Winter

by William Horwood

  He waited, trying to work out what to do if, as he now thought, they were going to use the knife to cut him free. His initial fear had gone. Even humans were not so unintelligent that they would kill him without trying to find out something about him first.

  What can I do when I’m free? he asked himself. Not a lot immediately because I’m going to find it hard even to sit up, let alone fight.

  That was because he had been unable to move for so long that he had cramped up. He would have to stretch, to go through the agony of sudden blood flow to areas deprived, of muscles strained and waking and having no sense of balance for a time.

  Between the ages of six and eleven, when he was subjected to a series of skin grafts following his rescue of Katherine from her parents’ burning car, he had sometimes spent days in bandages, unable to move. It had been a kind of torture then and was again now. The sudden itches which he was unable to scratch, the pins and needles, the throbbing aches and pains, the horrible need to pee and defecate and the nearly equal desire not to do so in his own clothes.

  As for moving again once he was freed, it would take him an hour to even start to move properly and a day or more to fully recover.

  The worst moment had been during the night, when the man who netted him, who was the same who shot the fox, judging from his scent, came looking for him. Jack heard him before he saw him.

  ‘Where . . . are . . . you . . . ?’

  Then he had heard feet in the grass approaching near, then getting more distant.

  ‘I’m coming to get you . . . !’ came a mocking voice.

  The feet came near again.

  ‘Where . . . are . . . you . . . ?’ and laughter as the cruel game of mock hide and seek was played.

  Bastard.

  Jack had not moved, hoping he would miss him. He saw the torchlight dart here and here, heard the man’s tread and winced when a powerful beam was directed straight into his eyes.

  ‘Oh! There you are . . .’

  Bastard.

  The man had kicked him hard in the small of the back, first on one side and then on the other.

  ‘We don’t like shitty little kids trespassing in here . . .’

  Jack had no doubt that his life was in danger but at least the guard did not know he was a hydden.

  A shout from afar, no, a command.

  The man’s third kick had halted in thin air and he had sworn. Summoned by a superior, it seemed. He put out his light, half turned, aimed a parting kick in the dark that glanced off Jack’s head and was gone. He never came back.

  Others did, different ones, cleaner by the smell, but they missed where he lay.

  He slept, had one pee into his pants, which was warm and then cold and finally stingy and unpleasant, and slept again.

  He had woken sometimes, flexing and relaxing his muscles to try to keep them from stiffening. He used the cover of night to roll back and forth. He stilled when he heard or smelt the patrols go by.

  One of them had eaten processed meat of some kind. He could smell salty preservatives and flavourings and that scent, which made him thirsty more than hungry, made for the worst moment of all.

  Thirst would kill him before hunger so he hoped it would rain. It did not.

  At least it was cold which meant there were few insects about. Moths troubled him briefly, as did a grey squirrel which nibbled at his feet. He kept coming back, touching and nibbling at Jack’s shoe and then his ankle. Jack rolled about a little and finally, chattering, the squirrel left him alone.

  Foxes and dogs would have worried him, but none came by, put off probably by the stench of the dead one. A magpie landed on him, its claws surprisingly sharp but in the end more ticklish than painful. He kept his eyes shut for fear of having them pecked out.

  Then sleep again and now, this.

  The men. The knife. The cutting-free, he hoped.

  Or maybe not.

  The one in the uniform knelt over him, produced the serrated knife again, and rolled him sideways.

  He’s going to cut my throat, Jack told himself and he called out to his stave: ‘Help!’

  The stave, if it was still there and could hear him, did not respond.

  Katherine was still holding Stort’s hand when, falling from what felt a vast distance and simultaneously shifting from a sleeping to a waking state, her legs left far behind her and her free hand way, way ahead, she came to on grass in a state of extreme alarm.

  In the last few waking seconds shards of sound and light had played and melded all around her, conveying a three-dimensional sense that Jack needed help now.

  But where?

  Stort, mumbling, thumped into the ground at her side and Slaeke Sinistral a short time after. In fact, they were all holding each other’s hand.

  She let go of Stort’s, sat up, looked round and saw the glint of the knife before anything else, in among the trees, beyond the henge, just there. She glanced around again to confirm that they had arrived, as she first thought, in the Woolstone tree henge. The clear intention she put into her mind at Stanton Drew was to find Jack because she had no doubt he was in real danger. That feeling redoubled now.

  ‘Leave this to me,’ she said, clear and cold. ‘Be ready.’

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Sinistral and Stort together.

  ‘Woolstone,’ murmured Katherine.

  She rose up knowing as she did so the importance of what Jack had always said: surprise.

  ‘Stay there, Stort, and keep Sinistral with you. Be ready.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For leaving, of course. I don’t think we’ll be hanging around.’

  ‘But we’ve only just . . .’ he began, stopping when he saw humans in grey-khaki through the trees in the long grass next to the lawn.

  ‘Stay!’ she commanded.

  The humans had not seen them, but that was not surprising. They did not expect to, for one thing, and the hydden had tumbled to the ground at the edge of the henge, so the view through it to that knife and those men was angled between trees and through thin vegetation. Also, there was something about opening henge portals that lent a shimmer to the air and to those travelling through it, as if being between worlds rendered them for a few seconds, perhaps even longer, hard for others to see clearly.

  She felt absolutely in control and she felt no fear, like a mother whose child is threatened, who knows exactly what to do.

  ‘No . . .’ she cried out, aware that her voice was a hydden’s, to them more like a bird’s, ‘no . . .’

  She controlled her impulse to run.

  Surprise was her only weapon and there was never going to be a surprise like a hydden appearing among humans. She ran straight into the open where they stood.

  The knife stilled, the man stood up, two giants looming over . . . what. What?

  The wyf in her turned into a raging demon.

  What had they done to him?

  She didn’t give a damn how big they were or what they might do or anything.

  She reached him, knelt down and said, ‘What have they done to you?’

  Jack stared at her, baffled.

  He opened his mouth but the net tightened more and what he said was slurred, as if he was in pain or had been beaten.

  ‘What have they done to you?’ she said.

  If he could have answered he might have tried but as he couldn’t he stared at her with mute appeal.

  For Mirror’s sake get me out of here. Katherine . . .

  Her initial anger had changed to rage when she first saw him, now it became fury, total and complete, but icily controlled. Surprise had been essential, now speed was of the essence.

  She reached down to the net and found it impossible to grasp. She turned and looked at the knife but that didn’t seem an option. They had not seen the others apparently, but stood staring open-mouthed at her, rubbing their eyes as if they could not quite see what was happening.

  She turned back to Jack, bent down and grabbed the easiest bit of him that was gra
spable, his left ankle.

  Katherine . . .

  She heaved at him in her fury and he began sliding along on his back over the humus and dry leaves.

  ‘Stort!’ she shouted. ‘Help me! My Lord Sinistral, please stay where you are.’

  She knew they had very limited time before the humans recovered from the shock of seeing them and, she now suspected, the aversion to touching what must seem to them alien, strange and perhaps repulsive figures. Then, too, the shimmer in the air induced by a portal being opened, was still helping.

  ‘Stort, now!’

  He came and managed to wrest Jack’s other foot from the net and joined his strength and greater leverage to Katherine’s. They gained momentum, Jack bumped over a branch and then went bumpety-bump over some roots.

  Katherine!

  The bedazzled and bewildered men were finally moving, shouting and turning in slow motion, as humans did, reaching out.

  Katherine, behind you! Jack tried to say.

  They reached the henge trees and began pulling Jack into the sanctuary of their circle as the first man reached forward to grab her.

  Jack tried to speak again, twisted his head, got his mouth free and shouted, ‘Stave!’

  There in the dark of wet vegetation where it had lain waiting, it stirred to action. Trembling, gathering light again, shaking itself as if sloughing off a tiredness. Then it was up and out and a stream of stars behind it as it rushed from the dark, turning over and over on itself as it came straight at them, slid sideways, and bashed the first man’s hand; then the barrel of a gun and someone’s head, then another and a third . . .

  As it did so, and the men fell back and two fell down, Jack was pulled into the henge and Stort was already turning, turning dexter, round and round, Katherine following, with Jack bumping along the ground and swearing and hurting because the net was torn now and his arm, which he could not move himself, was caught behind him, the muscles stretching to breaking point, the sinews cracking and the bones deep-hurting as bumpety-bump . . .

  ‘Oh God it feels like I’m going to die!’

  The fateful, ill-timed words came out at the same moment Katherine called, ‘Sinistral!’ and reached for his hand with her free one so they could all make the dance together as she turned dexter after Stort, ‘Oh yes . . . yes . . .’

  Dancing away, the stave dancing too, the men in confusion at the edge, staggering about as Stort turned and danced back into the henge, and its spiralling darkness, turning far away, and away, until they were nearly gone.

  I’m going to die, Jack had said and his unfortunate words hung like dark, sharp shards, blocking their safer way, forcing them towards the dark vale, beginning to jab at them with their points of death, trying to take them down to the void.

  Sinistral heard these words and his eyes widened in alarm and recognition of the mortal danger they created. As he felt Katherine’s hand beginning to grasp his he knew such words must not be the last thing said if his friends were to be portalled to safety. No, not the thought of dying, because the henge would deliver them to the place they thought of last. That included death itself, a subject about which Sinistral knew more than any mortal alive, having fought off death for so many decades past. He was ready, they were not.

  ‘Oh God . . .’ screamed Jack in the agony of his tearing limbs, ‘oh . . .’

  Slaeke Sinistral slowed his feet, he stopped his dance, he leaned forward and gently steered Jack the way he needed to go, not to death but towards life . . .

  ‘Sinistral . . .’ screamed Katherine, feeling his fingers letting her go and guessing what he was doing and the nature of his sacrifice, ‘you must come with us . . .’

  All stilled, all moved at a pace beyond speed.

  ‘It is all right, my dear, I shall go instead to where Jack was going, I shall dance that way . . . listen! Listen! I hear the musica and that is enough for me but you all . . . you must live to save the world . . .’

  Then they were gone one way and Sinistral another and all that was left in the henge was Katherine’s cry before it was lost within the siren sound of the Chimes outside.

  ‘What the hell was that!?’ gasped Reece, his head throbbing from the thump it had had from a flying stick.

  Bohr stared up into the heights of the trees, lost for words.

  ‘What was it?’ said one of them a few minutes later.

  ‘Hydden,’ said Bohr, unutterably awed by what they had seen and what had happened, ‘they were hydden! But we lost them, they were so fast we have no way of knowing how and where they came in and what they did to get out.’

  Reece smiled a knowing and unpleasant smile and pointed up into one of the trees. There was a tiny camera there.

  ‘Put it up this morning. And another over there. What were they doing before they . . . er . . . left?’

  ‘Dancing . . .’ said Bohr, stopping himself saying more because he did not like the belligerent look in Reece’s eyes.

  ‘Right,’ said Reece dismissively.

  ‘Well, it looked like that,’ said Bohr, sounding as doubtful and uncertain as he could.

  ‘Freaks!’ said Reece, ‘that’s what they were.’

  They came to at dusk in wide, open grassland, scattered like leaves, with no henge nearby that they could see. But the grey, drizzly day was already too dark to see far and they stirred only slowly, as if from a very long sleep.

  Jack found himself almost free again, the net in tatters about his feet, pulled nearly clear by Katherine when she hauled him into the henge. But his arm was painful and he winced as he tried to kick his feet free of the net. His throat was so parched he could not say clearly what he was trying to get out.

  Sinistral . . . he . . .

  Stort sat up, bemused.

  Katherine crawled over to Jack and gave him a drink.

  Sinistral . . .

  ‘Where’s Sinistral?’ asked Stort suddenly. ‘He’s nowhere to be seen!’

  But Katherine already knew, or rather had guessed.

  ‘He chose to stay behind,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Not good,’ said Stort.

  ‘No, not good,’ she replied, adding, ‘and yet . . .’

  ‘And yet?’ asked Jack, frowning, stretching very cautiously.

  ‘What was the last thing you heard?’ she asked.

  They thought back and tried to remember but as they did and the light dimmed the strangeness of where they were bore into them. A vast, undulating landscape, as it felt, and everywhere they turned the sense that they were not quite alone, nor quite in company. As if they had landed in a place where people had just that moment gone, or might at any moment arrive. The silence of these thoughts was interrupted only slowly by a sound above the breeze.

  Running water, not far off.

  ‘Come,’ said Katherine, helping Jack to his feet, ‘but carefully.’

  Stort supported him on the other side.

  ‘The last thing I heard,’ he said, ‘was the sound of the Chimes.’

  ‘Sinistral has gone to them,’ said Katherine, her blank tone hiding the grief she dared not yet feel.

  ‘The last thing I heard was my own voice, speaking of pain and death.’

  She shook her head. ‘The last thing was his voice calling after us to say that we must live.’

  They stumbled on, not yet knowing where they were but in the certain knowledge that to save their lives Sinistral had finally given up his own.

  27

  BACK TO BRUM

  The hundred-mile stretch between the stone circles of Stanton Drew and the city of Brum was a two-and-a-half-hour drive, three hours at most – for a human in normal conditions when there was no civil strife and the Earth had not gone mad. But it took Niklas Blut, Lord Festoon, Mister Barklice and Terce more than three exhausting days.

  Blut had to steer the large, awkward military truck through winding, hilly roads and territory unknown. Many a time, the roads being blocked by abandoned vehicles, or seeing signs of vagrant and troubl
esome human life ahead which they naturally wished to avoid, Terce was obliged to pore over the road atlas and direct Blut to alternative routes.

  Even in extremis, when they grew confused by conflicts between the map and roadside fingerposts, they did not stop to call upon Barklice’s expert aid until they were quite sure it was safe to do so. For it was not enough that the road ahead seemed clear, and the route behind had revealed no obvious danger. If Blut was to stop, it had to be on a crest of some kind, where they could see they were safe all around and, which was important, that if they had to flee they had an alternative to simply going forward or back.

  They began taking precautions early on, after they had stopped at what seemed a safe place. They climbed out of the vehicle to take the air, relieve themselves and stretch, when four humans emerged from a nearby wood, holding metal rods as clubs, and charged at them with shouts and threats.

  The truck was parked facing uphill and it was with the greatest difficulty that they clambered back into the cab, got the engine started and gained enough speed to throw off their pursuers. Had Terce not used his strength and feet to ward off the humans at the last moment, suffering severe bruising to his thighs and shins in the process, they would have been lost almost before they began.

  As it was, one of those chasing them managed to hurl his metal bar through the passenger window and another to grasp on to the vehicle’s side and very nearly open the door. Blut had stayed characteristically calm, swerving and braking violently almost as naturally as Katherine had done with the horsebox, and so dislodged the human that he was left hanging from the side between the wheels. A few seconds later Blut swerved hard enough to throw their attacker under the rear wheels.

  ‘Needs must,’ was his tersely grim comment.

  After that, when they lost their way and it needed Barklice to get out and look around, Blut always chose his spot with great care.

  ‘I wish I could stay within the cab itself,’ said Barklice apologetically, ‘but I lose all sense of where I am relative to the landscape about me in such a noisy, confined space as this!’