Winter

by William Horwood

  ‘How many of them are there?’

  ‘Four, my Lord. But with human weapons four can do a lot of damage. I would not have troubled you with the matter, which so far is under control, but that yesterday they began readying some new devices, presumably for use in the city. I have one here.’

  Pike heaved a ’sac onto the table and slid from it a saucer-shaped object two hands wide.

  ‘It is what we understand humans call a landmine. Step on it, disturb it, and it explodes.’

  He smiled briefly.

  ‘Relax, it has been defused by one of Marshal Brunte’s bombardiers.’

  Brunte shrugged. He had not been told this but he was well aware that his people and Pike’s worked together sometimes and he was inclined to turn a blind eye to it.

  ‘We think that so far they have not distributed them. But what do we do if they start spreading explosive devices about the place, just when we want our people to return? We saw what some of the humans did to the Fyrd. If we are not careful it may soon be our turn.’

  ‘You are sure they are not aware you are watching them?’

  ‘We are. When it comes to hyddening these humans are little better than clumsy children. But their explosive devices are anything but childish. We therefore have to decide what to do about them.’

  ‘Marshal?’ said Blut.

  ‘Eliminate them,’ he said brusquely. ‘We know from recent experience and from our history lessons what humans do. They destroy. We should strike first.’

  ‘Festoon?’

  ‘If we do that, more will come,’ he said at once. ‘If we do not, more will come anyway. I will not make such a decision myself but I will not stand in the way of what you others decide . . . this is an unhappy time for Brum and the presence of such humans raises the question of whether or not we should encourage our citizens back at all.’

  ‘Pike, what’s your view?’

  ‘We should kill them.’

  Blut remained silent, aware that, if he said no, Festoon would say no as well, creating a futile stalemate.

  ‘Gentlemen, I agree, but not with any enthusiasm, or any hope that eliminating a few humans will make any difference to Brum in the short or long term. My apologies for this, Lord Festoon, and you others too . . . but I think Brum’s days are done.

  ‘Something has shifted. Times have changed. This now feels like, whether we like it or not, the End of Days. I am tempted to suggest that we exit Brum and leave these humans to it. Hydden, like humans, are at their best in nature, not among buildings. You have lived your lives in the interstices of buildings here that should never have been created in the first place. I have lived most of my days until very recently in a coal mine in Germany which is, in terms of nature, an abomination. It is time for change. But that will not happen overnight. Whatever I think or say, hydden will come back to this city whether or not it is safe to do so. Most have no other home and we have a duty of care towards them. Therefore, we should rid the city of these humans even if it is only putting off an evil day.

  ‘Lord Sinistral would have argued for getting them out of Brum. Failing that he would have commanded the Fyrd to kill them. They failed; we must succeed.’

  His spectacles flashed and he looked hard at Brunte and Pike.

  ‘Gentlemen, do what you must. Lord Festoon and I leave the details to you!’

  31

  REALM OF THE LIVING

  It took Jack three days to recover from his ordeal at Woolstone, which gave them all time to come to terms with Sinistral’s death. For the fact surely was that Sinistral had chosen to stay behind to save their lives.

  When Jack had cried out the words I’m going to die as they dragged him to safety and his cramped, trapped body was violently and agonizingly stretched, he unwittingly endangered all their lives.

  Arthur had frequently warned that at such moments a portal traveller’s expressed intention was everything and whatever it is invokes a solution that meets it. Whether this was because the portals tapped into musica or wyrd no one knew, but to talk of death, let alone predict it, risked death itself.

  Sinistral had been so close to death so long, and understood musica so well, that he instantly saw the danger they were in and what he must do. He had literally pushed Jack the way he should go – towards life itself – and accepted to himself the fateful expression of the wish to die.

  ‘It was courageous certainly,’ observed Stort, ‘but I think we would do better to praise his action for its clarity of thinking and acceptance of death. Such things are hard to us all, for when we return to the Mirror and are reflected anew, the life we had is annihilated forever, memories in those who knew us are short-lived and very soon it is as if we have never been.

  ‘I do not say that Sinistral has died, for that I do not know, but I do think he felt he had done all he could in this life and could therefore accept death graciously. That would not be so easy if we felt there were things still left to do which we had left undone. Or . . . well.’

  ‘Or what, Bedwyn Stort?’ asked Katherine gently.

  ‘Or, if we loved another and never found a way to see that love fully lived and requited, how agonizing would death be then?’

  ‘I am sure you will find a way,’ Katherine said, knowing very well that it was of his great love for Judith the Shield Maiden that he was thinking.

  ‘I do not think I ever can,’ he replied sombrely.

  In this way and others they took time to come to terms with what they were certain had been the fact and nature of Slaeke Sinistral’s final passing.

  They made camp in the crook of a stream near where they had ended up. There was rough pasture on either side and the few sheep that grazed there gave them a welcome sense of normality.

  Jack worked out physically, using his stave to stretch and turn, a thing it seemed to enjoy because it challenged him, spinning away and making him reach for it, coming back suddenly and forcing him to catch its end and hold it still.

  They were all tired and what had happened had put them in a state of shock which felt like suspended animation. Even Stort was keeping his head down, venturing no more than a few yards from where they were, disinclined to explore. None of them was yet willing to face the fact that very soon they would have to decide what next to do.

  ‘Assuming that Arthur’s theories about using the henge portals are correct, and they certainly proved right when it came to getting us from Stanton Drew to where we needed to be, we must accept that once more we are where we need to be,’ said Katherine. ‘But where this place is and what we do now I don’t know and for the moment don’t want to think about it!’

  What they did do was talk, sharing their different experiences over the long weeks past and trying to make sense of what they had seen and felt. Stort listened far more than he talked, processing the facts of Jack’s narrative and in the light of it reviewing what had happened to them both and the others during their journey overland.

  ‘We have been here before, my friends,’ he suddenly announced, ‘and by that I do not mean this place spatially – though something tells me it is not entirely unknown to Katherine . . . ?’

  Perhaps it was but she did not rise to the bait. She wanted to rest.

  ‘No, I mean we have been here before in terms of quest. We have less than four weeks to find the gem of Winter and I have absolutely no idea where it is or where to begin.’

  ‘Which is much as it was with the gems of Summer and Autumn,’ said Jack.

  ‘Just so,’ acknowledged Stort. ‘Of course, the gem of Spring more or less fell into my lap or, more precisely, I fell on top of it on Waseley Hill!’

  He grinned ruefully, remembering again that difficult and turbulent night when he found the first gem.

  Jack and Katherine looked at each other, glad to see him smiling again, but said nothing. At least Stort seemed to have got over the raw sense of loss he felt at the end of October, after he had put the gem of Autumn into the Shield Maiden’s pendant. Neither of them
found it easy to say ‘Judith’ for a daughter who they felt had been taken from them in so many different ways – by wyrd, by the Mirror and by an angry Earth. ‘Shield Maiden’ was easier.

  That Stort loved her and that that love was returned they had no doubt. But an impossible love like that, born of innocence and certain to die on the rock of harsh experience, seemed to them to get so much in the way of things that it had clouded their friend’s judgement.

  ‘All I do know,’ continued Stort, ‘is that before each finding of the previous gems one or other of us visited the Chamber of Seasons in Brum and found the spirit and purpose to open the relevant door and pass on through to a place which led us to the gem we sought.’

  It had been so.

  ‘Well then, since time is running out, I suggest we get back to Brum as quickly as we can and visit the Chamber once more. It seems the best starting point.’

  ‘Getting back to Brum is exactly what we’ve been trying to do, Stort!’ cried Jack, less patient than Katherine with their friend’s occasional statements of the obvious. She understood better than he that this was the way the scrivener worked things out when the way forward remained unclear.

  ‘So . . .’ said Jack, turning to Katherine, ‘Stort here seems to think you know where we are.’

  ‘Well I do and I don’t,’ she responded reluctantly, ‘but that’s not what’s worrying me. There’s something about this place that presents us with an important choice but I just can’t remember exactly what it was that Arthur told me.’

  Jack stoked the fire, made a brew and handed them some brot and elder-cheese, all without a word.

  Only when they had imbibed and eaten to their entire satisfaction did Katherine feel ready to tell them where they were. Or rather, show them.

  They had been in no state to notice much beyond the immediate area of grassland near the stream they had arrived at. Since then they had been hunkered down, barely moving.

  Katherine now walked them north away from the water, across rough pasture, slowly veering west as she did so. Only when she pointed it out did they notice the nearly imperceptible ridges on either side of their route, which suggested it had once been a green road of some kind.

  She went slowly, breathing deeply, eyes half closed, engendering in them the sense that there was something very special about where they were.

  ‘And very familiar,’ murmured Jack.

  ‘You could say that,’ she said with a grin and such obvious irony that Jack turned to Stort and said, ‘She obviously thinks we should recognize this place . . .’

  At which moment Stort, taller than Jack and looking south-west, laughed and said, ‘Ahh! Yes! I see it now! Does that structure not remind you of something!?’

  Jack turned and stared, walked a few yards more, looked carefully again until suddenly the familiar became the very obvious indeed, like someone met out of context who becomes recognizable only when a name or a look prompts the memory.

  Jack’s eyes widened in astonishment and, feeling a fool, he said faintly, ‘It looks like Stonehenge.’

  ‘It is Stonehenge,’ said Katherine laughing. ‘That’s where we are.’

  The familiar, prehistoric megalithic structure sat stolidly in a slight depression and a few hundred yards from where they stood. It was not nearly as impressive as Jack might have expected, seeming dwarfed by the vast landscape about it. But there it was, grey and massive and, well, tempting.

  ‘Let’s go!’ said Jack.

  ‘I think not, Jack,’ said Stort, shaking his head and immediately taking his arm. ‘I believe that might be a very grave mistake. This is what you meant by making a choice, is it not, Katherine?’

  She said that it was.

  ‘Instead of doing the obvious, Jack, we should retreat at once, very quietly, very carefully, and without looking further at those alluring grey stones. Having done that, we should go the other way.’

  But Jack wasn’t having it.

  ‘Stop being ridiculous, Stort. The stones are only a few hundred yards away and we could be there in no time . . .’

  He walked a few steps towards them, the others not following. He continued on a few steps more and began to feel a lassitude, a weakening of will, the need to battle with a deeper instinct to turn back.

  ‘But the portal brought us here,’ Jack called back to them, ‘so obviously Stonehenge is where we’re meant to be!’

  ‘Obviously it is not,’ said Stort acidly. ‘Would you not agree, Katherine?’

  ‘I would,’ she said, ‘but I can’t exactly say why. Really, Jack, it’s not safe to go further. Please come back!’

  Grumbling, Jack turned and followed them back to their camp.

  ‘I was twelve when Arthur brought me here,’ explained Katherine. ‘I remember we explored the landscape all about while he expounded his theory about what it was for. The faint green path we were on runs from the river where we camped to Stonehenge and he explained that it had a use, but I can’t remember what exactly.’

  Jack was feeling better now he had retreated from Stonehenge and he looked questioningly at Stort for an explanation. But he was not yet ready to say what was on his mind. Instead, he said, ‘You say you explored this landscape “all about”. What exactly do you mean by that? Isn’t this “all”?’

  ‘Well, we didn’t start by Stonehenge itself but two miles north of here at a place called . . . Damn! I can’t remember its name though he mentioned it sometimes.’

  She wrinkled her brow trying to remember.

  ‘Doddington . . . ? No . . . Derrington . . . No . . .’

  ‘Durrington?’ said Stort.

  ‘Yes! How did you know?’

  ‘My mind retains useless information in case one day it might become useful. A waste of effort mostly, but once in a while it pays off. Do you remember what he showed you at Durrington?’

  ‘Nothing as dramatic as Stonehenge, which is probably why I can’t remember much about it.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘Well . . . I felt disappointed about the place. I mean, I wanted to see Stonehenge not a crummy little . . . Durrington was just a depression in the ground, like a big football pitch.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘There was another henge there. In fact he said there were a lot of henges and burial mounds and this cursus we’ve just walked . . . that’s right! This old green road was part of a route all the way from Durrington to Stonehenge. He said the other henge was made of wood and that was the whole point, but . . .’

  She petered out.

  They turned to Stort, who, as so often when he had something to impart, was pacing around, eyes half shut, moving his hands about in the air as if trying to grab hold of his own thoughts and make them solid.

  ‘There are many theories about these stone henges. One thing is certain, in those ancient times stone had a very different symbolic meaning than wood. The first is dead, the second is alive. Or, if you like, wood is the realm of the living and stone that of the dead.

  ‘I have heard, from Barklice, I think, that within the orbit of Durrington is a henge of wood. It was this, I am sure, that Arthur showed you, Katherine. But your disappointment was natural enough: the wooden posts of which it was constructed obviously rotted away millennia ago, their holes all filled up with debris, leaving no more than a low circular earthen mound within which there can only be the merest trace of post-holes.

  ‘But that was the realm of the living in ancient times and from it, when folk were dying or recently dead, they began their ritualistic journey to Stonehenge. First by water and then by the grassy way we walked along to Stonehenge.’

  He fell silent and pensive.

  ‘What is significant is where we ended up after escaping from the humans at Woolstone, which is halfway between these two realms,’ he continued. ‘No doubt that is because as we were leaving the Woolstone henge Jack unwittingly mentioned death. But for Sinistral’s intervention we might very easily have emerged at Stonehenge itself, with fat
al consequences. He understood the danger and saw a way to neutralize it.

  ‘But by taking that intention to himself he chose to find death another way, leaving us to end up safer than we might have done but still only halfway there. I conclude the land of the living is where we should be and that we head for Woodhenge and see what happens when we get there!’

  They struck camp and set off immediately, following the river upstream, Stort slow and pensive once more. But later his pace quickened and he began to hum.

  ‘He’s thought of something else,’ Jack said quietly to Katherine as they walked along.

  ‘I have indeed,’ cried Stort. ‘If this theory of realms be true then it answers a question of even greater importance than those surrounding Stonehenge, impressive though that grim and miserable monument might be to those of a mordant disposition!’

  Stort was on form.

  ‘The question I have in mind is simple,’ he went on. ‘Why was the White Horse carved into the particular place where it was carved? Goodness me, the possible answers are many, are they not?’

  The afternoon was darkening, the going was heavy but they felt they had a destination and a purpose once more. It was a very long time since Jack and Katherine had found time and space to simply hold each other’s hand and walk together in silence.

  At first sight Woodhenge was a disappointment. The area was one of undulating chalk downland higher than Stonehenge. The henge itself comprised over one hundred posts set in concentric circles within a raised grass bank so flattened by time and human interference that it was barely visible.

  The posts were round and made of concrete and except for a few slightly taller ones were half the size of a hydden. From a distance they appeared as a jumble of uprights, set close together without obvious pattern or meaning. But close-to they made sense, and interpretation was made easier because there was an explanatory noticeboard nearby for humans.

  They were circles-within-circles, each painted in different colours to indicate successive stages of building and usage. Katherine remembered enough of what she had learnt from Arthur on different walks to similar sites to be able to make a stab at interpretation.