The Skraelings (retold)

I was asked for more details on the skraelings story from Candlemass, so here it is.

Candlemass had said it was nearly midsummer's night eve, and the guard had already changed twice by the time he went on patrol. The moon was sitting, swung so it sat nearly on the horizon, so it almost seemed like a part of the houses whose lights shone steadily in town. The wall was, as always, ablaze with torches set in brackets on the wall's walkway itself at a regular ten foot interval, and the entire place smelled of tar and pitch.

The evening had been particularly hot and close- it felt like the night was a blanket, pressing in on you, closing in wetly on the perimeter the torches cast. It was a close darkness, and watchful. Even past the firelight, Candlemass could see eyes, glinting at him from the darkness.

Some, he knew, were probably wild animals. But only some.



He remembers relighting a torch by snapping his fingers, making his watch companion for that night, Buckram, snort. Candlemass was always considered, perhaps unfairly, a bit of a show-off due to his natural talents, of which very few possessed.

But, no sooner had that happened than a howl was flung out from the night, though it was more a screech than a howl, and it was quickly taken up by dozens of other voices, all clamoring over each other. For ages, all it seemed was those hideous, screaming voices coming out of the darkness, and all Buckram and Candlemass could do was watch the darkness in horror.

Candlemass realzied suddenly the glints had only been the eyes of the creatures that came boiling out of the darkness. Their small, human like bodies wriggled and shone as they moved, and their skull-like faces grimaced past the glow of their eyes. They climbed from the trees, clinging only to the trunks with their hands and feet, and the pair could only watch as they descended and hit the ground in a wave, immediately setting upon an unortunate cow-herd and his charge, who was in more shock than the watch.

A portion of the band had noticed them had broke off, and Buckram, quickly sensing things were going amiss, quickly told Candlemass he would notify the Order and fled to find them.

This left Candlemass entirely alone, facing the band of over three dozen of these things by himself.

Candlemass had to think quickly- a group of three was already descending upon him, hissing and gibbering, their mouths yawning wide. He unthinkingly threw out his hand to catch the first few in the face with a spread of flame, and they died almost instantly, crumping into scraps of hide and bones.

In a few moments, he'd retrived a bow and set of arrows from the duty hut nearby and, after wrapping them in scraps of cloth from the emergency medical kit, put them to work as slightly more effective artillery. He sent them flying into the group below, watching them part and throng, and catching themselves and each other aflame in their panic.

He had been afraid only for a moment, when one of them, more clever than most, had avoided his range and attention, and had fallen upon him from the upper branches of a nearby tree, gouging his face badly in the process. Candlemass said he'd immolated that one internally in response.

It took only about twenty more minutes before the remainders of the band were fleeing back into the darkness. Candlemass said he'd sent a few more arrows out after them, but quickly stopped because it had been a wet summer, and he was afraid of starting a fire. And besides, he was already losing quite a lot of blood, and felt obliged to rest a bit, sitting with his back to the walkway wall.

He hadn't been sure, he said, even to that day, if he'd passed out or not, because it seemed like not an instant had passed after he'd sat before Crow, Buckram, and Johnston, all members of the Order, were swimming blearily before him.

Between the three of them, they supported Candlemass down the walkway ladder, and half-carried him to the hospital. Candlemass said it was only then that he realized how little damage the dark things had done. They had only been able to reach the herder and his beast before he'd sprung on the defensive.

Rachel Dogood, who was manning the hospital that night, had been the one to attend him. He'd needed stitches, but he hadn't been awake for that, he'd said.

It was only after that that he'd won his way as one of the best Punishers for the village, and he'd always been regarded with fear and respect afterwards.