The Farmer's Wife #017

Suddenly, the shadows fell upon them.

The world slowed almost to a halt as Matthias watched something almost like a wolf leap -

flow

 - through the air towards Valdis. He yelled a warning, but the Purgator was already lunging to one side and reaching for his mace. The wolf-shadow's maw missed his neck by a hairs-breadth, and the creature's body twisted in the air as he shouldered it aside.

Too late, Matthias saw another shadow already launching itself towards Valdis, but as he watched the man spun around, mace in his hand, and smashed the beast aside. With a harsh sound somewhere between a yelp and a scream, it fell to the ground, rolled, and leaped out of the torchlight.

Valdis backed slowly towards Anya and Matthias, holding his torch out in front of him, peering into the darkness. Behind him, Matthias heard the soft sound of steel on leather; he turned to see Thanos' sword glinting in his hand.

The three priests closed in around Anya; Matthias realised that they had left a place for him in their rough, outward-facing circle. Breath caught in his throat, he stepped forward to fill it.

He lobbed his torch a short distance in front of him and took up a defensive stance, feet planted wide apart on the ground. He muttered a silent prayer of thanks for Brother Talis and his endless mantra of "'unarmed' should never mean 'defenceless'".

"Show yourselves, beasts," muttered Thanos. Matthias' eyes flicked back and forth from shadow to shadow. Things moved in the corners of his eyes. He felt his heart beating in his chest, heard his short, rapid breaths in his throat. What was coming? What was coming to take them?

For a moment, he almost lost control. Then he heard Valdis' voice. The man was chanting; singing. Matthias knew the Battle-Hymns of the Purgatai well, and, without any deliberate decision, his voice joined in. The voices of Thanos and Anat followed.

Four voices was not much. In the days of old, before the Shattering, this hymn would have been sung by groups dozens or hundreds strong. But as the chant - more a sung battle-cry than anything else - rose up within him, it lit a fire in his heart and washed away the fear. On his left, he saw Valdis' mace swinging in his hand; as their voices rose to a shout, the mace began to glow white-hot with a light that burned away the darkness that surrounded them.

In the woods around them, creatures stalked between the trees, circling, waiting.

All of them were four-legged, but otherwise no two were the same; some were more like wolves, some more like bears, some more like great cats. All of them did not so much walk as flow forward over the ground; the sight would have been extremely disconcerting save for the Battle-Hymn steeling Matthias' spirit.

They were hard to count; they faded into and out of the shadows the mace's light cast from the trees. There were at least thirty, perhaps more.

One of the cat-things darted forward. In moments, others followed. Seconds later, all were charging.

Matthias braced himself as the cat sprung up at him, jaws agape, claws outstretched. He dodged slightly to one side and span with the impact of its body into his shoulder. Grabbing it bodily, he used its own momentum to slam it into the ground. He kicked his legs out from beneath him and dropped down after it, slamming his elbow into the back of its neck with the full force of his weight. With a sickening crack, the beast went still.

Not staying still for a second, never letting the hymn fade from his lips, he rolled forward over its corpse, already begin to flake away in the holy light that washed over it, and scanned the circle of light as he rolled to his feet.

Thanos was swinging his sword through a hulking black monstrosity; the darkness of its flesh burned away before the silvered blade. Anat was wrestling a shadow-wolf to the ground. Valdis was spinning around into a follow-through even as the shattered body of the shadow he had just struck disintegrated into falling motes of darkness.

He rolled upright just as another wolf leapt at him and the last spark of conscious movement faded away as he brought his fist up sideways to meet it. Hymn still rising from his lips, he struck and span and struck again, weaving around his foes in an intricate dance that seemed to spring from his limbs themselves.

He pulled the others into his dance, and entered into theirs; here, he threw a leaping beast towards Valdis, whose mace launched it into a tree; there, he ducked below Thanos' blade as the old man cut into the beast that had been heading for his throat.

His foot caught on a root, the hymn faltered on his lips, and the dance fell apart around him. He fell, rolled, and came up strong, but before he could ready himself one of the creatures struck him in the chest, bearing him him down to the ground.

The hymn halted in his mouth and vanished from his mind, and there was only the primal terror of the prey before the predator.

"Aranaus!" The name of his god rung out from his lips, and with a flash of light and thunder the creature was thrown from his chest. He leapt to his feet and launched himself towards the creature before it could do the same; with a wrench of his arm he snapped its fragile neck.

His voice took up the Battle-Hymn again, but as he looked around, he saw the last few shadows fleeing into the darkness.

The hymn slowly faded from their voices and the fire that had burned in Matthias' blood receded, leaving exhaustion in its wake. He slumped down against a tree, staring blankly ahead as his vision clouded over and faded to black.