Relicts & Revenants: Monsters of the Week II

The Hunting of the Aurum Vorax

A pine knot broke in the fire, a dash of wild, violent gold under the black portcullis of the night. Hermann and Georg jumped; even Karl, who'd fed the stick in to the flames and saw the fire running through its seams, flinched at the sound – the forest was stiller than they'd ever heard it, ever felt it, in all their years hunting these woods, and worse than that, tonight, almost surely, something was hunting them.

By day, the woods of the Börnischer Heide were bad enough for the uninitiated: deep farrows of tall yet sickly-looking pines, dense as sheaves in a wheatfield, blocking the light and obscuring the run of the hills; when the trees fell away, the soil too poor for even them, the unlucky wayfarer found himself in a waste of half-bog, half bracken, relieved only by regaining the solid ground and unnatural silence of the forest. It was a hunting field for the Dukes of Sehmatal because no other use could be made of it – if a poor one because, even now in the days of flint-struck firelocks, there remained persistent sign of unextirpated wolves: gray shadows under the darkness of the pines, shards of torn-up carcasses, smudged prints in the bogs larger and heavier than any wandering farmer's stray. And now, perhaps, there was worse.

"Would it come, do you think?" Georg asked, eyes as much into the black wall of the trees as to his comrades around the fire. "Surely, there's nothing for it here – it's a poor meal it would make of three poor men. We should be with the Duke – it's an iron ring he'll need, if he's in these woods this night."

"According to the learned Doctor, the beast must eat meat as well as gold," Karl said, standing, listening for nothing; "as it must – for it's not a demon but an animal, and has animal appetites. And I thank God for it – I wouldn't be here a moment if this weren't something that men might kill with lead and steel. If it eats meat, it may come – but if it eats meat, it's an animal, and we may kill it like any other animal."

"You would be here, like us, when the Duke gave the summons," Hermann said; his eyes stayed locked on the coals. "The other way lies France, where they cut off the heads of their masters – but they're popish there, and damned already. If you did the same in a godly country, we would surely be struck dead."

"Then long may they do it, and save us the pain," Karl said back, squatting again to poke at the fire. "Those who they don't kill strew gold like water to get away – you hear the tales of a pouch full of shining pistoles for the change of a horse, rubies and emeralds for a night in a hayloft and silence after. If we could stumble on one of those, we'd be richer than even if we found this gold-eater – and men, Frenchmen, come easy to kill." "Sure, and be taken by the gold-eater in the next breath." Georg looked away from the flames, to the empty fall of the night. If there had been roads through it, or a reason for travelers to cross, the Börnischer Heide would have been a perfect robbers' nest; and with so many French fleeing the terror, you never knew – couldn't know who else might be here, not on the Duke's business.

"Indeed; that must have brought it." Hermann was as still as a carved image. "Gold flowing – the world upset. It smells – and it hunts. The French will be gone, safe at court or over the seas – but it'll hunt their gold, the blood of the ones who profit from this terror. An evil business – with an evil end." "Come, Hermann, this gold-eater isn't some kind of were-wolf: the Doctor said, even so. It is an animal – it smells as an animal smells after its prey, it eats as an animal eats. It's an animal, an animal we can stop with our guns and kill with our swords, just like a wolf or a bear. On a night like this – there's no need to make it out as the curse of God."

"True," said a fourth voice from the side of the fire. "But it's a strange animal that feeds on mineral food – what sort of animal do you hunt, in a night like this?" The three stood, shocked, staring, hands not quite to the hilts of their hangers, seeing in the eyes reflected through the fire that drawing would be useless – might be fatal.