The Spellbinder (Tom & Laura Series) (8 page)

Tom saw his chance and attacked, pushing Laura out of the way. He held Bruno’s gun up in the air as they struggled. Laura dived for her bag, she knew she only had seconds to cast a bind and save them. Bruno was certainly stronger than Tom and would prevail in no time at all.

As Tom struggled to hold onto Bruno, the urge to heal Bruno’s fingers surged through him. ‘
It can hardly hurt’
Tom thought wryly as his hold began to slip. Bruno kneed him in the guts and Tom sagged to the carriage floor, still holding onto the man’s legs as he fell.

Bruno held the gun in the hand with the two missing fingers. New fingers began to grow from the stumps. Bruno was not aware as they grew through the trigger guard of the gun and began to swell. The trigger guard was far two small to hold three adult fingers.

The gun went off as the trigger was depressed, the round missing Laura and Tom. Bruno began to scream as his new fingers were crushed against the metal of the guard and his other finger. He shook his hand hysterically, trying to free the gun. In the process he pushed Tom back into his seat. Laura completed her bind, the door behind him flew open as he bind required and he was sucked out into the night.

It took Laura and Tom several minutes to get the doors closed and the windows pushed up. They sat back on the benches exhausted by their efforts.

Laura chuckled wearily.

“You grew his fingers back? Did you know that would help?”

“No, but I was out of ideas.”

“It worked out wonderfully, though I did not know you could do that. I did not even know any Healer could do that.”

“Me neither, I believe your bind on me has done more than we expected”

“Impressive though,” Laura smiled at the man who had saved her life yet again.

“Whenever you want two fingers up, I am your man.” Tom said grinning, and was surprised when Laura blushed at his words.

“Come here,” Laura ordered, hugging and kissing Tom as he leaned against her.

Tom couldn’t help wondering that if it was this dangerous simply getting to Hobsgate, what was it going to be like when they actually got there?

Chapter 10
   
Hobsgate

Neither Tom nor Laura was able to sleep in the hours that followed. Tom would start to doze and imagine that Bruno was still on the train, hanging outside further down the carriage and was creeping up on them. Laura had more faith in her bind, but was certain he had survived the fall as binds cannot change the living to dead. She worried that there were others after them in the other compartments of the carriage, just waiting for them to drop their guard and fall sleep.

In the grey light before dawn, mist enveloped the countryside and they could only see a dozen yards to the side of the track. Laura was forced to use the window to relieve herself and was glad of the privacy the mist provided, though Tom’s sniggering was not a help. She was annoyed that it was so much simpler for boys as they had a built in pointing mechanism.

The train pulled to a stop at a tiny country station that consisted of little more than a stretch of gravel and a wooden hut. There was no station sign to say where they were, which Tom found more than a little peculiar.

“Is this it?” Laura asked sleepily as Tom got up. He slid down the window in the door and leaned out. A fat unkempt man in a railway uniform was making his way towards them from the hut. He carried a folded set of steps.

“Is this Hobsgate?” Tom shouted. The man put a finger to his lips before answering.

“This is yer stop. Be still, affor someone hears yer.”

Despite the man’s thick accent, Tom gathered that this was indeed their stop and the man must be the stationmaster.

“This is it,” Tom told Laura and she groaned as she stretched her legs. Tom opened the carriage door and the man set the steps up against the opening.

“What about our trunks?” Laura asked over Tom’s shoulder as they descended the rickety steps.

As if in answer, the baggage-car door slid open. A few seconds later someone unseen in the carriage pushed their trunks out of the carriage and onto the gravel where they landed with a sickening set of crashes and tumbled away from the train.

“That do yer?” the stationmaster asked.

Her trunk appeared to be in one piece so Laura decided not to antagonize the man by telling him what she thought of his railroad service. She could only hope her bottles of ink were still sealed.

As soon as they were clear of the steps the stationmaster slammed their carriage door shut and blew twice on the whistle hung around his neck. The baggage carriage door was already closed. The train began to move and was soon gone from sight.

The stationmaster folded his steps and dropped them onto the gravel. He set off towards their trunks with Tom and Laura following behind. The man grabbed hold of a handle of Laura’s trunk and began to drag the trunk across the gravel. Tom shrugged at Laura and took the handle of his own trunk before doing the same.

As they approached the station hut they saw a lane ran past it. The mist was rising as morning approached and they began to glimpse patches of rugged moorland and twisted trees beyond the hut.

There was the ghostly sound of echoing hooves along with the rumble of wheels and out of the mist, like an apparition, an open wagon being pulled by two horses appeared.

“Tha’ll be ‘im for yer,” the stationmaster said enigmatically. “Like as not.”

Laura looked at Tom for a translation, but Tom shook his head.

The wagon drove towards them and pulled up so close that Laura had to step back to avoid being run down. The driver wore a long dark coat with the collar turned up, a thick muffler and a floppy wide brimmed hat, that between them effectively covered his face.

“Tha’ll be Laura and Tom?” he asked. When Tom nodded the man added. “I be Mick,” as an afterthought.

Without another word he jumped down from the wagon. With the stationmaster’s assistance and a little help from Tom, they managed to get the two battered trunks onto the back of the wagon.

“The gal can ride up wi’ me. Tha’ll ‘ave to sit wi’ thee luggage,” Mick told Tom.

As soon as they were sat down, Mick cracked the reins and started the horses moving at a brisk pace, which was something only a little less than a gallop. The lane snaked up a hill, with sharp turns every hundred yards or so. The road was flanked with high hedgerows overgrown to the point that Laura had to put up her arm to defend her face from slashing branches.

The mist was heavy in places and it was still barely light enough to see. Tom and Laura clung on for their lives as Mick swung the wagon around corners they didn’t see until they were already upon them. Tom decided their driver knew the road so well he wasn’t using his eyes, but navigating them by instinct.

After a frighteningly long time they emerged from the hedges into a bleak landscape near the top of the large hill. The lane straightened to point in the direction of what looked at first like a castle with four tall towers at each of its corners. It had a bleak and forlorn look to it as if built by a very depressed warlord.

As they crested the top of the hill they saw the hill was actually a headland and the sea lay just beyond it. A strong wind pushed at them back from the sea. The lane took them right to the cliff edge where it joined a wider road that also led to Hobsgate. The training school squatted a few hundred yards from the sheer drop of the cliff.

Laura stared down hundreds of feet to jagged rocks and the raging sea below. The sea broke violently on the rocks below sending sheets of water halfway up the cliff face. White crested waves could be seen a long way out across the water. The sea merged at the horizon with identically colored black storm clouds. Laura wondered if there was a beach at low tide, but since the cliffs looked to be unclimbable it scarcely mattered.

The horses pranced and pulled the wagon from side to side as Mick tightened the reins trying to keep control. Laura wondered why he didn’t slow down, but he showed no signs of doing so.

Finally they reached the side of the building and found its bulk sheltered them from the worst of the wind. Up close, it looked more like an army barracks than a castle. Mick brought the wagon to a halt alongside a set of thick double doors reinforced by square iron studs.

“We be ‘ere,” he told them unnecessarily. “Tha’s best knock an’ let ‘em know tha’s come.”

Tom jumped down from the wagon, very glad to be back on solid ground, and knocked at the door while Laura got down joining him. They heard bolts being drawn, one of the doors opened and they were dragged inside.

A woman in housekeeper clothes greeted them once the door was shut, “Tha’ll be Miss Laura and Master Tom I expect. Come by the fire and get yer selves warm. Don’t ‘ee worry about Mick, he’ll get your baggage inside soon enough.”

They were ushered into a cosy room with a huge fire, “The school’s about to wake, but tha looks as if tha needs some sleep. We get up early here as I expects you’ll find, and go to bed not soon after the light fades. Ye’ll soon get used to it. But I expects we can let yer lie in for an hour. I’ll get yer a drink before I shows yer to yer rooms.” So saying, she rushed away, leaving them to sit on the two wooden benches that crowded the fire from both sides.

“The wood of this bench is hot,” said Laura with pleasure as she pressed her bottom firmly down on it, soaking in the welcoming heat.

“I know, I may not move from here for a while,” said Tom, blissfully warming up.

They made their way up endless circular stone steps before being ushered into rooms on adjacent sides of a long corridor. Tom fell onto his bed and was instantly sleep. Laura got undressed and sank gratefully into her bed.

A loud bell woke them a few minutes later, or so it seemed. The air was brisk, which is another way to say that they could see their breath as it left their mouths. A uniform of sorts had been laid out for both of them, dark grey tight breaches with a white shirt for Tom, dark grey culottes with a white blouse for Laura. Tom knocked at Laura’s door and they followed the other students down for breakfast.

Breakfast was a breakneck affair in a chaotic room whose door was labeled
The Mess
. There was a queue for the food, two or three people wide, that snaked through between a set of utilitarian benches, filled with students who had arrived earlier.

Their fellow students piled trays food and drink before making their way through the crowded room to a free bench. This seemed to involve making at least two trips and pushing through the people waiting in the queue.

There was a lot of good-natured shouting, and some booing, as well as laughter when a tray went flying across the floor. The two sexes seemed equally represented though everybody in the room looked at least a couple of years older than Tom and Laura.

To Tom, who had lived in boarding schools for a great many years, this all appeared fairly normal if a little out of control, while to Laura the place looked like a madhouse in which the inmates had gained control. She wasn’t a bit surprised that they called the room a mess.

They managed to fill a couple of trays and get to a vacant bench without spilling more than half their tea and juice. Their bench swayed alarmingly as a tall gangly youth sat down besides then, followed almost immediately by a girl with astonishingly bright blue hair.

The young man spoke to them as soon as he was sitting down. “May we intrude? But then, we have already, so I guess you will have to put up with it. You are the puppies we were told were coming last night, we call the new intake puppies by the way. I am Tompkins and this blue-haired parakeet is Burns, you must be Carter and Young. I saw your names on the notice board. We have no first names here. We are equal in the anonymity of our surnames.”

“What the idiot means,” the blue haired girl told them, “Is that females and males are treated equally. Have the puppies any questions?”

“Well, err… the hair?” Tom asked. He found it hard to take his eyes off it, it was so unusual. He had never seen anything like it.

Burns’ smile lit her face. “I am trying to prove my theory of
extreme camouflage
. I have theorized that by adding one extreme point of interest, to whit, my hair, people will not notice my other features. So if I was to put on a normal colored wig I would suddenly become invisible and undetectable in a crowd.”

“Wouldn’t it have been better to use a blue wig over normal hair?” Laura asked, genuinely curious.

“That is a typical uncomprehending puppy remark,” Burns said haughtily, before ignoring them and concentrating on her food.

Tompkins winked cheerfully and tucked into his meal. Tom and Laura took the hint that time might be short and set about eating their breakfast with a whim.

As they finished the last of the meal, Burns turned to Laura and said in a low voice, “Having considered the matter further I believe you probably are right. You don’t know how to remove blue dye from hair do you?”

“I’m a Spellbinder,” Laura told her. It took Burns only a second to realize what that meant. The girls grinned at each other and made to rise. The boys were already stood up and waiting patiently for them.

“I think we are going to get along famously,” Burns said as she took Laura’s arm and led her out of the Mess.