by F. G. Cottam
Finally, mercifully, they reached a plateau. They huddled on the flat snow in a white-out so severe it was not possible to see further than your own extended arm. Grayling took off his gloves and retrieved a pocket flashlight and a compass from the pouches on the equipment belt buckled around his waist.
In his hooded canvas smock and goggles he looked to Adam more the World War Two commando on arctic patrol than a modern Alpinist. They were all three of them attired in these drab, old-fashioned waterproofs.
Modern fabrics in bright colours would make them as conspicuous as zoo exhibits where they were going, McGuire had warned. Their concession to the conditions was the crampon friendly modern climbing boots they were all equipped with. They would swap these for the plain boots in their packs in the moments before the cross.
Their plateau ended abruptly at a vaunting rampart of solid rock. They edged left along it until the granite surface was breached by a fissure just wide enough to squeeze into. They followed Grayling into a cave. It widened sufficiently to accommodate them beyond the entrance.
He lit a lamp once a few feet inside and Adam was able to see that the cave narrowed again in the gloom where it deepened beyond the pale bloom of light. Grayling rigged a stove to make them a last drink before departure. It was very cold in the cave and Adam thought Jane would be as grateful for the warmth of the beverage as he would. He would heat his hands on the mug and change his boots when the numbness had left them.
‘That way,’ Grayling said, nodding into the darkness, a few minutes later. He paused, standing there. They hesitated. He looked down and brushed something imaginary from the front of his smock. And then he raised his eyes again and strode across and embraced each of them in turn.
They emerged into weak sunlight. The cross was an assault on the senses. The ground felt different, softening under their feet as the cave walls fell away into a limbo of space and the rich smell of an autumnal wood hit their nostrils in bark and ferns and windfall apples and pine resin. They were only aware of the loud shriek of the alpine wind beyond the cave entrance when it was gone, replaced by the busy chorus of birds in the branches above them competing in song. Jane felt the compulsion to crouch and gather herself. When she did, she saw that Adam had done the same, on his haunches beside her, the trickle of a stream nearby gurgling pleasantly, moss feeling cool and rough under them when she spread her hands on the earth.
They stood. ‘Look at the sky,’ Adam said.
Jane did. It was cloudless and blue and looked strange for a reason that would not quite clarify in her mind. Something was weirdly empty about it.
‘No con trails,’ Adam said. ‘There hasn’t been a sky like that on earth in our lifetimes.’
They tightened the straps on their packs and trekked steadily north. Jane occasionally took a compass reading to see that they had not strayed. The ground was lightly wooded and gently undulating and they made good progress. They had rations in their packs but snacked on apples and pears and damsons plucked ripe from the trees they passed.
Jane’s only immediate concern was about the great carnivorous avian creatures that blighted the shadow world. They would get plenty of warning of the beast’s approach in the clear sky above them but the odd wild orchard or copse would not shelter them from attack. They would not be safe from the Vorps until they reached the cover of the count’s forest and one threat was swapped for another, even more menacing, in the bloodthirsty shape of the parasites.
‘What are you thinking about?’
‘About how drab these retro outfits we’re wearing are. We could be kitted out head to toe in that Roam stuff you designed. I’m pretty sure we could have got it at cost price.’
Jane shuddered. She did not appreciate the joke. ‘Martin Prior wears Roam.’
‘He makes your stomach turn, doesn’t he?’
‘It’s really strange. We were good friends. I never fancied him but could see how someone could. Now I think he’s a loathsome creep.’
‘Next time he’s on television, take a good look at his eyes,’ Adam said. ‘He doesn’t look much different from the sailors I daydreamed about aboard that dreadnought. He’s been interfered with, charmed in some way. I’d hate to be inside his head.’
‘If we’re successful he won’t be on television for much longer,’ Jane said. ‘He won’t have any new sensations to reveal.’
They sighted the forest towards the late afternoon of the second day. When it first came into view, on the horizon about ten miles distant, Adam took it for a lake. He was judging what he was looking at by its darkness and density. But as they got closer it became green and they realized they were looking not at water, but at a vast expanse of trees.
‘Do we really want to be in there at nightfall?’ he said.
Jane looked at him. ‘Do we really want to be out here for a second night?’
It had not been discussed between them, but they had both heard the territorial cries of what sounded like large and predatory beasts in their tiny tent in the darkness. Their shelter had been fragile and they had been almost pitifully vulnerable inside it. And towards dawn, she had heard the flap above her of enormous wings, and the fabric over her head had rippled inward with the draft they stirred.
Full darkness had descended by the time they reached the forest. It was a clear night and the moon shone brightly. The forest was coniferous and its foliage thick and still, unchallenged by seasonality. It was totally silent. Pale toadstools littered the loamy forest floor. Jane did not think it could have contrived to be less inviting. Then she remembered the size of the single fallen vaned feather she had found at the site as Adam folded their tent after breakfast. The shaft had been the thickness of her arm and tipped in gore. She recalled the feral stink of it.
They had no choice. She walked forward into the trees, gesturing for him to follow her.
She could not have said how far they had travelled before the suspicion that they were being observed began to grow in her. Soon it became overwhelming. So strong was the sense of scrutiny that it became difficult to walk normally. Jane felt self-conscious, as though their movement was less progress to a destination than a performance. This was not an encouraging intuition. All it encouraged was fear. Every step felt more disheartening, as though it lured them nearer to a trap.
She glanced at Adam and he glanced back and nodded, and telepathy was not necessary between them to know that he was feeling the same skin-prickling instinct that she was. Nothing apparently moved other than the two of them. There was no sound. But the observation and pursuit were skilled, stealthy realities. They were not so much intruders here as prey. Their mission had been misconceived, their efforts futile.
The attack was very quick. There were three of them and they had waited for the space on the ground in which to fight. The density of the forest had slightly lessened at this point, and there was some clear space between the trees. They were pale and naked and powerful in the moonlight and moved with insectile suddenness. They were slightly taller than a man. Their assault came from three sides as though from the points of a triangle towards Jane and Adam at its centre.
Jane bit on a mouth full of loam as Adam shoved her off her feet and on to her stomach and she heard the shriek of escaping steel as he drew the swordstick’s blade and then a sort of gasp as he struck home with it. She turned her head and looked up to see him weaving out of the way of blows so fast they cut the air audibly.
He was fighting two of them. He was making them pay for every miss with clusters of blows of his own. She had never seen reflexes like those Adam was gifted with when he fought. His fists travelled through space at the speed of crudely edited movie footage. It was faster than some jump-cut trick. But his punches were bouncing off the creatures he fought. His knuckles left blood in black, moonlit smears on their carapace hides.
Where was the third? She twisted her head. He was lying against the trunk of a tree with McGuire’s lethal toy protruding from his chest. She looked at the creatu
re’s face: alert, tiny eyes over holes for nostrils and a maw which receded in complex rows of needle-like teeth. He was not dying. He did not even seem to be in pain. He pulled at the pommel of the weapon he’d been skewered with and it exited his body with a metallic shriek.
Adam was losing the fight. They were slowing him. Against one he might have prevailed, but he was matched against two and they were very strong and quick, and the third had rallied and was joining them with the blade that should have killed him held in the grip of what passed for his hand.
She saw Adam’s eyes glance down to look at her and saw only concern for her in them and loved him for his courage as he ducked under a sweeping lunge and responded with the smack of a solid headbutt to the temple of the creature’s head. It staggered. He kicked it to its knees. His hands were ruined, she realized. They were finished. He followed the butt with the point of an elbow and the creature flopped earthward. Jesus. He’d actually beaten one of them. The parasite holding the sword chittered out some awful, triumphant sound and bore down upon him.
‘Enough,’ said a voice. ‘Bravo,’ it added. The creatures stopped and stood entirely still.
‘You speak English.’
To Jane’s ears, Adam sounded spent. But the voice had spoken English. She did not dare look to see who had spoken. Her hands were soiled, filled, fists squeezing out what they contained between her fingers with tension. The voice had brought hope to hopelessness and she felt the more fraught for the optimism it delivered her.
‘Do not move, for the moment,’ it said. ‘Remain still, both of you. Do not speak again, young man. You are brave and able. But if you wish to survive this encounter, you would be wise to curtail your words. This is not the moment for defiance. You have demonstrated quite enough of that. Be quiet. Follow me humbly.’
The creature Jane had thought rendered unconscious by the point of Adam’s elbow unfolded abruptly off the ground. The parasite holding the sword surrendered it to the man with a bow. While he examined it, she examined him. He looked about thirty-five and could plausibly have been a far closer relative of Professor Grayling than Doctor McGuire, who claimed to be. He was silver-headed in the moonlight and austerely handsome.
‘Come,’ he said. Jane got up and Adam wiped the blood from his knuckles on his smock and put an arm around her. They followed the man a hundred yards to where a carriage waited. Harnessed to it were a team of two blinkered horses. The parasites had disappeared, Jane saw, as they climbed into the carriage, the forest silently absorbing them. They had seen no driver, but the horses must have been well schooled. They set off as soon as the carriage door was closed. The wheels groaned on their axles with the twists and turns of their route.
Jane wore no watch – Grayling had forbidden it – but she thought that the journey took about half an hour. The interior of the coach was leather and luxurious, deep piled animal pelts draped warmly over the seats. It smelled richly of hide and some heady, floral perfume.
‘The scent is that of my late wife,’ their host said. ‘This is her carriage. She was murdered just over a week ago.’
‘You are the count of Sarth,’ Adam said. ‘We are very sorry, sir, for your loss.’
‘And you are a descendant of de Morey, I believe.’
‘Believing that,’ Jane said, ‘why did you try to have us killed?’
The count laughed curtly. ‘They were an escort only, instructed to disarm you. Had they been instructed to kill, you would be dead now and an empty vessel. They overreached their instructions. Sometimes their exuberance is difficult to contain. It does not greatly signify. They provided me with a useful measure of our friend.’
‘How long have you known we were here?’
‘You ask a lot of questions, madam. Since your arrival, is the answer to that one. My question is, why have you come?’ The carriage stopped. ‘We are here,’ he said. ‘You can satisfy my curiosity over dinner. The exertions of your young champion will have given him an appetite.’
‘His hands are ruined.’
‘Yet he is very fortunate. He has your devotion. His hands shall be repaired before we eat.’
When they alighted, Jane half-expected it to be before a gothic castle fit for Dracula. But the count’s residence was more a grand hunting lodge in the style of the dachas of Imperial Russia, the sort of country refuge enjoyed by the Czar and his nobles before the Bolshevik Revolution. It did not appear fortified. This was no stockade or keep. His parasite legion was all the protection he required from the hostile nation to the south.
He insisted they bathe and change. Clothing was provided for them. A woman was summoned from somewhere who applied a salve to the torn skin of Adam’s knuckles. The flesh began to mend, to regenerate and heal so fast he could see the process taking place. The cream must be some agent that enabled rapid cellular reconstruction, he thought. It was very powerful, whatever it was. It eased out the bruising before the worst of the pain he expected had even arrived. By the time he sat down with Jane at the count’s table his hands were completely restored.
They explained their mission. Their host listened with a look on his face that betrayed nothing of what he thought. Then, addressing Adam, he said, ‘It is true I am greatly in the debt of your ancestor. And of course mine knew of the pestilence on which Slee was working to eradicate the parasites. But the parasites have evolved so far since then I doubt the bacillus would have the effect on them today it would have then.’
‘We are not here to blackmail you with threats of plague,’ Jane said. ‘We are not here even to accuse your family of exploiting de Morey centuries ago. Your ancestor enabled him to fulfill his obligation to his king. What he did was of mutual benefit to them. There was no exploitation. But there is, as you have just said, a debt of gratitude to be repaid.’
He seemed to ponder for a long time. He had more wine poured for all of them. He ran a staff at the lodge that seemed large. He lived well. Then she remembered that his wife had been murdered only a week ago.
As though reading her mind, he said, ‘My wife suffered a genetic condition. It required her treatment, twice annually, by a skilled physician in Salabra. She enjoyed these clandestine trips.’ He shrugged. ‘Salabra has its mercantile charms and she was a woman. She was betrayed. Perhaps it was only a matter of time. Perhaps I was naïve. I always thought that if she was found out, a ransom demand would follow. It breaches the protocol to feed a woman of noble birth to a giant bird of prey trained in the practice of execution.’
Jane and Adam swapped a glance. Silence seemed the tactful response.
‘I have been musing on my revenge. But I am not mobilized for war. My army of parasites, my thirsty horde of monsters, numbers at this moment scarcely twenty.’
Adam could not conceal his frank astonishment. ‘Why?’
The count smiled at him. ‘Practicality is the answer. Their thirst is relentless. They are self-sufficient, feeding on the men sent from the south by the pretender. They are as formidable as they are voracious and alert. It is enough. I maintain a stock of captive beasts as food for when their own prey becomes scarce. If I bred an army, only a war could sustain it. So I keep twenty.’
Jane said, ‘How long would an army take to breed?’
‘They breed rapidly. They come to maturity with the swiftness of insects. In three months I would have the numbers. In six they would be trained.’
‘I don’t think earth has six months,’ Adam said.
‘And I have no intention of breeding an army.’
‘So you won’t help us,’ Adam said.
‘On the contrary, my young friend.’ He smiled and leaned across the table to squeeze Adam’s shoulder. There were jewelled rings on his fingers which glittered in the light of the candelabra, and Jane wondered how old they might be.
‘We will halt the undermining with a bluff. You will take a letter to the pretender from me. In it I will threaten war unless their dabbling stops. For all they know, this domain of mine contains twenty thousan
d parasites. My letter will promise to unleash a horde from hell. They will meet my terms.’
‘It will not avenge your wife,’ Jane said quietly.
The count looked at her. Adam thought the look openly appreciative of Jane’s qualities; her brains and beauty and her courage, too. ‘Nothing will avenge my wife,’ he said. ‘Come.’
He rose and led them to one of the dining room’s several doors. It opened upon a library. Logs blazed in a great fireplace. Above it was a portrait in the medieval style of a man of noble aspect attired in armour, seated bareheaded astride a warhorse. The knight was caught in profile.
Jane turned to Adam. ‘When did you sit for that?’
The count chuckled. ‘Yes, madam, the likeness fair reflects the bloodline, does it not? The whole of Endrimor knows of the debt owed by the house of Sarth to the house of de Morey. I would not be the man to deny or dishonour it.’
They met Sebastian Dray in a tent erected for the purpose in a field with the towers and turrets of Salabra a distant smudge to the south. Adam had expected a glittering power display to offset the defeat of accepting the count’s terms. The undermining took time and planning and orchestrated effort. The conflict was ancient and bitter and the ultimate ambition perhaps closer to realization than it had ever been. But it was Dray and Proctor Maul only. Maul for protection, Adam supposed. Dray looked physically capable. But he was a diplomat, more schemer than warrior.
He and Jane had travelled to the site on horseback. The journey had taken them five days. The parley had been arranged by a fast courier dispatched on the evening of the count’s decision to help. He had communicated the threat of war, the demand for safe passage and the proposed location of this conference.