Stephen Lawhead - Hood

The soldiers proceeded along this eerie corridor in silence, eyes wide, shoulders hunched with apprehension. The farther they went, the more uncanny it became. The feeling of dread deepened moment by moment, as if each step brought them closer to a doom unknown and deeply to be feared.

Guy, resolute but anxious, was no less affected than his men; the weird sights around them seemed both purposeful and malevolent; yet the meaning of the macabre displayif meaning there wasescaped him.

Then, all at once…

"Yeux de Dieu!" swore Guy, jerking back the reins involuntarily. The big grey halted in the road.

Affixed to a tree beside the road was what appeared to be the figure of a man with huge hands and an enormous misshapen head, drenched in blood, his arms stretched as if to welcome passersby with a grisly embrace.

A second glance revealed that it was not a man at all, but a statue of cloth and straw affixed to a scaffold of tree limbs and topped with the head of a boar. The hideous thing had been drenched in blood and was covered with flies. "Merde," Guy spat, urging his mount forward once more. "Pagans."

The heavy wagons rolled slowly past this grisly herald. Knights and men loosed curses even as they signed themselves with the cross.

The road descended gently into a shallow trough between the crests of two low hills. The forest pressed dose, ominously silent. Guy, riding ahead, reached the bottom of the dell and, in the last light of day fading to the shadowy gloom of twilight, saw something lying across the road. Closer inspection revealed that a tree had fallen, its trunk spanning the road from side to side. There was no going around it.

Guy, now fully alert to danger, wheeled his mount. "Halt!" he shouted, his voice cracking loud in the deep forest hush. "Jeremias!" he said, indicating the tree behind him. "Remove it. Form a troop. Get it cleared away."

"At once, sire," replied the sergeant. Turning in the saddle, he called to the knights and men behind him. "First four ranks dismount!" he shouted. "The rest remain on guard."

Before the knights and men-at-arms could climb down from their saddles, there came a crashing from the surrounding woodsomething huge and clumsy crashing through the tangled undergrowth toward the road. The soldiers drew their weapons as the unknown entity lumbered closer.

The bushes beside the road began quaking and thrashing from side to side. Guy's hand found his sword hilt and drew it. The sword was halfway out of the scabbard when, with the mewling, inarticulate squeal of a host of lost and tortured souls, the branches parted, and out from the vine-covered thicket to his left burst a herd of wild pigs.

Half-mad with fear, the animals tumbled through the opening and into the road. Whatever was driving the pigs terrified them more than the men on horseback, for the squealing, squalling animals, seeing their only path of escape blocked by the fallen tree, swirled around once, then lowered their heads and charged into the halted ranks of soldiers.

The hapless creatures-four sows with perhaps twenty or more piglets-darted in amongst the legs of the horses, instantly throwing the ordered ranks into rearing, kicking chaos. Some of the soldiers tried to ward off the pigs by stabbing at them with their swords, which only increased the confusion.

"Hold!" cried Guy, trying to make himself heard above the frantic neighing of the horses. "Hold the ranks! Let them pass!"

Catching a movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned and saw something alight on the trunk of the fallen tree. It seemed to simply materialise out of the darkness-a shadow taking substance, darkness contracting to itself and coalescing into the shape of a gigantic birdlike creature with the wings and high-domed head of a raven and the torso and legs of a man. The face of the phantom was a smooth, black skull with an absurdly long, pointed beak.

Guy gaped at the unearthly creature. His shouted orders clotted on his tongue. He swallowed and found his mouth had gone dry.

The phantom perched on the massive trunk of the fallen tree, spread its great wings wide, and in a voice that seemed torn from the very forest round about, shrieked out a cry of raw animal rage that resounded through the forest, echoing amongst the treetops. Soldiers threw their hands over their ears to keep out the sound.

At once, the scent of smoke filled the air, and before Guy could draw breath to shout a warning to his men, twin curtains of flame leapt up on each side of the road along the length of the wagon train, which was now a confused mass of frightened men, pigs, and thrashing horses.

The phantom shrieked again. Lord Guy's grey destrier reared, its eyes rolling in terror. When Guy turned to look, the enormous raven had vanished. "Fall back!" cried the knight marshal. "Retreat!" His command was lost in the cacophony of pigs squealing, men shouting, and oxen bawling. "Turn around! Go back!"

As if in reply, the forest answered with a low groan and the shuddering creak of tree trunks cracking. The soldiers shouted-some pointing left, some right-as two huge oaks gave way on each side of the road, crashing to earth in a juddering mass of limbs and leaves. Knights on horseback scattered as the heavy pillars toppled, one atop the other, directly behind the last wagon in the train. The startled ox team surged forward, smashing into the stationary ranks directly ahead, overturning two horses and unseating their riders.

Trapped now in a corridor of flame and oily, pungent smoke, the wagons could neither turn around nor move off the road. The soldiers, still contending with the remaining pigs, strove to regain control of their mounts.

In the tumult and confusion, no one saw two furtive figures in deerskin cloaks rise from the bracken with pots of flaming pitch suspended from leather cords. Standing just beyond the shimmering sheet of fire, the skin-clad figures swung the pots in tight, looping arcs and let fly. The clay pots smashed into flaming shards, splattering hot, burning pitch over the sideboards of the nearest wagon.

The frightened oxen bolted, driving into the men and horses who could not get out of the way swiftly enough.

"Hold!" cried Guy. "Drivers, hold your teams!"

But there was no holding the terrified animals. They surged forward, heads down, driving into anything in their path. Knights and men-at-arms scattered, desperate to get out of the way of the wildly scything horns.

Some of the soldiers braved the wall of flames. Turning their mounts, they jumped the burning logs and struggled into the bramblebound undergrowth. Those in the rearward ranks, seeing the flames and chaos ahead, abandoned their uncontrollable mounts and scrambled through the branches and over the fallen tree trunks blocking their retreat.

In the chaos of the moment, no one gave a thought to their trapped comrades; thoughts ran only to survival, and each man looked after himself. Once free, the men-at-arms took to their feet, running back down the road the way they had come.

The wagons were burning fiercely now, driving the horses and oxen wild with terror. There was no holding them. Everywhere, men were abandoning their saddles to flee the panic-stricken horses and flaming wagons.

Marshal Guy, his voice raw from shouting, tried to order his scattered retinue. With sword held high, he repeatedly called his men to rally to him. But the preternatural attack had overwhelmed them to a man, and Guy could not make himself heard above the clamour of beasts and men lost in the frenzy of escape.

In the end, he had no choice but to desert his own mount and follow his retreating men as they fled into the night. Working his way back along the riotous commotion of his flailing, devastated soldiers, Guy reached the rear of the treasure train and climbed onto the bole of one of the toppled oaks. There he took up the call to retreat. "Fall back! To me! Fall back!"