Winter

by William Horwood

  He peered round towards the human and saw that he was down and was also finding it hard to get back up.

  ‘Come on, Jack,’ cried Katherine, reaching him, helping him up and supporting him towards the great door that now stood black and wavering in the wind with Winter scribed above it. Terce and the others had used planks to prop it up against the wind, leaving space enough to open the door, if it would open.

  ‘Stupid,’ said Jack, annoyed with himself for being hit, ‘stupid. Open the damn thing, Stort, and let’s try to get out of here.’

  They gathered around him again to keep the wind and icy snow off as he put a hand on the corroded handle and turned.

  ‘It won’t.’

  Festoon, limping, tried, then Terce with two hands, then Katherine. Finally Barklice and even Bohr, broken by the loss of Ingrid though he was.

  It was stuck fast.

  ‘You try,’ shouted Barklice at Bratfire.

  He reached two hands to it, the adults pressing from behind, and the handle turned like it had been just fixed and oiled ten minutes before.

  ‘You turned the wrong way,’ said Bratfire shaking his head.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Stort, ‘and maybe not.’

  ‘Now push it open,’ said Jack, the buffet to his side now turning to deep pain.

  Stort pushed open the door of Winter but all he saw on the far side was the same white-out they were already in.

  ‘Useless,’ said Katherine.

  ‘We’ll see . . .’ growled Jack. He pushed Bratfire through, shouting, ‘Hold your pa’s hand and don’t let go . . . nobody let go of the hand they take else you’ll end up somewhere else.’

  If it works, he thought.

  Barklice followed, and then Terce.

  Bohr, still in a state of shock, followed numbly and without protest, Blut after him.

  ‘Jack, you next . . .’

  ‘No, me last . . .’

  Katherine brooked no argument and pushed him through and could not but follow because he had her hand.

  ‘Stort . . .’ cried Festoon, ‘this is my city, I go last – you go now.’

  Blut reached his hand to Stort, and Festoon, wanting to be last, pushed Stort ahead of him.

  ‘My Lord,’ cried Stort, reaching back through the door, ‘my Lord!’

  Reece had been right, he was down but by no means out.

  He left the bolt right where it was. Painful, but the safest thing to do. Pull it out and blood flows. Leave it in and there might be a way to staunch it if he could only get out of the wind and cold.

  He rolled onto his front, pulled his weapon close to keep it from freezing, and peered forward to see where they were. He could not, he literally could not, believe his eyes.

  They were insane, or their world was.

  They had somehow heaved a great door up despite the wind, and having opened the effing thing they were piling through it, the freakheads. As he watched, a big one looked like he was thrusting a tall thin one through. Reece’s vision had cleared.

  His head too.

  Oh yes, oh yees.

  It was painful but not difficult getting his weapon ready, it being much easier lying down with the bipod out and settled into the icy snow, the sight steady.

  No messing, he could get both now and then follow to take the rest. Except that the sight line on the second was now blocked by the first one. What the hell, it would have been easy enough to get both but one is better than none.

  Reece raised his weapon, got the sight plumb perfect on the one he could see and fired. He would have had to be dead himself to miss and he didn’t: the hydden slewed straight across the gaping door and was down.

  A pause, a moment to steady his aim on the one already half through the door and into the blizzard beyond.

  ‘Think you can slip away from me do you?’

  The view was not perfect but he got the sight clear on his retreating shoulder, and stilled himself to fire.

  Stort had felt Festoon’s grip on his arm slacken and then seen the look of surprise on his face as he fell sideways, his eyes glazing.

  He felt a yank as Katherine’s right hand tugged at his and he fell back and found himself watching Festoon slowly hit the ground on the far side of the door as time . . . time . . . time slowed to nearly nothing, time between the world of here and there, ice worlds both, a world of difference as Stort looked up and back at the human on the ground, a silhouetted head against huge flames.

  He thought of a date and a name he did not know and said to himself quite gently, ‘Yes, of course, that will be it . . .’

  He saw the muzzle of the weapon fire and the bullet coming towards him, shining and turning, reflecting ice and fire and blood and all things as it came, continuing to turn in the blizzard of slow time between here and there, back there, oh yes, he understood what he must try to do but it would be hard, so hard but but but . . .

  He turned to follow Katherine and felt the bullet smash through his left shoulder and an agony of pain and loss as he tumbled forward towards the place, the date, the moment Blut and Katherine had told him about.

  ‘Not yet,’ he whispered, for there were things still to do, ‘not yet!’

  Reece stared and saw one down and the other . . . disappear into the snow beyond the door. The wind was like a hundred thousand shards of ice, made orange by the flames behind.

  He swore with the pain, got up and walked slowly towards the open door, weapon at the ready to finish them off. They wouldn’t get far.

  ‘No need to hurry,’ he murmured when he got to the door where one small form hunched down in death. He shot that one again anyway, for the dark pleasure of it. Another moment of release from the eternal pain he felt.

  Now for the second one . . .

  Reece looked at the door, puzzled.

  From afar it looked normal size; close-to it was half size. A trick of scale and perspective. It was a freak door just like them, and, bending down, stepping over the body, he peered through and saw nothing but the blizzard wind, darker here because the flame-light was blocked by the door frame itself.

  Weird, curious, nobody, no one beyond at all. They had disappeared, which wasn’t possible.

  He was about to rise and go round when he decided, his mind numbing a little, his head hurting again, to heave his shoulder through to see if his eyes were playing tricks. He did so, squeezed some more and fell forward, half through onto his hands and knees. Vulnerable now, not good.

  He scrambled hastily forward, dragging his rifle with him, until he was able to stand up once more. But when he finally did he stared, puzzled, because the wind had suddenly weakened at ground level and his feet were not on the debris of a building but on snow-encrusted grass; and things weren’t right.

  Grass?

  More bewildering still his weapon had grown heavier. He looked down at it and nearly smashed his forehead into its muzzle. It had grown longer too.

  He stepped back, fear mounting, and looked at it. The rifle had become giant-size. He looked about wild-eyed, then up to where the wind raged loud among bending, whipping, leafless treetops far above his head.

  Where am I . . . ?

  He examined his rifle more closely for confirmation it was really his and saw his initials on it, no question. It was just that they were now twice as big as before.

  He stared at his hands and feet and felt an existential horror as he realized what he was.

  ‘You bastards,’ screamed Reece as he dropped the rifle and felt the blood oozing from where the crossbow bolt had hit him.

  ‘You’ve made me one of you!’ he cried.

  The bolt in his side shifted, blood began to flow but he no longer cared. He lay bleeding and dying with no interest in recovery, no wish to survive, no wish for anything. Release from himself was what he wanted, a final, blessed release.

  The trees were a circle above him, the sky beyond as grey as the ice that now entered into him and he saw a woman staring down at him. Large or small he had no idea.
He didn’t care.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘Woolstone.’

  ‘No, where am I?’

  ‘You’re in the Hyddenworld.’

  ‘They . . . they . . . made . . . they . . . fr . . . fr . . . I . . .’

  But the old words, the old hate words, the old poison dried up in his mouth under her scrutiny.

  He had only to look at her to know she had suffered more than he ever could.

  She was old, so old, a form withered by time, with hands whose swollen, bent knuckles were raw blue and red with the cold; hideous. Oh, she had suffered more. Her eyes were the loneliest he had ever looked into and they put in him something he had forgotten and left behind long, long before, something simple. Something he wanted to say, because until he did he could never be at peace and for that, time had all but run out.

  ‘I . . . I . . .’ he tried to say as with great difficulty she bent down to hear him better.

  ‘You . . . ?’ she whispered. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I killed my brother,’ Reece said, weeping like the boy of sixteen he had once been, ‘and I miss him . . .’

  ‘I know,’ she said, reaching her hand to his cheek, her hurt, bent, tortured hand. ‘I know, my dear.’ And he knew she did.

  ‘I want to forget.’

  ‘You will forget everything,’ she said softly, letting him reach his hand to her, that he was not alone any more as the cold, cold wind carried the sound of the Chimes over him and he travelled on with it to the musica, a mortal on his final journey, one of the very last, as the Mirror-of-All finally broke asunder and the End of Days began.

  43

  TO THE TOP

  ‘Where are Festoon and Stort?’

  It was Katherine’s voice, desperate against the wind. She had been the last to hold Stort’s hand when they left the door behind but couldn’t see him now.

  Oh, but Mirror she was cold!

  Where are the last two?

  Her mind was working so slowly she could no longer get the words out very loudly, or find the energy to call to those in front, or begin to think about going back to seek them out in the glacial wastes behind.

  She could hardly push one foot in front of the other along the rutted, icy ground they were on. So far as she could see the rest of the party at all through the snow they were frowning, heads down, tramping ever more desperately on, grey figures hunched against the wind, each step difficult.

  Night had turned to day, but what time of day was impossible to tell.

  Terce kicked at the snow, banged on the rucked ice, saw soil.

  Bratfire, over to one side, went on his hands and knees, stabbed at the ground and found grass. He peered from low down up the slight slope. He, at least, seemed half alive.

  ‘We’re on a path.’

  ‘Where are Stort and Festoon?’ screamed Katherine again, her voice thinned to nothing by the wind.

  They all finally stopped, and slowly turned, their expressions ones of such cold, fatigue and listlessness that they looked as if they were close to giving up all hope for themselves and one another. They just stood there, buffeted by the harsh wind, looking back the way they had come, waiting for their friends.

  When Stort finally came they saw he was alone. He looked as he had on distant Pendower Beach: battered, nearly engulfed, on the very edge of what a mortal can any longer bear. His cap gone, his left arm loose and blowing about, his slow tread more wander than walk. Yet when he too paused, staring up the slight slope towards them, he was for a moment Stort again. His fingers flickered in recognition, his dull eyes momentarily brightened; it seemed he was trying to speak.

  They went back to him and saw at once the mess that was his shoulder where he had been shot – the torn jacket, the blood, the protruding bone. His face was grey, his freckles nearly black, his eyes hollow with pain. Yet there was no despair.

  ‘Lie down,’ said Katherine, but he laughed a broken, cracked kind of laugh, shook his head and looked about. To lie down was to die.

  He raised his good hand and, finding Jack, grasped his jacket, pulled himself nearer and rasped, ‘You must try to get me there. Festoon was not able to come . . . but there is a way. Get me there.’

  Where and for what he did not, or could not, say.

  But Festoon . . . left behind.

  Grief was out there in the cold, and a terrible numbness.

  Jack’s face was blue-white and his right hand held his side; between its fingers there was blood, congealed and fresh.

  ‘Bar . . . Bark . . . Barklice?’

  Barklice came and the three stood together like menhirs in the snow, cleaving to each other as they had through time. They stood windswept and bleak, words slow.

  ‘Tell us . . . where are we?’ Jack asked, the pain of trying to shout against the wind making him wince. ‘Stort needs to know.’

  Barklice pulled free of them again and looked about, as far as that was possible. Alone of all of them but Bratfire, he still seemed to have his natural strength. Wiry, spare, used to all conditions, honed down to all he needed to be, no more nor less. A survivor.

  As he tried to make sense of what he could see, so too did they all as far as their individual strengths allowed, which wasn’t much. Bohr, shattered by the loss of Ingrid, was withering before their eyes.

  Blut looked weak and leaned on Terce’s arm, though the chorister was half dead as well, his head dropped forward and eyes peering, his mouth open and lips swollen, as fragments of a tuneless song struggled out of his throat.

  They seemed to be in an icy wilderness, the only feature being the fences on either side of the path they trekked. The ground sloped up against the wind, not steep but steadily, which was the way their collective wyrd took them.

  ‘This place I know not,’ said Barklice finally, pulling Bratfire closer to protect him from the cold and checking that his jacket was as tight and buttoned as it could be, ‘but the direction we are going in feels right. Perhaps somewhere ahead we’ll find a place to rest, where we can tend to Stort and Jack.’

  ‘Continue against the wind?’ said Terce. ‘Surely . . .’

  ‘Against the wind,’ said Jack resolutely, ‘if Barklice wants it.’

  ‘Yes . . . yes . . .’ said Barklice, himself blown sideways for a moment, Bratfire keeping him from falling. ‘I’ll lead the way.’

  ‘Can you go on, Stort?’ asked Katherine.

  Stort nodded and whispered, ‘I can, I must, we have a gem to find . . . it is . . . this is . . . the time . . .’

  He struggled to get out his chronometer and failed and Blut did so instead.

  ‘It is the last day of January . . .’

  This information seemed to revive Stort a little.

  ‘I thought it was too late,’ he said.

  ‘Afternoon,’ mumbled Blut, his chronometer slipping from his frozen fingers onto the icy snow, ‘middle of . . .’

  He made no attempt to pick it up so Bratfire did it for him.

  ‘Keep it,’ said Blut, waving his hand, ‘you’ll have more use for it than I.’

  ‘If it is only the afternoon of January 31st,’ repeated Stort, with something like his old spirit, though his voice was no more than a rasp, ‘then we have time to get wherever we are going, lots of time . . .’

  He cracked an ironic laugh. His fingers were blanched white, his knuckles an ill-coloured maroon.

  ‘Terce . . .’ called Katherine.

  She took Blut’s arm on one side, and Jack’s on the other, helping them both to move on.

  Terce supported Stort, one singing, the other humming.

  ‘Worst choir in the world,’ muttered Jack, stumbling at Katherine’s side.

  Bratfire dropped back to help Bohr, Barklice staying in front. Any one of them might have fallen over in such conditions and never got up again but together they soldiered on, heads down to the wind, going ever more slowly, minds numbing and playing tricks, eyes seeing nothing but the hard path beneath, the iced barbed wire of the
fences and shadowed hallucinations far ahead . . .

  Then . . . dogs racing around, mastered by Reivers, in and out of their vision and the sound of her ancient screaming, telling them to be respectful, cursing where they went. She was there, was the Shield Maiden, waiting maybe, watching perhaps, urging more like, angry it had taken them so long to get to this day and this place that she was almost dead herself . . .

  ‘Woolstone Down,’ said Katherine to Jack suddenly, the path, the parallel fences, the dip slope of the escarpment up towards which they were going, ‘that’s where we are. Remember?’

  He half looked up, he made a noise, no more.

  He was dying, she could feel him dying, could feel his strong body frail now against her, his voice little more than weak rasps.

  ‘We’re on the far side from the Horse,’ she said, her lips warm and urgent to his ear, doing her best against her own dreadful fatigue. ‘We walked down this way more than once. We’re on the gallops of Woolstone Down. Jack, we’re nearly home.’

  ‘I can’t . . .’ he whispered, ‘I can’t protect them any more, Katherine, I can’t . . .’

  ‘You can,’ she said, ‘you always have . . . you got us through. I think we’ll make it there. Keep on going, my love, we’re nearly home.’

  Then, striving to make the others hear, she called out those same words again: ‘Keep on going, we’re nearly home.’

  ‘Look . . .’ said Bohr, eyes screwed up against the wind, cheeks now chapped and raw and bleeding at his mouth and eyes, ‘look!’

  In his brief and terrible time in the Hyddenworld he had never felt such fear.

  The Reivers charged in on their fearsome dogs, seemingly impervious to cold, raced in and out of the blizzard wind, laughing, their foul dogs slavering, their mistress so old now they seemed to have lost their fear of her.

  She was alone, without support. Even the White Horse had deserted her in old age, it seemed.

  So they ran and they charged, teeth bared, her own dog Morten no longer hers but loose, leading the others, ahead of the hydden, then to the sides, mocking their slow progress up the hill by showing how easy it was whichever way they did it.