The Witch of Glenaster (19 page)

I learned the next morning what
had occurred.

Fyn had been keeping the watch
with Thomas, so Samuel was never allowed out of sight; and though his behaviour
was odd and distressing, especially for his brother, it didn’t seem to promise
any harm.

But as the night had worn on,
he had turned his face increasingly towards the road, and the sound of singing,
whose sudden softness, after growing steadily louder for so long, alerted the
men to imminent danger.

Thomas had moved out of the
clearing, to see if there was anyone on the road; and it had been then, while
Fyn was left briefly alone, and with everyone else asleep except for Samuel,
that the Watchers had struck.

I remember Thomas had said that
they could move remarkably fast when they were sure of their prey, for all
their blindness, and Fyn had found himself suddenly surrounded, though not so
quickly he was unable to rise and draw his sword. This had given the Watchers
pause at least – three of them, Fyn thought, and more just out of sight – as
they strode towards him, their cloaks the colour of darkness, and their faces
pale and sightless, the hungry mouths hanging open like black pits in their
faces, and the cruel mark of the Third Eye set deep into their foreheads.

But in his surprise, Fyn had
forgotten about Samuel, until he felt a sharp pain at the back of his head, as
the man he was guarding struck at him with a rock, and wrestled him to the
ground. He had given a cry, which had wakened Griffin and Lukas, and brought
Thomas running, and the three of them had then set about the Watchers with
sword and dagger, and drawn blood from two of them.

But when they had beaten them
back, they saw that both Samuel and Joseph were gone, Lukas’s horse was
missing, and there was blood on Fyn’s sword. Human blood. And he feared he had
unwittingly struck Samuel a mortal blow.

Thomas told us he had ridden
several miles back through the wood, but had not encountered anyone else, and
had eventually abandoned the search, and returned just before dawn.

“They retreated too quickly,”
he said, stamping out the fire with his foot as we prepared to leave. “I fear a
trap.” The others nodded grimly, and continued breaking camp. But what made the
blood run a little colder in my veins was not so much the loss of Samuel and
Joseph – though Magnus wept for them till his eyes ached – but what Griffin
told me had happened just before he and the other men had beaten off the Watchers.

One of them had been moving
towards the waggon. And he had been carrying a knife.

We left as soon as the first
light crept into the forest, and kept a fast pace once we were back on the
road, or as fast as the speed of the waggon would allow. Lukas was now driving,
and the wind felt cold on our faces as we bounced along in the back, and the
sound of the horses’ hooves on the ground was a steady drumbeat as we
approached Salem’s northern edge, and the
Nailinch
Crossing over the Meer.

It was about halfway through
the morning, as my head nodded reluctantly into sleep, that I felt the shadow -
not a shadow like the ones cast in dense woodland such as this, that thicken
and deepen at nature’s will, but rather something that had a definable
malignancy, and that seemed to steal into the waggon, and brush tangibly
against my skin. I must have given a start, for Magnus awoke also, and looked
at me with grumpy bemusement.

I leaned towards Lukas, smoking
on a cheroot as he drove the horses forward, and whispered:

“I think we’re being followed.”

I do not know to this day what
made me think so with such conviction, but it was clearly enough to persuade
him, for with hardly a sign that he had even heard what I had said, he made a
low whistle, and gestured to Griffin, who then turned around and headed back to
join Fyn, at the rear.

Now I clambered over the packs
and belongings in the waggon, and looked out at the two riders behind; and I
could hear them talking above the noise of the wheels and the horses, but could
not make out any words. But then suddenly, Fyn nodded to Griffin, and galloped
off back into the wood; and the other man remained behind, stealing frequent,
anxious glances at the retreating road.

I felt foolish then, for my
precipitate behaviour – I was wasting our time, I decided, and this would only
make our journey longer. Several minutes drifted by, filled only with the
sounds of our passage along the road, the smell of freshly churned earth in our
nostrils, and the cold air scraping at our lungs.

Then Fyn returned.

At first I thought it was a
trick of the light, or that my eyes somehow mistook me. But then I realized
there was
something forming, at the very edge of my vision, something
taking shape, far off in the recesses of the forest. And that shape became a
man.

He came barrelling towards us,
and I could not at first see his expression; Griffin turned his horse suddenly,
and the beast reared up and whinnied loudly, its eyes rolling in its head. For
Fyn was coming, but he was not alone.

Behind him rode Samuel.

My first instinct was joy at
their return – but then something struck me as wrong. For Fyn was leaning at a
strange angle out of the saddle, as if he were about to topple, and he seemed
oddly stiff and straight-backed.

As they approached I saw why.
And it was the eyes that told me: Fyn’s eyes, that had been so bright and full
of mischief, now bleached to white; the pupils all but invisible, the irises
rinsed away. There was nothing behind them but a mind struck as still and dead
as a stone. Unfocussed, and unseeing, they gazed upon us for the last time; and
Fyn’s young face, now scorched of feeling, his mouth hung open like that of a
dead fish, was a lamentable sight, and indeed it seemed almost ashamed that its
wretchedness should be so witnessed by its friends.

His hands were tied behind his
back, and he was lashed crudely to the saddle, and an arrowhead protruded like
a bone a good couple of inches from his throat, the blood about it already dried,
and the kerchief below stained a sooty crimson.

This was horrible enough; but
my eyes then alighted upon the man riding behind him: Samuel Hollis, or,
rather, the man who had
been
Samuel Hollis, for I saw very clearly that
it was no longer him. Unlike Fyn, he seemed at least alive, and in control; but
I saw as I looked that it was not so, and that he was more dead than anything,
for all the purpose with which he rode, sat high upon Lukas’s powerful courser.
He was ensorcelled, a servant of the Witch. And the look on his face was
terrible.

Griffin’s horse now made a run
for it, bolting so suddenly he was nearly thrown clear of the saddle, and I
heard Lukas shout after him as he sprang away. Then the horses pulling the
waggon started picking up speed, so that I was flung back onto some sacking,
and Magnus cried out, as we lurched unsteadily. I heard Lukas swear, and the
frame of the waggon shook, as if it might buckle under the pressure. When I put
my eye back to the opening, I could still see Fyn, riding mindlessly on, his
body now tilting away from his horse, like a flower bending in the wind.

But I could not see Samuel.

He seemed to have disappeared,
and I shrunk back when a shadow passed quickly over the canvas; Magnus reached
forward and threaded his hand into mine. The bowling of the vehicle seemed to
lessen slightly, as Lukas brought the horses under control, and then I heard
Thomas and Griffin galloping back towards us, and I saw Thomas bring himself
level with Fyn, riding alongside, and carefully, gingerly, cut him loose from
the saddle, and, with some effort, manoeuvre the dead man’s body on to his own
horse. He looked exhausted.

Griffin was shouting something
at Lukas, who shouted back in reply, but I could not quite catch what they
said, and it was when I turned back that I saw Thomas was gazing up at the roof
of the waggon. And as I wondered what this meant, I saw Samuel Hollis’s face,
the face of the dead, leer vacantly into my own, as he slid down the back of
the waggon and tried to force his way in; and for a moment our eyes locked, and
I nearly lost control of myself. For as well as my grief for my lost friend,
and what the Witch had done to him, I saw that in his hand he clutched a knife.

Its handle was of jet, and it
was similar in design to the ones used by the Librarians in the Imperial
Compendium. The blade was keen, and pattern-welded, dark waves of beaten iron
and steel rippling across its surface. And Samuel held it out to me, as if it
were a gift, though his hand, white as bone, retained a fierce grip, and his
face looked murder. For a moment, I saw my own death, just as I had at
Cornelius’s house, in the
Moonland
; I saw the blood
pump out hopelessly, and felt the searing pain, the frantic desperation of the
dying. But the vision passed; and when I looked again I saw Griffin haul Samuel
out of the way, and the two men wrestled like schoolboys, desperate and angry.
The older man had jumped from his horse, and grabbed Samuel by the forehead,
pulling his head so far back I thought his neck would snap.

But Samuel had the strength of
the undead.

He twisted the other man
around, and almost pushed him off the waggon, so that Griffin had to cling on
to the canvas, which had been torn open at the back, and was flapping loosely
in the wind. I could not see his horse, nor Lukas’s, so I supposed they had run
off, and I wondered for a moment why we did not stop; but then I realized that
to do so would be madness, and would make us easy prey for whatever waited out
there in the dark plenitude of the woods.

Lukas kept the horses to a firm
whip, and I heard his voice, hoarse from urging them on; behind us, Griffin and
Samuel continued to struggle, and there were shouts from Thomas as he rode
along behind them, but I could see that Griffin had the weaker hand in the
fight, and I feared for him.
Hastefully
, I searched
about the floor of the waggon for some weapon to use, something to help him,
even though it would mean Samuel’s death – or re-death, for he was surely no
more alive now than a marionette. I wondered if he could be killed.

I felt a gentle tug at my
shoulder, and turned, startled, to see my brother, looking up at me,
frightened, but composed, his large eyes serious and grave, and in his hand a
seax
, almost half as long as he was. I could see he
meant for me to take it, though he did not speak; and I was so surprised I
could not reply, but merely managed a half-nod in response. He watched me as I
turned back to face the two men behind, and he kept watching as I raised the
knife to strike.

I did not know how I should go
about attacking Samuel: I had never attacked a man before, or indeed done more
than scrap with the boys in our village, and that was hardly sufficient
preparation for this. I half-closed my eyes, wincing slightly as I flung the
blade outward, my heart bracing my ribs, and a dreadful trembling in my
fingers. But I knew what I was doing; I knew that to do this, or worse, was
what would be required when I faced the Witch. I struck.

The first blow, aimed towards
Samuel’s chest, bounced clean off his tunic and scraped against one of the
brass buttons of his greatcoat. Then I struck again: and this time I thought I
did
hit something, something soft, and there seemed to be some give at the blade’s
point. As he realized what was happening, he tried to grasp the
seax
from my hand, while fighting off Griffin with
his other arm; but he could not do both and remain clinging on to the waggon,
and he clearly judged the other man the greater threat, for he concentrated his
efforts on him, and batted at me when he could as a man does at a fly. I had to
hold myself as steady as possible, so that
I
did not fall out of the
waggon; and so doing, struck out a third, and then a fourth, time; and with my
fifth blow - with Samuel’s fingers pushing against me, and his hands now bloody
from trying to grab the knife - the edge bit deep into the right-hand side of
his chest, and, as it did so, the handle slipped from my fingers, and the long
dagger twisted into his flesh as I pulled away, and he gave a howl, and reached
desperately at it as if to pull it out; but as he did so, Griffin brought his
fist smashing down on to the back of his head, and he fell off the waggon,
grasping at the air.

He landed on his backside, sitting
in the road like a dazed child, as if the spell were broken; and for a moment
he looked up at me with pleading eyes. But as I opened my mouth - to speak, or
merely to weep – I saw Thomas, who had no time to move or adjust his speed,
come galloping upon us, and his horse’s hooves swept over Samuel like a running
wave, and left his body a broken wreck on the road.

“Where is Joseph?” I heard
Griffin call, but I could not make out Thomas’s reply; he bundled Fyn’s body
into the waggon, muttering:

“Sorry. Cover him up.”

Then he rode forward to speak
to Lukas, and Griffin half-fell, half-climbed alongside us, lying exhausted on
a rug; and I turned and looked at my hands, and saw the dark blood there. Then
I looked up and saw my brother’s face, gazing at me with an unreadable
expression, his face ruddy and still. I did not know what to think. I did not
know what to say to him.