into something he couldn't begin to understand. 

Brave enough, for all the good that did him. The wolf soul lit him up like a bonfire, and then, when the moment came, I had to put him down with my own hands and a comfy pillow. 

I hope he went quickly, and there are many worse ways to die than soft suffocation.

Please believe me on this. I have died often and in various manners. A lot of them did not involve dying in good manners. 

Some deaths were utterly bizarre, some mundane. Anyway, as his goodness, the Archangel Gabriel said to me last time I was unfortunate enough to bump into him on my demise. 

'Death can't keep a good chap down.' Hmm!

At least here, no one seems to care that Clarence died. The bonus in this particular war-filled environment is that nobody is asking any questions about how the young men die, because a lot of young men are. 

There would be too many of those questions to ask if it were possible to ask that many questions. So the likelihood is that I am not going to get hanged or is it hung, for murder. Again. 

It gets utterly urksome after one or two swings at it. Swings... I amuse myself sometimes. Swing at a hanging... Sadly, no one here I wish to share that wit with.

I've had to kill innocents before—more times than I care to number. I can't say more times than I care to remember, because a chap does remember each of them, and I think a chap should... remember them that it is. Only decent after all.

That's the other nasty bit of immortality: the faces don't fade. No gentle rot of memory, no merciful forgetfulness. They're all still there. Fresh as morning birdsong, sharp as glass. Clarence is just the most recent and sadly one of the most innocent. 

I stare at my tin mug of tarry tea, daring it to be coffee, and lift it to my lips. 

As I sip at the liquid in it, I can taste its strength. Well stewed. 

I can sense the stuff discolouring my teeth and throat as it goes down. 

'Not bad.' I say to the world at large as I place the cup back on the table.

And then there's her.

My mind wanders to her. 

It often wanders to her in a moment of ponderance. 

Thee... Luc-ifer.

I don't like her. 

Not in the ordinary way, one doesn't like fire, or famine, or taxes. 

No — I don't like her because I admire her, and that's the sort of weakness I despise in myself.

She's clever. Too clever. Always playing a longer game than you think. She's beautiful, too, of course, but that's the least of it. I've met a lot of the angels, and even they didn't carry beauty the way she does — like a knife hidden in silk. 

It's a magical glamour, of course, her beauty. She casts it on all she meets so they see the thing that they lust for the most. Hmm!

But, I have glimpsed her... shall we say, actual reality, once or twice. 

Is reality appropriate? Hmm!

That real version of her, my friends, is not pretty, but it's pretty mentally scarring, you can be sure of that. 

I admire her, and I loathe that I do. Somewhere in the marrow of these cursed bones, I suspect that if she asked me to dance, I'd bloody well dance...

...Well, actually, we did dance that once... where was it? Gosh, I was utterly marinated in wine. No, it's gone. A big castle somewhere in France. Versailles perhaps? Hmm!

Funny if you think about it, I danced with the Devil... and I bloody enjoyed it. She had a hell of a Belle Danse. Belle Danse? Must have been Versailles.

Hmm! Maybe I should eat something. 

I'm halfway through convincing myself porridge might be improved with a stiff measure of whisky — or perhaps a healthy dose of arsenic — when I catch it. 

A knot of voices at the end of the mess table. Soldiers, huddled close, muttering the way men do when they've seen something they don't want to believe in but can't quite laugh off. I know this conversation type well.

'…little bugger, nicked my spoon, swear on my sainted mother's grave…'

'… weren't a rat, I tell you. I've seen rats. This was smaller. Faster. Eyes like… like bloody coals…'

'…and my mess tin, gone! Whole tin! Jerry couldn't manage that, and he's got an army…'

I lower the spoon gratefully. My ears prick—salvation from the grey goo.

Something small. 

Something thieving. 

Something with a taste for silver.

I wipe my mouth with my hanky — an immortal ought to look presentable, even in a trench mess — and lean just slightly closer.

Breakfast, at last, has improved by not involving porridge.

Three Tommies at the next table — hollow-eyed, their uniforms crusted with mud — speaking in low, urgent tones. Not the usual trench gossip about girls, football or dying, but something altogether more raw.

They'd caught something, and for once it was not the blighted clap. 

The clap... (laugh) Had to kill myself a couple of times in the past to get rid of that damned disease. Syphilis was ripe and rife, and made you become ripe and rotten... 

Where was I? 

Ah yes. They continued to talk. Whatever the small thief of a thing was, it was not a rat, not a ferret, not even some mangy dog wandering off the lines. They were adamant about that. Hmm! 

This thing — whatever it was—had been crawling through the dugouts at night, pinching rations, even gnawing through mess tins. 

Private Davies, I learnt his name later, sitting with his disgusting roll-up hanging from his swollen lip, swore blind his wristwatch had been unbuckled while he slept, lifted right off his hand without waking him. 

Another man laughed at this.

'You aint'nt ever had a watch you pillock! You can't even tell time, can ya!' Banter Ah!

Little thing, stealing things like watches and silver?

That in itself would have been remarkable. 

But the way they told it, when they finally laid a trap, it got worse. Well, worse for the wee creature.

They'd baited the trap with shiny pennies, left out like you might for a fox with bread. And when it crept close, Private Davies brought his shovel down hard—he'd stunned it at first... I will not continue with what was said to have been done to the poor animal, but know it now lies stiff as iron in an empty shell crate, wrapped up in a bit of canvas because no one dares look at it for long, possibly due to some guilt.

I listened as they stumbled through their descriptions. One said its fingers were 'wrong — too long, too thin, like wire hooks.'

Another swore its eyes were 'bulging out, big as shillings and glowing like wet glass.' 

A third muttered, almost to himself, that it had smiled as it died. A little grin, sharp-toothed and knowing, like it understood the punchline of a joke no man could hear. 

That was a lie. I could smell that it was a lie. Trying to make a conscience more at ease. 

They were horrified — and you could tell they were even more horrified by not knowing what it was. 

Soldiers will put up with shellfire, mud, lice, even gas, but the unknown gets under their skin in ways bullets never could. 

One of them muttered — half fear, half anger — that the Germans must've bred it. Some devilish little thing, made in secret, designed to steal food and ruin kit. To starve the British out by inches. 

Utterly ridiculous, of course. They were breeding much larger things that could actually do damage, not tiny things.

They all agreed it wasn't natural. And when a group of men who've lived cheek by jowl with lice, corpse-rats, and gangrene tell you something's unnatural, you believe them.

I stirred the remains of my tea, added a small tot of whisky to keep me warm and pretended not to listen.

I have to admit that immortality ruins a lot of things, but immortality doesn't dull curiosity — quite the opposite, in fact. If anything, you get tired of ordinary puzzles. But this… this wasn't ordinary.

By the sound of it, they'd killed a kobold, though the poor bastards wouldn't have known the word. To them, it was just a nightmare with long fingers and a taste for silver.

And so, with my breakfast turning to lead in my mouth, I decided I'd take a look at this thing in the crate. Because if there really were kobolds crawling through our trenches, the Army didn't have a rat problem. It had a me problem.

It's the curse of being immortal: you overhear things you really shouldn't, and then you can't help but involve yourself. 

Not because you care — I actually do— but because you've lived too long to ignore the sort of conversation that begins with: 

'It weren't natural, I tell ya.'

So I gulped down my tea, smoothed my tunic, and wandered over to the trio of soldiers. To make them uncomfortable, obviously. 

They looked up the way men do when the rank on your shoulders suddenly matters.

'Gentlemen,' I said, in my best Major's voice, which is somewhere between fatherly reassurance and the sort of tone you use to tell a dog to stop eating your boots. 

'I couldn't help but overhear. Sounds like you've got quite the story on your hands. Something about… a creature?'

They glanced at each other. Nervous. Suspicious. Like schoolboys who'd just been caught doing something that was technically against the rules but not covered explicitly in the Bible. 

The one in the middle, big-shouldered and pig-eyed, gave me a look I've seen too many times: the look of a man who's never met a cruelty he didn't quite like. He'd made it somehow to sergeant. 

'What's it to you, sir?' he asked, with just enough emphasis on the sir to make it sound like an insult.

'I make it my business to know things,' I said lightly. 

'And, more importantly, the Army does like to reward anything unusual. If you've really caught… whatever it is, you might find it worth your while, chaps, to show me. Official curiosity, let's call it.'

I had added the chaps in my best patronising manner to make them realise that they hate me due to class differences and the fact that I could outplay them at both cricket and rugger. Always a rub for men like these.

The smallest of the three shifted in his seat, clearly unsettled. He muttered, 'Best left alone, Major. Best left buried.' He wheedled.

'Buried things have a nasty habit of unburying themselves,' I replied as I thought about the evidence that was already in my kit bag of just such a thing. 

'Much better to have a proper look.' Then I leaned in just a fraction, as if sharing a secret. 

'And if it is valuable, well, the Army does occasionally reward handsomely. Food shortages, you understand. New weapons. All very hush-hush. You'd be surprised what a discovery can be worth.' I told them, tapping my nose conspiratorially.

The Pig-Eyed Sergeant perked up like a fox scenting blood. 

'Ah, you'll be making much more than us on this wuntcha.' I flinched at the lack of erudition. The man was an utter cur. 

'And how much, Major...' he asked, drawling the word Major as though he'd practised savagery on it. 

'...Would you be getting? For our prize' He asked, pointing at each of the two others.

'Well, if you thought a fellow like myself would do such a thing... ' I paused as if hurt.

'I thought it would be a nice gesture to help fellow Tommies on the front, but no. I will find someone else to give the one hundred guineas reward.' I said as I turned my back to the intake of breath at such a sum. 

The thug leader of the band stood and called after me. Let's not call him a sergeant. He was rank and not worthy of that rank.

'Now, let's not be too 'asty, sir...' I turned back to him and his men, who all looked at me like a starving mutt would look at a steak.

His uniform was a little tight on those labourers' shoulders. I would have put him as maybe a butcher or a Bible salesman back in Blighty. 

'One hundred Guineas is a lot of money...' He looked at his group of lads, who all nodded. 

'How much would ya pay if we brought you a live un?"

There it was—the test. I have lived long enough to see the measure of men quick as blinking. And these three — well, I wouldn't have trusted them with a shovel in a graveyard.

I gave him a thin smile. 'For a live one? One hundred and fifty guineas.'

That made them all sit up. One of them even whistled, low and shaky. 

A hundred and fifty guineas was a small fortune. Enough to buy their way out of the mud and blood, if they had the sense. Which, by the look of them... they didn't.

'But,' I added smoothly, 'I must see the dead one first. Quality assurance, you might say. No sense in buying a pig in a poke. Or in this case… whatever you've bagged.'

They exchanged another round of wary glances. They didn't like me. That much was clear. But they liked the idea of money. Greed won, as greed always does.

'Fine,' Pig-Eyes muttered. 'You'll see it. But you'll keep your mouth shut 'til then, Major. We don't want no officers deciding this is their prize, understand?' He actually pointed at me with his big sausage-like finger in a threatening manner. This one would have to learn some respect or rest in peace. It could be either, but his behaviour from now on would decide on such. 

I gave him my most affable smile. 'Gentlemen, secrecy is my speciality.' Not a lie in this case.

As I walked with them, I couldn't help thinking: it's always the greedy ones. Always the cruel ones who ask about money first. The decent ones want nothing to do with it. Which told me, before I ever laid eyes on their catch, that whatever was in that crate, these bastards had probably made its end a cruel one.

And immortality or no, I still hate seeing barbarity.

The munitions shed was a cheerless little place, the sort of wooden shack that smelled perpetually of old grease, damp timber, and the vague, metallic promise of explosions. 

The three soldiers led me there in silence, their boots crunching over gravel. The pig-eyed brute carried himself with the air of a man who thinks he's finally found the shortcut to fortune. He walked a pace behind me and stared at the back of my head as if wondering whether or not to bash it in from behind—a bully, a definite bully.

His pals looked less certain of their fortunes after this... reveal. It was as though the coins had already turned to lead in their pockets.

Inside the shed, it was dim, lit only by a single guttering lantern that swung like it couldn't quite decide whether to illuminate or conspire. 

Pig-Eyes kicked a crate in the corner.

'In there,' he said, with a smirk. 'Safe as houses... Major'

Safe as houses, indeed — if your house happened to be haunted, drafty, and prone to spontaneous combustion. 

I waited for the man to open the crate, but he just stood looking at me with revulsion. Oh, I see he was going to make me open the crate. Prove that he would not bow to my authority, fair enough—another black mark on this man's soul. 

I actually looked around for her...Luci, but sadly, she did not appear. What was I thinking? She would be awfully busy at the war front. 

I squatted next to the crate and smiled at the man as he loomed over me. It was a proper loom. It had a practised loom quality to it. 

I waited for the man to remove his mud-caked boot from the top of the crate. 

He... held it there... just a little... too long. 

He was hoping that this display would intimidate me and impress his friends. I just looked at him and waited. I am not a petty man... I really am not, but this utter bastard was going to...

He removed his foot before my hand got to my holstered pistol. 

I was a bit disappointed. It would have been nice to shoot him, because I would have if he had held his foot there another second. I would have shot him and smiled about it—job well done. 

I took off my gloves and opened the wooden shell crate.

The box contained a blood-soaked sack, a rough Hessian sack tied with twine. The blood was black. Hmmm!

Something about the way the wet sack sagged told me more than I wanted to know: the way it didn't sag naturally, the way it seemed to hold not an object but a silence. I've seen enough to recognise silence when it's heavy.

I tugged the sack open painfully. I knew that this was not going to be a pleasant thing to see. I knew that my response was not going to be a pleasing one. 

And there it was.

A small thing, curled in on itself like a child in sleep. Only it wasn't sleeping. Its limbs were thin, almost stick-like, and covered in a patchy down of greyish fur and... broken.

The ears were too large for its head, sharp-pointed like a fox's, but its mouth was what stopped me: too wide, teeth like pin-shards, some shattered, some missing. Its fingers were long and narrow, tipped with nails that had been torn back.

It looked like someone had tried to wring secrets out of it the way you wring water from a rag. 

There were burns on its arms—bruises on its ribs. Someone had taken delight in its pain — slow, careful delight.

Not a natural kill. Not mercy. Torture.

One of the men shifted, uneasy. 'Didn't scream like any animal I ever heard, sir. Sounded… like a baby. Like it was beggin'.' A hint of sorrow in his tone.

I closed the sack gently, because some things deserve dignity even after they've been denied it in life.

Pig-Eyes grinned, teeth yellow in the lamplight. 'Nasty little bugger, ain't it? German, I reckon. One of their tricks. Little thievin' bastard.' He spat at the end of the sentence.

'They're set loose to wreck our stores. Ain't natural, is it? Ain't… 'uman.'

'No,' I said softly. 'Not... human.' I announced, pronouncing the word 'human' correctly and with a tone of disgust.

My mind ran back over the little body. The scars, the burns, the trembling shape of it. It died in such pain. I could sense that agony vibrating from that shell of a thing. Anger rose in my throat. No, I must contain it at least for a moment or two.

This was not German engineering. Not some battlefield experiment. This was much older than that.

Much older. Something from under hill, dragged up into the muck of man's war, and then brutalised for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

They should not be on the surface. They had obviously been brought up by what was happening above. This one looked like a starved version of what it was. It must have resorted to this... Hmm!

It was a Kobold. 

'I'll take this from here,' I said at last. My tone brooked no argument, though Pig-Eyes's lip curled as if he wanted to. 

'You'll have your reward once I've confirmed its nature. That's the arrangement. Do we understand one another?'

Pig-Eyes leaned in. 'And if we bring you a live one, Major… you'll pay? Another hundred and fifty guineas?'

I looked him dead in the eye. The sort of look only an immortal can perfect: the look of someone who's already seen a thousand men like you, and outlived every one.

'Yes,' I said, my voice smooth as silk and sharp as razors. 'One hundred and fifty guineas. Paid in full. But be very sure, soldier — very sure — that you understand what you've caught.' I slowly put my gloves back on while I spoke before regarding the... beast of a man and spoke to him directly.

'Cruelty has a way of crawling back to its master.'

That shut him up, though not happily.

I lifted the sack out of the crate and slung it carefully over my shoulder. 

Light as a child. Lighter, even. And gods, it felt wrong. The wrongness of a fairy tale turned inside out. Inwardly, I now burned.

I turned to the men. 

I had to say something.

'Do you have any idea how rare these little creatures are? The damage you have done? They are not like humans; there are only a few of them left, and you've... you've killed one...'

'Thing shouldn't be snarfing our kit. It's a thief, it is, and if someone or something nicks stuff from me, it pays the price. Ain't that right, lads?' He said to the others, who all looked utterly weary and saddened to actually think and act like the bully.

'I fucking said something you agree with, right?' He said to the men threat in his tone. 

'Yeah, sarge.' Came back as a pitiable chorus from the cowards.

Cowards on a war front. Who could fathom that? 

I am revolted by humankind regularly, and this was one of those times.

I paused and stared at the three. A little too long.

'Fuck this for game of soldiers. You are just not worth saving.' I spat at the men. I had made my decision. 

I gently placed the sack down with reverence and reached towards my holster, unclipping the fastening to get my hand on the pistol's grip.

The big man started forward to try and stop me. Fists made into clubs. The others stood incredulous, their mouths agape. So-called soldiers, but untrained. 

Pig-eyes was not quick enough. I was practised and lethal. 

He was practised but not in lethality, in savagery and thuggery. 

I was going to show him some cruelty.

As he almost got me in his grasp, I put the muzzle of my Webley revolver directly on the man's shoulder and fired. 

The bullet and blast liquified and then tore a large chunk of flesh from that now ruined shoulder, and he fell to his back, not dead but screaming his rage. 

The fool was so dim-witted that he tried to get to his feet using his now-destroyed joint and collapsed, yelling defiance at me. 

'Facking officers. All lying scum you are. You hear me!' 

'Go get the bleeder.' He said to the other two soldiers.

They just stood there. I smiled at them in a mildly amused manner. They probably could have overcome me if they had charged in. Cowards. 

These men were not worthy of this uniform. Not worthy of being called British Soldiers. What were they? French?

Now, in the fresh silence as the echoes of the shot cleared my ears. I could sermonise a little. This is not the waste of effort you may think it is to talk to men who are about to die, because these men were about to die. 

No, they would take this little sermon with them on their next step. To wherever their soul would land.

'Take comfort in this. There are millions where you came from.' I told them.

'In the grand scheme of things, you will not be missed.' I sighed.

'This little fellow will be missed.' I said, waving the muzzle at the sad sack on the harsh wooden floor. 

'I have some explaining to do to his clan.'

'Because of your... Because of your cruelty to another being.' 

I left space for a reply. At least fight your case verbally. I admit they had already been judged and sentenced, but at least give it a go. 

'Pathetic.' I spat at them.

'Fucking humanity.' I spat again, looking heavenward with a little hate.

'I have some apologising and some promises to make to gain their forgiveness.' I said, pointing at the sack once more. 

I felt bitterness and resentment well up in me.  

'You fucking wunt dare kill us.' The sergeant offered. My eyes turned to him, my smile turned to a smirk.

'You off us and you'll be taken for a murderer.' He said as though I had not considered that. 

'Ah, you see, that's the rub, I'm afraid. Old chap' I said to him, crouching to get to his eye level.

'You're already dead. I would not give you much longer before you bleed out.' I said as I stood and took a disgusted step back from the expanding puddle of filthy blood beneath him. 

'I'm not even going to hurt you again.' One of the other soldiers moved. I pointed the pistol directly at him without looking in his direction. He stepped back to where he had stood as I shook my head in warning. 

'elp me.' He gurgled, and 

'Help me. H... elp me. It begins with the letter H.' I laughed before I continued speaking to the pig-faced monster bleeding out on the floor. 

'Oh, I'm not going to elp you, and neither are these chaps.' I said, waving my revolver toward the men as they shrank back from me.

'You're going to bleed and die, and you know what. No one will... care. That's 'umans for you.' I turned from him as he slowly gasped and fell from the elbow of his good arm to lie still and pale on the floor. 

'As for you two. Prepare yourselves, the retribution you are about to experience may be divine, but it won't feel like it!' I said cocking the hammer back on my gun. 

'There's a passage I have bladdy well memorised just for occasions like this. It is utterly appropriate, I think you'll find.' I told the men. 

'Ahem!' I prepared.

'Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon you.' It felt good to speak these words with such force. 

They stood stunned. I continued.

'Now... I must say that I have been quoting this passage for many years. And if you had ever heard it, that would mean I had killed you.' They stood incredulous.

'It means that you should be dead right now,' I reassured them. They nodded.

'I never actually gave much thought to what it means....' I paused in a moment of puzzlement.

'I just thought it was a cold-blooded thing to say to a lousy bastards such as yourselves before I killed them.' 

'But I saw something this morning that made me think twice.' 

'You see, Gentlemen, now I'm thinking: maybe it means you're the evil men.' 

'And I'm the righteous man.'

'And Mr Webley Mk V here...' I hefted the pistol as I viewed it. '...He's the shepherd protecting my righteous arse in the valley of darkness.' 

'Or it could mean you're the righteous men and I'm the shepherd, and it's the world that's evil and selfish.' I paused in thought.

'Hmm!' 

'And I'd like that. But that isn't the truth. The truth is, you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. Or some rot like that.' I lifted my pistol to them before continuing with my address.

'But I'm trying, gentlemen. I'm trying real hard to be the shepherd.'

(Gunshots and screams.)

They fell, they died. I basked in their slow deaths. My ears rang a little as the gunshots had rattled them in the compact space of the shed. 

Hmmm! There was another noise. It was...

...I turned. There she was, sitting in a red diaphonous evening dress in the modern style. Her pet black cat on her knee. She was applauding.

'Bravo.' She said.

I took a somewhat circumspect bow in her general direction, not taking my eyes from that beautiful face. Never allow the Devil to stay behind you.