Winter

by William Horwood

  He stopped, Stort’s face making him do so.

  A look, a kind of astonished look of someone who has glimpsed something through a fog – or maybe a blizzard.

  ‘There is a way,’ he said, ‘there is a way but Mirror knows if it is where the gem might be.’

  ‘A way to what, Stort?’

  ‘To find the gem or rather to make things . . . ah, yes . . . hmmm.’

  ‘To make things what?’

  ‘Reversible,’ he said. ‘There is a way! But it would be dangerous.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘How? How is the question. It would be tricky, complicated and complex and very, very unpredictable, but there is a way.’

  ‘What must we do?’

  He shrugged. ‘Ah, now there you have me and on a night like this with a blizzard blowing and humans after us and Bratfire lost and not yet found who can tell? Not me! Except . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think it would be wise to get us out of here.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Katherine. Then, turning to Jack, she said, ‘Tell us the rest. What happened to Pike?’

  ‘He and his people killed some of them but then . . . they suffered the same overwhelming force that Brunte did. I’m sorry, but Pike is dead. I’m sorry, Barklice.’

  ‘Pike,’ murmured the verderer softly, ‘poor Pike!’

  He went to Stort and put a hand on his shoulder. The scrivener had known Pike since a boy when he had personally travelled to Wales to bring him in safety to study under Master Brief in the Library. En route, the youthful Stort’s quick mind and inventiveness had saved Pike’s life and this reversal of roles had bonded the two closely together.

  ‘Dead,’ muttered Stort, ‘Mister Pike . . . dead.’

  In normal circumstances they might both have been able to grieve for their much loved and respected friend properly, but that could not be, and Jack knew it.

  ‘We think,’ he continued quietly, ‘there was only one more human, maybe two. We don’t know for sure. One certainly!’

  A figure loomed behind them all and Jack spun, his crossbow raised.

  ‘Mirror help us!’ said the staverman. ‘You got them safely here, Master Jack!’

  ‘Where’s Bratfire?’ demanded Barklice.

  ‘He got the helicopter and I got the last but one, through the neck. Bratfire will be on his way back and there’s only one left. Just one.’

  ‘He shot at me,’ said Jack.

  ‘I heard that. Until we find out where he is we can’t go out front or back. Which is just as well, seeing that it’s so damn cold outside, beggin’ your pardon, my Lords, that it would freeze your ears off, so to speak.’

  ‘Time to sort out our defences and patrols,’ said Jack. ‘Here’s how we’re going to do it . . .’

  The moment the human was out of sight Bratfire began to run downslope towards the Library doors to warn those inside what was happening. It was a distance of no more than one hundred and fifty yards, but even before he had covered half the distance, the blizzard wind rode down on him.

  Its strength and extreme cold nearly stopped him in his tracks, like running into an enveloping wall of ice. The wind had swept in from the north to West Bromwich and Sandwell Hall, down the Elder Road to Hawthorns, across to Handsworth, the windows there shattering and the trees in Victoria Park bending, bending and bending more as it drove on. It froze them as it went. Branches sheared off, trunks gave way, the cold was a tsunami made visible by the fragments of snow and ice it carried on to Winston Green.

  The first buffet of that wind, the sign that it had arrived, ripping along the ground into Main Square ahead of Bratfire, tumbling him several times before he hooked his arm around a bollard.

  ‘Pa!’ he cried, his voice carried on across the square and out the other side before he finished uttering it.

  A pause, a moment, and he was up, running to reach the steps up to the great doors, shouting through the gap between them, ‘Pa!’

  Barklice heard it first, heard it like a pa would hear it, heard it as he had to hear it.

  ‘Bratfire,’ they cried and Festoon hauled the young lad in. He was shivering so violently that he couldn’t speak, try as he might, so desperate was he to inform them of the danger they were in.

  ‘You c–c–can’t stay here, M–M–Master Jack,’ he eventually gasped. ‘Human’s coming.’

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘From the b–b–back,’ said Bratfire pointing.

  But it was too late.

  A shot rang out, and as it did the staverman staggered back and fell dead at their feet.

  ‘He’m set to kill you all,’ shouted Bratfire. ‘Follow me . . .’

  The main doors, stuck so fast, blew open with a bang.

  Another shot, from Mirror knew where, and Jack knew that Bratfire was right, and so did Stort.

  ‘How many are there?’ said Jack, fearing that if they went out others would fire.

  ‘He’m one alone. Come on, Pa! We can get ’em to Bartholomew.’

  Jack nodded.

  So did Stort, wondering, thinking, working something out.

  ‘My Lord Blut,’ he said, grasping the surprised Emperor by his collar, ‘if you can just remember . . .’

  But Jack barked orders to Barklice to follow Bratfire’s lead and get them out and Stort’s moment with Blut was lost.

  They heard steps on the floor above, which meant they had a little time.

  ‘He’s going across to the other stairs . . .’ said Jack, watching the ceiling as if to follow the steps but seeing instead something odd and smelling something odder. It was the sharp smell of petrol and what he saw was the ceiling at the far side of the hall begin to stain with it.

  ‘He’s going to burn us out!’ cried Katherine.

  ‘And then shoot at us in the square, where we’ll be visible,’ rasped Jack. ‘Bratfire’s right, it’s time to leave. Wait by the front door while I try to block his way through and hold him back a little. Get all the clothes you have on your backs and I’ll be with you at once.’

  Jack ran towards the far stairs, mounted them two at a time and, reaching the floor above, was in time to see the human passing an open door, scattering liquid from a container as he went. The smell of it was nearly overpowering.

  Jack raised his stave and hurled it after the human, willing it to attack him and come back to him when it was done.

  The others had retreated to the now-open doors and those that had spare garb put it on.

  ‘Tie caps on,’ ordered Barklice.

  When Stort was ready he helped Blut, taking his opportunity to renew his enquiry, which he did in a very urgent voice. ‘My Lord, this may be a matter of some importance. What was that date Arthur mentioned to you, the one at which things might still be reversible? Do you remember it precisely?’

  ‘I do,’ said Blut, and told him. ‘But it means nothing to me, though perhaps it does to you, Stort?’

  Stort shook his head, puzzled.

  ‘He said nothing more about it than that? Just a date?’

  ‘Does it matter, Stort?’ said Katherine testily.

  ‘I think it may. As would the occasion or name, if you can perhaps remember . . .’

  They repeated it to her and a distant memory stirred within her.

  ‘I can remember the name,’ she said, ‘but really, Stort, not now . . .’

  ‘What was it?’ he said, almost angrily.

  She gave it, but that too meant nothing to either Stort or Blut, nothing at all.

  ‘What does it mean?’ cried Stort, frustrated.

  ‘I wasn’t even born then,’ said Katherine, ‘but to Arthur . . .’

  ‘Please. Try to explain,’ said Stort.

  But time had run out.

  Jack shouted at them to get ready to make a run for it together, came running over to them, closed the inner door and then they were outside once more, hurrying down the steps into a wind so strong that as they passed the bonfire its remnants
were picked up bodily and scattered southward.

  ‘Follow Bratfire!’ Jack shouted which, with each step they took, got progressively harder to do. The wind was a mighty force, the cold now painfully intense, the racing snow and ice beginning to thicken.

  Only one of them stumbled and that was Ingrid.

  Bohr reached down to help her up, but Jack was there, bigger and stronger, picking her up, pushing Bohr on. ‘Come on!’ he urged her, ‘You can make it, come on!’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, as ahead of them Bohr stumbled in his turn, the ground treacherous, ‘I’m all right, so help him . . .’

  Jack stopped Bohr falling, ran on with him at his side, urging them all to flee, not seeing Ingrid slip a second time, not seeing that now she was limping, not letting Bohr turn back.

  ‘She’s all right . . . run . . .’

  Moments later the wind lulled and they were able to stop and look back. Behind them they could still see the Library. Inside, there was a brief glimmer of orange light and the next moment they saw it go up in a massive, explosive conflagration.

  ‘Ingrid!’ shouted Bohr as she ran on towards them.

  For a short time the fire roared even louder than the wind and seemed to clear the air of snow a little, revealing the human in silhouette on the Library steps, framed by the now-orange rectangle of its great doors.

  ‘Ingrid . . .’

  The human moved down the steps slowly, as it seemed, with all the assurance and certainty of death itself, the wind taking the flames and heat away from him. When he reached the level ground he paused and slowly raised his weapon.

  A moment’s stillness and Ingrid plunged forward and down to the ground as if she had been hit by a violent blow.

  Only once did she manage to raise her head to look towards them, and a hand as well, and cry out a single name.

  ‘Erich . . .’

  Then she was face down on the ground, mouth whispering to ice. ‘Oh, Erich,’ she murmured and was gone.

  The snow thickened and swirled between them and began settling on her still form as the human moved on towards them.

  Bohr stood utterly still, uncomprehending, wind and snow driving onto his face, into his shocked eyes, unable to move. But Jack, not hesitating a moment, grabbed him bodily and heaved him round and onwards.

  Ten yards on Jack looked back and saw that the blizzard was growing stronger, the snow thicker, and visibility reducing fast. The light from the flames diffused like a halo all around the human before he was lost to sight, and then Ingrid too.

  Bohr was rigid in Jack’s arms, mouth open to the bitter wind, eyes staring, his Ingrid lost behind him.

  ‘Noooo!’ he shouted almost silently.

  Jack held him powerfully, stopping him turning, stopping him looking.

  ‘There’s nothing more we can do now,’ said Jack gently, ‘and she would want you to save your own life.’

  He pushed the numbed and unresisting Bohr on.

  ‘Look, there!’ cried Festoon ahead of them. He had recognized the ruins of his former residence, of which only the steps remained, apart from the broken wood and piled-up doors salvaged earlier by the stavermen for the fire.

  Bohr slumped, kneeling, to the ground, Jack keeping a close eye on him and, looking back, realizing that the driving snow was giving them a few moments’ cover to do something to escape that human. But what?

  Ahead, as it seemed, there was no direction to go except to veer left past the wood and hope the wind might help them along. But they had to step carefully lest one or other of them fell down, slipping on the ice or blown straight over.

  Then Bedwyn Stort stopped as if he had hit a brick wall. They all stopped as well, for not to do so meant inevitably losing sight of each other.

  ‘Come on, Stort.’

  ‘I am a fool, Jack!’

  ‘No time for that now,’ said Jack. ‘Come on!’

  ‘A very great fool am I!’ he cried. ‘Shelter me!’

  With that and no explanation he fell to his knees by the great pile of wood. He ran his hands over it, throwing skirting boards, shelves, an empty drawer aside.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ cried Festoon.

  ‘What I should have looked for before. They burnt the painted panel with the images of Winter but I did not see them burn the door of Winter from the Chamber of Seasons. If it is here . . .’

  He peered closer still, struggled to heave one door aside, which Terce helped him do and then another before he cried, ‘There, my friends! There may be salvation. Free it and we might yet escape!’

  All they saw was the corner of a thick and battered door frame, the hinges of the door itself intact.

  Katherine saw Stort’s intent at once. ‘Get it free! Heave it upright!’

  With willing hands they got more loose wood and another door away and freed the bigger one beneath and there it lay, a massive mahogany door, frame and all, on the top part of which was inscribed in Gothic script a single word: Winter.

  Jack looked back, the blizzard snow all orange with the flames beyond. A bullet fizzed out of the murk and nicked Festoon’s leg.

  ‘By the Mirror!’ he cried powerfully, ‘the High Ealdor of Brum does not yield to that! Come on one and all, heave this door upright as Stort commands!’

  Jack shouted, ‘I’m going back to stall the human. Bohr, help them!’

  Like an automaton glad of something to do, Bohr did so.

  The door of Winter . . . the last remnant of the Chamber of Seasons, ã Faroün’s greatest architectural triumph. A door never before opened. A door that was old with time, its handle corroded, its hinges surely useless now, its wood either rotten or stuck to the frame around it, which even in the midst of such destruction had remained closed until its time had come.

  All the other doors of the seasons had led those who opened them to the end of their quest, now it was Winter’s turn. Together, they pushed it upright, frame and all, battling with its weight on the one hand and the driving wind on the other.

  The wind blew ice against it, the lettering began to be lost under it.

  ‘Jack!’ Katherine realized that Jack was standing between them and where the human would surely soon come, silhouetted against the flames and snow.

  ‘Katherine, help us!’

  She turned back to help with the door, terrible fear in her breast.

  Jack strained to see the human, knowing as he did so that he was already getting too cold and tired to use his crossbow effectively. He flexed his right hand where his stave should be and found it wasn’t there. He reached his hand up for it, but it did not come flying through the wind.

  The play of ice and flames before him took form and was the human, advancing steadily, treading carefully, nearer now, near enough for Jack to see he had a weapon and was going down to one knee to more easily raise the rifle and steady the aim he was beginning to take.

  Jack took three more steps forward to reduce the human’s lines of sight to his friends and stood firm. He raised his crossbow, trying to steady it against the terrible wind, trying to get the sight on the human only yards ahead, trying to still his mind and breathe deeply, hoping, wishing his stave to be there too, to help him when he needed it.

  But his fingers were cold, his mind wandering and slow, the shivering beginning, his strength dying, his will weakening as the cold ate into him with each flake and shard of ice that battered his hands and eyes.

  The human, stolid and grey before him, now came at last into Jack’s bow sight, clear and good. Jack moved his frozen fingers, trying to find a way to hold it all together against the wind and fire true.

  ‘Oh Mirror help me, help me . . .’ he whispered through swollen lips, and fired.

  42

  PEACE

  Reece’s head ached badly out there in the cold, from where the dwarf’s stick-thing came whirling and caught him hard on the temple. Ached and throbbed like his head was bursting. His eyes wouldn’t focus, he was seeing everything with shadows, seeing
double. In fact, just opening his eyes was painful.

  ‘Bastards,’ he had screamed as the place went up behind him and he had stumbled down the steps, the heat at his back, the snow clearing for a moment, knowing he must not lose sight of them.

  Bastards was his mantra. It was his fix upon the entire universe and now on them, the enemy, little freaks, who should not have had a chance in hell against his force yet were still alive and fighting.

  They had stopped and he could see them, the wind trying to knock him down.

  What the hell are they doing now?

  He knelt down, staring, trying to disentangle them from their shadows and from each other, the cold hitting his temple where the stick had, like a knife thrust.

  His eyes were beginning to focus at last and his vision cleared enough for him to see that one of them was coming back. The freak had come back and now he was nearer, was blocking the others from view, was raising a weapon, the wind fighting him.

  Reece’s training kicked in.

  He still could not see as clearly as he needed to to get a perfect shot but he could see enough to know what he must do. He knelt, he steadied, he raised his weapon. But it wasn’t easy because now the wind was like a hundred hands grabbing at the barrel, pulling it back and forth, the sight wandering, the one in front of him a black thing, his bow steadying. Reece breathed deeply and stilled, put aside the pain in his head, stared at the two images he could see, took aim plumb centre between them both and, as another cold knife thrust into his skull, he fired.

  He did not see the target slump back, because simultaneously a crossbow bolt caught him in his hip, and he slumped himself. Winded or wounded? He was so damned cold he could not tell.

  But not damn well out of it. Not yet. Bastard.

  Jack fell back, not immediately aware he had been shot. Only that something had buffeted him hard in the side, very hard.

  His stave?

  He felt for it with his right hand and there it was, apologetic, huffing and puffing like a mortal. But in the snow, already whipped by wind, was his blood.

  He struggled to rise with the help of the stave, but he only made it to his knees. He could find neither strength nor balance to get a purchase on the slippery ground and push himself upright.