Caino's Alphabet, C

Caino took up his spear, 
a thing of iron pulled from ruins,
ground sharp and wrapped tightly in rabbit skin, and followed Darius on cunningly silent feet. 
    “A hunter, a man,” said Darius.  
They crept through the branches 
and soon Caino caught sight of an old hunter.  
He was dressed in a loin cloth held up by a belt 
that was covered with holsters and pouches.
His skin hung upon him 
like a leather sheet draped over a skeleton, 
showing each of his muscles 
and revealing every bone.  
He had sighted a pig and, 
noticing Caino as well, 
he turned to the boy 
and crossed his lips with a finger 
that asked for a moment of quiet.
    Caino watched as the old man silently swung his sling and let fly his missile.  
The rock flew straight to the pig, 
striking it hard on its head, 
and the animal fell stiffly onto the forest floor, 
but when Caino looked back to the victorious hunter, he saw the old man lying flat on the ground, 
as still and stiff as the pig.
    Caino raised his spear 
and scanned the forest in fear, 
but Darius looked up and told him, 
“there’s no one else here, he fell on his own.”      Caino went to the old man 
who was still breathing in fits, 
his eyes half-closed, cloudy and blank.  
He bent over the hunter, 
thinking to comfort him somehow, 
but froze as a sudden darkness erupted about him—
a violet blackness that hurt his eyes like the sun.  
A tiny orb he could barely see 
began to emerge from the hunter’s head, 
sucking the light from the bright morning sky.
    Then of a sudden—
there was a crashing behind him 
and Caino turned to see the pig, 
its eyes red and insane, charging toward him 
and the hunter.  
He leapt from its path just in time and, 
as the dark light slowly rose 
from the old man’s head, 
the pig collided with both hunter and orb.  
    In a flash, the darkness was lifted 
and morning’s gentle light returned.  
Caino got up and, looking down at the hunter, 
saw he was now clearly dead, 
tangled up with the pig as if in a tender embrace, with a ghost of a smile on his face.  
Both hunter and pig appeared 
oddly serene and content.
—
    When Caino returned to the camp, 
he found he was all alone.  
For a brief spell, 
he believed the monks had left him, 
but he discarded this notion 
upon finding Bartholomew’s satchel of manuscripts
scattered beneath the low boughs of a juniper bush
as if they had been thrown there in haste.  
His suspicions aroused, 
Caino cast a careful eye about the camp.
    With the first sign of foul play sighted, 
it took little time to uncover the rest.  
Two pairs of furrows 
accompanied by human foot-prints left the camp, telling of bodies dragged into the woods.  
A branch specked with blood lay by the fire, speaking of an ambush or fight; 
more blood followed into the forest.  
The monks had been taken away.
—    
    Aaron, hood over his face 
and wrists tightly bound, 
was being dragged to he knew not where.  
When his captors stopped for a moment to rest, 
he heard Bartholomew speaking 
between uneven breaths—
to his mother, to monks who were not there. 
    Aaron dozed off and awoke 
with his wrists tied to a couple of sticks.  
When he was pulled to his feet 
he found he was dragging Bartholomew in a litter over the rough forest floor.  
He stumbled on and listened as his friend’s breathing grew weaker until at last, 
he heard nothing at all.
—
    Caino had no problem following the trail 
without Darius’s help, 
so he sent his friend on ahead as a scout.  
At midday, he came to a clearing 
where the tracks became scattered and mixed.  
He could see where they rested 
and when they resumed, 
a single, deeper pair of furrows 
trailed away through the trees.  
Caino cast about and found signs 
of cut branches and vines.  
He assumed that his quarry had made a litter
for one incapacitated monk, 
tasking the other to pull it along.  
The tracks leaving the clearing were just hours old
so Caino started to move with more care.  
With soft practiced foot-steps he slipped 
as silently as a whiff of smoke through the trees.  
    As the shadows grew longer 
he turned to see a familiar shape by his side.  
Darius was padding along next to him
 in the shape of a wolf, 
his mouth in a wide canine smile.
    ‘They are over this next rise,” 
said Darius in a voice Caino heard in his head, 
“two men, a girl, and the monks.” 
    “Have they made fire?” 
asked Caino with concern,  
he had found burnt bones in fire pits, 
gnawed and cut skeletons among the ruins.
    “They are not of that sort,” replied the wolf,
“they are well fed, their words sound like Aaron’s
and their movements have no stealth at all.  
They are not of the wild.”