Winter

by William Horwood

  39

  IRREVERSIBLE

  The moment the formal part of the spousal was complete and the Bilgesnipe began the festivities in earnest, Blut, Festoon and Bohr, wanting some quiet and warmth, moved thankfully inside. The old inglenook had proved indestructible and a merry fire was burning there, though much of the chimney above it was gone.

  Their mood being sombre and their foreboding great, there was a general inclination for more serious conversation. With this Katherine and Barklice concurred. As too did Ingrid when, flushed from dancing, and bright-eyed from the strong brew, she came to be with Bohr.

  Niklas Blut, his hands stretched out towards the fire, said, ‘It is not since I was with the late and very much missed Arthur Foale that I have had an opportunity of talking with humans, and never with three at once, that is including you as one, Katherine, if I may for this purpose. I count you, Doctors Bohr and Hansen . . .’

  ‘Please call me Ingrid.’

  . . . as the other two. Let us be honest. Tonight is but a respite from reality, is it not?’

  They all conceded that it was.

  He took off his spectacles, wiped them and clamped them back on his face, the orbs of glass as bright as ever, the eyes behind them as sharp.

  ‘We cannot know what our wyrd and the future hold,’ he began, ‘except that, according to hydden tradition and belief, if the gem of Winter is not found and returned to the pendant on or before the night when this dark season gives way to spring . . .’

  ‘You mean the pagan spring, which starts on the first day of February?’ queried Bohr. ‘That feels early and odd to humans!’

  ‘Which Arthur also often remarked,’ said Stort. ‘My Lord Blut is not saying that spring begins at the stroke of midnight: there is some latitude. But what hydden scholars of myth and legend all agree is that at the seasons’ turn, between the hours that run from sunset to sunrise of the day in question, the gem must be returned to the Shield Maiden . . .’

  His voice faded and he looked despairing – and they all knew why.

  ‘My dear chap,’ said Festoon, ‘I will not ask if you have yet found the gem . . .’

  ‘I have not,’ said Stort.

  ‘. . . or whether you know where it is . . .’

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘. . . or even if you have some idea . . .’

  ‘No idea at all, my Lord. My mind on that subject is a void and I would rather not talk about it.’

  ‘I was trying to say,’ continued Festoon sympathetically, ‘that I will not ask those questions, natural though they are, but I will make this observation. Time is running out!’

  ‘Thank you for the reminder, my Lord,’ said Stort tartly. ‘Now I would much prefer we spoke of something else!’

  ‘Certainly,’ added Barklice ingenuously, quite missing Stort’s desire not to be reminded of the pressures on him and so confident in his friend’s abilities that it did not occur to him that he might be in a state of self-doubt. ‘It does seem as if there’s no time left! Why, by my chronometer’ – and here he foolishly pulled the instrument out – ‘you have only – why, goodness me, where has the time gone? Only . . .’

  Katherine kicked him on the shin.

  ‘Really, Barklice, I don’t think it’s helpful to talk of it,’ she hissed.

  But Stort’s nature was such that, stressed though he was, where his good friend the verderer was concerned he was inclined to forgive anything. He knew there was no hydden so good-natured yet canny as Barklice, nor one who in extremis, when it came to helping his friends find the right ways and routes forward, would go the extra mile to help them.

  With a shake of his head and an exasperated smile he said resignedly, ‘Mister Barklice is quite right to point out that we have barely a few days left. He knows very well I have been avoiding the issue.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Blut, who had wished to raise the same point himself but had not been quite sure how.

  They waited in expectation of a response from Stort.

  ‘The truth?’ he finally said in a low voice. ‘The truth is I do not know where to begin, even though we have so little time left. It was the same with the gem of Autumn, but on this occasion much more is at stake, since we may all soon cease to be – and there is even less time this time, I believe. In fact, how much time is left, Barklice? Tell me the truth.’

  ‘Less than a week, Stort, and that’s assuming the time runs its normal course, but as you very well know it has not been doing that these past weeks and months. Like a glass pitcher full of water which gets broken, it could run out rather quicker than we expect.’

  Barklice could hardly have put the situation better.

  ‘Yes, time moves in fits and starts just now,’ agreed Stort. ‘Why? Because the Mirror is cracked and time messed up. If I look despondent, I am. When we finally got back to Brum, I had hoped I might start, as I did with the other gems, with the Chamber of Seasons at my Lord’s Residence. The images of the seasons there were filled with clues. But that is all gone, lost in the ruins of the Residence. And we were witness to the burning of the imagery of Winter itself on the fire this evening. If only I had realized it earlier, that great work of genius, or the part we needed, might have been rescued. How much I might have learnt studying it, even in its ruined state. But I realized all that too late.

  ‘That is a loss that may be fatal, for there lay the only hope we had of finding the clue that is so sorely needed. Now the end feels as if it is drawing near and I feel quite oppressed and unable to think with any clarity just when I need most to be able to do so. So yes, I would be much obliged if we might talk of other things!’

  He turned to the Emperor.

  ‘My Lord Blut, you said just now that you have missed the opportunity of talking to, and learning from, humans since Arthur’s death?’

  ‘I have. He often stated the opinion that the End of Days, which is what we now fear so much, is the result of human interference with the Earth and, perhaps, the Universe. His view was that the situation was irreversible.’

  Bohr nodded and said, ‘And I can assure you all that he was not the only one. Many of us humans have long believed that to be the case. Even assuming we knew what to do to save the Earth, which I’m not sure we do, it was always going to be too little, too late. The die was cast and the will was not there to try to change the result. In the end it came down to two simple truths: humans are too selfish and greedy to think beyond the short-term.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Blut, who seemed rather less gloomy than some, as if he sensed that somewhere there might be a way forward if only they could help Stort to see what it was, ‘which gives rise to two very different questions. It is these I would now like to ask, if it is not too inappropriate to do so on an occasion such as this. After all, the opportunity may not arise again.’

  But outside on the wharf it seemed the moment was fast approaching when the bride and groom were to depart. Katherine got up to investigate and came back at once and said with a smile, ‘Pa Mallarkhi is about to make the final speech, which gives us a little time . . .’

  ‘The first question, then,’ continued Blut, ‘is if we believe that the position is irreversible and the End of Days is nigh, why do we even hope the quest can possibly have a positive outcome, even assuming Stort finds the gem?’

  ‘Because . . .’ said one, his voice petering out.

  ‘Because . . .’ began another, with nowhere else to go.

  ‘Because we believe it,’ a voice said from behind them, ‘and we must believe it, even to the very end.’

  It was Jack, come to the wedding at last. He looked tired and in need of a rest and a drink and he wouldn’t sit down.

  Instead, glancing meaningfully at Katherine, he signalled that he needed a discreet but urgent word with her.

  ‘Because we believe it,’ Blut repeated quietly as she got up with the excuse of ordering more drinks, ‘Yes, I think that is the answer I wanted to hear. I think there can be no better one. Good! Now
for my second question . . .’

  ‘What is it, Jack, what’s wrong?’ whispered Katherine, slipping over to him.

  ‘We need to leave, now,’ he said.

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Now. But I don’t want to cause a panic which I will if I try to gather together those who are leaving with us. So who have we got here . . . ?’

  ‘I don’t understand, Jack.’

  ‘It’s now, Katherine, now, but there’s no time to tell you why. We have to go.’

  He looked pale and shocked but only because she knew him so well did she gauge the real depth of his concern.

  ‘Who do you want to come with us . . . ?’

  ‘Stort, of course, and Barklice will be needed. Emperor Blut, Terce . . . where the hell’s Terce? We need him. Bohr as well, though Mirror knows why.’

  ‘Ingrid?’

  ‘I suppose so but we have no time to argue about it.’

  ‘Who else . . . ?’ he muttered, looking around.

  ‘You, of course,’ she said.

  He hesitated and half shook his head.

  ‘You, Jack, you’re coming to wherever it is.’

  ‘I may not be able to . . .’

  ‘Jack . . . !’

  ‘Ah Jack!’ called out Blut, the drinks having come and the conversation resuming. ‘I have a second question!’

  ‘Find Terce,’ Jack said in a low voice. ‘Have him ready but out of sight . . . I’ll bring these others.’

  Then, turning to Blut, Jack said, ‘Your question is, my Lord?’

  Blut turned to Erich Bohr as Katherine went outside unseen.

  ‘Doctor, I daresay you have a better grasp of human history than most of us, so I shall direct this one at you: at what moment in the historic past of human history might what we hydden call the End of Days have still been reversible? Ten years ago? Twenty? One hundred? Perhaps back at the start of what you call the Industrial Revolution?’

  Bohr stared at him, seeking an answer to a question he had never been asked before.

  ‘You mean a general period of history or a specific one moment in time?’

  ‘I mean the question as I ask it and you wish to interpret it.’

  ‘Well . . . I would have to think if . . .’ said Bohr uncertainly.

  ‘It must depend on all sorts of things and how you define “reversible”,’ added Ingrid.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘A very long time ago,’ said Jack, his voice tense. ‘Probably you’d have to go back two hundred years to before the Industrial Revolution to be certain that, if humanity had taken a different direction, then . . .’

  ‘Humans being human,’ said Bohr cynically, ‘you’d have to go back whole millennia! They have always been on a road to self-destruction. It’s just we seem to be its final witnesses.’

  ‘Stort?’

  ‘I have and can have no answer to such a hypothetical question, my Lord Emperor. Did you ask it of Arthur himself?’

  ‘Ah! I wondered who would ask that!’ said Blut. ‘Yes I did.’

  ‘Did he give you an answer?’

  ‘Not one that I understood. I thought he might answer it as we seem to be trying to do, broadly, or in terms of inevitability, as Jack has. He said something very different.’

  The noise outside swelled, there was clapping; the moment of departure was almost on them.

  ‘Well?’ said Stort.

  ‘He said that it wasn’t a question of history so much as human will. He put it as Bohr seems to be doing: suggesting that as a species Homo Sapiens is innately self-destructive and will never find a solution. In those terms, he said, the end is indeed irreversible. But his time in the Hyddenworld had taught Arthur a different way of seeing things. We are, he said, part of the musica and the musica is positive, always finally positive.

  ‘It needs, Arthur suggested, but one individual in the whole world to sing a different song and if it can only be heard, all can change. Naturally I asked him if he thought there had been a moment when that “song” might have been sung. Or, in other words, had there been a moment when the intervention of a single mortal might have made the difference needed to reverse it all. He thought a long time and said that maybe there had been many such moments, but in his lifetime only one and that, probably, a final one.’

  ‘And what moment was that?’ asked Bohr, very curious.

  ‘He gave me a date, indeed a precise date and time, but since I am a hydden and he was talking about human history it meant nothing to me. I asked him to explain. But very soon after that we were rescued by Jack and I’m afraid the opportunity to ask him again for an explanation of what precisely he meant slipped away.’

  ‘A specific date,’ exclaimed Stort, ‘how interesting! But what might that possibly be?’

  Just then their deliberations were interrupted by the fizz and roar of a rocket. At the same moment Jack saw Katherine outside, hurrying a bemused Terce behind the crowd to the street-side of the Duck.

  Jack rose impressively and said in a low, commanding voice, ‘Gentlemen and lady, I need your attention and I need you to trust me. There is no time for argument or for discussion. It is necessary, in fact essential, that we all leave now. We need to do so singly and discreetly, starting with you, Emperor . . . You will find Katherine on the street outside with Terce . . . follow them . . . tell her not to hurry . . . and please, “now” means now.’

  Blut knew Jack well enough that a full explanation would come later but that meanwhile they should do as he said. He slipped out, and since the crowd was facing the other way no one noticed.

  ‘Lord Festoon and Stort, you’re next,’ said Jack.

  When they had gone Jack turned to Barklice: ‘Now you, Barklice . . .’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere without Bratfire.’

  ‘He’s fine, he’s waiting for you already I’m sure . . . Go! And finally Doctors Bohr and Hansen . . .’

  As they left Jack turned towards the crowd to make sure no one was looking, gratified to see that most were Bilgesnipe. They, more than most, knew how to look after themselves.

  Over their heads he glimpsed Arnold leaping nimbly to the helm of the white wedding craft, and paused a second more to say a mute goodbye. He raised his hand in salutation as more rockets and fireworks began to go off and Arnold turned the craft expertly beneath a shower of golden sparks until, with a wave and a shout, they were gone.

  ‘Goodbye, my friend,’ said Jack, ‘good luck . . .’

  Then he too was gone, after the others, to try to find a way to save their lives.

  40

  HUNTER AND HUNTED

  The encounters of Colonel Reece and his men with the hydden had been little short of disastrous.

  First, the captive inadvertently netted at Woolstone had escaped from under their noses. At Woodhenge his best men had been left injured and bewildered by hydden they hardly saw. In Birmingham they had lost several men without really knowing how it happened.

  Now, the greatest disaster of all, which overshadowed all the others. The Huey UH-IN helicopter which was his main asset and only realistic means of escape from the city had exploded two hundred yards behind him, which had seemed inexplicable until he realized that once more the hydden had got the better of him.

  Colonel Reece’s rage turned toxic and his need for revenge overrode all reason and training. It was a moment that had been a long time coming – not for minutes and hours, nor days and weeks, but for years and decades, back to his teens, long before he ever heard of the Hyddenworld.

  Back then, when he was sixteen, someone – he knew who – tried to shoot him out in the open, from behind. It was a very good shot, from a great distance, but not a fatal one. It nicked his ear and nearly took his eye, burying itself explosively in the rock and soil in front of him.

  A month later, one afternoon in winter, in the Montana snow and supposedly shooting for elk, Reece set off to hunt down his would-be-killer. He did it slowly, methodically, like their dead father had taught him: h
e was hunting his own brother.

  The shot that nearly killed him was the remaining proof he needed to confirm his suspicions that it had been his brother who had killed their father. Fearing that Reece knew, he had also tried to kill him.

  Bastard.

  Now Reece wanted to enjoy the process of hunting him as prey, so he did it cruelly, shooting first to frighten, then to graze a leg and next to shatter a hand. Not the right but the left, so his brother could still shoot.

  When his brother shouted Reece’s name in the dark, Phil Phil Phil, it was the beginning of the fearful pleading of one who knows he cannot win and likely will soon die. Philip Reece began to feel alive for the first time since his father died.

  Bastard.

  Reece spent that afternoon and far into the night, right until first light, hunting his kin-prey, hating him, loving it, his blood racing with anticipation of the penultimate, perfect, shot. The one that was going to slice his temple and nick his ear and bury itself right in front of him to mirror what happened before. To lull him into thinking that was all he intended.

  Phil . . .

  The sound of hope in that last cry was sadistic bliss to Reece. Two minutes later, as the sun rose slanting across Flathead Lake, lying in the blood trail he had been following, Reece aimed a final time, his hands rock-steady, his eyes alight with sunlight, his sense of power absolute until, pulling the trigger, he watched his brother’s head explode.

  That was then.

  But revenge was bitter and left a bitter taste.

  Killers do not escape their killing.

  Hate never left Reece, though he held it in check. Training turned the poison into a drive to be better, better than better, better than the best. He used the hate to rise higher through the ranks. But hate and anger, held inside, show outside: they make a mouth thin, make eyes dead, make a life withered and bleak as frozen water in a dyke. Yet this was what steadied his hand, stilled his breath, cleared his mind and enabled him to take his time and shoot his sniper shots.