I'd like feed back on how I approach the mood during this pivotal moment Im approaching in my story. This is my first time trying to write anything long term, and would appreciate how you think I did! Also this is written as a mythic fantasy novel so its suppose to read as archaic. Thank You!

   The wide, white fields that were once all around them were now beginning to show clusters of tall pines, snow-heavy with sagging branches, as the Abraxyl fields gave way to the edges of the Greenblades forest.

  The line of the horizon, stifled by the ever-thickening patches of trunks and branches, dipped below the treetops until all they saw was the shadow of the wood.

  Buried beneath the blanket of snow there formed thin edges that marked the flanks of a hidden dirt road, and upon it they saw no fresh marks. No others, it seemed, had been by this way in days and its narrow pathway fell under the hooves of their horses as the branches stretched out overhead, shielding the trail from the light of the moon.

  “We are nearly there,” Ryu’Shorra said, drawing on Soklido’s reins to slow her. “We must lower our pace, the trees ahead grow quite dense.”

They followed the road slowly, leaning in the saddle to dodge low-lying limbs, looking out into the growing veil of darkness their lamps could only scantly pierce.

A shack, which was little more than a shelter of branches and wattle erected between two large stones, sat vacant on the roadside between the borders of deep shadow and dim lamplight.

The trees closed in around them, leaving no remaining evidence of the open fields the riders had just passed out of, and had they not been riding along with lamps in outstretched hands they would have ridden directly into the uneven perimeter of an old wooden wall, grown over with bramble and thicket.

They drew back their reins in enough time to stop the collision and come to a rest directly beneath a haggard sign that bore one lonely word.

Ayomund raised his lamp to the hanging warped wood and read the world aloud, then looked the place over with a skeptical eye.

“Leedisch”

Its palisade was pressed hard by thick brush around its base while the era-old logs slumped forward in the ditches that were once dug for them.

The gate, made up of disproportionately shaped planks, hung loosely from the hinges that held the warped wood, and within the frame of its open doors they could see the small village beyond.

They entered the place, finding it to be as quiet within as the shack they had passed. No lanterns hung on the posts, and no people could be seen.

The homes were equally black and blank, showing no signs of life trickling out from within.

“Eh, Ryu,” Ayomund whispered. The cold on the air worsening his lisp, “Does anyone even live ‘ere?”

“It has been some time since last I passed through this way,” Ryu’Shorra replied. “But the place is not as I remember it. It is as if it is—

“Dead,” Ayomund cut in, “the word you look for is dead.”

The monk did not respond, only keeping his face forward, as he eyed the barrow.

Its high mound rose from the drear of the small hamlet’s shadowed backstreets, towering above them from its hilltop that glowed an eerie sapphire under the cool, pale light of the moon.

A small creek divided the village, and they crossed over it's splintered wooden bridge and frozen water to approach the ancient place, feeling the cold deepen as they drew nearer to it.

Narrow paths of footprints cut through the snow on this side, pouring out from the thatched homes and cottages, and converged into a single line that moved toward the low hill where the village’s tiny church sat.

  A flat, hollow ring cracked the silence, startling both riders enough to jump at the sound as it carried from the steeple throughout the eerie place. It rang three long tolls, each seeming to fall more shrill than the pervious on the nerves of the riders'.

  “Well, someone’s here,” Ayomund said chuckling nervously, “Do ya think we should go an’ see what they’re up to??”

  Ryu’Shorra shifted in the saddle, drawing in and releasing a deep breath, shaking his head almost imperceptibly.

  He closed his eyes in silent worry as he saw from the entrance of the barrow a dense sapphire fog spilling forth like long, waving tendrils of the vile magic that marked its presence.

  “No,” he said quietly, “Go nowhere near anyone or anything in this place.”

  But as he spoke, almost in defiance of his insisted avoidance of the folk here, a crowded line of them began to stream down the small hill from the church, approaching the riders slowly. Ominously. Almost, as the riders saw it, predatory.

 As they spilled into the wide part of the street between yards and houses the moon light gave the riders faint glimpses and glints of the things the villagers clutched in their hands.

On their right the reflection of the low moonlight showed the edges rakes and knives and timber axes, but in the shadows over their left sides were hidden hands that held the heads of hogs and hounds and horses.