Oh, gods, not again. Not again!
But moments passed in silence, minutes, and nothing happened. Nothing at all.
Brandishing a meat cleaver, a butcher woman in a bloody apron snarled," Look, all of ye! The mayor was wrong! That blasted swamp-thing has no magical protector."
A dozen voices spoke in outrage and hate. "So it was all a lie!"
"A trick of the freak!"
"There be no horseman!"
"Aye!" loudly stated a burly stevedore, gloved fists bunched and shoulder's bent in a fighter's crouch. "An'I say we end this charade now!"
Countless people everywhere took up the cry. "Kill the freak! Hang 'im! Burn 'im!"
As the crowd surged forward, Anatole dashed through an alleyway, clambered over a wooden wall, and landed in a pile of garbage. Uncaring of soiling his clothes, the youth fought a path through a tangle of thorny rose bushes and managed to reach the next street. He ran on.
On the other side of the buildings he could hear the noise of a growing mob; shouts for weapons, rope and pitch, tar and feathers, boiling oil and dull axes. Their rabid cries fueled his feet to greater speed.
Sprinting through the city gates, Anatole pushed aside the yawning guards and jumped over a pile of hay fallen from the back of a two-wheel cart. There were woods on each side, but it was sparse greenery and offered no real protection from the mob. As he forced his muscular body onward, he laid his plan of escape. North along the king's road to the big bridge, then he would jump into the river and swim with the current until reaching the east end of his swamp. Once there, they would never find him. And in the night, he would leave this valley forever. And he privately hoped the horseman would come that evening and kill them, one and all. The whole damn town.
Soon, the bridge was in sight, and Anatole felt a twinge of success before he heard the galloping horses approaching from behind. Throwing himself to the right, he scrambled for the trees, but a dappled mare cut him off, the hooves just barely missing his feet. He heaved sideways, but a whip cracked across his sore shoulder, slicing open tunic and flesh. Pain! Grabbing hold of the knotted end, Anatole pulled with all of his strength, and the startled rider came flying off his mount. Sprawling, the man struck the road flat on his face and went still. Too still. Anatole dropped the whip in horror.
The mob gushed through the city gates, and another rider called out," Beware! He killed Raymond!"
Howling for vengeance, the crowd charged forward. Trying to flee, Anatole was cut off by the horsemen who now raced in a circle around him. The villagers rushed closer, and the hermit glanced everywhere, praying for a miracle.
That was when the sky turned purple, as if with twilight. Shouting their confusion, the crowd paused to stare at the dimming sky. This was impossible! It was but minutes after noon!
Anatole, too, looked upward and saw a slice of the blazing sun disappear into darkness, an encroaching black curve extending deeper and wider. What the. . an eclipse! The moon was coming between the sun and the earth, giving them night in the middle of the day. But that was impossible! The moon was only a crescent last night. How could. .
Ohmigodsno.
A few of the villagers turned to go back to the village, and staggered as they saw an empty road stretching out of sight to the distant sea. Ghostly echoes of crashing waves rose faintly.
Sensing this was his only chance, Anatole started to edge away, but could not step from the road. Something invisible, perhaps the air itself, forbid escape from the highway.
Now breath fogged from cursing mouths, and tendrils of thickening mist rose from the cobblestone road. As the lunar orb claimed the last of the sun, night enveloped the world. Stars appeared overhead, and mountains rose on each side of the dense, primordial forest. Clutching his misshapen head, Anatole felt his mind reel. Time and distance no longer seemed to have meaning. The world was warping around him like clay in the hands of a mad child.
And then the awful silhouette of the huge horse and its ghastly nonhuman rider blossomed on the high horizon, the savage pounding of the iron hooves rumbling the ground like an approaching earthquake, a descending avalanche.
As one, the crowd screamed in fear and fury. The horses bucked and threw their riders to the hard pavement, and one man cried out as he held his twisted leg, his mount charging off into the distance. Despite their terror, half the villagers stood motionless, watching death approach. The rest forced hands into pockets to grab good-luck charms or wards, and thus broke free of the paralysis.
Shouting orders, the village guards assumed a battle formation. Levers were cocked and a dozen crossbows twanged, sending a flurry of arrows through the cold air. Neat holes appeared in the billowing cloak of the horseman, one arrow striking him in the shoulder, the shaft sinking to the feathered fletching. One bolt, particularly well aimed, lanced straight through the collar, notching the stiff white linen at the back of the neck.
In response, the rider drew a hand-held sickle from within his cloak, and the horse bared its perfectly square teeth, grinning like an exhumed skull.
More arrows and bolts were unleashed, with the same useless results. Again the soldiers fired, making the horse their target this time. The barbed quarrels jammed into the ebony flesh of the animal, and ribbons of red blood trailed behind the galloping nightmare beast. Illuminated by starlight, the silver ornaments of the headless rider twinkled like the firmament itself. Whitish steam poured from the flared nostrils of the behemoth horse, the thunder of its approach shaking the very stones in the road. And now there was something moving behind the giant horseman and his bedamned stallion. Flying black globes, which bobbed and gamboled in wild abandonment.
His back against the invisible barrier, Anatole could do naught but watch this final tableau of horror unfold. As if sensing the futility of conflict, three of the townspeople threw away their weapons and ran down the road toward the sea. But the rest bravely raised their swords and axes, preparing for battle.
The reverberations of the hooves grew deafening, and then the horseman and his mount were among them. Swords stabbed, and axes swung, missing, always missing. But the silver sickle rose and fell with inhuman accuracy, and headless bodies toppled over, gushing life fluid and smashing apart the orderly ranks of the mob.
Then the things aft of the pair came out of the fog and into horrifying view. They were heads. Disembodied heads sailing through the air like nimble cannonballs. Hair whipping in the wind, the dead snarled at the living, exposing teeth yellowed with age and cracked to jagged stumps. One even grinned humorlessly as it bit a soldier's arm, exposing bone. Anatole gasped. It was Hans! These horrid things must be the amassed victims of the horseman, now serving as his unholy minions. Dead, they had become mute slaves of their killer.
A standing man sliced the flying head of a woman apart with his sword, and the rest of the aerial servants changed course to converge on him. The snapping and gnashing of the hundreds of teeth almost drowned out his piteous wails of agony.
Wheeling about, the headless horseman galloped inches away from the sweating Anatole, his sickle killing frozen villagers to the left and the right, but not touching the terrified hermit. In the manner of carrion birds, the flock of heads followed their diabolical leader, sailing around Anatole as if he were a rock in a river. And then the freak understood.
He was the bait for the trap! The horseman wanted the whole town out here on the main road during the eclipse, where he could slay them in one great battle. A bloody harvest of lives to feed his lust.