The Hunting Lodge

The Spring bode well for a burgeoned herd on the fells that year. 

The wild boar grew fat on the lush mast and barged rampant through the dark forests.

Sport was in the air. Good sport. Of the killing sort.

A hunt would be had, a wild tilt, a magnificent rout led by the King up from the South. 

A fearing King who knew the the malice in the hearts of men, his army poised to face their demons in Autumn's fields, their souls aimed at Heaven true. 

It will be Hell on Earth.

The King's resolve was wavering. He sensed the darkness massing, his crown of thorns.

The mountain air would clear his head before the war to come, to flannel his brains in the crisp hills of the Northern Dales.

The blood would run.

Under the May moon a hundred minarets were erected in the vale, the standard of England's throne eeling in the brisk winds, half shadow, half breath, the faint whiff of death.

A pregnant pause, the wait before the entourage arrived in June, a carnival of jesters and bowmen and a troubled monarch giddy for the chase.

Childe Ralphe was sent to ready the lodge on Crack Crow Top, the highest peak, where the King and his men would eat and sleep whilst they stalked the wily boars.

The young knight kissed his parents goodbye and with a fare thee well embarked on the two day slog to the locked lodge in the rain-soaked hills.

His pack of apples, rough cheese and village wine would serve the boy well in the stark ravines along the way. His sword would save the day should ruffians and reivers choose to enliven his noble hike.

But two nights too the Childe must seek to survive with all his senses and so it was that a harsh cold darkness fell on the first of them, a sable void in which Ralphe made camp and cooked a rabbit on a fire, it's meat delicious but the pile of bones fell ill and the boy felt the first fingers of fear crawl along his spine.

He made progress in the lightless tracts between the trees, yet something ailed him. A figure could be seen beyond the boughs. Not man nor beast. A loosening of shadow. A figment of unease.

Damn you nerves! Tis but my scatterbrains!

Ralphe bolstered and ploughed forth. His second starry night, a brace of woodcock the hearty supper in the clearing below the Top. Tomorrow he would reach his quarry and prepare the King's lodge.

The boar were out and the knight slept badly, grunting, snouting in his dreams like spectres, nudging his feet and licking his face. 

He woke with a start to see the tusked devils beside the embers, their pupils fixed upon his face, an unnatural blaze firing their feral brains.

Go home young Childe!

The voice rebounded round the forest and the boar were gone. It was morning, a tattered rash of daylight skittering through the canopy.

Ralphe felt dread heavy on his shoulders. He should heed the warnings of the wild and leave at once but duty forced him on, even when the figure in the shadows returned in the corner of his eye, a grain of evil, a squint of foreboding all tusks, horns and fur. 

It was waiting at Crack Crow Top.

Curled in the wood store it unfurled and stood before him, an unfathomable stain of midnight besieging the day, the embodiment of evil and the blood-smeared One. 

It smiled and caressed his hair.

When the King arrived the boy lay within the lodge, hunched up beneath the crucifix turned down, his eyes pinned wide with thorns, his toothed maw agape.

The Monarch heard him whisper something or perhaps he had simply hissed, when a shadow was seen to slither from his mouth, between his frozen Men and ran out to the phantoms now gathering in the night

Childe Ralphe stood up and with a smile, welcomed them.