THE RIDER IN DARKNESS

THE RIDER IN DARKNESS, by Phil Emery, with audio by the author

 

 

Clouds shamble ‘cross the death-pale morn,

Mist writhes about the plain,

Brooding low in ravening dawn

Portending kingdom’s bane…

 

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The knight slumped ‘gainst his palfrey’s spine

Riding the forest way,

And moon and star made argentine

His shattered panoply.

 

When in a glade through which he strayed

He came upon a hut.

From hovel’s bays a fire played,

Red glow the darkness cut.

 

Beyond the door a woman bade

Tending a dying fire,

Bent-crouched on chair before the flame

Like bones above a pyre.

 

“I have a tale to tell,” he said,

A breath in the dimming glow,

Yet stillness held the woman’s head

While something stirred below.

 

Upon her lap a thing of fur

A curl of sable sat.

It turned its eyes and subtle purr

As though it spied a rat.

 

Yet still it nuzzled sinister

While limp by limp the knight

Breached the cottage of the spinstress,

A haunted armoured kite.

 

He stood before her, shadowed grief,

She crooked upon her chair

As still as winter bare of leaf,

The fire still held her stare.

 

His breath held words of sombre kind

Doom-rhythmed like a drum,

A ballad of dark times behind

and darker times to come.

 

“It started with an unsheathed brand

Raised on a misted plain

Where armies met to offer hand

To forge a bloodless reign.

 

Clouds shambled ‘cross the death-pale morn,

Mist writhed about the plain,

Brooding low in ravening dawn

Portending kingdom’s bane.

 

A thousand swords were tempered there

Beneath the morning sky,

But hatreds lurked in armoured lair

Carnage in scabbard eye.

 

And when that first unsheathing came

A war-cry burst a knell,

A thousand swords slipped loose their rein

Forged thunderbolts from hell.”

 

The knight’s voice failed, a grim respite.

Beyond the cottage door

The forest waited – in the night

Fox, stoat, and owl paused.

 

And when his voice unsheathed again

Its cadence limped with grief

And battle-bloodied words of shame

Recalled the day’s bleak strife.

 

Until some threshold in his heart

Bade him bring a stop.

“The thunder wanes,” each word apart

Faltering drop by drop.

 

“And sunset drips across the plain

The world yet turns, light fails,

All blades steeped in gore or grave

Save one…” he shivered, paled.

 

Words once hoar bitter, once hoar sharp,

Once accented by ire,

Now murmurs from a broken harp

Into the dying fire.

 

Yet still it held the woman’s gaze,

A look the knight now read.

A glaze he’d seen too much that day

On the hollow-eyed dead.

 

He steps outside the cottage now

Searching the boughs for dawn

But only finds the forest sough

Haunting, chill, forlorn,

 

Too like the sound of thirsty swords

Slithering from harness.

Then mounts his palfrey one time more

In once and future darkness.

 

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Phil Emery’s work has been published in the UK, USA, Europe and Canada since the 70s.  The novel “Necromantra”, was published in 2005 by Immanion Press, and reissued in a revised second edition in 2015.  Various stories have been published in US and UK fantasy anthologies.  Another fantasy, “The Shadow Cycles” was published in 2011.  His PhD thesis on the genre is entitled “Revivifying the Ur-text”.  Latest publications include the S&S tales ‘Seven Thrones” and ‘Demonic’ in the recent “Swords and Sorceries’ Parallel Universe” anthologies.  The absurdist cyberpunk graphic novel “Razor’s Edge” is due out from Android Press next year.