23: The Wild Hunt

A full moon shone bright in the crisp night sky. The air was icy but improbably still, and a rime of frost glittered on the ground. Pete pulled his coat tighter around himself and strode across Blackfriars Bridge, walking a little faster than was comfortable. He didn't have far to go, but the bulk of the horn was uncomfortable against his side, and he wanted this over with.

He had no idea what possessed him to steal the thing in the first place. It was old and precious-seeming, but also worn ragged. And ridiculous. Who would want something like that? You knew where you were with a laptop or a diamond ring. Easy come, easy go. Finding a fence for this had been quite a different matter.

For a moment he was tempted to give up the whole business, just toss the horn into the river and go home. But he'd come this far, he might as well see it through.

The night was quiet. The lights of an aeroplane drifted overhead, a night bus rumbled away down Blackfriars Road. He could make out a couple of cars on the Embankment. There should have been dozens. There should have been people on the streets, scurrying home or drunkenly carousing. Was everyone usually so put off by the cold? Pete couldn't remember. Perhaps they were.

He walked on.

Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked; a long, sorrowful howl, like the baying of a wolf. Pete shivered; from the cold, he told himself.

The bus had disappeared into the distance. Looking around, he realised he could no longer see the plane either. Nor the cars. The stillness was unsettling. There was nothing moving at all; nothing except the surface of the river.

Pete had lived in London his whole life, and couldn't ever remember a moment like this. He was used to noise and bustle, not silence. Now there wasn't even the distant murmur of traffic, and he discovered he was lost without it.

He felt terribly alone. Terribly exposed. It was an unfamiliar feeling, and he desperately wished it would go away. Suddenly he didn't want to be there anymore, over the water, in the city. He wanted to be anywhere else.

Where the fuck was everyone?

When he noticed someone walking over the bridge towards him, he felt a great rush of relief. He wasn't alone after all. The world was still there. The city was.

He resumed his journey.

But there was something odd about the person approaching; something not quite right. Pete couldn't immediately identify what it was, but it frightened him. He didn't like being frightened; it made him angry. As the person approached, heels clattering on the frozen pavement, Pete straightened up and strode forward, ready.

"Oi, you! What the fuck is going on? Where is everyone?"

"Silence, whelp!"

The man spoke with such authority that Pete, who'd never done what he was told in his life, obeyed instantly.

"You have taken something that belongs to me."

Pete tried to deny it, but the horn dug into his ribs as if of its own accord, and he yelped with pain.

"Give it to me."

Pete was desperate to do it, to hand over the dreadful thing at once; but something stopped him. Something like a voice in his head, though the words it spoke made no sense:

The flesh ballad of sacrifice in the threads of Mir-Ghal'ai...

The man took a step forward, and Pete was horrified to realise that his feet weren't feet at all, but hooves.

"Give it to me."

Without thinking, Pete unhooked the horn from his shoulder, reached it towards the other...

We deign!

...and then, equally unthinkingly, snatched it back. Placed it to his lips. Blew.

The sound it made was the sound of blood pumping in your ears, the sound of your own tears, the sound of the hateful, rejoicing laughter of enemies celebrating your misfortunes. A low, mournful keening that passed through flesh and bone and into the depths of Pete's soul. His insides turned to ice water...

...and the streetlamps went out.

An answering horn sounded. Then another. The ground throbbed with the thundering of hooves, the air with the baying of hounds. In the brittle moonlight, Herla looked twenty feet tall. He sighed.

"Run then, foolish child. Run, and we shall have our sport."

Pete ran.

He ran for his life; ran like all the demons of Hell were at his back -- and they were. The impact of each step drove up through his legs, his heartbeat grew faster and faster. The horn, the fucking horn, was still in his hand, but he wasn't even aware of it. He ran.

Around him, the city seemed to change, its whole geography shifting, silently, imperceptibly: now you see it, now you don't. The bridge was gone, and the Embankment, and the buildings. The river wound sedately away to the south, wide and languid, its waters soaking the marshy land on all sides. The skyscrapers, the cathedral, hovered vaguely in the sky, but they were mirages. Reality was the soggy ground underfoot, the reeds and the shrubs, and the sounds of pursuit.

The icy air was no longer still. A breeze sprang up, gentle at first, but strengthening and with a bitter edge. Pete ran into it blindly. He didn't know where he was anymore, his trusted landmarks had deserted him. All he had was the sound of pursuit and the need to escape it.

Everything was monochrome in the moonlight. The shapes he raced through, the brambles and branches that flayed him, the uneven ground, it all had an air of unreality, like an old black and white movie. But the agony in his legs was real, the clutching of his chest. His throat was raw from breathing hard, but the hounds and horses sounded ever louder, ever closer. Each time he turned to avoid a ditch or sinkhole, it seemed he was being nudged back toward his pursuers.

There were voices on the wind, great passionate shouts in a language he couldn't understand, and the baying, and the whinnying, until he couldn't think. Couldn't make sense of this experience; because it made no sense.

He was somewhere around Smithfields when the Hunt burst upon him. He could see, just about, the other world in which the Holborn Viaduct bridged Farringdon Street, but he was no longer in that world, could no more reach it than touch the moon with his outstretched hands.

The hounds surrounded him first, great slavering beasts like wolves, raging about him like the waters of a terrible flood, baying and prancing, around and around in a joyous gyre. And then the horsemen, huge and black, plaited hair flying behind them, earth shaking at their gallop, air vibrant with their calls.

"To me! To me! Ride, Einheriar of the Herlathing! Ride!"

"We ride! We ride!"

There was nowhere left for Pete to run, and he stopped, panting and defiant. His chest was on fire, his head throbbing, but the Hunt was upon him and he stood his ground. Overhead, the ghosts of lorries and taxi cabs purred across the ghosts of roads that would not be built for many hundreds of years. Pete finally understood that no help would come from that quarter.

The horn was still in his hand, and he held it up.

"You want this, motherfuckers? Then have it! Fucking have it!"

With all his might, he hurled the horn into the throng... but even as it left his hand, it dissolved into mist. The riders didn't even flinch.

For a few moments, they stood like that. Pete faced off against the Wild Hunt, surrounded and helpless, waiting for the axe to fall.

And then it fell.

The Hunt surged forward, horses leaping over the baying hounds, swords flashing in the moonlight. Then nothing of the night remained but the lust for blood. The Hunt went about its work with joy, and its prey was no more.
Posted by matt at November 27, 2004 11:45 PM