Guiscard Lescot and the Wolfish Bedevilment of Klöpz

“I’ve got a plan.” Those were the words that doomed Guiscard Lescot, just two days ago.

He reached for the next branch and pulled himself higher up the tree, sweat cascading down his face. Not only did it sting his eyes, his stupid chapel de fer kept sliding down too, making it impossible to see. When he finally wedged himself between two branches he took a breather and adjusted his helmet. His whole body was on fire and his heart stampeded in his chest – worse even than when he faced a cavalry charge on foot.

Two days was all it took for him to go from vagabond-destined-for-poverty-but-alive, to glory-seeking-idiot-that-dies. He huffed, lacking the energy to really berate himself. If only he had listened to his father. “Better to be poor and hungry, to marry an ugly girl, to keep fleas, to sire simple children, to work dusty land for an ungrateful lord, and to be alive, than to chase some idiotic notion of honour and wind up a bloody smear for someone else’s coin.” Wise words, he now knew. Wise, even if they came from a man who drunk himself stupid one night and fell down a well.

At the base of the tree beneath him, the bear roared, and Guiscard let out a most unmanly wail. Unwomanly too, and even most children would have been ashamed of it. He grasped the bark harder and shivered loud enough for the branches to rumble. At least, he thought, I am safe in this tree.

The bear rose on its hind legs, sniffed up at him, and then began climbing.

“Oh, for crying out loud!”

***

Two days ago, he stumbled on a nameless little hamlet called simply Klöpz, buried somewhere in the armpit of Upper Bavaria. The slack jawed children ran barefoot onto the muddy paths and marvelled at the brave foreign knight who had just arrived, and the young maidens fluttered their lashes at him and blushed.

Then the mothers corralled them all in their homes and gave him the evil eye, and the fathers started muttering about strangers. They grabbed their cudgels and formed a circle around him.

“Just who are you and what are you doing in our home?” they asked.

“Easy, friends, I’m just passing through,” Guiscard said, holding up his palms. “I thought I’d buy some bread and find a place to lay my head for the night.”

“That accent!” one of the men shouted. “You’re a foreigner. Where’s that from then, eh?”

“Friends, friends,” Guiscard said, with a nervous chuckle. “It’s true, I’m a man of Paris.”

Guiscard flinched when the men all in unison spat on the ground.

“Oh!” said a pock-marked young man. “Look at that on his back! Is that a devil bow?”

Guiscard frowned. “It’s a crossbow.”

“A true coward’s weapon, truly,” said a squat, balding man.

Guiscard grimaced. As they talked, he spun around, addressing all of the men in turn, and it made his stomach roil to count over twenty of them in all. If this got violent, it would go poorly. Well, it was going poorly, it would just go poorerly.

An old man stepped forward, this one wearing shoes. The others all grew silent and watched this new one. He beheld Guiscard with the unnerving gaze of a seasoned grandfather, and Guiscard found he couldn’t meet those unblinking eyes.

“So, boy,” he said. “You’re a deserter then, is it?”

“N-no!” Guiscard blurted out, almost at once. How did the old man know? And anyway, it wasn’t really desertion if your unit was routed and your commander was killed. It was… retirement. Yes. Nobody paid him to die.

The old man sneered, and the others – where they had been merely suspicious of a stranger before – now glared at him with the fury reserved for cowards and oath-breakers.

“So what are you then?” asked the old man.

“I’m,” Guiscard began, and then scrambled to find something – anything – because all he could see in his near future was this pox riddled rabble stringing him up in the town oak. “I’m a hunter,” he continued, and then he saw their glares deepen, because of course, what kind of a hunter would need a chapel de fer and a chained mail? So he added, “of monsters,” and immediately regretted it.

But the townsfolk recoiled in shock, and even the old man’s brows rose.

“A hunter of monsters? Is that what you said?”

“Y-yes.”

“My word,” the old man said, chewing his lip. A tentative smile formed on his face. “My word! Our prayers have been answered!”

The crowd cheered and patted Guiscard on the back, and the mothers let their children into the streets again. And Guiscard gulped.

***

The tree groaned each time the bear laboriously hoisted itself further up the trunk. It was nearly a third of the way up, or so Guiscard thought, but it was hard to tell by looking down at it, and doing so made his head spin.

He climbed up a few more branches himself but they were thinning out, and there was a limit to how much higher he could go.

“Go away, devil!” Guiscard shouted.

The bear roared up at him.

“I’m serious! This isn’t funny!”

The bear grunted and climbed another foot.

Guiscard assessed his belongings. He had dropped most of his kit at the base of the tree – and scattered around the forest, probably, as he dropped a lot of things in his mad dash – but he still had his axe. He drew it and waved it menacingly. “I’m warning you, bear! I have an axe!”

The handle slipped out of his sweaty palm, and the axe tumbled to the distant ground with a thud.

The bear snorted and climbed another foot.

“Ah, merde.”

Guiscard looked around for any way out. It occurred to him he was really high up, and for a moment, the bird’s view of the forest took his breath away. If he wasn’t about to be mauled to death, this would have been a serene and inspiring vista. Alas.

His tree and the trees around it were higher than most around, atop a hill, and there was a river nearby. A river! That was it. He’d be safe there, only it was too far a jump from the tree. Although, there was a branch nearby… if he could just climb out onto it, he might be able to fall into the water below.

The tree juddered as the bear climbed, and Guiscard scrambled for the branch. It was slow going, as the branch was narrow and the vertigo was intense, but he was encouraged by a healthy fear of being eaten. The further he went out, the more the tree bowed towards the water – Just like a bow! he realized.

But when he got to the edge of the branch, it was still too far to the river. Then suddenly, it wasn’t. The bear had made it up to the branch and roared, but its added weight made the tree dip just far enough. Guiscard flung himself from the branch with a scream.

At least, he thought, I will be safe in the water.

Then he saw the bear, too, dive into the river.

Oh, for the love of it!

***

“So you see,” the old man – the alderman of Klöpz – said, “we have a problem with a man-wolf. The bedevilled creature has been murdering our goats for two months now, and we fear it’s only a matter of time before he goes after our dogs, or our mules, or even our children.”

“Yes, most dire,” said Guiscard. They sat in what passed for the town’s inn, which was also its hall, and the residence of the alderman.

“And of course,” the alderman added, “we’d be willing to pay.”

The pile of silver caught Guiscard’s eye. Twenty pieces. It was by no stretch of the imagination a fortune, but it was a lot more than the zero he had in his pockets. And besides, he couldn’t well refuse, lest these bumpkins went back to thinking him a deserter. And then there was that one comely lass that had baked a pie for him, filled with berries and promises. Yes, he couldn’t well refuse.

“I accept your offer,” he said. “I have heard your plight, and I will slay this monster for you. I’ve got a plan.”

He didn’t.

It wasn’t until he was out in the god-forsaken woods alone, with a full stomach and an empty bladder, that it occurred to him he had no idea how to even find a man-wolf, much less kill one. Well, it was probably like everything else in life. Just put your faith in God and he’ll sort it out. Guiscard prayed over his weapons. Guiscard prayed he was on good terms with the Almighty. Guiscard even promised to build a cathedral if the Lord helped him out – and then backpedalled to visiting a cathedral before the prayer took flight.

And God must have heard his prayers, for he saw a sign that night. As he was drinking at dusk, enjoying the mild spring weather, he saw a silhouette of a man-like figure in the distance, with a lupine snout. And then he heard the unmistakeable howl of a wolf. He set out at once, but couldn’t see anything in the dark, so he slept instead.

In the morning he found tracks – boots, perhaps, and not his own. He followed them as long as he could, and by noon he stumbled deep into the woods and saw his quarry. Only, it wasn’t a man-wolf at all. It was the biggest bear he had ever seen, slumbering lazily. And the boots must have belonged to one of the townsfolk, and no doubt the bear had eaten him.

Well, Guiscard thought. The silly townsfolk thought they were beset by a demon, but it turned out to just be a bear. Nevertheless, this is a fine quarry. I’ll kill the beast, take their silver, and sell that fur for a good penny. And they’ll celebrate me.

He drew his crossbow and took aim. If there was one thing he was, it was a good shot, and there was little doubt this stupid brute would fall to his trusty weapon.

Just as he was about to fire, a bumblebee bumbled into his nose and he flinched. The bolt flew high. Instead of piercing the bear’s skull, it grazed its fur and woke it.

“Merde,” said Guiscard. He threw his crossbow at the bear and ran, and the bear roared.

***

Guiscard awoke with a torrent of coughing. He must have been laying on his back because he rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself onto shaking arms, and retched up the remains of river water. Then he collapsed again with a groan, wanting nothing more than to sleep off this terrible feeling. But he remembered his ordeal.

He forced his eyes open and found himself staring at a man-wolf.

The man-wolf sat on the opposite side of a crackling fire, surrounded by trees. Various animal skins were hanging around the place, including a particularly large black fur. There was a tent nearby and a collection of spears and other tools in several piles. And the man-wolf was sitting on a stump. He was tall and broad, and covered in fur – only, it occurred to Guiscard that his arms were bare, like human arms. And his snout… well, his face was actually inside the snout, so it wasn’t really his snout at all.

Actually, it looked like the man-wolf was just a man wearing a wolf pelt.

“You live,” the man-wolf said, his voice deep but not unusually so. He jabbed a stick into the fire and stirred up some sparks. A pot suspended over the flames was coming to a boil.

Guiscard coughed and winced. His throat was parched. He drew himself to his knees and fought off dizziness, and then realized he was in his under clothes. He did spot his mail nearby in a clump.

“You sank like a stone, in that stupid thing,” the man-wolf said.

Guiscard blinked the blear out of his eyes. He saw the big black fur hanging from the tree had a bear’s face attached to it.

“Did you not know bears swim?”

Guiscard shook his head. Well, he knew now. “You saved me?”

The man-wolf grunted. “You frightened my quarry. For weeks I’ve been tracking this cur. But I suppose you tired him out somewhat, so I should be thankful. Yes, I pulled you from the river.” He motioned to the fire. “Come, sit. I have food.”

Guiscard obeyed, his stomach growling. He sat on a log and accepted the wooden bowl of piping stew. There were big chunks of meat in it.

“So tell me,” the man-wolf said. “Why did you wander into the woods?”

Guiscard ate some of the stew, even though it was too hot. He looked around the camp and marvelled at all the pelts. So this was what a hunter actually looked like. Then he saw goat skulls.

“I’ve been contracted by Klöpz,” he said, “to hunt a monster that’s been killing goats. A man-wolf.”

The man-wolf chuckled roughly.

“It’s you, isn’t it?”

The man-wolf shrugged. “They don’t leave me much choice. The idiots have it in their head I’m an outlaw, so for all intents and purposes, I am. My name’s Ulf, and I’m just a man, no wolf.”

“Guiscard Lescot. Veteran crossbowman and… monster hunter, I guess.”

“Crossbowman? Without a crossbow?”

Guiscard winced. “I think I threw it at the bear.”

Ulf snorted another chuckle. “So, tell me, monster hunter. Is there a reward for this man-wolf?”

“Yes, damn near twenty pieces of silver.”

Ulf smiled. “Well, it just so happens, that stew there? Ten pieces of silver.”

“Bandit!”

“If you’d prefer, I could throw you back in the river.”

Guiscard moped into his stew. Well, splitting the prize fifty-fifty wasn’t too bad an idea, after all. He’d still get a decent chunk, and at least he was alive. Shame about the bear pelt though, that was out of his reach.

“You’ll leave the townsfolk alone?”

“Yes, yes,” said Ulf. “Time I moved on from here.”

“Okay,” said Guiscard. “Deal.”

And that evening he brought the bear’s skull to Klöpz, and explained it had been responsible for their plight. The townsfolk cheered his bravery, paid him, and celebrated their new hero, and life was good.

Until the next morning when the local baron rode into town and arrested Guiscard for poaching.