Hexwood

by Diana Wynne Jones

  At last, when the shop was practically empty except for the apples Dad was forced to sprawl in and a trodden leaf or so of spinach, one of the men ducked into the shop to say, “All loaded, Sir Fors, sir.”

  “Good,” said the tall man. “Tell the men to mount.” He drew back his sword from Dads throat and casually clanged it against the side of Dad’s head. Then he took his foot down from Dad’s stomach and strode away through the door, leaving Dad holding his head and almost too dazed to move.

  Mum rushed after him, screaming names that normally would have astonished Ann. Now she felt the man deserved every word. She saw Mum stop in the doorway and turn drearily back. “No good. There’s a whole army of them,” she told Ann helplessly.

  Ann was on her way to help Dad, but she ran to the door to look. By this time, all the men who had raided them were up on their loaded horses, clattering smartly along the road to join other groups of horses that were also piled with bundles. Most of the riders were laughing as if it were all a great joke. Two doors along, Brian, Mr Porter the butcher’s assistant, was staggering out of the butcher’s shop weakly waving a cleaver. The two boys from the wine shop were kneeling in the pavement beyond, clutching one another and staring. The bread shop ladies were standing in their doorway, glaring dourly. The fish and chip shop had its windows broken, while down the other way, Mrs Price was in tears among milk and burst boxes of chocolate all over the pavement. There was glass from other smashed shops everywhere.

  “They’ve been to all the shops!” Ann said. By this time, the whole troop of horsemen was riding away with the tall man at its head. Ann dazedly watched one man, who had a white surcoat with a red cross on it, like – and most unlike! – St George, ride past with most of an ox behind his saddle.

  He was the last. After that, the riders were gone as suddenly as they had come.

  “Help me with your father!” Mum called.

  “Of course,” Ann said. Dad looked awful. She felt utterly shaken herself. “Oughtn’t we to ring the police?” she asked.

  “Do no good,” Dad mumbled. “Who’s going to believe this? This is something we’ll have to settle for ourselves. Ann, go and see what they did to Dan Porter. If he’s all right, ask him to step along here. And those two from the wine shop too. Get all of them.”

  As Mum helped Dad, groaning and wobbling, over to sit on a crate, Ann turned to go out of the shop and nearly ran into Martin coming in. He looked awful too. He was white as a sheet, with a great bloody, dirty graze down one side of his face. On that side of him, his clothes were all torn, with blood oozing through. “Martin!” she said. “What happened to you?”

  “A whole lot of men dressed up in armour riding horses,” Martin gasped. “They came charging through the wood like they were mad or something. Me and Jim got knocked down. Jim hit a tree. I think it broke his arm. He – he screamed all the time I was getting him home.” His shocked, blank stare slowly took in the empty shop and Dad sitting panting on a crate. “What happened?”

  “Same damn lot that got you,” Dad growled. “That does it! Ann, do as I said and fetch the rest here. Anyone else who’ll come. I’m going to make sure that lot meet trouble if they try this again.”

  As Ann ran off to Mr Porter’s, all her doubts came back again. Dad seemed so suspiciously ready not to bother the police with this raid. True, it was a wild-sounding thing. But it was also armed robbery, or robbery with violence, or something, and the police were supposed to deal with that. Could the Bannus be working on Dad’s mind now?

  Reigner Five, like Reigner Four, did not bother to go to the basement for Earth clothes. He sent a robot.

  Vierran’s response was to send the robot back with a monks robe. Only Vierran and Vierran’s private sense of humour knew whether this was a comment on the round bald patch, like a tonsure, in the middle of Five’s ginger head, which he kept carefully grafted with carroty hair; or whether it referred to some other aspect of Reigner Five.

  Reigner Five had no idea it was a joke. He was preoccupied with the latest reports from Earth and elsewhere. The Organisation seemed to have gone to pieces all over Earth and no flint was coming through. There were outcries and urgent enquires all over the galaxy. He looked absently at the monk’s robe as the robot presented it and saw the garment was ideal for concealing the large number of special gadgets he was planning to take, and he put it on with satisfaction. Five had no intention of letting anything on Earth stop him, including the bannus and the Servant. He had enough under the robe to wipe out London.

  His journey was swifter than Reigner Two’s and the Servant’s, and far, far swifter than Reigner Four’s. He was brusque with every Governor and each Controller. He simply demanded the next portal open and went through it, slanting down through the galaxy at his rapid nervy stride in the shortest possible time. When he reached Albion, he was curter still. He turned his eyes about the office, saw with scorn that the steak and mustard décor was even worse than it looked in the monitor cube, and turned the same look of scorn on Associate Controller Giraldus. This man, he reflected, was slated for termination. It surprised him that Reigner Four had not done it. He had his hand raised to terminate Giraldus himself, when it occurred to him that this man was at least efficient. He would need someone reliable to open a portal for him on his return. Earth was clearly not to be trusted. They had managed to employ a crooked library clerk. And now they had collapsed in chaos and let vital loads of flint pile up, just because their Area Director and a security team had gone missing. People like that would probably open a portal on to empty space.

  So Five took his hand down, nodded coldly to the bowing Giraldus and said, “I shan’t be long. Keep your portal on standby.” Then he let himself be deposited in the road outside Hexwood Farm.

  It was early evening. Nobody seemed to be about Indeed, from the look of the dwellings along the street, it appeared to be the custom to barricade yourself in, in a most untrusting way. Wooden boards were nailed over every door and window, and further nails were strewn, point upwards, all over the road. But Reigner Five had very little interest in the peculiar customs of Earth. He swept up to the gate of the farm.

  To his surprise and outrage, the gate opened when he touched it. What had Four or Earth Security been thinking of, leaving this gate unlocked? Five edged round the crude land vehicle he found standing outside the house very cautiously indeed, but the gadgets under the monk’s robe assured him – and kept on assuring him – that this place was absolutely deserted. By the time he was inside the house, at the head of the carpeted stairs, he was sure his gadgets were right. No one had been near this place for a long time. But the bannus must be here somewhere. He swept on down, and did not bother with the squalid room below, since it was just what he expected. In the operations area beyond, a red light was flashing on something, but Reigner Five did not bother with that either. His gadgets pointed him to one of the software halls beyond and he went swiftly that way.

  The bannus was in some kind of storage section at the end, under jury-rigged cables carrying crude glass light bulbs. The oculus was alive on the front of it, showing the thing was indeed activated. Reigner Five nudged the gadget at his waist up to maximum. It protected him from the thing’s field. He halted warily in front of the thing, prepared to handle it with great care. It was taller than he remembered, nearly eight feet high, and square and black. The broken Reigner Seals dangled off the two top corners of it like absurd drooping ears.

  “Can I do anything for you?” it asked him politely.

  As soon as it spoke, all Five’s tracers indicated that this was only a simulacrum of the bannus. The real bannus was a short distance away. The thing was trying its tricks. “Yes,” he said. “You can show me where the bannus really is.”

  “Please turn to your right and continue walking,” the image of the bannus told him politely.

  Reigner Five swung to the right and marched on, further into the storage bay. It became steadily darker. He adjusted his vision and w
ent on. The floor shortly gave way to irregular wooden planks on which his feet thumped and echoed. Since his attention was all for any further tricks from the bannus, Five did not realise he was on a bridge over a stretch of water, until a lighted piece of wood flared in front of him, half blinding him. He readjusted his vision hastily and found that the flaming wood was held in the hand of a man wearing a short embroidered robe, who was standing on the bridge in front of him. The flames sent lapping orange reflections down into the water on both sides. Distantly behind the man was a sturdy, fortlike building that seemed to be dimly lighted inside.

  “Out of my way with that thing, man!” Five said. “You’ll have this wooden thing on fire if you’re not careful.”

  The man raised his flaming stick high so its light fell wider. He peered at Five and seemed profoundly relieved. “Thank the Bannus you came!” he said. “Now we can eat!”

  “What?” snapped Five. “A cannibal feast?” Let the bannus dare try that!

  “Oh no, sir,” said the man. “Nothing like that, revered sir. It’s just that our king has decreed that we wait to begin our feast until some marvel or adventure befalls. Very noble idea, sir. But we’ve been waiting now since sundown and most of us are getting rather hungry. If you’ll just step this way quickly, Your Reverence.”

  There was a cheer from the long tables as Five was ushered into the castle hall. Sir Fors, waiting by the high table on the platform as impatiently as all the rest, looked up with relief. The marvel was only a miserable, skinny monk, but it would have to do. He could not think what had possessed Ambitas to make this sudden decree. The smell of the feast he had procured with his own efforts, steadily overcooking in the kitchens, was nearly driving him mad by now.

  “Driving the cooks mad too,” Sir Harrisoun whispered irritably beside him.

  As the monk briskly followed the herald up to the high table, everyone turned anxiously to where Ambitas sat, propped up in his chair with pillows. Surely even the king was hungry enough by now to accept this monk as an adventure? To Sir Fors’s dismay, Ambitas was frowning at the monk as if something about the fellow disturbed him. Sir Fors looked at the monk again, and found that he was similarly disturbed. The fellow seemed familiar. Where had he seen that high forehead before, with the ginger hair across it in streaks? Why did he seem to know that thin and bitter face?

  Ambitas, with kingly courtesy, put aside his doubts. “Welcome, sir monk, to our castle on this Feast of Bannustide,” he said. “I hope you have some marvel or adventure to relate.”

  So here are Two and Four! Just as I might have expected! Five thought. Both of them sold out completely to the bannus, the fools! I see now what is meant by having to work through the bannus. Neither of them is going to listen to a word I say unless I put it in terms of this silly play-acting.

  “I have both an adventure and a marvel, King,” he said. “Your marvel is that I came here from – er – from lands beyond the sun, bringing a message from the great Reigners who are your overlords, and the overlords of all in this place.”

  “A marvel indeed,” said Ambitas coldly. “But I am king here and have no overlord.”

  “High Rulers whose rule you share, I mean,” Five corrected himself irritably. Old fool. “But they are overlords to you,” he said, pointing to Sir Fors. I’m damned if I see you as an equal again, Four! He searched along the fine company at the king’s table. All the ladies and half the men were unreal, inventions of the bannus. Couldn’t the idiots see? His eye fell on Sir Harrisoun. “They are your overlords too,” he said. “And the overlords of you two,” he added, pointing to Sir Bedefer and Sir Bors. All of them, Sir Fors included, drew themselves up and glared at Five. “Yes, they are,” said Five. “And it is your sacred duty to obey the orders they send. The orders they send concern the adventure I have to relate. Does any of you know a man called Mordion?”

  King Ambitas and Sir Fors both frowned. The name did ring a bell. But not much of one. They shook their heads coldly, like everyone else.

  Five had expected this. A large percentage of his gadgets were to warn him if the Servant was anywhere within a mile of him, and they all said he was not. Evidently the bannus was slyly keeping the Servant apart from his rightful masters, no doubt while it worked on the Servant’s brain. Well, two could play that game. “This Mordion is the Servant of the Rulers beyond the sun, who rule all in this hall,” he said. “This Mordion has grievously betrayed and traitorously planned to kill his masters. Therefore he has grievously betrayed all you in this hall too. Seek this Mordion out. Put him to death, or he will kill you all.”

  There! he thought. That ought to get through to them.

  “I thank you, monk,” Ambitas said. “Do you by this Servant intend to name the outlaw and renegade knight Artegal?”

  “The name is Mordion,” said Five. He was puzzled for a moment, until it occurred to him that Agenos and Artegal were somewhat similar names. No doubt this was what Mordion was calling himself now. He opened his mouth to declare that the two names applied to the same man, but found he was too late. Ambitas was waving him aside.

  “One of our knights will take up this adventure in due course,” the king said. “Herald, place the monk at table with our men-at-arms, and then let the feast begin.”

  Anything Reigner Five might have wished to add was drowned in cheering and a fanfare of trumpets. Five shrugged and let the herald lead him to a table down the hall. He suspected that it was a lowly table and that Two was deliberately being rude to his visitor from beyond the sun, but he did not mind. If he had had to sit near either Two or Four, he thought, he would have ended by hitting them. They looked so pleased with themselves and their silly mumbo-jumbo. Two particularly. What was supposed to be wrong with him that he had to sit up on pillows? He asked the men at his table.

  “Don’t you know, sir monk? The king has this wound that will not heal until someone comes and asks the right thing of the Bannus,” one of them told him. He was real, and so were all the men at this table, somewhat to Reigner Five’s surprise. Some must be the maintenance men, but he was at a loss to account for the others, unless they were the security men from Runcorn. It did no good to ask them. They looked at him as if he were mad and changed the subject. One of them told him that the bannus would be showing itself at some time during the feast. It always did on Bannustide, he said.

  Reigner Five was pleased to hear this. Let the bannus wait! The news made this ridiculous feast easier to sit through. Five was always impatient with food. It interrupted his life. And there was course after course of this feast – roasts and pastries, puddings and fruits whipped in cream, pies and roast birds, giant mountains of vegetables and pyramids of unknown fruit. It was monumental. But most of it was real. The bent yellow fruit he took, expecting its ridiculous shape to mean it was an invention of the bannus, was a true fruit. And the whole roast ox was a whole roast ox.

  He made cautious enquiries from the soldiers around him. In reply, they told him gleefully that they had collected the food as tax from the peasants. It had been such a doddle that they hoped Sir Fors would arrange for them to do it again soon. Have some wine, monk. That was taken as tax too.

  “No wine. My religion does not permit,” Five said austerely. He wanted his head clear. He was puzzled. There was something about this real food and this tax-raid which made him feel that a few of the facts he was basing his plans on were not correct somewhere – but he could not work out which facts they might be.

  While he puzzled about it, the bannus entered the hall.

  Five was aware of a hush first, and then a sweet scent. It was an open-air scent that seemed to blow away the heavy smells of the feast and fill the hall with an expectation of bluebells, budding oaks and willows, lichen on a heath, and flowering gorse – as if all these things were just round the corner, ready to appear. There was singing too, faint and pure and far off. Very nice! Five thought. Pretty effect indeed! He swung himself round on his seat to see where it was coming from.<
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  A great chalice was floating up the central space between the tables, shedding its otherworldly light on all the faces near. It was a massive flat cup that seemed to be made of pure gold, wrought in patterns of great intricacy, and it was covered with a cloth so white and delicate that it impeded the light it shed barely at all. The music passed to solemn chords. On the platform, the knight with the key of a Sector Controller was standing up to meet the chalice, and his face was dazzled with reverence.

  The bannus floated gently right past Reigner Five, Got you! he thought He pressed the button concealed in his sleeve and released a small-scale molecular disintegrator straight into the heart of the chalice.

  For an instant, the chalice was wrapped in great wing-shaped flames. There was an explosion.

  Reigner Five was congratulating himself, when he found that it was he that was wrapped in flames, and himself the centre of the explosion. For a thousandth of a thousandth of a second he held together, long enough to realise that the chalice was only another image and not the bannus at all. It had fooled him somehow.

  Then everything went away and he was lying on some kind of heath at dawn. His robe was stiff with a ground frost that had turned the heather to grey lace. He was no longer sure of anything very much. But he got up and staggered away. They don’t get me so easily! he thought. Not me!