The Book of the Crowman

by Joseph D'lacey

  He took his bounty back to the living area, sat down on the sofa and began to eat, as slowly as he could discipline himself to. Even so, fullness crept up swiftly on his shrunken stomach and the meal was far too quickly over. Hauling himself with great effort from the couch, he returned his dishes to the kitchen and went in search of a bed and blankets.

  38

  In spite of thick covers and a comfortable bed, Gordon slept badly. It always happened this way when he first came in from the outdoors. Walls and doors and warmth caused him to feel trapped and claustrophobic and he woke many times through the night, flailing to escape the binding of the bedclothes only to wake again later and cover himself up.

  He was three-quarters wild now and vowed to himself this would be the last night he ever spent in a building. He needed the touch of the open air on his face, the proximity of the earth beneath him, the night-sounds and day-sounds of the land all around him just to feel like he belonged. Certainly he did not belong here, in this tower block, in this city.

  Though he hated to admit it to himself, not having Denise beside him to share this dark envelope also caused him a degree of restlessness. It hadn’t taken long to get used to the comfort she gave him in the darkest hours of the night.

  When grey light began to bring the colour back to the world, Gordon was still exhausted. He pulled the covers over himself and slept on for as long as he could. Though he woke often, he didn’t rise until he felt the strength had returned to his body. He sat once more in the living room, then, eating his fill of corned beef and baked beans, followed by a tin of pears. What he couldn’t eat in that sitting he left in the cupboards. He had no way of carrying anything without his pack and finding food for himself would be no trouble once he was back on the road.

  Before he left he spent time looking out of the window. Daylight revealed a clearer view of Coventry's massing forces. The car park beneath the overpass, a camp to tens of thousands, had mostly been broken up. The forces of Green Men he’d seen there the previous night were either marching out of the city or had already gone. But more were arriving from north and south all the time. More than he could count. Poorly-equipped, hungry-looking troops thronged every street and, somewhere down there, a command system now directed them through the city and out to meet the enemy.

  As high above it all as he was, Gordon could feel the excitement. The people moved as one. Suddenly there was the promise of something decisive happening, a chance to fight back. He recognised the anticipation in the way people moved around. Every woman and man walking with a sense of purpose and possibility. There was hope again. But hope, Gordon knew, was risky. It was the gambler’s flimsy conviction; that good things will come against all the odds, a win just around the next bend. This was no simple game, though. No inconsequential turn of a wheel or sequence of cards. If the Green Men lost, Gordon didn’t believe they could ever recover.

  He turned away from the scenes below, back to his own temporary living space. In here there was only a sense of abandonment and dereliction. The flat had been neatly kept, almost obsessively so. Magazines and newspapers were stacked in a special rack beside the armchair. The few ornaments on shelves and surfaces looked to have been placed with mathematical accuracy. Everything in the space was angular: the television and game console, the DVD player, the stands and shelves, even the furniture. Everything cubic.

  Boxes inside boxes inside boxes.

  Unable to bear another moment in the flat, Gordon leapt from the sofa and ran to the door. He whipped away the chair and let it fall behind him in the hall. He left the door wide open, hoping someone might find the bounty in the kitchen and survive a little longer. He sprinted along the corridor, between the tightly spaced doors and almost tumbled down the dozens of flights of stairs.

  Gasping, he spilled out into the daylight through the ground floor doors. Everything was dirty brick red, drab grey, slate grey, grey black. All he wanted was the whisper of the trees and the breath of the wind through uncut grasses, to see the whole land healed and made green once more. He wanted to see the people walk upon the land as lightly as they would tread their own flesh.

  Gordon soon realised it was a mistake to try to get back to the car park where he’d spoken to Grimwold. In spite of everything, Gordon still had questions he was certain the Rag Man could answer.

  The whole population was on the move. Most of the shelters had either been packed up or abandoned. Slowly, because of the huge numbers, but with great purpose, a tide of civilian militia was flowing away from the area around the car park bus station. Walking against the tide was time-consuming but he had to find something to guide him. A sign. Anything. Just one small clue to follow.

  Those who’d just arrived had no real choice but to join the throng and keep marching. The momentum of the multitudes carried them along. What condition these travellers would be in when they finally met the forces of the Ward, Gordon didn’t like to imagine. He prayed there would be time for them to rest and eat before they went into battle.

  His own progress, against the flow of human traffic, was exhausting. He went first to the old double-decker bus but it was deserted. Checking inside he found no trace left behind of Grimwold or his rag boys. Perhaps he too was required for war. That the Green Men had allowed him to preach to all these people must have been a sign that the Rag Man’s presence was welcomed.

  Outside the bus, the masses of troops thickened, their momentum irresistible. Gordon gave up trying to walk against them.

  “What’s happening?” he asked a group of men armed with axes.

  “Heading south,” said one of them. “On the M6. Scouts say a huge Ward army is coming north. Wherever we meet, that’s where it’ll begin.”

  “What happened to the Rag Man?”

  The man shrugged.

  “Who knows?”

  Gordon worked his temples with agitated fingers.

  “Have you seen a woman travelling with a group of First Guard?” he asked.

  “They were first to leave. Just after dawn. They’re leading us in.”

  Dawn? thought Gordon. They’ll be halfway to Rugby by now.

  “Thanks,” said Gordon. He joined the direction of the tide now, aiming instead to push towards the front of the column, but it was clear that even this tactic would take hours.

  He turned back to the axe-wielder and called out:

  “Have you seen the Crowman?”

  “Not yet. But he’ll be there. The Rag Man says he’s with us and I believe him.”

  Gordon turned away and pushed on. He had to find the Crowman today. Otherwise, he feared the deaths of tens of thousand of Green Men would be on his hands.

  39

  It’s dark when Megan wakes and a fine snow is falling, its crystals barely the size of alfalfa seed. By the light of the half moon, it could be powdered gemstones sifting down from the sky. The sky is clear, but for a haze furring the edges of the moon. Where this snow comes from is a mystery.

  Megan sits up and peers through the pines across the valley. The cave mouth is out of sight but if Mr Keeper’s map is correct, it will be easy to see once she is nearer. She rolls her blanket up and stows it below her pack. Nerves make her stomach tumble and her bladder demands release. The moment she has finished relieving herself, she needs to go again. She glances at the food and water in her pack and can face neither. The time has come.

  The night is utterly silent but Megan thinks she can hear the tinkle of the snow as it falls past her ears. The ground is anvil hard with frost and covered by a dusting of rainbow particles that sparkle in the moonlight.

  Midway down her side of the small valley, she feels exposed and turns to look behind herself again and again. There’s nothing out here with her, neither fox nor rabbit nor badger. She is the only creature braving the night. Her faint hope is that Mr Keeper has slipped her a fungal sacrament at some point in the last day and that all this is nothing more than a vision. But she knows now, through experience, the difference between t
he world of dreams and the real world. At least she thinks she does.

  This is real. Too real.

  She reaches the midpoint, the nadir of the valley, and stops. The night casts its mantle like a net of enchantment. Everything is white or grey or charcoal; lustrous in the moonlight. Megan wonders why terror and beauty go hand in hand and finds no answer. This is just the way it is. She steels herself and walks on, faster now, wanting the job to be over, wanting to make a good and swift retreat when her work here is done.

  At the crest of the opposite hill, the windmill is a three-armed giant who has fallen asleep standing up. Still, she can’t help but feel that it, or something within it, watches her approach ready to pounce or sound an alarm. She tries to ignore its quiet sentinel stare.

  There’s no sign of the cave entrance. Directly below the windmill is a thicket of well-established hawthorn, its winter branches twisted with age and bristling with unforgiving spines. Somewhere behind it must be the way in. She approaches and can see the ghost of a track between the stunted, agonised trees. The footprints are well-furred and indistinct with snow. She moves slower now, careful to make as little noise as possible. Her breath quietens, her heartbeat thickens and slows, her footsteps become as light as the prowling, hungry fox.

  Ahead of her opens a deeper blackness within the night. She approaches the mouth of the cave. At the threshold, she stops and listens. There is nothing but the hiss of empty space. She passes the entrance and moves to her left. As the tiny light of the moon is left behind, she uses her fingers on the cold stone to guide her in. Too soon, her fingers meet an angle and she finds herself at an impasse. In the total darkness, she uses her fingers to explore the obstruction. What she finds feels like mud bricks with seeping mortar between them. Someone has erected a rough wall – to keep out animals, no doubt – but there must be a door in this wall. She follows the uneven plane of its surface, her fingers dislodging gobbets of still-damp mortar as she explores. She finds hinges next, the panelling of a door and, with a sinking heart, a sturdy iron chain and lock.

  Megan stands in front of this low door in the darkness. A strong insistent voice from within tells her she can’t continue. The men have safeguarded their secrets too well. The only option is to go back and tell Mr Keeper she has tried and been unsuccessful. They can always return, together and better equipped, when he is well. This same voice tells her to run right now, back out of the cave, across the tiny, shallow valley and up to the coppice. To keep running until she is far away from here and safe from the men who made this wall. She knows this voice too well. It is the too-convincing whine of fear. She stills it with her will.

  There is a way through this obstacle.

  She moves back to her left where the rough blocks meet the stone sides of the cave. She unsheathes her knife and begins to rake out the mortar from between the bricks. It is too easy. She scoops out mortar as though it is the jam in a cake. A brick comes loose and she pulls it free.

  Too scared to light a candle to work by in case someone sees its light, Megan is unable to see the effect she is having on the wall until it begins to collapse. She staggers backwards from the dull clatter of tumbling bricks. As quickly as it starts, the small avalanche is over and silence returns to the cave. Her heart batters away inside her chest, her animal composure shattered by the racket. How far away will the sound have been heard? Are the men in the windmill above her right now? Will they have felt the rumble of falling masonry?

  To run is to lose the advantage she’s created. She must go through the collapsed wall and complete her job.

  She removes her pack and lights a tallow candle. She can’t afford to sprain an ankle on the uneven ground no matter how terrified she is of her light being seen from outside. She steps over the scattered bricks and moves deeper into the cave. The space around her broadens and opens out. A few paces farther on she enters the body of the cave. It’s about four times her height at the highest point and about fifteen paces across in the widest place. Around its edges smaller tunnels lead off into darkness. Whether they are used as access or departure points, she can’t tell. Many of them are too small even for a child to squeeze through but she supposes some of them could easily lead to other caverns like this one.

  The space Megan occupies is full of things she neither recognises nor understands. Strings and ropes hang from a tiny aperture in the roof of the cave. These lines are attached to various collections of items held together with twine, leather bindings, wooden casings and iron sleeves. Some surfaces are black and yet as reflective as the surface of a lake. In other amalgamations, crystals of various hues are bound in reflective threads and woven into concertinaed patterns. Tucked away in a deep recess like a miniature version of the cave, there is a smithy’s furnace and forge and all the tools required for making and shaping iron or steel. On every stretch of the cavern’s wall hang racks and racks of small instruments and items which Megan knows can only have been recovered from the dead cities; things that have no place or business in this part of the land.

  Over all of this is a fine layer of white dust making it appear as though the cavern has lain undisturbed for years. But here and there she sees evidence of hands dabbling in this dust, smears made by fingers and swatches of clear space where an arm or elbow has brushed through the layer of powder. Some of the equipment has been touched so much and so recently there is barely any trace of powder. She holds up her candle towards the hole bored into the roof of the cave and sees a shimmering rain of particles, lazily falling from it. Not snow, not dust but flour from the mill high above the cave.

  There doesn’t seem to be anything outwardly wrong about any of what she sees. This place is a site of industry and study and enquiry. And yet every item has an aura of simple doom about it. These things, if developed, if spread, will separate the people from the land with great efficiency. They will prevent them from hearing the voice of nature and the people will fall out of balance again. Megan doesn’t have to know what any of these machines are to know what they will ultimately lead to. They may have brought good things to people for a time but whatever power they bestowed upon their wielders was cold and meaningless without a conscious connection to the land.

  Megan doesn’t want to understand what she sees. She merely wants to destroy it. From her pack she takes out the black oil Mr Keeper has given her in two large water skins. She does as he has instructed her and douses every piece of apparatus with the oil. The cavern fills with a thick but heady smell. Megan uses the last of the oil to run a trail back towards the broken wall. She sets her tallow to the glistening track and fire races away along it. Megan doesn’t watch it reach its destination. She turns away and she runs as fast as she can. Out through the throat of the cave, out of its mouth, past the grasping hawthorns and into the frozen night.

  40

  Neither Skelton nor Pike could ride a horse. With all the remaining fuel required for war machinery, this meant the journey north was made in an open carriage. It was pulled by a nodding, plodding horse, a shire breed if Skelton recognised correctly, and driven by a Wardsman so young and shy he’d barely said a word to them. Occasionally, Skelton would turn and lift the canvas tarp covering their cargo and permit himself a small grin of anticipation. Soon, very soon, their mission would be complete.

  Pike and he sat with a couple of thick rugs over their knees to keep off the cold. The pace was slow but the touch of air passing over them was constant, numbing their faces, making Skelton's forehead ache. From time to time, Skelton’s hand would move unconsciously beneath the folds of wool and touch Pike’s knee or thigh. Sometimes he sought out the giant man’s slab of a hand, squeezed his cold, callused fingers. Pike, never a garrulous man in the first place, had grown even quieter over the past months. His face was locked into a grim scowl for most of the hours in a day, except when Skelton used one of the secret keys which revealed some other expression – of tension or release perhaps. In his sleep, the same downturn of his dour mouth hid the flesh of his
lips, lips Skelton longed to reveal, to touch with his fingertips. Pike was an unexpected companion but they’d worked together for so long and with such single-mindedness that Skelton could not imagine a time when they wouldn’t be together.

  What went on in Pike’s mind remained a mystery. Since that first touch, which had awakened stirrings and possibilities in Skelton – even the butterfly caress of real emotion, if he was honest – Pike worked as hard and as seriously as he always had. When they were off duty he responded to Skelton, albeit with the same mechanical, dutiful manner he brought to any task. Sometimes Skelton wondered if Pike felt the same way as he did. Sometimes he wondered if the man had any feelings at all other than the drive to accomplish the objectives of the Ward. Hence it was that, from time to time, Skelton could not help but reassure himself that Pike was beside him, not just as a partner in Ward business but as a dearly held brother, a friend for life. But as the slow progress north unfolded over the cracked, long undriven motorway and Pike’s physical response remained neutral, Skelton grew hungry for interaction.

  “He’ll be ours soon. A day. Two at the most, I’d have thought.”

  Pike may have grunted under his breath but Skelton couldn’t be sure. He didn’t give up.

  “All this effort, Pike. The men we’ve sacrificed to this cause. I can’t quite believe that we’ll hold the key to all of it in so short a time.” Pike didn’t make a sound. “Do you ever wonder what we’ll do when Gordon Black has been disposed of and the Crowman is laid to rest?”

  Pike’s head turned slowly towards him. Such was the length of time Pike had spent unmoving Skelton expected to hear the grind of rust between his bones. Pike’s flat yet fathomless eyes looked into his. Skelton was always unsettled by what he thought he saw there. Either a vast, deep emptiness or a total reflection through which no entry could be gained.