‘Hardly a boy,’ said Streik, ‘not even a lad. He’s got courage and strength even if he has yet much to learn of the fighting arts! But for the help he received we would have had him.’
Feld had to agree.
Streik was both insubordinate and insolent, but he had brains and had uses, and more important, Sub-Quentor Brunte favoured him. Feld had him on a leash, but a long one.
‘There was no point in risking his life, or ours, by fighting any harder than we did,’ he said patiently. ‘He’s bound to follow us to Brum and try to get her back. He’ll be easy enough to take when he gets there – and we don’t have the trouble of getting him there and trouble he would be. So, no heroics, no reprisals. We take the girl and we continue to allow ourselves to be seen to be doing so. We instruct our other patrols to harry him and the others but not to kill them. The same goes for us if the boy’s headstrong enough to attack us. Understood?’
The others nodded, but reluctantly. Fyrd do not take kindly to resistance.
‘And when we’ve got the girl to Brum and the boy’s taken, what then?’ one of the others asked.
Feld frowned. It was a reasonable question but he did not want to answer it.
Streik answered it for him matter-of-factly.
‘The Sub-Quentor will kill her,’ he said, ‘or command me to . . .’
Streik was Brunte’s executioner and he was good at his job. This trip beyond the confines of Brum was something of a vacation for him, a reward.
Feld did not respond to his comment about the girl’s fate, which was not quite as certain as Streik seemed to think. It was true enough that Fyrd did not generally take prisoners unless there was a good reason. For one thing, killing in all its forms was part of their training, a routine so that each time made it easier the next. For another, prisoners often spelt trouble and cost.
But the girl was different and Feld knew it. The hydden in Brum, led by Brief, had tried to give the impression that Katherine was of no consequence, but Brunte, and now Feld too, thought the opposite might be true. There were rumours that she might be the Shield Maiden herself, though having met her Feld rather doubted it. A spirited young woman, of course, but an immortal? Feld doubted it.
Jack was a different matter. In Feld’s memory no one had ever resisted four trained Fyrd and their shadows as he had, even if, in the end, it had been Brief and his stave that had rescued him. Jack was something extraordinary, and Feld could see very well why Igor Brunte would wish to take and control him before the Sinistral hierarchy did.
‘What concerns me more,’ he said, moving the subject to safer ground, ‘is that the boy has the support of a Brummish staverman like Pike, who is nobody’s fool when it comes to a fight. We will do well to avoid clashing with him anyway, even if there were not these other considerations, because he’ll have back-up in one form or another.’
Streik nodded. Pike’s reputation was well known, and in any other occupied Fyrd city in the Hyddenworld one such as he would be taken into the Fyrd command, or eliminated as being too dangerous. But Brum was different and there he was allowed his freedom under the titular leadership of the Hydden’s High Ealdor.
‘Then there was the unexpected presence of Master Brief . . .’ continued Feld, obviously surprised that what had seemed a simple assignment to find a boy had turned into something more complex, with wider implications than he could possibly have expected when the Sub-Quentor gave him the task. ‘Like Pike he is a formidable adversary, though in a different way.’
‘That was the Master Scrivener?’ one of the others said, looking both impressed and surprised.
‘I cannot think of another hydden likely to wield such a stave as that, though . . .’
He fell silent, pondering.
The others waited.
‘Did any of you get a good look at how the boy himself caught it even if his use of it was still juvenile!? My Lords Sinistral are right to be fearful of this giant-born, if he truly be so!’
The others shook their heads and Streik said, ‘Couldn’t see much because of the stave’s confusing light, sir. It stopped me seeing anything else clearly.’
‘Quite so,’ said Feld. ‘The old ways of fighting have much to be said for them, even if our own weapons are more reliable, but . . . this assignment is about capture, not death. I have a feeling that we were not meant to see the boy’s prowess at all. Very interesting! Meanwhile we know what our task is! Understood?’
They nodded.
The boy would have a use, just as the girl now had – for a time. All this was easy enough for Feld to work out, as was the fact that this simple-seeming assignment was a test and Streik little more than the insolent eyes and ears of the far cleverer Sub-Quentor.
Katherine stirred and then stood up unsteadily. She looked dazed and her clothes hung on her in an untidy mess.
‘Change her into the garments we brought for her,’ ordered Feld.
One of them did so, there and then, shrugging her into a uniform just like their own, roughly pinning up her hair with the help of a metal clasp brought along for that purpose. Her discarded clothes were abandoned in a hedge. By the time they finished, Katherine was nearly unconscious.
Streik reached out a hand to touch her hair.
‘Thick and horrible,’ he said dismissively.
Katherine’s eyes opened slowly and she tried to focus.
‘She is regaining her composure,’ observed Feld. ‘Enshadow her once more and let us get on our way.’
They formed shadows around themselves and Katherine, and began walking along the road towards the village of Uffington. Once or twice, seeming to have some sense that she was being abducted, she tried to attract the attention of people in passing cars, but she hardly had strength to even raise a hand and the Fyrd laughed heartily at her efforts.
‘They cannot see us,’ explained Feld.
Streik angrily grabbed her hand and pushed it back to her side. ‘Don’t do that,’ he ordered, not liking resistance of any kind.
They turned off the road just before reaching the village, and then cut across the fields to the embankment that carried the railway line between Swindon and Didcot.
They climbed up to the line itself, and squatted down with their backs against a pile of old wooden sleepers, then finally released Katherine from the shadows. She felt very cold and tired, but was soon able to think clearly again.
White Horse Hill was a silhouetted wall of darkness against the starry sky, but she recognized it at once and she knew that meant she was facing south.
She searched the darkened vale below and saw the lights of a village and what looked like a square church tower among its trees, and another one further off to the left.
Uffington and Childrey, she told herself.
She turned to the Fyrd. ‘Who are you?’ she asked the one who looked like their leader.
‘He’s Meyor Feld, sir to you,’ said Streik, hauling her up and pushing her on towards the lights of Wantage.
When she tried to protest she was shoved all the harder.
‘Come on, sister, we’ve got some walking to do yet, if we’re to get to where we need to before sunrise.’
Katherine decided that, since she seemed in no immediate danger, it was best to go along with them until she could make more sense of where she was and what was happening. She did not want them to envelop her with shadows again. Maybe, too, when the sun rose, she might see someone who could help.
‘Stop dawdling!’ snarled Streik.
‘There’s no need to push,’ she snapped over her shoulder.
‘Sister, show some respect to elders, betters – and males.’
‘I’m nobody’s sister and you’re mad,’ said Katherine quietly. She was beginning to feel more like her old self by the moment.
But this sense of confidence did not last long because, whenever she was better able to catch a glimpse in the darkness of something with whose size she was familiar – a plant, a fence, the railway sleepers –
they looked twice as big as they should be.
This didn’t make sense, so she told herself she must be simply exhausted, or else the shadows had confused her mind.
But then they passed under a road bridge she was sure she had seen only weeks before during one of her walks with Jack. Then it had seemed normal, but now it towered above her into the darkness, far higher than she could possibly remember it being. A horrible thought occured to her.
It can’t be, she told herself. It just can’t be.
But it was, she knew it was.
She was smaller now. The shadows had dragged her into the henge and pulled her out of its sinister side, and that had somehow taken her into the same world that Arthur had tried to enter. The world was different but she felt the same.
She plodded on through the night trying to control the waves of panic that regularly gripped her.
‘Where am I?’ she asked aloud at one point.
No one bothered to answer.
What’s happening?
They walked on and on along the railway line, until she grew tired again, each step becoming an effort.
Then she took the decision to stop.
Streik tried to push her forward again but she resisted.
‘Where are we going?’ she demanded.
Feld came forward and stared at her. ‘Sister, you’ve done well to keep up with us, but keep your voice down.’
It was the first positive thing any of them had said and she could sense the respect in his voice.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked more quietly.
‘To the city.’
‘Which one? London?’
‘Brum,’ he said.
‘I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Humans call it Birmingham.’
‘Why Birmingham?’
The question was as much for her as for him. It seemed a strange place to be going and a long way to walk.
She tried another question. ‘How?’ she asked.
The rails at their feet began to vibrate and whine. Seconds later they heard a train coming and they retreated to the edge of the embankment as it roared past, a blast of air rushing at their faces and ruffling through their hair.
‘By train,’ replied Feld. ‘Not far to go now.’
But it seemed a long way to her and soon she found herself only able to walk by being supported on either side.
When dawn came, she was wandering blurrily among stationary goods trains, their wheels rising huge about her. They had reached the complex rail junction of Didcot.
‘This is the one for Brum,’ she heard someone say. ‘Here, help pull her up . . .’
Then she was inside a wagon being deposited on some sacking, more being laid on top of her, all dusty and smelling of grain.
‘You can sleep now,’ Feld said.
She closed her eyes and slept.
49
CAMP
Jack woke to the sound of an approaching car. It seemed so nearly on top of him that he opened his eyes in alarm, ready to jump out of the way.
He was lying on bare ground, only some dry leaves protecting him from the damp beneath. Someone had placed a rough plaid blanket over him. His pillow was the exposed root of a tree whose trunk rose above him, its leafless branches whispering in the cold breeze.
Jack’s head throbbed, his body was tired and aching, his mind a confusion of jumbled memories whose clarity ended with Katherine’s disappearance into shadows. After that, nothing.
He could hear some people talking cheerfully nearby, and decided to stay still and try to make sense of things.
What had happened in the henge came back to him. He had been saved from the same shadows that took Katherine by three strangers, hydden as he now realized.
When he had talked with the Peace-Weaver on White Horse Hill, she had said that people were on their way to help him. These must be the ones she meant.
Another car passed by, leaving the surrounding vegetation shifting and rustling in its wake.
That he was now in the Hyddenworld he had no doubt, and it felt good to be so, as if, after a long time away, he had finally come home.
The root on which his head rested smelt mossy, earthy, and good. In fact it was surprisingly comfortable. Then he became aware that, along with the conversation, there was the aroma of food cooking, and it smelt delicious.
Tempted though he was to turn over and thus indicate he was awake, he decided to stay just as he was while he tried to work out what he was going to do next. For finding Katherine had to be his first priority.
The names of the three people who had stopped him going into the shadows began to come back to him.
Master Brief, Pike and . . . Bedwyn Stort – the one named by the Peace-Weaver.
Stort was younger than the others but nearly as tall and that’s all he could remember.
Jack gradually rolled over, keeping his eyes carefully closed in case the strangers were near enough to see him, hoping they would assume he was merely turning over in his sleep. The talking continued without a pause, so his change of position had not been noticed.
He opened his eyes and found himself looking towards a small clearing in a scrubby copse. Brief and Pike were sitting cross-legged by a small fire, while Stort was nowhere to be seen.
They were eating and drinking from rough wooden bowls. A curious contraption hung over the fire supported at its four corners by straps tied to a framework of sticks. From the fact that something inside it steamed, and it had a bulbous balloon-like shape, he decided it must be filled with liquid. The steam carried the subtle scents of . . . He sniffed a bit more, his mouth watering.
A mushroomy, herby, stewy sort of thing . . .
He licked his lips.
Pike took a large pebble from inside the fire, using two sticks tied together at one end. He then carefully dropped the hot stone into the bag-thing which Jack now decided was made of leather, which was why it was hung high enough above the flames not to catch fire. He therefore concluded that the leather bag was nothing more or less than a flexible stew pot.
Weird but clever Jack admitted himself.
He studied the pair of them more closely.
The one called Brief had used a stave that seemed to hold the light of a hundred thousand fragments of the moon, and he now saw the same stave lying nearby on the ground.
Pike, who was doing most of the talking, was aged about thirty-five, with short grizzled hair and a tough, intimidating air. He wore a grey-green tunic, loose black tights and strange leather shoes that were more boots than shoes, with soles made of . . .
Jack squinted to see them better. The soles had been cut out of car tyre, carefully shaped and then crudely stitched to the leather uppers. A stave lay by his side, too.
Pike picked up the small, blackened kettle propped at the edge of the fire and filled both their cups with some liquid whose scent had such sweet allure that to Jack’s mounting hunger was now added a growing thirst.
‘We can’t just stay here any more waiting for him to wake up,’ Pike remarked. ‘It’s too dangerous, Master Brief. We have to make a decision soon about where to go and what to do. The Fyrd can’t be far behind us now.’
Jack closed his eyes. He had no real desire to get up at all. In fact he wanted to shut out all that had happened and the very world itself because . . . His eyes snapped open. Why? Why in the hour of Katherine’s greatest need did he want to have nothing to do with it and go back to sleep?
Because something had happened that he found impossible to conceive of, let alone accept.
He had been in denial. Now he must face it. His inkling of what ‘it’ was had come to him in the wood henge as the trees seemed to grow taller and the gaps between them to widen. Then, as he left the Woolstone garden with the help of Stort, the wire of the fence seemed to be above his head.
No, it didn’t ‘seem’. It was! he told himself now.
He looked around the place where he lay and spotted what is always fou
nd by roadsides – debris from cars. It was a can of Diet Coke that confirmed what he already knew: it was twice the size it should be. So was a wrapper of a Mars bar. So, finally, was an old shoe – monstrous in size, a giant’s.
It must be that his passage through the henge had not only transported him into the Hyddenworld but, in some strange way, made him a hydden too.
But if this realization horrified him, he had no time to dwell on the fact. The hydden had continued talking but now he heard sly movement down on the road below. First some steps, then whispering, and finally the sound of somebody creeping up the verge towards him.
He turned slowly back to his earlier position and saw four figures beneath, two right down on the road itself, two more climbing furtively up the embankment towards him.
Enemies, obviously!
They were dressed in black and armed with staves, crossbows and knives which looked very sharp indeed. The one in front was no more than twenty feet from where Jack lay, and he was getting nearer all the time.
50
FIGHT AND FLIGHT
Jack’s brain cleared at once.
He stayed just as he was, so far unseen, hidden amid the vegetation. He knew well that while surprise was of the essence, effective action was even more crucial.
He had no doubt that he was looking at some of the Fyrd that Brief and the others had been fleeing from, with himself groggily in tow. He examined the two in front carefully, and noted the course they were on, which was very slightly off-track from himself. They would reach the top of the verge just beyond his feet, which would put them out of reach of a well-delivered kick.
On the other hand, once they were up on level ground he would have lost any advantage his position slightly higher up might give him. But he could not take them on by himself and decided to take an immediate risk. He rolled over and away from them, and raised his hand silently in the hope that one of the hydden would see it.
One of them did: the ever-watchful Pike.
Jack pointed behind himself silently, and indicated the number of them with four fingers. Pike nodded and then whispered to Brief, who remained seated by the fire.
Hyddenworld: Spring Bk. 1 (Hyddenworld Quartet 1) Page 22