The Laws of Magic 6: Hour of Need (10 page)

K
IRCHOFF’S UNIT BROKE FORMATION AND LEFT WITH THE
same cold efficiency they had taken the village. Not a word was spoken after Kirchoff’s orders were given to his officers. The entire stowing of kit and disassembling of emplacements was done silently.

Aubrey and von Stralick were on the side of the road, watching the departure. Kirchoff was in the leading lorry and saluted as it rolled out.

When the last lorry disappeared around the bend, von Stralick slipped into the woods. Aubrey stood where he was, retaining his Dr Tremaine appearance in case Kirchoff returned. He saw the villagers congregating once again on the green, amazed at the turn of events but unwilling to approach him, for which Aubrey was grateful, for it gave him some time to contemplate what it was like to be Dr Tremaine.

So this is what it’s like to be feared
, he thought. Once Aubrey – as Dr Tremaine – had confronted Kirchoff, every action of the colonel had been dictated by fear. He was fearful of having done the wrong thing, of not having followed orders properly, of making a mistake. There was a kind of respect in Kirchoff’s eyes, too, but it was the sort of respect a beaten dog gives a capricious master.
Keep on his right side!
it said.
He’s dangerous!

The rain George had been predicting finally began to fall. Gloomily, Aubrey ignored it. He didn’t like the way fear was used to move people. It fostered negativity and distrust. It crushed hope, denied joy.

But it was effective.

Von Stralick, Madame Zelinka, George, Caroline and Sophie came out of the woods. They were all armed, apart from von Stralick. ‘I told them all was safe, but they preferred to believe otherwise.’

‘Just being careful,’ George said. ‘Something I’ve learned, of late.’

Caroline stood directly in front of Aubrey, pistol in one hand, the other on her hip. ‘I don’t like your looks, Aubrey. Can you do something about them?’

‘A pleasure.’ Aubrey dispensed with the Dr Tremaine aspect, casting it aside like a soiled garment. ‘Better?’

‘Much.’

As Aubrey and his friends approached the green, avoiding puddles where they could, the villagers, one by one, came out of their dwellings in hats and heavy coats.

Finally an old gaffer – the one who had spent most of his time glaring at Kirchoff’s troops – confronted them.

‘And who would you be?’

Aubrey hesitated. What could he tell them? ‘Friends,’ he said in his best Holmlandish.

The gaffer shuffled forward. He removed his cap and held it in both hands in front of him while rain pelted on his bald head. ‘What have we done?’ he demanded. ‘To be treated like this?’

Aubrey did his best. ‘It’s the war.’

‘Those Albionites.’ The old man spat on the ground. ‘They were going to kill us, weren’t they?’

‘I –’

‘They killed the miners. The last ten young men in the village and they killed them.’

‘They wanted to join up,’ a woman called, ‘but they weren’t allowed!’

‘They were needed in the mine?’ Aubrey asked. ‘To find the crystal?’

The gaffer eyed Aubrey. ‘You heard of that? Never seen the likes of it, any of us. As big as the church door, it was.’

‘Unbelievable,’ von Stralick breathed. ‘Nothing like that has been found for centuries.’

And Dr Tremaine has happened to fall on the place just after it was uncovered,
Aubrey thought.

‘What happens now?’ the gaffer said.

That’s an extremely good question
. His deception had undone Kirchoff’s deception, but for how long?

He put up a hand. ‘Kirchoff talked about choosing survivors. He said they were taken away.’

The old man scratched his chin. ‘Survivors? Trudy and her children were tied up and put in the church.’ He pointed at the young woman who had called out.

Survivors. Aubrey gnawed at this. Why would Kirchoff want survivors? Why would he organise survivors
before
the massacre started?

Aubrey nearly slapped himself on the forehead as the answer came to him. ‘Thank you,’ he said to the old man. ‘You’ll be safe now.’

‘We will? How do you know?’

‘I guarantee it.’

‘Y
OU TOLD US THAT THERE WERE REPORTS OF UNREST
from Fisherberg, about the war,’ Aubrey said to George after they had all withdrawn to the edge of the village. The rain was still heavy as the Enlightened Ones made camp, but Aubrey hardly noticed. Pieces were falling into place.

‘That’s right, old man.’

‘The stalemate has made people unhappy with the war,’ Sophie said. ‘Caroline and I did what we could to make them more unhappy with it.’

‘I thought as much. So imagine the response in Fisherberg if this massacre had gone ahead.’

‘Opposition to the war would disappear,’ von Stralick said. ‘A helpless village destroyed by perfidious Albionites? No patriotic Holmlander would fail to respond to that.’

‘Keeping aside a few survivors would guarantee that the outrage would be known. It was well planned.’ Ghastly, horrible, but well planned – so it had all the hallmarks of a Dr Tremaine plot.

Except that his plots usually had other plots hidden inside them
, Aubrey thought.
So what’s the plot within the plot here
?

‘This Crystal Johannes,’ Aubrey said to von Stralick. ‘A slab that size. How much would it be worth?’

‘It’s incalculable. Priceless.’

That couldn’t be it. What good would a lot of money do for Dr Tremaine now? He had all of Holmland at his beck and call.

Aubrey scowled and wiped rain from his brow.
Think!
he ordered himself. What would someone like Dr Tremaine want Crystal Johannes for?

As soon as he thought it, he knew it was the wrong question. Not ‘What would someone like Dr Tremaine want Crystal Johannes for?’ but ‘What would
a magician
like Dr Tremaine want Crystal Johannes for?’

Any answer to that was likely to be very dangerous indeed.

Caroline’s pistol was suddenly in her hand again. ‘Lorries approaching.’

Madame Zelinka gave a short laugh. ‘We do not have to worry.’

‘No?’

‘These are friends. These are the rest of my Enlightened Ones.’

A
FTER SOME HOURS OF SLEEP IN THE REAR OF THEIR
lorry, Aubrey emerged into an afternoon where the rain had stopped. The clouds were breaking up and going their own ways, like old school friends after a reunion, and blue sky was beginning take possession of the sky. His neck and back ached. He found his friends around a fire near what had been the machine gun emplacement on the main road into Korsur.

He dragged up a log and sat on it, stifling a groan. Von Stralick and Madame Zelinka were sharing a cup of coffee, while George and Sophie huddled, trying to ignore the dripping that came from the overhanging oak. ‘The appearance spell,’ he explained after noting the questioning looks from Caroline and Sophie. ‘It was more draining than I expected.’

‘Ravi’s Second Principle of Magic,’ Sophie murmured. ‘The spell was complex, working on a number of levels. It must have had an effect.’

Aubrey shrugged, then winced at the muscles thus abused. ‘I’ve had worse.’

George had a suspiciously fresh-looking slice of bread in his hand. Aubrey assumed the Enlightened Ones must have brought some supplies from Fisherberg. ‘Where are we off to?’

‘We have some work still to do here,’ Aubrey said. ‘Remember the second step in our plan?’

‘We’ve removed the troops, which is a good start.’ George looked about, vaguely, then turned to Sophie. ‘What was Step Two?’

‘We have to hide the village.’

‘That’s right. Fear of reprisals.’

Each of them glanced at the village. Wholesome smoke and the smell of cooking was coming from chimneys again. Children were jumping in puddles, laughing as if they were the first ever to engage in such an outlandish activity.

‘Kirchoff isn’t an idiot,’ von Stralick said. ‘Our ruse will be discovered, eventually. He will hurry back to complete his task and hope that Dr Tremaine doesn’t find out.’

‘Which is why Sophie and I were working on Step Two last night,’ Aubrey said. ‘Sophie?’

Sophie reached into her pack and took out her spellcraft notebook. ‘Misdirection. It could save the village.’

Von Stralick wrinkled his brown. ‘Misdirection?’

Sophie gripped her notebook in both hands, suddenly uncertain. ‘If they cannot find the village, they cannot destroy it, true?’

George beamed. ‘Sophie, my gem, that sounds like a splendid Step Two.’

Sophie nudged him with her elbow. ‘Whoever is coming will be using maps and compasses –’

‘And roads,’ George said, ‘following signposts.’

‘We do not have to move the village off the map,’ Sophie continued. ‘We simply have to make it easy for those looking for the village to get lost.’

‘Confusion,’ Aubrey said. ‘Bafflement.’

‘Making a thing appear to be what it is not,’ Sophie said. ‘If the road to Korsur looks like the road to somewhere else, it will be ignored. If north looks like north-east, or south-west, it will do them no good.’

‘We’ve had many variables to take into account,’ Aubrey said, but he felt excitement rising, the excitement that came from a magical challenge.

‘The Law of Familiarity,’ Sophie said. ‘It was most important.’

‘And the Law of Patterns, and the Law of Action at a Distance and an important application of the Law of Seeming.’ Aubrey’s voice trailed off when he saw Caroline’s tolerant smile. ‘Sorry. Boring magic talk?’

‘I’m sure it’s interesting to both of you,’ Caroline said. ‘I think I’m speaking for the rest of us when I say that we’d much rather see your work in action than hear it discussed.’

With that, they set about making a village vanish.

‘I
F
I
DIDN’T KNOW BETTER
,’ G
EORGE ANNOUNCED IN THE
darkness, ‘I’d think I’d eaten some bad oysters.’

‘I doubt the Holmland army will be sampling seafood on its way to destroy Korsur,’ Aubrey said, but he knew what George was talking about. Almost as an afterthought, he’d woven a spell that would cause a faint level of nausea when facing the direction of the village. He hoped it was subtle enough to encourage anyone approaching to look in other directions, where Sophie had done her best to make more attractive options appear.

Night had fallen by the time that Sophie and he had completed the hiding of Korsur. Aubrey began the project assuring himself that he would simply coordinate and help Sophie along with her spell definitions. Soon, however, the discussions involved him to an extent that he was seeing places to concatenate spells, joining them together to enhance their effects and their efficiency. Naturally, he cast the spells that enabled this concatenation and one thing led to another …

The result was a dizzying locality, a hidden village and a thundering headache that tested the limits of his skull. He did his best to hide his discomfort as Sophie was looking wan after her efforts and he didn’t want to make her feel worse.

Midnight was nearing by the time all was done. Aubrey was yearning for a soft place to stretch out – rock, stone, slab of concrete – but von Stralick chose this time to stroll over from the fire where he’d been conferring with Madame Zelinka. He brought a lantern and squatted next to where Aubrey was sitting, his back against a lorry, a groundsheet spread out beneath him.

‘Fitzwilliam, I need to tell you something I neglected to mention earlier.’

Aubrey yawned, which made his headache move around abominably. ‘Neglected? I can’t imagine you neglecting anything, Hugo.’

‘Perhaps neglected is not the right word.’

‘What about “held back”? I’ll wager that’s more accurate.’

Von Stralick still hadn’t regained all the weight he’d lost in his illness, but he was definitely looking more robust. Aubrey decided that Madame Zelinka must have been taking good care of him. ‘Before we left Fisherberg, I had time to meet an old colleague of mine.’

‘From your spying days?’

‘Indeed. She confirmed much of what the Enlightened Ones reported about the useful opposition to the Chancellor. She also gave me a file before she had to flee Fisherberg.’

‘Had to flee? Why?’

‘For the same reason I’m not welcome there. The faction of the intelligence service that is now in the ascendant is not the faction to which we once belonged.’

‘Where?’

‘Where what?’

‘Where did she go?’

‘Really, Fitzwilliam, does it matter?’

‘It does if you’re suspicious. Which I am.’

‘Do not be. I trust her with my life.’

‘I hope it doesn’t come to that. The file?’

‘Copies of memoranda from the Holmland Supreme Army Command, among other things. They contain details of what they’re calling the next phase of the war.’

Von Stralick gave him a battered folder, bulging with documents. Aubrey leafed through them and grew increasingly wide-eyed. Troop dispersals, matériel requisitions, supply invoices – and maps. Many, many maps.

‘The Directorate would give anything for this.’

‘I’m sure they would.’

Aubrey closed the file and rested his hands on top of it. Von Stralick’s face was shrouded, silhouetted as he was against the campfire. ‘Why are you doing this, Hugo?’

Von Stralick picked at some mud on the knee of his trousers. ‘Because I am a loyal Holmlander.’

‘Passing secret documents to the enemy is an action of a loyal Holmlander?’

‘Loyalty is a complex thing, Fitzwilliam, as I’m sure you’ve found.’

Aubrey recalled his discussion with George about rational patriotism. Blindly following anything was not good. Rationally following something, aware of the issues, the strengths and shortcomings, was better.

‘You think that this information will help Albion bring the war to a swift conclusion.’

‘I do. A long, drawn-out war would be bad for everyone. Decisive action is needed.’

‘Then why have you waited until now to give it to me?’

Von Stralick was silent for a moment, nodding. ‘It’s you, Fitzwilliam. You are the problem.’

‘Me?’

‘It is difficult to understand you, Fitzwilliam. You are an Albionite, but you do not always act in the interests of Albion. Not obviously.’

‘I beg your pardon. I always act in the interests of Albion.’

‘It is hard to see that nursing a Holmland spy back to health is in the interests of Albion, for instance.’

‘Ex-Holmland spy,’ Aubrey mumbled, his thoughts elsewhere.
Had
he been acting against Albion?

‘And what about in Stalsfrieden? You had a herd of giant concrete animals at your disposal. You could have killed all the Holmland soldiers stationed there.’

‘It mightn’t have been as easy as you think. I barely had those beasts under control,’ Aubrey said, but he remembered the chaotic events as they escaped the clutches of Baron von Grolman. Did he overlook a chance to wreak even more havoc?

‘Don’t forget what you’ve done here,’ von Stralick continued. ‘You’ve saved the population of an entire Holmland village from being killed. Is that in the interests of Albion?’

‘I made sure Albion wasn’t blamed for a massacre, that’s all. Now Dr Tremaine doesn’t have an outrage to rally ordinary Holmlanders behind.’

‘Then you went on and saved the village from any reprisals.’

‘More of the same. It makes good strategic sense, protecting Albion’s interests.’

‘And that is all?’

It was Aubrey’s turn for silence. Behind them, his friends and the Enlightened Ones were outlined against the glow of the fire, talking in low, casual murmurs. ‘I don’t like to see innocent people being hurt,’ he said eventually. ‘Sorry.’

‘Tcha! Don’t be afraid of compassion, Fitzwilliam. It is one reason that I am giving you this file.’

‘What?’ Aubrey blinked and ran a hand over the dossier. ‘Er, any other reasons?’

‘You think about your actions instead of blindly going ahead. That reassures me that I’m doing the right thing.’

Aubrey cleared his throat.
Was it getting cold?
‘I appreciate it, Hugo.’ He opened the file and raised an eyebrow at the assorted photographs of Holmland generals and political leaders. Good portrait quality photographs. ‘And what exactly is the Supreme Army Command planning next?’

‘It’s all in there,’ von Stralick said. ‘Feints, withdrawals, build-ups. I spent most of the journey here piecing it together, and I’m not sure that I have it all straight, but it looks as if the generals want to push into Gallia via Divodorum rather than through the north-west.’

‘I had fears that this could be the case.’

‘Troops have been falling back and digging in on the western front to hold the line.’ Von Stralick leaned forward and sifted through papers. ‘All other capacities will be directed to the Divodorum region. A massive effort will be made to break through into Gallia and crush its resistance. Soon.’

Aubrey had a moment of insight. This could be a pivotal moment on which the entire outcome of the war depended. Like a boulder balanced on the peak of a hill, a push and it would roll one way, a different push and it would roll the other.

If this Holmland plan were successful, the world that this would create wouldn’t be one that Aubrey would be happy living in. A battle to break through at Divodorum could be big enough to present the world with an immortal Dr Tremaine.

Reasons aplenty to stop this from happening, but Aubrey also spared a thought for the men on the ground. He’d had a glimpse of the developing war front when they’d skirted the trenches outside Divodorum and what he had seen was the dusty, benighted plight of the infantry, dug in amid the blood and terror, holding their positions or trying to advance inch by inch. He remembered the lads who were joining up when George and he had attempted to do the same. Had they met their fate in the squalor that was the trenches?

If Aubrey could do something to prevent these ordinary men from being ground away, stone against stone, that was reason enough to risk his own life – and the life of his friends, loath though he was to contemplate this.

‘Note how the generals talk about strategic aims,’ von Stralick said, ‘and tactical movements and battleground outcomes. From their vantage point, well behind the lines, it all makes sense.’

‘I’m sure it does. To them.’ Aubrey hummed a little, thinking. ‘Thank you, Hugo. You’ve given me something else to worry about.’

‘My pleasure, Fitzwilliam. In the time I have known you, I’ve come to think that I’d rather have you worrying about a problem than most other people.’

Von Stralick flipped an ironic salute then slipped off, taking his lantern with him. Aubrey watched the night, the moving figures that were the Enlightened Ones, the shapes of the humble buildings of Korsur, and he reluctantly made an effort to take this new ball of worries and roll it to the corner of his mind.