Solis Invicti
Her eyes flickered over his rather spectacularly ravaged appearance… hair wild, beard long and matted, bloodstains all over him… and then a bolt of pain decided it, and she nodded weakly. He stooped to lift her, careful to not smack his head on the beams of the loft (a lesson he’d learned through many, many impacts to the skull) and made his way back to the door, gesturing to the axe with his elbow as he went past it and gratified that Doug picked up on it. As he carefully made his way down the ladder, he got his first look at Miriam even as she got her first look at the chaos below, and hissed in combined pain and revulsion. She was unusually pale, with long black hair currently sweated back and large brown eyes, and she looked like a high school student in the slowly dawning red light creeping over the trees. Doug, for his part, was gaunt, lean, dark hair and skin like someone who saw a lot of time outside. His eyes were huge at the sight of the wolf bodies, and looked from them to the man holding his wife with extreme apprehension.
“You… did all this?”
“Yes. Let’s go.” Heading out the barn door, for a moment he was caught off guard by the brassy sky behind the pine trees, where the sun was clawing its way up the sky. Then he turned and headed to the light blue farmhouse, Miriam sweating and grunting in his arms, Doug clutching the axe in his hands. Striding across the gravel, he made his way to the front door and knocked hard, hoping against hope that someone was home. After waiting a long thirty seconds, he reached down and handed Miriam into Doug’s arms, and then dropped to his knees, searching under the mat, under flowerpots, and finally finding the key in a box underneath a large seashell. The door opened, swinging into a perfectly ordinary kitchen.
The sound of something, a great many of them, coming towards the house. Hooved somethings that were dragging something else behind them. This time, he did cradle his face in his hand. Stepping back down the stairs, he took the axe from an uncomprehending hand.
“Get inside. Call the police if the phone works, get a doctor out here. Don’t come out for anything, don’t open this door for me or anyone else who doesn’t have a badge and a doctor with them. Tell them everything you know, but don’t describe me.” Before Doug could speak, he was shoved along with Miriam into the house and the door pulled shut behind him. Holding the bloody axe, the nameless man stepped down onto the gravel road leading up to the house.
It came out of the woods, a large black sled vaguely like a chariot, pulled by immense black and red stags. The one in the lead had a mottled coat, with a red muzzle that almost seemed bloodstained, shining with reflected light from the approaching day. Twisting his head to look over his shoulder, the nameless man cursed the sun for taking its time to rise. The red antlers of the stags waved like spears in the air as they came on, easily pulling the sled across hard packed earth and frosted grass. Seated in the sled was a huge, grey-bearded man in animal skins and furs stained with blood, a festering hole where his left eye should be, a great spear in his right hand.
The sled came on, finally stopping ten yards away, the team snorting and tossing their antlers as they came to a halt. The red furred man stepped from the back, easily half as tall again as the man without a name, the spear in his hand just as large. He glowered, his massive eyebrows like clouds across his wide, hair-wreathed face.
“You killed my wolves.”
“Yep, I did. And that bull, too.” The great grey man in his red skins arched an eyebrow at that. “And what do I call you? Valdemar Atterdag? Dietrich von Bern? Herne? The King of Fairy? Elflord? What brings you and yours out this fine morning?”
“Not morning yet. I come for the woman. The woman and her babe.”
“No.”
“No?” The huntsman seemed to grow even larger. “Who are you to deny? Men who displease me decorate trees with their entrails, their heads perched atop the branches to warn others. This is my night. I do as I please, and it pleases me to have the woman. You will die if you defy me.”
