Winter

by William Horwood

  ‘We just need a vehicle large enough for all of us and a set of keys and . . .’

  They stared at her blankly, not getting it at all. The human world and all its ways and means still felt alien to them. It was as if, though it was palpable enough, it was impossible for them to be part of its realm.

  ‘Can’t you see we’d get back to Brum a lot faster?’ she said, exasperated.

  ‘And a lot deader,’ said Barklice darkly.

  But after another rough, sleepless night of driving wet and cold and a miserable dawn-time start, Katherine had finally had enough.

  To everyone’s astonishment, when they stopped for breakfast, she simply said, ‘I’m going to eat, I’m going to drink Stort’s brew, and then I’m going to do it.’

  ‘Do what?’ asked Barklice.

  ‘Take a vehicle and get away from this place.’

  She looked around, glaring at each in turn, challenging them to tell her not to. None of them did.

  Instead, the decision made it seemed, Blut said, ‘Tell me, Katherine, exactly how a car is driven?’

  ‘And how, pray, exactly, is the direction in which a vehicle goes determined?’ wondered Stort.

  ‘By a steering wheel.’

  She explained how steering worked.

  ‘Ingenious,’ observed Stort, ‘but rather subject to error, I would have thought.’

  ‘You get used to it,’ said Katherine.

  ‘Then you will do what you call the driving . . . ?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she replied very firmly, ‘I’ll do the driving.’

  ‘No one is driving anywhere,’ said Barklice firmly ‘until we need to, and we don’t need to yet.’

  Which re-started the argument, a bickering, rumbling, bad-tempered thing, which dragged on half a day. Until Sinistral, who had stayed silent and was very tired, asserted himself.

  ‘Miss Katherine,’ he said very formally, ‘you will select a vehicle from the many we find along the way and convey myself and Blut to Brum. The others may choose to come with us or not as they wish.’

  ‘Yes, my Lord!’ said Katherine.

  The road took them steadily on into the open heath and moor. It was sterile and desolate and the only buildings were occasional farms, bothies and concrete erections that looked military. The strong wind grew ever colder, the chill factor making their progress increasingly unpleasant. Sinistral, who had proved remarkably robust for an old hydden, was growing pale and breathless.

  ‘Time for another halt,’ said Barklice.

  Ten minutes previously they had passed a heavily gated private road with a sign which read: ‘Bodmin Equestrian Centre’. They could see buildings half a mile away across the fields.

  ‘Interesting,’ murmured Stort examining it with his glass. ‘Let us explore it, Katherine. It has possibilities.’

  Despite the protests of Barklice, they set off to do so, assuring everyone they would not be long or do anything stupid. Time passed, the afternoon light faded, twilight came and with it no Stort or Katherine.

  The only sign of life had been a light showing briefly by the cluster of buildings they had gone to explore and after that a white light nearby followed by a red one. Barklice grew restive and uneasy.

  ‘My only consolation is that Katherine is with Stort and will prevent him doing something extreme. She is the personification of common sense. I would not have allowed him to go without her. I can only hope they have found some useful but heavy supplies which are slowing their return down.’

  Darkness came and they began to get seriously worried. The last time Katherine went off the world exploded.

  The silence was broken by the sudden starting of an engine, and two strong beams of white light shot out of the darkness across the fields from the direction of the equestrian centre. The engine sounds increased and decreased, stopped, started and stopped again. The engine started once more, the lights cutting through the darkness as the vehicle they had found, for that was surely what it was, began jolting and bouncing along the private road, gathering speed towards them.

  ‘I hope that Stort is not at the wheel,’ said Sinistral uneasily.

  ‘He will have to stop at the gate,’ said Blut, ‘so do not concern yourself, my Lord.’

  ‘Humph!’ said Sinistral, eyeing the rapidly advancing lights and then the gate.

  ‘He must stop,’ said Barklice, his voice rising. ‘Surely!’

  But Stort, if it was he, did not stop.

  Indeed, as they neared the entrance, the vehicle loomed ever faster out of the darkness, a great monster of a thing, as big as any truck, but high-sided, solid and long. Its side and roof shone darkly in the night and, as it approached, they saw no sign of Stort at the driver’s seat in the cab. They could only see Katherine’s face, lit by green-white light, peering through the window.

  The vehicle lurched over the last few bumpy yards of the track on the far side of the gate and powered straight through it. The two parts splayed open, padlock and chains skittering across the road towards the watching hydden as the rear wheels of the vehicle, of which there were several pairs, rode over the fallen gates and skidded sideways. To avoid crashing into the central reservation, the vehicle made a sharp left with a clattering of metal and a burning of rubber, sliding to a stop with a squeal of brakes.

  The vehicle skewed over on one side, the nearside wheels leaving the road and hanging briefly in the air before it thumped back down. Acrid smoke lingered as the engine stuttered to a stop, the passenger door swung open and Stort, small compared to the great passenger seat, tumbled down onto the tarmac of the road, swiftly followed by Katherine.

  The others gathered around, lanterns in their hands, at once alarmed, awed and amazed.

  ‘Not bad,’ cried out Stort cheerfully, proffering Katherine a hand, ‘considering.’

  ‘Who was driving?’ asked Blut very reasonably. He might equally well have asked: ‘How were you managing to drive, given the distance between seat and pedals?’

  Stort and Katherine looked at each other.

  ‘We both were,’ she said. ‘Once the engine was on I turned the wheel to steer while Stort’s height enabled him to have a foot on the clutch and accelerator and change gears.’

  ‘And we may well have just made history,’ added Stort, ‘this being the first time, to my knowledge, that a hydden has driven a human vehicle.’

  ‘It’s against all the traditions,’ said Barklice with a frown and somewhat feebly, ‘and as Chief Verderer of Brum and leader of this particular journey I feel . . .’

  But his voice was drowned out by the others, who hoisted each other up onto the seats to examine the steering wheel, dashboard and lights.

  ‘It’s a horsebox,’ Katherine explained, ‘which we found locked away in an outhouse. Very new, complete with a sleeping bunk behind the passenger seat, a television which doesn’t work, a full tank and berths for horse handlers in the rear, accessed through a side door.’

  Stort had put padding on the seat so Katherine could see out of the window. He had also stockpiled more fuel at the rear, in containers they had found. Now he built up the pedals with wooden blocks so she could reach them as well.

  ‘The perfect transport on these empty roads,’ he declared with satisfaction.

  ‘Provided we don’t run into humans,’ said Barklice darkly.

  Neither Sinistral nor Blut felt they should let the moment pass without comment.

  ‘We have avoided human contact, and the use of their machinery, for centuries,’ said Blut, ‘and historical though this moment may be I am not sure it is entirely positive.’

  ‘My dear Blut,’ responded Sinistral, ‘you delude yourself. We hydden have been living off human mismanagement of our Mother Earth for centuries. Borrowing one of these vehicles may seem a significant moment in history but in my view it is nothing more than an extension of what we already do.’

  ‘My Lord, you always surprise me,’ said Blut.

  ‘Needs must,’ replied Sinistral
with a smile, ‘and we certainly need to get on faster than we have been!’

  They stowed their ’sacs in the rear and agreed it might be safer if they all travelled together in the cab.

  ‘We might do best to wait until dawn to leave,’ said Blut, ever the sensible planner.

  ‘Indeed we might . . .’ began Sinistral, as excited as the others by the prospect of speeding up what had become a troublesome and wearisome journey, ‘. . . but that . . . I fear . . .’

  ‘What is it, my Lord?’ asked Blut, following the former Emperor’s gaze down the road behind them.’

  ‘I fear we are no longer alone upon the road!’ he announced.

  Small lights were bobbing in the dark towards them, their distance hard to determine.

  ‘Shutter the lanterns,’ called out Barklice as Stort focused his monocular on the lights.

  ‘Humans,’ he pronounced, ‘armed and running . . .’

  ‘All aboard, me hearties!’ cried out Arnold Mallarkhi, who was clearheaded at such moments. ‘Katherine first, since she’s going to be the main one driving this great craft. Stort next to her, since he be needed too, it seems. Up’n you all go,’ he said, cupping his hands to give each of them in turn a bunk-up.

  ‘Quick!’ said Barklice.

  ‘Start the engine!’ commanded Stort.

  ‘Give me a hand, my Lordship Emperor!’ called out Arnold, the last left on the ground.

  As Blut obliged and helped Arnold in, the engine started with a roar. The great vehicle lurched forward; they heard gunfire and the thumping of someone trying to board behind. Then they were gone, the offside tyre sending up a spray of gravel as they swung across the road.

  Katherine righted the wheel, grazed the central reservation, swung the vehicle back, straightened up and accelerated into total darkness.

  ‘It would help,’ said Stort, ‘if someone put the lights back on!’

  ‘That’s your job, Stort,’ Katherine said, ‘remember?’

  The road ahead flooded with light and they saw a grey metal barrier on the passenger side swing towards them. Katherine turned the wheel again, and they were away.

  14

  THE HORSEBOX

  An awed silence descended in the cab as Katherine drove the vehicle along the A30 dual carriageway. Gaining confidence, and seeing they were not pursued by another vehicle, she eased their speed to fifty miles an hour. They had to stop twice to pad out her seating and make it comfortable, and to re-attach the blocks on the pedals to the right angle for her to work them easily.

  ‘Even were I back to human size,’ she said ruefully, ‘I’d have trouble driving this great thing!’

  The others, whether on the passenger seat or perched on the spacious bunk behind, crowded forward with excitement, with one exception: Terce.

  The strongest among them, he had already proved his courage in the face of danger. But naturally, since the explosion and consequent loss of his hearing and being badly shaken about, he had not been himself. Now, as the road rushed towards him, he sat terrified, covering his eyes with his fingers. Beads of sweat broke out on his brow, his heart raced and he muttered his thoughts aloud, unable to hear his own voice, ‘I can’t . . . it’s too . . . we’ll all . . .’

  Because it was night and the lights were on low beam, items like emergency orange telephones, the occasional tree on an embankment and a cardboard box that had blown onto the carriageway, appeared to jump into view as they rushed on by.

  Used as he was to a quiet, monastic way of life, he had no experience of human roads. These sudden apparitions or the disconcerting vibrations caused by the various bumps and turns, swings and slowings down along the way disturbed him.

  Several times he cried out ‘Oh!’ and ‘Nooo!’ and then, when it suddenly got too much and he lost all confidence, he cried out, half-hitting those around him in his panic as if thinking they could not hear his cries, ‘Please, stop! I cannot bear this any more.’

  But Katherine did not stop.

  Instead Festoon, at Sinistral’s suggestion, moved his bulky frame alongside that of Terce and put a great and reassuring hand upon his arm.

  The chorister finally calmed down, relaxed his body into the vehicle’s motion and, before many more miles had passed, began staring with growing confidence at the continuously changing nocturnal scene.

  Of the others not one said a word, so entranced were they by the flying spectacle of dark and light, white markings, barriers and abandoned vehicles before them. But for Stort. The scene beyond the windows soon bored him and he refocused his interest on the instrument panel and its appealing array of knobs and buttons of things unknown.

  ‘Don’t touch!’ commanded Katherine and for a short time he did not. But like a child to whom temptation is presented, he surreptitiously reached a finger out here, and prodded something there, to see what would happen if he . . . if he . . . pushed that thing, there, just a wee bit . . . just enough to make it . . .

  The temperature in the cab suddenly began to drop and in moments the air was icy and a draught blowing in their faces.

  ‘Stort, you’ve turned on the air conditioning and the fan as well!’

  ‘Ah! Interesting, I wondered what that was for.’

  ‘It cools the air.’

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘Turn it off!’

  He pressed a button and turned a knob.

  The temperature rose and rose some more and then more still.

  ‘Stort . . .’ said Katherine warningly.

  ‘This is so interesting,’ he said unabashed. ‘This panel here appears to show the temperature.’

  ‘Turn it down . . .’

  ‘Please Stort,’ said Blut suddenly, ‘my Lord and myself are beginning to feel over-heated . . .’

  ‘It’s a display,’ said Katherine, ‘not a panel. Humans call it a display.’

  ‘Ah, quite so. Interesting concept. Lit up from . . .’

  ‘Behind,’ said Katherine. ‘Do not press anything else.’

  But he did, unable to stop himself.

  A new display appeared, this time on a screen, moving all the time, its contents lines of different colours like snakes. Numbers too.

  ‘What . . . ?’

  A disembodied voice said: Turn around when possible!

  ‘It’s the Satnav, a human navigation device,’ explained Katherine. ‘Turn it off!’

  ‘I can’t seem to . . .’

  Keep in the right-hand lane.

  ‘I can’t concentrate,’ said Katherine, ‘and that’s . . . there’s . . .’

  ‘What?’ asked Stort more urgently than before, hearing the crisis in her voice.

  But she did not need to reply.

  Coming towards them were the two white lights of another vehicle, on their side of the dual carriageway and, they saw as it got closer still, in the same lane.

  ‘What shall I do?’

  Her voice was tense, eyes focused and the green light from the dashboard showed her jaws were clenched.

  As quickly as he had engaged the Satnav Stort now turned it off and gave his attention to the approaching lights. There were alarmed murmurings from the others and the beginnings of conflicting advice . . .

  ‘Swerve,’ suggested Barklice.

  Terce raised his hand to indicate the need to stop.

  ‘Stop!’ said Blut.

  But Sinistral said calmly, ‘Keep straight on and don’t deviate. The Empire did not get built on a foundation of doubt and hesitation.’

  ‘But supposing he . . . doesn’t . . . sto—’

  ‘He will stop or he’ll swerve.’

  ‘Accelerate,’ said Stort suddenly.

  ‘A hydden after my own heart!’ murmured Sinistral.

  The approaching vehicle was almost on them, its lights getting bigger and brighter, which gave Katherine an idea.

  She turned the beam full on and, her voice strong and determined, said, ‘Here we go!’

  The vehicle ahead of them suddenly lit up and they
saw everything. It was bull-nosed and painted in khaki camouflage, the wheelbase high, and the whole thing larger and more robust than their own vehicle. It was coming directly at them.

  ‘Do not deviate,’ repeated Sinistral quietly in Katherine’s ear, ‘I have always found it the best policy.’

  She answered by accelerating even more and flashing the full beam on and off.

  A large male human was driving, another two next to him, and all three had their hands in front of their eyes, blinded by the beam.

  One of them, and it did not look like the driver, lost his nerve, leaned over and jerked the wheel sideways. The vehicle slewed to their left and there was a jolt and loud bang as their own vehicle hit its offside rear end.

  Katherine clung to the wheel, Stort helping to hold it steady, and then they were past, skidding briefly before they were back into darkness and still on the road – just. The vehicle swayed violently as Katherine struggled to get it on course again and there was a sudden thump somewhere at the rear and then another. Neither affected the steering or speed but an airy roaring sound now filled the cab.

  ‘Can anyone see what’s happening behind?’ called out Katherine, above the new noise, signalling to the still-deaf Terce what she meant.

  He immediately indicated that the side mirror gave a view behind.

  ‘It looks like the vehicle you hit just exploded,’ said Stort matter-of-factly.

  Katherine ignored this and said, ‘I mean behind in our own vehicle?’

  The bangings continued.

  Until then those on the bunk had been too pre-occupied with the road ahead to bother examining the rear of the horsebox through the window at the back of the cab. Blut now did so and found a small curtain. He pulled it aside and found himself staring at very close quarters into a malevolent human face.

  He cried out involuntarily and explained what he had seen. Katherine turned the steering wheel sharply to one side. The face disappeared and there was a thud and muffled shout. She righted the vehicle again and the face reappeared briefly before going the opposite way.

  ‘We have a passenger in the rear,’ Blut announced, coolly closing the curtain, ‘and he or she is having trouble keeping balance.’