Dark Angels. Katherine Langrish
one after another down the slope as hard as he could. “I hate you! I’m never coming back!”
He buried his face in his hands. It’s not my fault!
But it was. He, Wolf, had run away from the household of God. And now he would pay for it by spending the night on the hill, alone and shelterless.
But if he went back…
If he went back, the rest of his life would be bound by the Rule, the endless circle of prayers and duties. Walk, don’t run. Pray, don’t talk. Rise when the bell rings. Eat when the bell rings. Sleep when the bell rings. Till one day he’d be an old man shuffling between refectory and chapel, coughing in the dormitory at night and keeping the boys awake.
Wolf lifted his head. It wasn’t dark yet, and when it was he’d find somewhere safe to rest — a dry spot under a gorse bush, or if he was lucky, a shepherd’s hut. He turned to go on.
Above him rose Devil’s Edge, stark against the sky with its crest of jagged rocks like broken castles — like a ruined city where monsters lived and demons lurked. In a clump of bracken nearby, something uttered a deep wheezing cough, and Wolf leaped like a hare. But it must be a sheep. Only a sheep.
He squelched around the edge of a bog. Last year workmen digging peat for winter fuel had discovered a body in one of these bogs. Some unlucky traveller had drowned there — or been murdered and thrown in by robbers — but centuries ago, in the time of the old Romans, maybe. The workmen had carried the body down to the abbey on a hurdle, and Wolf had seen it —creased like old leather, muddy and dripping, stained deep brown from the dark water. Now he wished he hadn’t.
He imagined it, or something like it, with glowing eyes and long, thin arms and huge, dark hands, stalking him through the heather. And why not? There were plenty of scary tales about this hill. Stories of blue elf-fires, burning at the mouths of long-abandoned mineshafts and tunnels. Stories of bogeymen and ghosts.
He took another glance at the ridge. Up on the very top, he had heard there was a road. A road leading nowhere, a road no one used. For if anyone was so bold as to walk along it, especially at night, he’d hear the clamour of hounds and the blowing of horns, the cracking of whips and the rumbling of a cart. And out of the dark would burst the Devil’s own dog pack, dashing beside a black wagon drawn by goats with fiery eyes, crammed full of screaming souls bound for the pits of Hell.
Wolf crossed himself, shivering. “Blessed Saint Ethelbert, protect me.” Then realised that Saint Ethelbert would have no time for a disobedient, sinful boy, and was probably scowling down at him over the battlements of Heaven, hoping the demons and elves that undoubtedly lived on this wild hill would be keeping a special lookout, just for him.
Rain flicked his cheek like a cold finger. The day was ending early. The ridge was still high above him.
So hurry! Get moving, Wolf. Get over the top before nightfall!
He broke into a panicked trot. But it wasn’t possible to keep it up for long. Soon he was puffing, clambering, wading through the heather, stumbling again and again into unexpected holes and hidden watercourses.
He began to feel almost sure something was following him, a little way behind and on the edge of sight, a furtive, scuttling smudge at the corner of his eye. It couldn’t be an animal: animals wouldn’t act like that. No good looking round, he thought unhappily. It would either duck into the heather, or — far worse — stand erect, and stare back at him. And then what?
I won’t look, he swore. I won’t look.
He looked. Not a soul was in sight, not a wayfarer, not a peat-cutter, not a solitary shepherd. The wind gusted up the hill towards him. On it, faint but clear, floated the same lamenting wail he’d heard before.
Something pale scurried over a nearby rock.
He snapped round to look. It whipped out of sight. Naked, whitish, running on all fours. A thin stalk of a neck and a big, round head. It couldn’t be human.
A demon!
Wolf bolted up the hillside.
I’m sorry! His prayer was a mental shriek. Please, please don’t let it get me! He scrambled over a rocky outcrop, floundered into a marshy hollow that sucked at his boots like the slobbering mouth of Hell. Snatching handfuls of tough heather which ripped his palms, he hauled himself out, hearing a distant clamour that swelled on the wind and faded again. The baying of dogs.
Who was out hunting — who was blowing horns on Devil’s Edge? Wolf really, really didn’t want to know. He dived into a clump of bracken and curled into a ball, arms wrapped over his head, eyes screwed shut.
The wind hissed and the bracken rattled. Nothing pounced on him. Wolf sat up. He peered this way and that, first fearfully and then with rising hope. Where was the demon? Perhaps he’d lost it.
Two yards away, a grey puffball head with glittering eyes rose over the ferns. Half of the face was white, half dark red.
Wolf bounced to his feet and went tearing up the slope. The skyline was close, so close it looked as though he could leap over it into the sky. With bursting lungs he struggled up one last steep bank and found himself on the top.
So high! So windy! He could see for miles — hills lying in rows like a giant’s ploughland. And all along the length of the ridge, linking crag to crag, a broad roadway of pale stones gleamed in the last of the light.
The Devil’s Road.
Wolf was frightened to set foot on it, but he didn’t dare stop. Any minute now, the Devil would be coming home from his day’s work of roaming the world, stalking through the air to set one black, clawed foot on his mountain! Wolf hopped and stumbled across, feeling uniquely visible, like a mouse trying to cross a room where a cat was hiding. The stones poked out of the black turf at all angles, a jumble of unforgiving points and edges that tripped and turned his feet.
The horn sounded again, a flat, sinister wail, followed by the uneven, choppy barking of a large pack of dogs. Wolf reached the far side of the Devil’s Road and jumped into the heather. Bleating sheep scattered ahead of him. He ran jolting down the slope, not knowing what else to do. There was nowhere to hide. The ground transmitted an insistent, dull drumming. Hoofbeats.
A cramp tore through Wolf’s side. He limped on, throwing agonised glances over his shoulder at the ridge. The gabble of the hounds became louder as they crested the hill. They poured over in a mottled flood, spilling down the slope. Two or three were out in front, running after him with enormous, raking strides. Behind flickered a shape with a blotched, blobby head.
The demon was with them — driving them on! Wolf ran faster. He hit a patch of slippery grass, his feet shot away and he fell, knocking the breath from his lungs.
A band of horsemen rode over the skyline, thin spears pricking the wind. The clamour of the dog pack was close now, savage and eager. Wolf scrambled up, his heart banging in clumsy strokes. Here they come! The front-runners were huge. He saw the grinning white teeth in sharp black jaws, the laid-back ears and mad light eyes, the long mud-splattered legs that reached and stretched in fluent bounds…
Wolves! Not dogs at all, but wolves!
He shrieked and brandished his arms. The leading wolf leaped aside in a racing swerve. The other two followed, dashing by at a safe distance. He saw now how tired they were, with glazed eyes and lolling tongues. And with a strange hoarse cry the demon brushed past him, mushroom white except for the red blotch like spilled wine down half its face. Wolf shrank back. It ran stooping, on its hind legs, and was smaller than he’d thought. It had no tail and—
“Hey!” he yelled incredulously, straightening up. “Hey!”
A narrow, bare back and thin buttocks disappeared into the bracken. What he’d thought was a huge head was a tangled mass of greyish-blond hair.
A child? A dirty little child?
No time to think. Horses were coming