‘Ah,’ Bladud said. ‘I was going to speak to you about that. This is Tangwen of the Pobl Neidr – she escaped from the wicker man. She has need of the bow, and I will compensate you for it.’
‘Pobl Neidr? Catuvellauni weaklings. That’s why they were in the wicker man.’
Tangwen didn’t think she was going to get on with the other woman.
‘Tangwen, may I introduce Sadhbh of the Iceni.’
‘You will be hiding while these others die, then?’ Tangwen asked. She knew of the Iceni. They were a warlike tribe from the lands to the north of the Trinovantes, who in turn bordered Tangwen’s people’s lands. Tangwen suspected that had the Iceni been less warlike, the Trinovantes would have troubled her people more. As it was they spent a lot of time and resources defending their northern borders from the aggressive Iceni.
The other woman bristled. ‘We will be watching—’ she snapped.
‘And reporting back to me,’ Bladud said. ‘I have more than enough swinging cocks and prideful warriors. Do not let these warriors’ sacrifices mean nothing. We need information.’
‘I’m going as well,’ Tangwen told them. Sadhbh opened her mouth but Tangwen got there first: ‘Keep your people out of my way.’
Bladud started to say something, but Nerthach was at his side.
‘It is time to go,’ the big warrior told his rhi and began to all but drag him back up the hill.
Tangwen turned back, but the other woman had gone. Behind her the warriors were mounting nervous steeds and coaxing them up out of the trench. Tangwen cursed her own foolishness. Then she walked between the flames of the pyres.
She walked into the woods, all but blind because of the fire. She knew that if any of Andraste’s spawn were nearby, her lack of night-sight would get her killed. She found a place to hide, then lay down and waited for her vision to return.
The woods were very busy tonight. She could hear the sounds of the warriors – the chink of metal, the creak of leather and wood. The warriors were advancing in a staggered line, experienced enough to control their nervous mounts. She watched one ride by close to where she hid. His polished and honed iron blade was caught in a beam of moonlight that had pierced the thinning autumn canopy of leaves. The sword blade looked as if it was glowing for a moment, and Tangwen thought of Fachtna.
When she was happy she could see as clearly as she would be able to, when she was happy she had been still long enough for the woods to get used to her, she started to move. She whispered a prayer to her father, and another to the night. She tried to move as she thought the other creatures of the forest would. It was only then that she realised what had been irking her, what felt odd about the forest: there were no noises other than the sounds of the horses. The warriors riding through the woods would disturb the local animals, but there should be noises further afield. Bats, owls, wolves and even bears were all night-hunters, but she heard nothing of them. The Lord of the Woods has warned them, she thought, and then wondered why she hadn’t heeded the same warning.
If the Iceni scouts were out there with her, she couldn’t hear them, which meant they were good. She started trailing the warriors who were ahead of her now, moving as if she was hunting them.
She heard noises the like of which she had never heard before. There was movement and lots of it; it sounded unnatural, too large for any normal creatures. She heard the warriors’ voices, they spoke as though they were trying to suppress their fear, a few shouted with false bravado. She continued moving forwards, flitting from shadow to shadow, an arrow nocked on the bowstring, for all the good it would do her.
Ahead of her it looked as if the entire forest was moving of its own accord. She glanced down and found the ground alive with crawling, fast-moving life. She could not make out what the creatures were, but they looked wrong. Larger, more twisted shapes, little more than shadows, moved through the beams of moonlight that broke through the forest canopy.
She could see several of the warriors on horseback advancing in a broken line, shields in one hand, longspears in the other. She moved closer still, though the fast-moving carpet of crawling, warped life made her nervous.
She heard screaming, forced herself to turn slowly so sudden movement didn’t give her position away. She saw one of the horses rearing. Its rider had dropped his spear and was desperately trying to control the animal. Living things surged up the horse’s legs from the moving forest floor. She watched as the flesh and then the bones of horse and rider were stripped and consumed. The rider’s cries only lasted a moment.
Emerging from the trees, which even now were beginning to change, warp and move of their own accord, were mockeries of life. She saw strange and horrible creatures that were patchwork fusions of other life, swollen to enormous size.
She heard battle cries, turned back to see a warrior charge something that looked like a tree with a mouth, four legs which ended in cloven hooves and flailing branch-like tendrils. A tendril flicked out and a man’s head tumbled through the night air. The horse ran by the thing, but more branch-like tendrils dropped down from newly moving trees and tore the creature off the ground. Chunks of horseflesh rained down on the seething, moving earth. Tangwen flinched at the sound of bones splintering, as blood sprayed the tree-thing’s bark-like skin.
The night air was full of the sounds of tearing flesh and human screams. She looked down and saw lines of tiny creatures, part insect, part lizard and snake, even part bird, moving across the ground. The closest was almost upon her. They had too many mouths, legs, pincers, stings, fingers. It was enough for her. She ran.
Tangwen hit something solid and living. She tumbled to the ground on top of it, losing her bow as she fell. She managed to suppress a cry as the thing beneath her fought violently. She yanked her dagger free. Wide, white eyes stared up at her. The face was dark, woaded to aid with concealment. Tangwen stayed her hand, though it took her a moment to realise she had almost stabbed Bladud. She climbed off him, grabbing her bow.
‘I had to see,’ he whispered. Tangwen held a finger to his mouth and gestured towards the hills. She didn’t help him up. Instead she sheathed her dagger and nocked an arrow to her bowstring.
Bladud was getting to his feet. The staff was gone, as was the armour. He wore his dark robes, and his sword still hung from his hip. As the last of the screams was cut off suddenly, he started running back towards the hills. Tangwen followed him, continually glancing behind her. Suddenly she grabbed him and dragged him to the ground by the root structure of a tree.
‘Be still,’ she whispered.
Something landed with a thump nearby. Tangwen was all but lying on Bladud. She could see over the root and remained still – she knew it was movement that gave you away. She heard a shuffling noise. Slowly it crept into sight. What looked like a single, massive, powerful leg was in fact two legs fused together. A single withered arm ending in long claws grew from its muscular torso. A mouth too big for its head was filled with rows of strange, sharp-looking, half-circle-shaped teeth. It had an oversized nose, a huge single eye, and instead of hair it sported a mane of black feathers.
Tangwen swallowed hard and tried not to wet herself. Bladud had gone still beneath her. The thing was sniffing the air. Tangwen stared at the abomination, afraid that it would hear her heart hammering in her chest. She felt Bladud shift beneath her, his hand reaching for his sword. The creature stopped shuffling and stood stock still. Tangwen willed Bladud to stop moving but he didn’t. Suddenly the creature’s head jerked towards them.
Tangwen knelt on Bladud, drawing the bow and loosing before Bladud had a chance to move and spoil her aim. She had aimed for the eye, and at such close range she was good enough to hit her mark. But the creature had crouched at the last moment and the arrow hit the top of its head, skidding across the hard bone of its skull. The creature leaped high into the air on mutated leg muscles. Tangwen dropped the bow and moved off Bladud, d
rawing her dagger and hatchet.
Arrows filled the air. The creature practically landed on Bladud as he tried to get up and draw his sword. He started to cry out but managed to stifle it.
Tangwen sensed rather than heard movement behind her. She spun around and almost swung her hatchet at the lynx-headed form of Sadhbh. The other woman was lifting a short sword to parry when Tangwen stopped herself.
‘Fools,’ the other woman spat. She still clutched her bow in her other hand.
Bladud disentangled himself from the corpse and stood up. ‘So they can die,’ he muttered, looking down at the thing. ‘This was a man once.’
‘We need to go now,’ Sadhbh hissed.
‘No,’ Tangwen said to Bladud. ‘Look.’ The arrows were melting as they were pulled into the wounds, which were already beginning to seal. Then the one-legged thing started to move. Even Sadhbh was staring at it in horror. She grabbed Bladud and all but pulled him away.
‘I had to see,’ Tangwen heard Bladud mutter as Sadhbh led him back towards the hills.
They ran into a furious Nerthach, who soundly berated his rhi for giving him the slip. They climbed the hill and crossed down into a broad, flat valley of woods and farmland.
Eventually Tangwen caught up with the other survivors, who were trailing behind the warband. As the sky started to turn red in the distance, Tangwen found herself walking beside Germelqart.
‘What does Brenin Uchel mean?’ Germelqart asked.
‘High King,’ Tangwen said. ‘Why?’
‘I think this Bladud seeks to rule over all the tribes,’ the navigator told her.
22
Birmingham, 4 Weeks Ago
Du Bois was meandering along the side of the Grand Union Canal, checking all around him. His blood-screen was doing pretty much the same thing but on the molecular scale. Grace and du Bois had spent the better part of a week scouring the canals of Birmingham and further afield, looking for Silas. The city might have had more miles of canals than Venice, but Grace had decided that they lacked some of the Italian city’s romantic appeal. Other than a few dead rats they had found nothing. Grace quickly grew bored of checking the canals, but something kept dragging du Bois back to them.
They continued seeding the city’s rats, but still nothing had come of it. Grace suggested that their quarry might have only used the canals on that particular occasion, or even that he was taking the time to come in from much further afield. They dropped some extensively genetically engineered koi into the canals, but they discovered as much as the nano-seeded rats had.
At first du Bois found the canals a depressing place. Many of the factories that backed onto them were derelict, overrun by weeds and covered in graffiti. The canals looked like a graveyard for the city’s past industrial glories. Then he started noticing the redevelopment. He began to recognise common images in the graffiti – codes of some sort. He found secret gardens of plastic statues, modern-day groves of some unknown postmodern religion analogy. They were the history of the city on display, a kind of living archaeology telling its story better than any dry museum exhibit, for those who cared to look. The canals weren’t really a place. They were woven between places. They were the back doors, a strange borderland. Perhaps that was why he kept returning to them looking for Silas.
Du Bois found himself thinking about one particular piece of graffiti a lot. It wasn’t actually on the canal side, but on a garage attached to one of the nearby buildings. The image was of a hand, but the fingers had eyes, and the nails were mouths with teeth. Du Bois wondered what the artist knew about his world, even if it was only subconsciously.
Du Bois recognised the sound of the motorbike before he saw it. Ahead of him a narrow road bridge crossed over the canal, and just behind that was a much higher, dark brick rail bridge. Grace brought the Triumph Speed Triple to a halt and looked down along the canal towards du Bois. Du Bois gave her a wave, but he could tell by her body language that she was less than happy.
‘What’s up?’ he asked when he’d climbed the steps up to the roadway.
Grace’s riding was one of the few things that still managed to frighten him. She pulled into the taxi lane in front of the ugly brutalist concrete building that housed Birmingham New Street, the city’s main train station, and braked hard. Du Bois climbed off, trying not to let his irritation show. He handed her the helmet, walked to the edge of the raised taxi lane and looked down on the platforms. A train had been cordoned off and a tent erected over the platform next to it. Grace came over to stand next to him, removing her helmet. Her Mohican was a flattened mess on her head.
Du Bois noticed a group of people of various ages surrounded by a loose cordon of police. He pointed at them as he and Grace walked past, making for the escalator that would carry them down to the platforms beneath the main concourse.
‘Witnesses, would you believe?’ Grace told him.
Du Bois gaped at her incredulously. ‘We’re not going to have interview them, are we?’
‘I think they’ll all tell the same story – for reasons they can’t explain, they all stood up and exited the carriage as one, leaving a man they can’t describe and the victim in the carriage alone.’
‘He did this publicly?’
Grace nodded. ‘I’ve got the police taking blood samples from them. I suspect we’ll find they were slaved and their memories modified.’
‘This could be good,’ du Bois said. Grace gave him a questioning look. ‘Does this not strike you as overconfidence?’
‘No, I think this is actual confidence.’
They reached the platforms. Like the exterior of the building, they were mainly ugly concrete architecture, and the whole area was dimly lit by flickering electric lights. Pillars supporting the main concourse were interspersed along the platforms. Despite the sun shining outside the station, the covered platforms had all the charm of an ugly underground car park.
Du Bois and Grace walked past the forensic team, who were taking off their protective crime scene suits. The forensic team glared at them angrily as, without any protective clothing, it looked like du Bois and Grace weren’t even trying to preserve evidence.
‘They want to make a case,’ Grace said quietly. Both of them knew that wasn’t going to happen.
‘Did they leave the body in situ?’ du Bois asked. Grace didn’t say anything. Instead she pushed through the well-lit tent the forensic team had set up, which somehow looked more cheerful than the actual platforms themselves, and into the railway carriage murder scene. Du Bois followed her and saw the body for himself.
The victim was an attractive young man, if a little gaunt. He had long dark hair, and du Bois suspected he had taken himself very seriously when he was alive. In fact, du Bois mused, he looked exactly like the sort of person Grace would spend time with, and then complain bitterly about it after the fact.
‘He was pretty,’ Grace said. Du Bois tried not to let a smile creep across his face. He glanced at her. She didn’t appear to be letting this one get to her quite as much as the last. She was capable of killing ruthlessly when she had to, but their pursuit of Silas was creating too many reminders of what Hawksmoor had done.
Du Bois leaned down and looked at the thin line of red bisecting the man’s head. Almost absently, he reached for the tanto at his hip. The folded steel cut into his skin and he released the blood-screen into the air, programming it to look for evidence with a thought.
‘He took the brain again but it’s neater,’ du Bois muttered to himself. Grace was concentrating, collating, searching and then downloading relevant CCTV footage.
Du Bois reached into the man’s coat, looking for – and finding – a wallet, which he extracted carefully. Rigor mortis was still hours away, and he didn’t want move the body too much in case the top of the man’s bisected head fell off.
‘Robert Jaggard,’ du Bois said. He sent the instruction to
his Circle-modified phone to find and download everything it could find on Jaggard. He pulled the phone out of his jacket and took a picture of Jaggard for the image-recognition routines he was running.
‘You know you can do that in your head, right?’ Grace asked.
‘I don’t like doing that.’
‘It slows you down.’
‘When it matters I’ll do it in my head.’ It was a conversation that they’d had many times before.
Du Bois’ blood-screen was coming back with nothing. Another blood-screen, presumably Silas’s, had already sanitised the area.
‘Look at this.’ Grace sent him CCTV footage. His phone buffered it. ‘Just run it in your damn head,’ Grace said irritably. Du Bois opened the connection in his mind and the images uploaded instantly. As he did this he took a vial from his pocket. With a thought, he changed the vial’s shape and pushed the needle end into Jaggard’s cold flesh. It took blood and tissue samples from the body. Du Bois knew he was going to find that Silas had paralysed the man’s body but left him aware. The nerve endings would be intact so that his victim could experience what was happening to him. Absently du Bois wondered why this atrocity felt so commonplace. Why didn’t it bother him so much any more?
As the samples confirmed his suspicions he ran the CCTV footage, spooling through it quickly. There had been no footage of him getting on or off the train at any of the stations.
As the train reached Birmingham, rolling on raised tracks past the rooftops of houses, over factories, shops, motorways and canals, all the passengers had stood up and started filing out of the carriage. Jaggard, who’d been reading, had looked up, frowning, and then glanced out of the window, presumably to see if they were arriving at a station. Eventually he returned to his book.
Du Bois’ internal systems were cleaning up the resolution of the image. As he reviewed it, the grainy footage was becoming clearer. He watched the long, thin, black-clad arm reach in through an open window and unlock the carriage door. Somehow it reminded him of the expressionist films that had come out of Germany between the two wars.
A Quantum Mythology Page 33