Winter

by William Horwood

  The next day brought more evidence that some mass panic and flight, combined with a breakdown of order into chaos and anarchy, in which the military were in some way involved, had overtaken the humans and their world.

  They found cows and pigs which had battered at their pens in the desperation of their thirst and starvation, horses dying in the fields and along the lanes, poisoned by drinking polluted water, and sheep, tangled helplessly in barbed wire.

  There was no normal life, no humans but dead and occasionally dying ones, no healthy animals but feral dogs and cats, growling and hissing from the shadows of burnt buildings and woodland; or those horses and cattle that had succeeded in escaping their captivity unharmed and wandered the roads and paths, feeding where they could and instinctively avoiding the ponds and rivers in which the dead lay.

  These wretched sights, combined with the different stresses and strains to which each member of the party had been subjected in recent weeks and days, rendered several of them silent and uncommunicative.

  Barklice, as their route-finder, stayed alert and positive, as was his nature. He missed talking with Katherine about the ways and means of their journey as they went along, debating this or that option or considering when best to take a break. But she was much shaken by the explosion and she still walked like one in a daze.

  Festoon and Blut, on whose respective shoulders lay the burdens of Brum and the Hyddenworld, sat and talked in low voices at the stopping points. But when moving Blut stayed close by Sinistral, ever watchful and protective.

  Terce walked slowly and in evident discomfort. He never complained, but it was his pace and his need for frequent rest as well that slowed them down.

  Even Arnold Mallarkhi, the youngest and normally most ebullient of them all, was now in sombre mood, the sights and sounds of so much death having been a severe shock to him. As was the sight of the filth and pollution in the waterways caused by dead animals and uncontrolled effluent. For a Bilgesnipe, water is a beautiful thing, whether still or flowing. It is a source of life and a medium of movement and celebration. Arnold’s distress at what he saw was very real, and for the time being he was a shadow of what they all knew he could be.

  Sinistral at least was more positive than the others, though death seemed sometimes to stalk across his frail face and watery eyes. He moved cautiously now, though with a kind of infinite, unforced elegance, like a great tree whose leaves still shine but whose branches have grown brittle and stiff.

  His bleak gaze took in everything and he still found time and energy to comment on the natural beauty of the Earth and be glad that old though he was, the blood still flowed in his veins.

  ‘Things will get better,’ he said, ‘and as a poet of my youth once wrote, “the snow falls, and the winds calls and the year turns round again.” The winter may be upon us, it will no doubt get worse, but spring will come again even if I do not myself live that long! Eh, Blut?’

  ‘Yes, my Lord. I mean, no, my Lord!’

  ‘Just so, Blut, just so!’

  ‘It would help,’ said Barklice on the sixth day after the explosion, ‘if we could get some intelligence. Normally I meet fellow hydden on my travels who are only too willing to talk, but almost everyone has gone to ground.’

  In fact they had come across three or four hydden along the way, not including the dead ones, of whom there had been many more. With only one exception these had been no more than brief sightings of hydden making themselves scarce and resisting all attempts to come and talk.

  The one they talked to was unfortunately a hydden in deep mental distress, maddened by some terrible experience affecting those he knew. He stood trembling before them and in an obvious state of fear. He wanted to talk but when he did his words were incoherent, his shouts and moans, tics and shaking very frightening. He sought to attack Barklice with his fists, broke free of Terce’s grasp, ran off into woodland, and they saw him no more.

  It seemed that whatever trauma the human beings had suffered had affected hydden too.

  ‘Ourselves as well, perhaps,’ murmured Sinistral in a rare moment, ‘at least in some ways. Are we not now behaving with extreme caution and daily growing more anxious? Eh, Blut?’

  ‘I fear that may be true, my Lord,’ was Blut’s reply.

  It was as if a mass hysteria had gripped Englalond, a fearful mood made up of insubstantial fears and shadows fuelled by outbreaks of anarchy and violence here and there, perhaps by hydden as well as human.

  Of all the sights they saw, the strangest – and in its way the most beautiful – was a horse that galloped past them one evening, along a metalled road. They heard the pounding of its hoofs approaching from behind and stopped and waited. Their reward was the sight of a stallion, big and strong, rushing by as if it, too, was in flight.

  At first it was black against the setting sky, a silhouette. Then, its hoofbeats fading into the distance, the road curved such that the last sunlight fell upon its flanks and they saw that it was not black at all.

  It was as white as snow, but for its flowing mane and flailing tail, which were pale gold in the evening sun. It turned for a moment and stared at them. Then it raced on once more, leaving them with a fearful, irrational feeling that if they did not hurry they might be left behind in the wasteland of lost and ruined life that the world about them had become.

  That evening, Sinistral briefly took the lead.

  ‘There is no enemy but we ourselves,’ he said. ‘There never is, there never was. Eh, Blut?’

  ‘That is indeed so, my Lord.’

  ‘Then we shall do the only thing we can, we shall carry on.’

  Which they did, into the night, not sure if it was the horse or Sinistral that put strength into their legs and new hope into their hearts.

  12

  ACROSS THE GOODWINS

  It was sixteen days since Riff and Deap had launched their craft into the waves at Pendower and the storm, which had never abated, was still getting worse. It was the most severe, according to Borkum Riff, there ever was or ever could be in all of time.

  ‘As if he can possibly know that!’ observed Jack, almost cheerfully. His seasickness was gone and he had recovered from his fall. His duties now were in the galley and occasionally helping on deck.

  ‘Oh he knows,’ shouted Leetha, anything less being inaudible against the howling wind and creaking of the craft. ‘The Earth is made up of sea as well as land and from Riff’s birth he’s felt the sea like his own blood and through it the beat of the heart of Mother Earth. He believes this storm is the Earth’s cry of rage and pain.’

  Riff and Deap each worried for the other, each now so dog tired they were beginning to make mistakes. They fell asleep at the wheel at times, their salt-swollen eyes closing. The mouths and lips of both were bruised and bloodied by the freezing sleet and hail. Sometimes they spoke incoherently, their minds circling around towards the bliss of unknowing when they needed to be even more clear and focused. The crews as well.

  Not a one among them but had not been hurt: a falling spar, a parted, thrashing rope, the swing of jib and the cosh of tackle, like thunderous fists coming at them without warning, putting clusters of bursting stars around their heads and the dull, deep pain of mounting injury.

  Slew was thrown down and his leg and ankle so damaged that he could not use them without worse injury and he was sent below.

  ‘Riff’s going to need you, Jack,’ his mother said, binding Slew’s ankle up.

  He knew that well enough but did not reply. He knew nothing of the mariner’s art and had none of their experience and skills. But he knew exhaustion when he saw it and where his duty lay.

  The storm was relentless and they seemed caught up now in its vast roundel of driving wind, forced to tack and gybe to face the shifting direction of the waves, harried far from the course they thought they were on.

  One night a pillar of chalky cliff loomed out of the waters, needle like. There were more behind it, the waves breaking high over the top of
them.

  ‘Where the Mirror did that come from?’ muttered Riff, staring at his compass in puzzlement. ‘If it be what I think we’m way off course or the compass be wild. That was . . .’

  The chalk scraped by before he named it and the water opened up once more and an hour later or maybe three, or maybe a whole day, they ran into a big red buoy, number plain in white.

  ‘What’s that doing here, it’s . . . !?’

  Wrong place again, the bearings all awry, Deap as confused in his craft as Riff in his.

  Confused and bewildered, tired beyond the grave, they fought on and on. But now they were beginning to lose, even Riff, even Deap, greatest sailors of their day. Jack could feel their growing despair.

  ‘Mortality has limits,’ Leetha whispered in a lull, repeating, ‘they need you now, Jack, they need all the help they can get. Take them this.’

  He took them the food in a closed cannikin to stop it blowing away.

  ‘You eat now,’ he ordered his father, the first time he had done so.

  Riff cursed and swore but took the mess of pottage she had made and gulped it down. He wanted more and Jack, still uncertain on the slippery decks, went and got it.

  ‘Leetha make this?’

  He nodded.

  ‘She never were much good in a galley,’ he growled.

  ‘I’ll do it next time,’ said Jack. ‘She’s tired through. What herbs have you got?’

  ‘Seaweed!’ someone called out with a laugh.

  ‘That’s a start,’ said Jack, who had learnt a lot from Mister Barklice about making do and doing that well along the way.

  The next day Leetha rested and he did the galley work, serving them, brews and all, twixt stove and table, bulkhead and floor, making, serving, eating, drinking, one and together, crew as well, family every one of them.

  It was there, doing that, being a part, keeping the craft surviving, that Jack found his sea legs. They came suddenly, from fighting the deck to being one with it, from being an alien and bumped about to joining himself to the cutter, as if he were one of its planks, or the mast maybe, one and all together.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked, beginning to move and flex his body with the craft as Riff did.

  Riff smelt the air like a fox at night.

  Jack, whose sight was good, couldn’t see a thing.

  Riff listened, head cocking to one side.

  Jack could only hear the roar and whine of the wind in the ropes and the spray thudding on the deck.

  Riff caressed the wheel and felt the shiver of the boat.

  Jack touched wheel and deck, rail and stanchion, and all he felt was cold.

  ‘We’m round about and headin’ where we’ve no business to be,’ said Riff, slow now, his eyes vague.

  ‘Where’s Deap?’

  ‘Half a mile to leeward and he’s tired, more tired even than me.’

  Riff’s bulk swung with the wheel and the lean of the boat into Jack’s hulking body. He stood his ground, supporting Riff awhile until he swung away upright again. His tiredness engendered Jack’s growing strength.

  ‘Aye,’ said Riff, eyes closing again, ‘he be more tired than me and . . . and . . .’

  Jack saw new worry in the dark, creased, bearded features of his father’s face, and alarm in his eyes.

  ‘And what? What is it?’

  ‘Ain’t nowt.’

  But Jack knew something wasn’t right. He looked round the boat, eyes half shut against the stinging spray. He felt the boat, or it felt him. Solid, strong, like his own blood and bone. It wasn’t the boat that was worrying Riff.

  Jack went to the side and stared through the breaking waves and spray in the direction Riff had cocked his head, to listen rather than look. The din was a chaotic mix of wind on water, water breaking, the slap of the bows against the sea, the fall of sea upon the decks, and the clatter and crash of things loose, things breaking.

  ‘Canst hear it, Jack?’ he said.

  Jack listened and was about to shake his head when his eyes caught something through the spray, whiter than the spray, blacker than the night shadows.

  It was . . . it was . . .

  He strained to see, leaning out over the racing, raging water, and it turned and was gone, a massive horse’s shin and hoof, streaming with water.

  Then the flank of a horse vast above them, whose other parts – its head, its tail, its racing legs, he could not see.

  But the shining, streaming, palely iridescent flank, and down it, plain as the spray that raced by it, a mortal leg, robe streaming behind. Then briefly, as the flank dipped and turned and the horse’s legs raced through the great seas, her bare arm, her hand loose on the rein, her angry, bitter laugh.

  ‘Canst thou?’ whispered his father, pulling him back to safety, speaking lips to ear, ‘canst hear it?’

  ‘I saw it, I heard it, the White Horse and its Rider.’

  Riff shook his head.

  ‘Nay, ’tis an illusion. Listen, lad, and hear the soft, grating growl of the Goodwin Sands, which we call the Ship Swallower. That’s what we saw!’

  Jack looked and listened and had to shake his head. There was nothing for him there.

  Riff slipped, let go the wheel and it spun momentarily out of control.

  ‘Damn its eyes and spokes,’ said Riff as Jack himself took the wheel and held it, stilled it, and helped Riff set it and their craft true with the waves again.

  ‘Listen up, Jack, and you’ll hear ’im soon enough. But now . . . now . . .’

  Riff’s eyes were closing, his body sagging.

  ‘You take ’er, Jack,’ he said, as the bow dipped deep into green water and the sails above their heads jolted dangerously about, filling and emptying, ‘and keep her . . . so . . .’

  Together they leaned into the great wheel, feeling the heft of the craft against them, a-playing to her play, their strength with hers.

  ‘You take her,’ repeated Riff, stepping back like he had when Deap was a scrap of a boy, teaching him his trade.

  Riff’s smiles were usually rare and grudging things but out there, as Jack took over, and unseen by anyone, even Jack himself, his smile was a joyful open thing.

  You’re getting your sea legs now, my lad, and by the Mirror true, afore this day be done we’ll have need o’ you!

  A lull, and Jack at the wheel, watching to port where a wave steepened towards them, saw the Horse’s head heave up out of the water, its mane a breaking waterfall, its exquisite cheeks two calms, its proud dark eyes the shadows beyond the waves.

  ‘Why didn’t we take shelter in a harbour along the coast?’ asked Jack as the Rider, who was perhaps no more than the broiling sky, rode by.

  ‘This storm came on too fast,’ explained Slew, back on deck but struggling; his head was bleeding from a knock. ‘It is safer staying out in open sea than trying to make land. Get it wrong and a single wave in weather like this will crash a craft onto sand or shore or the stage of a jetty so hard it will break in two.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Jack, hearing a sudden grating sound.

  ‘The Ship Swallower,’ said Riff, eyes wild, ‘right under us.’

  ‘And that . . . ?’ cried Jack, hearing a warning shout carried on the wind.

  ‘That’s Deap.’

  Whatever it was, the keel had touched the bottom and at the wheel’s turn the wind had brought them clear again. The white wall of savage surf, where the Horse and Rider went, loomed off to starboard before it was gone from sight.

  The great seas rose and fell about them like the rise and fall of mountains, majestic and slow. Their craft now felt no more substantial than a splinter of sodden wood. It went heavily up with the waves, on and on, up and up until all that remained was the angry, grey sky ahead and the top of the wave beginning to break around them, driven by the wind into a million flying fragments of water. Then, cresting the giant wave, they slid back down and down to the furious, dark deep below, the craft losing way and steerage, slewing sideways, perilously
near broaching, risking capsize absolute if they could not control it and bring it round, the bow back up the rise, bow to the new crest far above, up and up once more, each time more tiring than the last.

  Sometime then came the shout again, and Jack, who was needed now at the wheel all the time because Riff had grown too weak, pointed forward through the spray.

  There, for the first time in hours, Jack saw Deap’s craft and Deap at the wheel, hand raised, not in salute but to show he needed aid.

  ‘He’m lost un’ o’erboard . . .’ cried Riff, head snapping round as not one, but two bodies, Deap’s deckhands, shot by them overboard and gone in a moment, floppy drowned and dead.

  ‘Not a chance o’ getting ’em and no damn point,’ said Riff, dismissing them because he needed to be alert to what lay ahead. ‘He’ll need you now, over there.’

  ‘Me?’ cried Jack, spitting out salt, cheek blown sideways. ‘You need me!’

  Riff nodded his head and leaned to the wheel, letting the cutter slide up and down the great seas, swearing and cursing as, with a skill born of years of experience, he brought their craft ever nearer Deap’s.

  ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Can you hear ’im now?’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Jack, who could hear the surf’s fatal roar, a thumping, battering of sound.

  ‘Watch to starboard now, as we crest this wave . . . There, lad! That’s the Ship Swallower!’

  It would have been unimaginable had he not seen it with his own eyes. A wilderness of surf straight ahead, just moments away, all darkened by sand and stretching to the horizon.

  ‘It be the Goodwin Sands, and they’m never something you’d want t’see either side of your bow. Gybing or tacking’s now too late and will only broach us down.’

  Jack looked around but saw no way back.

  ‘There be none,’ said Riff, holding the wheel through the breaking waves, ‘we’m to cross ’em or die in the trying.’

  Another crest, another fragmentary view, before their bow dropped forward and down, down to the trough, deeper down than any valley Jack had ever entered.