Page 9 - Mad Shadows II

in for good measure. They have powerful jaws and a mouth
crammed with sharp teeth capable of stripping the flesh from a
corpse and then cracking the bones to get at the marrow. I was
no expert on ghouls, and I certainly never dreamed I was going
to learn more than I ever knew about these eaters of the dead —
creatures the Muthologians of Khanya-Toth call the Gulai
Carovul.

All this reminded me of last summer, when my friend
Yozinda Andovo and I rode into her father’s village of Okalin.
The men of Okalin had been hunting and killing wolves, bears,
foxes, coyote and even long-horned goblins by the score, not
knowing at the time that their village was cursed by not one, but
two werewolves. But this . . . this was different.

Seven men were using the heads of the ghouls for target
practice. They fired crossbows and longbows, shooting arrows
and bolts into the heads. Two of these characters, who looked
like ordinary cutthroats, were throwing knives. This circus
atmosphere caused me to grind my teeth. It reminded me of the
jeering crowds who gather to watch a public hanging, flogging
or a witch being burned at the stake.

“Disgusting, isn’t it?” asked a tall soldier standing next to
me. “It never fails to spoil my appetite when I see men and
women behaving no better than animals.”

He was a grizzled-looking, brown-skinned fellow, probably
in his forties, dressed in the baron’s livery and wearing a
longsword at his side. A seasoned veteran of many a bloody
campaign, I figured. He hadn’t gotten the scars on his
mahogany face and the one that parted his close-cropped hair
on the left side of his head by sitting in some university
classroom.

“My sentiments exactly,” I told him. “What’s going on
here?”

“Something’s got the ghouls all stirred up. Over the last few
days five villagers have been found butchered. Their bones
picked clean.”

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