The funerary rites of the hobbes struck the boy as both appropriate and horrific.
By the time he was standing–watching it all unfold–his mind had grown dimmed. The sight of it all passed like clouds before the sun: fleeting, illusory and never quite blocking out a sun-brightness of guilt and grief beyond.
Before they did anything else, the hobbes set about felling small trees and constructing tottering platforms from lashed ropes and rough-shorn staves. The boy watched all this–listening distractedly to the whack and thunk of axes–smelling the tacky resins of cut pine-wood–wondering if these were to be pyres or something else entirely.
They went about their work so quietly–and with such focus–that the boy did not feel it right to profane the silence with questions.
So, he stood a little apart, under treed shadows. And he watched.
The dead were collected and arranged on the ground: laid out on their backs, hands folded upon chests. This seemed ordinary enough. But then, the owl-folk drew sharp knives, and started to dig sharp points into skin, joint and sinew. They levered, and they wrenched, and they hacked. The boy watched on, transfixed, and not a little repulsed. The bodies were cut up with neat efficiency. Even skulls were cut open, and the brains pulled out. The boy caught himself staring in sick wonderment at the many intricate blue veins that ran along the inside of one of the skulls, thus dismembered. Everything was then lifted up to the airy platforms, and piled there, left in raw heaps, left open to the air.
Soon enough, the purpose behind the madness became obvious.
The flesh was being presented for carrion birds. Ravens and crows, rooks and brown hawk-buzzards soon arrived. Even eagles came down from their circlings in the clouds. It might have been an illusion brought on by stress and tiredness, but the boy felt certain that each bird paused for a short, ponderous length of time before picking away at the dead.
Once the funerary platforms were full, the hobbes let the birds get on with their feast and turned their attention instead to the fallen enemies.
The Sorthe dead were not cut up for the birds: in fact the hobbes seemed determined to chase ravens and crows away from them. There was a distinct impression that the hobbe-folk did not think the Sorthe were worthy of being eaten by birds. Nonetheless, the enemy’s dead were not mistreated. And in the usual ideas of humanfolk, perhaps, they were even treated better. The hobbes buried them under what piles of small rocks and loose, sandy dirt could be scraped from the mountainside. The result was a cairn that in time would be overgrown, and likely turn into a barrow. The boy thought about this. He thought about the permanence of a thing like a burial mound, and the impermance of life. He imagined a lonely travelling, passing this way in a hundred years time, noticing the deathly hill in this strange, remote mountain pass. He wondered what stories would be told about the barrow. Would it be the truth, or something less strange? It would be hard to believe the truth. A battle between owls and knights and ghosts and winged monsters?
No.
That didn’t seem likely.
As for the dead draig, trophy-hunters and braggers among the hobbes quickly cut them up– almost down to the bone–and took the head and horns, scales and claws, and every last scrap that might feasibly be carried away, later to be shown as evidence of having seen these sky-bourne monsters in battle. The draig-riders, in their elaborate and knightly outfits, were at least allowed peaceful burial in the cairn with their fellows, though they were stripped naked first, and every small fleck of silver was stripped from their armour.
Night in its proper fullest darkness came then, settling itself into smooth trickles of darkness upon the landscape.
The boy stayed awake for some hours, watching the world pass itself through night.
The ravens and eagles all flapped away once the fullness of dusk was in the air… but the boy thought he heard other, stranger wings slapping the air soon after. Maybe wild owls had come to pay their respects? Or something else entirely? The boy was never sure afterwards. It seemed to him that great winged shadows had descended from the mountain wilds, and that they had visited the platforms. But the night was dark, and sheer exhaustion was playing tricks with his ability to see or think by then.
He fell asleep whilst sitting, and woke in a painful half-foetal position. Someone had draped a blanket over him at least, so he woke more uncomfortable than cold.
He blinked into the weak grey dawn.
Then he felt the hollowness slink back into his bones. He didn’t feel like eating, but forced himself to take a few mouthfuls of bread and cheese.
Throughout the morning that followed, the boy kept himself aside from the others.
Caewen and Dapplegrim had meantime risen before dawn, and spent some time exploring the path that led into the hills. They returned looking alert, but not worried. By now, the hobbes were gathering into walking columns, and readying themselves to return home.
“Good luck,” said Caewen to one after another. “And thank you.”
“We’ll be needing it,” came the answer, more than once.
Finally, the boy said, “The Sorthe will be hunting you now, won’t they?”
A nearby hobbe replied. The boy didn’t know her name. “Aye. We snuck away from the service of Old Night and Chaos so many years and ages ago; the princes and lords of the night no doubt thought we were all gone to dust and death. There will be anger now. Rage at out betrayal.”
“What will you do? Flee south?”
She shook her head. “There are hidden caves and secret fortresses deeper in our lands. We will retreat, and we will hide. We have hidden so long already. We will win through again.” She smiled. “After all, it’s hard work to track an owl to her nest, as they say.”
“I’ve never heard that saying.”
She shrugged. “Maybe it’s just a thing we say then.” And she turned and left with the others.
Caewen and Dapplegrim stood together, watching the hobbes go.
After the last of the little folk were vanished up among the mountain pines, the boy raised his voice to ask, “Should we be following them?”
But Caewen said, “No. They follow a path over the mountain, through a pass. We must turn aside, and find the watchfire on the hill. We’ve still some business with a worker of death-magics, I wager.”