Spring (44 page)

‘I have no idea,’ said Brief unconvincingly.

‘Against who?’

‘That I do not know either.’ He was plainly lying.

‘Who is your informant?’

‘I cannot say – yet.’

Pike looked furious. ‘And I am meant to be your chief staverman.’ he said ironically.

‘Mister Pike,’ said Brief carefully, ‘I was told of the possibility of this happening on condition I revealed it to no one, and only because the person who informed me was aware all this might happen before we got back from our mission. In which case we might be walking blind, as it were, into a very dangerous and unsettled situation. We could not have known in advance that Mistress Katherine would be abducted and brought here. What we do know is that powerful wyrd is abroad that affects all of us, and that these two young strangers are now in our care – and in Brum’s too.’

He brought his great stave of office diagonally across his chest, and held it there with both hands. It seemed to Jack that it glimmered in the half-light of this rainy afternoon.

‘This is not
your
fight, Jack,’ Brief went on, laying a hand on his shoulder, ‘nor is it your dear friend’s. But, with each moment that has passed since I met you and we began our journey here, I have become more and more convinced that your joint mission is to fulfil that ancient prophecy from Beornamund’s time and, in some way as yet unknown, to find the Shield Maiden and deliver to her the gem of Spring. How Brum is involved, or this present trouble, or even ourselves, or this ceaseless strange rain, I know not!’

He turned then to Pike, who had calmed down a little. ‘As for this insurrection I know only that no citizen of Brum is better placed in terms of experience, or knowledge of the city, and the trust others place in him, than yourself, Mister Pike, to see to matters of fighting and the like as they affect the good of our community.

‘What I also know is that the experience of history, on which I myself can speak with some authority, shows that nothing is predictable and much now depends upon our individual and collective strength. We must act right, trust in each other, recognize our true friends, know our real enemies, and then hope that courage, common sense and determination will see us through.’

‘Aye,’ said Pike, mollified, ‘I’ll second that. And there’s something else which history tells us, and even if I’m not much of a reader, I know it’s true. Fights and battles, like wars, are rarely over quickly. What’s happening here in Brum today may take weeks, months or years to reach a conclusion, eh, Master Brief?’

‘It may, Master Pike. It may.’

‘But you still won’t tell us the name of your informant, Master Brief?’ prompted Barklice. Like Pike, he did not appreciate being excluded from such secrets.

‘I will only tell you this. The person who gave me this information is cleverer than any of us in some respects, and when the time comes he will need our support to see him through. Now, Barklice, how are we going to get Jack and ourselves into Brum without running into trouble with the Fyrd?’

‘Deritend’s the place to go,’ said Barklice, ‘and unfortunately there’s only one way to get there quickly and still avoid the Fyrd.’

He looked at the surging canal. ‘All we need is the professional services of one of the Mallarkhi, the Bilgesnipe family that covers this side of Brum.’

‘You are having me on, Mister Barklice,’ said Pike, shaking his head. ‘You can see from here that the canal’s dodgy in this wind and rain. Once we turn off it into one of the sewers that lead to Deritend, you can start searching for our bodies, for we’ll never come out alive.’

Barklice ignored him and clambered down the embankment. They worked their way through a metal fence, repaired with barbed wire, and crossed carefully through rough and muddy ground to the canal’s edge.

Here they found a small huddle of shivering folk taking shelter among dripping bushes. Pike called a greeting, and several peered at them from the shadows, staves ready in some hands, dirks in other. Then one ventured nearer, had a good look at them, and turned to cry out to the others, ‘It’s Master Brief himself. And Mister Pike with him! Mercy be, but we’re saved at last!’

Others came running from the damp shadows and soon a gaggle of hydden, clutching their possessions and children, had gathered around them hopefully. Some nursed injuries, while a few seemed too infirm to be still on their feet.

To Jack they looked poor and downtrodden. The light of the hope that kindled in their eye on seeing Master Brief was the brightest thing about them.

‘Please lead us away from the city to safety!’ one implored. Others began to weep and wail.

Brief calmed them sufficiently to ask what had happened.

‘Nobody rightly knows,’ one of them replied. ‘We got word the Fyrd were coming to seal the gate, and that set up a panic and there was fighting when Fyrd actually arrived. We’re the lucky ones because we live near the gate and were able to get out . . . Please, it’s not safe for you to go into Brum, so stay with us, for nobody would dare harm you.’

Pike inquired, ‘You actually heard they were going to
seal the gate
?’

‘Everyone was running and shouting . . .’

‘It does sound like there’s a sealing order,’ said Pike grimly, ‘and you know what that means! It means blocking off certain of the tunnels, which will cause flooding and likely deaths as well if places can’t be evacuated. Work to do, Master Brief! We can’t dawdle here.’

Brief turned to the group of refugees and said, ‘My friends here and I have urgent business in Brum, but the safest place for you people to go is up-canal, not back down it with us. Lie low a few days and Pike here will send word up Northfield way to tell you when it’s safe to return. Good luck, my friends, but we must go now.’

‘You’re never venturing into the sewers, Master Brief?!’ insisted one of them, alarm rising in his voice. ‘The level’s so high on the canal itself that you’ll not get safely through into them. And if there’s backing up from the river to the east, you’re all going to be drowned!’

‘We must try,’ said Brief calmly.

They left the refugees to the mercy of the elements, and pushed on through towards the canal. They heard its uneasy, angry sucking sound before they finally saw it on the verge of breaking over its banks.

‘Barklice,’ growled Pike, ‘this does not feel good. Anyway, who’s going to be acting ferryman on a night like this?’

‘Old Mallarkhi is a personal friend of mine, and very reliable. As I said before, I left him clear instructions that I would be needing transport this afternoon, and he’s never let me down, just as I have never let
him
down!’

Barklice let out a soft call, like that of a female coot in season.

No response.

He tried again, a little louder.

Again no response.

‘Just as well,’ said Pike with relief. ‘We’ll now have to walk it, which is going to be a lot safer.’

There was a further horrible sucking sound from the canal below.

‘She’s regurgitating,’ said Barklice in a low voice, ‘and that means we’ll just have to wait but be ready. Our boat’ll be along once she spits back down. Be ready one and all, be ready, for the boat won’t be able to linger on a backing river!’

The canal sucked yet again, like water going down a vast plughole, and dragging everything in its wake.

‘Barklice, are you really sure this is a good idea?’ It was Brief expressing doubts this time.

‘Am I still alive after all these years of journeying, Master Brief?’ cried out Barklice, annoyed at being doubted. ‘Clearly, I am. Have we got back to Brum in good time? We have indeed. Do I try and do your job, Master Brief, or yours, Mister Pike? I do not! So, yes, I think it’s a good idea. Therefore you shall now sit and you shall wait, and you shall trust in my ability to get you where you wish to go in one piece, just as I shall trust in your common sense and co-operation in the final stage of our journey to Deritend – which will not be easy, and certainly involves risks, but is not helped one bit by your moaning, groaning and constant doubts. Do I make myself clear?’

With that, Barklice sat down with his back to them, and everyone else sat down too, suitably chastened and daring to complain no more.

T
he hydden city of Brum lay just below the centre of modern Birmingham, whose human inhabitants went about their business in ignorance of the fact that one of the most historic cities in the Hyddenworld existed right under their noses.

Some parts of Brum were actually in the open air, visible to any human who cared to look, though not without great difficulty. These places were buried away in shadows, cut off by the projections and overhangs of buildings, or located around nearly inaccessible corners.

However, the main parts of the hydden city – its accommodation and religious institutions, its places of business, its residential areas and its places of delight and leisure – lay underground and out of sight.

That is not to say that the hydden did not make use of the human part of Birmingham – or the Upperworld.

During the day there were many parts of Birmingham – the lower half of the River Rea, for example, which runs largely unnoticed right through the city, abandoned canals and old rail tracks, also many of the interstices between the motorways, factories and tower blocks – that were safely accessible to those hydden who knew the routes. At night the opportunities were greater still, and included the roofs and sills of most of the buildings in the city centre and the shadowed parts of many streets and pavements.

In short, Brum and often The Upperworld were as busy with hydden as any metropolis in the mortal world.

The hydden city proper was divided into two parts, Old and New. The older part dated back to Beornamund’s time and lived out its busy, murky, semi-secret life in the dank places that lie below and either side of the bridge that was the first medieval crossing of the River Rea. Here, in the north-west corner of Europe, developed one of the greatest pilgrim cities of the Hyddenworld. Drawn by the legends of Beornamund were seekers after truth, journeyers in search of peace, personal wisdom and – let it be honestly said – drawn in the hope that
they
would be the ones to find the secret of the lost gem, which was Spring. They came in their thousands like bees to a spiritual honeypot and the Brummers were not slow to satisfy their need.

Immediately on its west side rises Digbeth, where rich hydden traders once made their residences under the shadow of human ones, enjoying the ample space, fresh air and views across the city which are now lost beneath the inexorable vertical rise of the human city.

To the east of the bridge lies Deritend. Down there, in among the sewers and conduits which constantly discharge their contents into the Rea, poor folk with nowhere better to go eke out an unhealthy living.

A hundred and fifty years ago this simple pattern of the centuries changed for ever with the coming of the railways and the building of several passenger and goods termini, and associated building, to the north and east of Old Brum.

The deep, crypt-like footings, or underwalls, of these great new structures formed the necessary base for what was built on top. Once built, they were often soon buried and blocked off to further access by humans.

However, for the enterprising hydden of nearby Digbeth, these brand-new, partially underground structures offered an open invitation to take up residence.

Set among new canals and railway lines, culverted streams, sewers and conduits, these offices and homes (or ‘humbles’ as the hydden called them) formed the foundations for New Brum. In fact, this adoption of railway systems as the basis for new hydden enterprise and cities occurred simultaneously in all the great metropolitan railway centres at that time – not just in Englalond but across Europe too.

But in Brum – New and Old included – something extraordinary then happened.

While the economies and societies of the Hyddenworld were transformed within a few decades, and with them the basis of global power, the essentials of Brum’s spirit of independence and creative originality remained the same. It was a bastion of free thinking, of rude licence, of subversive humour, with a rich cosmopolitan culture unlike any other in the Hyddenworld. Though occupied by the Fyrd for many decades before the coming of Jack and Katherine to the city, it remained free of most of the stricter Fyrd observances and laws, a place in which thinkers, artists and the like could do their work with little fear of reprisal or repression.