The rocks weren’t supposed to be here.
Not this far into the field. Not even along this ridge of land.
Greer recognized their shapes instantly. The big one, just beyond where Tàmhas knelt with his broken beloved, was miles off its mark. It had stood watch over Calloway land for generations, but not here. Not in the middle of their pasture.
Greer’s eyes swept over the carnage with new understanding, counting each Stone.
The Calloways and their sheep hadn’t been attacked.
The Warding Stones had moved.
1669
The reckoning begannot with a whisper, but a scream. So many screams, and the squelch of blood and bone matter.
Resolution Beaufort was dead, impaled on the very tree he’d destroyed lives for.
The settlers wanted to leave the body where it lay. They’d wanted to see it rot, never to find rest in hallowed ground. Some uncharitably hoped his soul would suffer the same fate, putrefying in the depths of a most fiery hell.
But the blackflies had come, drawn to congealing blood, and they were hungry.
Once they’d feasted upon Resolution’s remains, they turned to the survivors, swarming and biting. Welts raised across the skin of child and adult alike, great swelling pustules of pain. The settlers coated their faces and hands with mud and cried for the body to be removed.
Several of the crew were tasked with burying it within the woods, in an unmarked grave.
By the time Resolution was pulled free, it was late afternoon. The men carried his body past giant stones that stood like sentries along the edge of the tree line, flashing and flickering an otherworldly red.
Deep in the forest, the men began to dig. The sun hung like an overripe piece of fruit as it slowly sank behind a mountain ridge.
The screaming began after sunset.
Malbeck Baird was the only one to return. He stumbled onto the rocky beach, eyes rolling mad with terror, and it was impossible to tell if the blood darkening his clothes was from him or the missing others.
He said they’d been digging.
He said they’d thrown Resolution’s body into the pit as the sun set in the west.
Then, he said, the attack began.
Tall, heavyset lumberjacks and sailors alike had been picked up and hurled through the air, not by beasts or monsters, but by wind.
Wind strong and powerful.
Wind that screeched and smelled of lake water and lichen and so much black soil.
The men were tossed about as though they were nothing but a scattering of dried leaves, smashing into trees and boulders, fallen logs and wicked brambles.
The wind had filled with their screams.
Then their gurgled breaths.
Then…nothing.
Malbeck’s head had struck a tamarack. The tree had scraped away his scalp and sent him into blessed unconsciousness. When he woke, he was in the clearing they’d gone through earlier. One of the flickering stones loomed over him. The remains of the men and their shovels lay in ungainly, messy heaps, staining the tall grass red. The only thing missing was Resolution’s corpse. It had been allowed to remain behind.
He told the group how he’d stared at the stones for a long time, trying to put together what had happened, trying to understand. And as he’d stared at their iridescent brilliance, another light had caught his attention.
A pair of bright eyes shining from the darkness beyond the stones.
