Harvest (36 page)

Strangely, it was this which distressed him most, as if he was discovering in himself something he did not like. Later, if he had been rude or discourteous, he would apologize with a shake of
the head and a charming smile.

The hydden under Slew’s command soon came to both respect and like him.

Den Helder was two miles east of its human namesake, a large, thriving port whose ambient light they had seen across the flatlands for two nights past.

They arrived at dusk and had a final rest between the human and hydden settlements, sheltering behind a concrete sea wall from the cold, moist wind.

Sinistral was as well and vigorous as he had so far been, and now talkative.

‘In former times it was known as Hell’s Door or Helledore because of these fortifications you see all about. Hardy sea folk are born and raised in this place, Borkum Riff among
them.’

‘You’ve been here before, my Lord?’ one of them asked, handing him a warming drink.

‘Once. Seventy years ago. I have reason to remember it but . . .’

Seventy years.

They shook their heads in wonderment. That must mean . . . but no one dared ask his age, though they knew the rumours. One hundred and fifty years! He was already old when he came here last, and
very old when they were born.

He said no more. Instead, turning round and raising himself up to look over the wall towards the driven, spumey waves and grey sea, he said, ‘Let us move on.’

Riff’s place was on the far side of Den Helder, among sand dunes, on the neck of a spit of land with shores and jetties on either side, allowing craft to land in all conditions of wind and
tide. If, that is, their skipper had the skill to do so.

A cutter bobbed against a granite jetty on the south-east shore. Steel hawsers rattled in the wind. Waves roared over sand and shingle. Sturdy, salt-bleached grass stuttered at their feet.
Riff’s humble was half underground, the smell of woodsmoke coming from some cleverly hidden outlet, its odour driven into their noses then whipped away again.

He stood alone, apart from his humble, on the wild, dark shore, in oilskins from head to toe, his sou’wester black, his beard thick but short. He stood and stared, waiting.

‘I will go to him alone,’ said Sinistral and then, blown sideways for a moment, he got his footing right, leaned into the wind, and went down to where Riff stood.

‘My Lord,’ said Borkum Riff, reaching out a hand.

Sinistral took it and said, ‘Where is he?’

‘He clings on to life.’

‘He knows I am here?’

‘He allers swore he’d stand erect the day you came back but . . . my Lord . . . he has a pride as hard and sharp as flint.’

‘Your father is ill?’

‘Old, infirm, unable . . .’

‘Where is he?’

‘Abed, but he’ll not see you lying down.’

‘Take me to him.’

‘No, my Lord, that I cannot . . .’

But he paused and, glancing over Sinistral’s shoulder, looked surprised.

Slaeke Sinistral turned and looked where Riff did, and Slew and the Brethren too.

The door of the humble had opened and a tall thin hydden, very old, thin as a beanstalk, his white nightshirt flapping in the violent wind, a young wyf trying to haul him back inside, stood on
the threshold.

Sinistral went to him at once.

‘My Lord,’ said the old one stepping out into the wind which caught him and began to blow him over, ‘I allers said to ’em that you’d come back and . . . and . .
.’

Sinistral suddenly lost years. He stepped forward, as if out of his own weakness into a stronger body and took the old one in his arms and embraced him for all to see.

Who or what they were to each other none there knew.

‘I
said
you’d come!’

They laughed like young things, the foul night resonant with memories the others could not share.

‘You know why I’ve come?’

‘Aye, it’s time. He’s ready to skipper your boat to the furthest shore. Now he be ready, Lord. And I too. But . . . do you want to see ’em afore you go? It is your right.
You do?’

He turned to his son.

‘Whistle ’em up, Borkum, let my Lord see and appraise ’em, every one!’

The wyf who had tried to drag the old one in reappeared with a long, warm coat which she draped around him, and a scarf which she wrapped around his neck and head, standing on tiptoe.

Then Borkum Riff pulled a ship’s silver whistle from around his neck and raised it to his mouth and blew, playing the note up and down three times.

At first nothing happened, the wind just blew and the dark continued to hang about the dunes and the waves to pile up palely on the shore.

But then the light of a humble, unnoticed till then, went on, followed by another, then a third.

Out of the doors of these buried dwellings, hydden began to come, males and females, one or two Riff’s age, more a little younger: wyfkin, spouses, kinder nearly grown, dressed in the
rough, tough garb of the polder folk and mariners of those wild sea-roads.

They came and stood in awe, staring at the old hydden, then at Borkum Riff, and finally at Sinistral, who stood so tall.

‘These be my kin, my Lord,’ said the old hydden. ‘These be the true harvest of that night you saved my life! These be my progeny your great courage made. Touch ’em, Lord,
so they know you did.’

They saw the pride in the Lord Emperor’s face.

‘All these are yours?’

‘That night you gave me life, that same night you made ’em be. These be your kinder too, my Lord. Touch ’em now!’

Then Sinistral went from one to another of Riff’s father’s descendants, Borkum at his side. He introduced each by name and Sinistral shook their hands.

‘This be Lord Slaeke Sinistral, Emperor of the Hyddenworld, who saved my life and Borkum’s there, that was a babe, where none other dared to go that night long past, out on a
sea-road that was hell. Then, though she be gone to the Mirror now, he went out again alone and saved she I loved who was Borkum’s Ma and thine. Honour him! Remember him. He is your Lord and
mine, who comes this night to take his due.’

Sinistral shook his head and pulled back, looking round at Slew as if for escape.

‘I cannot do it!’ he said.

‘You can and will. I promised Borkum’d skipper you when you crossed the sea again to that furthest shore. These be my harvest, he be my tithe. His wyrd will bring him back or
no!’

‘So be it,’ said Sinistral, ‘Borkum Riff shall skipper me over the sea and beyond.’

‘I will, My Lord,’ Riff replied.

They supped in a boathouse and took good brew.

They talked and heard that tale of seventy years before from Riff’s Pa, from Riff himself and from one of the wyfs, who heard it from Ma.

All different in detail and degree, all like the ocean, never the same on the surface but always the ocean still.

They listened to songs from the young and the old, they each found their way to say thank you and goodbye.

Until the wind howled and spray spattered along the boathouse wall and Borkum Riff growled, ‘’Tis time!’

He rose, his crew with him, and they went to rig and to range his black-hulled craft, ready for the fray.

Sinistral stood tall and said his farewell, Old Riff the same.

They went outside and Borkum Riff came back up the sandy shore, the waves thundering after him. He stopped short by the shell and shingle bank where his kin stood to watch him leave. Like his
Lord before, he went to each and every one to say his last farewell.

It was only then that Slew and his friends understood that Riff did not expect ever to come back.

‘You know,’ said Sinistral, ‘I thought my Lady Leetha would come. I thought she’d journey on with us.’

Old Riff laughed.

‘In a boat, with males like you, my Lord, and Borkum and Slew? Too confined for her, she couldn’t dance . . .
Does
she still dance, my Lord? My Lady Leetha?’

‘She always will.’

‘A boat would be too confined for your beloved, Lord.’

His face, so dark, so caught up with tides and seas, lightened. He flashed white teeth at a memory.

‘I came; she will,’ said Sinistral. ‘But you can’t pin her down to time and place; never could.’

‘No, never could,’ agreed Borkum Riff, ‘but we must, Lord, if we’re to catch the tide. That never waits, not even for her.’

Then, ‘Time!’ he called out again, embracing his Pa at the very last, turning his heel in the gritty wet sand, climbing aboard, checking all was well and the crew well stationed and
his passengers safe, before raising his hand to the land-based helpers, which was his family, down to the babe who squealed like a juvenile gull on the wind to see him go.

‘Now my lads!’ he cried and the craft was pushed out into the waves towards the spit. ‘Pull good!’ as it reefed and turned and gibed into the wind and waves. ‘Pull
hard!’

He didn’t look back, not then nor later, until that place some call Helledore was not even a light, nor a shadow in the night they left behind.

‘Whither bound, my Lord?’ he sang out.

‘Unto Samhain,’ replied Slaeke Sinistral, naming a time not a place.

‘Aye, aye, sir, Samhain!’ cried Borkum Riff, who understood, and set his craft to its course.

Having got up that night, Old Riff stayed up, knowing he might never again.

He had seen his Lord one last time, now he wanted to see the end of it and greet my Lady.

His wyfkin kept him warm, plied him with brew, pressed close to his thin shanks, wrapped his coat and his scarf tighter, lingering. They wanted to see her too.

‘Be gone,’ he growled like he used to do when he was younger, but he didn’t say it harshly nor enforce his will. They had a right to see as well.

At dawn she came on the White Horse, along the strand, picking their way through shadows and the casts of lug and razor shells, staring at the shine of the rising sun on wet stones.

Oh, she was beautiful, that lady was, so much so it brought tears to his eyes.

‘Am I too late?’ she said, as the White Horse knelt down by him and she embraced him so tight her wild hair blew right round his old head and tickled his ears.

‘Course you are, Leetha, but we’m known that’d be for all of twenty years and more.’

‘Was he angry?’

Old Riff shook his head.

‘No.’

‘Does he love me still?’

‘My Lord Sinistral does.’

‘Shall I dance?’

‘No. But you can say a warm morning to my progeny and Borkum’s too, made by my Lord all those years ago.’

‘He never forgot.’

‘Nor I.’

They came out with the sun, shy but not afraid, and of course Leetha danced for them and made them dance as well.

The tide had gone out, now it came in, and they had seen things they would never forget.

But there was one more thing.

‘Where’s he gone, that White Horse?’ asked Old Riff. ‘You wouldn’t think that a beast that big would make no sound when it left.’

‘Don’t need it,’ said Leetha. ‘I borrowed it from my granddaughter the Shield Maiden.’

‘Well, you’re not ending your days on this foreign shore, though Mirror knows . . .’

He didn’t say more but sat right down, his hand to his chest, sweating, breathing heavily, in pain.

‘Borkum’s not here to hold your hand,’ she said, ‘and that’s why I’ve stayed. Don’t talk . . .’

‘Don’t dance, for Mirror’s sake . . .’ he gasped, ‘don’t even laugh . . .’

But she did, she did, as they talked the day through and his breathing grew slow.

‘What’ll you do, Leetha, when I’m gone, which I will be soon.’

‘Follow after them across the sea. I’ll surprise them.’

‘And who of our brood will have courage enough to skipper your craft to Samhain?’

‘I think you know.’

‘That wasn’t . . .’

‘You know Old Riff . . .’

‘You mustn’t . . .’

‘But I will . . .’

‘Just don’t bloody dance . . .’

But she did, and her skipper, who was barely a man but had Riff all over his face and in the strength of his arms, watched in silence as she did and Old Riff died with an old cracked laugh.

‘Don’t dance . . .’

But she did.

That night, his pyre burning, Leetha said, ‘You know who I am?’

He did.

‘Have you sailed the North Sea?’

‘Sailed, not skippered.’

‘With your father?’

He nodded.

‘Time for skippering now.’

‘Where to, my Lady?’

‘Don’t call me that . . .’

‘What then, my . . .’

‘Just be,’ she said softly, ‘and the right word will come.’

He rigged and ranged his own new craft, made by his own hand. A dozen would have crewed for him but he chose just three.

They launched into a gentler sea, the pyre a glow on shore, and he said as his father had, ‘Whither bound?’

‘Didn’t he tell you?’

He shook his head.

‘Take me to Samhain.’

‘But that’s a time, not a place!’

‘Just so,’ said Leetha. ‘Just so.’

T
he hope that the return of Jack’s unit to Brum with their two rescued hostages would be as straightforward and Fyrd-free as their outward
journey had been was soon dashed. They made their way back to their starting point, the depot in the industrial estate, undetected, but when they got there it was closed, its gate padlocked, the
site under the watchful eye of two security men.

‘And dogs,’ reported Barklice, after a short reconnaissance. ‘They scented me and would have
had
me but . . .’

He waved a rueful hand over trews, boots and hair wiped in engine oil to put them off his scent.

‘Needs must,’ he murmured. ‘Now, the alternatives. If speed’s the thing then the quickest way is undercroft a train on the London– Birmingham line which, gentlemen,
is no distance at all.’

‘General Quatremayne has his forward HQ on that line, in Coventry itself,’ warned Blut.

‘The alternatives are to go round north or south, the first by rail to Tamworth, also undercroft, of course; or south by green road, which is a long and probably difficult haul if Fyrd are
thick on the ground.’