Chapter 33. The Doctor and The Beast
by Russel
"Are we to destroy this badger?" inquired Solgrim.
The hedgehog shot him a glance, head lopsided as an unsecured shelf.
"I should hope not! Blimey, destroying a thing like that would be like destroying...well…"
He didn't have a comparison. Whatever that thing was was uniquely it. It was the product of a brilliant mind and one that may have been just a bit mad. Russel might have felt some kinship to that thing's creator, if he hadn't seen it slaughter all of those creatures, most especially the one who went back for his son.
"Then what are we to do, landbound, talk it to death?"
"Talk, yes, death, no. Not if I have a say in it and I'd imagine I do; having a son does wonders for strengthening your vocal cords. We talk to this creature, figure out what it wants, perhaps convince it that it's the same thing we want."
"What would that be?"
"Peace," Russel said, spouting the word as though it was the most obvious answer and yet not the most appropriate word to use. Somehow it didn't cover it all. It was a soup bowl used to hold an entire kettle.
Solgrim shook his head. "Speak for yourself, spikehog."
"Oy, what'd I say about calling me that, that hurts! Besides, what's your end goal in all of this?"
He could see Solgrim's breast inflate with pride as he gave his answer. "To become the greatest weapon in the history of this world."
Russel's brows raised, kites on the winds of confusion.
"And?"
"There is supposed to be more?"
"Well, yes, of course yes. The greatest weapon? What for?"
Solgrim appeared to be counting the number of spines on Russel's forehead before he returned with, "No reason than becoming."
The hog, his head skewing to one side like a turning gear, laughed. He shook his head as he answered the great bird.
"Now that is more profound an answer than you think. Spikes and beakers, Lua'd love that answer." If it wasn't relating to something so macabre as a weapon
Talon and paw crunched through the snow, the air filled with a sound like great feasting caterpillars, the only beat signifying the passage of time as they tread the black and white wood. Then a soft word, a sort of desire to dispel the silence as they searched for a beast whom it was probably best not to find.
"This Lua, she is your mate?"
Another laugh from Doctor Song at his patient. "Yes. Wonderful hog. You'll have to meet her when we get back to the abbey." He took a deep breath of the stinging air.
"Just wonderful. I have met very few people in my lifetime as brilliant as me but she, well, she's acres ahead. Well, we're about even, actually. But the things she sees, the way she thinks...it's loads beyond my understanding and I will tell you one thing, Solgrim, if you know nothing else about me, know that there are very few things that that happens with. Except maybe baking. Never could figure out how to bake that casserole. Anyway, Lua, though, you should see-see that there, that right there! You see it, Solgrim? Tell me I haven't gone mad."
A few yards away was a prone form. The snow had kept it somewhat preserved, though the blood around the neck looked like it was beginning to go a bit bad.
"Sage," said Solgrim as if describing a tree or a plant.
"Who?"
"He was the doctor of the Redfire Army."
"Oh." He knelt next to the slumped body. "Well, I'm sorry, Doctor Sage, so sorry especially that we didn't get a chance to meet. I'd wager, one doctor talking to another, might have been interesting. And I'm especially sorry that I'm going through your pockets right now, but, well, can't resist a piece of paper when it's sticking out of a beast's pocket."
Russel was two lines into reading the parchment he had retrieved from the fallen doctor's pocket when he realized something.
"Oh, for puff's sake! I've forgotten my spectacles. Solgrim, would you be a good buzzard and fetch them for me? You already know where my study is at the abbey, David should be there to tell you where they are."
The buzzard shuffled his feet, stacking claw prints in the snow. "What about...my recent injury?"
"Well," began Russel, a claw pressed to his lip. "The abbey's not to far away if you fly straight to it. I figure fly that way for about fifty paces, take a break for a few breaths, then fly again, another break. It'll take longer, but it's shorter than me having to make the way."
The great buzzard appeared to deliberate before rising into the air, scattering snowflakes like motes before a feather duster, then climbing until his shadow blended with the trees and then the blue-black of the night sky.
When Russel was alone, he turned his attention back to the document, impatient to try to make out more. He swore loudly when the next few lines read quite clearly.
"Doctor Song, you've just gone and done something very foolish."
As he was want to do when he was alone, he answered himself.
"And that would be?"
"You don't wear spectacles!"
All he could do now was wait for Solgrim to return and read the paper as he did so. Two paragraphs in, he noticed something amiss.
"Doctor Song?"
"Yes?"
"The sky wasn't cloudy when we left the abbey, was it?"
"Not very, no."
"Then why is it suddenly so dark?"
Two seconds were afforded the hog before a great metal something crashed into the ground where he stood not a moment before. Bringing himself about, Russel looked up to behold the object of his search.
"Hello! So nice to finally …"
Russel realized all too quickly that one day's rest wasn't enough for a bad ankle as he narrowly dodged the badger's next blow.
"Where is he?"
"Now, hold on, just a moment! There, right there, you can talk, right? Let's talk."
This slowed the creature, but only just, as it continued to lumber closer to him.
"Where?!"
"I can help you!"
"Kill! Crush! Exterminate!"
"Hold on, hold on!"
"I must be complete."
As though one paw could stop the avalanche of beast and metal, Russel raised his palm skyward.
"Wait, right there, wait! What you just said. You have to be complete. Why?"
The beast froze.
"It is my destiny."
"So you kill? You kill to be complete, is that what you're telling me - wait, don't answer that, not just yet. Ruins it for me to guess. You're...you need someone specific to make you complete, yes?"
"Where is he?"
The doctor waved the giant badger's words away like swatting at a mite.
"You have to kill someone to be complete - no, no, you need someone to make you complete." Something the badger had mentioned before came to his mind then. "The Professor."
The badger went rigid as a loaded crossbow.
"You know the professor?"
Now he was in the boiling water. His next answer could very well determine if he was to return home with all of his bone still inside his body and uncrushed or if he'd suddenly become very well acquainted with the woodland soil.
"Yes, I know the professor. Several, actually. How d'you think I became a doctor, eh?"
"Where is he?"
"First, though, you've got to tell me who he is?"
A massive paw crushed the snow very near where Russel was, then retreated, circling about again as though it had a mind of its own, a beast prowling behind prison bars. The badger was thinking.
"I need a name. Can't help you without a name."
The badger didn't move, but Russel could tell he was thinking. He could almost hear the whirring of belts, the great clanking of gears inside the great metal beast's head. The beast's jaw seemed to groan as it churned out an answer.
"Falliss. Professor Falliss."
"Falliss." Russel rolled the word on his tongue, juggled it between his cheeks, then swallowed it and attempted to digest the information a bit. "Professor Falliss? Right-o, that'll be all for right now."
"Where are you going?"
"To go have a word with the professor, of course."
He could hear and feel the badger's footsteps like felled trees following him.
"Take me to him."
"'Fraid not. I need to...confer with him, that's a good word for it, confer. Is it a conference, though, if it's just the two of us? Anyway, need to confer with him, tell him of your progress and, if he concurs with me, as I think he will, you'll be meeting him soon enough. Bye."
His ears were suddenly filled with an old oak's screaming as roots were rent from the ground, fibers were torn in half, bark was shattered and tossed asunder with its home trunk.
"I must see him!?"
Russel turned about, paws in his pocket, head cocked to the side.
"I was very afraid of having to do this."
The hog bolted as thought all the forces of Hellgates were bearing down upon him, and with the racket of metal and flesh and rage going on behind him, it very well might have been. Russel could picture the gates opening as the beast's armor creaked like ancient, rusted iron hinges, hear another scream of aged bark as the first assailant began to charge him. The hog threw himself to the ground, rolled, heard his coat tear in the struggle.
From his vantage point, the naked tree limbs appeared to branch out the creature's back, long, spindly claws, spider legs to ensnare twitching, writhing victims. All thoughts of the liquid burning itch in his ankle evaporated as he pulled himself upright, footpaws leaping through the snow to escape the predator. Russel could only think of the sound of the creature behind him as he ran and how he had to escape that cacophony, the sound of one million clocks being ground together and set ablaze. He couldn't die here. They were waiting for him, Lua and his son were waiting for him. He needed to see them again.
Bartholomew had the crossbow, which left Russel with one weapon; the one lodged betwixt his ears, behind his skull. There must have been something about this creature, a chink in the armor, a weakness. Or perhaps, he realized with wide eyes and a grin as he ducked a sweeping paw he could feel coming after him before seeing it, a design flaw. The monster had to adjust when he'd made the hard turn earlier.
"Oh, I am brilliant! Why didn't I see it before?"
The hog ran, then as quick as he could manage, made a sharp turn around an oak. Behind, armor clattered, muscle bulged, footpaws thundered into the earth, then lowered to a rustling as the creature came about. Russel let the creature get half-way to where he was before making another sharp turn, then another, then another. Rounding off by ducking low beneath some branches not yet starved by winter's frost, the hog was a good fifty-five-and-a-half paces away before he could hear the creature begin to tear through the overgrowth. Russel didn't allow himself rest, though, not yet. It would take more than trees and right-angles to slow this beast enough to get away. The hog ran straight away for five hard, staggered breaths when he changed course, hoping he wasn't about to do something that would get a bunch of innocent children killed.
The doors to a restored Saint Ninian's exploded open, then slammed shut, followed by the uneven tattoo of limping paw beats on cold stone.
"Bart, 'ello! I see you succeeded in your search," said Russel with the last of his breath, diving back into frantic panting soon after. Crowded around the hare were three ferret children, all boys.
"Quite so, old bean. And you yours, wot?"
A cry as loud and evoking as much dread in the hog as all of his shelves coming loose from their walls at once shook the entire church. Doctor Song offered a weak smile.
"You...could say that."
The hog limped down the isle as he struggled for control over his lungs. Fear and desperation dulled pain better than any apothecary's craft but only for so long. Russel's twisted ankle had been forgotten during his run but now it made itself known. The hog clattered into a nearby pew just as he heard steel scrape sheath.
"You three, names, and make it quick. Can't say I'll remember them, but, well, courtesy and all. Bart, put that thing away, you'll get us all killed."
The children answered him around the same time Bart complained.
"With due respect, Doctor, that monster killed half me crew, if that's the sound of what I think it is."
"I'm Fortin, that one's Launce -"
An' the little one over there is Benedick," cut in the middle child before the eldest could finish. "Why you havta introduce the lot of us, can't we do it ourselves?"
Confronted with such overlapping noise, Russel was forced to partake in his least favorite activity; dealing with one thing at a time.
"Right, never mind that. Fortin, you and your brother Luce -"
"Launce."
"Right, him, go barricade that door. Put the crossbar down, stack pews in front of it, everything you can. Now, you..."
His eyes rested upon the youngest ferret who stared up at him with unsure eyes and waved.
"Just. Just stay close, right?"
"Hey, spike hog!" called Launce. "Does this look good enough?"
Before he could appraise their work, the two ferrets were flung from the door by a great resounding crash which caused splinters to fly from the door, small mites of masonry to fall from the ceiling. The hog's eyes searched the room, latching onto a small doorway at the far end. He could see stairs peeking around the corner of the frame
"You lot, help me up, we're heading through that door and up the stair. I've got a plan-well, more of a rough outline on how we're going to get out of this little predicament."
Though the children obeyed, Bart remained where he was, saber drawn, grumbling under his breath.
"not about t'let the old boy have his run of this church, no sah, not while I…"
The hog put a paw on the hare's shoulder.
"Bart, I'm sorry about your crew, really I am, but take a look around. Right now, you've got a cripple doctor, three children and a weapon that's a metal toothpick in comparison to the creature outside. Well, and my crossbow." Which gave the doctor an idea for the next step in their plan. "You'll have to trust me."
Whatever it was that got the hare to sheath his weapon, be it begrudging acceptance or desperation bourn of realization, Russel was grateful for it. Otherwise, Bart would have surely been slain.
Indeed, they were not more than half-way up the stairway, the children assisting him on either side while Bart guarded their rear flank, when they could hear the door finally give to the rage-fueled muscle that had been pounding relentless against it.
"Keep moving, everybeast, don't look back," he whispered. "That small door will give him some trouble and he won't know exactly where we are just yet."
The reconstructed Saint Ninian's possessed several key differences from it's predecessor, foremost the tall bell tower set at one end. This new feature would facilitate two of the needs for their escape: a confined space and a good deal of rope.
More disheveled stone clattered against the foundation, backed by the hollow clatter of wood in a disjointed duet. That would be the badger breaking through the door at the other end of the church, giving them extra time. A good thing they had made it to the top of the tower.
Russel clapped his paws together soon after they had thrown the door closed and bolted it shut. If nothing else, the architects of Saint Ninian's had kept in mind how often the older building had been sieged and taken over by vermin. Even with the extra security, they still moved a few chairs against the door as quietly as they could.
The hog looked out the window until he found what he was looking for. A bit close, but we don't have time to wait for another tree to grow.
"Bart, give me the crossbow while you go and cut the bell free."
"That'll tell the blighter right where we are!"
"And it'll be right loud too, so mind your big ears. You three-forgot your names already, not important. Take that lantern oil over there, rip of a bit of your shirts and douse it in the oil. We'll need something to wrap around the rope."
The hog felt a tug at his pant leg, which caused him to look down to see the smallest ferret stare up at him, wave, then clutch the hem of his overgrown shirt.
"Mista Spikeydog, what are we doin'?"
Russel wagged a claw at the young, ever-so-adorable little creature, "Something that you and your brothers can never, ever try to do again once we're out of this mess. Although it'll be a lot of fun."
If it works and I haven't finally gone mad this time
Bart at least had the consideration to whisper off a count of three before he cut the rope holding the heavy metal bell. The tower design fulfilling its purpose, the sound of the crash echoed through the entire building, into the ear, and pierced the head like some boring insect. One of the children cried out, the sound drowned by the foggy ringing of the bell as was the following roar from below and the sound of the second doorway coming loose.
Despite his ache, Russel was able to mark off what he was sure was the right length of rope, cut it with Bart's saber and then tie it securely to the bolt before taking aim. He barely heard or felt as the badger crashed against the door unsuccessfully, so concentrated on the shot as he was.
Like some wonderful metal bird, the bolt loosed and flew obediently to nestle deep in the bark of the tree. With a boost from Bart, the hog tied the free end of the rope to the rafters.
The hog dunked the scrap of what used to be the lower half of his apron into the lantern oil. He loved that apron. Now he'd have to find somewhere else to keep his stuff.
"Doctor!" he made out through the persistent ringing.
"Coming!"
He looped the scrap around the rope, prepared to kick off for the initial test, stopped when he saw Bart standing with his saber drawn.
"Bart, time to go."
"Not while that monster still breathes it isn't."
Russel sighed and rolled his eyes.
"Right, kiddoes, you first. I need to talk Uncle Bart into staying a living, breathing
hare rather than becoming a furry smudge on that badger's boot."
"Are you sure this is safe?"
"Not a lot of time for me to make sure, is there?" he said, grinning even as his teeth rattled in the second impact. The door was starting to shake loose.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the children, one by one, slide down the rope to safety, taking a breath of relief after each departed when the rope held. Russel secured his rag to the rope before crossing to Bart. Shaking paws seized the hare's stiff shoulders.
"Bart, getting yourself killed isn't going to help avenge anybeast."
"It's a small space. Gives me the advantage of maneuverability, wot!"
"Right, small. Meaning it'll be easier for him to -"
Metal and muscle finally won out over wood and stone as the door collapsed to reveal the badger, his breath showing in the cold like smoke from a fire deep inside of the suit, keeping the creature going. It had to crouch down to get into the room, delaying it somewhat. Just as Russel expected.
"Take me to the professor!"
"Bart. Window. Now."
The hare finally obeyed.
"I'll take you to him soon enough, but for now you need to stay calm."
The creature advanced. "I will crush you if you do not take me to him."
"Do that and I'll make sure you're never made complete. Ever," said Russel in a tone that suggested he was talking to an overlarge dibbun and not a metal monstrosity.
The badger stopped.
"Good. Manners are important. Now, you just sit -"
A crossbow bolt thudded uselessly against the creature's chest plate. It was like sounding an enormous gong, the way the small thing caused the behemoth roar to usher from the creature's mask. Russel turned. Bart was holding the crossbow.
"Bart, you stupid, stupid, stupid...dumb!"
The hare began to reload the weapon but even with a twisted ankle, Russel was too fast. He ran to the window, barreled into the hare and through some miracle of coordination seized hold of the rag with his free paw.
The hog nearly lost his grip more than a few times as he shot down the line faster than a stone from a sling. He saw portraits of her in his mind's eye, then, hastily drawn things, yet so vivid in their color. Lua's expression on the day they met, working hard at her creation; Lua studying an old book, reading it backward and upside down; Lua practicing her script with her off-paw. Lua smiling at him as they corrected one another's notes. Lua on a sick bed. Lua slowly becoming something that wasn't Lua anymore, but a house, a hollowed-out dwelling for whatever sickness had her in its thrall. Lua no longer Lua. Just a barren shell of a hog, lying on a bed stained with her blood, covered to her face in disease ridden sheets.
Russel padded himself. Everything was solid, no fractures anywhere. He prodded the lump composed of snow, fur and cloth at his side. It groaned.
"On you feet, sailor, there's a good lad."
The hog helped Bart to his feet, realizing a bit too late that it would have been nice had there been someone to do the same for him. His legs steadied quickly. However, his heart did not.
"It's trapped, the blighter. It'll take it awhile to get out of that small room, I'd wager" said Bart.
"Which gives us enough time to get back to the abbey before that thing can give chase. Come along, children, Bart."
The hare lingered on the spot, but didn't stay after Russel was more than a few steps away. At least that crossbow bolt had showed him how foolish it would have been to go after the badger on his own.
Not a sound from any in the group on the way back, save the occasional sniff from Russel. His eyes got a bit too blurry for navigation a few times, but he didn't trip. A small partition of his brain hoped Solgrim would be smart enough to find them at the abbey.
The rest of him was focused on a singular, far off thing. He knew exactly what he would do when he got back to the abbey, what he had to do. He would go to the corridor and he would try, no matter how hot as cinders that memory might burn, try to remember what he told himself to remember.