Dark Mist Rising (Crossing Over)

by Anna Kendall

  Or perhaps I was not. I didn't know what the Young Chieftain's soldiers, back in the upstairs bedchamber of that snug cottage, were doing to my helpless body. It was possible I was already among the Dead, and would not know it until I returned – if I could return.

  And now another terror came to me. I had brought Cecilia back from the dead. I had brought back the sailor Bat. I had brought back the entire Blue army, which had defeated Solek's men because the Blues could not be hurt or killed a second time. But a fortnight after each return all of them had melted away, leaving not even dust. They had vanished for ever, to be found neither among the living nor the Dead. Would that now happen to me?

  If I was even now being tortured to death in the land of the living, and then I crossed back over, would it be as if I brought myself back from the dead? Would I live a fortnight on the other side, whole and invulnerable, and then melt grotesquely away, my chance at eternity forfeit?

  I didn't know. I didn't know anything. I was afraid to stay here and afraid to go back. Fear tightened around my chest until my breath came fast and shallow, and my heart pounded hard enough to hurt. I put my head in my hands and there, in the quiet Country of the Dead, I wept and sobbed like the six-year-old I had once been, who lost his mother to a death he could not understand.

  9

  I stayed longer in the Country of the Dead, but I could not stay for ever. There was no way to know if more or less time had passed here than in the land of the living; time is not the same in the two realms. However, if the pain on the other side was too great, I could always cross back again. My torturers could not take that escape away from me. It was mine.

  Despite my fear, I had to know if I was I already dead in that tiny bedchamber in The Queendom. I took a last look at the puzzling grey fog, wispy and motionless around the circle of the Dead. Then I bit my tongue and crossed back over.

  Darkness—

  Cold—

  Dirt choking my mouth—

  Worms in my eyes—

  Earth imprisoning my fleshless arms and legs—

  I was back in my body in the cottage bedchamber, again tied to the chair and with the knotted cord bound painfully around my head. A burst of agony around my eyes as I returned, and a moment to clear my blood-soaked vision. So much blood. And then I saw that it was not all mine. Only a small portion of it was mine.

  The two savage soldiers, the singer-warrior and his lieutenant, lay on the floor. I could see the lieutenant clearly, but the singer-that-was lay mostly behind the bed, where he must have fallen. On the quilted bedcover the pattern of wildflowers was spattered with sprays of blood. The lieutenant's throat had been torn out in fleshy gobbets of meat and blood. His hands were flung helplessly above his head and one arm lay at a grotesque angle to his still body. Beside him sat Shadow, wagging his tail.

  It was a moment before I could speak. When I did, my voice came out thick and high. ‘Shadow ... did you ... ?'

  Of course he had. The huge dog gazed at me expectantly, eager for praise. His green eyes shone. Blood matted his grey coat. In the dim light from the single tallow candle on the dresser, the blood looked almost black, oily and viscous as tar.

  I felt sickened, and relieved, and grateful. Mostly, however, I felt scared. Where were the other two savages, the ones who had brought me here? At any moment they could come pounding up the stairs, guns drawn, and I didn't think even Shadow would be a match for guns. Why hadn't they come up already? They must have heard some noise – a dog cannot kill two men without noise.

  Someone was climbing the stairs.

  ‘Shadow, go! Kill!'

  The dog wagged his tail harder.

  A figure filled the doorway. All I could see was his outline, and then he came carefully into the room.

  Not a savage. It was a youth of about my own age, at least six and a half feet tall, his considerable bulk made even larger by a pack strapped to his shoulders. Yellow-haired and stubble-bearded, he was dressed like the son of a prosperous farmer in wool tunic and leggings, with thick leather boots. In one enormous hand he carried a pig-butchering knife. We stared at each other for a moment, he looming huge above me, before he loosened the knotted cord from my head. I gasped with relief. The boy's knife slashed through the ropes that bound me to the chair.

  Finally he spoke. ‘Who are you?'

  How to answer that? I gave the simplest answer. ‘Peter Forest.'

  ‘I heard a ... I was bringing the sheep back from high pasture and ... Your dog ain't never done that?' He waved at the dead soldiers.

  Shadow bounded over and licked his hand. The dog's short tail wagged. I said, ‘Help me up – please.'

  He hesitated, but evidently decided I was harmless. To someone of his bulk and strength, armed with a butchering knife, I most certainly was. With one hand he pulled me to my feet, but I could not stand. I collapsed upon the bed. The reek of fresh blood filled the room.

  I said urgently, ‘There are two more savages—'

  ‘Dead in the kitchen. More of their soldiers hold the roads. Are you the reason they have taken Almsbury?'

  ‘No.' Was I? It seemed possible, but I didn't want to tell that to this stranger who looked at me with such frank, fearless curiosity. Yes, fearless. He stood absently patting Shadow's blood-spattered head with no trace of alarm about the four murdered men, the dog that had killed them or the Young Chieftain's soldiers occupying his village.

  ‘If you ain't the reason they came here, then why were they torturing you?' He stared at my head, where the bloody wounds left by the knotted cord still burned like fire.

  ‘I don't know,' I lied. ‘How many more savages are in ... in Almsbury?'

  ‘Dunno. I been several days at high pasture with my father's sheep. I came down at twilight to visit Betsy Turner. She's Almsbury's whore, you know. She told me, all a-fright, that some of the Young Chieftain's army was here, searching cottages and barns for something. Or, I suppose, someone.' He eyed me speculatively. ‘Do those wounds hurt?'

  ‘Of course they hurt!'

  ‘Did the soldiers cut off your hand, too?'

  ‘No. I lost it long ago.'

  He nodded, studying the stump of my wrist.

  Again I tried to stand. This time my legs held me, if I kept one hand on the bedstead. My head throbbed and burned but that pain could be borne. I had to get away now. More savages could appear at any moment. Trying to make my voice as authoritative as possible, I said, ‘Listen to me, boy. I will give you a silver if you will say nothing to anyone about seeing me here. If you leave now, go back to your sheep or to the ... the whore, or to your father's house, the savages will never know you've been here. You won't be harmed. And you will be a silver richer.' I hoped he was young enough, sheltered enough, that a silver would seem like a fortune, rather than what it had seemed to me: a week's rent on the inn at Applebridge.

  He said instantly, ‘Take me with you instead.'

  I stared at him. ‘Take you with me? But you ... I ...'

  ‘Yes!' Enthusiasm flooded him, along with that naive fearlessness, and I realized he must be younger than I had first supposed from his height and bulk. ‘You don't know the countryside and I do. You're weak from torture. You have only one hand.'

  If he had left out any of my disadvantages, I didn't know what it was.

  ‘Besides,' he added, ‘if the savages are looking for one man, two may mislead them. We could pretend to be cousins. Or brothers. We could make up names that fit together.'

  ‘This is not a game!'

  ‘I know. But I would nonetheless go with you. You and the dog.' His fingers nuzzled Shadow's ears. The dog licked his hand.

  ‘Your father would send men after you.'

  ‘No. I am not due back from the sheep pasture for another day. I came down for Betsy.'

  ‘But if your father—'

  ‘Leave off about my father,' he said in a different tone, harsh and bitter. ‘The stinking old pinchpenny ain't going to look for me. He hates me and I hate him
, He'd be glad if he thought I disappeared or – better yet – died.'

  I said nothing, remembering my own step-uncle, Hartah.

  ‘I can be of use to you. I know the countryside as well as I know Betsy Turner's bottom. Also, I'm the best tracker in three counties. But we must start right away, you know. The townspeople are all shut in their cottages, scared as mice, but they ain't going to stay inside for ever.'

  He was right. I made a sudden decision. After all, I could always leave him once we were in the Unclaimed Lands, creeping away while he slept, as I had crept away from Maggie. ‘All right. I am glad for your help.'

  ‘Then let us go!' he said, too happily.

  We went downstairs, me holding on to the wall every step in the narrow stairwell. The kitchen door still stood open to the soft summer night. Shadow had had no trouble entering. The other two savages sprawled on the floor, one with his feet still draped over the wooden bench beside the table. Blood and ale mingled on the flagstones. In one corner stood the four long guns that Shadow had given the savages no time to use. The boy snatched up one.

  ‘You can't take that,' I said. ‘It makes too much noise. And do you even know how to use it?'

  ‘I can learn.' He bent over the dead soldiers.

  ‘Come, we have no time!'

  ‘Just one moment.' Swiftly he went through both men's pockets, put several items I did not see into his own and grabbed a half-drunk tankard of ale off the table.

  He drained it and grinned at me, for all the world like a boy who has just won some cheap prize at a summer faire. In the greater light of the torches stuck in wall sconces, I saw that he was indeed younger than his body suggested and that he was extraordinarily handsome. He seemed to feel no fear whatsoever at striding out the door into an occupied village with a man he did not know, a weapon he could not use and a dog that killed.

  He was an idiot.

  But I needed him.

  10

  His name was Tom Jenkins and he was sixteen years old. Confidently he led me out the kitchen door into the moonlight, around the well house, and into a thick hedgerow bordering a small lane. A long, thin patch of bare ground had been scraped clean in the very centre of the hedge, completely invisible from either side. Tom whispered, ‘Made it for Joan Westfield and me. Biggest teats in Almsbury! Stay here while I look around.'

  He was enjoying this.

  I huddled in the tiny space, scratched by twigs, the reek of blood still in my nostrils and the real thing clotting on my aching temples. Tom returned in a few minutes. ‘This way, Peter.'

  He led me along the lane, within the deep shadow of the hedgerow. When we left the shadows, Tom went first, running across fields silvered by moonlight. We ran crouched low, and once I stumbled and sprawled flat. Something small and fast skittered away from me in the half-grown hay.

  We passed a barn but Tom whispered, ‘No, that's the first place they'll search for you.' We kept moving until I could go no further. My legs simply refused to carry me. I collapsed onto the ground beside a ditch.

  ‘Peter, you have to go on!'

  ‘I ... I can't.'

  I felt him crouch beside me and then he heaved me onto his great shoulders on top of the pack he already carried and set off.

  ‘Put me down! You ... you can't ...'

  He carried me another hundred yards. He was immensely strong, but he could not have kept it up much longer. This was a theatrical bit of business, a display of his great strength. When I wriggled off his shoulders he was panting heavily, and I was shamed into staggering forward on my own. Which may have been what he intended in the first place.

  The full moon shed clear, cruel light. Once I heard shouting in the distance. Soldiers? Had the carnage in the cottage been discovered?

  For the first time, I wondered why Shadow was not with us. Or was he, trailing along somewhere behind? Had the dog taken injuries I had not, in my own pain, even noticed?

  ‘Shadow ...'

  ‘Don't try to talk,' Tom said ‘We're almost there.'

  ‘There' turned out to be a cave on the side of a hill, its entrance hidden by bushes. Inside, it was so dark that I could see neither the cave's dimensions nor its interior. I had no cloak with me, nothing to lie upon, but Tom produced one from his pack. ‘Sleep,' he said softly, suddenly tender as a woman.

  I slept.

  I woke with my left side much warmer than my right. Shadow lay pressed up against me. Tom Jenkins was gone.

  Sunlight filtered weakly through the brush in front of the cave. Sitting up, I saw it was about the size of a cottage kitchen, but roofed low with irregular rock. A man could not stand upright. In the back, water dripped slowly down the rock, and the space smelled dank. Rocks and logs had been dragged inside to form a table and stools, such as children might make for their play. Tom Jenkins's pack lay open and its contents scattered on the ground. He'd been several days at high pasture with his father's sheep, he'd told me, and the pack held flint and steel to strike a fire, a thin blanket, small cookpot, tin tankard, pewter spoon, salt in a twist of paper. The butchering knife was gone. The gun he'd taken from the cottage leaned against the cave wall, but I did not know how to shoot it and in any case I had no bullets.

  Shadow stirred. ‘Hey, boy, hey ...' I could barely get the words out. My throat was swollen, my mouth dry, my head throbbing. Every muscle ached. Worse, I didn't know what to do next. Where was I? Would Tom Jenkins return, and if he did, would he bring with him savage soldiers? If the Young Chieftain had offered a reward for the man who had killed four of his soldiers ...

  The thought was like a hot sword in the ribs. Immediately I crawled out of the cave, blinking in the sunlight, to get away as fast as I could. Tom Jenkins, alone, strode towards me, swinging a full water bag.

  ‘Good morrow, Peter! How are you today?'

  How was I? No simple answer suggested itself, but Tom didn't wait for one anyway.

  ‘I have water and food. Here, back into the cave – you can't come out till night. Almsbury's swarming with savages. Pepper my arse, but they look fierce! Here, you best eat.'

  He was as cheerful as if returning from a morning stroll through a garden. Not sure what else to do, I retreated back into the cave. If Tom had set soldiers coming this way, he was more than capable of holding me here until they arrived. I possessed only my little shaving knife, which was about as dangerous as a woman's sewing needle. The savages had not even bothered to take it from me. So I sat with Tom in the dank gloom of the cave and drank the fresh water he'd brought in his water bag, ate the good bread and cheese, listened to him chatter as he tore into his own breakfast.

  ‘Got the bread from Agnes Coldwater. She's been after me to lie with her for a month or more. Too ugly, though it's a pity because she bakes the best bread and pies and sweet cakes in Almsbury. Good, ain't it? I'm going to have to stay here with you in the cave today, you know. Pretty soon my father'll miss me, the doddering old bastard! We used to play here when I was a boy, me and John Crenshaw. John died of plague three years ago. We pretended to be highwaymen and ... Here, dog, you want some cheese, boy? Shake paws, then!'

  Shadow did not shake paws. His eyes fastened on the cheese and he went utterly still, as if to ensorcel the cheese, or Tom, or both.

  ‘He don't shake paws? Well, we can cure that, can't we. Here, boy, sit!'

  Shadow was already sitting. Tom began to teach him to shake paws, using bits of cheese, talking all the while. Tom's energy was boundless. It wearied me, already weakened by pain and fear. The good food stretched my belly taut as a drum. I had just woken up, but drowsiness took me, and despite myself, I fell back asleep.

  A dream came.

  Not the dream of the crowned figure moving through the Country of the Dead. This was worse, a dream I had had two years ago and hoped to never have again, a dream of my mother:

  She sat in her lavender gown with a child on her lap. I was both the watcher and the child, safe and warm in my mother's arms. She sang to me softly, a
tune that I heard at first without words. Then the words became clear, and Roger the watcher's blood froze. ‘Die, my baby, die die, my little one, die die ...' But Roger the child listened to the monstrous song and nestled closer, a smile on his small face and the pretty tune in his ears. ‘Die, my baby, die die, my little one, die die ...'

  I woke with a great cry. Shadow crashed through the underbrush and into the cave, looking for whatever had attacked me. A moment later Tom stuck his head in.

  ‘Peter, what is it? A bear?'

  ‘No, I ... I ...'

  ‘No bear?' He crawled into the cave. He carried the savage's gun. The sight of it banished the last of the terrible dream.

  ‘Tom, you can't shoot that thing out there. It makes a great noise – soldiers will come running from miles away.'

  ‘I know,' he said cheerfully, ‘but I wanted to practise holding it. There might come bears. I can shoot it once we're in the Unclaimed Lands. I took metal pellets from that savage in the cottage – that's what the weapon shoots, you know, big metal pellets – and I—'

  ‘No! You cannot shoot that gun. Not even in the Unclaimed Lands.'

  ‘Sure I can. It ain't hard. See, you open this small chamber here and—'

  ‘Tom, you cannot.'

  He grinned at me. ‘Do you always worry so, Peter Forest? Damn, but you're tetchy as a girl. Although not so pretty. Here, have some more of Agnes's cheese.'

  I didn't want some more of Agnes's cheese. Tom pointed the gun at me, sighted along it as if along a tautly strung bow, and said, ‘Kwong!' He laughed.

  I put my head into my hands.

  No bears appeared. Shadow was taught to ‘shake paw'. Tom fidgeted in the cave until twilight, ducked outside periodically, slept briefly and fidgeted some more. Whenever he was awake, he talked. Whenever he was asleep, I worried. About Tom – was he reliable? About the savages – would they catch me? And about Maggie, whom I had abandoned. Not that Maggie couldn't take care of herself, and of Jee as well. But she had given me everything she had, and I had left her with nothing. Guilt gnawed at me like rats.