Harvest

by William Horwood

  ’I’ll leave you men to chat,’ Arthur said, jogging off towards the fence.

  He hoped he looked ridiculous.

  He did.

  The marines chatted, gazing occasionally his way, too polite to say anything about him, more interested in dogs, new postings and sport.

  The portion of the fence he needed got nearer, the lights atop them brighter, making what lay beyond impossible to see. But he knew it was there. It had been there for over five thousand years. It was there still on Google Earth. It was a pity it was just beyond the fence. As for the one that was further off, he could not see across the first field for the glare.

  He headed for his spot and began his routines, this time punching at the fence as if boxing. Then pressing against it, cutters in hand.

  Snip by snip he cut three-quarters of a rough rectangle, first the uprights to two feet high, then the horizontal. He did not bother with the bit along the ground; the bit he had cut would just bend outward and he could crawl over it.

  He turned twice to check if he was being watched. He was not.

  It felt as if it took a long time and that at any moment he would be seen. The last snip completed, he pushed the wire outward, though with difficulty, for the points snagged each other. But then it was free, lolloping forward, and it was time to go.

  He resisted the temptation to look back, went down slowly on his knees, did some silly exercise a couple of times which enabled him to push the ’sac through, and then, clumsily, with difficulty, he pushed his way through the hole.

  Cut wire caught at his vest, which tore before he was free. Then he was through and up and looking round to see if they had seen.

  Astonishingly they had not, or not quite.

  His usual guard turned slowly his way and stared and looked away.

  Arthur had the presence of mind to bend down and push the wire back, re-entangling the jagged ends with each other so the hole was not obvious. Then he turned, walked a few paces so sudden movement did not make him obvious, and then made his way quickly across the ground towards the centre of the vestigial Iron Age circle defined by paler grass – a distance of about seventy yards.

  As he reached it he heard a shout, then a bark and a whistle. But at first he could see nothing because of the lights in his eyes. As another shout came, his eyes finally made out the pale grass and he turned into the ancient circle it formed.

  What now? Dexter or sinister? Feel the circle’s power, turn and turn again into its strength, Judith, help me, remind me . . . you did this best of all . . .

  As he began running round inside the circle, trying to remember how to work the portal and make the entrance into the Hyddenworld, there was a thump against the wire fence nearby. The dogs had arrived and stood snarling and scrabbling to get at him. They were seventy yards from the hole he had made and began quartering back and forth, trying to pick up his scent.

  He circled once, then twice, and one of the guards arrived, also on the far side of the fence.

  As Arthur turned sinister in the circle again he felt none of the drag of power he knew he should, or the brief rush of pain through his body. Nothing, nothing at all.

  One of the dogs got near to the hole but turned back a yard or two from it, beginning a new quarter again.

  The guard began examining the fence, running towards where Arthur normally exercised.

  Breathless now, Arthur decided to try the other circle. He set off across the field towards the stile in the distance.

  He heard a command behind, the snarling bark of the dogs and ran faster. He reached the stile and heaved himself over it and carried on.

  There was a shout behind him: ‘Professor, stop! You can’t . . . !’

  I damn well can!

  He reached the far side of the second field, climbed over the next stile. He hoped he might see signs of a circle in the grass but the light was now bad and he saw nothing. But his spatial memory was good and he headed where he knew the second circle must be. He hoped that once he reached it he might feel its power, know its lines, lean his being into the whorl and wend of it, let it take him.

  A dog leapt and he kicked at it and it fell back on the far side of the stile as he dropped over the other side.

  Another scrabbled at the stile, snarling, whining, and desperate to get at him.

  As it forced its way up the first step and through he heard a whistle and shouted command.

  Then: ‘Professor, you can’t get away! Please, stop!’

  If they had called off the dogs, fearful of elderly academics suing the base, he had a chance. He took it, stumbling forward once more, the field rough under foot. Another shout. He looked back for orientation, veered left and with his last strength pulled himself forward, leg after heavy leg, knees buckling, head forward.

  ‘Professor Foale!’

  He felt the sudden power of the ancient circle, turning dexter at once to gain its power to himself, straining for it. He heaved off his pack and held it tight to his chest to let its hydden power add itself all the more to his weaker energy, closed his eyes before turning sinister just when he should.

  The guard, the human, entered the circle too.

  Arthur remembered something Stort had told him.

  I believe, he had said, that the last thing you should think of is not the place you want to go, but the thing it is you seek . . .

  The guard lunged towards him as Arthur thought of the gem of Autumn.

  Help me . . .

  Then he felt the power surge into him, painful and frightening until he began flying into the Hyddenworld. Then he was falling, he was rolling in a whirl and spiralling out of the orbit of the torches’ lights away from the circle, to dexter of the man who had almost reached him, all big and murky; and then he was scrambling, the great grass round him; he was running, he was sliding, he was breathing deep, deep gulps of air.

  ‘Pro . . .’

  The guard’s cry fractured and broke away, flying that way, Arthur this, human no more.

  The human world shot away behind him and the Hyddenworld began to welcome him in.

  ‘Sinister,’ he heard himself mutter desperately, ‘dexter . . . and, and, and . . . what is it that I seek?’

  He heard himself say ‘gem’ but the word was torn from his mouth and stretched away behind him like the white silk scarf his father once let him wear.

  Then that was gone and the only thought that came to his retreating mind, over which he found he had less and less control, were two orbs of light dancing in the dark: headlights maybe, torches probably, their beams searching for him, one or other nearer and nearer until suddenly they shone sharp and deep into his eyes, blinding him, taking him, the shadows peripheral now as he was sucked away and out of reach of the puzzled guards who were left alone and bemused in a henge they did not even know was there.

  ‘Professor?’ they said weakly.

  But Arthur Foale was gone.

  13

  BACK TO BRUM

  ‘Keep down and stay silent,’ ordered Jack, coolly. ‘If, as is possible, I come under attack, I will go forward and engage, and Stort will lead you others to safety, with Katherine taking up the rear. Terce, you will stay with Meister Laud and help him along as best you can.’

  Terce nodded.

  Meister Laud look anxious and confused.

  ‘Jack . . .’ began Katherine.

  He looked at her sharply and shook his head. This was no time for doubts or indecision. Each must know what they were doing.

  ‘Is that understood?’ he said. ‘If I am attacked, you flee and hide. I will find you. Yes?’

  ‘Yees . . .’ they agreed hesitantly, one by one.

  ‘Stort?’

  ‘Indeed,’ he said calmly. Where others’ safety was concerned he could be relied on.

  ‘Katherine?’

  She nodded, grimmer than all of them. Perhaps she had most to lose.

  ‘So, now . . .’

  It was four days since they had left Abbey Mortai
ne. The Fyrd had not followed them then but they had run into several patrols along the way and the nearer they got to Brum, the more frequent the patrols became.

  As did evidence of Fyrd brutality.

  They had come upon several corpses of young hydden males who Jack guessed had offended or resisted them.

  They had, as well, found the violated corpses of two females, probably a mother and daughter, their spouses or some other male family members nearby, mutilated.

  Their journey had ceased to be pleasant in any way. It was now a grim exercise in survival through a landscape that felt increasingly tense as local hydden trusted no one and made themselves scarce, while even the birds, as Katherine observed, fell silent and the vegetation and woods curiously sullen.

  It had become the strange and untoward August the village sages predicted when they began their journey three weeks before.

  They might have wished that they had returned straight to Brum from White Horse Hill, but had they done so, how much might they have lost? The experience of the Scythe of Time on the Malvern Hills had put a sense of urgency into the quest for the gem; while the strange way they had made their way to Abbey Mortaine, and their rescue of the Quinterne in the form of Meister Laud and Terce gave them all the clear sense that the quest was on the right track. What these things meant they did not yet know, but time shifts and musica seemed of the essence, if only they could understand them better.

  Now there was a new reason, if a nerve-racking one, for being glad of the diversion. Their route north of Mortaine was by the Gloucestershire–Warwickshire railway line, the same one that Dodd had continued on after they left him. The first twenty miles had proved safe enough, the problem being not the Fyrd but Meister Laud’s ailing health.

  The climb out from Abbey Mortaine had been hard on him, the trekking since harder still, and grief at the violent loss of his lifelong friends, as the other choristers had been, had taken him over. He was tired, listless and in pain and it was all Terce could do to keep him going.

  After twenty miles, the Fyrd’s presence was ever greater, especially along the railways lines, and Jack realized that circumstance had put them into the position of being unseen observers of what he had feared might happen since he and Stort had wrested the gems of Spring and Summer from the Imperial Court in Bochum in July: a punitive invasion of Englalond.

  Now, as they reached the main lines into Brum, or branches of them, evidence of the invasion increased. He and Katherine began making notes of how and where the Fyrd were disposed, their numbers, weaponry and supply lines.

  He had no doubt that his counterparts in Brum itself – Igor Brunte, Meyor Feld, and the redoubtable civilian leader Lord Festoon – were collecting and collating what data they could.

  ‘That’s all very well, Jack,’ warned Katherine, ‘but data’s no good if it dies with you.’

  The night before they had reached the little-used railway line between Henley-in-Arden and Turner’s Green, in Warwickshire. It was cross-country, but the direct route from Henley was blocked by Fyrd.

  It was now a murky early morning and their safe detour had taken them to an embankment, on the other side of which was the London– Birmingham rail track.

  They watched as Jack crawled up it to see if the line was clear, it being impossible to see from so far below, and no Fyrd had been seen on top. If it was, then they might pick up a train at one of the stopping points and travel undercroft into the heart of Brum. This was a common form of transport for experienced hydden, where they travelled on narrow boards fixed under trains, lying there for the duration of a journey.

  He went very carefully. The bank was made of stones that shifted at the slightest pressure and the sparse vegetation that grew on it was dry, the seed husks of fumitory all too ready to spring open at the slightest touch and reveal his presence to any Fyrd who might be patrolling along the track.

  They watched his slow progress up the steep bank, stiffening when they heard him make the slightest sound. There were bushes at the top and they lost sight of him in the foliage, except for his feet and the end of his stave, which trailed behind him. He was there a long time before he came back down, shaking his head.

  ‘Useless,’ he said. ‘There are Fyrd down there too, near the signals where the train stops and we might have boarded.’

  Right on cue, they heard a train approach from the direction of London beyond the embankment Jack had just descended.

  ‘It would be so easy . . .’ said Stort, who now wanted to get back to Brum as much as the others.

  ‘Easy to be seen,’ said Jack firmly. ‘We’ll have to find another way.’

  The Kapellmeister’s condition took a turn for the worse that morning, caused no doubt by the stress of the past days. His chest hurt, the sores on his feet began to weep and bleed, he was unable to keep warm, moaning and whispering, with his fingers fretting at the covers they put on him.

  Worse, he stopped being able to sing, his throat being painful and dry, and this caused him great distress.

  ‘He needs the ministrations of a goodwife,’ said Stort. ‘I do believe I know the best . . .’

  He was thinking of his own, Goodwife Cluckett, his stern and forbidding housekeeper, who had nursed him back to health at the beginning of Summer; and later Jack as well.

  ‘She’ll know what to do with him,’ said Stort, ‘if only we can get him to Brum.’

  The sojourn under cover confirmed beyond doubt that the line they had now reached had been commandeered by the Fyrd for the purpose of getting troops rapidly into Brum. They saw reinforcements arrive with each train that stopped at the signal above them. The numbers were increasing all the time.

  They were heavily armed, more than was needed for ordinary patrols. They were also making themselves more obvious than seemed necessary.

  ‘They want to put off other hydden using the train,’ said Katherine.

  ‘And they’re succeeding,’ said Jack. ‘The sooner we get back and warn Brum, the better. The question is, how?’

  It was a question answered in an unexpected way.

  They decided to leave in the dead of night, having rested up through the day.

  All seemed well until they reached that part of the path that was within the light-fall of the M1 motorway, which ran parallel with the railway and the path they were taking to get further north.

  They were hurrying along, trying to escape the light above, when they heard a shout from the road’s parapet.

  Fyrd!

  ‘Move!’ said Jack.

  But they were plainly visible and there was no obvious way of getting out of sight quickly.

  ‘Stop and wait!’ the Fyrd called down.

  ‘Run!’ said Jack.

  Next moment, a crossbow bolt whizzed past Katherine’s head.

  ‘Faster!’

  A second came hissing down and hit Stort’s ’sac.

  If they had been able to run under the motorway and out of the Fyrd’s line of sight they would have done so, but a hefty boarded fence topped by barbed wire stopped that.

  Then a shadow appeared ahead and the bulky form of a hydden.

  Jack ran forward with his stave raised, as did Terce, and they might have struck the hydden down had he not said, ‘This way, quick!’

  He stood his ground, risking being fired upon by the Fyrd above before hurrying them through a gap in the fence into shadows.

  When they were all safe, they turned to see who had intervened.

  ‘Greeting, Mister Jack and friends!’ he said.

  ‘Who . . . ?’

  It was impossible to make out his face in the dark.

  ‘Dodd’s the name and it’s Dodd again. Been watching and saw you earlier coming off that embankment. Reckoned you’d eventually come back this way . . .’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘No time for chat, not here. Them up above will come on down, but it’ll take them time. Follow me close, it be a windy sort of way, but it’s the best out of here now.
There are many Fyrd about in these parts.’

  He led them away by a route that they could never have found by themselves, under the motorway and back again, on through the night, the Fyrd left behind.

  At his first stop Dodd said, ‘I suppose you’re still wanting to get to Brum? Me too! There’s only one way from here that’s going to be safe, which I imagine you have already worked out?’

  ‘Well,’ said Stort, ‘failing the rail, and the road not being easy for hydden unless you know the ropes, which we do not, I fear I am thinking that we’re in for a boat trip.’

  Katherine and Jack looked at each other. Stort was about to lead them into the unknown. Unfortunately it looked like he had an ally in Dodd, who was nodding vigorously at every word he said.

  ‘Try us,’ said Jack.

  ‘All we need is a light watercraft, a large outboard engine and some fuel, and a watercourse between here and Brum. Then . . .’

  ‘No,’ said Katherine.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Jack.

  ‘Be bold!’ cried Stort, ‘and the world is yours.’

  He turned cheerfully to Dodd: ‘You can’t mean a river, there is none direct to Brum. You must mean a canal. The Stratford-upon-Avon perhaps?’

  Dodd laughed conspiratorially.

  ‘You know it, Mister Stort? Tell ’em the treat we have in store for ’em is bold!’

  ‘I know it from the towpath only. And what I know is that it’s too problematic were we to attempt to take a boat. Too many bends, too many locks. No, if we are to be bold it must be the Grand Union.’

  ‘Which is where from here, exactly?’ asked Jack reluctantly.

  Stort turned to Dodd and raised a questioning brow.

  ‘Not far, one and all. Less than a mile from here and there’s an underpass for cows which will serve our needs should Fyrd be on the track overhead, which they were last time I looked.’

  ‘Why haven’t you gone that way already?’

  ‘You can’t work the Union without a crew and that’s what we’re going to be. And with humans about at weekends a weekday is better.’

  ‘And who’s to be the skipper?’ asked Jack.