Whips cracked at heads and horse. Swords parried. Crossbows twanged. Axes slashed. The sickle flashed and bodies fell.
Then from the cloying mists a different head appeared out of the darkness, that of a silently laughing woman. Her countenance was fiendish: slanted cat-eyes with square goatlike pupils, no ears, fanged teeth, mottled reptilian skin, and hair a nest of wriggling, hissing snakes that spit in fury at everything!
Moving directly before a stevedore fumbling to reload his crossbow, the eyes of the hideous head glowed greenish, and the man froze abruptly. Anatole could see that his eyes jerked wildly about, and his muscles bunched and writhed beneath his leather apron. Yet he moved not a bit. And the hermit realized it was as if the fellow's very bones had been fused into a single mass. Trapped on his own immobile skeleton, the helpless man could only twitch as the other heads swarmed around him, their broken yellow teeth biting and tearing and ripping him to pieces.
With a high-pitched whinny, the great black stallion once more charged through the pandemonium. The ruby-dripping sickle of the horseman struck like deadly lightning. Arrows flew everywhere, striking nothing. Breath fogged. Torches flared blue. Clothing was ripped. Swords clanged. Screams. Oh, the screams! And the horrible animal growls of the flying heads. It was chaos! Madness!
Crying aloud in shame and fear, Anatole covered both ears and dropped to his knees, trying to blot out the massacre around him.
The slaughter seemed to last forever.
Eventually, Anatole roused from his stupor. Silence. Moving almost against his will, the hermit rose and faced the foggy roadway. It was a charnel house. Bent and broken weapons lay abandoned everywhere. Decapitated bodies were piled atop each other. Only partially obscured by the swirling mists, one stood directly across the roadway from him, supported by the unyielding barrier like some hideous scarecrow. The head was nowhere to be seen. Some of the villagers were torn limb from limb, others split asunder, and each was ravaged by endless bite marks, their tattered clothes in pieces, exposing the chewed flesh underneath. A sob of anguish wracking him, Anatole gulped a breath, and the coppery stench of fresh blood filled his lungs.
Turning to be sick, the freak leaned against the cold barrier still confining him to the death arena. His fault. It was all his fault! The horseman had used him like a worm on a hook, played him like a pawn. . but no, for he was still alive. He had not been sacrificed with the rest. Unharmed and alive! Why? Because he had unwittingly helped the midnight rider? Or perhaps, maybe, even this darklord of the road could feel some small measure of compassion and mercy for one such as he.
Then suddenly Anatole heard galloping iron hooves once more. Turning, he saw the silver blade flash downward. Hot pain took him as the sickle brutally struck, removing his good ear, gashing his normal eye, and slicing his disfigured face to bits.
Reeling from the attack, the youth vaguely saw a shaft of golden sunlight appear, dispelling the graveyard mists. The eclipse was over. Numb from shock, Anatole heard the leviathan horse neigh a taunting laugh and then canter away, taking its silent master back to whatever hell he had come from. Weeping aloud, the freak stood trembling amid the desecration, holding the bleeding ruin of his face in those perfect-perfect hands. He would survive, but made ten times more ugly than before, rendered unfit for even the lonely swamp by this departing 'gift'of his dark benefactor. Anatole would leave this place of death, leave his lonely swamp, find another dwelling somewhere…
But would the horseman follow him, use him to bait another town? Dare he go anywhere to find a home? And suddenly, the broken youth knew the answer to his earlier question. Did hell have compassion and mercy? Oh, yes. Most certainly.
But in its own dark way.
The Weaver's Pride
Welse, guild weaver of Arbora, tried to hide his disgust at the acrid stench of the half-naked old Abber nomad who fingered through the goods in his shop. Did the nomads ever bathe? he wondered. Perhaps there were no pools of water in their lands. He had heard tales enough to understand the strange haunted looks in the eyes of those who dwelled there, and the stoic acceptance they had of their fate.
"It's fine cloth," he said slowly, hoping the nomad would understand. The nomad scratched his armpit, and Welse hoped he would pick something less fine, for above all else he prized the work he had done on the mauve-and plum-colored blanket. The red and white silken threads that ran through it gave it a delicate look and feel, one unsuited to a nomad's life. Welse almost hoped the man had brought nothing to trade, but it was unlikely. Nomads did not come to Arbora empty-handed.
A weaver did not deal with the nomads often. Usually the Abber nomads brought strange metals and gemstones from their lands, trading for the practical items they needed for their tribe. It always astonished Welse how unsettled, almost frightened, the nomads seemed among the orderly houses and tree-lined streets of Arbora, and how quickly they returned to the ever-shifting terrain of the country all of Nova Vaasa called the Nightmare Lands.
The Abber turned his attention to a pile of colorful scarves and skirts, reaching for them with his filthy hands. How much would Welse have to clean after the grimy man left?" If you show me what you've brought, we can agree on a price," Welse said with some irritation.
"You best," the nomad commented.
Welse adjusted his flowing tunic on his shoulders and tied the contrasting woven belt more tightly. Like all Arbora weavers, Welse wore his own creations. So did his wife, his daughter, and his four sons, weavers all of them. There was no family as prosperous in all of Arbora, and every bit of the wealth had been earned. "My family is," he replied with honest pride.
"Trade for this?" The nomad drew what seemed to be a dirty length of silk from the pouch on his belt and handed it to Welse.
When Welse examined it closely, he saw that the strand was actually a braided chain of perhaps a dozen thinner filaments that glowed with a strange silver sheen. He had never seen a fiber so delicate. He unbraided the end of the chain and examined a single filament, finding it incredibly strong, with an elasticity that astonished him. Though he longed to keep it, he handed it back to the nomad. "Nothing," he replied sadly. "Too small an amount. I am sorry."
The nomad grinned and pulled something else from the pouch, a glowing cocoon of the silver threads. He handed it to Welse. "More," he said. "Many more."
Welse looked at the cocoon. "Many more?" he asked.
The Abber smiled, his teeth surprisingly white and sharp for one so old. He held out his hands, indicating a pile half his height and as wide as his outstretched arms.
"We trade," Welse said.
The nomad returned the following day with two of his tribesmen. Each carried a pair of huge leather sacks. Welse had already cleaned out one of the great metal cauldrons he used for boiling silk. As the nomads emptied their sacks into it, the cocoons expanded, filling the container and overflowing onto the floor. Even here, before Welse had unraveled the cocoons, before he had a chance to use his skill on them, the strands were magnificent. Welse was almost certain that, if he closed the doors, the pile would shed its own silver light.
He paid the nomads in coin rather than goods. He was pleased to see that the old man purchased only his most durable weavings, blankets and clothing that would serve his tribe well through the winter — if there was a winter in that cursed land, Welse reminded himself. Later he heard that the nomads spent every coin he had given them to purchase knives, axes, and other tools. A strange people, Welse thought, yet they had brought him such an incredible find.