Winter

by William Horwood

  ‘Stop that!’ Judith cried, asserting her old strength. ‘You know what I can do to you! Stop it! And my once beautiful dog, come here!’

  Morten came, a scabby cur now with only a distant hint of what he too had been, a reflection of his mistress. With his tail between his legs, he went to heel.

  The cruel eyes of the Reivers and their dogs widened in surprise and fear, for they had thought Judith was so old and weak now she had forgotten how to command.

  They chased each other away to a crest on the near horizon and huddled whining there in what bitter little bit of shelter they could find, the intense cold having finally got even to them. They too, they knew, were near death.

  The hydden moved on, one after another . . . knowing now they could not make it, not back home, not to warmth again, not to life, not that place Katherine mentioned.

  ‘Too far,’ Terce finally said and Bohr agreed.

  ‘Too far and too late,’ said Blut.

  Their steps slowing as they reached the crest, and the wind, as cold until then as it had ever been, and stronger too, grew colder yet.

  For what it was worth, which was nothing at all, Katherine had been right. They had trekked up the gallops and having reached the Ridgeway, which stretched away impossibly to right and left, they faced the ramparts of Uffington Fort straight ahead. The edge of the escarpment was on the far side, where the White Horse was.

  The cold wind cut through their clothes and bodies, it made their ears ache and felt as if it was tearing off their skin.

  Barklice came to Stort.

  ‘What day is it?’ asked Stort, his mind wandering.

  ‘The last, my dear friend. Is the gem near?’

  ‘What time is it?’

  Good Barklice smiled and took Stort’s arm from Terce.

  ‘Stort, there’s still time. The season does not turn until midnight and then there’s the hours betwixt and between but . . . my . . . you do cut it fine and scare us all!’

  He took Stort’s hand in his own to warm it, but it was stiff now, white now.

  ‘Stort, my dear old friend,’ said Barklice, his voice breaking.

  Stort slowed and whispered, ‘Barklice, there may be something I must ask of you . . .’

  ‘Anything . . .’

  ‘Something . . .’

  But Stort was unable to concentrate and say just then what it was. All he could do was what he often did when he fretted and stressed and got lost in his mind. His fingers reached to his neck and touched the chime that still hung there, which Judith had given him when she was a child.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ asked Barklice.

  ‘I . . . maybe . . . I . . . am . . . not . . . yet . . . sure.’

  They did not talk very much as they struggled on. Except for mumbles now and then as they shuffled on past the ramparts into a wind that was icier yet, to the high place on the edge from where, in spring, after the snows have gone and sunshine returned, all Englalond stretches forth below in welcome.

  Not so now. Grey winter was all they saw, the worst ever known and likely the very last.

  Nearly home?

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Katherine might have said when she was younger, but not any more; she too looked old, they all looked old and coming to their end with nowhere left to go.

  The ramparts of the Iron Age fort faded behind them, lost in swirling wind.

  ‘We might have sheltered in among them, Stort,’ said Barklice, but he spoke to deaf ears now. The only hope was getting off the hill, down to Woolstone, to the sheltering henge.

  But life was slipping away faster than any chronometer could show. The only life in the vast landscape, apart from their own group moving towards the edge of the hill, was that of the Reivers and their dogs, chastened by what they saw, knowing that they too would die if the End of Days was reached and no gem found to give to their decrepit mistress.

  She, Judith, unable to help, unable to look, fearing that, after all, after all the long journeying, her beloved wouldn’t find what she herself could not, waited.

  Stort saw her but was so weak now he could not even raise a hand or smile or feel. Then he wasn’t looking any more, he was stopping, his eyes were closing.

  ‘Barkl . . . Barklice . . . what time is it?’

  ‘There’s time.’

  ‘Kath . . . Ka . . .’

  ‘I’m here, Stort, I’m holding you . . .’

  ‘I saw Judith . . .’ he whispered, ‘I need to feel her touch just once in my life . . .’

  Which she, hearing his words on the wind, feeling them through the ground, seeing each precious memory in the shards of ice that shot between them both, knew she must not, could not, respond to him while there was still hope. A mortal and immortal cannot be.

  Her dog pressed his harrowed body against her leg. The Reivers shook their heads and a lone tree shivered in the wind.

  44

  THE LAST PORTAL

  It was Bohr who saw the tree, that same solitary tree under which Jack and Katherine had sometimes sat in better days. In spring its blossoms all creamy white; in summer its leaves dancing with light; in autumn its tiny berries red as the deepest sunset.

  Now, in winter, the hawthorn was a black old thing, with gnarled branches and twigs and twisted roots exposed and open to the skies.

  One way was the White Horse carved in chalk, the lone tree was the other.

  ‘It might give us shelter, it might be home,’ mumbled Erich Bohr.

  They began turning towards it as one, even Jack, but Stort shook his head. Leaning his hurt, weak body into those who held him, he turned towards the escarpment edge below which the White Horse galloped eternally across the sward where, when humans and hydden were at peace, they and their leader had cut and scoured it.

  ‘There is a way,’ said Stort, ‘but . . . but . . . I’m not sure yet. Take me so I can see the Horse.’

  They gave all of their final strength to get him there, until, reaching the edge, where they knew they could see it, all Englalond a waste of ice beneath them, they saw that the Horse was not visible.

  The icy snow had covered it and nothing was to be seen.

  Stort shuddered then and something in him seemed to go, as it did in all of them. He pulled back out of the cruel wind and then some more until, unable to support him any more, they laid him down.

  Nothing more to do, nothing more to see.

  ‘Have I failed?’ he asked.

  It is said that, reaching the point of death, many creatures choose to be alone, as befits a mortal’s return to the Mirror’s light.

  So now up there on White Horse Hill.

  Stort lay on the ground as each of the others, seeking their own way back to a Mirror cracked beyond repair, set off alone.

  Even Katherine, separate from Jack.

  Bohr, alone.

  Niklas Blut, great Emperor that he was, dying now, alone upon the ground murmuring the names of those he had loved: his spouse, his kinder and Lord Sinistral, progenitor of so much.

  ‘My Lord . . .’ he whispered finally, but said no more. Sinistral for good and ill, but finally mainly good, was gone, and now even memory of him as of all else was fading fast.

  Blut reached for his spectacles but even that was too much at the end, so they shone where he lay, white reflected orbs of sky, bright as his mind and nature had always been.

  While Terce, trying still to find the song that once he sang, his voice failing him, slumped to his knees, unable to go on.

  ‘Barklice,’ whispered Stort, ‘are you there?’

  Barklice came, Bratfire hanging back, staring at the fallen ones.

  ‘Where is Judith . . . ? I saw her and now . . . I . . . for one last time.’

  Judith, who was now no more than a husky, ragged thing, barely recognizable, came then and knelt by them both. She wanted to reach to him at last, knowing she could and he was dying and age had torn all fear out of her.

  ‘No!’ said Stort. ‘No!’

 
She pulled back her twisted hand, eyes bleak.

  ‘There is still a way,’ said Stort, ‘I glimpsed it, I felt it, though now I have no strength at all to find it.’

  His torn, broken shoulder shivered in the wind, blood black now, none flowing any more.

  ‘If we . . . if I . . .’

  ‘If what, my friend?’ asked Barklice.

  ‘If we could have reached the tree henge again I could have . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Journeyed on. I could have, couldn’t I?’

  Barklice nodded because he supposed he could. But journey to where he had no idea.

  ‘I could have stopped the End of Days if I’d been able to reach one last henge!’

  Judith nodded, because her beloved might well have changed the world. But now? He was dying too soon.

  Yet even then, so close to death, Stort smiled his gentle smile of wonder and surprise, challenge and questioning.

  ‘Trouble is,’ he whispered in his old way, ‘once there and all that done, how would I ever find my way back home to you?’

  Few words could have touched her more.

  ‘Worse still, if I go to the Mirror, I will forget.’

  She nodded for she knew it was so. She searched for comfort in something as final as his loss of memory of her and she said, ‘My dear love, to remember all that is lost in a life such as yours would be an agony too great for a mortal to bear.’

  Stort stared at her and finally shook his head.

  ‘I don’t want to forget everything,’ he whispered fiercely. ‘I am my memory, I am my friends, I am my love of you. Without them I am not. With them, pain and all, I can be everything.’

  He lay quietly for a time, thinking. Then, though so close to death, Stort roused in himself a little of the spirit of old.

  ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘I refuse to forget! Therefore, my love and my dear friend, leave me in peace while I try to find a way . . . I am sure I can . . . leave me, Barklice. I would like to believe that you and Bratfire are both still on the green road in case I have need of you. Judith . . . you too must go so I can find the way by myself. But how to come back? How do I find you again if I have forgotten who you were though you were all my life?’

  The wind died a little and the snow fell more thickly, drifting across where he lay and the others too. When Barklice looked back it seemed to him that all he saw was Stort and Judith. Even their friends, like the Horse, were lost now beneath a pall of white.

  He saw Stort reaching a hand to his beloved, as she to him, until, not quite touching, each forever alone, she wept out her loss. Finally she too departed into the waste of that unimaginable winter, leaving Stort alone. Then, the snow thickening, Barklice could see them no more.

  Stort lay alone, hearing a tuneless sound.

  ‘Terce,’ he whispered, ‘if you can’t sing in tune don’t sing at all. I’m dying and I would very much prefer . . . I mean to say I had always thought . . .’

  He struggled and heaved in the thrall of death, trying to sit up, to prop himself for a brief moment on his good arm to see the world he loved once more and the people he had loved as well.

  He tried . . . and time is relative.

  A moment can be eternal.

  In that moment Stort looked at where Terce was, on the ground now, trying to sing.

  He looked around to where Katherine lay amidst the snow, then on to Jack, utterly still, as if asleep.

  Then on round to Bohr and Blut . . . and then Terce once more. Stort was circled by his friends as if they were sheltering him.

  He had thought that if they could have reached the protection of the henge of Woolstone, maybe then he could have journeyed on.

  His mind clarified and, having seen before what it was he had to do, he now saw how he might do it.

  ‘There is a way!’ he tried to shout.

  It was there all around him, rising before him as it seemed.

  ‘Terce!’ he commanded, ‘sing true!’

  Which Terce did, as if very slowly waking, rising as a living being once again.

  ‘Katherine,’ cried Stort, ‘we need your help! Listen!’

  Then Katherine, so proud, rose tall before him, she heard the musica and rose.

  Jack too, solid as rock, his stave glinting and shining brighter than the crystals in the snow.

  On around to Bohr, cast down by sorrow, risen now with hope at the musica he heard.

  ‘Sing, Terce, sing!’ and at last Terce did, the voice that he had lost and never quite fully recovered, bursting forth now like a clear mountain stream.

  He sent out a wondrous song that spiralled up into the skies of the then and now, of all time and the Universe. A song beyond all songs, which held for a moment its monophony before building into a harmony with all around them that expressed the boundlessness and joy of all creation.

  At which Blut, bold Blut, spectacles and all, rose to the challenge he was given and gave his all.

  Stort stared at the circle that they made, amazed and fearful, for few though they were, they were enough, forming about him as powerful a living henge as ever was.

  ‘Terce, do not stop, my friend, musica alone can mend this broken world!’ Stort cried, moaning, groaning, complaining as he too heaved himself upright, taller than them all, smiling as exquisite sound healed his hurt shoulder.

  ‘What foolishness not to see it before! Of course . . . there is a way and there may yet be time, if only . . .’

  If only I can dance the henge and find a way to journey back to that time and place where Arthur said, and Blut and Katherine agreed, things might be reversed and a new course set.

  ‘But if I get there how to get back! I can take nothing to remind me of this world and if I succeed in this last task this world, this End of Days, will never be for I will have . . .’

  He nearly stumbled then and fell back to the ground, but he knew he must not. The time to go was now, the place he must reach was then.

  ‘Mirror, cracked you may be but try to help me this last time,’ cried Stort, ‘and show me that reflection I must become to be in the time and place where things could still be changed. Help me!’

  With enormous difficulty he put chilled fingers to his neck to shed his last connection with all he knew. He found the golden thread from which hung the Chime Judith had given him when she was young, and broke it free. Then, reluctantly and yet with hope as well, he dropped it in the snow in the centre of the circle remembering he could take nothing with him, not even the Chime and its memory.

  ‘And yet, my dear friend Barklice, I have always been able to rely on you to guide me home!’

  Which said, Stort turned finally to those things he had to do if he was to complete the task in hand: Now, where was I, what was I trying to do? Dance! That was it. I was trying to dance.

  Then Stort did dance, he danced the musica Terce sang, he danced the henge they made of themselves, he danced right out through them into the swirling wind, forgetting all and who and what he was, Stort went, leaving it behind, even she he loved most in all the world, as he set off to stop the End of Days.

  While behind him the snow fell, drifting over the circle where he had been, little by little covering the Chime which was the last connection, the final memory, of the life he once had in the Hyddenworld.

  45

  THE END OF DAYS

  Barklice, holding Bratfire close to him, looked back a final time at where Stort had risen before what seemed a swirl of snow took him and he was no more.

  The Shield Maiden was long gone, the ramparts a dark wall to their right, their friends were a subtle circle on the flat ground a little above where the Horse lay hidden beneath the snow.

  Barklice too was weakening and he knew it, but if they could just continue far enough to find shelter then Bratfire might survive.

  But then, as he struggled against the wind on the high ridge of White Horse Hill, he stopped, a thought occurring.

  ‘I’m an idiot, Bratfire, your pa
is growing old like the rest of them. We do not need to fight our way along the Ridgeway, we can go down to Woolstone, where we . . . might . . .’

  He fell silent, a look of astonishment on his face. He sat down, shook his head and closed his eyes, muttering in his fatigue, ‘I think . . . why yes . . . I am an idiot!’

  ‘Pa, what is it? What’s wrong?’

  Barklice felt himself shaken awake.

  Barklice looked up at his son.

  ‘You’m been sitting down too long and mustn’t sleep. Come on, Pa!’

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘The last day of Samhain.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Getting dark.’

  ‘Help me up, and don’t let me sit down again, even for an instant. I’ve been a fool. He said there must be a way . . . and there is a way . . .’

  ‘A way to what?’

  ‘To help Mister Stort, of course! To help him find his way home when his work of saving us is done. The least he deserves is to give him the means to find her again!’

  Bratfire considered this and finally said, ‘Well, Pa, I bain’t sure I know what yer on about but if you’m can’t do whate’er it be, no one can.’

  They turned and began retracing their steps, their progress slow, the light fading and the wind making one last effort to blow them off the hill.

  ‘Come on, Pa, nearly there.’

  Their friends lay on open ground, covered in snow, their bodies forming a wide circle around . . . around nothing at all. Barklice went closer, ordering Bratfire to stay back, and checked them all for signs of life. He found none and nor did he find the body of Bedwyn Stort, nor any footprints or other indication that he had found the strength to rise and leave.

  He stood shocked and puzzled and whispering. Barklice thought he had found a way to help Stort at the last but if he wasn’t there . . . if he had gone . . . he could not do what he had thought he might.

  ‘You went on, Mister Stort,’ cried Barklice in despair, ‘but how are you to find your way home if I’m not there? I might have . . . if only . . . if . . . only . . .’

  He stared at the centre of the circle, where he guessed Stort might have been, with an alternating look of hope and finally despair as, going closer, he saw nothing but a drift of virgin snow.