The Ghosts of Dunmail Raise Pt. 2
This piece is part of the Choc Board, a 30 day writing challenge instigated by Chocolate Knox. You can read his Substack here. Some things take more than one day to write, and so this is the entry for day 24 and 25.
This is part two of a fictional retelling of an old Cumbrian legend. You can find part one here, and I suggest you read that first, else this part won’t make much sense!
I have since forgotten the sound of that horn, though I know it was thin and reedy, like the madness of the moon blown on a frail wind. It’s effect, though, on the scrubby land around me was immediate.
The tussocks of rush seemed to bow a little, as if light feet were pressing down on them and I suddenly became aware of the breeze that had been so inconsequential moments before, and the sharp, crisp cool of autumn air became dull, as if someone had closed the cupboard door.
An answering horn came, as from a great distance. And with that, the man lowered his own horn and brought his eyes to meet mine again.
“If you will not move, you will come with us.”
As he spoke, a slender light came towards me and coiled itself around my wrists. It drew my hands together tightly in front of me and the point of something sharp settled between my shoulder blades.
A third horn sounded, much closer. And like the heaving sigh of a consumptive patient, a phantom host began to ooze out of the earth around me; first a forest of ghostly spears, then helms, then the soldiers themselves bathed in the same moonlit pallor as my captor.
That first man turned and began to walk. And with the weariness of those who have done it a thousand times before, the host followed, and so did I.
In that moment, despair settled on me like a veil. At the very first, I could have fled, or fought. But now I knew that it was hopeless. Perhaps, if one of the ghostly warriors had met my eyes with their listless stupor I would’ve bolted and taken whatever pain the spear between my shoulders would deal. But in the midst of that host and its dreary trudge, there was no hope of escape, nor the terror to spur me on to risk it.
And so we walked. The pace was slower than my natural pace, slow enough to make every moment a conscious struggle to walk at the right speed, though I knew that my bonds, and the spear behind me would never allow me to go faster than the men around me.
It seemed to me then that the march would last forever and though we climbed, ever up the side of a hill, it felt as if a great weight was pulling me down and all that kept me above the bowels of the earth was a thin sheet of glass, or ice. And throughout it all, there was silence, all except for a noise just out of earshot, a deep sound that rose and fell like song, but had all the warmth of slate scraped through frozen mud.
After what must have been an hour, we came to the edge of a tarn, hard with the start of an early frost.
Mountain tarns are usually still, and we grow numb to cliches about the water being like glass. But that night the tarn was more than glass; it was a mirror in which the stars above appeared to shine more brightly than they do in the vaulted ceilings of the heavens. They shone as if seen without dust or distance. Though it had felt like lightning as we walked through the undead fog of the fells, the spear in my back felt blunt, suddenly dulled in comparison to the piercing eyes of the stars.
My companions seemed to shudder at that, and the slow hum of the slate song ceased its rhythm for a moment. The first man, my captor, raised his horn and blew a short blast. Each ghost turned and faced away from the tarn before picking up their chant once more.
Only I and the first man remained looking at the water. The cord that bound me tugged on my hands slightly. There was no pain, but not because its malice was gentle, but because it was frail.
“Walk, weighty one, and bring us Dunmail’s crown”, my captor said and at that, the rope began to pull me onwards towards the edge of the water.
Something of my first terror returned to me then, now that I was faced with the water. At any moment the toe of my boot would touch the tarn, and then the next step would take me in up to my knees, then my waist, my neck and on until I drowned alone in a mountain pool; a thousand ghostly watchmen my only deathbed company, and they wouldn’t even look.
to be continued…