Spring

  He had promised to keep Mrs Foale informed, and he decided to do so now. He picked up the phone again and tried the Foales’ number. He got an answer straight away.

  ‘Just to say Jack’s on his way to London now, and as soon as he’s arrived I’ll let you know. If you’re free tomorrow . . .’

  ‘I’m free any time,’ said Margaret Foale, ‘but . . .’ she hesitated.

  ‘What?’ Lynas was trained to notice anything and everything.

  ‘It’s the weather. It’s bad now and the forecast says it’s getting even worse. It’s not the best evening to be travelling, so couldn’t Jack have been brought down tomorrow?’

  Lynas smiled slightly. She sounded like a worried parent. That was a good sign. ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine,’ he said.

  Wind thumped against the side of the building he sat in, which suddenly shook with the strength of it.

  Lynas went to his office window and stared into wild darkness at an indifferent world: trees, people, buildings, cars, clouds and beyond it, far beyond it, the Universe itself.

  ‘It’s certainly a wild night, Mrs Foale, but Jack is with a doctor and his family known to me and will be safe I’m sure.’

  ‘Well . . . that’s good then,’ said Margaret Foale doubtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lynas, hoping his reassuring words worked more successfully for her than they did for him.

  As he ended the call the building was hit by violent wind again.

  19

  FLAMES

  Richard Shore slowly emerged back into consciousness. He found himself still sitting in the driver’s seat but with the roof of his car gone and a dark patch of sky above him. The car was surrounded by the light of flames shooting up all around, and the hiss of steaming rain.

  Puzzled and bewildered but not yet feeling the pain of any injuries or burns, instinct made him rise, his seat belt melted away and the air-bag, which had briefly blown up, now deflated.

  He turned very slowly, flames licking at his lower body, to see his wife Clare scrabbling uselessly at her seat-belt fastener. He reached down through flames to try and free her, but failed, and his hair started sizzling in the intense heat.

  He turned further still to look behind him, and saw that Jack had inexplicably disappeared, but Katherine was still there, sitting calmly, probably in shock but seemingly unhurt.

  Richard turned back to Clare, moving so slowly that time itself might have been on holiday, and saw that she had now half-turned to try to reach out towards Katherine, except that the seat belt prevented her.

  She began screaming desperately at him, but her words remained silent, his eardrums, like the rest of him, still in shock and trauma.

  Then, inexplicably, his wife’s beautiful dark hair darted one way and then another, tugged by the hot and violent gusts of wind all about them, and her eyes closed as her hands wandered aimlessly here and there through the flames, becoming increasingly useless.

  It was then that Richard’s world speeded up again, and his hearing returned, and he heard another explosion and saw the sudden roaring of flames.

  Then, astonishingly, he heard something else, and if anything restored him to his senses it was that sound: the cool, calm, voice of the man inside the radio he could no longer see, still reporting the news. Then that too was gone.

  Richard reached down and slid his own arms under Clare’s flailing arms. With a strength born of panic and love and the primeval need to keep his wife alive, he heaved her bodily from her seat and shoved her through the now non-existent door at her side.

  As he did so both the arms of his jacket burst into flame.

  ‘I feel no pain,’ he told himself aloud and wonderingly, ‘not a thing.’

  One of his eyes blistered with heat and turned blind.

  He then turned back to where Katherine sat and tried to free her too, but failed. Instead he half-dived, half-fell out of the car after Clare, picked her up again and threw her onto the far verge well clear of danger, before returning to the car and instinctively turning towards Katherine’s door, so as to open it and set her free.

  But the door handle had already turned black with heat.

  On the verge onto which he had been thrown, Jack finally came to, and at once sat bolt upright.

  His eyes took in the wreckage of the car and then what looked like a rag doll on the opposite verge, its hands moving ever so slowly. With a shock, he realized it was the woman, the girl’s mother.

  Nearer to him, but on the far side of the car, he saw a figure in flames trying to wrestle open the girl’s door.

  Then Jack saw Katherine still stuck in her seat, though his own door was gone, all that part of the interior now no more than a tangled skein of springs and metal struts that had once been his seat.

  But Jack did not hesitate further.

  He leapt up and began to run back towards the burning vehicle, each step seeming to take a lifetime as the flames from the front of the car started to encroach on the seat in which she was still trapped.

  Then, hearing her scream as the flames now almost reached her, Jack found himself running faster still.

  Richard’s world, briefly so fast and urgent, had begun to slow down once more, as the scalding pain heralding his own descent into a darkness from which he would never return began to overwhelm him.

  Even then the instinct to save his child’s life was more powerful than the desire to save his own.

  He reached for the handle of Katherine’s door, but as he gripped the hot metal he smelt his own flesh burning and felt his fingers curl into uselessness. He saw Katherine’s face staring out at him through the glass, and realized she was so afraid, so frightened now, in a way no child should ever be . . .

  Then a moment of terrible, heavy sadness as the darkness closed in around him – creeping up his body, into his head and then blinding his other eye – a feeling of despair that might have been the last thing he knew, except that he saw her turn her head away from him to look the other way and reach a hand out towards the boy, who was suddenly there now, there to help her, there to see her to safety.

  Which was the last thing Richard knew before darkness came, pain fled and he was no more.

  At that same moment Jack reached the ragged gap in the car where the passenger doorframe on his side had been, and saw the man through glass, a dark form surrounded by orange, slowly sinking away and out of sight on the far side of the car.

  Katherine, hearing him shout, turned in Jack’s direction and reached out her hand. Jack took it but for a moment he didn’t think he’d be able to move her. He leaned further in, grabbed her arm and pulled harder still. The buckle of her seat belt burst open, and he was finally able to heave her out of the car and right over himself as the flames erupted brightly again from the footwell in the front.

  She fell on to the road, beyond the blazing car, and he landed on top of her with a thump.

  She rolled out from under him and, as he tried to heave himself to his feet, he felt her hand clutching at his jacket, hauling him upright.

  Then, together, back on their feet, the flames rushing after them, they ran from the road and the exploding car towards the same verge where Jack had lain before, heaving, pulling, shoving each other up the slippery grass into the darkness above.

  At the end, as Jack felt something like hot water coursing down his back, he kept her moving ahead of him and sheltered from the worst of it until, with one last desperate exertion, they reached the top of the manmade embankment and tumbled down its far side into blissful darkness.

  Jack felt himself slip again into unconsciousness and, as he did so, Katherine took hold of him with one hand while in the other she clutched his little leather bag as if, in the midst of all this tragedy, pain and death, it was the most important thing of all.

  It was then that she looked up and saw them coming across the field, three strangers in black, looming and purposeful. They were not much bigger than herself but they were broader, stronger – and seeming
ly adult.

  She let go of Jack and the bag, and stood up in the dark, the flames of the wrecked car still lighting up the sky on the other side of the embankment they had slithered down. She took up position in front of Jack as if to protect him from them.

  ‘No!’ she said quietly.

  But the Fyrd, three of them, faces shining in the firelight, eyes dark-set and glittering with night, came on until they were almost within reach. The leader, taller than the others, was sleek of hair and had an unpleasant smile even more distorted by the flickering light of the flames. His eyes were cold.

  ‘It’s not you we want but the boy!’ he announced, his voice an icy whisper in the dark. One of them had a knife in his hand.

  ‘No!’ she said again.

  The other two moved closer.

  One was an ordinary Fyrd, stern, fit, in his thirties, with a flat, emotionless gaze.

  The last one, the one with the weapon, was different. He was younger and looked as if he came from tough Polish stock. He was broader of body and face, his expression a natural smile, his hair curly and dark, his eyes hazel and his manner warm. But his eyes were gimlet-sharp, his hands large and strong, his stance firmly grounded. He was dressed in the light grey uniform of an untried Fyrd, one seconded to a senior officer to watch and learn. The only weapons such trainees were permitted to use were knives, of which he wore two, to front and back respectively.

  He stood silent and respectful, shadowing his leader.

  It was the other who now spoke.

  ’We want to look at the boy,’ he said.

  ‘No!’ cried Katherine again, her eyes defiant, her little form protective over Jack. ‘Noooo!’ she screamed.

  It was then that Bedwyn Stort arrived.

  He had as good as fallen down the embankment from the bridge in his haste to reach Katherine and Jack before the Fyrd did.

  Now, breathless from running, scratched by brambles, his trews half falling down, his tunic torn open by barbed wire, looking completely shambolic, he pushed Katherine behind him before raising his fists to the Fyrd in an apparent attempt to engage all three of them at once.

  Astonishingly the Fyrd pulled back, suspecting a bigger ambush. They stood half-smiling while they considered what to do with someone who was nowhere near their size or weight, who did not carry a stave, and who quite plainly had never fought anyone before in his life.

  The younger Fyrd, thinking perhaps that charm would do better than threats, squatted down in front of Stort, smiling falsely, glanced at Katherine in a speculative way, and then looked past them both to Jack and said, ‘We only want to help the boy.’

  But his knife glittered in the dark.

  20

  FROM THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE

  Pike had reacted swiftly to Stort’s impulsive decision to intervene down below. The moment he realized what his protégé was up to, he alerted the others. Then, ordering Brief and the pedlar to stay where they were, he and the other stavermen followed Stort down the embankment as silently as they could.

  The evident surprise among the Fyrd at Stort’s arrival told Pike that the newcomers had no idea any other hydden were present, and he wanted to retain this element of surprise as long as he could.

  In the brief moments while the Fyrd considered how to deal with Master Stort, Pike was able to study them unseen.

  Even though there were only three of them, they looked formidable; that much was certain. And, as was the custom of the Fyrd when on military duty, they were dressed in well-made black garb shot through with the clear synthetic thread that diffused their outlines and made their form indistinct.

  It was instantly obvious to Pike which of them was the leader – he’d had to deal with his like many times back in Brum. Tall, aristocratic, self-confident, indifferent to those beneath him, contemptuous of ordinary civilians but far too young for such a role.

  Unless . . . Pike told himself, this is a well-connected junior member of the Sinistral establishment on his way to Brum to take up an appointment which would give him the experience he needs to be pushed through the ranks very fast.

  Pike guessed that the present assignment was ordered by a more senior member of the Sinistral clan still, someone who had come to know of the boy’s movements.

  Which said much for the Fyrd’s network of intelligence and their ability to get things organized on the ground. It also told Pike that this was a situation fraught with danger and implications that he and the others were not fully aware of.

  The Fyrd officer’s number two was the usual sort, military through and through: well-set and orderly, with close-cut hair. The kind trained to take orders as well as give them, up to his level of competence. Such as had made the Fyrd the formidably successful occupying force it was.

  The third had the broad good looks of someone from Eastern Europe, whence a large number of the reinforcements for the Fyrd and its administration came from, their home territory of the Rhinelands not supplying enough as their empire expanded. Many such had come to Brum, often to take up menial roles, to give support to the Sinistral’s army of occupation.

  All in all the three Fyrd did not look too much of a challenge for Pike and his stavermen, but then they could not have expected opposition.

  ’Follow me straight in,’ Pike whispered to the others, glad that Brief and the pedlar had had the sense to stay out of sight. ‘Their leader is armed only with stave and crossbow, and that not primed, probably because he was not expecting any trouble. I’ll take the one to his left, you deal with the young one on the right who is kneeling before Stort with knife drawn. Then we’ll see what they have to say for themselves.’

  Pike emerged with the others slowly from the shadows of the embankment, not wishing to seem too much of a threat and thus precipitate an attack.

  He called out, ‘That boy’s under our protection.’

  The young Fyrd stood up and backed off immediately.

  His leader, as cool as Pike himself, half-smiled and said, ‘If that’s the case, you’re not doing such a good job. He appears to be as good as dead.’

  It was not the best of moments for Bedwyn Stort to renew his intervention, but that’s what he did. Except for the appearance of Pike and the stavermen, things might have gone very badly for him, but the smiling young Fyrd acted coolly.

  He restrained him with one hand but held out the knife with the other to show he meant business.

  The tall Fyrd laughed aloud and drawled, ‘This little drama seems suddenly to have moved from laughable comedy to potential tragedy, so would you care to bring your dog to heel before my assistant Brunte kills him? He likes the taste of blood, so I would not advise provoking him unnecessarily.’

  Pike looked at Brunte and had no doubt that, young though he was, he meant business.

  ‘Mister Stort . . .’ he growled warningly.

  Bedwyn Stort had the sense to scramble away but, to his credit, only as far as the two children. For her part, Katherine stood stock-still, now in an apparent state of shock, while Jack lay unmoving on the ground, the burns to his back and right shoulder all too visible.

  ‘So,’ said the Fyrd, with a sardonic smile, ‘are there any more in your motley group we should be aware of?’

  Pike hesitated, unsure whether to reveal the presence of Brief and the pedlar.

  But the decision was made for him.

  Brief himself appeared from the shadows of his own accord, tall and bold, his stave of office held proudly in his right hand.

  ‘Well, this gets more astonishing by the moment!’ said the Fyrd. ‘Our orders were simply to detain the boy, but now it seems that half of Brum is here in an attempt to do the same thing. You are none other than Brief, Master Scrivener of Brum, am I right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Brief, taking his place next to Pike, who now realized that the pedlar, or whatever she was, was nowhere to be seen. Much good she was going to be to anyone in a crisis!

  ‘You realize, Master Brief, that your presence here is illegal
?’ continued the Fyrd. ‘If you, of all people, had applied for permission to depart the environs of Brum, I would have known about it, so I guess you did not?’

  ‘You being who, sir?’ replied Brief with no sign of nervousness.

  The Fyrd smiled grimly. ‘I am the newly appointed Quentor of Brum on my way to take up office. Apprehending this boy is but a small diversion.’ His eyes hardened. His voice too. ‘But you know what, Brief? I have been travelling for some days now and I am cold and tired and bored. This boy is of interest to us, but he cannot possibly be of interest to you. Therefore I am ordering you and your friends to return to Brum at once. Get there before me and your transgressions will go unnoticed. Get there afterwards and I regret that you will not go unpunished, and even your position will not protect you, Master Brief.’

  The Fyrd readied their weapons, as did Pike and the stavermen.

  ‘The boy is a human and there should be no contact between hydden and human,’ said Brief. ‘That is the law! As for your purpose – quite plainly it is not to apprehend but to murder.’

  The Fyrd’s eyes grew cold.

  ‘You do not know what Fyrd I am. My name is Lavin Sinistral . . . and I will have my way over this boy and you will retreat!’

  At the mention of the name Sinistral a chill hush fell across them all. They knew at once that they were dealing with a situation as difficult as it was dangerous. This new Quentor was young, but if he was a Sinistral it meant his post was merely a training ground. Arguing with such a one had consequences, defying him was as good as death, young though he was. The Sinistral watched over their own.

  But Brief stood firm, while Pike looked yet more threatening. Neither was intimidated. If a member of the Sinistral family had been sent in person to deal with the boy then Stort’s premonitions of his importance were correct.

  A shadow crossed over the Quentor’s face, and Pike realized too late that he had misjudged the situation entirely. It seemed a new breed of Fyrd was on its way to Brum, one that was more resolute than ever before.