A Quantum Mythology

by Gavin G. Smith

  ‘The children of Andraste will catch and consume us,’ Kush said.

  ‘Then let us hunt them,’ the angry Iceni repeated.

  ‘On their territory? For them to have killed this many, and to have done so quietly, there must be at least fifty competent warriors, probably a lot more,’ Tangwen said. ‘I do not think you would be doing the hunting.’

  ‘Coward!’ Sadhbh spat.

  ‘Indeed,’ Tangwen mused. This time she felt Kush bristle on the other side of her. She reached over to touch his arm before he said anything.

  ‘We have no choice but to march on,’ Bladud said. ‘We will bring the people closer together, and there will be no sleep for the warriors until we make it into Cornovii territory.’

  ‘That is a long way from here,’ Nerthach said gravely.

  ‘Do you still counsel allying with these people?’ Tangwen asked Kush.

  ‘I would rather have them with us than not, but Nerthach is right – I do not think they will ally with us.’

  ‘Aye, but will you walk into the woods with a known coward,’ Tangwen asked, grinning.

  Kush smiled back and glanced over at Sadhbh. ‘Depends on the coward.’

  ‘There must be someone with us who knows of these people,’ Tangwen said, turning to Bladud. ‘We will walk among the people and see who we can find.’ Then, after a moment’s thought: ‘Are you a great king, Bladud?’

  Bladud narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Nerthach was laughing.

  ‘Why?’ Bladud asked.

  ‘You must prove your greatness with generosity.’

  It was an impressive gift indeed: a skull that Bladud had personally taken from a warrior who had caused the Witch King several scars. The skull had been lined with beaten silver to hold Bladud’s beer, after it had been picked clean of flesh and preserved with cedar wood oil. Kush had muttered something about ‘civilisation’ when he saw the skull. It wasn’t a word Tangwen knew. Kush and Germelqart tried explaining it to her. It sounded quite frightening to her, and something to be fought against.

  Her idea had felt like a good one when she was standing around with the other warriors. Now, out among the trees, she was less sure. It might have been a bright and sunny day, but the canopy provided by the dense forest was thick, and they walked through the woods in cool, green shadow interspersed with beams of sunlight shining down through the leaves. It was quiet in the woods. Birdsong and the cries of animals sounded distant. She found enough traces of tracks to confirm there were people nearby, but unseen.

  They had walked among the refugees, asking about these lands. The only person they found who knew anything was a young man, little more than a boy, from the eastern Dobunni.

  It had taken a while for the boy to work out where he was in conjunction with the stories he knew. When he did, he became terrified. He said that no people lived in the woods or even entered them. That it was a place of fierce forest spirits who would feast on the skin of those who trespassed there. He spat and made the sign against evil before he would utter their name. He called the spirits the gwyllion, meaning ‘night wanderers’. Tangwen had silently scoffed at the stories. Now, under the trees in the midst of the quiet woods, she was less sure.

  First the Lynx Women, and now this. Tangwen was growing sick and tired of being treated like prey.

  ‘I have to leave you,’ she suddenly said.

  ‘What?’ Kush demanded.

  Tangwen handed him the skull. ‘I’m sorry,’ she told him. ‘You have to believe that I will be watching over you.’ She was looking all around them. She had spent so long watching over others that she had forgotten how to be on her own, how to hunt.

  ‘What do you expect me to do?’

  ‘Walk into the woods,’ she said, not paying him much attention.

  ‘Like leaving out meat for lions?’

  She looked at him. ‘I promise you that if you die, I will die, too.’

  ‘But we will be claimed by different gods, and go to different places, and I will not be able castigate you for your foolishness,’ he told her, only half-joking.

  Tangwen continued to hold his gaze, conscious that he had not yet given his permission.

  ‘Go, you don’t have to die with me.’ Kush smiled at her.

  Tangwen nodded, then turned and headed off into the woods. She could hear the sound of running water. That was what she had been looking for.

  Kush could not make up his mind about what he thought of all the trees he had seen since he arrived in this land of mad men, women and monsters. It was so different from his arid home, but there was an undeniable beauty to it. What the canopy of green leaves did to the light made him feel as if he had moved into a different realm: the realm of the gods.

  The walking was aimless but not unpleasant. His faultless sense of direction told him he had walked directly away from the survivors and held that course for the better part of a day. Kush decided this was far enough. He stopped and leaned against a tree, an ancient lichen-encrusted oak. He grabbed the sack he had slung across his back with a piece of rope and opened it, pulling out some bread, cheese and a small wax-sealed earthen jug of wine. He had been saving the wine. Kush knew that protecting the survivors was the right thing to do, and for the most part he liked the people of this ridiculous land, even if they thought him a demon, but it felt like a long time since he had been on his own. He needed that now – even if it meant that his head would be taken, his blood drunk and his skin flayed off.

  Kush was thinking of Hanno. When Hanno first bought him, and again when he freed him, Kush was given a cup of blood to drink. He was told this was part of a rite to seal the deal made between him and Hanno. He never learned whose blood it was. He had drunk it on both occasions, and everything had changed. He became stronger and faster, he learned to pick up languages more quickly, he could see further and, like Germelqart, he could see at night. He had heard stories of heroes who had drunk the blood of the gods, whispered tales of Sumer and the milk of the goddess Innana. It was this power that enabled Hanno to trade further than any other Carthaginian trader dared. The gods, particularly Dagon, had blessed him.

  The blood he drank had also made Kush’s hearing far superior to those who had not been similarly blessed.

  He had been aware of them for some time now, and he resented them disturbing his thoughts and his dinner. He put down the bread and the jug and placed his hands on the haft of his bronze axe. The axe had been pulled from the ruins of Troy. It, too, had been blessed by the gods.

  ‘I am as happy to give gifts and to share bread and wine as I am to die at your hands standing on a pile of your dead,’ he said in the difficult tongue of the Pretani.

  There was no answer. He was concerned that, his excellent eyesight notwithstanding, he had barely seen a leaf move, let alone glimpsed one of these gwyllion, if that’s who they were. Even with his exceptional hearing, he had no idea how many they were.

  ‘I am Kush the Numibian. I am no demon. Reveal yourself so we can talk or fight. To do less shows fear,’ he said, climbing to his feet, his axe already held loosely in one hand.

  There was a crash followed by the sound of flesh hitting flesh, hard, and branches splitting. A strangely coloured, misshapen creature rolled out of the undergrowth. No, Kush realised, not one creature, but two fighting. He moved towards them, shifting his axe in his grip but still unwilling to strike first. They were difficult to make out. One was a grey colour and had horns like a ram. He suspected that the Muileartach’s children had caught up with them until the horns fell off. The other was mottled brown, with patterns on his skin that reminded him of the scales on a serpent.

  They separated and the serpent-like one rolled into a crouch, an iron-bladed dagger at the ready, hissing. It took Kush a moment to realise it was Tangwen. She was wearing only a loincloth and a strip of hide to hold her small breasts in place. She had painted herse
lf with mud and then used some kind of dye to add the black, mottled patterns to help camouflage herself. It wasn’t just the mud that made it difficult to recognise her. Her tongue was out as she hissed, and she looked less like the scarred young woman he knew and more like an angry serpent.

  The other figure was coated with grey ash, much of which had been scraped off during the fight. He was naked except for a narrow hide belt and a quiver across his back. His body was lithe and lean, filled out with wiry muscle, and various complex spiral symbols had been painted over the ash with a flaking, dry, brown substance that Kush was fairly certain was blood.

  The gwyll, if such he was, held a club of stone in one hand and a knife in the other. Kush had learned in the arena to look for fear on which he could capitalise. There was no fear in the gwyll’s eyes, but he did not look happy to be facing Tangwen. Tangwen’s knife darted out again and again, like a snake striking. The blade opened slashes in the gwyll’s skin as she wove from side to side, seeking an opening to finish him. To Kush it looked as if Tangwen was lost to the snake. The man scrambled backwards, leaping a fallen log. He was trying to avoid the dagger’s blade and waiting for an opening to strike.

  ‘Tangwen,’ Kush said. She ignored him, trying to press her attack home. ‘Tangwen,’ he said again, with more urgency in his voice. The gwyll was still backing away from her. He swung his club at the hunter, but her weaving from side to side had confused him and she was not where the weapon fell. ‘Tangwen!’

  This time she hesitated. The gwyllion were all around them: naked ash-covered warriors painted with symbols of blood, rams’ horns on their heads. They carried various weapons – bows with arrows nocked, spears, clubs, hand axes, daggers and even a few swords. Their weapons were made from wood, stone, flint and bone. Only a few were of bronze, and fewer still were made of iron. Kush could see why they might be mistaken for forest spirits, but all he could smell was other humans.

  ‘Remember why we are here,’ Kush told the scarred woman. She looked at him uncomprehendingly, then, slowly, understanding returned to her contorted features and she relaxed. She took a deep breath and looked around warily. The warrior she had slashed was watching her, similarly wary, but there was no fear, hatred or anger in his expression.

  ‘We would treat with you,’ Kush said. ‘We bring gifts.’

  A shadow fell across him and Kush looked up. Standing on an earthen rise in the woods, the sun behind it, was a figure. Kush shielded his eyes with his hand, but even then the form was only a silhouette. The robed figure looked old and quite frail, and was carrying a staff or spear. A mantle of antlers rose from its head.

  28

  Birmingham, 3 Weeks Ago

  Nanette Hollis was her own biggest critic. To her mind it was one of her strengths. She felt it was the main reason why she’d been accepted on the course she wanted at the Birmingham Conservatoire. It was this perfectionism, this drive, that she knew would in time lead to a job with a prestigious orchestra, and finally to becoming virtuoso violinist.

  Despite being her biggest critic, she knew that the music she was playing at the moment was truly beautiful, so beautiful it was making her cry. The music was beautiful despite – indeed, perhaps even enhanced by – the disturbing discordant undertones in the complex counter-melody. She knew there was a story in the music. It was about someone in extraordinary pain who could also see, and was tormented by, the presence of extraordinary beauty.

  And it had just come to her. She just started to play it, completely improvised yet fully formed. She had worked extraordinarily hard on all her previous compositions, but this one arrived straight out of the air, as they had when she was a child. She’d always thought that her father’s fear of her improvised tunes was jealousy. Now she wasn’t so sure. The tears in her eyes were partly a response to the beauty of the music and partly fear. She might have been playing the music, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been created somewhere else. She kept reaching for it in her mind, but it was beyond her understanding. She thought of Paganini, and the accusations of being possessed by the devil levelled at him during his life.

  She wasn’t sure how long she’d been playing in the empty practice room, but there was blood on the strings now. Somehow she would have to try and remember the strange, haunting double tune, one melodic, the other discordant. She knew she would never play it as well as she had this night. She was weeping. And then it was gone. She just stopped playing.

  She stared through the practice room window over the Queensway, where traffic was still heavy and slow-moving despite the lateness of the hour. She could see the side of the neoclassical town hall.

  Nanette felt empty, bereft, hollow inside, as if something had left her. She reached over and used the mouse to stop the recording software. Then she wiped the tears off her face with the arm of her woolly jumper.

  ‘I’ve been watching you for a while. I heard you when I slept.’

  Nanette jumped, let out a small scream, felt her heart skip a beat at the unexpected voice. She swung around. He was tall, thin, hairless, dressed like an undertaker or a Mennonite traditionalist. He was holding a hat in his hand, gaze downcast, not on her. He looked the picture of humility. She assumed he must be some Internet stalker, someone who’d heard the music she posted online.

  ‘What are you doing in—’ Nanette started.

  ‘Please don’t spoil this with banality,’ he said. His voice was rich and deep, with just the hint of a central European accent. ‘I think this was your finest moment. I am … It was just so fortuitous that I was here to witness this.’ Then she noticed the tears on his face.

  ‘Look, arsehole—’ She started reaching for her phone. He shook his head sadly and then strode towards her, reaching for her. She opened her mouth to scream.

  ‘What has this got to do with us?’ du Bois asked as he walked across Centenary Square towards Baskerville House, a renovated modern facade superimposed on pre-World War Two mock-imperial splendour. A council building originally, it was now expensive city-centre office space.

  Grace didn’t answer. He glanced down. She was wearing headphones. He glared at her until she took them off.

  ‘What?’ she asked innocently.

  ‘Is it my turn to point out that you can do that in your head?’ he asked. ‘Not to mention you can multitask – and I mean really multitask – so you could be listening to whatever noise you call music and still be courteous enough to answer my question.’ Du Bois looked genuinely irritated. Grace was losing the fight against the smirk she was trying to suppress.

  ‘Do you think there’s any way you could sound more like someone’s dad?’ she asked. This only succeeded in irritating him further.

  ‘You know I don’t like it when—’

  ‘Sorry, Dad,’ she said, grinning.

  ‘Grace!’

  ‘Malcolm!’ Even this she managed to make sound like a daughter mocking a parent by using their name. Grace decided she was pushing him a bit too hard. ‘Anyway, it’s not “noise” – it’s your stuff.’

  He glanced down at her again as they approached the police cordon. He was aware that Grace had sent a file to his phone.

  ‘It’s the violinist from the Conservatory,’ she said, pointing in the Conservatoire’s rough direction with her thumb.

  ‘The missing girl?’ Malcolm asked. Grace nodded. ‘You think it was Silas?’

  ‘I don’t know, but there’s something about the music she posted. A lot of it’s just the boring stuff that you like—’

  ‘That would be actual music,’ du Bois told her.

  ‘But some of her own stuff …’ Grace started. Du Bois glanced down at her. She looked a little disquieted.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked, but she was saved from replying by their arrival at the cordon.

  They showed their IDs and made their way past the line of suspicious, resentful police, then pushed t
hrough the revolving door and into Baskerville House.

  The reception area was a marble mixture of modern and neoclassical that made du Bois wince. The decor was further spoiled by the presence of a number of West Midland Police armed-response officers crouching behind cover, aiming MP5s and G36s into the interior of Baskerville House. They were surprised to see du Bois. They were even more surprised to see Grace.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ du Bois said.

  Baskerville House had a large open space at its centre, surrounded by five floors of glass-fronted open-plan offices. There was a bloody smear against the glass on the fourth floor overlooking the open area. Du Bois could just about make out the body slumped against the window.

  ‘I don’t know, is the answer,’ Grace told him. They were making their way back towards the fire escape on the fifth floor having observed the floor below. They hadn’t caught a glimpse of the gunman yet. With all the glass walls around, the gunman was obviously keeping his head down to avoid police marksmen.

  ‘Is this intuition?’ du Bois asked, surprise in his voice. He glanced over at Grace. She looked less than happy. ‘Grace?’

  ‘Have you got anything better to go on?’ she snapped. ‘This Renaissance arsehole is running rings around both of us.’

  Du Bois stopped and they both crouched next to a desk partition.

  ‘More early modern,’ du Bois said. ‘Are we killing this guy because he’s hurt people? Because he’s sick? We’ve had this conversation before. We can’t solve all the world’s ills.’

  ‘We could if we tried,’ Grace said, very quietly.

  ‘What?’ du Bois demanded, though his augmented hearing meant he’d heard her perfectly well.

  ‘We’re in the middle of a hostage situation! You want to have this conversation right here?’

  Du Bois just stared at her.