It seems to me that its eerie light, fragmented on shifts in the misty air, creates what could be a ghostly copse (much like frost creates its shattered patterns on cold blades) embedded on a small section of the hills.
And a darkness moves within this wraithlike copse, flowing towards its edges.
Then the shadows break clear, swiftly moving and picked out against those glittering lines. Staring more intently at these flurries of black, I begin to make out that they’re giant hounds.
I catch the air of the Master of the Wild Hunt, singing the souls of the dead to their rest in the Summerlands of the Otherworld.
The hound alongside me glances up, his expression bashful, his eyes possibly full of regret for making me think he was one of these hounds.
Is it possible to read that much into a dog’s eyes, his expression?
Possibly not; but then again, this is no normal hound.
And yet: these are the real Hellhounds, out hunting any wayward souls foolish enough to wander too far from the battlefield.
Which makes my hound – what?’
*
Chapter 16
The dog patiently waits until he’s sure the hounds have all passed safely by; and then we continue on our journey.
After a while, as the sun at last begins to rise once more, it seems to me that we’re heading to a particular figure, one that I suspect is far more ancient than any of the more numerous ones more recently hacked out of the land.
It’s a giant, the stag-headed Cernnunos, boasting magnificent antlers any male trooper would be bound to envy, while at his feet the Wise Salmon and the Five Rivers spring from the Great Cauldron.
down in the dark
below where grass remains moist
he lies underfoot
sleeping
waiting
for he is our roots
His mouth gapes slightly. A dark, horizontal cleft so low and narrow we can enter only by getting down onto our bellies and scrambling through.
I’m tempted to put aside my robe, perhaps a part of my armour, or even my sword, worried that they might catch on something and entrap me in the confines of the giant’s mouth: but naturally I’d prefer to keep them with me.
Our own bodies block out a great deal of the light as we crawl into what increasingly feels to be a bigger, more spacious area. And so it’s only when we both stand clear of the light entering by the entrance hole that I can make out that we’re in a large cave.
But it’s not an empty cave.
An angel stands there, quite obviously waiting for and expecting me.
*
Chapter 17
The song that’s supposed to comfort the souls of the dead suddenly no longer seems so melodious.
The voice is even a little choked.
I’m standing on an abruptly moist, even moving floor, both it and the cave walls surrounding me now a bright blood red.
Then suddenly, I’m no longer standing; I’m being effortlessly lifted up off the floor and hoisted back out of the cave, as something huge and cold grabs me by the back of my chainmail.
I’m not pulled from the cave, however, but from a gaping mouth.
The mouth of the giant Cernnunos.
*
I hang helplessly from the tips of the giant’s huge fingers until, with a bemused grin, much as one might grant a troublesome insect, he gently lets me down onto the outstretched palm of his other hand.
His antlers branch ever upwards, like some great pulsating tree reaching up to touch the circling sun, moon and stars.
The forests and even the seas, teaming with frenzied, never stilled life, spin around his massive trunk.
Under his great weight, his feet sink into the moist earth, like roots reaching into otherworlds.
‘Are you…are you the secret?’ I nervously ask him.
He smiles, his mouth almost forming into a hurt pout.
‘The secret? Now why would we have secrets between us?’
‘Because...there are some things that it is best man remains unaware of?’
He frowns as if sagely thinking about this, then nods in agreement.
‘Now that is a secret! Thankfully, man remains unaware of so many, many things, precisely because he flatters himself he knows so much.’
‘I was told a roebuck hides a secret,’ I persist.
‘A roebuck indeed?’
He says it as if this is something he’d never considered before.
‘Now,’ he continues, ‘the roebuck is indeed an interesting creature, I believe.’
As he speaks, he reveals a small roebuck hiding in the thicket of the surrounding forests.
‘So interesting that, as I’d heard it, Amaethon the god of agriculture and luck stole such a creature from the Otherworld – along with a lapwing and a bitch.’
As he speaks, the scenario is enacted amongst his spreading branches.
‘Now why do people tell such a strange tale, do you think?’
He stares at me intently, as if expecting an immediate answer.
I’m sure he must have seen my eyes light up on his mentioning of the lapwing and the hound; those who veil and guard the secret.
what is your nature?
a heart feels
an eye must see
a boldness dares follow
I don't think he says this.
I flatter myself I simply think it.
And then he’s gone.
And I’m back in the cave with the hound and the angel.
*
Chapter 18
The angel hasn’t made any move towards me while I’ve been in my trance, or whatever else it was I’ve just suffered.
In fact, now I take time to stare little harder at him as I wait for him to attack – my sword already instinctively drawn, already uselessly raised to parry any normal thrust with a spear or suchlike – I see that he’s suspended a little off the ground, but without the use of his wings of flame; that his head slumps weirdly, almost as if he’s just the husk of a man, one cruelly skinned and hung up to dry as a piece of leather.
The hound casually lopes past this angel who, I now see, hangs much as a set of chainmail and a helmet might appear if its back shoulder pieces were draped over a protruding part of the cave wall; a simple means of scaring away anyone entering the cave.
Passing some form of elaborate backpack – I only recognise it as such because it has a similar set of straps to ones I’m familiar with, for it’s at least three times the size of our own already heavy, cumbersome packs – the dog heads towards what could be a large pile of rags in the corner until I make out the muddied, bloody colouring of a trooper’s robe, laid out in the way we’ve been trained to use it as bedding.
The dog lies down beside this makeshift bed; and inside the bed, lying sweating beneath the sheeting of the robe, their lies a sleeping woman – but a woman of the weirdest appearance I’ve ever seen.
*
The sleeping woman is almost human.
He face is much flatter, her nose almost non-existent. Her ears, too, are minute and set incredibly low down.
I touch the side of her face carefully, hoping to wake her up; I can't see that she could cause me much trouble, for I’m sure now that the ‘angel’ I’d seen hanging by the cave’s entrance is actually her armour.
Even so, I keep my sword drawn, and in readiness to bring it swiftly down upon the woman’s head should she make any effort to attack me.
She doesn't wake.
It’s not so much a sleep she’s in, I realise, as a deep trance, perhaps even one similar to the state a shaman slips into when visiting the otherworld.
Is that what this angel is doing? Journeying into the otherworld?
Or is this a trance that’s been deliberately induced, the way some of our own medics treat the badly injured with plant and animal venom extracts that put patients under a deep sleep until more sophisticated treatment can be applied?
I glance nervously back towards the cave entrance; does that mean the angels who have helped her are still around?
The dog yawns, like it’s his sign that I’m worrying unnecessarily.
Near the backpack, I see a number of small, glass phials, the ends broken, the contents emptied. Were these the medicines administered to the angel?
Did she take them herself, of did she have help?
She must have been injured in one of the battles, and then was either helped here –no, that’s ridiculous, isn’t it?
I’ve just seen how quickly the angels can send out a black crow to remove their dead; so why would any injured angel feel they have to leave the battlefield?
All they’d have to do is wait; that would be quite easily the safest course of action.
I pull back the robe a little, to see if I can spot where she’s been injured. There are more clothes beneath the robe, made of types of cloth I don't recognise; these must be the angel’s undergarments, which she’s placed around herself to help keep her body as warm as possible.
There’s an elaborate dressing of bandages firmly affixed across her chest, obviously covering some from of wound. Other than that, she doesn’t appear to have suffered any other form of injury, unless there are more wounds lower down her body.
Her arms, like her face, are odd, bending at unusual angles. Strangely, she bears no resemblance to the angel babes, who are human in almost all respects other than the presence of the wings on the wrists and ankles; and it doesn’t appear, even, as if this lady has ever had wings on her rather delicate wrists.
If she has wings on her back, they must be furled small enough to be hidden beneath her; it’s impossible for me to tell while she’s lying down like this.
I would suspect that her legs follow a similar construction to her arms– ohh!
It seems she’s not a she after all!
*
The hound watches my actions with interest, even looks like he’s smiling as I express shock at my discovery.
As soon as he knows he has my attention, he slinks off towards the angel’s backpack, where he sniffs at what could be a side pocket. Kneeling down beside the dog, I reach in and pull out a small box, made of some hard yet light material I’ve never come across before – unless you count the backpack itself, a great deal of which is made from similarly unusual substances.
Within the box there are a few bizarre looking implements, along with a small book made of a much lighter form of vellum than I’ve ever come across before. I’m tempted to put the book aside, being unable to read anything written down in my own language, let alone some angelic form of it, but the dog – with an urgent prodding of his nose – persuades me to look inside.
There are few words for me to decipher, thankfully. It’s mainly some form of patterning, of odd shapes in various colours, but a set of simpler pictorial aids reasonably clearly show that the box’s implements should be used to transfer what can only be blood from one angel to another.
Why anyone one would want to do such a thing, I’m not sure, but once again the hound – by sniffing and licking at my wrist, by then sniffing and licking at the wrist of the injured angel – makes it clearer than any diagram that he expects me to use the wristbands and phials contained within the box.
He expects me to save the life of the angel?
I should have already killed him, by rights.
I detect a smell of burning, or at least of something that has been burnt. There are no signs of any fire in the cave, and it dawns on me that the scent of charring is emanating from the backpack.
It’s not until I lift the backpack up – it’s surprisingly light, weirdly rigid – that I see the holes to either side of it, set low down and apparently movable. There’s what could be a sooty substance around the edges, and the stench of burning is stronger still here, as if these work as braziers.
But why would anyone need braziers that are more or less positioned upside down?
Then I understand; these are the wings of fire.
Looking back towards the injured ‘angel’, I realise now why I hadn’t detected any signs of any wings. Even if they did sprout from her back, of course, a backpack this size would severely constrict them.
Do the adults not only lose the small wings of the babies, but also any wings on their backs? Or are the wings of flame just a more convenient or efficient way of flying?
Rising up from my kneeling position by the dog and the backpack, I stride over towards the hanging ‘angel suit’.
The dog doesn’t seem very happy about this, but at least he’s simply curious rather than so angry that he’s preventing me from inspecting the suit.
The back of the angel’s outfit is definitely scorched. It hasn’t burnt through, however, so it must – once again – be made of some material completely alien to us. Does it also absorb or reflect the heat, or are these semi-humans we’re up against capable of tolerating extremes of temperature?
Is this how they fly from one planet to another, using these mechanically produced wings of fire? Or do they come across on the giant ravens, which I saw being used earlier?
Next I unhook the helmet, which I find would normally be attached to the suit using a number of elaborate locking devices, but thankfully here it’s just been clipped on using some type of interlinking stud. I briefly wonder if the helmet is safe to wear, especially when I realise that I might have mistaken the man for a woman simply because they deem it necessary to adapt their heads to fit within its close, heavily padded confines.
As soon as I slip the helmet on, I’m blinded by a sharp blast of light.
*
Chapter 19
I whip the helmet up and off my head, hoping my eyes haven’t been permanently damaged by the abrupt burst of light.
As I furiously blink my eyes, I sense that – thankfully – there are star-like eruptions amongst the darkness, that there’s a darkly formed image of the cave returning.
In a moment, my eyes seem to have returned to normal, if a little pained from their experience.
Looking once more at the helmet, I note the globular green eyes I’d seen the other angels lifting clear of their face, in the way some of our own more expensive helmets have visors than can be worn either raised of dropped into place. Fixing these ‘eyes’ out of the way, I try the helmet on once more, but more cautiously this time.
There’s no blinding light. I’m looking through some sort of transparent visor, one that could be made of something like isinglass, perhaps.
Tentatively, I lower the globular eyes, keeping my own eyes half closed this time, blinking them shut as soon as I recognise that I’m going to be struck by a blaze of light once more.
Opening and shutting my eyes in this way, they become accustomed to this new source of light. Soon, rather than being blinded, I find that I can see into even the darkest corners of the cave, with everything being illuminated by an emerald-like glow.
No wonder the angels could see clearly in the dark.
If they really are angels, that is.
All I’ve seen so far is that their superiority comes from their equipment, rather than from any more natural advantages.
As soon as I take off the helmet, I’m plunged into a complete darkness, my eyes having to become accustomed once more to the change in light. It takes me longer than expected, my vision being quite hazy, even suffering once again from a sparkling of star-like bursts.
I’m dazed, quite lightheaded, in fact; I feel so unsteady on my feet, I have to consciously think about the way I’m standing to prevent myself from pitching forward.
There’s a hollowness in the pit it of my stomach, one that suddenly spreads and rises up to my throat, as if I’m about to be sick.
I gip but, thankfully, stop myself from vomiting.
Even so, I abruptly feel incredibly weak, as if I’ve been instantly drained of energy. My muscles ache, as they normally would be only after the most tremendous efforts.
; Of course, it could all be down to everything I’ve recently suffered; a hard fought battle, an ignominious defeat, the fleeing of a battlefield strewn with dead who I’d once called friends.
And yet I also feel strangely, unfamiliarly queasy; am I ill, maybe?
Have I caught some form of sickness from this angel?
*
The hound eyes me warily.
The way I’m swaying, the way I’ve raised a hand to clasp my aching temples; all this, of course, would be obvious to anyone.
But dogs are capable of sensing things we’re not; including when someone is unwell.
And when that dog is some sort of Hellhound or whatever he is; well, all the more reason, then, to believe that he knows something’s wrong.
He barks, but not loudly. It’s just to draw my attention back towards the medicine box containing what I presumed was some form of blood transfusion device.
He can see I’m ill and yet his main concern is for the wounded angel?
It’s probably because he brought me here than I’m now sickening!
Unless – was I unwell before I even came here?
Had I contracted some form of sickness during the battle?
That’s hardly unusual, after all.
In which case…it could be the dog is trying to tell me a transfer of the angelic blood could save me.
*
Chapter 20
Clipping the wristband around the angel’s wrist looks like it should be an easy enough task; as I move to do it, however, the hound barks again, quite irritably this time too, as if he doesn't want me to go ahead with all this blood transference after all.
He forcibly pushes his wet muzzle against my wrist, his way of saying, I’m sure, that he wants me to wear it.
But…that can’t be right.
The wristband – if I’ve interpreted the pictures correctly – collects the blood, saving it in a small phial. Then, when I attach the wristband to my own wrist, the blood should somehow seep into my own body.