But that did not make him unmindful of the danger he was in. Feared he might be – for now. He did not underestimate how quickly that fear might turn to simple dislike; dislike to disrespect; and disrespect to that dangerous other place of secret meetings, shadowy conferences and private cabals which, if not nipped in the bud, turned in a few moments to revolt and overthrow.
In short, Blut knew that his new position rested on shaky and fragile foundations which needed attention – and fast.
The question that he immediately began to ponder was to where the people’s energies should be directed.
After that, he knew, the next question would be when.
The answer to that was easy: sooner than later and sooner than his enemies expected.
Surprise was of the essence, as Sinistral had also taught him.
But there was a difficulty and it was a grave one.
Blut assumed power towards the end of July, following the departure of Jack and the others from Bochum, where by courage and outrageous good fortune they recovered the gems of Spring and Summer. He knew very well that Sinistral regarded the loss of the gems with relief rather than horror. The bold act by the hydden from Englalond had given him the liberty he needed to give up his dependence on the gems.
But the Court and the Fyrd were a different matter. To them, and especially the intransigent and unpleasant Commander-in-Chief of the Fyrd, Quatremayne, the theft of the gems was an affront to pride and threat to their positions they could not let go unchallenged.
Blut was forced at once to make a difficult and dangerous decision. He knew his history well enough to realize that the first thing he ought to do was to consolidate his power and elevate individuals who would owe their loyalty to him rather than themselves, now that their former Emperor had been taken out of the picture.
The trouble was that before his departure Sinistral had put in place an Imperial visit to Brum, the city of his birth. Was it a purely social call? No one at the Imperial Court now thought so.
Two years before, the city of Brum, under the leadership of Igor Brunte, formerly a Fyrd, and Lord Festoon, the High Ealdor of the City, had renounced its fealty to the Empire. Brunte had gone further and massacred the Empire’s representatives for reasons of personal vengeance. The two leaders had then taken up the governance of their city for themselves.
At the time it had taken all Blut’s political skills to stop Quatremayne and his colleagues from mounting an invasion to crush Brunte’s insolent insurrection.
Now that Sinistral had gone, but a state visit was agreed, it was impossible for Blut to impose his will to stop it without his authority being undermined. He therefore had no choice but to sanction what amounted to an invasion even though he disagreed with it. He knew that if he stayed behind in Bochum he would lose credibility but if he went, he put himself and his security directly in the hands of Quatremayne and his people.
His only ally among the Fyrd was Witold Slew, the Master of Shadows, one of the greatest fighters in the Hyddenworld and loyal to the office of Emperor. But Blut had reservations about him, and about using him. He had another task in mind for Slew.
So Blut’s agreement to the invasion of Englalond was reluctant and his decision to journey with Quatremayne more reluctant still.
No wonder that he had crossed the North Sea in the third week of August with great trepidation, knowing that he left his power base behind, was travelling with no allies he could trust and would have no easy way to combat revolt against him if it came.
Which, he knew, it shortly would.
So now he sat, a stylo in hand, a pad upon his desk, his door guarded by two Fyrd, ostensibly for his safely but, as he well knew, really for Quatremayne’s satisfaction.
Blut was now doing what he did best: planning a strategy.
He was in a foreign country, without support, in the hands of his enemies.
His list of wants and needs was short – very short.
His spectacles flashed as he wrote down four simple words: I need a miracle . . .
Yet he smiled, because he knew that that is exactly what Slaeke Sinistral would have said before adding, as Blut now did, ‘Miracles happen.’
15
INTO THE FIRE
Arthur came back to consciousness after his escape from RAF Croughton not knowing what time it was or where he was. One thing he did know, he was hungry. Very.
But first things first.
He needed to know that he was in one piece and that his life was not under threat.
He had not immediately opened his eyes but he did not need to do so to know that he lay on a wet, uncomfortable, slimy surface and that it sloped down towards the water which he could hear lapping at his feet. He wiggled his fingers, which squelched in mud. He half-raised his head and realized that his cheek and ear, and bearded chin, were in rank mud as well. So he was on the edge of a filthy river.
Heaving himself into an upright position, he established two things simultaneously.
The first, which he immediately disregarded, was that he was sitting in a bundle of wet rags.
The second was that he was beneath a very large bridge which soared above him and across the grey waters of the river. There was the sound of water falling behind him which, when he turned, he saw came from a wide pipe set high above in a block of granite, one of many that formed a sheer wall to right and left.
The sound of heavy traffic bounced and echoed all around.
So he was in a city and one that, judging from the buildings on the far shore, the river and the embankment, looked like London.
It took him only seconds to confirm that his passage into the Hyddenworld was complete. The detritus embedded in the slimy, stony shore contained enough items whose size he knew well. An empty bottle of Merlot wine, a rusted sparking plug and, final proof, a shoe, size ten, his own size. Except it was huge, and the other things were huge, about twice their normal size.
He hesitated to use the word ‘shrunk’ but that is precisely what had happened to him.
It was one of the mysteries of travelling between the human and the hydden worlds that outcomes were not predictable, let alone logical. He knew that from previous experience.
Clothes, for example, ought not to shrink in tandem with the mortal wearing them. Usually they did, yet occasionally they did not. A matter he once discussed with the late, wise, Master Brief, who could only speak theoretically, since he had never travelled between the two worlds, but felt it might have to do with perception or illusion – ‘or both’.
On this occasion, Arthur’s clothes had not shrunk, and the wet and muddy ‘rags’ he was covered in, as a tent might cover a child, were his human clothes.
For this Arthur was prepared.
His formerly tiny leather ’sac was now the right size and inside were the trews and jerkin, underclothes, jacket and some shoes that he had brought for just this situation. He changed into them quickly and ate the chocolate he had packed for sustenance, found some plasters and covered a cut on his hand that must have happened during his escape. Then he moved on to immediate practicalities.
If he was right, and this was London, it was not the best of places for a hydden ally of Brum to have fetched up. When the Fyrd originally invaded Englalond, Slaeke Sinistral, the Emperor who had been raised in Brum and wished it to be left just as it was, ordained that the City, as they called London, become the new capital. It had never been more than a garrison town and civilians, especially from Brum, rarely ventured there.
So much, Arthur told himself, for the theory that a journeyer through the henges arrives where he needs to be. I thought of the gem of Autumn and I end up on the Thames’s muddy shore!
He decided he needed to get out from where he was as soon as possible.
He dug in his ’sac once more and found a digital watch he had put there, not to wear – it now looked giant-sized and the strap was far too big – but to see what time had passed since his escape from RAF Croughton. He had gone th
rough the wire fence on Saturday September 23rd.
‘And it is now . . .’ he said, examining the watch carefully before making his pronouncement aloud, ‘. . . it is now Sunday October 1st.’
He was shocked. In his transition from one world to another he had lost a week of his life.
‘Humph!’ he murmured. ‘Can’t do that too often or there’ll be nothing left!’
He stared about moodily.
‘Out of the frying pan into the fire,’ he muttered, though, looking at the murky water beyond the narrow stretch of shore, he took comfort from the fact that there was no immediate danger of being burnt thereabout. Drowned, more like.
Arthur looked up at the pipe again and saw in some alarm that there was a weedy tide line not far below it, which meant it was way above his head.
He immediately felt alarm, having read somewhere that the tidal range in London was very great, its pace very rapid.
He stood up, satisfied he could not be easily seen down in the shadows he was in by anyone on the embankment above, nor from the barges which, he now saw, were plying the great river. He peered to right and left, looking for a familiar landmark.
He might have hoped to see something familiar like Tower Bridge, to help him locate himself. As it was, the embankment wall was so sheer and high he could see nothing over it. The opposite bank yielded no easy clues that he recognized, just the lights of modern buildings. But then he had not been to riverside London for years.
He moved along the shore and out from under the bridge into the light and immediately had a clear view upstream to what he recognized as the smooth, modern lines of London Bridge. That meant that the more famous Tower Bridge, with its two crenellated towers, was immediately above him. Sure enough, as he moved further away he could see the towers and chains soaring overhead.
As for the embankment just behind him, he now saw the closed, grim portal of the Traitors’ Gate. He had arrived in the very shadow of the Tower of London. What such a location might have to do with finding the gem of Autumn he had no idea, but here he was and he must make the best of it.
He went to the water and saw that it was creeping in over mud, gravel and old cobbles at an alarming rate. He knew that a tide took six hours to go out, six hours to come in and this one looked as if it was already well advanced.
Time was therefore running out.
He looked back again at the embankment wall and realized that it would not be long before the water reached it, and not long after that that it rose in a swirling and lethal way above his head.
Time to leave.
Which was not a course of action he would have chosen just then. From his previous ventures in the Hyddenworld he knew that henge-travel was tiring and disorientating and it was best to lie low at first and take things slowly.
The river splashed eagerly up the filthy shore and a tongue of it ran up towards him. He stumbled back too late. It overtook him and filled his shoes with muddy water.
He dug inside his ’sac for more food and water and untied his stave, which was attached for safekeeping to it. Relatively small before, it was the right size now and ideal for a hydden wayfarer, who might have need of it for many purposes, not least frightening folk off.
His other things were there as well – a hydden compass, a bivvy bag, liquid soap, a flannel which now seemed the size of a small towel, a raggedy hat against wind and rain, writing equipment, a notebook and a good many other items small enough to be useful in the Hyddenworld.
The tide threatened his feet again. It seemed that the river had noticed he was there, sensing that his back was almost literally to the wall. Like a blind, predatory monster it sent tentacles of water after him, trying to grasp his ankles, to pull him down.
As he began wondering with increasing desperation what to do, there was a gurgle high above his head and a great globby spew of watery something came pouring out of a hole he could barely see, in a deluge that nearly flattened him.
‘It is the outlet of a drain or sewer!’ cried Arthur Foale with relief. ‘If something can come out, I can go in!’
He reached up even as the last of the shore was inundated, got hold of the slippery lip of a huge pipe with one hand, and a rusty chain of some kind with the other and, holding himself, for he had not strength enough to raise himself up, he let the swirling, rising water do the rest.
Twice did he suffer a deluge of filth from the pipe, twice did he hold on fast, spitting muck from his mouth but unable to let go a hand to clean his eyes or ears for fear of losing his grip with the other.
The current tried to pull him away but he held on fast until at last his chest got level with the pipe and he was able to pull himself to the darkness within. It was echoing, crawling, foul and without light.
The water continued to rise behind him and he realized that if he did not move on up the sewer it might yet get him and he would be drowned.
But what if it were blocked by a grille? The horrid idea caused him to turn back, though the space was too small to make that easy, but as he did so a wave of water rushed in at him and he knew there was no going back.
If there had been light ahead it would have helped, but at least he was alive and could travel in the darkness in the hope that eventually he must find respite. The water could not follow him forever.
He heard it behind, and the horrible pattering as of a thousand clawed feet ahead, and a sudden deep drip-drip-drip before there came a ghastly sound like the clearing of a giant’s diseased throat as, gathering his phlegm, he ejected it from his mouth.
Which it might as well have been, for another great gob of whatever it was before deluged Arthur and tried to force him back the way he had come. He clung on, pressed on, closed his eyes and mouth, sensing that the tidal water was not far behind, slipping and sliding his way forward in the hope of finding something not so much better but a little less vile.
He had little doubt that he was now advancing under the vast complex that was the Tower of London. He moved on more easily now, the tunnel larger, grateful for a sudden shaft of light from far, far above, just at a point where the sewer bifurcated to left and right.
Which way?
He turned left, began running again, a panic overtaking him as he thought the tide might come after him even there, even now. Running, floundering, crawling towards the bowels of the Tower, to where no hydden past or present, unless they were insane, would ever wish to visit by the subterranean route.
For a while he drove himself on, impelled by the sense that what lay ahead must surely be better than what lay behind. Then: Stop! a little voice told him. Go no further! Take stock! Consider your options!
Arthur was in no state to listen to the voice of common sense. In any case, the sounds in the horrible tunnel had changed in nature and pitch. They were high now and seemed like screams right behind him.
Stop, Arthur, journey no more!
He slowed, his reason trying to impose itself upon his panic.
The sewer turned, a sluice gate presented itself as an obstacle, he climbed over it and whoosh! . . . he was off and away on a smooth and slippery surface, in total darkness once again, sliding and turning, his hands finding no purchase, his feet unable to gain friction, tumbling down and up and along towards the screams and cries.
Light!
Blinding as if it was a torch to his eyes.
Thump!
A bang as if he had been thumped by a hammer of concrete.
Shouts!
As if they were right in his ears.
Then a grip of iron!
As if an ancient implement of torture had been closed about his leg.
He opened his eyes and peered about as best he could and saw a nightmare come true: he was an actor in some medieval depiction of hell.
There was the rack, the hook and the red-hot brand.
There was a fiery furnace so hot that the filth on him began to steam and dry at once.
‘What in Mirror’s sacred name, my friends, have w
e here?’ said a voice that had a raspy unpleasantness to it.
He was dragged to his feet, his hands were tied and he was hooked to a metal ring in a wall and hauled aloft before gaining full consciousness again.
Slowly, as he swung helplessly about, two things became certain.
First that he was in a chamber full of Fyrd dressed in black leathery clothing, their heads shorn neat and sleek.
The second was that they were all in a human medieval torture chamber, for in addition to the rack there were chains, iron maidens, fires, spiky things and unspeakable hooks hanging and swinging near his face from the high ceiling from which he himself swung.
To one side was a great hole through which, he surmised, he had just fallen. A chimney perhaps, to allow the smoke of the fires of torture to escape.
‘Well, lads,’ said the Fyrd who had a leather cannikin of ale in his hand, which he supped deep and cheerfully before saying more, ‘we was saying, were we not, that all we was lacking was a victim. Well, now it seems one has been delivered to us. What shall we do with him?’
‘The rack!’ someone cried.
Arthur stared down as the rough, wooden bed-like structure, with ropes and ratcheted wheels, swam into view.
‘The Maiden!’ said someone else, forcing his head round so that he stared into the opened metal body, with rough and rusted spikes inside, onto which he must be horribly impaled as the body-shaped door was closed on him . . .
The fact that the torture instruments were of human size and the Fyrd were merely taunting him did not lessen the horror he felt at the sight of them.
But then: ‘Let it be the brand,’ said a deeper voice, waving something that smelt hot and acrid under his nose, singeing his beard and making him cough with the smell of his own burnt hair. Flames at the end of a stick danced in front of him.
‘Yes, the brand, the brand!’ they cried ever more loudly as Arthur struggled uselessly to escape from the burning heat near his eyes.
Fire can hurt a hydden as easily as a human. Size was of no consequence now.
‘Noooo!’ he heard himself cry as they loosed the chain and he began to fall.
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