Hellsborough Chronicles - Hellsborough and The Dark Peak
The semi-mythical Van Hallam's adventures in Hellsborough and The Dark Peak.
The finished version of Dark Peak: Hellsborough Chronicles Book One, is now available in Kindle and paperback formats from Amazon -- or you can download the first 7 chapters for free in ePub or Kindle mobi format from Hellsborough Library
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Introduction » Chapter 1 » Chapter 2 » Chapter 3 » Chapter 4 » Chapter 5 » Chapter 6 » Chapter 7 »
Van had dropped off at this point, eyes closed, arms outstretched, palms upturned, like some meditating divinity. His beer glass seemingly like his mind, was an empty void; as empty as the vastness of The Dark Peak. I alighted to the bar to recharge his glass, and mine, since I too had drained my vessel. Despite the lateness of the hour and our apparent intoxication, the re-fills weren't questioned; if anything, they were welcomed, and apparently, free of charge. When I return to the table, Van is playing out his crib hands against himself, and getting engrossed in a run culminating of four and a jubilant fifteen-two. He accepts his recharged glass with thanks and slurps noisily at the foamy head. He pauses slightly to admire the played out cards laying on the table and then continues his oration.
The landscape, at once familiar and alien, was peppered by the purple of heather and yellow of gorse bushes. It was dawn, and the sun meekly and unsuccessfully tried to overcome the all pervading gloom of the murk. Here and there were slight outcroppings of gritty rock which might have glistened in the sunlight, were that sunlight able to penetrate the heavy drismality of the day. A little to my left, only two minutes distant there was a low walled enclosure.
Parched from nothing to drink and with no bodies of water visible nearby, not even a stream cutting through the moorland, I thought it best to make that my top priority and start a little exploring. The low structure was the only evidence of habitation in sight, so keeping as low to the ground as I could, since, I didn't know who -- or what -- was likely to be about, I made my way over to it, and although my clothing blended well with the greys of the rock and the greens of the moss and bracken, I was pretty much out in the open, and so felt somewhat vulnerable.
I couldn't see any doors or windows, but as the wall was only about four feet high I cautiously got to my feet and peered over the top. What I saw was one of the strangest things I had, until then, seen in my life: The roof of the enclosure was of a solid yet opaque material, around four or five fingers in thickness, but of no structural material I had ever seen -- although it reminded me webbing, perhaps from some giant spider. Or maybe ice. Beneath this were several hundred large eggs, perfectly round and a dull pinkish-grey colour -- the angry colour of The Dark Peak sky. The eggs were nearly uniform in size being about a foot in diameter.
Five or six of the eggs had already hatched and their grotesque contents sat blinking in the dull morning light. Had my stomach had anything in it, the sight of those things would likely as much have emptied it there and then. They seemed mostly head, with little scrawny bodies, short fat necks and six legs, or, as I afterward learned, two legs and two arms, with an intermediary pair of limbs which could be used at will either as arms or legs. Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their heads and protruded in such a manner that they could be directed either forward or back and independently of each other, thus these toady things could look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without having to turn their heads.
There was no hair on their bodies, which were a light yellowish-green. In the adults, as I was to learn quite soon, this colour deepens to an olive green and is darker in the male than in the female, and the heads of the adults are not so out of proportion to their bodies as in the case of the young, but that's not so different to use humans either, is it.
Shad, hungry as he was, wanted to eat the little things and was whining and scratching at the enclosure, to try and get at them. I held him back, a little afraid of what they might be, and young as they clearly were, what natural instincts they might possess which could do him or me harm. More of the eggs were hatching as we watched, which meant that we both failed to notice a dozen full-grown adults approaching from behind us.
Coming, as they did, their mounts soundlessly skimming across the heather, they might have captured me easily, but the rattling of the equipment of the warrior at the head of the charge warned me and I turned to face the oncoming horde. Had not the rifle of this leader swung from its fastenings beside his saddle in such a way as to strike against the butt of a large metal-shod spear I should have been on my way to the Ripperthroat mountains without ever knowing what had hit me. But the sound caused me to turn, and there upon me, not ten feet from my chest, was the point of that huge spear.
The hatchlings in the enclosure looked harmless when compared to this mature and full grown incarnation of hate, vengeance and of death. It had a ferocious appearance, with tusks sprouting from its lower jaw that curved upwards to sharp points, ending around where the eyes of a human would be. Against the dark background of his olive skin his tusks stood out strikingly, giving him a formidable appearance. The man himself, was around six feet in height and, of a muscular build, possibly weighing in at a lean fourteen stone. He sat his mount as I might sit a horse, grasping the animal's barrel with his lower limbs, while the hands of his two right arms held his spear low at the side of his mount; his two left arms were outstretched laterally to help preserve his balance, the thing he rode having neither bridle or reins for guidance.
The mount itself was probably eight feet long and had a head consisting of a great eyes flanked at the sides by its searching antennae. It's six spindly, hairy legs were tucked under its abdomen, and it flew deftly over the terrain, its mighty dark wings beating slowly.
Behind the first, were eleven others, similar in all respects, but, as I learned later, bearing individual characteristics peculiar to themselves; precisely as no two of us are identical although we are all cast in a similar mould.
Barely armed as I was, just my big old knife, the first law of nature manifested itself in the only possible solution of my immediate problem, and that was to get out of the vicinity of the point of that charging spear. I scrambled across the gossamer dome of the enclosure, my featherweight allowing me the possibility of doing so without breaking the structure, something which my pursuers were unlikely to attempt for fear of crashing down onto their young and crushing them, for lean as the build of the xin -- as they are known -- is, it is still massive compared to the spindly baby xin, and when you add to that their impressive array of armoury, they would surely be too heavy for such a delicate looking structure.
Just like sliding on the icy ponds of the Rivelin valley, I made it to the far side of the dome without mishap, but turning saw my enemies impale Shad upon the shaft of the lead spear -- such was his lust for the smaller hatchlings, he had failed to sense the danger that bared down on us and he succumbed to the brutes. Part of me crumbled as I watched his black and lifeless body thrown to the floor, discarded like some soiled rag, but I had no time for mourning his passing, as I had my own life to think of and preserve, and there was no way that I was out of the line of fire yet.
The horde, having landed their mounts, lined up against the wall opposite, surveying me with expressions which I could not fathom, but afterwards discovered marked extreme astonishment. Others were evidently satisfying themselves that their young had not been harmed in any way.
They were conversing together in low tones, and gesticulating and pointing at me. Their discovery that I had not harmed the little xin, and that I was (compared to themselves) unarmed, must have caused them to look upon me with less ferocity, considering also, that they had already despatched Shad, whose teeth were far more effective weapons that anything that I could wield.
I noted that each was armed with several other weapons in addition to a spear. The weapon which caused me to decide against an attempt at escape by flight was what was a rifle of some description, and which I felt, for some reason, they were peculiarly efficient in handling.