Lullaby for the Dead by Ravien_Filque  

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Lullaby for the Dead

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"Come, my lord!" I shouted over the howling wind, my breath pushed back into my lungs by the raging gust of a blinding snowstorm. "Come quickly, we can't stay here in the open!" The wind was picking up like it was trying to outrun itself; the freezing air was biting my skin, and the harsh snow, or was it hail, was sticking to my eyelashes, making it hard to see anything.

He wasn't moving, despite the storm. He just stood there on the snow-covered road, his strange eyes fixed on the partly covered moon, like he was trying to read something from the copper-coloured halo around the orb. A ring around the moon is a bad omen. Every child knows that.

To my left there was a dense forest, to my right an open space where the Old Road cut through the vast wilderness. We were close to the settlement, I could see the lights flickering just over the curve. He was not moving.

The air cracked suddenly as if someone snapped a whip across the sky and everything became very bright for a moment. Then the thunder came. In the dead of winter. Either Perun hunting Veles, or the Horde beginning its ride.

No, not yet, it can't be. Not yet, we still have time. Please, Gods!

I ran to him and grabbed his arm to drag him to safety. My hand wrapped around his leather-covered bicep and I pulled. I felt the muscles dance under my grip but he wouldn't budge. He was much taller than me, and I pulled again until I was almost hanging on his arm. Nothing but a slight shift of his head like he was listening to something over the blizzard.

Another roll of thunder rumbled across the sky, the wind sped up and pushed against us with such strength that I was sure we would fall.

We didn't. In the blink of an eye everything stopped. The wind, the thunder, the driving gale. Silence. Stillness. The kind that has nothing to do with calm.

My breath came white, my heart was pounding like it wanted to break free from my too-tight chest when the howls came. Maddening howls of nightmarish hounds. Or was it the horn first? A hellish vibrating drone that rattled the ribs of the living.

The noise was intensifying — barking, yes, that's the hounds, thundering hooves, and something more.

"Move now!" I yelled and pulled at him with all my might. It hurt to breathe. "Please, you'll doom us both." I tried once more, already sobbing uncontrollably.

That got his attention. One fluid turn, and he was holding my arms and piercing me with eyes that were wrong.

"Run," he said and looked over my head to the wall of the forest. "To the trees."

"I…no, c-can't leave…you. C-come." His grip became iron-like, and he shook me like a rag doll my sister used to play with when we were children. And by the Gods, his eyes shone even more when his lips formed a sound. For a moment, I was drowning in him, and then my torso was turning and my legs moving, and I was running for the trees.

When my mind became my own I was kneeling surrounded by silver birches that created a living barrier with their entwined branches. My heart was drumming in my ears, and I was shaking like a leaf, though my breath was no longer freezing mid-exhale. I shook my head to clear my thoughts and leaned my weight against the nearest birch trunk. A bitter half-laugh escaped my lips as I inhaled the scent of the wood and caressed the black-and-white bark. Birches — Veles' trees — were keeping me hidden from the galloping dead.

I could see him through the branches. He had lost his hood at some point and his dark hair was glimmering with frost under the moonlight. Why wasn't he hiding?

I shifted my weight and looked around. Something was…not right. Was I protected or trapped? My breath was still quick, but this time I could feel warm moisture trickling down the sides of my face, my woollen hat and mantle felt too heavy, and fear grew sharp — I was sweating. I closed my eyes; oh, may the Spirits protect me.

I checked the road — still no change. Then the night erupted with the churring, bone-melting song of what sounded like hundreds of nightjars, and it was coming from all directions at once, making the air tremble along with the changing pitch. 

Ku-wik ku-wik ku-wik pierced through my brain — the harbinger of death, the carrier of souls. They are coming they are coming theyarecoming.

The air cracked. My breath stopped. The sky split open, and the Cavalcade of the Dead tumbled down from the heavens. Countless, endless numbers of lost souls circling lower and lower. I could not look away. I could not move a single muscle.

They were galloping madly above the road, no higher than the tree line, and now he was moving. Wha — he stepped into the open. It looked like his feet didn't touch the ground any more, the movements so fluid, so graceful as he moved sideways, keeping them in his line of sight.

The sound of a hunting horn filled the night. He froze. Again, the horn rang out, and there was a melody to it, so heartbreaking I feared I would surely die of a grief that was not my own. I grabbed fistfuls of my hair and pulled. I was barely conscious. 

And when I thought that I could bear it no longer — a voice. Deep as the sea, it drowned out everything else. The Horde, the nightjars, stopped short, snuffed out as if they had never been there. Even the birches in my grove were listening and relaxing their hold. Protecting, not trapping.

The Wild Hunt were still riding across the snowy plain. Silently now, except for the horn that once more resounded, but this time it was trying to mimic the song, and — oh, oh, what madness was this? One rider broke away from the circling procession and was charging towards my companion.

My companion — what was his name? Makar? Magnar? — was swaying gently to his song. I could see his silhouette cut distinctly against the vast whiteness. Long black hair falling loosely on a deep-red cloak; he looked like a vision from the tales of the Old World, almost shining like firelight.

His face was unreadable to me, but I knew his only focus was the rider who once more blew the horn, joining the melody. My fists loosened and let go of my hair, and I could breathe again. I wanted to run through summer fields of golden wheat, my arms stretched out, my head thrown back as laughter rose in my chest.

I watched the Hunter jump off his horse — a shining dapple-grey, not the half-skeletal nightmare — and take one hesitant step.

My lord opened his arms and lifted his voice even more, and I swear the earth and trees moved with it, and the snow melted, leaving a path of soft brown earth between them. I was past being afraid. Perhaps I was dying or had died already.

The Hunter was closing the distance. Silver stars on his hunting garb, silver hair braided like I had never seen before. Then his face and his eyes, steel-grey and shining exactly like the ones I had been drowning in a moment ago. His lips were parted and moving as if trying to form a word. He raised his hand.

"Laurë…" A heart-wrenching sob from the spectre's mouth. I'm sure I heard it. I am sure.

I switched my gaze to my companion, and I nearly choked — his face was in tears, his eyes wide and round and full of such love that no human could hold it, yet he never broke the song. 

He lifted his right hand, fingers bent and dark, and grabbed the Hunter, and with his left he wrapped them in his heavy crimson cloak. 

A wail worse than all the demons, hounds, and nightjars combined shattered the air. The song rose; they were swaying to the melody, holding, foreheads touching, breaths mingling, black and silver hair intertwining.

There was nothing but the song and them. I closed my eyes, and the melody swept me away.

A silver-haired boy laughing loudly and flying up into the air only to be caught in the arms of a dark-haired youth and kissed on rosy cheeks.

The same boy wandering a corridor lit by a flash of lightning, pushing open a door, climbing into a bed where two older boys, one dark- and one red-haired, are hiding from the rumbling thunder amidst soft blankets and pillows. They tuck him between themselves, kiss his silver head, and the dark one starts humming a now familiar melody — it's a lullaby, my mind provides unasked.

I leaned against the sturdiest birch, wrapping my arms around its trunk. I could feel the bark scratch at my face.

A silver-haired hunter running breathlessly on his first chase. A great hound at his side.

Both of them, fully grown, standing on a beach holding bloody swords.

Grey stone walls, voices raised in a language impossible to follow, one word thrown back and forth: "Findaráto!" Silver Hunter turning his back, leaving the Dark Singer with a hand outstretched. A scream rattling the windows. Doors slamming shut.

I was kneeling in the grove, holding the birch. Melting snow soaked through my breeches, and it was on my face, falling from the branches, but why was it salty?

Snow and silver hair soaking up fresh blood. A scream : "Tyelko!" Strong arms lifting the fallen body. "No, no, little one, shh…shh…" And the lullaby…

I opened my eyes. There was only winter silence and the moon shining upon a lone figure in the middle of emptiness. He was almost bent in half, one hand still outstretched, the other on his thigh. He was rocking unsteadily.

It was so quiet that I could easily hear him repeating: "Tyelko, Tyelko, please."

I moved from my hiding place and ran to him on a foal's legs only to grab him when he let out a hoarse scream and fell to his knees, shaking violently.

I could only hold him — this…this not-man who had saved me from the nightmare of The Wild Hunt. There was nothing I could do to ease his pain.

Warmth, like in the grove but gentler, enveloped me and at the edge of my vision I saw a horned figure with soft amber eyes. I took a breath and sang.

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Chapter End Notes

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