‘Well, the Territorial SAS they do.’
Harry whistled. ‘Bloody ’ell, Battley, you’re a fuckin’ close one!’
Ridley, checking his massive gun, chuckled. ‘Glad to have you aboard.’
Neville shrugged. ‘That was a few years back, mind. Quickest way up’s through that copse, I reckon.’
Jess had expected to have to lead the way, but Neville set out with such assurance, shepherding Harry, that she gratefully dropped back beside Ridley. Harry was an unsteady beginner, but his animal reflexes – ‘and ’is low-slung arse!’ as Neville pointed out – helped him stay on his feet. Ridley had no balance problems, but kept trying to ski as if he were on a sports piste, sailing ahead of the others on downward slopes and having trouble stopping. Only the wind-rush concealed Harry’s ungainly clatter and Ridley’s entanglements with trees and bushes. When the breeze dropped for a moment there were none of the usual small sounds of a wood, and no animals scuttling through the undergrowth – just the thump of snow falling from over-laden branches, and the faint, eerie music of rippling icicles. The wind bit more harshly as they began to pick up speed, but after a few minutes all of them were hot and sweating in their parkas, and the weapons hung like lead bars on their shoulders. Jess, more out of practice than she had realised, found the muscles behind her knees turning to red-hot wires, and was vastly relieved when Neville turned to signal a halt behind a heavy thicket. ‘Reckon that’s Temple Covert up there – that line of trees on the rise.’
Ridley, scarlet in the face, could only nod and put his finger to his lips. Neville nodded back. ‘Uhuh. Don’t want to scare ’im off –’
‘Scare?’ grunted Harry, pulling his scarf back up over his raw nose.
‘Or … alert … anyone … else,’ panted Ridley. ‘If he isn’t there we work around – reconnoitre … if he is …’
‘Use our ruddy initiative!’ said Neville.
‘No!’ Jess flared. ‘We wait, and we watch! We agreed, remember? We only show ourselves if he needs help, or …’
‘Or ’e’s not ’imself,’ Neville nodded. ‘Fair enough. Let’s go. Stumm, remember, Harry.’ Harry managed not to make a single sound until they crested the rise and came in among the gloomy knot of ash trees that was Temple Covert. Then there was a splintering creak and snap of wood. Neville rounded on him furiously. ‘Broken your ruddy ski?’
‘It weren’t me! It were … down there, I reckon.’ Everyone swung round, staring down into the gloom ahead, holding their breath to listen. There was another loud creak and crash, and a momentary flicker of orange light leapt up. Without another word they crept slowly forward, hunkering down on their skis among the sparse bushes. They came to the lip of Temple Dell – and froze, staring, as if the snow had run into their bones.
Within the shallow dip the snow had been cleared away from the low foundation walls of the temple, and brushed completely away from the huge altar stone. On this stone a tall man was working furiously, piling up stakes, pieces of wood and dig debris into a massive heap that was already alight. As they watched, he uprooted the landscaping company’s signboard, broke the thick post over his knee and threw it onto the flames. Sap popped and sputtered in the raw timber. ‘What’s –’ began Neville, but Jess clamped a hand over his mouth. The man turned, and in the firelight she saw clearly that it was Hal – or his double. He was pulling off his parka …
Now they had stopped moving the wind was whipping through their sweat-soaked clothes, and for the first time Jess became aware of the ice caked in her eyebrows and in the hair that her skiing hat left unprotected. Neville’s moustache was pure white. Yet Hal was calmly stripping to the waist. ‘ ’E’ll catch ’is bloody death!’ whispered Neville. ‘That fire won’t ’elp – I could use it right now, dressed an’ all!’
‘Maybe we should bring him in, Jess,’ said Ridley in her ear. ‘He does look, well, disturbed …’
‘No!’ she hissed. There was a moment’s silence. Below them the fire crackled, damp wood sizzling and remnants of snow hissing away into steam. Then, far away in the wood, almost at the edge of hearing, came new sounds, as if something were awakening and stirring. They had heard no birds, but there was a sudden loud flutter of wings, a patter of falling snow, and a harsh caw from high above.
Ridley shrugged nervously. ‘Okay. It’s your show.’
Jess grabbed his arm. ‘Look! What’s he doing now?’ Again the red-bearded man climbed onto the altarstone, paced slowly round the fire, and stopped facing the apex of the stone, the north end of the ancient temple. He spread his arms wide – and shouted. The wind was rising, rushing among the trees, but his voice, deep and resonant, seemed to ride it.
‘Sounds like German or summat,’ muttered Neville.
‘Danish, maybe,’ said Ridley. ‘Must be raving.’
‘Can it!’ Jess pushed her woollen hat back off her ears. ‘Morth-vig – that’s Old Norse he’s shouting!’
Neville gaped. ‘Old Norse? Viking? You understand ’im?’
‘Not my subject – but I might if you shut your goddam mouth!’ Neville touched his forelock, bowed, and shook his head at Ridley. ‘Something about law – a murder – Jesus! He’s calling a door court!’
‘A what?’ choked Ridley.
‘Trying to remember – his lectures. A sort of Icelandic trial – no, like sticking a person with a subpoena, a summons. He keeps saying it over – calling someone …’ Her voice died. They had all heard the name, howled aloud in a voice that rang with defiance and contempt, flung in the face of the bitter wind, the icy, deadened rows of trees, the sullen banks of snow. ‘Hrafn! Hrafn Rimkonung!’ Raven, Raven the Ice King.
‘Ek skora ther, Hrafn Rimkonung, til holmgongu!’
Jess was almost out of the bushes before Ridley could pull her back. She grabbed at his parka front with tearing strength. ‘We can’t let him! He can’t – he wouldn’t have a chance – not in a holmgang –’
‘What the hell’s that?’
‘I’ve ’eard of it,’ muttered Neville. ‘Call it an Irish lawsuit – no ’olds barred. Trial by fuckin’ combat.’
Ridley stared down aghast at the figure below, small against the rising fire. ‘We’d better get him in. Like enough he’s gone a bit gaga and nothing’ll come of it –’
‘Summat already ’as,’ growled Harry. ‘That bloody wind’s gone and dropped. Just like that!’ The air, suddenly stilled, was growing chill and clammy. In the silence, very faintly, Jess heard a soft, distant ring, a church clock striking an uncertain hour. The darkness seemed to grow heavier, to flow up and around the hill like a black wave. It gathered around the little circle of dancing orange light as if to overwhelm it utterly, but the man stood motionless, arms folded, looking down across the clearing into the northern slopes of the wood. Following his gaze, Jess saw the faintest flicker of pale light appear and grow, swirling like liquid moonlight. Harry swore softly. ‘That’s all we needed. Friggin’ mist!’
‘Not just mist,’ said Ridley, and there was a deep shiver in his voice. ‘Look …’
Not just mist. The trees stood out against it like a ghost of the fallen temple, shadow pillars supporting walls of vapour and a roof of darkness. And out of its billows, like swimmers striding from a creamy sea, dark shapes were rising, heads and shoulders lifting above the mist. It rolled past the barrier of trees and poured down in a silent waterfall to pool in the snowbound clearing. As it reached the altar fire the heat twisted it into fantastic rising spirals that bobbed and swayed in a grotesque parody of worship. Behind it, without the slightest sound, the solid shadows gathered, and the man faced them and did not move. The watchers on the slope above could only stare. Jess, shaking violently herself, felt the tremor in Ridley’s shoulder and heard the faint rattle of Neville’s teeth. Only Harry seemed unaffected, the ghost of a grin lingering on his lips. He rose slowly to his feet, turned awkwardly on his skis, and suddenly he was away down the slope and into the trees to one side. Neville stared. ‘What – you
daft pillock! Come back!’ But he did not dare shout.
‘You blame him?’ hissed Jess. They’d expected to meet two, or three, or four adversaries. But there had to be at least a hundred shapes spilling into the clearing below.
Not all of them were the same. Some seemed almost normal in outline, men and a few women, draped in ragged shreds of cloth. Others were monstrous, shapeless hulks that stumbled forward careless of obstacles in their path, or wiry skeletal figures that slipped between the trees like shadows. Most were naked, and the pale light glittered on their darkened skins and long, matted hair. Here and there it found tarnished metal, the encrusted remains of ornaments or weaponry, the glinting shreds of a mailshirt. But on the figures at their head the hot firelight awoke an answer, the fresh, cold gleam of copper, bronze and gold against the rags of the man, the nakedness of the woman. Serpent rings snaked up her darkened arms, twisted torcs clashed faintly under her shaggy mane of hair, glass beads shone at her neck, between her small, black-tipped breasts and around her waist, dipping over her belly to meet black curls. Rings and hoops shone on his swollen, black-nailed fingers, hung in tight chains from his massive arms, gleamed below the hidden ears. A jewelled belt clasped shreds of stiff leather about his waist. A thick-linked silvery chain looped around his neck under the thin beard, and from it hung a tarnished metal, spearhead shape. His head was circled with a massive fillet of twisted gold which seemed not to weigh him down. Together, the two figures raised their arms, and the ring and crash of metal came echoing up to the watchers on the hill. They stood like ornamented effigies of a pagan king and queen – and behind them, silently, the draugar formed into a loose half-circle outside the firelight, heads bowed from their great height, gazing in and down at the figure they dwarfed, the man who stood, unmoving, as if he guarded some unseen bridge they still had to pass.
Jess had imagined herself running down the hill to join him at the first sign of an answer to his challenge. Now, her guts hollow and cold with terror, she found herself helpless, frozen with fear, struggling not to whimper aloud. Rising from below, far stronger than the feartang in her cold sweat, came the same stench she remembered from the trailer, but far stronger; beside her she heard Neville choke and a rasp as Ridley wiped a half-frozen glove across his mouth. She saw, and understood, the rim of white in his eyes. In that silent ring of undead shadows they were seeing themselves. They had all met and fought a single one of these creatures, and barely escaped joining them. Against such numbers, what chance did they have?
Ridley stirred himself with an almost visible effort and wrenched out his radio. ‘Control? Ridley! Emergency, Fern Farm – temple site! Armed patrols – all patrols, every man, and fucking step on it!’
The radio crackled. ‘Chief, t’nearest’s out at Habthorpe’s – five miles up –’
‘Just get ’em here!’ Ridley stuffed the walkie-talkie back into his pocket and swung the heavy riot gun off his back.
‘Where’d this shower come from, anyway?’ muttered Neville. ‘They can’t ’ave killed that many round ’ere …’
‘No,’ whispered Jess, ‘but look at the armour on that one. From the King’s time – maybe a follower who died with him. He’s called up his thralls.’
‘Maybe ’e’s more powerful now ’is winter’s taken ’old. Anyhow, ’e’s scuppered us good and proper. Can’t fight that crew, not just the three of us – well, four countin’ Hal –’
Hal’s powerful voice interrupted him. Again the ancient words of accusation and challenge rang among the trees, mocking the uncanny silence of the dark ranks before him, but this time the echoes died away at once, as if the mist and the power of the Ice King’s winter had stifled them. For an endless moment the two antagonists stood watching each other without a word or a gesture – yet the air seemed to prickle with tension, the red anger of the fire blazing against the chill, indifferent malice of the night. Then, abruptly, Hal flung his arms wide in a sweeping gesture. The King echoed it with ironic slowness. The Queen stepped back out of the firelight, and behind her the rows of draugar spread out along the ruined walls to form a wide ring round the altarstone. Ignoring them, Hal stepped lightly back to one end. Equally lightly, the King sprang up onto the other – but a thick billet of wood from the fire snapped and splintered unnoticed under his massive foot.
Neville gave a cracked chuckle. ‘In the blue corner …’
Slowly, the King raised his arms and dropped into a wrestler’s crouch, muscles hardening like dark serpents under his gleaming skin. Hal copied him, looking dwarfed, absurd. Fire struck flame in the tangles of his hair, and played runnels of molten gold over his bare flesh – but beyond his reach the orange flames were blocked by the living darkness that opposed him. An immense, bloated shadow reached back towards the watchers on the hill, bridging the circle of light, opening a way for the limitless night beyond. Suddenly the massive arm swept out in a contemptuous back-handed stroke – and was met, with a jolting shock.
‘Bloody ’ell!’ gasped Neville. ‘He’s holding ’im!’ For a moment light and dark merged in a thrashing tangle of limbs – and then Hal was forced up, back, in the crushing hug of the King’s left arm. Hal’s knee strained against his enemy’s ribs, hands clawing to keep the huge black-nailed hands from his throat. Together they toppled backwards, with Hal beneath, crashing to the altarstone inches from the edge of the fire. The King’s hand whipped back and bunched into a boulder-like fist. With a tearing, terrible shriek Jess was on her feet, mattock in hand, sailing out over the crest of the slope and downward in a sweeping schuss.
In the shadows below, dark heads snapped around – and the Ice King’s blow smashed into the bare stone beside Hal’s head. Ridley shouted, but Neville was already speeding after her, shotgun in hand, swerving to cut between Jess and the shadows beneath. The draugar, the Queen at their head, were spilling out of the ruins, bounding through the snow with terrible energy to bar her way to the temple. Ridley’s cheeks flared. He scrambled clumsily to the very edge of the slope, hefted the riot gun, and worked the lever.
Thanks to Jess, there was a way clear to the altar; he could see the massive form of the King lurch forward, threshing violently to avoid the fire, as Hal rolled free. Ridley took a deep breath and jabbed his sticks downward. He wobbled violently, then all at once he was flying along and gaining speed. Below him he saw Neville crouch on his skis and swing around in a great hissing shower of snow, right in the face of the nearest figure. The cold silence rang with a double explosion and the draug folded in the middle like a cardboard doll and flopped limply into the snow. Ridley yelled out his relief. Cartridges fell smoking into the snow as Neville flicked the gun open, but the dark wave was already turning and bearing down on him, and he had to swing away without reloading. A few stuck on Jess’s heels. She swung her mattock, sent one sprawling, but almost lost her balance as two more leapt into her path. Without a thought for range, Ridley jerked up his gun and fired. The kick almost knocked him off his skis – Jess flinched as the heavy charge went past her ear – but the first thing’s head exploded from its shoulders and the second fell in a heap and lay writhing horribly. Jess sailed free. Neville’s gun banged again; Ridley saw him speeding clear of a ghastly loping figure with its side half blasted away, and then there was no time to see anything. He was swaying and ducking, fighting to slow down, to see with the wind in his eyes, to hang onto his gun and his sticks, simply to stay on his feet because at this speed God alone knew what a fall might do. He went whipping right past the altar, and saw it as no more than a glowing blur with a shadow at its heart. But he heard a shout, Hal’s voice, a desperate yell of rage. ‘No! Get away! Stay out! I told you! God damn you, all of you, i fandens navn you’ll kill us all …’
Then his raving was drowned in a sudden, terrible dragon-roar, a sound that shook the clearing, a dazzling, searing blaze of light. A shining shape arced through the air on a comet’s trail and burst spattering among the draugar. Red flames danced and sizzled on the snow, and
they fell back, scattering. The roar swelled to a climax, and with a terrible crunch of gears the snowfan rose bucking and lurching into the clearing.
In the stark sweep of its headlights the draugar stood revealed, like dark cave creatures frozen for a moment in a flashlight beam – horrible human things swollen to stiffness like overripe fruit or shrivelled to an awful leathery leanness, dark, discoloured, ghastly but shadow-quick. Harry swung half out of the cab, lighting another petrol bomb from the cigarette jammed in his teeth, but even as he threw it they scattered and regrouped, and it only spattered the stragglers.
Ridley, slowed at last by the slope above the temple, made a clumsy, skidding turn that brought him around behind the altarstone. He struggled to a halt, braced his legs apart and lifted up the gun, squinting down the sights at the locked, swaying figures of the fighters, firelit human flesh and black, gleaming hide. No chance yet of a clear shot – but a chance was all he needed. At the edge of vision he saw the tractor moving towards Jess and Neville, but the draugar were already sweeping across its path, charging straight towards it. There was something odd about it … It slowed, the fan began to spin, and – where was the safety-guard?
‘Jesus Christ!’ yelled Ridley.
As the bare steel blades of the fan met the first of the nightwalkers they simply seemed to vanish. There was a mincing, grinding sound, the fan slowed and the snow spraying out to the side turned slushy black. The tractor was through before the draugar could react, but it could not move fast with power going to the fan, and almost at once they wheeled to attack the lumbering excavator from the back and sides. Harry, trying to fend them off, veered it violently from side to side, and its powerful headlights swept blindingly across the altar. The King, startled, reared up and broke free of Hal. Ridley held his breath and fired.
At such close range the charge hardly spread. It took the King in his right side, shattering his outflung arm – and Hal yelled with fury and despair. The King seemed to topple sideways, towards the fire – and then Ridley realised he was just reaching down, coming up with a burning fence-post in his hand. Something whirled momentarily before his eyes, and the night exploded into sparks of agony.
The Ice King Page 25
