Hellmouth

by Giles Kristian

It is chaos. A storm within a storm as Galien climbs to his feet, turns, deflects a spear-thrust with his sword and takes a man’s head, which thumps into the mud, staring up at the grey sky. A life gone in a half-breath.

In psalm and parable, threats veiled in riddle. Such men of words and scrawled ink have always set his flesh crawling. The way they swept into a place like an ill wind, their words entwined in the Roman tongue, the spectre of damnation following them like a shadow.

His whole body being so stiff on waking each morning that he sometimes thinks he’s died in the night and the rigor has set in before his soul’s had the chance to fly from his corpse.

A rattle of leaves and the rain comes, drops splashing on helmets and bouncing off shields on backs and strapped to saddles. Then, like a great seething breath it descends, spearing through leafy boughs and blurring the forest gloom.

And he feels the air around him change as each member of his company gives him or herself over to the instinct which has kept them alive up to now.

A man builds a castle to keep others out. But this castle, Galien knows as sure as the thump of his heart in his chest, was built to keep something in.

They all crave violence now, because in violence there is no place for thought, and thought in this place is like a sickness.