The two found a gap in the fence and clambered through.
The field was filled with beet, the green leaves flurrying in the wind.
‘Come, Jack, let us head for the highest part. Over there, I think . . .’
They battled their way through crop and wind, the others watching from the road.
Reaching what seemed the highest part of the field and best vantage point, Barklice slowly looked all around.
‘Can’t see a thing,’ he pronounced. ‘I am an idiot but I am not a complete one.’
‘What now?’ said Jack.
‘Hoist me up, my good fellow, onto your shoulders. Wait, I must have the glass at the ready! Right, up I go!’
Jack obliged, lifting Barklice bodily, such that his feet rested on his shoulders, and his legs were held steady in Jack’s large hands.
‘Get on with it,’ gasped Jack, ‘you’re heavier than you look.’
Balanced thus precariously, the wind whipping at his thin hair and thick jerkin, Barklice surveyed the landscape.
‘Turn slowly,’ he cried, ‘a full three hundred and sixty degrees. Not so fast, I need to study what I see.’
Jack turned slowly, boots digging into his shoulders, his arms straining to keep the verderer upright.
‘What can you see?’
‘Patience, my young friend, patience!’
Jack continued round a second time, Barklice silent, one eye screwed up, the other open to the monocular.
‘Ah! No! Back! Aaah, no! Forward, too fast! Back. No . . . I don’t believe it! It cannot, it must not be.’
‘What now?’
‘The enemy! Now turn ninety degrees to your left. Quickly!’
In that position, Jack saw, he was facing towards the sea.
‘A mite more, if you will.’
Then: ‘Good, excellent . . . now, a midgekin more . . . I said a midgekin, not . . . yes, that’s it. Oh perfection. There it is! Named Carne Beacon on that map, Centre of the Universe indeed! Now, where’s my compass?’
He took a bearing, Jack lowered him back down and he said, ‘Job done!’
‘You sure?’ said Jack.
‘I am sure,’ said Barklice. ‘Less than half a mile to the west and we’ll be there. However . . . I regret to say . . .’
They hurried back to the others.
‘The good news,’ said Jack, ‘is that Barklice knows where it is and can get us there in ten or fifteen minutes.’
‘The bad?’ they asked.
‘We are not the only figures in this landscape,’ said Barklice. ‘I saw Fyrd, a whole troop of them, and they are heading in the same direction.’
‘How far off?’ asked Blut.
‘Half a mile,’ said Barklice.
‘Let’s go,’ said Bedwyn Stort.
51
PURSUED
The Beacon came into view a few minutes later, a symmetrical hump across the fields, a good deal higher than the surrounding hedges and, too, the slight rise to the east from which they now approached it.
It was in the centre of a huge grass field in which a scattering of sheep grazed, their thick legs, sturdy heads and plump coats set against the south-westerly wind. Stretching away beneath the fold and bluffs of farmland beyond was Pendower Beach, the same which Stort now saw, on which he had imagined himself standing when entangled with the Embroidery.
Jack ordered them to halt in the covering shelter of a drystone wall overtopped by a thick growth of shrubs, hawthorn and ivy.
‘Let’s study the map, Stort,’ he said. ‘Lord Festoon, please keep watch. The Fyrd are approaching from our right, probably on this road here.’
He indicated a narrow north–south lane which was plain enough on the map but obscured from view by high hedges from where they were.
‘The question is,’ Jack continued, ‘whether we make a dash across this field now in daylight and gain control of the Beacon or let the Fyrd take it and attempt to wrest it from them in the night. How many were there, Barklice?’
‘A troop,’ he said. ‘Maybe twelve or so.’
‘We are no match for such a number,’ said Jack, ‘not by daylight at least. If we did get to the Beacon now it would become a siege, no better than an exposed prison in a field open on all sides and impossible to cross without being seen by the Fyrd. What’s your sense of it, Stort?’
‘Dangerous,’ he said. ‘My vision with the Embroidery was different from this. I was on the beach, the surf coming in, the Beacon aflame in the night, not like this.’
‘Katherine?’
‘I think we should sit it out until dark.’
‘Here?’
‘Not sure,’ she said uncertainly. ‘It doesn’t feel right here.’
Festoon and Blut shook their heads at Jack’s query, having nothing more to add.
‘We’ll wait and watch,’ said Jack.
He had just made this sensible pronouncement when Festoon said quietly, ‘We have been observed!’
There was a dark figure across the fields behind them, on the nearside of the hill they had just come down. He was hard to see against the murky sky but he must have known they were there and he stood in the open as if it didn’t matter to him to be seen.
‘He has the size and boldness of a Fyrd,’ said Jack. ‘The other Fyrd may have sent him ahead to scout and now he’s seen us.’
As if in confirmation they saw the Fyrd raise an arm and point with the other in their direction.
Jack looked at the map urgently, reading the printed contours and setting them against what he could see on the ground.
‘Forget the Beacon,’ he said, ‘we’re going to make ourselves scarce until dark. Then we might have a better chance.’
They hurried to the east side of the field and downslope along its high edge, bringing them to within fifty yards of the Beacon itself, whose massive size now showed itself, for it rose high into the air, dwarfing the few trees on its side and top.
They heard a shout on the far side of the field, where there was a stile, and saw Fyrd streaming over it towards the Beacon.
‘Quick,’ said Jack, ‘we need to get out of this field on the opposite side and away downslope through the village called Carne.’
As they reached the stile opposite to the one the Fyrd had climbed they heard a derisive shout.
Two Fyrd had got to the Beacon and climbed to the top and were staring over the grass at them as sheep scattered to left and right.
They expected to see others come round the base of the mound and give chase, but they did not. Instead more appeared on top and with them someone dressed in civilian clothes it took them a moment to recognize.
‘Come and get your friend, you Brummie bastards,’ one of the Fyrd shouted.
They froze, horrified.
The civilian was Arthur Foale and he looked ill, broken, in some way destroyed. Two of the Fyrd had to hold him up, but when they were satisfied he had been seen and recognized they let him go and he collapsed at their feet, apparently unconscious.
Their instinct was to run across the field, climb the Beacon and try to rescue him.
‘No,’ said Jack his voice low and cold. ‘No, we stay here. It’s what they want and nothing we can do right now will make the situation better.’
‘Give Blut to us,’ called out a voice from the group on the hill, ‘and you can have your friend in time to save his life.’
It was General Quatremayne.
‘I’ll go,’ said Blut at once. ‘He has become a friend and I should never have let him out of my sight in Brum.’
Jack exchanged a glance with Katherine and Festoon, who went either side of Blut and stopped him impulsively offering his life for Arthur’s.
‘I count seven,’ said Jack, ‘making eight with the one we saw and therefore three or four unaccounted for. They’re probably making their way round to us as the others delay us here. We’re leaving right now. But we’ll be back!’
They climbed the stile with heavy hearts, caught sig
ht of a single Fyrd coming at them from the left and made their way forward into the human village of Carne.
‘Carry on,’ said Jack, ‘the map shows a footpath down to the sea. I’ll deal with this Fyrd to even up the numbers a little bit.’
Katherine led them on. Jack waited out of sight for the lone Fyrd to come down the road, and round the corner.
As he did so Jack stepped up to him, his stave fierce and strong, and aimed a blow straight into his face so hard it broke open and turned to blood, spilling flesh and cartilage before he hit the ground. All Jack’s anger for Arthur was in the blow and he muttered, ‘There’s more, much more, where that came from.’
He was tempted to wait and see if any others he had not yet seen showed up, but none did. Perhaps they were further on and trying to cut them off. What was very clear was that, having gained control of the Beacon, it would not be long before Quatremayne sent a party in pursuit.
Jack paused and studied the fields around the Beacon, especially to its seaward side, and then the fields beyond. He focused hard, visioning the ground in the dark, working out the best ways for a night attack. As for the Beacon itself, it was thick with wind-dried vegetation and woody shrubs, a couple of hawthorns, rough gorse and a dead elder tree. He turned about and raced after the others.
He caught them up as they reached the far end of the hamlet and picked up the path he had seen on the map. It ran down the side of a small deep valley, carved out by the stream they could hear but not see on their right.
The vegetation on either side was thick and prickly, so any pursuit, if it was to catch them up, would have to come down the same path they were on.
They paused a moment and he put Katherine in the lead, himself at the rear.
‘Don’t go too fast, because we’re going to divert when we can so we can hide up for a time.’
The light was fading fast and the air cold and dank with little wind in the hollow they were in. There was no visible sign of pursuit behind, but on such a rapidly descending winding path an enemy would be close behind before they were seen. But they could hear heavy running steps and shouted commands.
‘We could divert here,’ called out Katherine.
They had reached a split in the path, or rather a hollowing out in the bushes to the left past a bluff of rock, used by humans once in a while but exploited by animals. To the right the slope down to the stream had grown steeper still.
‘Too obvious a place to stop,’ said Jack, ‘let’s go a bit further down.’
The path turned suddenly and steepened over slippery rocks. Katherine fell, followed by Blut. There was a sickening smell from the river gulley.
‘A dead sheep,’ said Katherine, picking herself up and hauling Blut upright. His spectacles were spattered with mud but he had no time or inclination to take them off and clean them.
‘Here,’ said Jack, ‘we’ll push through the scrub to our left.’
Again Katherine took the lead and the others followed, except for Jack, who remained on the path.
‘Carry on downslope through the bushes, find a place to wait unseen; I have a little more business to attend to. Katherine, after a couple of minutes cup your hand and shout upslope the words “Run! They’re coming.” I have an idea.’
He waited in the shadows through which the others had gone, confident that if the Fyrd coming down were too many he could slip away unseen. If few enough he would take them on as they rounded the awkward corner where the ground steepened and the rank odour was a distraction. Each one he killed or disabled was one less for them to have to fight later.
On cue Katherine’s call was heard and his ruse worked.
He heard gruff voices of the Fyrd on the path they had just come down, peered low through the undergrowth to see their feet, a trick Barklice had taught him, and counted three in all. Ideal.
The first slipped round the corner and nearly fell, the second tumbled, and Jack threw himself at him, his stave end into his throat. The other end he shoved twistingly into the groin of the one coming down, who screamed and fell sideways, clutching himself, down into the noisome gully.
He struck in that order because he knew that the momentum of the other would have carried him down a few paces, giving him the advantage of slope and surprise. Jack felt on fire, his stave humming dangerously in his hands, and he had no compunction about maiming for life or killing. None. The sight of Arthur up on the Beacon had leached out any pity he might have had for Fyrd.
He thrust hard at the one below him, who parried well and brought the lower end of his stave up and round very hard. But the slope was such that he could do no more than strike Jack’s shin. Jack’s second blow was into his knee, the third into the joint of his foot and then the back of it.
He too cried out at the pain, his stave spinning away.
Jack did not kill him, satisfied his foot was broken and he was not going to get far until more Fyrd found him, which was Jack’s intent.
He checked back on the others too, one dead, one halfway down the gully and still alive. Jack checked no more Fyrd were on their way, went the few steps down to him and dealt with him as he had the first, a lethal buffet in the throat.
Then he stripped him of his crossbow and bolts, standard weapons of the Fyrd, went back to the path and did the same with the second corpse.
There was a fury in Jack and he looked frightening. The injured Fyrd, lying awkwardly lengthwise down the path below, who now strained and struggled to get round and up, looked terrified.
Jack relieved him of his crossbow too, checked again that he was as good as immobile and retreated into the gap through which the others had gone, slowly and visibly. He let him live because he wanted him to be able to report the way they had gone or had appeared to.
When he caught up with the others for the second time he ordered them to double back in silence so they joined the same path lower down.
‘The Fyrd will chase us the way the one I left alive tells them to,’ he said, ‘giving us a clear, safer run down to the shore. It’s no good trying to defend ourselves on a clifftop against superior arms and numbers. Down there there’ll be places to hide and we now have three crossbows too.’
They proceeded slowly and in silence, the wind strong in the shrubs and trees above their heads, the sea glimpsed below as the path twisted and turned.
Until at last, the safety of dusk upon them, they reached the stream whose valley the path had been following and picked their way along it through tussocky grass and gorse down to the shore to which it tumbled.
‘Take care,’ said Katherine, who still led the way. ‘These rocks are slippery and dangerous and a twisted ankle now might be a death sentence.’
They finally reached sand, the surf’s roar fifty yards beyond them, the breaking waves almost invisible in the gloom.
‘What now, Stort?’ said Jack. ‘What do you remember from your dream?’
That Stort remembered anything at all from his strange encounter with the Embroidery astonished him, but that was Stort. Each had their strengths and the visioning instinct of the seer was one of his.
He gazed back up the cliff they had clambered down and then further along it.
‘Not that way,’ he said.
The other way, to their left as they faced inland, the cove widened to a sandy bay.
‘Pendower Beach,’ said Stort. ‘Have to go there to get the view inland I think I saw.’
‘We’ll be exposed,’ said Jack.
‘But barely visible in this light,’ said Katherine. ‘Let’s do it; the Fyrd will catch up with us eventually if we stay here so it’s best we see the lie of the land if we’re to go back up to the Beacon and rescue Arthur.’
They waited another quarter of an hour for the dark to thicken, during which time Jack used his torch, hunched among rocks and the sharp smell of seaweed to study the map.
‘You saw what you called a fort in your visioning?’ he prompted Stort.
‘Dreaming, I’d call it. Yes I
did, on a low bluff. Not much of one.’
Jack peered closer.
‘It must be this. There’s a second and bigger stream coming down in the cove, its valley less twisty than the one we’ve come down. At the top of it is an earthwork called Veryan Castle.’
Katherine peered closer, trained in map work by Arthur.
‘Fanciful name,’ she said. ‘Probably Iron Age. Looks as if it’s got ramparts like the ones on White Horse Hill. They would make it easy to defend.’
‘My thought too,’ said Jack. His finger moved a half-inch to the east.
‘There’s the Beacon, on this scale not more than three hundred yards or so beyond the fort.’
They saw a light on the cliffs above, on past where they had come down. Their mis-direction had worked.
‘The Fyrd!’ said Jack. ‘Right, time to move on and see what we find.’
They kept near to the cliff until it faded away where the bigger stream came down and across the sandy shore. The shore to their left eased away and they veered along with it, taking them further from the higher ground above. Beyond that was a road, a couple of houses behind it and, nearer the beach, the dark and lifeless windows of a hotel complex. It was deserted.
‘It seems the humans have left even this distant place,’ said Stort.
‘If it wasn’t for Arthur,’ said Blut, ‘those buildings would offer us options to hide. As it is, whatever else may be suggested, I cannot leave him up there by himself much longer.’
They all agreed.
Stort stood and stared up the bigger valley, or as much of it as he could see.
There were trees on either side at the lower end, their branches swaying as silhouettes in the wind from the sea. Further inland the valley had the usual deep Cornish hedges either side, as it rose steeply to the bluff that had to be Veryan Castle.
The torches on the cliff above had disappeared, but moments later they saw them bobbing about as they made their rapid way down.
The sand about them lightened suddenly and they saw faint shadows of themselves.
The wind had shifted and the clouds with it, revealing the moon.
‘They’ve probably seen us,’ said Jack, ‘but we can’t be sure if there aren’t more up this valley. But they won’t expect us to go back up so soon. If they catch us halfway up it we’re done for. If we can get to the ramparts of the fort we stand some kind of chance.’