Abomination by Gary Whitta

something more than simply waiting for him and his men to break down the door and finish him off.
    No, Aethelred would not go down so easily as that. He surely had one final card still to play. The only question was, what?
    Wulfric was still pondering that as Edgard looked at him, one eyebrow arched, waiting for an answer to his question. “That is why we’re here, isn’t it? To attack?”
    Wulfric gazed across the plain at the spires of Canterbury, shrouded in morning mist. “We will attack when I have a better idea of what awaits us within, and not before,” said Wulfric.
    “We know what awaits us within. Aethelred and at most a few dozen of his hellhounds—far fewer than we have already done away with. Why do we wait?”
    They had kept a close watch on the path Aethelred had taken back to Canterbury as they followed, taking note of any settlements or towns he might have harvested for reinforcements. So far as they could discern, he had passed through none, opting instead for the most direct route back to Canterbury—meaning he could only have conscripted any individuals or small groups encountered along his way. Perhaps by now he had also turned Canterbury’s own staff and other retainers, but even then the numbers could add up to no more than Edgard was estimating. The sorcerer was trapped and under siege, his forces depleted, his magick useless. He was ripe for the finishing.
Unless
 . . . The word ate away at Wulfric like the burning ring around his wrist.
    “He’s been in there for days,” he observed with a nod toward the fog-shrouded cathedral in the distance. “Doing what, God only knows. Perhaps refining his magick to counter the wards on our armor. Perhaps training his remaining forces to better stand their ground, to fight more fiercely. Perhaps something we have failed to even consider. I don’t like it.”
    “What evidence do you have to suggest any of this?” Edgard asked.
    “None,” admitted Wulfric. “Only a bad feeling. Like the one I had before Chippenham. Remember that?”
    “Hmph,” grunted Edgard, gazing out at the horizon. The two men had many differences on matters of war—from infantry strategies to the best way to silently cut a man’s throat—and had often debated late into the night, but Edgard had to admit that when it came to ill portents before a battle, Wulfric’s gut instinct was almost never wrong. He sighed.
    “Wulfric, the only way for us to know what awaits us in there is to go and find it.”
    Wulfric let the flower that confounded him fall from his fingers and stood, turning to look at his men, assembled not far behind him.
    “Perhaps not,” he said. “Bring me Cuthbert.”
    Edgard passed the order to a runner, and a few minutes later they saw the little cleric dashing across the field to where his commander stood, huffing as he ran, breath clouding in the morning mist. “It really is a wonder that boy’s still alive,” said Edgard with amusement as he observed Cuthbert’s awkward gait, his ill-fitting robes hanging off his willowy frame as though slung over a poorly made chair.
    “That boy’s the reason any of us are still alive,” replied Wulfric. Cuthbert had come to earn his respect over the course of this campaign. High-strung and brittle he may have seemed at first blush, but when it mattered, he had proven himself no coward. At Aylesbury, Cuthbert had insisted on staying with the men until the last moment to ensure that every one of them had a freshly placed blessing on their armor, as well as on that of their mounts, before they entered the fray, in case the protective power of the spell—at that point, still an unknown quantity—should diminish over time. In doing so, he ventured far closer to Aethelred’s horde than he had thought himself capable. It was not until later, after the battle had ended, that he realized he had forgotten to place a protective blessing upon his own vestments and had left himself vulnerable to one of