THE COMMON ROOM was rank with the odor of unwashed bodies, hard labor, soil, and beasts. A few greasy candles hung in iron cages between the rough wooden beams that lined the middle of the room, twisting and flickering with the draft. In years past, the common room would have been awash with laughter, and stories thrice repeated. In one corner sat a stump hauled in years ago, marked a thousand times where fathers threw knives with sons and brothers. In another, a rudely constructed stage for showmen and inebriates to bellow coarse but comforting songs. The walls were lined with the shields of men lost in service to the legion: solemn memories of good souls gone. Once, the men of the town had come to the common room to plan, scheme, and build together.

Now, it was where they went to agonize. The stale air rumbled with the tense talk of men who sat with hunched shoulders, whose eyes darted like hunted things, where trust was a rare thing indeed. The current of conversation from one neighbor to another had evaporated, and men sat in tight pockets discussing their plight.

"Something needs to be done," a man with butcher's hands grumbled. "Three months it's been, through sowing and into summer, now."

"Aye," the whip-thin thatcher's son replied. "four girls dead or gone, and as many lads."

Outside, there was shouting. The words were too familiar now, a chorus of despair forced upon whoever was nearest.

"Desdro is at it again," the butcher rumbled, head pitched low as if to avoid the outcry.

"Can't hardly blame the fool," said a man whose trade was rope-making. An accident had left him blind in one eye. The damaged organ stared milkily back at his compatriots. "Two of the taken were his blood kin."

They nodded grimly, knowing all too well. Outside, the shouting turned to shrieking and the common room grew still and quiet.

"The priestesses of Iddunir say it's like to get worse," the thatcher's son spoke up, lancing the sullen silence. His father had taken him to plea with the temple virgins in the big town. "We ought to do something. All of us."

"Peace, Shen. What good are we? Storm the thirstin' castle with wooden hoes and staves? It grows stronger, takes more. How many of us will feed the beast's bloody hunger? Besides, we sent that small fellow with the long sword up there days ago. Perhaps he'll pull through."

The butcher spat at this show of thin optimism. "He's dead. We know it. Maybe Shen's right. No word from the legion, and the governor cares not a wit, so long as the wagons keep rolling. But a bully gang of twenty men should be enough! We've some iron between us, lads…or Deaf Jake can forge us some."

Shen nodded eagerly at this. The sparks of adventure gleamed yet in his youthful eyes.

The rope-maker pursed his lips. "You sorry fools are too eager to rush to an early grave, I say."

"Eager?" the butcher said, raising his voice above the general rumble. Others quieted, listening. "Better I go to the grave than my daughters, or my wife, or your son, Imro. This town's been cursed by some thing of the night, and you pin your hopes on strangers who fight for coin. I say Shen is right. Our land, our blood, our justice!"

He had taken to his feet and raised his voice to a shout. Realizing what he had proposed, the butcher sat down all at once. Sneaking a look around, he found his fellows searching their cups; none would meet his eye.

Silence smothered the table, each man looking inward to his troubles, save for young Shen, who stared over his shoulder at the wall. Beyond, Brokewrist Castle loomed on the treeless crag above the town. The old walls had weathered the long years well, but one of the two towers which stood above the keep had collapsed long before any of these poor souls had been spawned. The governor had never bothered to repair it, for in those days the crown cared more for the collection of taxes than the defense of its borders. It was for this broken tower the castle was now named.

It had long stood unoccupied, a place of daring and brief adventure for the most courageous boys, and a place of dread for younger children old enough to peer up at its sinister stone heights. And for the adults, too.

A man stepped up to the table and set down a round of drinks. They glanced up at this newcomer suspiciously. His features marked him as a foreigner: eyes flinty gray, set deep in a square, almost long face with a crooked nose broken more than once. A mustache hung below that bludgeoned nose, weighted down with small silver rings. His was the face of a rugged chieftain out veterans’ frontier tales. Yet, grim as he looked, the man regarded them not with contempt. He wore his black hair long, held at his temples by a dark headband embroidered with a lion’s head.

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About his neck hung a necklace of bone chips, each graven with a strange mark. He was tall and lean, a giant of a man, but he did not loom over them with menace. Rather, the stranger hooked a chair with a booted foot and pushed the long, heavy-looking sword on his back aside to take his ease beside the three men.

"Those are for you," he said, nodding at the foaming cups.

"And what for your generosity, outlander?" asked Imro, the rope-maker.

"The truth of this ‘creature’ of the night," said he, taking up one of the drinks with a large, hard hand. A golden ring glittered on his forefinger, marked with strange designs that seemed to avoid the eye. He threw back his drink, wiped his lips, and said, "I am Ulrem, a fighter. I would try my might against this thing you fear."

"Heard it before," the butcher said. "My name is Hagon. Forty winters have I, and no man I know of can best the thing that dwells in Brokewrist Keep."

"Yet you sent another man to test it?" Ulrem said.

Hagon the butcher looked away. His comrade said, "The man was a foreigner. Quick like a bird. He said he would follow the wind, but he took no coin. 'Harvest pays at market day,' or such like, he said. The headman has his reward, if he can collect."

"Or mine," said Ulrem. There was a fierce light in his eyes: the eager charge of a hunter at first sight of a blood trail. "Tell me, brothers."

The tension broke, and the men seized up each their own drink. The truth of it came in spurts, each man sharing a portion, filling in or correcting the others, but they did not argue the facts. Three months past, during the Gloaming, the month of dark and rain when the sun rose not above the horizon, a light had been spied up at the old keep. A few men had gone to search the castle, suspecting vagabonds or bandits, or some misguided youths at play. They found nothing in those chambers of the castle they could reach. Yet, night after night, the light returned.

No one dared enter the castle grounds after those first searches, but they set a picket around the place and lay in wait for the intruders. Though they saw no one, each night that cursed light rose in the keep, pale and ghostly, growing brighter as the night waxed. Not long after the light had appeared, the first of the children had been taken: a girl, already promised in marriage, waiting for the spring festivals. They had found no body.

And no one had dared climb the crag at all after that.

Two weeks passed, and then another youth vanished, and so it had gone, and the men were powerless to stop it. Boy, girl, it didn’t matter. All young and vital, all suddenly disappeared from their beds at night. Eight gone in total. The dogs would not go near the place; if forced, they turned on their owners with gnashing teeth to escape.

Ulrem digested this for a while in silence. "And your priestesses? What do they caution?"

"They speak of omens and sin," the butcher growled. "They offer us no guidance."

"Very well," said the fighter. He fingered the ring on his hand, spinning it round and round. "Then I shall go up to your castle and slay this thing, be it man or beast."

"Or demon," Shen said with more than a hint of fear.

Ulrem slapped the table and made to stand.

"You scoundrel!" a voice burst out across the room. “Flea-bitten dog!”

Faces turned to see a gaunt, almost starved man standing in the door to the common room. He swayed a little. Glaring around at the seated occupants and more than a little mad, he was dressed all in black. The crofter had let his hair and beard grow long into a wild mane. There were calls for him to leave. He ignored them and made straight for Ulrem.

“This bastard hitched his beast at my brother's pole!" Desdro said. "Rendo needs it for when he arrives tonight to drink and sing!"

Ulrem cocked his head.

"Rendo is dead five weeks!" cried one of the men at the table behind Ulrem. "Go home, Desdro. You insult our guest."

Heedless, he swung wildly at Ulrem. The fighting man caught the farmer's wrist in the air and spun him about, stepping round him deftly on dancer's feet. "I was just leaving," he grunted.

"Filth!" Desdro spat as he recovered his footing. "These slouching fools speak of devils in the dark. But it's rogues like you that come and steal our kin. I know the truth, even if the rest of you dogs are blind! Outlanders and perverts, preying on our children. I'll kill you!"

Ulrem's fast eye picked out the glitter of a legionary’s dagger torn from the lunatic's belt. Gripped in a skeletal fist, it stabbed at the fighter's side, seeking to pierce his vital organs and rip the very life from him.

He moved faster than any could have believed, dodging backward, to the side, deftly evading the vicious strikes. Caught off-balance by his flailing rush, Desdro stumbled, and Ulrem chopped hard with the blade of his hand on the man's wrist, knocking the dirk loose. He caught it, twisted, and hurled it at the stump in the corner of the room with unerring force. With his other hand, he caught the ruffian by the collar and forced him down into the chair he had only just vacated. All this with a panther’s easy grace. The villagers had never seen the like.

"Take this man home and see to his grief," Ulrem said to Shen and the others. "I will climb to the castle tonight. Perhaps we will meet again in the morning."

He left the common room in stunned silence, except for Desdro's strained weeping. All other eyes were on the stump in the corner, where the dirk still quivered, half-buried in the center of the stump.