A tired old legend

This story is by J.E. Barchenger and was part of our 2023 Fall Writing Contest. You can find all the writing contest stories here.

The great hall McClaggen glowed like a beacon in the murky night.  A sign of hearth and humanity against the cruel, heartless fields before it.  Where the work of the day lay cooling under a weak, waning moon.

Amidst the piles a shaggy black hound was seeking, head rising every few moments to check his bearings while the prize in his mouth dangled like melon on a vine.

He found his objective in a patch of pumpkins, one in her lap and a knife in her hand.

“You found it?”

The black hound placed the severed head at her feet and sat obediently.

“Good,” she said, punctuating the word with a stab of the knife into her pumpkin.  “We are almost ready.”

Away from the field of cooling corpses and severed heads, the hall rang with song.

Fire roared in the hearths and from every lamp, torch, and candle.  Nimble shadows leapt and danced in time with the flame, but they were pale things, timid, fainting.  They recoiled like whipped dogs at the thunderous ruckus, the banging and howling of the revelers who ate and drank at raucous volume.

At the head of the long table their leader sat.  Covered in a cloak of thick fur, his yellow hair shone in the firelight like spun gold.  A haughty man, he surveyed all that fell before him, and all he surveyed was his own.

From this privileged position he was the first to notice her.  A shadow, darker than the rest, stepping away from the pale dance, coming to stand opposite him at the table.

The dress she wore was a tattered, dirty rag which did nothing to hide her feminine charms.  Hair as black as midnight spilled over her shoulders like oily darkness.  But it was the eyes that caught him.

Even at the full length of the table, which was some thirty feet, he could feel those eyes.  Like some feral cat they stared, piercing him, judging him.

“Who are you?” he said, addressing the woman and subsequently bringing her to the attention of the others.

She did not speak, only smiled.

“I asked you a question woman, who are you?  What do you want?”

“The second, I think, is the better question to be asking,” she said.

Sauntering past the startled men at the table, she came to the man at the head.

“Carmac McClaggen, I have come for you.”

A single brow rose at this statement, and eyes shining with less than wholesome intent lingered in places longer than was strictly polite.

“Well, you’re not a bad looking lass,” he said.  “I suppose I might have you a time.”

The woman shook her head, tutting at this remark.

“So prideful.    Yet I can see no reason for it, this pridefulness.”

“You know not what you speak,” he scoffed.  “I am head of this clan.  Everyone and everything upon these hills belong to me.  If any man has a right to pride it is I.”

“Pride is for the victor, is it not?  The last man standing.  That is what your family has always believed.  What your brothers all believed.”

Steel audibly inched from its sheath, a warning at her implication.

“Mind your tongue girl, and whose hall you wag it in.  My brothers all died years ago.  Their lives claimed by our enemies, as was proper.  Never in my life have I raised a blade to family.  You would do well to remember that.”

“I do far more than remember,” she said, unfazed by the presence of his weapon.  “When your grandfather bargained with me for control of these hills for his blood line, he made that point quite clear.”

McClaggen sneered, “This again?  I have heard that story before.  It is nothing but a tired old legend.  We own these hills through steel and blood, not some magical fairy bargain.”

“All the steel and blood in the world could not have bought you my hills McClaggen.”

A chill ran up the spine of every man at the way she called them ‘my hills’.  Even their chief could not deny it.

“Who are you?”

The smile she gave him boiled his blood.  Steel leapt from its sheath and sheered the air in twain, but when it came to the girl, there was nothing to cut.  She was gone.

More steel sang free as every flame about the room turned a sickly green, and men who but hours before had screamed defiantly in the face of death now huddled together like frightened children.  They could not see her, but none could deny her presence was still among them.

Even McClaggen could not suppress the shudder that gripped him.

“Tell me your name,” he shouted.  “I have asked you thrice.  You must answer.”

“So, we believe in legends now, do we McClaggen,” the voice taunted.  “Three times they ask and answer we must.  Aye, so it is and so it is.”

The men trembled at the implication for they knew the legends as well.

“Your name, NOW!”

A sudden gale swept the hall, and on that gale howled a single word.

“MAB.”

“The Dark Queen Mab,” someone wailed.  “We are dead men.  DEAD MEN!”

Faced with an enemy they could not see nor touch, they panicked.  Some dropped their weapons while others tried in vain to hack at the howling wind.  The wind mocked their effort with cruel laughter.

It was this that put steel in McClaggen’s spine, for if there was one thing pride hates above all else, it is being mocked.

“Enough of your trick’s fairy.  If it’s my head you want, come and claim it!”

As swiftly as the wind appeared it was gone, which may have been more unsettling.  The stillness was pregnant with vile intent.

“Your head?  Aye, I’ll have that.  But a queen does not do her own killing, as you are about to learn.”

The men leapt like grasshoppers when the large pumpkin crashed into the center of the table.  Trembling swords rose tentatively to test the offending object.  Was it corporeal as it seemed, or just another illusion.

They shuffled back when green firelight sparked from within and lit the simple carved out face.

A sound whispered from its flaming maw too loud to miss but too quiet to discern.

“McClaggen.”

“What did it say?”

“Did… did you hear that?”

If they hadn’t the first time, the second time ensured they would.  The fires blazed up and a voice like the echo from a tomb roared.

“MCCLAGGEN!”

The doors of the hall thundered when something struck them from outside.  The heavy beam that held them shut shook and creaked.  Twice then thrice it struck, and on the fourth the beam snapped.  Doors that took three large men each to open swung wide revealing but one.

Terror filled them as it approached, sword in hand.  The body was a man, armored and caked in muck.  But it was a body that lacked, and there was the horror, for what it lacked was a head.

For some this was too much, they turned and fled.  Those that tried to fight died quickly.  No match for the headless man’s unnatural strength even in greater numbers.

Then, with his path cleared, the headless man turned to their leader.

From the pumpkin it came, echoing like a bell, “McClaggen.”

Somewhere in his terrified brain he remembered he was holding a sword, and he ought to know how to use it.  The other knocked it away with insulting ease, backing him, trembling, to the nearest wall.

In that instant, as he watched the sword rise, his eyes widened, as if in recognition.  He knew that armor, and more, the head he had personally removed from it that very day.

“No, it couldn’t… how could you…” he tried to ask.

But the question fell away, and with it his head.

“A good cut my knight.  Yes, a very good cut indeed.”

Striding on dainty feet, the dark queen collected the fallen head, the final moment of revelation forever etched across his face.

“As to you McClaggen, take heart in knowing that while you have failed the line, the wandering eyes that sired you have left many other prospects to ensure it carries on.  So long as one of the bastards survives, the line can afford to lose a few,” and she turned to look at her knight, “isn’t that right?”

Leaving the hall, they found the hound sitting outside, a jet-black charger with glowing red eyes standing beside him.

With pumpkin in hand the knight mounted the horse then pulled the queen up behind him.

“Let us away,” she said.  “There is other work to be done tonight.  Other contracts to collect.”

With a tug at the reigns and a kick to the side the horse leapt forward and thundered into the night.  The black grim hound took one last look around before following quickly after.  A pale shadow under a weak waning moon.