Like the child, the hound appears to be asleep, and yet I’m sure I just caught his ears slightly pricking at the man’s avalanche of new information that leaves me wanting to ask numerous questions all at once.
‘I don't have angelic blood; although Bjorn had.’
‘And yet here I am, fully recovered. Which amazes me, as blood transfusion isn’t something to be approached lightly! Maybe your child–’ he smiles at the baby, who’s now tightly clutching his angled fingers – ‘has altered your blood. As for Bjorn, his body was dead, remember?’
That explains why Bjorn left the angel – the man, the alien, or whatever it is I should now be calling him – here in the cave, why he went out searching for an angelic baby.
And how did he find this angelic baby? Why, it seems his ‘gods’ helped him, of course.
‘How did he die? How did he return to life?’
Obviously, the second question is one anyone would be desperate to have answered. But I’m also curious regarding the manner of Bjorn’s death; did he die bravely after all?
‘I didn’t see him die; but his head had been completely severed.’
Hah! Didn’t I think my own severing of his head had been physically far easier than I’d expected?
‘And yet he saved you; he came into our camp,’ I point out.
‘How he did that – how he came back to life – I don’t know,’ the man admits with another shrug. ‘I thought I was the sole survivor of a hard fought battle, intending to tend any of my own people I found alive. As I bent towards a dead friend, Bjorn’s decapitated body rose up and stabbed me in my chest.’
He clutches the section of his chest where I had seen the dressed wound earlier.
‘My armour protected me from the worst of it,’ the man continues, ‘but I thought I must be dying as I saw Bjorn searching for his head, then placing it back into position.’
‘And it was his god who told him to spare you?’
This is an important point to clarify; why would our gods be telling us to spare our enemies?
‘I thought he would kill me. But he stared at me curiously – almost a little in disbelief – and then he stripped off my helmet. He found a horse that was still alive, slipped me up across its back, and then left the battlefield before anyone had chance to come out and find me.’
I notice for the first time that he no longer wears his wristband; whatever help a transfusion of my blood gave him, he obviously no longer needs it.
The wristband and it’s phial is – naturally – over by the medicines left by the backpack; and it seems to me that hardly any of the blood has been used.
Maybe – just as my child might have already altered my own blood – it only takes a small amount to create whatever effect Bjorn was seeking.
I suppose an angelic blood could well be an effective cure-all, after all.
This time, the angel’s the one who has followed the direction of my gaze.
‘Despite what Bjorn’s god might have told him,’ he says, ‘I must admit I was sceptical about all this angelic blood–’
He stops himself, chuckles as he stares once more at my little daughter.
My daughter!
And I haven’t named her yet!
‘I was about to say “nonsense”,’ the man confesses (maybe I should ask him his name too!), ‘but now I’m beginning to realise that I’m the unknowing fool! I’d told Bjorn that all this idea of an angelic blood was all based on ancient artefacts recalling that angels had once visited earth, or on fanciful interpretations of the fact that there are certain types of blood that don’t come from the same rhesus sources.’
‘You’re saying it wasn’t angels that visited the earth? But you – you were here, yes? Your people I mean?’
He nods.
‘But I don’t know if there’s any connection between my people and your people; it’s been such a long, long time, with all forms of crossovers and mutations taking place – but no one could have predicted this…this wonderful development!’
He looks once again at my daughter, his eyes possibly full of adoration.
I look beyond him, over his shoulder, staring out through the cleft forming the giant’s mouth towards where the rapidly approaching planet is once again visible in the night sky.
But I’ve never seen it like this before, not in our world. It’s still relatively small, of course, nothing like how forebodingly huge it appears when I visit the otherworld; and yet there’s no mistaking its odd presence, for it lies where before there had always appeared to be nothing but a gap in the universe.
Now the planet itself appears to be that perfectly spherical, perfectly dark gap in the cosmos.
The question is, will the giant swallow it – or will it swallow the giant, and everything he stands for?
‘The planet draws nearer each day,’ I say miserably, dreading the day when more of his people arrive once more.
‘Planet?’
He sounds mystified. Following my anxious gaze, he turns around to also peer out through the caves opening.
‘I’ve never seen any approaching plane–’
He gasps.
‘Oh no, no! I’d no idea it was already so close!’
*
Chapter 26
Before I can ask the man why he finds the sight of the approaching planet so unbelievable, he’s scrambling out of the cave.
I wrap up my child – Bjeliq, I shall call her Bjeliq – in some of the spare clothes I pick up from the nearby crumpled pile that makes up the man’s bed.
It’s not so easy working my way through the low cleft of the giant’s mouth when I have the safety of my child to take into account. At first, unaware of my attempt to scramble after him, the awestruck man continues staring at the approaching planet.
Despite his amazement, he turns to help me when he hears me struggling to pull myself through the fissure. Bending down to take Bjeliq from me, he wraps her tenderly in his arms – but as he prepares to spin around and stare once more at the looming planet, I briefly stop him by offering him my thanks, leaving a space in my sentence in the hope he fills it with a name for me.
‘Joshe,’ he says, adding in the same hopeful tone I’d used, ‘And your name is…’
‘Heliq.’
As I answer, I at last pull myself clear of the cleft and, along with Joshe, rise to my feet.
Joshe still continues to affectionately hold onto Bjeliq as he turns and raises his head, gazing up into the night sky as if venerating the arrival of the dark planet.
‘How long have you been able to see it there like this?’ he asks.
The hound has joined us at some point. He’s also watching the approach of the throbbing sphere – yes, it comes now with a dull, threatening humming – yet his gaze is only one of acceptance, it seems to me.
‘A few days now,’ I say in reply to Joshe’s question, reaching out for Bjeliq.
‘Physically, it’s not yet this close; I…I don’t know how it’s possible, but you’re seeing its potential impacts,’ he breathes in surprise, carefully letting me take Bjeliq from his arms. ‘Your blood transfusion, your angelic blood: it must have opened my eyes – no, my mind – to all the things you can see!’
He glances back towards me, as if I might be expecting an explanation.
‘You see things we don't…we were always told it was your overactive imagination…’
‘I used your helmet; I could see in the dark,’ I say, a touch confused by his claim that we see things he’s unable to see – how is that possible?
‘Yes, yes,’ he agrees, nodding as he takes in more and more of the surrounding landscape, his mouth dropping in astonishment, ‘but that's only equipment – science. This is like nothing I’ve ever seen before – ever imagined before!’
The giant hares, the doves, the warriors; they are all rising up from the hills once more, striding out or loping across the landscape.
Joshe’s eyes widen all the more in astonishment.
/>
‘I never realised, never knew; it’s all…all just so different!’
He falls to his knees.
‘Oh my God, my God; what are we doing? Why are we killing you?’
*
That, I think, is a good question; why are they killing us?
But before I can demand an answer from Joshe, he’s rising to his feet again, this time as much in shock as wonder.
I follow his distressed gaze, looking over towards the beginning of the valley meandering between the evenly undulating hills.
It could be a languidly flowing river, glinting like a pure, fluid silver in the moonlight.
But it’s not waters reflecting the mercurial light.
It’s the sharpened and polished blades of countless spears.
The spears of the Legions of the Dead.
*
Chapter 27
‘Your people send such a vast army; yet my people will effortlessly kill them all.’
I’m surprised by Joshe’s abruptly realised care for the wellbeing of my people.
‘It’s not our army,’ I point out forlornly. ‘It’s an unbeatable one; for how can we kill those who have already been killed?’
the many heads
the countless eyes
devouring those in its path
what prevails against this beast?
the sibling
who chokes it
‘The dead?’
Joshe’s tone is one of complete uncertainty. He fleeting looks back towards me, seeking acknowledgement that he’s understood me correctly.
I nod.
‘I can see the dead?’
His sense of mingled disbelief and wonder has returned.
Curiously, he waves his hand in front of his forehead, much as he did with me just a few days back. He gasps in elation as he catches his palm glowing with reflected light.
I’m so habitually used to seeing it that I’ve only just noticed that his forehead now shimmers with blue light, as if he were human after all.
‘A third eye; the transfusion must have granted me a third eye!’
He’s elated if a little crazy; the emanated light, of course, is nothing like an eye.
The glittering river of the dead is slowly becoming a sea. Behind what was only a vanguard of troops, the rest of the army follows, seemingly trailing back endlessly.
Bjeliq stills sleeps, as if she would sleep through the end of the world.
‘There are so many of them,’ Joshe almost wails. ‘But why wouldn’t there be?’ he adds with a scoffing laugh, mocking his own stupidity.
He turns back to me.
‘Why didn’t they take over the earth ages ago?’
This has been pondered over by my own people long enough to arrive at a long-accepted answer.
‘Because we give birth to those who will later be their own, new offspring; those who bring a sense of newness to what we must call their lives. While the spirits live within our bodies, they learn things otherwise completely inaccessible to pure spirits.’
‘Then…why now? Why would they rise up against you, if they need you?’
The hound growls miserably as, rising to his feet, he turns his head away from the approaching army, looking instead down towards the other end of the valley, where it abruptly forks.
‘Of course,’ Joshe says, his scornful chuckle now bitter and perhaps afraid, ‘it’s not your people they hunt; it's mine!’
*
‘If what you say is true – that the dead rely on your people for, as it were, their growth in understanding – then they can’t allow my people to eradicate you, can they?’
He says it without a hint of resentment. If anything, his attitude is more one of acceptance of a harsh yet ultimately fair and well-deserved judgement.
‘You’ve recently flooded their ranks with vast numbers of our people,’ I point out, vainly trying to keep my own bitterness under control. ‘No doubt they were originally thankful for that.’
‘With your vision, your people are probably a richer prize than mine; I can only hope they see some worth in my own people…’
‘There are none of your people amongst the dead,’ I inform him, perhaps with an unfair bluntness.
He appears genuinely startled by this.
‘We…we’re not amongst the dead? But – how is that possible? We die too; don’t we deserve some other form of life?’
I shrug my shoulders.
‘I could be wrong, of course; but I’ve never seen any of your people amongst them. We never see your spirits rise up from the battlefield; it’s thought that you don’t possess spirits, like we do.’
‘No!’
He sounds, looks, broken by this. His legs almost crumple beneath him; he has to fight to steady himself.
‘Then they have no reason to spare my people,’ he says, a shiver of terror at last entering his voice.
*
Chapter 28
‘I must try and warn them.’
Joshe looks down the darkened valley leading to where his people live. He’s thoughtful, obviously trying to work out the quickest means of travel, his chances of success.
Without a horse, despite the slowness of the dead’s advance, he will soon tire.
And even if he gets warning to his people, what good will it do them?
They can’t run; the dead will always hunt them down.
They probably won’t see any reason to run anyway, believing this army will be defeated as easily as every other one they’ve faced.
‘They’re going to die anyway,’ I point out, feeling miserable for stating the obvious. ‘What point is there in warning them they’re going to die if there’s nothing they can do about it?’
Joshe wrings his hands.
‘Maybe…maybe we can show them we didn’t mean to start killing you; that it was all a misunderstanding?’
I can’t respond to his anguish with anything more considerate than a bitter, scoffing laugh.
‘Wiping out my people was a misunderstanding?’
‘When we first approached your people, wishing to help them – to at least record your achievements and lifestyle – they were obviously distrustful; there were those amongst you who said we were trying to trick you, that we were creatures of a dark underworld.’
‘Why would they think that?’ I ask.
He shrugs, like he’s not sure of the answer; like he’s putting certain facts together to come up with a likely scenario.
‘Someone must have followed one of our missions back to our home; seen them descending below ground. We’d retreated there thousands of years ago, when the surface air became poisonous to us; we were generally forgotten about, our histories becoming indelibly intermingled with your own. When our envoys were killed, well – we had our own belligerents, who wanted retaliation.’
In my arms, Bjeliq gives a lazy, tired stretch.
She smiles in her sleep.
The wings on her wrists flutter quietly.
I had always feared the angel children; and now here I am, holding one lovingly in my arms.
One delivered by Joshe.
The way we give birth is similar, he’d said.
He could have killed me
He could, at the very least, have left me to die, safely returning to his own people.
‘We can live in peace together,’ I assuredly declare. ‘But – can we persuade the dead that that’s possible?’
*
I can ride the hound, provided I cling on tight with my knees, while also holding on even tighter to Bjeliq.
Joshe has to run. His ‘wings of fire’, as I call them, no longer work, he explains; ‘they’ve run out of fuel.’
We run down the hill, but in a direction that should take us far ahead of where the vanguard of the legions is at present. In this way, of course, we’re hoping our paths converge long before the army has reached a point where Joshe’s people will attempt a defensive attack.
Our headlong rush do
wn the hill disturbs the evening mist, setting it swirling about us, wraith-like in its coiling.
Wraiths with helmets.
With lances.
And mounted.
With no warning bar the sound of a rising mist, the dead are upon us.
*
Chapter 29
The lance tips that draw breath, the breath of life from the living, are but a hand’s width from us.
We come to an abrupt halt.
‘We’re unarmed,’ I point out, somewhat unnecessarily, as arms would do us little good anyway.
‘He’s one of them,’ the dead all seem to slur as one, like a rumour caught on the breeze, though none move a single muscle about either mouth or throat.
Their blank eyes are fastened upon Joshe.
‘He’s not like them,’ I say, stepping down off the hound, being careful not to disturb the still sleeping Bjeliq (do angel babes ever wake?).
‘You; you made him different.’
Some of the eyes now fall on me. The shivering whisper has become an angry accusation.
I nod; I feel it would be pointless attempting to lie to them.
‘Yes,’ I agree, ‘and now I think peace can exist between us; I need to speak to someone who can halt your attack on his people.’
Some of the troops appear to grin, as if amused by my pomposity.
‘No one leads; we are all of one mind!’
I can’t see why I should disbelieve them when, once again, the multitude of drifting voices seems to come from them all, from no one in particular.
‘Shouldn’t we kill him anyway?’ the voices ask themselves.
‘No!’ I say – but the voices have already begun to answer their own question.
‘He will follow on later.’
There is a uniform coldness in their eyes, their demeanour.
Some of these will have died only recently, at the hands of Joshe’s people.
They may be dead themselves, but that does not mean they wish their loved ones still amongst the living should join them.
‘This is how it must be,’ the ghostly patrol announces, as if it is judgement handed down.
‘There are women and children in there!’ Joshe snaps. ‘Can’t they at least be spared?’