Spring (13 page)

She is near her end
he told himself at once,
which means that her death will happen in my lifetime, perhaps while I am still young. Therefore I must ready myself to take hold of that pendant, which one day will fall from her neck . . . It will give me power over all.

That was only the first of Brunte’s immediate thoughts. Having now caught the sweet scent of opportunity, he decided to take it. But he knew that it was no good seeing what might be if he was not there to take advantage of it. The path to power is littered with the bodies of those who did not know how best to tread it.

So it was that as he and his more senior colleagues retreated from the bridge, Brunte glanced sideways at the Quentor and like the survivor that he was knew at once what he was thinking: something similar to himself.

‘Brunte must die, and my colleague too,’ is what’s in his mind
Brunte told himself.
He knows that we saw what he did, and fears it will thwart his own ambition.

Igor Brunte did not hesitate once he had worked out what action to take. He never had, and he never would.

‘My lord,’ he said, the moment their retreat had taken them back into shadows, ‘a word in your ear if you please . . .’

He glanced meaningfully at the other Fyrd, as if mutely accusing him of those same dark thoughts of which he himself was guilty. The Quentor understood at once and fell into the trap.

‘Yes?’ he said softly, inviting him close.

Brunte had his back to the other Fyrd, blocking his view. In his left hand he now held the longer of his knives.

‘I have something here for you, my lord,’ he said softly, plunging the knife into his leader’s side so that its point went straight to his heart.

The Fyrd leader did no more than let out a little gasp of surprise, before falling sideways to the ground.

Brunte turned at once to the other one.

Shocked, speechless, and surprised – all emotions Brunte noted with cold interest – the second Fyrd’s training deserted him, the more so because of Brunte’s strangely hypnotic smile. He succeeded in uttering only a single word: ‘No!’

‘Oh yes, my friend, you too. For the secret of this night I share with no one.’

This time he used both his knives together, each cruelly: one upward into the eye, the other downward to the gut. Then, letting go of them, he shoved his calloused fist hard into the stricken Fyrd’s open mouth, reducing his dying scream to a mere grunting sob.

The job done, Brunte retrieved his knives and turned away into the night. Without further delay, he set forth to Brum, fabricating a tale of murderous attack and thinking of ways he might himself in time assume senior office of some kind and ready himself for greater power still.

I
mbolc’s intervention had saved Brief’s life and left them free to do what they could for Jack. He lay awkwardly and still, the blackened flesh of his burnt back bare to the night, while his face, caught by the flickering light of the still-burning car, bore the pallor of death.

Brief examined him.

‘Well, he’s still alive, that much we can say. But unless I can treat these burns . . .’

He bent closer, hardly daring to touch Jack’s clothes, which had melted into his skin.

‘I don’t think I have ever seen anything so brave as what this boy did,’ murmured Brief, ‘which rather confirms that he is what we think he is – a giant-born. In fact
the
giant-born. But . . .’ He sat back on his haunches and dug inside his robe to remove a flat pouch secured on a woven cord around his waist. ‘It’s a long time since I treated wounds of this severity. I fear that unless I can first cool these burns I will only do worse damage if I try to apply a salve, even one as sovereign as I have here.’

He looked up at Pike, despair written on his face. ‘I’m not sure what to do, but if he’s to have any hope then we need to use something cold, very cold – and quickly.’

Stort loomed up suddenly from the shadow of the embankment, covered in mud and grime. He carried a black bin-bag, heavy and dripping, in his hands.

‘Some of the hail which fell just now,’ he announced. ‘Master Brief, I have a feeling this might help the boy’s burns if you can apply it.’

Brief took the load thankfully and knelt down beside Jack.

‘So he’s putting to one side his doubts about tradition and taboos concerning hydden and human!’ Stort whispered to Pike.

‘If he hadn’t I most certainly would have done what I could myself,’ replied the staverman.

‘Yes, I am,’ muttered Brief irritably. ‘Now could you kindly stop chattering and Master Stort, please find me some more ice.’

‘I will try,’ said Stort. ‘Meanwhile, Mister Pike, I think the human lady lying on the far verge may need some of this hail as well, so perhaps you could set your stavermen to collecting some.’

He dug into one of his pockets and produced a roll of bin-bags. ‘Please tell them that I will wish to have any they do not use returned to me. It was no easy matter getting hold of this lot.’ Despite his otherworldliness, Bedwyn Stort had a streak of practicality about him, odd though his methods sometimes were.

Pike stared across the road, past the wreckage of the car, to the opposite verge where the dark form of Clare Shore lay exactly where she had been thrown.

He sent two of the stavermen across to examine her, while Stort and some others busily gathered more hail. Katherine, wide-eyed, stared after them, but made no attempt to move from Jack’s side, as if, for the moment at least, he needed her presence most.

Brief applied the bin-bags of ice and water as Stort brought them to him, successfully easing Jack onto his side, and grunting with satisfaction when he heard the boy’s breathing grow deeper and more regular.

Then Jack began to shiver, his body and legs shaking more and more violently.

Brief took off his own robe and laid it over him, covering the makeshift ice packs as well, then he dug into his pouch and produced a small vial of liquid from which he shook some drops into Jack’s half-open mouth.

He coughed faintly, and for a moment he even tried to move.

But it was Katherine who did the moving. She got up, went closer to him and knelt down, her head so close to Brief’s that they were touching.

‘It’s all right, Jack,’ she whispered, and impulsively reached out a hand to his cheek. His own right hand moved in the dark, reaching for hers.

‘It’s all right,’ she murmured, as much to reassure herself as him.

Stort said to Brief, ‘The boy might need this.’ It was the leather backpack he had been carrying with him earlier.

‘Plainly it’s hydden-made,’ observed Stort. ‘Confirmation if we needed it of what the boy’s origins really are.’

Moments later there came a quiet whistle from the far side of road, and one of the stavermen attending to Clare Shore raised his hand.

‘It’s Mum,’ said Katherine to Jack, as if instinctively understanding that he must know why she was now leaving him.

Only one of the stavermen stayed with Jack, while the others crossed the road to approach Clare.

‘Not a sign of life,’ Brief informed them heavily, ‘not even a tremor. But she’s an adult human, so I don’t know if . . .’

They all stared at her, in awe.

To them she was a giant, their feet smaller than her hands, her twisted limbs massive compared to their own.

‘I can find no burns to speak of, nor any real injury,’ Brief told Pike, ‘but there is no sign of a pulse, assuming humans have them too. Since they bleed, as we do, I assume they must. I can only think she’s sustained some terrible internal injury we cannot see.’

Pike stared at her, never having seen a female human at such close range. She looked monstrous.

‘Did you apply that same balm that brought the boy round?’ asked Pike.

Brief nodded bleakly. ‘But no result.’

‘And the girl?’ said Pike quietly, nodding towards Katherine, who knelt beside her mother, staring into her face.

‘Hasn’t even touched her or tried to say anything. I think perhaps she realizes her mother is—’

‘Master Brief!’

It was Stort and he was pointing towards the area of the night sky towards which the Peace-Weaver had ridden. It was not dark but like a vast open wound, a violent cut of a knife across the Universe which burned with cosmic fire.

As they stared in astonishment the fire burned bright and shone its light briefly where Katherine knelt by her mother.

Clare Shore stirred and moaned. Then, opening her eyes, she reached out to her daughter, seeming not to see the rest of them at all.

She couldn’t sit up, or speak, in fact could hardly even move.

Clare was quite evidently very badly hurt.

But she was most definitely alive.

The strange light in the sky, which after all might have been no more than swirling low clouds catching in some way the burning wreck of the car, for a moment shone brighter still.

‘We see the Fires of the Universe,’ whispered Brief in awe, speaking for them all, ‘as the Mirror turns . . . and with its light shining on that girl and her mother we glimpse something of the Shield Maiden!’

Brief fell silent as if in prayer, before adding in a different voice, ‘They’ll be all right now. Our work, gentlemen, is done.’

Then, one by one, the hydden backed away and left the human mother and daughter by themselves.

Instead they crossed the road and went back to Jack.

‘He seems more comfortable,’ announced the staverman who had stayed with him.

‘Well, then,’ said Brief, ‘there’s no more that we can do here. But we’ll watch over them all until help arrives.’

Less than ten minutes later, the storm having considerably abated, they heard the sound of a vehicle. It came slowly towards them in the same direction Richard Shore had originally approached from.

Brief removed his cloak from Jack, and they all retreated behind the parapet of the railway bridge above.

Below them the lone car slowed to a halt just before reaching the smouldering wreck. A man got out, looked about him in shock, retreated inside his vehicle and emerged again to make a call on his mobile. He then climbed up the verge to where Jack lay, took off his jacket and spread it over him.

Only then did he notice Katherine and her mother.

Very slowly, cautiously, he went over to them, and knelt down by them.

He made a second call on his mobile.

Twenty minutes later the first ambulance arrived, its headlights and blue flashing lights finally revealing the scene in all its true horror of injury and death and destruction.

The police turned up next, and then a second ambulance.

The three of them were placed in separate ambulances, the girl remaining with her mother.

The body of Richard Shore was removed last of all.

Meanwhile, unseen up on the railway bridge, the hydden watched these developments to the very last.

Pike looked grim and resolute, and Stort looked saddened, while Master Brief, feeling all those emotions, raised his stave to the sky and whispered prayers for the living and a prayer for the dead; and finally a prayer for the hydden themselves, summoning them all to him before he spoke further.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘we who have been witnesses to the events of this night will be its guardians. We shall not speak of what we have seen, and we swear to watch over these three surviving humans whose paths have crossed ours during the turning of the Mirror-of-All which has shown itself this night. The boy, the girl, the woman and ourselves remain as witnesses; the man who died here goes on ahead.’

‘And the Fyrd,’ interrupted Stort, ‘they are part of it, too.’

‘Indeed they are,’ acknowledged Brief. ‘They are witnesses caught like us in the wyrd of things.’

With that they shook each other’s hands in solemn acknowledgement of their sense of shared responsibility, before turning away to begin the journey back to Brum.

Except it seemed that they had forgotten something.

‘Master Brief . . . ?’

For the second time that night Bedwyn Stort slipped away and down the embankment. Pike followed him, the others watched.

‘It’s here somewhere,’ said Stort, searching through the shadowed undergrowth furtively lest humans near the crash scene saw him.

‘What is?’ asked Pike, hand firmly on his stave in case the Fyrd reappeared.

‘This!’ said Stort.

He reached into the grass and moments later was holding something in the air.

‘It’s the giant-born’s portersac. One day he’ll need it again.’

He climbed back up the embankment and joined the others.

Pike took the old bag and opened it.

‘Nothing inside,’ he pronounced.

‘Just so,’ said Brief, taking the bag and carefully folding it and putting it in his own. ‘It’s waiting to be filled with the things he’ll need for his life’s journey. Now, gentlemen . . . let us leave!’