SNAFU: Hunters

by James A. Moore

  * * *

  The overwhelming charge did not come. It ended in a dark whorl of mist, a chill breeze, a shiver, and a sudden hush.

  Hreyth, who had closed her eyes in wincing anticipation, opened them. Valhild cautiously lowered her shield. The others did likewise.

  At their feet lay the rune-marked bones. Around them, already, the mist was lifting, dispersing, giving way again to mild spring sun and clear blue sky.

  In front of them, mere paces from their line, several tall grey shapes jutted from the earth at canted, slanted angles. By some, shields painted half yellow and half black had fallen. By some, swords and spears.

  Crumpled at the base of the nearest was a dire-hound’s shaggy pelt, knotted at the forepaws.

  No one spoke. Their throats worked as they swallowed, their mouths faltered at forming words, but no one spoke.

  The dead, those slain in the battle, were as they had been. Unaffected. So too were the horses, nosing in the grass. Atli barely clung to life, and Anbjorn was little better.

  Of Ulfvir, and his men…

  Only stones left in their place.

  Valhild found her voice first, looking at Hreyth. “Your runes protected us?”

  “I hoped they might.”

  A nod, and the firm squeeze of Valhild’s big hand on Hreyth’s mail-clad shoulder, conveyed her thanks. Then she stepped toward the group of stones, though made no move yet to touch.

  “Wh-what happened to them?” stammered Thrunn.

  “The stanvaettir stole their breath,” Egil said.

  “Not just stanvaettir,” Hreyth said. “Another power.”

  “And it did this?” Valhild indicated the valley. “All this?”

  “With each theft, growing stronger. Growing hungrier, more ravenous.”

  “How do we kill it?”

  “Kill it?” Thrunn gaped. “How?”

  “That’s what I’m asking,” she told him. “Can it be killed?”

  “I don’t know,” Hreyth said. “Perhaps.”

  “If not?”

  “If not,” said Egil, “this valley won’t contain it long.”

  Hreyth thought of farm-steads and villages… of Jorfyn’s war-camp and Gunnleif’s forces at the town – two armies, and more men arriving every day in answer to the summons of their earls.

  “It emerged from those fissures in the rock, and that broken boulder’s cleft,” she said. “There must be something under us, underneath the ground. A cavern, pit, or tunnel.”

  “A lair,” said Valhild with a grim smile.

  “My runes stopped it once. If I can find where it came from, I might be able to block its way and trap it in the earth.”

  The grim smile widened. “Well then, what are we waiting for? It’s gorged itself and gone to rest; let’s finish this before it wakes again.”

  Egil shook his head. “We cannot all go. We have injured men.”

  “And the king must be warned,” Hreyth said. “Gunnleif, too, for that matter; they’ll have greater worries if this evil descends.”

  “You heard them,” Valhild said to Thrunn. “Get horses. Take our wounded, and the bodies of our dead, and ride for Langenvik.”

  * * *

  Egil bound Hreyth’s arm with two sticks, and strips cut from her cloak. “You’re hurt,” he said, tying more of the grey cloth into a sling. “Are you certain?”

  The pain was considerable. It gnawed the way the wicked squirrel Ratatoskr gnawed the bark of Yggdrasil as he ran up and down its great ash trunk, but she could not let it dissuade her.

  “I work the runes. It must be done.”

  Valhild approached, settling her helm securely in place. “Thrunn’s off,” she said. “Gods willing, Anbjorn and Atli survive the journey, and the tale be believed when they get there.”

  “Gods willing, we survive our journey as well.” Egil donned his own helm and helped Hreyth to her feet.

  “What a tale we’ll have to tell if we do!” Valhild clapped him on the back. “Over mead-bowls in the king’s feasting-hall! Hailed as heroes, shining with silver and gift-given gold, our names long remembered in saga and song.”

  “And if we don’t survive?” asked Hreyth, clutching her bag of rune-marked bones in her sling-bound hand.

  The big woman laughed. “Then I trust you’ll put forth a good word to the All-Wise All-Father for us, so that even if we do not fall in battle, we’ll still tell our tale over mead-bowls in his feasting-hall!”

  They’d left their three horses loosely tethered with some that had belonged to Ulfvir and his men, and proceeded to the rocky ridge from behind which the first hail of arrows had come… and from fissures in which Hreyth had noticed the curling, coiling, issuing mists. The broken boulder reared there, cracked nearly in half to reveal a narrow crevice running throat-like into the earth.

  Its wound looked recent, perhaps frost-made over the past winter, perhaps sundered by tremor-quakes as Ymir stirred in his giant-god sleep. Scree and shards gritted underfoot at each step, stone chips and flecks sifting loose as they passed.

  “I go first,” Egil said in a tone brooking no argument.

  Hreyth followed him, and Valhild brought up the rear. The way was narrow indeed and grew narrower still, until Valhild could not even have drawn her great blade. Her shoulders and Egil’s scraped the rough passage walls. The air was cool, heavy with moisture. Thin shafts through the rock let in weak threads of sunlight; otherwise, they went in a deepening darkness.

  Until Hreyth, with one of her mismatched eyes, again glimpsed the waxing and waning strange glow, etching lines not unlike runes themselves in the misty shadows opening ahead.

  Here was a roundish cave-chamber of tapering formations, joined columns, and shallow ridge-lipped pools where drips plinked and rippled. At the heart of it brimmed a well – a well rich with power, seidr-magic.

  This, yes, this was the source of it. This cousin to Mimir’s Well, where Odin had made sacrifice in exchange for knowledge. This well, which drank rather than quenched, which took rather than gave, which stole and consumed rather than bestowed.

  Across its glass-black surface, images seemed to whirl and flow… images, visages, spirit-faces; bodies drifting, floating weightless as if in liquid, trailing hands and limbs and hair…

  “Do you see them?” she whispered.

  “I see only water,” said Egil.

  “As do I,” Valhild agreed, adding, “What do you see?”

  “Later. I’ll begin setting the runes. Be ready.”

  “For what?” Valhild asked, eyebrows lifting.

  “I wish I knew. But, if anything comes up from the well, hold your breath.”

  Their expressions suggested they found this scant comfort, and Hreyth felt the same. Held breath against a power such as this? A power that had drawn life from so many men, leaving only stones in their place? Dotting the river-valley with them, silent standing warnings of an incomprehensible danger; and she had come, a young rune-caster of uncertain parentage, armed with little more than her witch-queen mother’s lore…

  But she had come, and as she’d told Egil, it must be done.

  She reached into her bag of rune-marked bones – old and worn smooth, ivoried, rolling and clicking beneath her fingers. One by one, she brought them out and set them in a ring around the well’s rim.

  The spirit-fraught glassy surface heaved in a sudden, terrible bulge as her circle neared completion. Hreyth sprang back, gasping. Her heel caught on the lip of a shallow pool. The last rune-bone clattered to the cavern floor.

  Mist plumed from the well, wreathed her hand, gloved it, wrapped her arm, and pulled. It was insubstantial yet solid, mist made iron, iron made mist. It had her to the elbow, to the shoulder, to the throat.

  From somewhere sounding far away, she heard Egil call her name, and Valhild shout a battle-cry.

  The gasp she’d taken, she held. Struggling to do so, locking jaw and mouth, lungs already throbbing with a burning ache. The mist engulfed her head and che
st.

  She felt a tug at her belt – Egil, anchoring her with one hand as he groped along the floor for the fallen rune-bone. His boots slid as he, too, was inexorably pulled toward the hungry well.

  Then came a violent, striking crash – metal on stone, steel on stone, the steel of Valhild’s great sword-blade, hewing and hacking at the cave ceiling’s formations. Sparks flew. Again and again, the strong steel struck, until stone cracked and shattered. Huge fanglike chunks of rock, some broken off in pieces and some at the root, smashed down.

  The solid mist released abruptly. Egil and Hreyth pitched backward. As his free arm flailed, she saw the rune-bone in his fist and grabbed for it.

  A heap of rubble filled the well, mounded there like some crude and makeshift cairn. Valhild stood astride the pile with her sword-hilt in both hands and the blade poised for a downward thrust.

  Around the well’s rim, the rest of the rune-ring was – by god-miracle, praise Odin! – undisturbed. Hreyth slid the last bone into place. The rune upon it flashed an almost blinding gleam that raced around the circle in a line like fire.

  The chamber’s air changed with an odd, pressuring pop. The cave walls shook; more rock-chunks fell from the ceiling and water sloshed over the lips of the pools. There was, for a moment, the sense of a vast, gusty sigh, an exhalation from the very lungs of the world.

  The sense of seidr-magic dwindled to a fading echo, then was gone.

  Hreyth released her long-held aching breath. Her gaze found Valhild’s in the gloom, then the familiar crags and outcrops of Egil’s scarred features beside her.

  They had done it. They had lived. They had won.

  Tales over mead-bowls, feasting-halls, hailed as heroes, shining with silver and gift-given gold, names long remembered in saga and song.

  Through the half-collapsed passage, they picked their bruised and battered way back to surface and sunlight. The high river-valley spread green and peaceful before them, horses grazing in the new spring grass.

  But, although the spell had been broken, it had not been unmade… and where so many brave men had once been, still remained only stones.

  That Old Black Magic

  James A. Moore

  We didn’t find him. He found us.

  We’d just loaded up on supplies, as much as we could at any rate, and we were headed out into the field. Somewhere along the way, the new guy was just there.

  He was a slick sleeve. Not a bit of rank to him, but no one in their right mind would have looked at him and called him green. He was too old, for one. I was twenty when we met. I have to say he was ten to fifteen years older than me. New soldiers, those fresh from basic, they don’t look that way and they don’t move that way. He wore the same combat boots as everyone else, but he almost never made a noise when he walked, and I never heard a single sound that startled Jonathan Crowley.

  Sergeant Marks took one look at him and scowled. “How long have you been here?” He looked at the man’s uniform and spotted the nametag exactly where it belonged. “Crowley! You listening to me?”

  The man looked at him and nodded. “I’m not deaf the last time I checked.”

  That was about all it took for the sarge to grab him by the arm and haul him out of the ranks. Being of sound mind and wanting to keep our bodies as close to that state as possible, we ignored the action and kept walking. Smart people don’t piss off their sergeants.

  Twenty minutes later Crowley and Marks got back into the ranks. Not a word was said, but from that moment on, Crowley was one of us. He did his job, he took care of his equipment, and he kept to himself. I have never much trusted a quiet man. It seems to me that a man who keeps to himself is either full of too many dark thoughts or too many secrets, and I’m not so sure there’s much of a difference.

  I think with Crowley it was dark thoughts.

  Normandy was done.

  We’d stormed the beach and done our best and paid a price that no one dared think about. It’s been decades and I can tell you with complete sincerity that when I close my eyes and the weather feels too much like France did, I can count on nightmares to come into my sleep and hunt for my soul. They are hungry dreams, too, and they sniff in every dark corner of my mind and under every hidden memory while they seek their prize.

  What part of France were we in? Who knew any longer? I didn’t. How long had the war gone on? Too long.

  I missed my home. I missed my family. I missed Jenny, even though she’d already sent me a letter that sounded a lot like she was looking to move on. I was young, but maybe not completely stupid. I knew what was written between the lines even though I was trying hard not to see those ugly, unwritten words.

  According to the captain, we were in France and not far from Luxembourg. You couldn’t have proven it. All I saw was hills and trees and from time to time a field that had maybe once been planted with something to seed and was now growing a variety of muds. Frozen muds, mostly, as the weather had gone cold and we woke in the morning with frost on the ground and spent the days trying to stay warm.

  Infantry. Love that word. It says so much if you’ve been a foot soldier. We were well armed. We had a little food left. We were getting colder every day as autumn snuck in and changed the remaining greens to differing shades of orange and yellow and blood red. I kept hearing that we had the Germans on the ropes, but all I saw was more of the same, and every time we turned around we were ducking back into the woods because this was not our territory, much as we were planning to take it back.

  It was just past the point when we should have been walking any longer. It was dark, pure and simple. The only lights were coming from a building that was too far away to identify. We went for it anyway, because there comes a point where any shelter would be better than none and there was a chance that they would be friendly. Yes, we had tents. Not a one of us said a damned thing about trying to pitch them.

  Lester was walking next to me. Desmond Lester was a good egg, kept his calm and did what he had to in order to get through the day. He didn’t smile much, he didn’t talk much, but he was also reliable. If something needed doing he did it. Four times in the months we’d known each other he had taken the lives of other people. Some of the guys cried when they killed, some of them grinned and made marks on the butt of their rifle or bragged. Lester just did what he had to do and plodded on, his lean face drawn and tired but his eyes alert.

  He was the one that stopped me moving and pointed them out.

  Them.

  The ghost dogs and their ghost master.

  Since then I’ve heard they’re called the Wild Hunt, or Wotan’s Hunt, or la Chasse d’Artu, depending on where you are. I guess that last one was the best because it was the French countryside. Whatever name you want to call them, they were terrifying.

  So what’s so scary about a bunch of dogs? I had a friend of mine ask me that when I was a few beers too many into my night and my tongue was looser than usual.

  I looked at him for a long time before I could answer. It’s hard to find the words.

  The dogs themselves were the sort most sane people would be wary around. They were big animals, lean and hard and hungry. You could almost feel how hungry they were. They were hunting for fresh kill, and they intended to have it. I have seen men look at women that way and known they were trouble. I have seen addicts looking for their next fix with that same sort of starving desperation. Now and then, in moments of weakness, I still look at a shot of whiskey that way. I haven’t had a drink since, well, since I got drunk enough to swing at my wife if I’m being honest. I can never forgive myself for being that angry and that weak. But I also knew a big part of both those feelings came from the bottle and I made myself stop. Jenny forgave me. I know that. I have never forgiven myself. Every time I’ve ever had that thirst for the bottle I remember the fear in her eyes when I cocked back my fist, and the rest is easy.

  But I was talking about the dogs. They had that sort of hunger and there was nothing like mercy in the snarls drawn
across their muzzles. I couldn’t say what sort of dogs they were. They were black and they were shaggy and they leaped and heaved their way through the air and above the trees.

  And behind them came their master, riding on a massive beast of a horse. I was raised around horses. I know them well enough and I’ve ridden them all my life. Never in the whole of my existence have I seen the like of that steed. It was as black as the night and carried the man on its back with ease. The hooves of the thing ran across the sky, but each time they struck where ground should have been, I swear I saw a tiny flash of lightning and I heard a ghostly rumble of thunder. The breaths that snorted from that stallion’s muzzle were storm clouds waiting to be born, and the winds that moved in the animal’s wake were sure to let those seeds grow. I could feel the menace that came from the thing and knew that the passing of its form would lead to disaster.

  The rider himself was worse. He crouched low over the neck of his mount, his face thrust forward as if he, like his hounds, scented the air for fresh trails to hunt. One hand held to the mane of his horse, the other held a great hunting bow that rattled against his side with each stride of the charger beneath him.

  How long did I stare? I couldn’t say. It felt like hours. I’m guessing about six seconds in reality. Sometimes it feels like that after the fact. When you’re in it, everything happens so quickly, too quickly to think if you want to survive. When it’s done, you can look at what happened and you can examine it a thousand times and your mind makes it bigger I think. Except with the Wild Hunt. I don’t think my mind could ever make that bigger than it was. When the hunt had run past, both me and Lester stared after it and then stared at each other with wide, wet eyes.

  Not a word was spoken. We agreed not to talk to anyone else about it, but I can say this, we were more alert after the passing of that spectral huntsman.

  Looking back, I think that night was the first time I ever saw Crowley smile. Crowley was a plain man. That’s the only way I can put it. He was as average as any one I have ever seen in my life. If you put him in a crowd of a hundred people, he’d fade from view. I believe that, because mostly I can’t remember much about him. Brown hair, brown eyes, lean build and average height. There was nothing at all about him that stood out.