by Jon Jacks
The farther I head down the path, the more I’m sure I can hear a terrified screaming. No one around me is reacting to it in any way however, as if this is all perfectly normal to them.
It reminds me of the shaman’s petrified shrieks, yet I can soon also hear the threatening growls of a fierce dog. I break into the nearest I can manage to a run, the constant ducking to avoid straggling branches slowing me down.
No one pays either my frantic, crashing run through the trees or the shaman’s piecing shrieks any attention at all, as if all the commotion we’re responsible for is every bit as muted as their own sounds of work and everyday life are to me.
The shaman, when I last come across him deep in the forest, is shaking with fear, making vain attempts to either scramble off into or even clamber up the thick and quite obviously impenetrable undergrowth lying to one side of the track. A towering hound, its snarling maw and glowering eyes a flaming blood red, is growling at him as if readying itself to make a sudden, vicious attack; and yet it makes no move towards him at all, apparently satisfied that the man is so terrified he’s trying to flee.
Why isn’t the shaman running this way, down the path? Does he fear that the dog would simply chase him, run him down?
What was it that Bjorn had said to me just before he died?
Don’t fear the Hellhound?
Even so, I cautiously slow my approach towards both the shaman and the dog, breathing a sigh of relief when the snarling beast at last quietens and, with a happily lolling tongue, lies down upon the floor as if favourably ensconced before his master’s hearth.
The shaman’s frenzied scrabbling at the unmovable undergrowth continues, however, no more aware of my presence than he is that the hound is no longer threatening him.
As I step alongside him, he actually appears even more startled than ever.
‘You!’ he snaps.
He glances over my shoulder, where the path stretches out behind me; but he stares at it in bewilderment as if he can’t see it, as if all he sees is yet more darkly impenetrable thicket.
He even tentatively reaches out into what I see as empty space, only to instantly withdraw his hand with a pained scowl, the face of a man whose flesh has been deeply pierced by thick thorns.
More remarkably still, his skin is bleeding, although if that’s from some earlier injury or not, I can’t be sure.
‘How did you get here?’ he demands – then jerks in terror, looking back towards the hound as if he’s abruptly remembered that he was attempting to flee it.
Although relieved to see that the hound is now peacefully laid out upon the ground, the shaman nevertheless glares at me with eyes wide with what could only be suspicious dread.
‘Why’s the dog stopped attacking me? Is he yours?’
Questions, questions, questions!
Did he really come all this way out here to seek answers to those questions?
‘Of course he isn’t mine!’ I retort angrily, knowing full well he’s just about proclaiming that I’m a witch. ‘Would I be trying to help you if I was a…I can leave you here, if you don’t trust me!’
Then it dawns on me; how can I help him, when I don’t even know the way out of this forest myself? So far, the track I’ve been following seems to have only led me deeper into the ever-thickening woodland.
‘Help me?’
The shaman sneers as if the suggestion is ludicrous.
I’m tempted to confess that I really have no idea how we can exit this forest when I notice that the dog has risen to his feet and, where he stands by the edge of the track, looking back at me as if waiting for me to join him, a new opening has appeared in the dense thicket.
This is an odd hound, I realise: he has a strange solidity to him, such that he could be from our own world, rather than this one – and yet it would mean, also, that he has somehow managed to drag his bodily form into this underworld, something neither I nor the shaman have obviously managed.
Don’t fear the Hellhound.
Follow him.
I’m tempted to leave the shaman here.
If we follow this new track, how much more likely will it be that he accuses me of being in league with the hound?
I decide that I’ll leave it up the shaman if he wants to follow me or not.
I step towards the dog, following him into the undergrowth as it gradually opens before him.
The shaman follows on behind.
Grumbling resentfully.
*
Chapter 9
The shaman glowers at me, daring me to contradict him as he relates his experiences in the underworld: fighting off demons, besting devious imps, carving his own way back to our world through his own remarkable navigational skills.
He’s made no mention of me, or the hound.
Neither has he said anything about either his guide or any angel, apart from ‘explaining’ that the woman had panicked and run off into the ever-grasping hands of the dead before he’d had a chance to stop or help her.
From that point on, according to him, he had been lost, relying only on his previous visits to the underworld to serve as a guide.
‘And what message did you receive while there?’ our commanding officer asks him, weary of the shaman’s boasting.
Although making no attempt to hide his irritation at being interrupted by our commanding officer’s interruption, the shaman nevertheless changes his tone, slipping easily from regaling everyone with his heroics to a more serious manner of disclosing matters of great portent.
‘It’s the end of days,’ he says, lowering a heavily furrowed brow over already narrowed eyes. ‘I fear there will only be ever more angels for us to fight!’
Even our officers can’t help but gasp in dismay at this news.
‘How do you know this? Who told you? Is it reliable information?’
The questions now pour from our commanding officer. She’s worried that the shaman’s information can only sap an already dangerously low morale.
‘I visited the underworld!’ the shaman snarls, effectively dismissing the officer’s anxieties as naive stupidities. ‘This isn’t some gossip from some fishwife!’
Our commanding officer nods, her way of saying that she grants this is true.
‘But even those in the underworld can lie, or be wrong,’ she points out.
The shaman’s laughter is mocking, confident.
‘This cannot lie,’ he declares assuredly, effortlessly rising up from his cross-legged stance upon the ground.
He points up into the almost entirely black sky.
He points up towards a huge, darkly forbidding planet, dominating the night.
*
The planet, thankfully, is nowhere near as huge – or, rather, nowhere near as close to earth – as the one I’d seen while visiting the underworld.
Yet judged by the standards of the other planets we can see in our skies, it’s closer in size to that of a full moon rather than any other.
How could we have missed it?
Because it is so dark; because it appears simply as a black disc, a hole, almost, in the night sky – a perfectly formed circle where no stars playfully wink at us.
‘What is it, Shaman?’ our commanding officer demands. ‘No such planet exists in our skies!’
The shaman scornfully chuckles once more.
‘And yet, there it is; plain for all to see!’ he says jeeringly. ‘It will draw closer, bringing with it more angels, who’ll be able to fly to earth once more.’
‘Once more? Many have already flown here; why does it need to draw closer?’
‘Because the ones we fight now came here long ago; thousands of years ago, when the dark planet visited us last time.’
‘The planet has been here before? But…but surely it would affect our planet, surely–’
‘It will, it will: just as, so the ancients tell us, it caused floods, tremors, terrible storms, and brought into being tidal waves and new volcanoes that wracked the earth. Despit
e it’s size in the sky, it is still far away.’
‘How long have we got, Shaman; before the planet is so close that the angels can descend in even greater force upon us?’
The shaman shakes his head sadly.
‘I didn’t have time to learn that.’
He whirls around on his feet, now pointing accusingly at me.
‘Because she denied me my true guide!’
As far as everyone here is concerned, I fainted when the woman’s body disintegrated before us.
For people to believe this of me, that would be humiliation enough; but to be accused of denying everyone important information on the positions and capabilities of the enemy is tantamount to treachery.
A growl – a strangely familiar growl – comes out of the thickly surrounding darkness.
And I see the blazing red eyes of the Hellhound languidly draw closer towards our campfire.
*
The drooling maw of the approaching hound is every bit as blood red as the flaming eyes.
Yet, thankfully, it’s all an effect of our campfire, its flames reflected in the glistening of the eyes, the slavering of the lolling tongue.
It’s nothing more than the mangy hound I’d seen loping alongside the farmer’s wagon as they’d drawn into the village earlier.
And yet – there are remarkable similarities between the two towering dogs.
Similarities the shaman takes more seriously – maybe even more personally – than I do.
‘Catch that hound!’ he shrieks, no longer pointing at me, his ire reserved now only for the dog. ‘Catch it, kill it – it’s a devil dog!’
I don’t believe that anyone else amongst us actually believes it’s a Hellhound; if they did, then they were being either spectacularly brave or amazingly stupid to rush off into the darkness after the dog. They were neither wearing battle armour nor armed with anything more than their knives or any spear they picked up from any tented stack they happened to be passing.
I thought I should look like I was also making the effort to hunt down the dog, even though my reasons for charging into the night were wholly different, seeking only to preserve the hound’s life should it be in any way threatened.
How I’d do that, of course, I hadn’t yet considered.
Would I really risk my own life, or even contemplate taking the life of a fellow solider, simply to save this dog?
Probably not, if it came down to making such a choice.
And yet I felt I owed this dog my help, if it was indeed the one that had saved me by leading me out of the underworld.
Besides, I might need him alive if I hope to make sense of what was possibly the oddest thing of all about my journey into the underworld – an event that ironically took place just as we were leaving, meaning I couldn’t turn back to check that I’d heard correctly.
It was the hound – perhaps this hound – who seemed to speak to me in a growling voice as I slipped back into my body.
‘The dog guards the secret,’ it had said.
*
Chapter 10
As I’d feared, I’ve been appointed to the Forlorn Hope.
We set off a little earlier than everyone else, meaning an early rising, a swift, hurried breakfast, before the sun has even truly risen.
The captain who had allowed me to spare Bjorn a tortured end is leading us, for everyone in this doomed party is guilty of some misdemeanour, whether serious or paltry.
It doesn't really matter. It just means we get to die a little sooner than everyone else in our troop.
The role of the Forlorn Hope is to die.
For when we die, we can return to our troop and warn them of the numbers they face.
Only in this way might we hope to make recommence for our misconduct.
Maybe I’ll soon be journeying in the underworld once more; and if that is the case, I’m glad my friendly Hellhound is still with me, rather than falling to someone’s blade last night.
Every now and again, I’ve caught a glimpse of him, keeping pace with our small column. He’s keeping his distance, possibly so as not to alarm any amongst us who recall the way the dog seemed to predict his pursuers’ every move, using the night as his veil as effectively as any well trained warrior.
We should have had him; there were enough of us, some even taking his pursuit as an opportunity to turn it into a hunt, mounting their horses, riding around with blazing firebrands, lowered lances.
The dog evaded us all, slipping past even the guards on the edges of the village without being seen, as if it were all a game for him.
Now he displays that same remarkable level of almost human intelligence, taking the opportunities afforded by any distractions we face – the startling abrupt rise of a flock of birds, the need to take care of our mounts’ steps when passing across rocky ground or fords – to slink across the more open spaces and seek the shrouding grasses and bushes once more.
As the sun rises, we face more distractions, ones we should by rights be ignoring; yet as we’re soon about to die, surely we have the right to observe the construction of those great beasts and giants we hope will one day be able to enthral future generations with tales of the sacrifices we made.
And if there are no future generations? Then let these vast figures being carved into our landscape serve as testament to the achievements and aspirations to my people, who once lived – and fought and died – here.
they rise when they wish
their will only their own to command
no king to obey
no lord to honour
the stars alone
bring them low
The angels, for some reason, allow the bone collectors and carvers to go about their business unmolested: perhaps they relish the idea that our own messengers will one day tell of their victories over us.
The hill we’re passing is being graced with a huge hare, the carvers hacking down towards the chalk levels, the collectors arriving with wagons stacked to the brim with the bones of the fallen they’ve gathered from the battlefields. Others can be seen sorting out these bones into large piles: those that can be used whole, to help form the lines of the chalk figures, those that will be ground down, to mix in with the chalk itself.
Other colossal figures stare down at us from the hills, their eyes doubtlessly following us, admiring our straggly column and, hopefully, working out how to make us sound more impressive than we actually are when they’re finally called upon to relate the things they have witnessed
There’s a rising swan, a charging bull, a curiously observant wren. A giant ploughs his field, a warrior threateningly raises his shield and spear.
It is from behind these very hills, of course, that we might glimpse these titans and creatures either rising up into the night sky, or descending from amongst those stars to briefly make home here on earth.
You can see any manner of beast in the stars, I reckon, depending upon which star you agree to make your starting point, which your end.
Even so, I can make out nothing that I could call a roebuck.
And so it is not in the stars that I will find my answer to this secret being hidden from me.
*
It doesn’t take us long to reach our very first battlefield, one still strewn with our dead. Their bodies rot, still encased in armour that keeps many of them in lifelike positions; kneeling, as if for prayer, or seemingly clambering over those who fell before them.
We no longer have the numbers nor the energy to bury our dead. On this field alone, the corpses strewn out around us stretch off in all directions, like some fallen, diseased crop.
There are no angelic bodies here, of course.
They are always, ultimately, the victors.
I’ve heard that, initially, they used to take away our dead too. But, fearful of how they intended to utilise our corpses, any legions nearby would hurriedly throw themselves into fresh – magnificent yet always hopeless – attacks until the angels realised they were taking los
ses themselves for what must have been little benefit.
And so our bodies are left as meals for the black clouds of carrion that flock so thickly about us they are hardly disturbed by our intrusion. Here and there wild dogs also risk feasting on the dead, but many are chased away by massed, bitterly cawing ravens, their beaks reddened by slivers of flesh they refuse to let go of.
of shredded shadow
or flames of night
and all so that
the dead
may take wing
We could make a show of chasing away the crows, but what would be the point? They would settle once again as soon as we had left.
A standard rises up from amongst a pile of the dead, its banner tattered, its paintwork heavily scarred.
The Fifth Legion: only recently reformed from a previous massacre at the hands of the merciless angels.
Well now they have another battlefield honour to add to any new standard. There is no disgrace in losing to the angels as long as you’re prepared to fight to the last trooper.
Our horses make their way carefully through the chaotically strewn bodies, perhaps retaining more respect for the dead than we ourselves can manage these days. It is simply wearying for us to see these areas of mass yet obviously useless sacrifice.
The same fate awaits us.
We keep our heads down, not wishing to see what we will soon become, not wishing to admit to ourselves that we will soon be nothing more than fodder for the wild creatures to engorge themselves upon.
Is this what our mothers raised us to be?
It’s only because I raise my head to search out my escorting hound that I realise we’re being shadowed by another column of troops.
They’ve approached silently, with no pounding of hooves, no clank of harness or armour, no stirring of dust or crows.
It’s a patrol of the dead.
*
Chapter 11
The abrupt change in my demeanour – I instinctively sit up straighter in my saddle – alerts the rest of my troop to the nearby presence of the dead.
Unlike us, the dead display no need to stare at us curiously. Their expressions are blank, sternly facing ahead.
