A Shadow in the Night Rising

A Shadow in the Night Rising

LITHE-WIND CROUCHED beyond the vale, studying the horror before her that had become so commonplace since the start of Metacom’s War. She waited, slowing her breath, patient though her heart pounded, implacable though her lip twitched, serene though her stomach roiled. For a long while, nothing moved but the billow of black smoke, roping blistered in knurled plumes high into the sky.

The smoke rose from the homestead, a ruin, a half-charred carcass. On the path leading toward the front door, face down in her flower-patterned dress lay a Yankee woman, her limbs splayed out, her head split raw, hacked open, mess and bone scattered about in a crimson staccato across the uneven brown and white. A tomahawk blow or musket butt… Why they had killed one of their own, she could not say, but it did not surprise her. Nothing surprised her. Not anymore.

Through the fields beyond the homestead, a trail of muck slashed through the trampled snow, disappearing down the hills and far off into the swamp. The Yankee warpath…

Brushing her black hair back from her charcoal-rubbed face, her funerary masque, Lithe-Wind rose from cover, from the skeletal brush and stalked onward, flowing deliberately, bow clutched in her fist, the nocked arrow her only source of solace. Her moccasins crunched softly in the snow. Through the open gate and past the corpse she slunk, toward the yawning homestead door. Creaking… It hung by a single hinge. Circle it. Leave it, she told herself, Go, but she’d not eaten in three days, and her belly sang a different song, a song bereft of sustenance, full only of sorrow. And so she stepped over the dead Yankee, offering a glance downward — she was no Yankee. She was one of Lithe-Wind’s people. Wampanoag. Pequot. Narragansett, maybe. Or a half-breed… But it had been a tomahawk. That was certain. A clean punch to the back of the head. Two breadths of her hand long. Go, she told herself. Run. But her stomach rumbled, protesting in animal reply. A piece of bread. Gleanings of a root cellar. Something. Anything…

The front door creaked as she toed it inward, her breath held, bow drawn as she glared down the arrow shaft, aimed into the black chasm. The space of ten breaths… Eyes adjusting. Focusing. Finally, she made out what lay within. Meat… Lithe-Wind blanched, fighting down the nausea rising within, scrabbling up through her like some wild beast, clawing her innards, mad for freedom.

Sliding back, swallowing, covering nose and mouth, she took a long breath and as always quelled it, stifled it, mastered it…

She ran then, swift as her namesake, focused once more, onward through the field, down the hill and into the tangled swamp beyond.

* * * *

MUD SUCKED AT the witch-hunter’s boots, thick swamp mud.

Long-legged and raw-boned, gaunt as a desiccated corpse, Elijah Proctor stomped along the scarce path, his edges and affect as sharp and brittle as chipped granite. He trod along at a relentless pace, savage, slashing nude saplings out of his way with his axe, hacking them with the dead-drop of his arm, his gaze fixed ever at the path before him, searching for some sign, something.

The Bridgewater militiamen staggered along behind, trudging without order, ragged, threadbare, worthless, their breaths coming in rasps, hisses, stunted grunts, as they struggled to keep up. Even their captain, a listless string bean of a man, was bent low. Captain Barnhardt, the man who’d insisted on coming, who’d insisted on bringing his command. Why the bishop had ceded to his will — Elijah Proctor halted dead in his tracks and turned slowly, evenly, glaring grim-eyed from beneath his wide-brimmed hat like the avatar of some pagan god of the old world reincarnated here across the wide expanse of merciless sea.

One amongst the column suddenly collapsed. Samuel Mather. The newcomer, the prisoner, the commiserator. Again. In the soft muck, on all fours, he gasped, whining like a stuck sow.

“I don’t know nothing,” Mather cried.

“Get up — GET UP!” Captain Barnhardt pleaded as his militiamen mobbed Mather, “For the love of God, man—” grabbing at his arms, manacle chains rattling as they hauled him bodily to his feet, holding him upright, steadying him, until he stood, finally, on his own, slumped and broken, a line of sick dangling from his chin.

“Steady, man,” the captain said, offering a baleful glare back the witch-hunter’s way. “Keep moving. Just keep moving.”

Hissing softly, Elijah Proctor continued his march. They’d struck out from Bridgewater three days past, marching ceaselessly after the fiend, pausing only to eat, to drink, to question the locals, one after another in a long line of inbred homesteaders and sallow half-breeds and all shades in between. And it all came to no avail, except for Mather, who had claimed to know the swamps and obviously did not. Time wasted. Daylight. An icy wind slid snaking past, chilling his bones. It was cold for late March, colder even than it ought be. He fingered the cross at his throat as the darkness grew long.

* * * *

LITHE-WIND LOPED ALONG like a shadow, the Yankees’ torchlights flickering beyond, wisping behind trees then reappearing as the soldiers trudged along, hangdog, weary. Twice already she’d slid behind a tree as ragged deserters tore back through the muck, their eyes wide in panic, terror, looking back toward the column, always back.

And Lithe-Wind let them go; she melded into the lengthening shadows, watching, her tomahawk and long-knife clutched to her breast, waiting with bated breath for them to see her, raise some alarm, but they didn’t. They were cowards only concerned with escape, unmindful of anything but their own skins. The swamp would take them once the sun went down, quicksand and sucking mire; a more treacherous land she could scarcely envisage.

She’d trailed the column since sunrise, from north of Bridgewater, and finally caught up. Now she had to get around it, and she would, as soon as the sun set and they were lost in the twilight.

* * * *

AT THE PEAK of Solemn Rock, a jutted tooth of boulder rising, the witch-hunter surveyed the far horizon, the dying glow of metal-red oozing through the tangle of stunted tree and bare branch intersticed ahead, a skeletal bulwark crazing the far horizon. The trail beyond Solemn Rock split thrice, slithering northwest, west, southwest, each choked off from view in a tangle of degree and distance. At his side, Indian Tom pointed northwest. Noncommittally.

“Which path?” Elijah Proctor demanded.

Indian Tom shrugged. He was held in some regard as a tracker in these parts. Elijah Proctor had yet to see why.

“Which path?” Elijah Proctor repeated.

“Amidst this mire?” Indian Tom shrugged, stroking his chin as though appraising a young colt at auction. “Who can say?”

“You can say,” Elijah Proctor hissed. He ground his teeth as the last vestiges of daylight failed. “That is what I pay you for.”

“Your fiend is versed in woodcraft,” Indian Tom said. “He has bested me, left no spoor.” He glanced down the slope. “Try asking your new dog, seems maybe he has the scent.”

A commotion had broken out below. Elijah Proctor turned, glaring down at Samuel Mather, at the foot of the hill, on his knees, again, like some Ipswich whore, pleading, penitent in the muck. “The man made claims…” the witch-hunter said.

“A man might make any claims with feet to the fire.” Indian Tom spat in disgust. “Useless, but you ask him.”

Elijah Proctor said nothing as he strode down. At the hill’s foot, Captain Barnhardt stepped in his path, “Sir, I must insist…” and Elijah Proctor shouldered through him, knocking him flat on his back in the mud like he was nothing, no one.

“Please…” Samuel Mather begged from his knees, his hands pressed together, tears streaming. “Just let me go.” Dried blood, cracked brownish, covered half his face. His squaw’s blood. His half-breed brood’s blood. “I don’t know nothing!” Samuel Mather scuttled back.

“Mister Proctor, this man is in my custody and as such—” the captain started, puffing up his pigeon chest, then freezing, wavering, deflating, cowing to dread silence when Elijah Proctor laid the full brunt of his balefire glare upon him. The witch-hunter held that gaze, reflections of the torches slithering upright in his eyes. The captain swallowed, sniffed, sagged, saying nothing further; he brushed mud off his rumpled uniform then receded into the shadows.

“You led me to believe you knew the swamp,” Elijah Proctor stood over Mather now, “and so I offered you the clean path to absolution.” He spoke softly, simply; he was not a man given to bursts of anger. His was the slow, constant simmer. “A chance to atone for your sins, but for a price.” He sneered, envisaging this man lying intertwined beside his dirt-worshipping whore. “You live by this accursed land and know its lies. You know its truths. And you claim to have seen the fiend we hunt. You know the sins he has committed, the abominations…”

“Please, I lied…” Mathers sputtered, a petulant child, pouting lips bubbling with sick and drool. “I don’t know nothing!”

Elijah Proctor took his cross in hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it; then he let it drop, dangling by its wiry cord. “You chose atonement.”

Samuel Mather crumpled, sobbing into the wet leaf litter.

“Atonement is a long road, a harsh road,” Elijah Proctor whispered; then he bit the fingertips of his glove, one by one, loosening it, unsheathing his hand. Cold. Steam poured off his red hand, his flensed hand, as though it were on fire. The glove plopped to the ground, hissing in the wet. In his other hand, the witch-hunter raised his axe. “And I deem you unfit to walk it.”

“I beg you…” Samuel Proctor stuttered, straightened, his eyes suddenly wide, far-seeing.

“The hand or the axe…?” Elijah Proctor demanded, his voice granite, his eyes blazing, his hand dripping crimson.

Samuel Mather saw only his wife, his girls, dear Lily and Agnes, sweet Jane, hanging from the rafters of his homestead, dangling in the dark — he broke then, giggling sharp, cackling hysterical, a condemned man with head thrust through noose, feeling the prickly rasp of hemp burn tight across his throat, the dizzied blur of a throttled jugular as he waited for the world to drop. A mad grin. Fractured glass. Fit to burst.

Elijah Proctor nodded, reaching out for Samuel Mather, the witch-hunter’s red fingers outstretched, a bone-tipped claw, steam coursing off it as the militiamen as one blanched, some retching, others looking down, away, anywhere but there.

“The axe—!” Samuel Mather wailed, wriggling, clutching white-knuckled at himself. “PLEASE!”

* * * *

COLD FLAME ROSE blue and rippling into the night sky, knife sharp, glittering icy as starlight, casting nightmarish shadows across the altar-mound, a tangled garden sprouting haphazard; it was the garden he had sown, the garden he had promised. Black-Hart. He stood amidst the fierce tangle, his gaze skyward, toward the rotating stars, feeling the impending emptiness draw him inward, upward, infinitesimally so.

For a millennium, through sacrifice, his people had sought to keep the old one at bay, but Black-Hart had labored for months now, since the earliest frost, and tonight would prove different.

“It is nearly done…” Black-Hart murmured. He raised the severed head of his long-dead leader, White-Elk, distorted now, lumped, nearly unrecognizable. A skein of desiccated tar flaked off it, empty sockets staring, a horrid thing. Horrid for who he had been. Horrid for what the people of Bridgewater had wrought upon him. Horrid for what atrocities Black-hart had committed to retrieve him. Horrid for what his final addition to the garden would set into motion.

“Father…” Eye to eye, Black-Hart drew the leering thing close, its snarled lips torqued back, exposing grey teeth, chisel sharp, and brought it touching against his own lips. Brittle. Dry. Desiccated. Long and cold he held it thus. A chill wind rose suddenly, from lovers caress to biting gale, converging upon him, tearing in from on all points, the flames rearing skyward in a cyclone swirl, roaring silent, blinding bright, whipping, cutting, undulating as violent and sharp as a wild spirit dance.

Kneeling before the torrent, Black-Hart reached into the flames, placing his father’s head into the flames, the cold fire burning across his face and torso, up his arms; he released a groan of ecstasy as a sheen of hoarfrost eructed into spikes all across his form.

* * * *

THE WITCH-HUNTER wiped the flecks of blood from his face and lowered his axe, his breath coming hard, violent. The thing on the ground was no longer a man if in fact it had ever been one. The militiamen stared from all around, a wide circle of bare ground between he and they. All bore weapons, long guns, axes, sabers, but none dared act. Captain Barnhardt stood in their midst staring down at the mess. He would not meet Elijah Proctor’s gaze; none of them would.

“Witch-hunter!” Indian Tom called out, perched still atop Solemn Rock. “To the west, see!”

Elijah Proctor strode through the circle of men; they retracted, recoiled from him as though he bore the plague. “The fiend…” he whispered to himself, staring off toward the western horizon. There was a light there, a blue glimmer, and not the blue of a winter moon rising; it was something else, the cyan of bruise seeping through corrupted flesh. Deep. Dark. Alien. It emanated from below the tree line, beyond, from deep within the swamp. “Witch lights…”

* * * *

THE NIGHT STUNK of blood and of iron. The screams were stifled short, but they echoed far, and they echoed wide, followed by the sound of hacking. Of breaking bone. Wet sounds. Lithe-Wind crept close, watching, spying from behind a boulder, slowing her breath from her long run, listening, considering how best to bypass them on such a narrow strip of land. The two waters pressed close here, nearly touching. Between them, Solemn Rock rose like the slumped shoulders of some stooped giant, stuck fast between the two rivers, sinking inexorably, visible only for the flicker of the Yankee torches. The soldiers stood about, wide-eyed, ragged, raw, shaken. Amidst their herd, a corpse lay strewn about. One of their own…

“But we should not go there…” spoke a man. Lithe-Wind knew him by his dress for a Pequot. His face was painted red, and half of his head was shorn smooth. The other half sprouted thick black hair, braided, hanging to his waist. His Pequot name was unknown to her. His true name was: Traitor. “Matchuk. Mashpaog.” The Traitor shook his head. “Badlands. Bad water. Very bad.”

“We’ll not go back…” said another, so softly that Lithe-Wind strained to hear. She knew him only by reputation; her people spoke of him only in hushed tones. Black tones. They called him Demon-Hand; it was said that he could not be killed. “His crimes are legion.”

“Crimes?” the Traitor scoffed. “In war?”

“I’ll not return empty handed,” said Demon-Hand. A wide-brimmed hat sat above his corpse face; in his hand was a tomahawk, a ruin of red.

Frowning, the Traitor stared down at the hewn corpse. “I shall not go,” he said finally.

“You fear it?” Demon-Hand’s glower slid to the Traitor, taking hold, burning, his fury roiling near boiling as he clutched the crucifix hanging around his neck, his black medicine, a paean to the black Yankee spirit.

“All men who know of it, fear the place,” the Traitor explained.

“The fiend knows, yet that is where he has gone.” Demon-Hand wiped the head of his axe on his pant leg.

“Then he wishes to die,” the Traitor replied, swallowing.

“Then I shall see fit to oblige him,” Demon-Hand said.

“I’m not afraid of you,” the Traitor said, taking a step back.

“Yes, you are…” Demon-Hand said, turning to the blue glow in the sky, “but you fear that place more.”

Lithe-Wind clutched her tomahawk, feeling the weight of it, its head of iron, blade of steel. She had to circumvent them — no, not circumvent; it was impossible on that strip of land. The water was iced over still, but river ice was as treacherous as the Yankees; Solemn Rock split the trail through the swamp as surely as Demon-Hand’s tomahawk had split that homesteader woman’s skull. Lithe-Wind had to distract them, evade them, cut through them, reach Black-Hart first. Somehow. For an instant, her mind fled back to better times, warmer days, closer nights, that feel of oneness she’d never experienced before, nor since. Those long nights they’d spent together, alone, the warmth of his smooth skin pressed softly against hers, his ragged breath upon her cheek as he murmured in dreams. Such bad dreams. Night horrors. He had always been afflicted so by the whisper of dark spirits, when in the deep night he would awaken screaming, sweating, mangled in her arms, and she would soothe him softly back to slumber.

* * * *

Zip—

Zip—

Zip—

Screamers. All three. One after another they whistled in procession, sharp as an eagle’s challenge, rigid, raw, piercing, so piercing the second two were enveloped by the first and by the screams following—

THUNK—

THUNK—

THUNK—

“Ambush!” Elijah Proctor roared as the first arrow struck home, piercing flesh — “Take aim and return fire!” — an anemic drumbeat of gunfire and empty clicks, misfires, sounded out, but the lion’s share of the men broke, panicked, dove for cover.

Indian Tom lay out in the open, splayed across the ground, gawping fish-like, clutching his neck, a shaft jutting out from between intertwined fingers. His life pooled out beneath him, souring the muck. Another shaft lay dead in the eye of Captain Barnhardt, seated in peace against a boulder, hands on knees, in king-like effigy, achieving a measure of stature, an air of dignity and command only in death. Standing ramrod straight, glowering, Elijah Proctor tore the third arrow out from within his own chest. Around him men whimpered and cursed as they ramrodded bullet down gun maw, hissing prayer, crying as they spilled gunpowder from horn.

“The captain!” someone cried.

“There!” Elijah Proctor snarled — “FIRE!” — roaring, pointing with his axe as a shadow leapt past, hurtling along the shore, dashing swift and nimble as a fleeing doe, vaulting rock, soaring, rolling over a felled tree and rising, disappearing beyond, down the thin strip of land between the two waters. Not a single gun fired, but many a foot pounded through the muck, retreating back east down the path, through the dark.

* * * *

HER HEART POUNDED in her chest, hammering, unrelenting. Make it stop. Make him stop. Do something. Say something — “I love you…” she blurted finally, still looking down, still staring at and not seeing the basket she wove with fumbling fingers. Dull hands. Always with such fare. The basket and splint sides were a tangled mess, rising uneven, warped, loose, an effigy of a squashed spider. It would prove useless, but she continued anyways, biting her lip, weaving on, mindless, pointless, fruitless. Under, over, under, over, under…

Black-Hart paused at the wigwam’s threshold, pulling back the bark overlay. Rich sunlight outside poured in, a golden glow. He squinted, turned, gazing at her through the haze of blue-tendriled smoke rising from her small fire. He studied her work. “You truly are terrible at that sort of work,” he said finally.

She nodded, fingers still working, eyes still down, focused on the task at hand. Always focused. Always.

“You should start over…” he said.

She shook her head, obstinate, as always.

“You could…” he hazarded.

“No,” she answered. “I could not. That is not my way, was never my way.”

“I…” Black-Hart shouldered his medicine bag. Birds chirped from the stand of white birch, intermingled with the song of the waterfall not far. It was a beautiful spot. Truly. “I … I love you as well.”

She continued her labor, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand.

He frowned, scratching at his cheek when she did not return an answer. “You know that…?”

She pursed her lips, gaze still downward, continuing.

He moved for the threshold.

“Do not go—” she said, breaking finally, slumping, her hands still. “Do not do this thing, this terrible, terrible thing.”

His glare back was furious. “I thought you above all would understand.”

“I understand, but I cannot condone. Not now. Not ever.”

“Condone? We … we are one, you and I. Always. Do not ever forget that. Outcasts. Pariahs. From our own people. From birth until death I have been nothing!”

“An indiscretion of youth,” she admitted. “Some indiscretions bear the fruit of consequence. I am sorry that mine has blackened both of our lives. Perhaps after the war—”

“Fah! They never accepted us,” Black Hart spat. “And they never shall. We owe them nothing.” He paused, shaking his head. “I do this for you.” He glanced down at the splint around her injured leg. “I would take you with me if I could. You know that.”

“I would not go.”

“You would,” he said it as a statement of fact. “You would do anything for me.” He was not wrong in this.

“There are other paths.” She cast the basket aside and rose, struggling up on her crutch, her broken leg still bound, still beneath her. “Other options less … extreme.” She rose nevertheless, defiant, determined, unmindful of the pain. She hobbled toward him, leaning hard on her crutch, a lurching, awkward, lumbering thing. “I would not slow you.”

He watched her, his gaze dark as he shook his head slowly.

“Our people fight still,” she said. “Take up with them.”

“No. A pariah has no people. And besides, they have already lost.”

“No.” Her hand balled. Quivering. A white-knuckled fist. “We—”

“We…?” He shook his head in disapproval, derision. “The we you mean does not exist, has never existed. Not to them, not to you. The only we is you and I. Only that. Them? Their fight is ended.” Black-Hart nodded firmly. “By spring they shall be gone. They shall all be gone. I have seen it in my dreams.”

“You hate them so…” she shook her head in disbelief.

“How is it that you do not?” Black-Hart hissed, his voice acid, his expression a dark reflection her own. “Yes. I do hate them, all of them, both sides, all sides.” Forest lay beyond the threshold, the red and yellow licking flames of autumn, but the hint, just the hint, of winter lay upon its edges in the cool breeze gliding like a slivered-whisper through the entrance. And that would be enough for him. That would be a start. “I hate everything … I hate everyone … except for you.”

“Then stay your hand for me—” she gasped, begging, dropping awkwardly to one knee like some traitor praying to the Yankee spirit. She clutched at his leggings, her small hands strong, gripping tight, unrelenting, her eyes flowing tears like a river in spring thaw. “Please…”

“They will kill you, too.” He looked away, his face stone. “And then what?”

“You have seen it?” she asked.

He frowned, silent, resolute.

“You have seen it?” she demanded, craning her neck, looking him in the eye. He was so handsome, disarmingly so, so tall and straight and strong. The strength that resided within him … he could have been sachem, should have been sachem, as his father had. Black-hart should have led the people when White-Elk had fallen, years past, but no one would heed him, no one would ever heed him, because of her, and she … she was nothing.

“I refuse to see it.” Kneeling, placing his big hands on her shoulders, he leaned forward and kissed her softly. “I have work to do. Fare—” he froze as her long-knife pressed suddenly against his throat, the blade quivering in her tiny hand. He sighed and nodded, then smiled, the ice in his glare melting at some ember of warmth within. “Would that you could…” How she missed that warmth. “Come to me when you are able, when the day and night are equal. Come to me then and see what I have done.”

“Where?” She swallowed.

“The heart of the great swamp,” he said, leaning forward, pressing his throat into the blade’s edge, offering his life, eking down in crimson tears. “The altar…”

“What altar?”

“The Wind-Walker’s,” he answered softly, rising from his knee, turning, departing. Her arm was still outstretched, poised, the steel blade throttled in her quivering grip wicked, merciless sharp, useless…

* * * *

HER HAIR WHIPPED like a nest of striking vipers, wrapping, coiling, unraveling, the gale winds ever at her back. There was no difficulty in her ascent, even in the dim-lit dark. Handholds abounded. She crept as patient and able as a spider, sliding over outstretched branches, through depressions and toward the azure gleam coruscating at the peak. As she achieved the mound summit she froze, blinded — so bright — averting her eyes, blocking the azure glare with her hand, her arm. Cracking an eye, squinting, hissing, she realized for the first what it was she had scaled.

Glazed eyes stared from beneath her, set within a face glaring back at her in dread, in terror. It was a garden of chaos, of limbs brown and black, hands and legs, bodies, all desiccated corpse. Friend and foe alike. Wampanoag and Yankee. Man and woman, children, all petrified into rock, all melded into a single mass, an altar of limb crippled in skyward homage, a chaotic firmament of ossified flesh. So many… Lithe-Wind screamed inside her own skull, mind cramping, scrambling, her vision blurring, ears ringing. There were eyes she remembered, faces she knew. Somber-Smile, a Wampanoag from the village west of home. Blue-River. And others. So many others. All frozen. All one. The Wind-Walker’s altar…

Reaching forth, tears streaming black down her charcoaled cheeks, Lithe-Wind brushed Somber-Smile’s eyelids, a vain attempt to close them, frozen in that mien — instantly, she reared up, tomahawk drawn. Someone watched her. She turned left. Right. Around. Nothing… Nothing but blue flame and escarpment and the cold-beyond of starlight glittering like polished rock in the night sky. The Mother gazed down with concern, and the Guiding-Far-Star … the Lovers, too, but something was wrong with the Bear. Something. It was skewed and seated so low upon the horizon. Too low. She squinted, counting. And there were too many stars, the pattern —

Lithe-Wind sprang back at the sound of ice cracking, splitting as the glimmering star-cluster of the Bear lurched as one, uniform, high into the night sky, blues as numerous as a spider’s eyes all glaring down. Glistening. Breathing. Cold. It was a shadow in the night rising, rotating, peering down at her, studying her, quizzical, horrific. She could make out only parts, the impression of long serpent forms undulating, scaled and scraping, awful insect eyes. A thing monstrous. Profane. And then it struck.

Diving aside, rolling, rising to her feet, she hurled her tomahawk whipping through the night, end over end, thudding into flesh unseen — her bow drawn screaming-back taut an instant later as she pivoted aside, long tendrils of jagged ice bursting through the blue flames, horned ends hammering into corpse-earth.

Arrow nocked, she let fly and was again on the move — ducking, shooting, as the thing burst toward her, its skin hard and cold as river ice ripping past, jagged hoarfrost rasping her flank bloody, whirling her about like a top. She danced drunkenly free, choking a scream, firing again then was up and moving, always moving. Something snatched her foot, gripping on soft and wet, thick and viscous; it hobbled her, slithering up her calf like coils of snake. Cold burned her screaming past numbness, slithering up her thigh as she kicked, trying to fight free. Off balance, she loosed another arrow, and her bow was torn from her grasp by a flurry of arm and crushed into pieces by the horrid thing, by its lamprey maw, circular in mandible. The remnants of bow clattered to the altar, and too many eyes slid in close, examining her. Grunting, she struck down, her steel blade bared. Long segmented arms flailed, buffeting her, but again and again she hammered, snarling, swinging, driving the blade deep — deeper, a squeal sounding from above — pealing, inhuman, but somehow, somewhere, familiar…

She froze suddenly then glanced up, her mouth open, slack-jawed as she surrendered numbly, her hand outstretched, unfurling, her long-knife dropping. Clanging. Ringing. Raising her eyes, she allowed the nest of coils up around her thighs, enveloping her hips, the biting cold swallowing her in darkness, crushing her breathless as it took her torso, pinning her arms against her body as she gazed up into the glimmering stars leering forth, Black-Hart’s stars, as cold and distant as the empty night.

“Oh, my poor son,” she whispered.

* * * *

THE WITCH-HUNTER paused at the edge of the clearing, his breath ragged, raw as he loaded his long gun. The militiamen were gone. All of them, scattered, deserted, left behind. And good riddance. He focused upon the blue light ahead, gleaming atop the peak of an earthen mound rising from the swamp like an old world barrow. Silhouettes danced wild at the summit. No. Not a dance, not some pagan ritual. Steel clashed and an unearthly peal pierced the night. It was a battle.

Elijah Proctor tore from cover, bounding up the gnarly slope, gun in one hand, his other scrabbling for purchase as his long legs propelled him toward the shimmering blue. As he achieved the rim, he froze. Unearthly shadows whipped, a tangled miasma, blaring off the night sky. Devil! There was no other word for the thing before him. A thing of cold hell. He clutched his crucifix, hissing prayer through pursed lip. His eyes could suss out no sense of it, a riot of seething arm, distorted body rippling liquid, contorting, folding in on itself, all accompanied by the sound of ice shattering, cracking at its every move. In its many-armed grasp writhed a heathen bitch — the sniper — stabbing ferociously in animal madness with a blade clutched in her free hand — then it wasn’t free as rivers of tendril converged upon her, pouring, churning round, enwrapping her struggling from neck to toe like some hellish spider’s cocoon. Her weapon fell…

The witch-hunter sited along his gun barrel at what he envisaged the thing’s head, a misshapen conglomeration of glittering blue ember set upon wending stalk — he squeezed the trigger — a burst of smoke, an explosion of fire as the rifle bucked back into his shoulder. CRACK! The Devil’s head recoiled, whipping back, matter bursting free from its sinuous neck. Missed! caterwauled through his mind, but the witch-hunter was charging anyways through the acrid black, of set purpose, eyes and nostrils burning, axe in one hand, his other hand naked, striated red with muscle, white tendon and bone, as he spoke the Lord’s Prayer, his voice echoing through the night, fissuring the very earth beneath his feet.

The Devil turned, aware of him, oozing, shifting snakelike around somehow without itself visibly moving — everything around it did — and struck out, tendril arms spiraling infinite, exploding over him, past him, through him, piercing his empty soul.

* * * *

A THUNDERCRACK, a rifle report, and Lithe-Wind could suddenly breathe again, her arms free as the hoarfrost coils slackened an instant. It was enough. She writhed alive — bucking and churning, thrusting her body free of his embrace, spilling out wet and cold as a newborn babe onto the jagged ground, an audience of stone, brittle, accusatory, glaring beneath her.

The stink of black powder burned in the gale as Lithe-Wind gasped for breath, clutching numbly at her throat as she rose, charred all blue and black from the frigid embrace. Shivering. Hoarse. A glint of steel, her long-knife, caught her eye and she was on it, diving aside as the two forms exploded through the blue flames, embers wheeling high, the one form, Black-Hart, enormous, overwhelming, corrupt, crushing, impaling the other, the man — Demon-Hand.

Ensnared within Black-Hart’s snaking embrace, tendril piercing him through, again and again like a worm hooked, Demon-Hand spouted Yankee-magic and hacked with tomahawk, unmindful of the coils’ pierce. But it was that hand, that demon-hand that reached red, gripping fistfuls and tearing, cracking carapace and stripping free the icy sinew beneath. Torrents streamed, hissing. The cold matter stretched in his burning grip, popping along with twangs and spatter, one by one exposing vertebrae and glistening viscera beneath. Hideous vermin squeals reverberated through the night, ear-splitting, shrill, cutting her skull apart inside. Teeth bared, Lithe-Wind covered her ears against the torrent of sound.

Demon-Hand snatched out blue stars from the awful constellation, fingers burning through shell, reaching in, tearing them out, one by one by one. His tomahawk rose and fell, as though he were hacking the innards from a log. Tentacles writhed, buffeting, whipping, mindless.

But Lithe-Wind bore blade in hand once more.

Like a panther pouncing, she entered the fray, surging through the whip of appendage, the flash of axe, the thunk of steel shattering bone; Lithe-Wind slid over, under, through, dancing, dodging, fighting towards the melee’s black heart. Blue flames burst high. Hurricane winds tore past as she leapt upon Demon-Hand’s back, coiling onto him and burying her blade to the hilt in his neck. Snarling, he snatched her from over his shoulder, his grip burning her to the core as he hurled her aside.

Lithe-Wind slammed hard into the ground, bouncing, breaking, somersaulting ragged as a corn husk doll. Wobbly, she raised her head as Demon-Hand stomped onto Black-Hart’s head, pinning it there against the sacrificial earth, and hacked down with his tomahawk, extinguishing the final constellation of blue. The forest of tendril and tangle slithered limp, mindlessly pawing amongst the stone garden. Lithe-Wind screamed a hellcat yowl, rising to a crouch, something broken inside of her.

Demon-Hand paused, ragged, then turned toward Lithe-Wind as he drew twitching tendril from within his chest, hand over hand, coil after coil, from his flank and his neck, yanking them out, all of them, a grimace on his corpse visage as he labored.

A broken arrow in hand, Lithe-Wind slunk forth, awkward, her leg broken again, her wrist, too, shattered. She felt none of it as she raised her weapon. Demon-Hand stood before her, a lanky black shadow stretching high before the blue flame, axe and hand both dripping, his eyes blazing, Black-Hart pinned still beneath him, still dying. Lithe-Wind charged. Demon-Hand held his ground, raising that red hand as Lithe-Wind, mid-stride, hurled her dart — Demon-Hand batted it aside as Lithe-Wind dropped beneath his outstretched arm, driving her shoulder, her whole body into his chest, wrapping her leg around his and driving him staggering back, tripping, stumbling across corpse-ground and into the roaring blue silence. Demon-Hand fell backwards into the flames, Lithe-Wind atop him, forcing him down, clutching him, holding him struggling as best she could, desperate, the black of burning frostbite simmering up her arms, her shoulders, a plague of stone festering through her as Demon-Hand, on his back, roaring, reached out, his grasping stone fingers ploughing to the knuckle into her chest and clutching her still-beating heart. Both were frozen immobile as the flames roared around them, taking him, taking her, petrification burning through them like plague raging, torquing their flesh into one, rigid and dark and immobile as the stone altar beneath them.