Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #12 March 2015 | Page 31

delivered this grim news he turned back to the bridge.
Sighing again, he set out. The slap of his first footfall
on the bridge sounding like the knell of a leaden bell.
The mists swallowed them; none could tell how many
there were. The creak of leather, the jangle of gear
shifting, the occasional cough, were all the sounds
they made. Padraig led them, he didn’t look back.
When the torches came he stopped dead still and held
his breath. Resisted the urge to run. To hide. To crouch
down with his hands over his head. Three times the
torches came. Three times they stopped. Three times
they were passed over. The fourth time someone
coughed. The torches paused in their aimless wandering and like arrows shot from the same bow converged
on the sound. The screams of whomever it was they
caught rent the air like the screams of a bereft child.
Padraig had never heard man or woman scream so
loud, so high, so long, before. As stars span before his
eyes, from lack of breath, the torches rushed away,
back the way they had come, satiated for now. He
heard the explosive breaths from the others. As they
started forward again. Across the Bridge of Death.
One fewer than when they started.
***
If he took a shortcut, he’d get there faster. If he went
by the Fief of Dusk and past Hangman’s Corner, he’d
enter the Dan’s lands near to where the Bridge ended.
Crossing from the Lands of the Four. He hop-skips
as fast as he can down the Winding Road. As he gets
closer to Hangman’s Corner, however, there is a
mighty crash ahead of him as a tree slams down onto
the path, missing him by feet. This is followed by
a massive roar, and out from behind a tree, his club
swishing circles in the air, comes a massive troll. The
Seventh Magpie hops backwards a step or two and his
wing-like arm falls u