‘Mercenary humans, or spirits?’
‘Both! Some natural wizards, mostly spirits.’
That stood to reason. Mercenaries, wild spirits, were mainly the ones against whom Sam had established his networks. They obeyed nothing but their desire for magic to feed on, or serving the strongest master.
He shook the valkyrie harder. ‘Tell him I didn’t kill Freya. Tell him to leave me alone!’ he shouted, unmoved by her struggles. He laid his hand over her forehead. Her eyes flickered shut, and she slipped to the deck and lay there, face down in the water.
Sam re-sheathed his dagger, trembling with cold. For Thor to have his valkyries watch every port was to stretch them thin indeed. He must really be angry.
Returning to the warmth of the inner decks he collected his bag without a word to the astonished barman, and hurried down to a cubicle in the men’s lavatories. He took off his wet black coat and replaced it with the green anorak. In the shop he purchased a different rucksack, describing him as a ‘world trekker’, and piled his belongings into that. He’d put on the baseball cap, but ruled out buying a pair of sunglasses, in gloomy February.
Holidaymakers are often disappointed by their arrival in Calais. After leaving Dover, which for the most part was bombed flat and poorly rebuilt, they usually want to arrive in a gleaming port where, for preference, a man wearing a silly hat is selling wine and garlic. Not so with Calais. From the port it’s straight on to a motorway which commands views over railyards and industrial estates. The bus to the centre of town goes past advertisement hoardings, and giant steel sheds in which foothills of builder’s cement are stacked for some unhappy day when the world finds itself needing that much of the stuff. The first indication of being in another land is the red-brick town hall, make-believe Flemish medieval, with a colossal clock tower. As the more cynical tourists point out, it surely isn’t Dover Castle. But it is different.
The bus’s final destination was the town’s two stations, one international, the other regional. Sam bought a ticket and ran on to the Paris platform, catching the last train seconds before the whistle went. But surely not too soon. When would his trance on the valkyrie have worn off? Was it known even now that he’d got off the ferry in Calais?
Did he dare sleep? he thought as the train clunked out of the station. Or were there more enemies out there, waiting for him? Because of a crime he hadn’t committed? Or for some truth whose discovery had got Freya killed?
Sam resolved to stay awake.
It had been on another train journey, Paris to Orleans, when he’d first decided, all those years ago, to intervene. He’d done so reluctantly, knowing how dangerous interference was in mortal affairs.
His travelling companions were a woman in a hat and a neat suit, sitting up straight, her face empty. Either a spy or an informer, he decided in a flight of fancy. A man wearing rough, greasy clothes, with uncombed hair and dirt on his hands and face. A pair of giggling young children, pressing their noses against the window and trying to see the darkened landscape rush by. Another woman, in a shabbier suit, sat with her husband. An indelible little frown was etched on her brow.
Sam had known he would intervene sooner or later. He’d seen the cratered homes in London, heard whispers about concentration camps, witnessed the Warsaw ghetto. In his heart he knew the only thing holding him back was fear. Even now, he feared mortals.
‘Papers.’ A German soldier, speaking heavily accented French, entered the carriage. Sam’s Luc Satise ID was briefly examined, and given back. The papers of the frowning woman and her husband were inspected, however, and not returned. Outside the closed compartment door the soldier engaged in a half-heard conversation with his commander.
‘There’s a notice about them, sir…’
‘Are they the ones?’
Sam glanced at the couple, their faces now empty, hands locked in each other’s. Resistance workers. They’ve been betrayed, the soldiers can identify them.
The compartment door opened again, and the soldier gestured with a pistol. ‘You two. Out.’
They rose without a word, the fear evident in their eyes. Sam looked at their faces, at the darkness outside, and back again. Even the children had fallen silent.
The man and woman were led away towards the front of the train, their heads already bowed in the submissive emptiness of prisoners. Sam turned to his neighbour and spoke in a low voice. ‘How far to Orleans?’
‘We’re nearly there.’
‘They’re going to be shot, aren’t they?’
‘Interrogated first.’ The man seemed indifferent.
Sam rose to his feet. Clinging to the handrail in the narrow corridor, he staggered to the end of the carriage, and flung open a window. Luckily the wind was carrying the smoke to the other side of the train. Sticking his head out, he looked towards the engine. His eyes flickered shut briefly, as his mind detached itself. There was a scream of brakes, and he was thrown to one side. The train groaned under the pressure of sudden deceleration. As it juddered to a halt, Sam slipped a door open and jumped down into the night.
He ran through the darkness, keeping close to the train. Suddenly a German soldier sprang out ahead and began yelling at the driver. Sam dived underneath a carriage, crawled to the other side and continued running, keeping his head low, before climbing back up. Now there were two soldiers shouting at the train crew, who were standing in confusion by the engine, trying to understand why its oiled and efficient parts should have locked so violently in place.
Outside the first-class compartments Sam risked peering round the edge of the window. Two bored German soldiers were staring over their rifles at the silent French couple, now handcuffed, with the man already showing signs of a large bruise across his mouth.
Again Sam intervened, hating himself for a blind fool even as he did so. All four heads snapped around as he tapped on the glass. He knocked gently once more, then moved quickly back against the side of the train. The door opened, and a German soldier stuck his head out. Sam leapt up, catching him round the neck and pulling him into the darkness, digging through his mind as he went. Mortal mind, unprepared – besides, humans had never understood how to defend themselves against another’s thoughts. There was a cry from his comrade, who sprang from the carriage, gun raised. But Sam was ready to catch him in magic. As the man jumped, his leap carried him down on to the far bank, where he sprawled, one leg at an odd angle. There were more shouts.
‘Come on!’ yelled Sam. The man and woman needed no prompting and clambered from the train as hurriedly as their handcuffs allowed.
‘Quickly!’ They broke into a run, rushing blindly into the thorn-filled embankment below. There was a rattle of gunfire, and Sam felt something strike his back, spin him around and throw him to the ground. The man and woman stopped, but in a breathless, anguish-filled voice he yelled, ‘Keep running!’ They hesitated, then fled into the darkness.
Snarling with pain, Sam crawled on hands and knees through thorns and bracken, not caring as his clothes and hands were torn, and collapsed behind a tree, gasping for breath. Already he could feel his body initiating the trance that would heal the wound, but he wouldn’t let it. The automatic trance was a leftover from the days when most weapons didn’t lodge in you; bullets were different. Gritting his teeth, he set his mind to what he had to do, and kept on concentrating. Agony tore through his back, when at last the bullet was pulled free as though by a surgeon impatient of others’ suffering.
This is what comes of interfering, he thought sourly, before pitching forward on his face.
He’d woken in a place that stank of death, and knew he wasn’t out of trouble yet. His back was searing him, and his heart was only just picking up its normal beat. His body had broken from its former state merely because the trance had been snapped by his warning wards. Danger had woken him, danger which needed him to be conscious.
He was face down in a muddy pit, wearing the same clothes as before, soaked with his own blood. As he wondered wh
o he was and what he was doing there, a splash of wet mud fell across his legs. Then another. With the return of awareness, he heard the sound of a shovel, and felt more mud fall. Someone was burying him, without a coffin, in an unmarked grave.
Though every nerve screamed against it, he sat up. There was a single Frenchman burying him. In his shock the man let the shovel fall thudding to the ground.
‘Hi,’ said Sam. He could feel mud fall in showers from his face as he tried to work his parched mouth.
The man ran. Oh come on, I’m not in such a state as all that, he thought, before losing consciousness again.
The train pulled up in Paris in the small hours, and Sam was reminded how hard it was to find a hotel that stayed open late. Eventually he found a place in a side street where the girl on the desk, who was from somewhere in Eastern Europe, was nearly falling over with fatigue. He took a grungy single room under the name of Michel Lesson, choosing it at random and hoping no one would ask for proof of identity.
As the city’s clocks tolled two, he slipped into yet another strange bed in a musty room with a black and white TV and a window that overlooked concrete rooftops, and drifted asleep without even bothering to set his customary wards. He was simply too tired.
As he dreamed, his mind was full of images: of snowstorms in the Tibetan mountains, Historians, Andrews, Gails, and Freya’s blood on a brother’s hands. Though he was under several blankets, he woke shaking with cold.
The River Bookshop was next to a small church that, were it not for the sign declaring it a house of God, Sam would probably have missed. It was one of those modern churches built in the belief that all that mattered was praying, not where you did it. As such it was little more than a small office with polished floors and a few pretty pictures on the walls. But what the church lacked in personality the River Bookshop, established in the first year of the twentieth century of Our Lord, made up for ten times over.
Sam pushed open the door hung with fifty-year-old posters and heard the dull tone of the old cowbell. He looked round a shop that was evidently managed by a Collector, capital C. There were a multitude of signed copies, several first editions, a whole shelf of old manuscripts and even an original copy of Pride and Prejudice, to be sold for thousands of euros to some prodigiously rich connoisseur. A ginger cat was curled up on one shelf, sleeping peacefully. In the corner a pile of cushions marked where children sat when stories were read to them. A tray of leaflets suggested that yes, this was a ‘community’ bookshop.
The cash desk was unmanned. Sam made a point of browsing round before wandering up and ringing the little bell that stood on it.
‘Coming, coming!’
A wizened little creature, more dwarf than man, entered the room. He had half-moon spectacles on the end of his nose and, though he had long grey hair and bulged around the waist, he moved as lightly on his feet as a child. To Sam he was unmistakable – a certain shadow followed him, perceptible only out of the corner of the eye. This man, like Adamarus, like Whisperer, was one of the Fey.
‘Run this shop long?’ Sam asked quietly.
The little man looked at him, and nearly yelped, dropping his spectacles as he realised exactly what it was that stood inside his door. ‘A fair while, sir,’ he mumbled, juggling with his glasses as though they were wet soap. ‘How can I help you?’
‘I’m looking for a first-edition copy of The Whispering Game, please.’
The man jumped even more at this, his old ears pricking at a code which he hadn’t heard for many a year. ‘I don’t suppose you know the author?’ he asked in a breathless voice.
Annette hadn’t mentioned anything about authors.
‘No. I know the publisher, though. It was brought out in nineteen forty-one by a company called Moondance.’
‘What’s your interest in this book, please?’
‘I was commissioning editor.’
The man gave a nervous little laugh, even more on edge now that he knew not just what, but who, was making this coded request for a meeting. ‘I’ll try and order it, sir.’
‘I’ll be waiting.’
With a fiendish smile, Sam left the store. There was a small park a few blocks away, which he knew from Annette was the right one. He walked down to it, found a bench and sat down. Even in Paris, February was a miserable month and it wasn’t long before he was blowing into his hands and rubbing his arms in an attempt to keep warm. How long would it take to get a message to Whisperer? Would he come at all?
After a while he was on his feet and hopping around to keep warm, attracting strange looks from passers by. In his green anorak and baseball cap he wasn’t surprised. Fashionable Paris probably regarded him as little better than a street beggar. Finally he sat down again and shivered unobtrusively, meeting no one’s eyes and trying to give the impression of another lost stranger waiting for a friend who hasn’t come.
There was movement behind, then next to him.
‘You’re dangerous,’ said a voice in his ear like the sighing of the wind.
‘I’m always dangerous.’ He turned to get a better look at Whisperer. ‘Thanks for getting here so fast.’
‘I thought you might come here; it seemed the logical thing to do. I’ve heard rumours. A Waywalker is dead. The faerie whisper that it was Freya who died, and that you are being watched.’
Whisperer was an old, old spirit, like Adamarus. But where Adamarus could easily get by as a normal human being, Whisperer was pale as snow, with fingers so long, and frame so thin it seemed if you even breathed on him too hard he would shatter into a thousand shards. He wore blue jeans and a blotched shirt underneath a blue coat, which hung on him as though from the neck downwards he was a skeleton. Which, Sam reflected, he might well be.
In Whisperer’s face there was none of the boyishness that lightened Sam’s looks, and no stranger, on spying Whisperer pass by, would call him anything but ancient. There was wisdom and knowledge and time written in his unwavering pale eyes and faintly smiling lips, which, like Beelzebub’s, never seemed to alter their expression. But where Beelzebub’s features were worn with care, Whisperer’s were eroded by a look of apprehension.
Of me? Or of what the world has become around us?
‘I know spirits keep in touch at all times. There are things I need to find out.’
‘Of course. In our own way we all loved Freya. And I still remember the old days. The Moondance network.’ Whisperer sighed, with a sound like the breeze off a slumbering river on a summer’s day. ‘We were the only ones who actually did anything, you know? The others were too scared of the mortals. Or hated them, for what humankind has done. Driven us from our homes, destroyed our shrines, denied our memories. But we did make a difference.’
‘Have you any idea how many Thor’s mustered after me? I need to know how serious it is.’
‘Thor?’ echoed Whisperer with disbelief. ‘From what I’m hearing, Thor is the least of your troubles. A mindless thug whom you can beat in any game. No, what you need to worry about is the younger school.’
Sam gaped. ‘The youngsters? Why are they after me?’
‘I don’t know that they’re specifically after you,’ Whisperer admitted, ‘but valkyries and angels have been seen. I also know certain mercenary spirits have been employed to report your location.’ Whenever Whisperer spoke the word ‘mercenary’ he did so with a passion. Mercenaries, to him, were dangerous adversary spirits who hated mankind and all its works. ‘Those with connections have also engaged the services of mortal wizards.’
‘What connections?’
‘Those who spent more time on Earth. They say Jehovah was close to Freya before she died. They say that Odin has been spending less and less time in Valhalla, that he disappears to Earth for months at a stretch. That’s not common, in Waywalkers – Earth is just a resource to them, not a world. Some even say that Odin has gone to Hell, a kingdom shunned by all Waywalkers. Well, nearly all.’
Sam nodded, though his heart was pounding. If any of
his brothers were visiting Hell… ‘Why there? Are they recruiting?’
‘Possibly. Hell does a good line in Oni and Balors. There are rumours of a few Titans in certain areas too. And Waywalkers, as you know, are revered in Hell. The arrival of a Son of Time wearing a large sword and a wise expression would be enough to get up a considerable following.’
‘They wouldn’t recruit in Hell unless they were serious about getting their numbers together. Traditionally it’s where you go to look for whole armies.’
‘I know.’ Whisperer’s tone, even by his standards, was unsettling. Sam looked up sharply.
‘What is it?’
‘Firedancers have also been seen.’
Sam’s attention redoubled. ‘How many?’
‘Two were sighted in Rome. Two have been seen in St Petersburg, two in New York. We’re sure there are others.’
‘Where,’ Sam began carefully, ‘is Andrew?’ He told Whisperer what little he knew, all the while aware of Andrew as the unknown factor, to be handled like a bomb.
Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series Page 9