by Nick Earls
The sound of fighting was close again. Suddenly parliamentary soldiers spilt out of a nearby alley. There was the sound of hooves racing on cobbles and royalist cavalry appeared, charging into the men on foot.
The word hunters ran to the breach in the wall and scrambled across the stones outside. On the barrel of the broken gun the portal light blinked. Al went down on his knees and fumbled around in his bag until he found the peg. Will opened the portal and Al drove the peg in, locked it and turned the key.
As the first of the soldiers stumbled out in retreat, mist billowed through the gap in the wall, the fallen stones shook and the ground fell away.
They fell clear of Colchester in darkness. There was a bump, then turbulence and they dropped from the sky to a clear summer day.
Lexi and Al spun around in the sky until they saw him. Grandad Al was flying to their left in the posture they had all learnt from Caractacus. His hair blew back and he laughed as he plunged towards the ground. Their father laughed the same way.
There were fields and forests below, and an inlet where the sea came a long way into the land. They were falling towards the edge of it, to a town and a castle built on top of a craggy rock. There was a wide square tower at one end, a tall tower in the middle and there were turrets at the other corners.
‘We want the tower that faces the sea,’ Will called out, and tilted to glide to it.
The others followed, and they landed on the battlements in their best 16th-century clothes. Lexi wore a purple satin gown with pearls sewn into the diamond pattern on the front. The others wore black jackets with puffy sleeves that were slashed to reveal red fabric beneath. They had black breeches on, and silver-grey stockings.
‘Now’s your chance,’ Will said to Lexi and Al. ‘We’ve got time. And we’ll be safe enough here.’
There was a group of people clustered further along the battlements at the top of the tower, with a ceremony underway. A huge cannon was mounted facing out to sea. Short and squat and made of solid iron with iron bands around it, in some ways it was the opposite of Kaiser Wilhelm. There were coloured ribbons decorating its carriage. This time there was no war.
‘You saved me,’ Grandad Al said, before Lexi or Al could speak. He rubbed his wrists again. ‘I don’t know how long I was in there.’
‘Thirty years,’ Lexi said. ‘Or no time at all. Depends how you measure it. We’re on the same word as you.’
He smiled. ‘Yes, we have two kinds of time, don’t we? We’re the only ones who would understand that.’
‘We’re after you. The next word hunters.’ Al wanted a better way to explain it. ‘We got the dictionary from the library at school. Cubberla Creek. You’re our grandfather.’
‘But I—’ Grandad Al blinked and put his hand up to block the sunlight. ‘But Mike’s 15. Julianne’s 14.’
‘Thirty years ago. Mike’s our father. Lexi’s and mine, in the 21st century. We found the dictionary in the wall of the school library. They’re doing renovations.’
‘Thirty years—’ The thought of it was too much for a moment. He put his hand on the battlements to steady himself. Thirty years of one dark night in Colchester, tied to a chair with a battle going on. ‘What have I missed? Noela—’
‘Grandma Noela’s okay.’ Lexi wanted to help him through it. ‘So’s Dad. So’s Auntie Jules. They missed you, obviously, but—’
‘There’s so much—’ A tear ran down his face. He didn’t seem to notice it. He stepped forward with his arms open and hugged them. He caught Will’s eye. ‘And you?’
Will smiled. ‘No, just those two. Will Hunter, London, 1918. They picked me up in the 1830s. After losing me there – but that’s another story.’
Looking past Grandad Al, he scanned the battlements again from one end to the other, checking for threats. Men in grey, any new enemy. It wasn’t enough to know he’d been safe here last time.
‘I was the one who hid the book there,’ Grandad Al began. ‘In the wall. Once I realised its power. You’re so young to be doing this. How do you—’ He hugged them tighter. ‘I’ve missed so much. I want you to tell me everything about yourselves. And Mike. And Julianne and Noela.’ The wail of bagpipes sounded from the tower. Grandad Al stood back and looked at Lexi and Al at arm’s length. ‘We can’t be distracted. We need to get through this one and then we can talk. And then get back to Caractacus. We have to reach him. Luckily, plenty of words will take us there.’ He patted his jacket where a shirt pocket would be and then noticed he was carrying nothing. ‘My bag. It’s still in Colchester. My pen—’ He reached inside the jacket. ‘I’ve still got my pegs, but they’ve got my bag. It’s going to look very strange when the sun comes up the next morning in 1648. It’s got my loudhailer from sports day.’
He felt dizzy again and crouched down and waited for the feeling to pass. His memory of Colchester was patchy. He had swept in with the pikemen. Then there was a fight in a doorway, then the room. Now he was free, 90 years earlier and with grandchildren he had never known.
‘This one’s Mons Meg,’ Will was saying. ‘Seven tons of cannon. No grey-robes here, last time I came through. No war either. We’re celebrating the wedding of Queen Mary in France a few months ago. She’s still there. She’s been there since she was five. Her mother, Mary of Guise, is reigning in her absence. You’ll see her up there. The gun came from France a hundred years ago for the Scottish to use against the English. But it’s also good for weddings, parties, family reunions—’
He led the way along the battlements to a point where the walls turned towards the tower. Down below were hundreds of people from the town, waiting for the gun to fire.
‘It all ends badly for young Queen Mary,’ Will said over his shoulder. ‘According to Encyclopaedia Britannica. And therefore the internet.’ He glanced at Grandad Al. ‘Did you have the internet in the 1980s?’
Grandad Al stopped and thought about it. ‘The internet? No, not that I’m aware of. I know Encyclopaedia Britannica pretty well, though.’
They climbed the five steps to the tower roof and made their way to the back of the ceremony. A bishop was blessing the union of the absent queen and her French prince Francois. The audience were Scottish nobles seated on benches and a crowned woman in black on a high-backed wooden throne. There were guards all around, and priests too, but no one in grey robes.
The bishop finished with a prayer and stepped aside.
The sergeant-at-arms stood up from his stool next to the cannon and ordered the barrel greased. While two men worked on that, a third tipped a funnel of gunpowder into the firing mechanism.
The sergeant-at-arms lit a piece of waxed fabric and walked with it to the edge of the battlements.
‘To Queen Mary and to Prince Francois!’ he shouted to the crowd below. ‘God bless their union and long may she reign!’
A cheer rose as he went to the cannon. He fixed the fuse in place and pulled the trigger. There was a fizzing sound as he covered his ears and then a boom. Flame and smoke roared from the cannon barrel and the cannon rocked back on its carriage.
The cannonball flew from the battlements and over the crowd and the town, towards the marshlands and the widening river.
Three long disorganised cheers came from the crowd below.
The queen put on a smile that didn’t look altogether happy and, as she stood up from her throne, the nobles hurried to their feet. The bishop came to join her and together they led the procession of dignitaries from the tower.
As soon as she was out of view and while earls and countesses and priests were still at the top of the steps, the sergeant-at-arms leant back over the battlements and shouted down to the crowd, ‘The shot’s gone out somewhere over Wardie Mure. There’s sixpence for the man who finds it and a penny each to the first six men there to help him bring it back to Mons Meg.’ He went to pat the cannon, but the heat of
the barrel made him take his hand away quickly. ‘Those things cost money, you know, and we have only ten of them.’
Near the cannon’s trigger the portal glowed brightly.
‘Two more pegs.’ Al had his hands in his black leather bag. ‘One more step before we’re home.’
Home with their grandfather, home with Will saved after they’d lost him in Nantucket. Al wanted to believe it was finished and that someone else could be a word hunter now.
The others stood back while Grandad Al touched the portal and it fizzed open. The peg slipped into the groove of the firing mechanism, which was still hot and smelt of burnt gunpowder. Al locked it in place.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’ the sergeant-at-arms called out, as Al turned the key.
A fog rolled in from the sea, over the town and the battlements, and before the gunnery crew could move, the word hunters were gone.
They fell and plunged, then got thrown sideways. There was a clear drop that felt like centuries, then a shudder and another clear drop.
They burst from the cloud to a cold grey November day over forests, farmland and a river town. On one side of the town the farms outside the walls were already burning. An army was camped in the fields, all the way to the edge of the forest. There were tents set up in no particular order, and cooking fires and pens for horses.
The word hunters dropped to the ground near a tent made of bear skin. There were two banners flying above it, each one triangular with a curved lower edge and a design featuring a raven in flight.
‘One guess what we are,’ Will said, as he looked at the way they were dressed.
They all had leather helmets and body armour, and round shields. Will and Grandad Al had battleaxes, and Lexi and Al were carrying spears.
Grandad Al pointed to the banner over the tent. ‘Two ravens. We’re in an army fighting under the god Odin. He had two ravens. We’re Vikings and we’re about to sack some settlement.’
He slipped his hand under his chest armour and pulled out a peg, just as Al did the same from the sack on his shoulder. They held them next to each other. The writing on them was identical.
‘Eoforwic is York.’ Will turned to face the town. ‘We’re about to capture York. The good news is we don’t have to fight this morning’s battle. I did that last time and what we’re waiting for comes later on.’
The tent flap was thrown back and three men came out. They ignored the word hunters and one of them pointed to the town.
‘That’s where they’ll come out,’ he said. ‘If we can bring them out.’ He was pointing to a gate set into a wall made of heaped earth with wooden battlements on top. ‘They’ll make their battle formation there, so their archers can fire over them and we have to go up the hill to get to them.’
The tallest of the three men nodded. ‘Are the berserkers at their breakfast?’ He had an iron helmet in his hand and a bear skin over a tunic of chain mail. He carried it all as if it weighed nothing.
‘Yes, my Lord.’
The tall man swapped the helmet from one hand to the other. ‘I might say a few words to them.’
He led the way between two tents, heading for the far corner of the camp where men were starting to gather in an open part of the field.
‘You’re in the middle of the Great Heathen Army,’ Will told the others as they started to follow the three Vikings. ‘And that man – the boss – is Ivar the Boneless, Viking King and son of Ragnar Lothbrok. Today’s big problem for York is that its king, Aella, killed Ragnar last year by throwing him into a pit of snakes. Ivar’s here for revenge. He landed in East Anglia, where they gave him hundreds of horses if he would leave in peace. It turns out that was exactly why he went there. He came here to attack York, and he wanted to surprise them by having cavalry. The best way for him to get horses was to turn up somewhere else and frighten them into handing them over.’
‘Encyclopaedia Britannica?’ Lexi could imagine him looking it up.
‘Not this time.’ Will leant the handle of his axe against his shoulder. ‘Not for most of it, anyway. I got “Great Heathen Army” from it, but not much else. One of the berserkers told me the rest when I was here last time. I bumped into him when he was halfway through “breakfast” and he couldn’t stop talking.’
‘I’ve done “berserk”,’ Grandad Al said. He checked to see if the others had too, but they shook their heads. ‘Walter Scott, then Old Norse. “Bear shirt” – that’s a sort of translation of it. They wear animal pelts into battle. They’re shock troops. And shocking troops too, as you’ll see.’
Lexi caught Al’s eye and smiled. It was the kind of game with words that their father would play. Shock troops that were also shocking. He held up a finger. They had a system for it. It was a Level 1 Dad Joke.
More soldiers were coming out of tents, strapping on armour, calling out to each other.
‘Why is the king called Ivar the Boneless?’ Ivar was still in front of them, and everything about the way he walked suggested to Al that he had the normal number of bones.
‘He’s very flexible. Apparently once he was attacked from behind and he somehow swung his axe back—’ Will held his axe behind his head to show how difficult it was – ‘and took the man’s head off without turning round.’
‘You’ll be taking us home as soon as possible, right?’ Lexi said.
‘As soon as they say the magic word.’ He brought the axe back down to his shoulder.
‘It has to be the name of a gun, doesn’t it?’ She wanted it said now, whatever it was. She wanted to be home with her grandfather and to leave the Vikings and Northumbrians to fight whatever ugly old-fashioned battle they planned to. ‘This one’s been different. It’s never been about the actual word, but they’ve all been guns with names. It’s going to be a gun with a name and this has to be the name that gives us the word “gun”.’
‘But Vikings don’t have guns, do they?’ Al was pretty certain of it. ‘And the people behind that fence don’t either, surely.’
‘Now I’m definitely not going to spoil the surprise.’ Will looked like he was going to leave it at that.
Before they could push him any further, there was shouting from beyond the tents ahead of them – shouting and growling and thumping. They followed Ivar the Boneless past the last tent and what they saw made them stop suddenly and step back.
The noises were coming from hundreds of men in wolf skins, who were beating the shafts of their spears against their own bodies or smashing their heads into shields. One broke a stool over the back of another and they both waved their spears at the sky and roared like animals.
At a table an older man stood before a large pot with a ladle, pouring stew into bowls. The men in wolf skins were pushing forward to take it. Their eyes were red and they were shaking. Every muscle they had seemed to be tensed up and ready to fight.
Mushrooms. Doug smelt mushrooms. Tasty, musty, spotty mushrooms.
He wriggled his way to the top of Al’s sack and jumped free just as Ivar the Boneless stepped up onto the table and shouted, ‘Berserkers!’
The men roared and turned to face him.
‘Eat well!’ Ivar thrust his sword into the air. ‘Your next meal is blood!’
The berserkers bellowed and waved their spears. Sweat ran from their arms and their matted hair. One punched a shield until his fist bled and the shield broke with a crack.
‘I’m so glad we’re on their side,’ Lexi said, taking a step behind Grandad Al without meaning to.
‘This way,’ Will said, ‘or we’ll get caught up in it.’
At that moment Al noticed a rat scurrying across the table towards the stew pot. A clean, well-fed 21st-century rat. Doug dodged around Ivar’s feet and started scrabbling at the pot.
‘Doug!’ Al broke away from the others.
Lexi grabbed his arm to
slow him down. ‘We don’t split up.’
As Ivar jumped from the table, Doug scrambled his way to the top of the pot. And fell in. The word hunters were only two steps behind Al when he got to the table. He grabbed a bowl.
The man with the ladle looked at him and shook his head. ‘Not for you, Roger. You’re not one of this lot. You’ll live far longer if you stay away from this stuff.’
‘Excuse me,’ Grandad Al said. ‘Those mushrooms—’
The man turned and Will stepped in and scooped Doug up in a bowl.
As more berserkers pushed forward, Grandad Al said, ‘Some other time—’ and moved back.
Al took the bowl from Will as they got out of the way. Doug looked up at him, fiercely bug-eyed with his lips peeled back and a low growl coming from his throat.
‘How is he?’ Lexi said.
Al couldn’t take his eyes off him. ‘Weird. Looks like he’s doing backstroke. I think it’s affected him. And why did that man call me Roger?’
Doug could see stars. Fireworks. And big pink – he didn’t know what they were, but they were big and pink. And had trunks. And crazy, crazy eyes. And they didn’t seem to like him at all.
He screeched and thrashed around. Al tipped out the stew and Doug slipped from the bowl and onto the ground. He ran around in tight circles. Ever-decreasing tight circles. He squealed something that sounded like ‘Stella!’ And then he vomited and fell asleep.
The word hunters sat on higher ground above the camp, next to the smouldering ruins of a farmhouse. Doug was still asleep, but his dreams had become a lot less twitchy.
‘“Roger” was a joke,’ Grandad Al said. ‘Sort of. The man with the stew said “Hrothgar” but you heard “Roger”, since that’s what it becomes in English. You’re a young guy with a spear. “Hrothgar” is an Old Norse or Germanic name meaning someone famous for his feats with a spear.’
