Spring

  He whispered, ‘Stay still, lad, but listen carefully. When I step over you to take the one in front, you follow on behind me and deal with the one further down who’s slightly over to the right. Use my bulk to hide yourself until the last moment, then go in hard. And I mean hard. You get no second chances with the Fyrd, understand?’

  Jack nodded and eased himself into a better position, bringing a leg closer under his body so he could rise faster and more surely.

  ‘And then,’ continued Pike coolly, his hand lightly patting Jack’s shoulder as if to reassure him, ‘go straight on down and take the one still on the road over to the right. Got it?’

  Jack nodded again.

  ‘Do you know how to use a stave?’

  Jack shook his head.

  Pike smiled. ‘You did well enough in the henge and here we have the element of surprise. He handed Jack a plain wooden stave. Then he said, ‘Just poke the end into their head, neck or privates hard as you can and they’ll not get up for a while!’ With that Pike rose up and lunged forward hard and fast at the Fyrd immediately below him.

  Jack threw off his plaid, jumped up and swooped down on the second, driving the end of his stave hard at his opponent’s head.

  There was no time to look back and check how effective his strike had been. All that mattered was that the Fyrd fell in front of him, and that he was able to take advantage of the momentum the slope allowed him and head straight on down towards one of the Fyrd still standing on the road.

  That one’s view was obscured by the vegetation, and the sudden sound of fighting offered him no clue as to what was happening upslope. Like his colleague, he was waiting for a further command from above.

  What they each got instead was a sudden, devastating assault, from straight out of the obscurity of the undergrowth, by Jack and Pike respectively.

  Moments later both Fyrd were lying moaning on the ground, while the ones above had already been laid out cold.

  ‘Know how to restrain ’im?’ called out Pike urgently, there being little time before the first two started to come round.

  He had done some martial arts so he could hold his own in the institutions he lived in in London, and knew how to hold the Fyrd in a neck lock, his head hauled back to spine-breaking point. But that wasn’t easy, because the Fyrd was a lot bulkier and stronger than himself, and began struggling at once.

  Pike swiftly cuffed the other with a cord and hauled him out of sight up on to the verge.

  ‘All right?’ he called again to Jack.

  It was not a propitious moment to intervene, since Jack merely lost concentration, and the next thing he knew the Fyrd was twisting into a better position to heave Jack off him and gain the ascendancy.

  As Pike climbed back up the verge to the other two, and roped them together, Jack had all but lost the fight below.

  Which he might well have done – and suffered grievous injury too, for the Fyrd was pulling out his knife in a very murderous way – had he not let his instinct take over.

  He twisted the stave around and brought it down about the Fyrd’s head and whacked his knife hand hard, sending the weapon flying.

  As the Fyrd grasped his hand, Jack poked him in the throat, winding him with such effect that the Fyrd collapsed back on to the ground, just as Pike came crashing back down on to the road to Jack’s assistance.

  ‘Well done!’ cried Pike, seeing the state of things. ‘You’re a natural born fighter, that’s for sure.’

  Two minutes later all four Fyrd were safely out of sight amid the thick vegetation, cuffed and tethered, the first two still groaning, the others silent. None was likely to cause any trouble for a while.

  Pike turned to Jack and reached out a hand.

  ‘You’ve a cool head, lad,’ he said, ‘but we guessed that already. If you hadn’t signalled to us that you’d seen ’em, I might not have known until too late. It’s good to have you with us, because I have need of another strong stave at my side for what’s ahead of us.’

  They climbed back up the embankment and emerged into the clearing where Master Brief waited, stave in hand and relief on his face.

  ‘I think the lad’s finally woken up,’ said Pike drolly, patting Jack on the back with a smile of respect on his face. ‘But for his quick thinking, I doubt we’d have broken loose from that lot without injury. Now we need to get away from here soon.’

  ‘How long have we got?’ asked Brief.

  ‘It’ll be no more than an hour before that patrol’s missed.’

  Brief looked at Jack. ‘I dare say there are a lot of questions going round in your head – there certainly would be in mine. But you can’t set off on the road until you’ve eaten something. So, Mister Pike, I suggest you make a new brew, and fix some food for Master Jack while I tell him what he needs to know.’

  ‘A briefing from Brief !’ said Jack with a goofy grin.

  Master Brief did not smile. ‘If I had a groat for every time that little joke’s been made, I’d have enough to buy ten new cloaks and change left for purchasing several more staves.’

  ‘But none of them as interesting as that one,’ murmured Jack, eyeing the carvings on Brief’s stave and then comparing them with his own.

  ‘Indeed not,’ exclaimed Brief.

  Jack wanted to find out more about the carved stave but Pike interrupted them with food and drink. Jack started digging in, hungrier than he’d realized.

  Pike gave Jack a mug of something like sweet herb tea, then handed him a bowl of mushrooms stewed in a light, yellow-green sauce. It smelt good but he had nothing to sup it with.

  ‘Have some brot,’ said Pike, handing him a chunk of what look like rye bread, baked in a square shape.

  ‘Easier to pack in your portersac,’ observed Brief, by way of explanation. It was clear that hydden were practical by nature.

  ‘Brot,’ repeated Jack, and immediately began enjoying it.

  ‘We have a lot of ground to cover if we’re to make our rendezvous with Stort in good time, Master Brief, but we need to put Jack more in the picture.’

  ‘Stort’s the name of the other one of you, isn’t it?’ said Jack.

  ‘That’s right, Bedwyn Stort is my former pupil and now a junior scrivener in his own right,’ said Brief. ‘But in truth his real talents and passion lie in invention and cosmology. There’s none quite like him in the Hyddenworld. Anyway, back to the point . . . You just eat now while we tell you so you know what’s afoot – and, more important, what the Hyddenworld expects of you. But where to begin, Mister Pike? That’s always the question!’

  ‘What do you know of your origins, lad?’ asked Pike.

  Jack told them that he knew he was brought to England from somewhere in Germany when he was only six, to protect him from the fate suffered by anyone who might be thought a ‘giant’.

  ‘There’s no ifs and buts about that, Jack. You most definitely are what we hydden call a giant.’

  ‘But I’m no bigger than you, Master Brief, or Mister Pike here.’

  ‘That’s true, for now. But it’s because you’ve come back to us through the henge portal, but there’s no knowing what the long-term effect of you entering into the Hyddenworld like this might be. Stort is of the opinion that it has no effect at all on a giant, because you possess the special ability to live in both worlds. But it may be that you’ll prefer the Hyddenworld because, after all, you’re a hydden deep down.’

  Jack told them he indeed felt sometimes as if the human world was not his own.

  ‘The trouble is,’ said Brief, ‘that we doubt Mistress Katherine will feel the same, seeing as she’s human. So if you want to be with her, you may have a choice to make. But that’s always the challenge of life itself, having to make such difficult choices.’

  Pike pulled out his chronometer and studied it ostentatiously. ‘Time is limited,’ he said, ‘so let’s keep to the point.’

  ‘What did you mean about the Hyddenworld expecting something of me?’ asked Jack. ‘I mean how can
the Hyddenworld know anything about me?’

  Brief and Pike exchange a glance and laughed.

  ‘You’re probably the best-known hydden alive who no one’s ever met, until now!’ said Pike. ‘Explain it to him, Master Brief.’

  Brief then explained how Jack’s coming from Germany into the human world of Englalond had long since leaked out. Great things were expected of him, especially by the hydden of Brum who had a special interest in the prophecies of Beornamund concerning the gems of the seasons and danger to the world.

  ‘Naturally that means you’re seen as a leader against the power of the Sinistral and their Fyrd army but it is early days to be thinking of that,’ said Brief. ‘It was a pity – a tragedy in truth – that someone in Germany revealed your existence to the Sinistal. They pursued you and were aware of your arrival here as soon as we were – hence the attack on you when you were six. It was as well that the elder of your village took you into the Harz Mountains, a region that still respects the old mysteries and has a long tradition of protecting the weak and vulnerable and those who are in any way different. Those misty heights are the home of the Modor and Wita – the Wise Ones – who took you in, and trained you in the mysteries. And when you had grown too big even for them to keep you safe, they invoked their powers and summoned the White Horse and its rider, the Peace-Weaver.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘Some of that may be true, and I certainly met the Peace-Weaver on White Horse Hill, but I don’t know of any so-called mysteries.’

  ‘You do,’ said Brief, ‘and we know you do. It’s just that you have forgotten you know them. They’ll come back to you when you need them as they did when you were faced by the Fyrd shadows. Few could have survived them as long as you did without the use of a stave such as mine. Of course, you have your own waiting for you . . . but that is something you must find and win for yourself when the time is right.

  ‘Now, what exactly did the Peace-Weaver say when you met her? In my own encounters she usually warns me the world, as we know it, is coming to an end through mortal folly, and that there’s nothing we can do about it but pick up the pieces and reassemble them in a better way.’

  Jack nodded his agreement with that account. ‘She warned me to watch over Katherine, and then said you might come, soon. She did not say why.’ He paused. ‘She also said you were witnesses to the car crash.’

  ‘We were,’ said Brief, ‘thanks to Stort’s special sense of such things. We decided that the accident gave us an opportunity to let other people think you were dead, and thus give you time to recover and grow into your natural size, so we put it about that you had been killed. Fortunately, there was only one surviving Fyrd who realized the significance of what has happened – Igor Brunte, of whom more later. Your ‘death’ suited his needs and, in fact, for many years he himself believed you were dead, so that was all right.’

  Jack’s questions were piling up but he decided to continue just listening.

  Brief continued. ‘Only when you were summoned to Woolstone by Clare Shore did the news reach him that you were alive after all. Since then matters have moved fast – and faster still since Clare Shore died. Now the whole of the Hyddenworld knows that a giant has survived into adulthood, and there is excitement and trepidation.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Things happen when giants are about, and most folk think it’s no coincidence that your arrival coincides with the imminent end of the present Peace-Weaver’s reign. She has served mortals for the best part of fifteen hundred years, and our records show that’s longer than most. Of course everyone knows that this Peace-Weaver is Imbolc, and tradition has it that she will only depart when her sister the Shield Maiden discovers the lost part of the Sphere which Beornamund never recovered, which represents Spring.’

  ‘I don’t see where Katherine comes into all this. All I want to do is to find her and get her back to the world we know, and then . . . well . . . you know . . .’

  ‘Then what, Jack?’

  Jack shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t actually know what. He knew only he wanted to be with Katherine and that he was worried about her, because he . . .

  I miss her, he told himself. But he wasn’t going to tell anyone else that fact, maybe not even Katherine herself.

  ‘Things aren’t as simple as they seem, Jack,’ said Brief. ‘Unfortunately. Hydden, like humans, have a habit of making things complicated. Who do you think sent the Fyrd to capture Katherine and why?’

  Jack said he had no idea.

  ‘It was Brunte, the Fyrd I mentioned earlier, and he was acting without the knowledge of his superiors. His plan is – and it’s working – to abduct Mistress Katherine so that you will follow. It’s both of you he wants. He thinks, as do I, that Katherine is the Shield Maiden, whether she knows it yet or not, and together with you her first task will be to find the missing Spring gem.’

  ‘So Katherine’ said Jack, ‘is both bait and something more, and I’m merely a way of him getting what he wants.’

  ‘Yes. But, unfortunately for you, there’s a good few folk in the Hyddenworld who want you to come into their lives for an entirely different reason. As I said before, they think you’re going lead them against the Fyrd.’

  ‘Me?!’

  ‘You,’ said Pike.

  ‘Who thinks this?’ said Jack, genuinely astonished. The rest he could almost believe, but the idea of him leading people he had never met against an enemy he barely understood seemed just ridiculous.

  ‘I do, for one,’ said Pike. ‘And most of the honest citizens of Brum think the same. It’s not going to happen for a few years yet, though we’re working on it, but it’ll help push things forward if you show your face in the city, even for a few days.’

  Jack thought for a bit and then said indignantly, ‘So, Brunte wants me in Brum so he can grab me, and you want me there to drum up support for a revolution. What about the needs of Katherine and me, then?’

  Brief smiled. ‘You want to be in Brum and find Katherine, so you and she can fulfil your quest to find the Spring gem.’

  ‘No,’ said Jack. ‘I want to be there so she and I can leave together as quickly as possible! Oh, and also to find out what we can about Arthur Foale, who went missing about three months ago.’

  ‘Never heard of him,’ said Brief, rather too quickly. ‘Not ever.’

  ‘Me neither,’ said Pike, averting his gaze.

  Jack studied their faces, decided they were useless at telling untruths.

  ‘You help me find Arthur Foale and get him home, and I might then help you with your revolution. By the way, when’s it starting? Have you fixed a date?’

  He was joking but Brief took him seriously.

  ‘Yes, we have. But, as Pike said, you won’t be needed at the beginning, except that it’ll help if we make your existence known to a few people who will matter for a few years. Remember, these things take time to get going.’

  ‘So when does this supposed revolution begin?

  Pike and Brief exchanged glances again.

  ‘Tell him,’ said Pike, ‘and he might begin to take this more seriously.’

  ‘The opening move will be made very soon,’ replied Brief matter-of-factly, ‘which is why this is not the safest of times for Katherine herself to be in Brum. All hell is about to break loose in that city.’

  A spatter of rain fell out of the dull sky.

  Pike muttered, ‘And things will be worse still if it rains. We need to go.’

  They left Jack to finish eating while they struck camp, packing everything in their portersacs and removing all evidence they had been there. They doused the fire with water before refilling the ash pit – with soil. As a final touch it was all re-covered with leaves.

  ‘Best way to find a recent fire like this is by the scent,’ observed Pike. ‘You’ve a lot to learn if you’re going to get through the next few days in one piece, so you might as well start right away.’

  Jack got up and circled around, until the place w
here the fire had been lit was upwind of him. He sniffed and quickly picked up the scent.

  ‘A natural pupil,’ said Brief approvingly.

  Jack had finished his meal, second helping and all, when the other two, ready now to move, joined him to finish off the warm mead.

  ‘So where’s Mister Stort?’ Jack inquired.

  ‘He’s gone on ahead to meet Mister Barklice, a hyddener of very great renown whose help we’ll need.’

  ‘He’ll help us to find Katherine?’ said Jack, hopefully.

  ‘Something like that,’ replied Pike rather evasively.

  Jack looked at him but decided this was not the best time to ask more questions.

  There came an angry shout from where they had left the four Fyrd tied up.

  Pike headed over to the top of the embankment, stave at the ready. He studied the situation for a moment and came back.

  ‘They are still secure but getting restive. It’s now just a matter of time before more Fyrd arrive, so we need to leave. Our job is done here.’

  Then they had a final clear-up, pulled on their portersacs and were gone.

  51

  ARRIVAL

  As Jack began his journey to Brum, Katherine ended hers inside the wagon of a freight train.

  She was woken by the squeal of wheels on steel as the wagon passed over some points, jolted a few times and came to an abrupt halt.

  Streik and the others heaved at one of the doors and slid it open sufficiently for them to drop to the track below. Meyor Feld made Katherine follow them and they held her fast until he too joined them.

  Katherine stood on the track looking around as the train shunted forward and then pulled back the way it had come and disappeared from sight.

  It was only mid-afternoon but the light was already dull, the air heavy with rain. The rail track lay deep between towering dirty yellow brick walls which rose so high she had to strain right back to glimpse a sliver of the sky between them. The clouds were dark and angry, the air heavy and thundery. Rain was on the way.