Winter

by William Horwood

  He turned back to the Poldy leader with a frown and took up a position closer still to his impulsive other.

  ‘As I said, I ain’t swiftly narktious on my own account but any that insults one such as Madder here, goodly as she is, comely too and braver than the whole pesky pack o’ you, has me to answer to! And not just me!’

  ‘Mayhap and mayhap not!’ cried the other, suddenly furious, ‘but we be many and you be motley and no match for us.’

  Arnold’s face reddened and now he really did begin to look furious.

  ‘First you sully me, then you bander Madder here and now you’m stupid o’ the subject of my bold friends and companions o’ the road. And we bain’t all! There’s shadows o’ my blood looming near, for my folks don’t take kindly to girtly fools like you, so you’m facing a whole army which makes the Fyrdie ones look like drowned gnats.’

  ‘Gnats! Girtly! Stupid!’ cried the Poldy one, hopping about from foot to foot, his face puce with rage. ‘We don’t care if your blood be the finest ever made, provided we spill it on this’n sward here and now and rightaway. Eh, lads? Eh, lassies?’

  ‘That’s right,’ responded his followers.

  ‘Afore you start and make a fool of yerselves maybe I should tell you who I be and what I be,’ Arnold called out, advancing on the one questioning him. ‘I be of Brum born and Bilgesnipe bred and my name be one should make your throttle dry up and disintegrate.’

  The Poldyfolk leader grinned unpleasantly and looked round at what seemed his mate, who was something else entirely. A fulsome female, of bright looks and bold intelligent eyes, who looked like she’d been spoused beneath herself. But she, loyal as Bilgesnipe are to their kith and kin, nodded in agreement with him.

  ‘You speak, my dearest,’ said he.

  ‘There be only one name weighs heavy with us’n folk,’ she said calmly, ‘and you’m too willowy and slight to be of that great bloodline of Brum. No, lad, go thee home and stop orderin’ your’n betters about! And take that sluttish wench and her dandy airy-fairy ways with you.’

  ‘Aye!’ said her spouse, rearing himself up taller than a slouch so that some semblance of the fine young hydden he might once have been, just about, showed itself, ‘and we’m both a-saying, willowboy, that there be only one name does my throttle in and I’m guessin’ you know it well enough.’

  ‘Fools you certainly be,’ said Arnold very menacingly, ‘but even such filchy fools as thee ’ave heard o’ Muggy Duck, I take it, even in these dim parts?’

  They looked at each other gravely, while their followers all nodded, wondering what he was driving at.

  ‘We have heard of it and we respect it.’

  ‘You’ve heard of he who founded it?’

  ‘ ’Twas Pa Mallarkhi.’

  ‘So it was,’ said Arnold. ‘I take it that be the family name you hold in reverence and awe, like wot you just declared?’

  ‘Natural-most we do. And especially that famed and famous Ma’Shuqa, Pa Mallarkhi’s daughter, who runs the place we’ve heard, Mirror praise her.’

  ‘Well then, twatty ones,’ cried Arnold, ‘she’m not one to take disrespect a-sitting on her butt. She’d rise up and strike you dead with a frying pan if she thought you were less than polite to one of her own.’

  ‘Like who, for example, bilgyboy?’

  ‘Like me,’ said Arnold coldly.

  They laughed derisively.

  ‘What be you, her scullery boy?’ said the female.

  ‘Scullery maid more like,’ said her spouse, laughing aloud and looking at his supporters so that they laughed too.

  Arnold shook his head.

  ‘No, I bain’t scullery-nothing nor any maid that I know of. Ma’Shuqa’s my ma and Pa Mallarkhi is my grandpa and my names is Arnold Mallarkhi and you’m and your crew just made me mad . . .’

  ‘And me!’ cried Madder suddenly, ‘and that be no lie! I bring a Mallarkhi into the fold and allers you do is like you allers done, trash ’im and them I’ve a liking for and like me.’

  ‘Who be this spousled pair of idiots?’ asked Arnold, turning to her in disbelief that they could be so rude.

  ‘I was tryin’ to say afore I grew briefly ashamed,’ Madder replied. ‘They be my pa and ma, Mirror help me!’

  ‘Then it be time to teach ’em what you really be, my lass!’

  ‘You ’n me both!’ she replied.

  With that, and to the astonishment of them all, Arnold threw aside Sinistral’s great stave and Madder hauled up the hems of her skirts and petticoats and tucked them into her belt, revealing her sturdy legs and lacy drawers, for ease of movement, it seemed. Then, without pause for further verbal insults, they launched themselves at the Poldyfolk together. With kicks and punches, bites and pokes, kneeings and elbowing and gougings and a good many other tricks he had learnt in the backwaters of Brum, Arnold attacked his putative father-in-law and anyone else he could get his hands on before sheer weight of numbers subdued him, swearing, foaming at the mouth and generally looking terrifying.

  As for Madder, she attacked a trio of smug-looking females, her older sisters it seemed, and might have killed them all had not four muddy males, seemingly kin of hers as well, hauled her off her screaming quarry and with difficulty subdued her.

  But no sooner had they relaxed and elicited promises from Arnold and Madder to be still than the former cried, ‘Boddle to that, we Brummies don’t yield to snipey folk like you!’ and he rushed over to Madder, freed her too, and the mayhem resumed.

  Barklice and the others stared in astonishment and, initially, some alarm. But it very soon became apparent that the Bilgesnipes’ approach to fighting was very different from that of ordinary hydden. For one thing, the weapons they had been carrying had been cast aside, as if they were a hindrance to the main action. For another, the blows they dealt each other were nothing more dangerous than biffs and buffets to ears and nose, and stomach, with occasional kicks to their shins and posteriors.

  It soon looked once more as if Arnold and Madder didn’t stand a chance. But after a further two or three minutes, with Arnold down again and Madder winded, her immediate family members suddenly became their friends against the wider group.

  ‘The lad be hurt and t’bain’t fair to set upon he when him grounded, so take that’m there and this’m here!’

  ‘Come on, lass,’ Madder’s pa cried, ‘upp’n you get and bide by me while I knicker out that snitchywitch your cousin once and fer all time, she didn’t never play fair, not since she’m a wee spikey thing o’ a girl!’

  Mayhem reigned again, with Arnold and Madder lost to sight until at last, honour satisfied, the Poldyfolk fell one way and another and only the two lovers-to-be remained standing, back to back, jabbing at thin air as if at foes imaginary, or perhaps foes remembered. Finally they sank down together and sat on the sward still back to back, with the beaten Poldyfolk scattered all around.

  To the astonishment of the bemused onlookers, these combatants rose up, apparently unharmed, and the females went to Madder and praised her while the males did the same to Arnold, reaching a hand to each and helping them to their feet.

  Madder’s father emerged from the crowd.

  ‘My name be Donard, lad. Take my hand, for you be worthy of thy name and of my lass’s hand ’n more.’

  He stood bruised and bloodied but evidently bore no ill-will.

  ‘What you say, Ma?’ he cried to Madder’s mother.

  ‘I say this and then let it be. I say she’m been the dreamiest, driftiest, irritatingist, willow-the-way girl o’ mine as I was ever cursed with and if I was angry at her ways and means it was disappointment made me so for never did I love one as I loved her, except o’ course for my other kinder, curse ’em all. But Madder’s got a maddening way with her, that squeezes a hug out o’ me every time, eh, Pa?’

  ‘She always had that, Ma, she always did, but that was then and now is now. I’m that proud o’ her spirit and the wild way she be in spite of all we allers said that my h
eart and head are bursting with it. I love ’er now more than I ever did and that was much and a lot.’

  They fell silent and came together and looked at Madder and Arnold, one after another.

  ‘Shall I say it, Ma, or you?’

  ‘You,’ said Ma.

  ‘So here and now I freely say that you was a girl once, Madder, and now you’re a stirtly, brightly, wondrous bilgywenchy woman.’

  ‘One o’ those will do, Pa, and it bain’t “wenchy”.’

  ‘I take that back. Now, Madder, what can we do by way of recompense?’

  ‘Make me proud, Pa, make me proud to see you shake Pa Mallarkhi’s hand if that day should ever come. Make me proud, Ma, to embrace his ma, as one equal to another, which I allers said we all should be, of whatever age or name or kin or spirit. Will you strive to that for me?’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘Even if you don’t and he’s right and you’m girtly, cowardly fools the lot o’ you I still . . . well . . . you been brave and he said truth’s best out. Oh then I love you and that be true whatever you done: allers did and allers will.’

  Chaos had reigned before but now a great group hug, which was the Bilgesnipe way at the end of fighting, came up and embraced them all, reaching its warm hands and touch and firm grip even to Sinistral himself, who might have expired of suffocation had not Terce pulled him clear just in time.

  Only then, and as the breeze stirred the trees above their heads and smoke from the now dying fire reminded them all of their duty, did Donard say, ‘We’m cowards no more. We’m all off to help the Knollers out. Which reminds me, Madder, who be ’is friends?’

  Madder gazed at Barklice and the rest, as if she had seen them for the first time, which was almost true. Arnold had had the bulk of her attention.

  Arnold was about to introduce them one by one when Donard raised a hand and said, ‘Now don’t go and tell some tomfool story to make bigger idiots of us folk than we are already. I’m ready to accept you’m the Mallarkhi heir but don’t make false claims for your friends. You’ll be telling me next that the tall one with the hoary hair is the Emperor hisself.’

  ‘Not me, but him,’ said Sinistral, pointing at Blut.

  At which Blut took off his spectacles and wiped them, as if to pause for thought and see matters more clearly.

  ‘Dang me and the Mirror if I ain’t heard the Emperor’s got specs,’ said one of Madder’s sisters.

  A look of awe had come over them all as they began to think that Arnold was actually telling the truth.

  ‘So next you’ll be saying that he’m with the red hair and dandly legs is Mister Stort and t’other shorter old one is Mister Barklice, best hyddener alive?’

  ‘The very same,’ said Barklice amicably.

  The awe deepened.

  ‘So you’d be the Lady Katherine, troubled ma of the Shield Maiden, Mirror help you?’ said Madder’s ma.

  ‘I am,’ said Katherine, introducing Terce in his turn.

  ‘Dang me but this be weird wyrd indeed,’ said Pa Donard.

  ‘Now, we better get on and do our duty by the Knollers. Follow us, one and all, for we may be slow off the mark to ’elp our enemies, which is only natural, but we got a plan and it’ll be easier to see through under cover of the mist.’

  As they all trooped off downslope towards the Levels, Pa and Ma turned to Katherine and said, as if in a final moment of doubt that any of what they had been told was true, ‘If you be all you say you are, why’s that famed Stavemeister Jack not here?’

  There was something reassuring in the question which Katherine, who had missed him so much in the troubled days past, very much liked.

  ‘He’s otherwise engaged,’ she said, going quiet as she sent Jack a silent prayer that he might know she was well and for the moment, just like him, ‘otherwise engaged’.

  21

  BOHR

  From twenty thousand feet the little known US airbase of RAF Croughton in the Northamptonshire countryside of the English Midlands looked like an oasis of light in a land of darkness.

  Dr Erich Bohr, one of only two civilian passengers on the C40 Clipper out of Scott Airbase, Illinois, USA, peered down at the landing lights with apprehension mixed with grim determination, as the crew began their final descent. His present mission was difficult, dangerous and very important. He doubted that he could save the world from the extraordinary cosmic stress it was now under; probably no one could. But he reckoned he had a better chance than most.

  The more so, perhaps, because he had Ingrid Hansen with him, his assistant and fellow researcher and the only other civilian passenger. She was his fresh pair of eyes and had a habit of solving problems others couldn’t.

  ‘Three minutes.’

  The captain’s words were a whisper in his ear.

  He settled back in his seat, hands and elbows on the rests, shoeless feet relaxed, and he stopped looking outside. That’s what he always did. He always had believed that if a plane was going to crash and he was going to die he would prefer not to watch the process.

  He had last made this landing three months before, in August, also in the small hours. Then, the surrounding countryside of villages, towns and roads between had been well lit, with very few pockets of real dark. Now darkness predominated, as it had for the whole of the approach since crossing the south coast. What few points of light he had seen were real fires, not artificial light.

  England was shut down, its population fled north, the various arms of its government bunkered, its communications now reliant on the specialist American equipment and personnel of RAF Croughton.

  ‘One minute . . .’

  The voice trailed and another crew member took over final instructions. Bohr closed his eyes and readied his body. Croughton was not the most modern of landing strips. Sheep grazed across its grass, or had when he was last there. Half the on-site buildings were non-functional, but that was a blind. From this airbase one-third of Europe’s military communications were run, or used to be until a few weeks before. Now everything was shutting down, military and civilian. God alone knew what percentage of communications now ran from this base.

  The rest of the personnel were military. Six were crew of the aircraft itself, from 932D Airlift Wing. Twenty-three were personnel from two different US Special Mission Units: ten from DEVGRU or Naval Special Warfare Development Group; thirteen from ISC, the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command.

  The mission was a joint command with Colonel P. Reece, a tough US Army officer with considerable experience in covert operations in alien and unusual territory. They were tasked with entering the Hyddenworld to establish if the cause of the present natural disasters besetting the Earth derived from that realm and if so what the cure might be.

  It was unusual but not unknown for the command of a complex intelligence mission, one that might involve considerable physical danger to some of its personnel, to be shared between a civilian and a member of the military in this way. Naturally, everyone hoped that the force and assets of the DEVGRU operatives would not be needed. But if they were, then their fast, highly skilled and well-honed, few-questions-asked approach to almost any situation the mission might face could save all their lives.

  Erich Bohr was exceptional for a civilian in that he had the respect of every man and woman there, except Reece who trusted no one. He was a physicist and a former NASA astronaut, meaning that he too had been through some very special training. That part of his career over, his academic and corporate political skills enabled him to rise to the post of director of one of the Agency’s research teams, with a special interest in cosmology and the science of the environment of space. He was also Special Adviser to the President of the United States.

  But all that, including even his two trips into space, paled into insignificance compared to the potential importance of the mission he was now on and for which he was uniquely qualified. For Bohr was one of Arthur Foale’s former pupils and second only to him in his knowledge of t
he Hyddenworld.

  The plane touched down and twenty-five minutes later Bohr, Reece, Hansen and their team were in one of the airbase’s briefing rooms. It was the same room in which Arthur Foale had also been briefed – and his skills and knowledge partially shared – in August, during Bohr’s previous visit.

  On that occasion Arthur had been keen to leave before pressure was put on him to divulge what he knew of the Hyddenworld and in particular how to enter it. He had realized that if he did not comply it was unlikely he would be allowed to leave.

  The purpose of the meeting then, which brought together a range of world experts and specialists on natural disasters from seismic events to climatological phenomena, was to try to develop a strategy for the Western international community following a series of cataclysmic disasters worldwide.

  As the brilliant but irascible former Professor of Astral Archaeology at Cambridge University, Arthur knew perfectly well what Bohr, one of his most original students, was likely to want. Arthur had foolishly let slip the fact that, after years of seemingly off-the-wall research into something he called the Hyddenworld, he had found a way of entering it.

  Unlike most other cosmologists, Bohr was prepared to take Arthur’s unfortunate claim seriously. But the more Bohr pressed him on the subject, the vaguer Arthur became, until relations between the two broke down. In any case, Bohr returned to the USA, where his career took off. But when the world entered a phase of natural disasters that might have a cosmological explanation, Bohr contacted Arthur again. Equally naturally, Arthur knew why.

  His sudden removal from Woolstone to Croughton under military guard in August confirmed his worst fears. He had no doubt that the base had been chosen for the conference precisely because it was near his home. What Bohr did not know was that his former professor had very specialist knowledge of Croughton as a prehistoric site and that, in particular, there were two henges close to its south-west boundary.

  Nor did Bohr imagine that an unfit, overweight academic in his seventies would be able to escape what was effectively military detention and disappear. He did not realize, as Arthur did, that perimeter fences are designed to keep people out, not keep them in. Once Arthur was certain that his brains would be picked, by force if necessary, he escaped through the fence and made his way to the second of the henges, of which no more remained than discoloration in the grass growing there, caused by differential soil in old post-holes, and a very slight raising of the ground. But it still functioned as a henge.