Hour of Need tlom-6

by Michael Pryor

  He knew that these symbols were relics, survivors from an earlier age of magic when it was less scientific, but at this stage he was willing to call on whatever help he could.

  Aubrey rubbed his nose, which was suddenly itchy, then he sat back on his heels and looked at the sky. For an instant it shimmered, but not with any colour the normal eye could see.

  ‘What is it?’ Caroline whispered.

  ‘Magic. Lots of it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Holmland lines. And it’s getting nearer.’

  ‘A good reason to move ahead with your spell?’

  ‘With all haste.’

  Originally, Aubrey had imagined himself standing, arms spread in dramatic magical mode, perfect for greeting the surprised Holmlanders. Discretion, however, told him that standing up in the middle of no-man’s-land would be an unfortunate idea, akin to volunteering for target practice in the role of target rather than marksman. He opted for the rather less imposing position of sitting cross-legged, ensuring his head was well below the level of the lip of the crater.

  Following Aubrey’s instructions, Caroline took up a position at one end of the crater, outside the diagram. He shook the photographs from his satchel and spread them in front of him, anchoring them with earth – and he came to his first hiccup.

  He couldn’t see them well enough in the dark. He needed to see the faces, and see them well, in order to use the Law of Familiarity to draw the owners of the likenesses to this location.

  Helplessly, he patted his chest in a forlorn longing for the marvellous appurtenances vest of George’s invention. If he had it, it might have included the handy cat’s eyes, neat devices that fitted over the eye to provide useful night sight.

  While I’m at it, he thought, I might as well wish for a cease-fire and a magic carpet to take us all home.

  He wasn’t about to give up because of a minor problem like this. He could summon a glowing light but was reluctant to do so in an arena where a cigarette lit for too long could attract a sniper.

  He gnawed his lip, aware of Caroline’s calm scrutiny, knowing that she’d soon realise that he’d hit a snag, but appreciating her silence. Of course, it meant he had to live up to that confidence, but that was a role he was willing to adopt.

  Attempting another spell wasn’t his preference. With the complex transference spell already packed into his memory, trying to wedge in another was fraught with danger – but he had a theory that casting a second spell in a language diametrically different from those used in the transference spell could prevent confusion.

  He had a spell in mind. He’d read about some recent experiments in using the Law of Amplification on parts of the eye in an effort to remedy sight problems. The footnote that had lodged in Aubrey’s memory mentioned one outcome where the function of the rods in the eye, the light receptors, was intensified, resulting in the experimental subjects being dazzled in ordinary light.

  Naturally, after reading this Aubrey had turned the experiment around in his mind and considered that such an outcome could actually mean useful seeing in condition of low light.

  Aubrey had a very healthy regard for his eyes. His imagination left him in no doubt that losing sight would be a dreadful blow – not being able to read, ever again? An awful fate. In normal circumstances, he would be quite happy for experiments on sight to be done by careful researchers in good laboratories. Since squatting in the middle of shell hole halfway between two armies dedicated to wiping each other out was about as far from normal circumstances as it was possible to be, he accepted the necessity to undertake such a spell on himself.

  He understood it, but it didn’t mean that he was entirely happy about it.

  Keeping a brave face, and knowing that Caroline would see through that facade immediately, he constructed the spell in his mind using Vedic, the ancient language of the Indus people, a whole continent and a sea or two away from the languages he’d used for the transference spell.

  The effect was immediate and profound, to the extent that he actually had to squint a little and shade his eyes, so bright were his surrounds. He could clearly make out every detail of the photographs, from the Chancellor’s bald head to the extraordinary array of whiskers, sideburns and beards on the faces of the other Holmlanders. Each of the men was posing proudly for the camera, chest outthrust and doing his best to present himself as the epitome of a wartime leader.

  Aubrey took the spell from his satchel and riffled through the pages. It was undoubtedly the most complex, the most convoluted and the longest spell he had ever attempted, but as he cast his eye over each element he was confident that he held it deeply in his mind ready for casting.

  That he could cast it, he was confident, but he was apprehensive about the consequences. A thin, cold voice asked if he was really sure of the state of his reunified body and soul. Would it stand the sort of backlash that such a spell could produce? He touched his chest, briefly, and shuddered at the prospect of returning to the appalling half-dead state, balanced on the edge of slipping away forever. Even with his plan to deflect much of the recoil onto the world around him, he was sure he would suffer.

  He looked up to see Caroline’s gaze on him. Her eyes were bright and fierce in his enhanced sight, unblinking in their resolve, and she broke her silence: ‘I believe you can do it.’

  It was enough. In his hour of need, it was enough. He nodded, closed his eyes for a moment to compose himself, and began.

  In a remarkably apt simile, somewhere in the middle of the lost time of spell casting, it came to him that it was like marching through an unknown city, late at night, with a thousand wrong turns available at any minute, the consequences of which were grim.

  The strain was most apparent in his mind and his mouth as they worked together to produce the language that was doing the work of wrestling the magical field, raw and inchoate, into the methodical, patterned arrangement that was a spell. As was typical for a dense spell, it began to take on a quasi-life of its own, the syllables and elements actively resisting being shaped, making the job harder and harder as it went on.

  Aubrey lost all sense of his surroundings, swept away as he was in the ordeal of spell casting that was unlike any other he’d endured. His focus was on each syllable, each word, each element of the spell as it came to be pronounced. They lined up unwillingly, testing his resolve as they waited, shifting uneasily, losing their shape and intent. It was the force of his will alone that kept them in line and maintained them in the way that he needed. Each one presented itself, was spoken clear and correct, then it was replaced by another, and another and another.

  In the magic firmament, Aubrey Fitzwilliam was making a spell, most powerful, most sweeping. He didn’t flag. He had the fate of nations and of individual people in his hands. When he saw, far away, his signature element at the end of the line of spell elements, he realised that he was nearly finished. He gritted his teeth, knowing it would be mad to waver now, so he took each element as it came and gave it its due. He spoke them and made them real.

  Finally, only his signature element was left. He uttered it, proud to have completed what he’d done.

  Then he doubled over as if kicked in the stomach. His magical senses flared. He felt as if he were caught in a vast current, one that was tearing him in all directions, dragging his limbs, his torso, his very essence. Then it surged and spread, and he had an apprehension of it moving away, a wave, a ripple spreading and being consumed by the hundreds, thousands of consciousnesses in the area.

  Including Caroline. She gasped and her eyes widened, but before she could say anything Chancellor Neumann, the head of the Holmland government, was standing in front of them.

  Aghast, Aubrey watched as Caroline levelled her pistol at the chancellor and fired.

  Aubrey reached for her, but the magical wave chose that moment to roll back and smash him into oblivion.

  56

  Aubrey opened his eyes. He regretted it immediately because every square inch
of him hurt. His eyelids hurt as he levered them upward. Even the act of regretting opening his eyes caused him pain.

  He was propped against one wall of the shell hole. A surge of panic struck him until he checked with his magical senses and was relieved to find that his body and soul were still united.

  The effects, then, of the massive spell were physical rather than spiritual. For a moment, he wallowed in knowing that he wasn’t going to die – at least not straight away – but the battering he’d received from the magical backwash soon overwhelmed that small pleasure.

  A measure of triumph filtered through the pain. The fact that he was alive meant that he’d been able to deflect the worst of the spell’s reaction onto the collective consciousness around him. The fact that Chancellor Neumann was here in front of him meant that the spell had worked, at least in part.

  Numbly, with his enhanced sight still working, he looked past his outstretched self – every movement of his eyeballs a twitch of agony – to see a dozen angry men sitting like schoolboys on the floor of the crater. They glared at him, but the most furious, his bald head a beacon of anger, was Chancellor Neumann.

  Chancellor Neumann was wearing extremely formal clothes – swallow-tail jacket, striped trousers, starched collar – and Aubrey wondered what he’d been doing when the spell plucked him away. At the opera? An audience with Elektor Leopold?

  In a land where facial hair was a point of pride, the Chancellor was a leader in more ways than one. Currently it looked as if two extremely fluffy cats had clamped themselves to his cheeks, but they were having trouble clinging, so livid was the leader of Holmland.

  The others were a mixture of middle-aged and older Holmlanders, conventionally well dressed or in uniforms that showed little sign of the wear that comes from being at the front lines. Some looked stunned while others were working themselves up to the level of self-righteous anger their leader was displaying. Aubrey recognised General Sterne and the aging Admiral Tolbeck, both of whom were composed. Gerhard Moln was near them, the industrialist who had been brought into Chancellor Neumann’s inner circle and who had become the Minister for Armaments. He was eying the sides of the crater.

  All of the Holmlanders, quite obviously, were not accustomed to sitting at the bottom of a shell hole. While Aubrey mastered his physical discomfort, they were bobbing their heads, jerking and hunching their shoulders as a hail of bullets criss-crossed just above them, humming and buzzing like angry insects.

  Carefully moving as little of his body as he could, he inched an elbow aside – more pain, red rockets going off inside his skull – and touched someone he hoped was Caroline. ‘Tell me you have a pistol trained on them.’

  ‘I do, with another prominently in my lap.’

  ‘It hurts.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘That might make things difficult.’

  ‘Things?’

  ‘Getting back to our lines, for instance.’

  Aubrey wasn’t thinking that far ahead. ‘You didn’t shoot him?’

  ‘The Chancellor? I fired over his head. It was the quickest way to get him to sit down. I didn’t want him shot by an alert Holmlander who saw someone standing in the middle of no-man’s-land.’

  ‘You will die for this,’ Chancellor Neumann said in guttural but fluent Albionish. ‘Both of you.’

  Without changing her expression, Caroline raised her pistol and fired straight up into the air. Immediately, their position came under even heavier fire, machine gun as well as rifle. Caroline didn’t flinch, but several of the Holmland generals and politicians pulled their necks in so far they looked like tortoises who’d decided that staying at home was better than going out.

  ‘We’ll die like all the young men you’ve sent here?’ Caroline asked.

  It didn’t take Aubrey’s enhanced sight to see realisation at work. Eyebrows rose, eyes widened, heads shook uncertainly. Several of the Holmlanders evidently refused to believe the conclusion that was becoming more and more obvious, and looked offended at the state of affairs.

  ‘Where are we?’ one of the generals demanded. ‘What is going on?’

  ‘We are in the disputed stretch of land between the Holmland trenches and the Allied trenches,’ Aubrey said. ‘Right where your army is about to launch a major assault, if our intelligence is correct.’

  ‘Fremont?’ another general burst out. ‘We will all be killed! We must leave this area immediately!’

  With uneasy satisfaction, Aubrey noted the confirmation that the Holmland assault was about to fall on this area.

  ‘It’s acceptable for young Holmlanders to die, but not you?’ Caroline said.

  ‘We are important men! We do not belong here!’

  ‘I’ll leave you for a moment to consider the unintended irony of that statement,’ Caroline said.

  The Holmlanders huddled, muttering, casting evil glances at Caroline and mostly ignoring Aubrey. He was glad for this. It was about all he could handle.

  ‘Now, Aubrey,’ Caroline said without taking her eyes from the Holmlanders. Her face was faintly luminous, a sheen on her skin where the burnt cork didn’t reach. Aubrey wondered if dawn were on its way, or if it was the effect of his enhanced eyesight. He was willing to contemplate that he might simply be delirious. ‘What are we going to do with you?’

  ‘That’s what Matron used to say just before she dosed us with castor oil.’ Speaking still hurt, but he felt as if he’d left agony behind and moved to a steady state, the relativity of pain being brought home in a new and interesting way.

  ‘I don’t doubt you deserved it, but that’s neither here nor there. You’ve achieved your aim, bringing these men here. Now it’s time for us to get back to the trenches before the artillery bombardment starts.’

  ‘That’s right. That was part of the plan, wasn’t it?’ Woozily, he groped for his watch, but he had trouble finding the end of his arm. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Nearly 0130. Is there anything you want to say to these men before we leave?’

  Aubrey nodded. Unwisely, as it proved, for it felt as if his teeth were about to fall out, with minor detonations accompanying each one. After a moment of intense wincing, he hunched himself until he was as upright as he could manage. Bullets continued to crack not far overhead, a reminder, if any was needed, of the peril of their situation.

  ‘Fitzwilliam,’ Chancellor Neumann snarled, ‘for a boy, you are causing us considerable nuisance. Dr Tremaine was correct in saying we should be wary of you.’

  ‘I’m flattered that Dr Tremaine thought I was that important.’

  ‘Important?’ The Chancellor laughed, a strange sound in the middle of no-man’s-land. ‘Tremaine drew up a list of potential problems. You were just below the silting up of the Auldberg Harbour and just above the shortage of rat poison in Tahlversen.’

  Aubrey shrugged. He felt he could be philosophical about such slights. ‘You’ve been brought here for a reason.’

  ‘To kill us all!’ one of the younger generals blustered. Aubrey thought he could be General Ebert, a hero of the same war in which Aubrey’s father had distinguished himself. ‘You are fiends!’

  ‘You make interesting assumptions,’ Aubrey said. ‘They probably tell us more about your thinking than mine.’

  ‘What is your purpose, then, in bringing us here if not to murder us?’ the Chancellor said.

  ‘No-one is murdered in war, Chancellor,’ Caroline said. ‘Many killings, no murders. Hasn’t that ever struck you as strange?’

  Chancellor Neumann glanced at Caroline, then dismissed her from his notice. Not a wise move, Aubrey felt. ‘I repeat: what is your purpose?’

  Aubrey sighed. ‘I want to stop the war.’

  Chancellor Neumann snorted and a laugh or two came from the more hardy of his cronies. ‘That is an easy task, not requiring our presence. Simply convince your father to surrender. The war will end immediately.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand. I
want Holmland to withdraw, to stop this warmongering. For you – all of you – to come to your senses.’

  ‘Do you think we don’t know about war?’ General Sterne called. ‘We are soldiers!’

  ‘I’ll warrant you haven’t seen a war like this. It’s a new century. War has changed.’ Aubrey grimaced as the pain in his head reasserted itself. ‘Besides, not all of you are soldiers. How are you liking this, sir?’

  Aubrey directed this question to one of those not in uniform, a thin man with a drooping moustache. His grey striped trousers were rapidly losing their expensive look. He shook his head and turned away, flinching as a chatter of machine gun fire bit into the bank of the shell hole and sprayed them all with dirt.

  Aubrey pressed on. ‘I’m not so presumptuous as to think I could give you a lesson in politics, but in this new world the generals take orders from the politicians. End this horror, all of you.’ He paused and glanced at the sky. ‘Look around. This isn’t a state for humanity. This is a hell you’ve created – but it’s a hell you can put an end to.’

  He took Caroline’s hand. She squeezed it and refused to let go, so he pointed with the other. ‘Gentlemen, your army is just over there, dug into trenches. If you keep your heads down and follow the line of wire, you should reach it. Dozens of your men have managed to. When you’re safely in their midst, look at them. Talk to them. See if this is a fit and proper condition for them. See if you can be proud of this.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Caroline said to them. ‘They are accustomed to our soldiers raiding their trenches. You don’t want to be mistaken for Albionites, but convincing your men that you are who you say you are may be difficult.’ She gestured with her pistol. ‘Go now.’