21st October 1102

The Hunter’s moon rose warily from behind the dark shadow of the mountains, filling the valley with a pallid, glowing light. It gazed down upon the hurrying figures, searching and dull like a giant blinded eye. It stared, unblinking at their terror, creamy yellow and mottled as though marred by cataracts and age.

The field lay stretched out before them, dotted with the occasional carefully stacked pile of hay. It seemed to Lochan, despite the darkness of night, like the farmers had simply stepped out of the scene and would return at any minute. The hoe stood where it been plunged into the rich soil ready to be grasped between sturdy hands to rend the earth with another furrowed wound. The bag of seeds was still gaping open as though at any moment someone should would reach in for a grainy handful.

They ran towards the fire as fast as their pounding legs would carry them.

Lochan could not help but remember that the Hunter’s moon was also known by some as the sanguine moon, or the blood moon. It was the night for predators to stalk their prey deep in the forest, while the moon glowed fiendishly above providing all the light they would ever need to seek out their terrified victims.

As a boy he had hunted on this night, his body bathed in the malignant radiance of the moon’s single eye. The forest had risen eerily about him as he followed the men, chasing a deer’s gleaming body through the twisting shadows. But Lochan had not hunted for many years and never would willingly again.

Tonight he felt more hunted than hunter, despite the arching blade he carried in his hand. It flashed white like a great jagged tooth as the glimmering light fell on it, as though he and the men who ran beside him merely carried pieces of the moon’s gaping rictus.

He crested the hill, a scene of nightmarish horror assailing his eyes. Two unmoving bodies lay entwined in the grass, a dark stain blooming outwards from their twisted forms. He could feel the heat of the fire that was rapidly digesting the tiny cottage before though he stood fifty paces from it. The roof had not yet caught but the thatched walls were exploding in incandescent sparks as the fire’s hungry tongue licked at them.

“Find them if they are here and if they are not start putting out this damned thing!”, Lochan screamed over the roar of the fire, his voice already growing raw from the acrid smoke that was billowing from the house.

“The others will be here soon so you’ll have more hands. Put it out before it spreads to the forest!”.

Osras and Kelgar sprinted towards the burning house, swords held ready, their bodies dark shadows blotting out the scorching inferno that blazed before them.

Lochan’s sword fell clumsily from his sweaty hand, a tooth come loose from its socket tumbling from a grinning mouth spread wide.

He knelt before the pair, his shaking fingers slithering through the blood that was slick on their throats to try and find a heart beat. They were both dead, lying beside one another, head to toe, a dark stain spread between them. They were not touching, but their faces were turned towards one another, as though in their final moments they had looked for the comfort of a lover’s gaze. Perhaps they had gone hand in hand to the gates of heaven, touching in death as they had not managed in the last throes of life.

He gazed down at the young man’s face. Brackenthwaite, his name had been. They had not had this plot of land for long and yet he saw the tidy ploughed rows stretching away from the house. His wife’s careful hands had methodically planted a bed of tomatoes, her husband’s strong hands building a neat fence around them. The tomatoes hung now, red and ripe, their juicy weight dragging down the healthy green stems. Without her they would fall unwanted to the ground, their full bodies bursting in last autumn light till crows came and ripped out their insides.

The Brackenthwaites… but hadn’t they? His mind flicked frantically to the roaring blaze behind him and he felt ill. His ears were pricked like a deer’s listening for the faint rustling of the hunter’s foot, but he was listening for a faint squalling.

It came, a tiny whimper, but from much closer than he expected. With shaking hands he reached down into the woolen folds of the woman’s cloak. He felt something soft and warm moving beneath his searching hands. He drew back in horror, terrified of the state something they had left behind would be in, frightened to draw out that squirming, clammy thing.

A small blonde head peeked from beneath her mother’s cloak. She wriggled herself carefully out from under the heavy, scratchy material her tiny limbs twisting in grass that was sticky with blood.

She stared up at Lochan curiously, her face specked with tiny red droplets of her mother’s blood.

Her eyes were glistening and dark, like the unseeing eye of the deer they had brought down, arrow heaving in its side as it died. He remembered the shining tears that had clung to its dark lashes, as though it mourned its own death.

She began to bleat in distress, reaching out her tiny arms toward him. Her blood-spattered face wore an unspoken plea as she reached out towards him, as though begging him to take her from the midst of her parent’s final embrace.

He grasped her small, shivering body, sweeping her up out of the blood-stained quagmire of her parent’s death and into his warm living arms.

In the darkness she stared up at him, her face breaking into a careful smile. She had a lot of teeth for such a small child, he mused thinking of Atholt and Kendrick’s gummy grins. They gleamed white under the moon’s savage gaze. Though she smiled, her eyes still stared up at him mournfully, her eyes shining in the dark as though unshed tears swam just below their dark surface.

He carefully licked his finger and began to wipe the drying blood from her pudgy cheeks. Once her face was reasonably clean he gently pinched one chubby cheek between two trembling fingers.

“There now”, he patted her tiny face with a weak smile, “all done”.

She sighed contentedly, and snuggled against the warmth of his chest, pressing her warm face against his neck. He held her close, though she smelt of burning hair and blood. He watched as the cottage she had lived in for mere months was torn apart by the hungry mouths of the fire. The thatch on the roof caught in a great rush, trails of fire running up the sides. He heard shouting and the sizzle of the sputtering flames as buckets of water splashed forth onto them.

He had failed again and they had lost still more to the crooning call of death. He had been certain this night that no new deaths would occur, everyone tucked safe in their beds and guarded heavily. He had not thought of this, the curling tongues of fire that forced someone from even the safest of beds. But this night even the moon’s light was cast for the predator and he should have known.

He had failed Sister Mella and he had failed poor Nelly Barran. He had failed Goodwife Rawtharn and little Cindra. He had failed Valeriya and Harndall and Vance and Kelgar. He had failed Igrayne, her poor, beautiful face marred for life.

But most of all he had failed the tiny child he held warm and safe in his arms. After this night no longer would she snuggle against the warm breast of her mother to listen to her breathy lullaby. Never again would she giggle when father’s scratchy beard tickled her face, as he hoisted her up into his arms at the end of the day.

The single eye of the sanguine moon focused on him blankly. The shadows of the broken ridges below its roving gaze spreading like a leer in the darkness.

Murchadh, Shildfrith