The Beast Must Die: Chapter 4
"Please...please my love...please don't go now."
"Vena, please try to understand darling. I'm doing this for us. The Queen said she can protect us. We need to be safe. I want you to be safe"
"But Varcus, why now? why her? We don't know anything about her, nobody does! what makes you think we can trust a stranger like her? besides, have you not heard the whispers...there are those that call her a witch, a sorceress! Oh Varcus, I just don't want anything to happen to you..."
"-and that is why I need to do this!" Varcus's harsh whisper interrupted. "Don't you understand? She's come to stay... she is the new power now. If she is indeed as strong as they say she is then who can stand against her? It's too late now, darling. The lines have been drawn, the village is feeling the pressure she puts on us... we can no longer stay neutral! I don't like her any more than you do, but... my love I just want you to be safe! If this village can earn her protection then by Aslan I intend to give her anything she wants for that!" Please try to understand...I'm doing this for you... for us...for me and you and Varcus Jr. on the way."
Now she laughed a little, appreciating the lightertopic her husband brought up. "Oh come now, how could we put up with two Varcuses in the house?" She smiled and patted her swollen belly. "No, even if it is a boy, I'm sure we'll have time to pick names when you get back. Go darling...go now and bring back good news."
"I won't be long, my love. You'll be with me every step of the way..."
"Wait! Don't go! don't leave me! Come back! Father come back!" Again Varco woke up screaming to the night air. Dawn was peeking over the trees, and everything was covered in dew. Varco felt the droplets run down his fur...felt his tears mixing with the morning dew on his face. He tried to move...and found he couldn't! As his eyes slowly adjusted to the relm of reality he came to realize he was standing up...more than that he'd been running...sprinting in his sleep! His tortured mind had fired his legs into tearing headlong through the forest...right into a broken offtree branch.
The stick was at about chest level...perhaps 3 ribs from his collarbone...he knew this because that's where it was now embedded...that waswhere pain was searing his flesh. his rusting chainmail dug into his neck, as if something were pulling at it from his back...or pushing it away from his body...slowly it dawned on him.
He was impaled on a jagged forest branch.
With a grunt he tried to move, tried to back away, and his chest screamed protest. With a muffled whimper Varco gripped the branch with both paws and pushed. slowly the wood gave way, splintering and crackling out of his back, through his ribcage, and finally out of his body. Varco collapsed to the ground as he felt blood quickly filling the hole left by the natural spear.
"how...how can it be?" Then it hit him. "even the trees are on His side now." The Beast's loyal foliage had tried to stop him, had skewered him as he dremt. Now thanks to them he would die here and the Lion would live unpunished...how dare he! Varco tried to breathe, but choked on blood.
"You can't get away with this Aslan...You did this to me!" Now the deep glow started to fill his wound...for an instant Varco felt a flash of pain...like a red-hot cauterizing iron was crawling out of his chest...then nothing.
He looked down, the blood no longer flowed, his fur was still matted with it, but already it was drying, hardening, but not flowing. No longer tormented by the awful pain, and too battered from the night to even attempt an explanation of what had just happened, his mind retreated to reflect...reflect upon all he'd seen that night.
Too long had he been tortured by these nightmares. Too often he was forced to relive all the most painful moents of his relatively young life. Too many times was he dragged through memory after awful memory...oh so many times! And each time more vivid than before...after a while he'd come to live with it; nerves of steel grew within him out of necessity...but this last revelation blasted through all his defenses like a hurricane through a card house. Because this one was new.
He'd never seen this before in his life. Never! always he'd been forced to relive episodes dredged upby hismemory...but this...this was something he'd never seen before...something he'd never witnessed in reality! Varco had seen his father for the first time...he now knew what he looked like...and the already-fading image in his mind wasenough to leave the hardened warrior broken and sobbing on the forest floor.
"Father...Daddy why? why'd you leave us? Why? Daddy..."
At the sound of hooves Varco's ears suddenly pricked up. Instantly his warrior instincts kicked in; his sobbing stopped instantly as if suddenly overridden. He leapt to his feet. Long years fighting Narnians had tuned his ears to pick up on his opponents. Once he knew who, where, and how many there were, they became not opposition, but prey. Now his ears detected a familiar sound...one that made his hair stand on end. Those were Centaur hooves he heard!