Their Hooves Carve Craters in the Earth

The chirping of crickets. The swaying of tall grass. It was a wonderful summer evening by all respects. A more moral, perhaps less desensitized, person would feel bad for doing what we planned on doing on this specific evening. There were probably still children out playing in the fields, under the soft citrusy orange of the sunsets sky. It reminded me a little of my own home town. It was a little bigger but it had the same sort of architecture, and the same sort of middle of nowhere malaise. These were a set of details I was in all honesty not bothered by though. If it was something that bothered me I wouldn’t have ended up in this line of work. And anyway, its not like I knew any of the children.

Those children were about now probably hearing the distant thunder of our hooves cratering the earth as we road towards them, the burlap peasant hats attached to our goblinoid avian masquerade masks flapping in the wind behind us. We shrieked and yelled as we rode, twirling unlit firebombs and flesh hooks over our head, producing war cries. We’d lost the elements of stealth: they could hear us coming. But that was the intent. There was no strategy in this attack but terror. We’d trekked on the laydown far inland as civilians knowing that this town wouldn’t be guarded. It also happened to be the ancestral home of an especially troublesome military leader.

We split our separate ways, each taking an entrance. We wanted to fork out. It was better hit as much of the town at once.

About now the children would be running home, eyes bleary and wrought with panic. Telling Mummy and Daddy that there were demons out in the fields in a shaky voice. In most cases Ma and Pa wouldn’t believe them. In this case the threat was legitimate though. “Demons in the fields” had turned out to be more than just childhood delusion in other towns.

The entire village, I imagine, was currently in the process of hushing itself. I could see the last of it as the village approached and proceeded to engulf us: windows slamming shut, hushed windows through shutters, and the odd pauper or vagabond hammering on doors. I imagine the others were greeted with their own versions of what I was seeing. There were only 6 of us, but we’d convince them there were 60.

The man, with a beard so nautically straggled and knotted it looked out of place this far from a boat, turned to see me. He could probably see the white of my eye under the mask. I could see the white of his. White was the wrong word. His were an unhealthy greenish-yellow, as if he was already part dead and necrotizing right while still walking. I stared him down. The wind blowing across my back, blowing the reddish black mass of fabric behind me. To him I was a grim bloody fable come true, masked upon a horse with meat hooks hanging from my saddle. To him I was a grim bloody reaper. Even without my horse I would have been far larger man than him. He was not short pint, but the oozing black tar of my vast shadow easily swallowed him whole: gluing him to the wooden door behind him. Petrified as if my eyes had been plucked from the skull of medusa.

That was good fear. That was useful fear. If I killed him I’d be wasting that. If I am to do my job effectively I don’t just have to put on a show here, but I have to have vectors who can carry the memories to others and infect them with the same trouser browning horror I gave him. “The Memory of you is to be to them a virus” is the first thing they told you in training.

I made good on the threat I posed. I would not destroy him. But I’d happily destroy the world around him. I reached into the satchel that hung at my hip and produced a wood hexagonal cylinder with two roped protruding from its top. I twirled it around, putting on a show for my captive audience peaking through their blinders. Then, as if by magic, I’d flick a lit match from my sleeve and light the other string, before gently swinging the thing full force at one of the blinders. Cries of panic came from behind that blinder and I rode off.

There was an eruption of cries of panic. Rattling as well as people desperately tried to dislodge the thing from the window. That was a mistake. The fuse is designed to speed up when jostled. After about three cycles of rattling the sparks hit the thing inside and it exploded. Even from where I was I could feel the flash of heat from it. These were firebombs: packed with The Kaiserins butter. I pulled another and began twirling it, looking down the winding street to my corner. Both sides of the street were smothered in roaring red flames. I tucked my other reached hand into its sleeve and in one motion whipped out and lit another match and caught one of the little hexagonal hell boxes restraining chains with a lick of flame, lighting and burning through it. The angry fire elemental trapped in the flammable grease inside would want out of its prison soon. It was hungry. Starving for the timber of houses. I let go of the thing and booted my horse, signaling for her to run. I didn’t want to get caught in its feeding frenzy.

Red light from the fire cast over me. The entire world was going red. The shadow extended and grew, becoming titanic. Reaching far down the street. Smothering house after house in impending misfortune.

I had many more tinder boxes to burn through.

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Pub: 11 Sep 2022 11:57 UTC
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