The downs were full of fog. The white, creeping tendrils, spreading and twisting over the silent houses, writhed in satisfied banks of utter occlusion, here or there breaking and revealing nothing, not a soul, not a man, dog, nor cow. Empty. Empty and silent. The downs waited.
Creeping along the sloping road, I descended into the quiet vale and rolling fog, my hand never moving far from the cold touch of my hatchet.
At a hollow sounding dunk a little to the left and ahead of me, I froze in my tracks, my weapon drawn and held up by my ear. Dunk… dunk… the sound went on at intervals, and slow reason came.
Sneaking with silent steps, I stalked forward on bent and ready legs until I saw the dangling triangle and its striker hung beside it. The two were swinging together and sometimes hitting. Dunk, the light tap went. I sighed a moment and then felt a cold chill wash over me at the thought that something must have started it swinging.
My eyes darted toward the dark and empty doorway the triangle was hung beside. I saw, in my mind’s eye how, in happier days, the good woman of this dwelling might have raised a general din to summon her men from the fields to table.
I had been summoned, I thought, but to whose table?
