It was packed with captives, but he could not see the face he sought. As soon as he heaved the barred door open they began to struggle out, shivering in the drizzle that misted the heath. The first of them clambered down into the mud and stared fearfully about as though expecting their captors to reappear out of the murk. “You are free,” Kane told them, but they only blinked at him, afraid to take his word. “Run,” he urged, “go now.” Their reluctance was frustrating him, and he shouted “Meredith!”
The name brought no response. As Kane helped the prisoners out of the cage he saw all too soon that Meredith was not among them. He reached inside his cloak for the locket that hung around his neck. He remembered William’s pride in what it symbolised – remembered the mute plea in Katherine’s eyes as she had entrusted the locket to Kane. He showed the portrait of Meredith to the prisoner who was venturing gingerly down from the cart, an old man with rheumy eyes. “Have you seen this girl?” Kane asked him.
The old man rubbed his eyes with thin arthritic fingers, but barely glanced at the locket. He seemed nervous of speaking, and stumbled away from Kane, almost falling in the mud. Kane seized him by one bony shoulder. “Look at it,” he urged.
The man peered uneasily at the miniature portrait of Meredith. A raindrop trickled down his forehead like a thread of sweat. “No, sir,” he mumbled.
Perhaps he was frightened of his rescuer – of any man with weapons – but the denial brought Kane close to rage. “What do you mean?”
“No, sir,” the old man blurted before managing to find more words. “I’ve never seen her.”
Kane scrutinised his face before letting him go. As the old man and his fellows retreated past the fallen guard Kane turned to stay a girl who was climbing down from the cart. “Where were they taking you?” he said. “Where were you going?”
Even the thought of the prospect appeared to dismay her. “I don’t know,” she confessed.
Kane tried not to hear this simply as an echo of the old man’s denial. “Help me,” he said as she attempted to step around him. “I have to find this girl.”
As he held up the locket, a raindrop blurred Meredith’s face. He dabbed at it with a thumb and cupped the locket in one protective hand. The girl bent her head towards it, rain dripping from her bedraggled hair. She wiped her eyes clear, and then she shook her head. “Are you certain of it?” Kane said in some desperation.
“She was never with us. There are raiders everywhere.” Perhaps the girl meant that Meredith might be anywhere with them, but she had reminded herself of the threat, and her eyes grew big with fear. “Please don’t hurt me,” she said.
Whatever the purity of Kane’s intentions, he was terrorising her when she had already suffered terrors. “Go in peace, child,” he said. “I pray you find refuge from this evil.”
He helped the last of the captives down from the cart and unhitched the horses for them. Some led the animals to the most injured and enfeebled members of the party and assisted them in mounting the horses, which emboldened others of the fugitives to round up the remaining steeds. As Kane rode away he saw the motley band disappear into the misty drizzle. He had done all he could for them, and at least they were heading into any safety that was left in the land. He breathed a prayer as he spurred his horse westwards. The encounter had left him more anxious for Meredith, and he closed a fist around the locket at his throat as if it were a talisman that would guide him.
TWENTY-ONE
When the last of the cages clanged shut Meredith thought she was safe. She held her breath and clenched her fists to keep her body still. Wheels began to rumble away along the track, and more wheels trundled after them, bearing the groans and whimpers of those captives who still lived. The sounds receded among the trees, and Meredith was about to risk trying to move when she heard voices far too close to her. At once she was as motionless as any of the other bodies in the heap, although they had an advantage when it came to stillness. They did not need to pretend to be dead.
The voices closed in on her, and she recognised them. They belonged to the trio she had seen transformed in the village square: the tattooed man, the bearded one, the man with the savagely shaven pate. They were less distinguishable now that they bore the elaborate marks of possession, but they had stayed close to her cage on the road. “Plenty of blood in these,” one said.
“No use to him. He likes them alive.”
“No use to us neither,” the third raider complained with what might have been a lingering remnant of his personality. “Nothing worth lifting.”
“Wait, though,” the first said, and his voice descended towards Meredith. “Here’s a girl.”
She was struggling not to betray the smallest hint of movement when another voice came close. “She’s dead.”
Meredith was resisting the temptation to relax, even if it might not be apparent when she did, but she stiffened in dread as she heard the response. “Won’t have much to say for herself, then.”
“That’s the way I like them too.”
“Makes three of us for it, then,” said their companion, and it was plain to Meredith that the power of the masked rider had not just overcome them; it had rooted itself in the blackest parts of their souls and seized on their corruption. She squeezed her eyes shut and kept so still that she was afraid of trembling with the effort. The men would have to drag aside the corpse that was pinning her down, and the moment they did she would run. Surely surprise would give her a start, and could she not outdistance men like these? She was attempting to be ready for the exact moment when she heard another cart move off. “Leave the dead,” a brutish voice yelled.
The vibration of the wheels revived the cries of prisoners, and Meredith heard heavy boots tramping to rejoin the cart. She had to breathe, but she did not relax until the sounds were minutes distant. By the time they grew inaudible she was all too aware of being pinned down and hemmed in by dead flesh. She braced her hands against the muddy earth and attempted to crawl from beneath the corpse that lay on her shoulders like a cross. It failed to shift even an inch, and its weight held her down. She had prayed for immobility, and now she had her wish.
She made herself reach up and touch the body. It was a woman’s; the breasts were flattened against Meredith’s back. One of Meredith’s reluctant hands found the dead face, and the loose lips seemed to respond with a kiss. Her other hand pressed against the flabby stomach. Meredith was caught between revulsion and dismay that the woman had been denied a Christian burial. The last vestiges of respect deserted her as she imagined being trapped among the cadavers until she succumbed to their state, and she heaved at the corpse with all her strength. She was afraid that before she could struggle free it would subside on her, burying her face in the mud. She dug her elbows into the earth and gave a final desperate shove, and the body sprawled ahead of her with a large slack thud.
She was distressed to recognise the woman who had tried to comfort her in the prison cart. Meredith was still walled in by corpses, ravaged faces staring sightlessly at her, mouths gaping in their last grimace, bodies so drenched by the insistent rain that she was unable to distinguish sodden clothes from softened flesh. As she made to clamber over the dead woman, a raindrop trickled across one unresponsive eyeball. The sight appalled Meredith, and she scrabbled backwards, only for her hand to sink into a muddy burrow inhabited by an enormous slimy worm.
It was an open mouth, full of rain that kept the dead tongue wet. Meredith snatched her hand out and lurched away from the corpse. Her panic threw her against a pile of cadavers, and for an awful moment she thought they were going to collapse on top of her. She felt the pile totter, and planted a hand against an old man’s scrawny ribcage. She had no time to spare for respect now. As the heaped corpses tumbled away from her she staggered to her feet and tottered forward, almost trampling on the woman’s body. In moments she was in the open and crying aloud with relief.
Otherwise the forest was silent except for the hiss of rain on the track and th
e plops of raindrops on the leaves beneath the trees. The tree-trunks were blackened by rain, while the further reaches of the woods were grey with mist and distance. Apart from the twitching of branches overhead, Meredith could see no movement anywhere. None of the corpses was stirring, even if they looked restless with the rain that swarmed over them, but the sight was another reason why she fled along the track.
She had no idea where she was going other than away from the raiders she had escaped. Rain streamed down her face and veiled her eyes, rain plastered her clothes to her body. She could hardly have been colder, except for her left hand, which felt no sensation at all. When she risked a glance at it she saw that the mark had grown. The irregular blotch was half the size of her palm now, and the tendrils that blackened the skin had reached her fingers and thumb. Surely the mark did not bar her from God’s protection – Captain Kane had assured her she was free of evil. Nevertheless the blemish made her feel as though something too dreadful to be named had taken her by the hand – as though however far she fled she would never elude its grasp. Her eyes were drawn back to it as she stumbled fast along the rutted muddy track, and it claimed so much of her attention that she did not immediately hear someone riding through the woods.
Which direction were the hoofbeats coming from? If they were ahead of her, could the rider be Captain Kane? No, they were at her back, and there was more than one horse. She dodged off the track and ran between the trees, desperate to find one that would hide her, but the trunks were no thicker than the masts of a ship. The only cover she could reach in time was a low bush. She fell to her knees on the waterlogged leaves behind it as the horsemen appeared on the track.
They were raiders – three of them. Through the dripping leaves she saw them rein their horses to a halt. She thought they had seen her, and she crouched lower before realising that they had stopped beside the heap of corpses. One rider dismounted and poked at the bodies with the toe of his boot, turning over those that lay face down and favouring some with a kick. “Not here,” he eventually grunted.
“Can’t be far.”
“We’ll find her,” the third raider said loudest of all.
Did they intend Meredith to hear? Were they hoping to frighten her into the open? Even if she had not been kneeling she would have offered up a silent prayer. The first man remounted his horse, which snorted as if it were adding to the threats to Meredith. The riders turned their horses and glared into the trees. One man’s gaze passed across Meredith’s hiding-place, and then another’s found it and lingered. She had to struggle not to adopt more of a crouch in case they glimpsed the movement, and at last – perhaps in no more than a second – the black gaze veered away. Then the riders stared at one another, and a thought passed between them, unless it was the same in all their brutish skulls. One spurred his horse along the track in the direction Meredith had been following, and the second rode into the woods on the far side of the track. The last rider came straight towards Meredith.
She took a breath that she prayed only she could hear, and saw the rider hesitate. The breath caught in her throat, and she was in danger of coughing uncontrollably until she realised that the horse had simply missed its footing on the treacherous ground. The rider jerked the reins to urge his steed aside. For the moment he was looking well away from Meredith, and she glanced back. A few yards behind her was a hollow strewn with leaves and deep enough to hide her if she lay at full length. She peered through the bush at the rider, who was scowling at a clump of trees. She backed away as swiftly as she could without making any noise that was louder than the incessant sibilance of the rain. Even if the rider looked towards her, surely the bush would block his view. She felt her toes fumble over the edge of the hollow, and found the downwards slope with them. Then a cold thick finger tapped her on the shoulder.
She did not cry out. She twisted around to face the raider who had sneaked behind her, and at the same time she threw herself aside on the slippery earth. But there was no raider, only a weighty raindrop that a tree had let fall. For an instant she was overwhelmed by a surge of relief so fierce it drove away all thought, and then the rider shouted “Here! She’s here!”
She heard hooves galloping towards her and sprang to her feet. The rider was hauling viciously at the reins to send the horse around a fallen tree – the tangled branches reached too high to jump – while his fellows rode to head Meredith off. She dashed past the hollow and ran between the trees, slithering over drenched leaves, slipping on a muddy slope, almost sprawling headlong. For the moment she had no thought other than somehow to leave her pursuers behind, and then she heard a liquid sound that was more than rain. She was coming to a river.
It was the nearest to a hope she had. She put on a speed that she would never have believed she had in her. Her lungs were heaving and her breaths felt harsh as fire by the time she reached the line of trees that marked the river’s edge. She swept rain from her eyes with the back of her hand, and then she faltered. It was not just the prospect of plunging into the icy torrent that made her waver. She was not on the bank of a river. She was on top of a cliff.
At the foot of a sheer drop of perhaps a hundred feet, a river quite as wide rushed foaming over rocks. As Meredith retreated a step before dizziness could send her over the brink, she heard hoofbeats converging on her, and swung around to find the riders at her back. Every face bared yellowed teeth in the same bestial grin of triumph. “You’re going nowhere, girl,” the rider closest to her said.
“You belong to the Master,” said the horseman to his left.
“He has a special purpose for you,” their fellow exulted.
Their grins widened, and their blackened eyeballs glared at her without a blink, despite the gusts of rain that assailed their faces. They held the horses where they stood and waited for Meredith to try to dodge between them. She would never elude them that way, and so she turned her back on them. She took a breath that tasted tearful with the rain, and breathed a prayer, and then she paced forward and stepped off the edge of the cliff.
TWENTY-TWO
Night was falling when Kane found the lake. The clouds on the horizon were tinged red by the last of the sinking light; the sun was more apparent in its extinction than it had been all day. The raw sky lent its colour to the water as though the lake were stained with blood, and indeed it had been a day of bloodshed. After releasing the captives on the road Kane had chanced upon a second band of raiders, encamped in the ruins of a castle on a hill. They appeared to believe themselves invulnerable, unless they thought none would dare attack them, for they had not even troubled to set a guard. Kane had ridden into their midst and slain them without mercy, interrogating more than one as they lay dying. They told him nothing – they barely spoke, and he was sure that he saw the same eyes glaring out of every face at him. They had no prisoners, and so Kane stood among the dead as they resumed whatever humanity they had surrendered, and murmured a brief prayer for them. The prayer he uttered as he rode away was not on their behalf. While he had released them from the evil that held the land in thrall, he was no closer to rescuing Meredith.
The lake was some hundreds of yards from the road, across a meadow starved of life by the vicious winter and bedraggled by the day’s rain. A copse occupied the far bank, where the foremost trees fingered the depths with their roots and with the reflections of their leafless branches. As Kane guided his horse through the dead grass, which was so tall it stooped, the glow dulled and drained out of the sky. He dismounted on the ragged border of the lake, and scarcely had time to examine the horse for cuts and scratches, finding none that would require treatment, before the land grew dark.
He led the horse to a gap in the reeds that fringed the lake and stroked its neck as it lowered its head to drink. A mist was seeping between the trees to drift across the lake, obscuring several rounded overgrown rocks that protruded just above the surface of the water. Kane squatted on the margin and cupped his hands as the horse dipped its muzzle in. Ripples spread throu
gh the water, slapping playfully against the rocks, uncovering a submerged inch of the nearest. Kane peered towards the rounded shape in the gloom, and then he narrowed his eyes and crouched over the water’s edge. Another ripple let him glimpse the topmost section of the object, where he distinguished two waterlogged tufts above a pair of bulging lumps. Those were staring although sightless, and now he discerned more beneath the surface of the water: dim arms outstretched on either side, a torso sunk too deep to be wholly visible, unless it ended above the waist. Kane sprang to his feet and tugged at the horse’s reins. “Don’t drink,” he cried. “It’s foul.”
The horse showed little inclination to obey. Kane might have wondered if it had been tainted by the evil that possessed the raiders, except that it had no soul to possess. “Can you not taste it, animal?” he raged, hauling at the reins until it lifted its reluctant head. In truth he was angry with himself, having made out that all the shapes he had taken for rocks belonged to bodies, drowned and rotting. He should never have allowed himself to be so unwary, and he was coaxing the horse away from the polluted water when he stiffened. Something had moved somewhere near him.
The horse snorted and shook its head uneasily, so that Kane had to stroke its muzzle to quiet it. As it subsided with a final whinny he heard the other sound again – a surreptitious restlessness of the grass. He might have assumed it was a stray breeze, but the night was as stagnant as the lake. He turned to face the meadow, one hand on the hilt of his sword. The grass and weeds were a smudged mass of blackness, which appeared to be utterly still. Here and there the drooping tips of grass-blades or the downcast heads of weeds were dimly outlined against the night sky, but they betrayed no movement. Then a withered flower twitched to his left, and another one swayed yards away to his right. Without further warning, the creatures that must have been lying low in the meadow rushed at him.
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