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 »
The dyapnid lay dead on the floor, and Shad huffed at its carcass uttering guttural growls. He stalked the room impatiently, his blood lust rising to a fervour. I called him over to where I was sat on the ground and put my arm around his neck, trying to calm him, but his agitation was such that there was no soothing him. I never feared for my own safety with what was now a huge a fearsome beast, but knew that this tremorousness --
Is that a word, Pip? You're the educated one, you sort it out.
No, I don't think it is.
Anyway, his excitement, needed to be quelled, otherwise he might be minded to rampage through the camp and cause all sorts of damage, which wouldn't bode well for our future safety, I was sure of that.
Shad's anxiety quietened after a while, and I was able to have a good look about me. The floor was covered with sackcloth, silks and furs, but there was no furniture or other signs of comfort. A picture hung skewly on the wall opposite me, It felt completely out of place, as if it had been taken from somewhere else -- maybe it was a spoil of war; this was the only example of any art I had seen since Id been brought to -- what I now realised, was my prison.
I know what you're thinking, Pip -- I've only been here a few hours, how could I make such a rash statement. But I tells you why, Pip -- if you was in the presence of this warlike race, you'd have thought the same. You just knows when something is out of place, and this piece of art, slung casually from the wall of a ramshackle shed, was out of place.
I'm not saying that there is no xin with an artistic bent, because maybe there may have been one of them in all those fierce warriors -- later, I thought that maybe Fentimoss could have had the sensitivity to paint something so beautiful, but she was still young, so that thought never entered my head. No, this piece of art, this wall hanging, was definitely not xin, it was alien.
I continued to look at that picture for clues as to my whereabouts -- mountain and hill, river and lake, moor and marsh, the deep foreboding sky of The Dark Peak.
Fenimoss returned with what I assumed was food and drink. She placed them on the floor beside me, and seating herself a short way off, watching as I examined what she had brought. I was hungry and thirsty, but not being used to solid food, and unsure how to eat it -- I had always taken my food via the psycmask's feeding pipes -- I took a little while to figure out what was what, despite the hunger crawling about my stomach.
There was a hefty lump of some solid substance of -- that I'd now recognise as cheese. It was almost tasteless. The liquid was apparently milk from some animal, which was more familiar to me, it being a liquid. It was not unpleasant to the taste, slightly salty, and I learned quickly to prize it very highly. Both products came, as I later discovered, from the females of those winged xin steeds, the mentiloths.
At this point, I felt I needed to stop and ask a question, something from Van's story was playing on my mind and I just couldn't let him continue without asking:
Was Fenimoss not concerned by the dead dyapnid?
Van answered quickly.
It's the strangest thing, that, he said. The xin have this almost cursory ability to ignore and not even notice death. It's just not something that ever comes onto their radar. They are a very focused race -- and as I have already said, warlike and bent on destruction, and to them, death is cheap -- or at least the price of life for the xin is very little. So she entered the room, looked at the dead creature -- she didn't see Shad at all -- and saying nothing, nothing at all, just accepted the fact that the dyapnid was no longer on guard and was, well, dead, and proffered me the food. Not once did she ask me what had happened or why, she just carried on as if nothing had happened at all.
Can I carry on? Asked Van. I indicated for him to continue.
After I had eaten I felt a darn sight better, but I needed to rest, I was shattered. I stretched out on the sacks and fell asleep.
I must have slept several hours, when I awoke, I was freezing cold. As I was to learn, nights in The Dark Peak are extremely cold, and because the murk forever shrouding the place blocks out much of the sun and moonlight, the place is often in continuous gloaming. I noticed that someone had thrown a fur over me, but it had fallen off and in the darkness I couldn't see to replace it. Suddenly a hand reached out and pulled the fur over me, shortly afterwards adding another covering.
I presumed that my watchful guardian was Fenimoss, and I weren't wrong. This girl alone, among all the green xin who I'd come in contact with, showed sympathy, kindliness, and affection unlike any of her race; her care for me was unfailing, and she saved me from much suffering and hardship.
The xin, being a nomadic race without high intellectual development, have only crude means of lighting; depending principally upon torches, or a kind of candle, rendered from the fat of one of their animals -- tallow candles, I guess -- but there use is limited, as extraction is a lengthy process, so is seldom used by the xin, whose only thought is for today, and whose preference for war and hatred for manual labor has kept them in this semi-barbaric state.
After Fenimoss had covered me up again, I slept, not waking until the tepid light that signalled day began to slowly diffuse into the room. I could now see other shapes in there -- five female xin, all still sleeping, piled high with sackcloth and furs.
I'm an adventurer, you know that, I can't help meself, and I has to investigate and experiment where wiser folk would do well to leave alone. I just can't seem to help myself exploring ginnels and passageways and taking the pathway less trod to see where it leads. In the same way that I pour over maps, I have an intrinsic need to build up a picture of the geography of my environment, so that I know what leads to where and what connects with something else.
So it now occurred to me that the way to learn about my surroundings would be to get out this prison room while I had a chance of not being noticed.
When Fenimoss woke up, she of course saw that I had gone missing, and informed Siltibog. He'd set out immediately with a handful of warriors to search for me. As they had approached the limits of the village they had witnessed me scrambling up the branches of a tall fir tree, in order to try and get my bearings. But I had hardly got above the level of the murk when a xin warrior sitting high on his mentiloth jabbed his spear at me.
Shad, ever my protector had launched himself into the air and taken a chunk out of the mentiloth's undercarriage, which caused the frightened thing to buck wildly as it swam through the heavy air on those great wings, and if not unseating its rider, then at least unsettling him, so that I was no longer within range of his weapon.
The careening mentiloth's wing tip glanced the branch on which I was standing as it tried to maintain its height, which was enough of a jolt to cause me to slip from the branch, and drop the not insignificant distance to the floor of the wood. Luckily, I was to fall not into briars and thistles, but a deep carpet of fallen leaves, cushioning my fall, and sparing me from broken bones, but leaving me battered and bruised nonetheless.
Fenimoss had tagged along with the search party, and came to my aid, examining my body for wounds and injuries. Satisfying herself that I'd survived unscathed, I saw her smile quietly to herself, and taking my hand, led me back towards our shack in the village.
Shad trailed behind at a distance, keeping a wary eye on the xin warriors. I increasingly found this to be the case with Shad -- he would stay away, but should I ever need him, all I would do is whisper "cam-ere" and he'd be there. That's not to say that I didn't hear of the odd story of him up to some haunting here or thereabouts in The Dark Peak, and my suspicion is that he frequently returned to the Wisewood as well as to grimy streets of Hellsborough for his own ghostly and demonic entertainment.