It was, he knew, a slim one, very slim.
They had done well to get this far unscathed and in different circumstances they would have got clean away by now.
Jack said, ‘I’m going up to see what I can do for Arthur, but I don’t think you others should all follow. Lord Festoon, you’re more valuable alive than dead! Emperor Blut, you are too. As for myself – and Katherine and Stort – it’s in the wyrd of our quest for the gems that we take these risks. You should not take them too.’
Festoon grunted, Blut took his glasses off and wiped them.
‘I think I speak for both of us,’ he said coolly, ‘when I say that we have no intention of spending this Samhain night with anyone but you. Wyrd is a strange thing and in my experience serves justly those who have faith in it and act honourably. Lead on and let us get to somewhere we can stand and fight. Not that I have ever shot a crossbow in my life!’
Jack was about to lead them on when Stort, who had been staring up the darkened valley, said, ‘The Beacon was alight, aflame, I saw it clearly in my dreaming. I felt its heat. That is what’s needed, Jack, but don’t ask me why.’
The wind grew stronger and began gusting about them as a front went over.
The clouds that had parted now came together again and lowered, feathery at their base and picking up the ambient light of Falmouth and Truro off to the north-west to make them lurid.
They set off up the beach to the road and from there found a path with a fingerpost pointing the way they were going. A human house to the right had broken windows and a garage, its doors open and bent by the wind.
Jack stopped them briefly and went to hunt about inside.
‘What are you looking for?’ someone asked when he returned.
‘This!’ he said, holding up a red petrol container. He pulled things from his ’sac and put it inside. ‘There’s another one you could take, Stort. We want a flaming beacon, so we’ll have one!’
They passed through the trees on the lower slopes and headed uphill, Jack taking the lead, Katherine behind. The wind roared up the valley behind them, colder now and salty.
They looked back and saw the bobbing lights down by the house. Beyond them the sea was lit by the rising moon, white and shining where the great surf was and the white horses further out. Dark in-between.
The slope got steeper, their breathing heavier and quicker, chests hurting, legs aching, each silent in their effort to keep going. Behind them the lights came quicker, not gaining fast but gaining. Inexorable.
They reached the bluff where the castle had to be in a final steep climb and stood leaning on their staves, gasping for air.
The Fyrd themselves could not be seen, just their lights, five of them.
‘Which probably means there’s nine or ten there,’ said Jack, ‘one torch between two. Now . . .’
He went forward onto the flat scar of the fort, its rampart deepening to their left and on the far side of the flat area presenting a wall of sward.
He and Katherine took off their ’sacs and quickly surveyed the ramparts.
‘This is the entrance area, which is why the path leads here. They’ll have to come this way too. We could defend it from either side using the crossbows.’
They rapidly discussed the pros and cons; there were very few pros indeed.
‘We can hold them back, we might get lucky and maim or kill some, but we’re too few to defend this place for long,’ said Jack. ‘As for heading on to the Beacon, we’ve seen how tough that can be.’
The lights below were steadily getting nearer.
The moon higher.
The wind stronger.
‘A suggestion,’ said Blut. ‘I do not think I shall do well with a crossbow and I never did learn to wield a stave. Let me take that fuel and see what I may do at the Beacon. No doubt the Fyrd will see me but it takes moments to scatter and light petrol.’
Festoon said, ‘I can take one of the crossbows. Can’t be that difficult to shoot.’
It was, Jack knew, as risky and crack-brained a plan as he had ever heard. If they didn’t get stopped and killed before reaching the Beacon then Arthur would get burnt by Blut or shot by Festoon and all three die unpleasant deaths. But if they stayed at the fort then Arthur had no chance at all.
‘You’ll do a better job at slowing them down than we can,’ said Blut persuasively, taking up Jack’s ’sac.
It was too large for him and the weight really too much. Yet he looked as brave and bold as a fighting Emperor should, his spectacles catching the moonlight, his grey eyes sharp and focused.
‘In fact, Stavemeister,’ he said asserting that same striking authority they had first seen in Brum, ‘this isn’t a request, it’s an order from your Commander-in-Chief. Arthur saved my life, the least I can do is to try and save his.’
Jack had neither time nor energy to argue. In any case, his instinct was with Blut.
‘You know which way to go?’
‘I can read a map,’ he said, ‘and I had a good look earlier. My spatial memory is good. Good luck to all of you. Festoon, my friend, let us be gone!’
52
BEACON
Jack, Katherine and Stort had the advantage of darkness and height. They conferred at once.
‘If we can get a couple of shots in and fell or hit at least one of them they won’t be in a hurry to come forward. We keep it up until they begin to, or look like they’re going to try to get round, and you and Stort join me on the high side. That gives us more options and me the advantage when it comes to a stave fight. I will fire first so there’s no confusion. I will aim for the nearest to me. Aim for the throat or groin, it’s where they are vulnerable. Whatever you do, join me the moment I whistle.’
They spoke in whispers, eyes glancing downslope as the torches got ever nearer until they suddenly went out. The tactics agreed and confirmed, they went to their positions.
Then there was silence.
‘They’re working out if anyone’s here,’ whispered Katherine.
The silence continued but for the roar of the surf far below and the never-ending wind in the trees nearby. Their eyes strained to see movement, watering from the wind and effort of staring, the dark forms of the hydden jumping, shifting, hard to keep in vision.
Then one moved, followed by another.
Coming forward up the hill, crossbows glinting in the moonlight.
They walked confidently and easily, clearly thinking there was no one there.
Katherine readied herself to aim at the one nearest to her. She could not deploy the crossbow fully without exposing herself, so she waited for Jack’s shot.
The two figures came nearer in the dark, beginning to loom, easy in their upward stride, forbidding in their presence. Katherine’s heart thumped, Stort gulped, silence reigned but for the surf and wind and finally the tread of the Fyrd on the steep path. The others below them were a solid, shadowed mass.
She looked from where the throat of her target must be to his groin. That seemed easier but it was lower and she would have to stand up to get her shot in. She decided on the throat.
They came nearer still, Katherine sure that they could hear her short breaths, her beating heart.
Then a soft thwump! and Jack had fired.
She rose, Stort’s hand on her back to keep her steady, and fired from the hip.
Jack’s target had spun round, his crossbow dropped. Katherine’s seemed not affected at all, yet he did not fire nor continue walking. He just stood motionless.
‘Load it,’ she said to Stort, taking up her stave, guessing what Jack would do next.
She was right.
He was up and out and thrusting hard at his quarry before he dropped back to his position. The Fyrd fell back, Katherine’s fell to his knees, speechless. She did as Jack had done and thrust her stave into his face.
As he fell back there was a thwump thwump from below and a bolt shot past her right side.
But something else happened which made the s
ound of the crossbows seem no more than soft whispers.
There was a roaring sound on the slope behind them and the low clouds above their heads turned orange-red.
Blut had done his stuff.
The Beacon was ablaze and the Fyrd on the slope below them were suddenly more visible, not from direct light but the ambient light of the clouds above.
Jack watched carefully, counting.
There were six below, so he had overestimated.
He fired another shot, another Fyrd went down, and he signalled to Katherine.
It was time to try to make it to the Beacon.
The hydden folk of Cornwall are like no other in Englalond. Dark, swarthy, strong, good-natured, they can sail a boat as well as till a field, neither gracefully but each with good effect.
They stand together fiercely but, unless threatened, they are welcoming to strangers.
Family matters, land as well; of the seasons Samhain is the most important.
And this was Samhain, the time when families gather, coming from afar.
The yearning brings them home, that same yearning which Stort rightly guessed lived always in ã Faroün’s heart.
With the yearning goes a deep, deep sense of duty to their own folk, duty to those oppressed, and reverence to land and sea.
No wonder that if there is anywhere in the Hyddenworld that a sailor would rather go down, if go down he must, it is off the Cornish coast, for help will come more surely than the wind and waves.
So too on the land.
If help is called for, those rough, good folk respond without thinking, for they know that if and when they need it, their people will do the same for them.
None more, in all of Cornwall, than the hydden thereabout the remote peninsula called Roseland, in the centre of which Veryan sits with its ancient Beacon standing on a nearby hill. They help each other on sea and land and would almost kill for the privilege or die in shame if they did not respond to a call for aid.
So it was that on that Samhain evening, when families were gathered close together in expectation of the midnight hour, they paid heed the moment the cry went up, ‘The Beacon’s aflame!’
The Beacon’s aflame!
‘It cannot be! Not for three generations has it been lit!’
But it was and they saw it and they knew what they must do.
They put down their cannikins, they set the stewpot to one side, they put the oldest kinder to watch the little ones. Not a grumble from the males, not a complaint from the wyfkin: the Beacon was aflame and that was a summons that could never be denied.
From the humbles of Carne and Tregamenna; from the homestead of Pennare; from Churchtown and Veryan and the deep fold of Caragloose . . .
Hydden put on their coats and their boots, they took up their staves and they set off into the night towards the Beacon flames which lit the night sky and sent a red skirl among the racing clouds.
Hurry! The great Beacon’s aflame.
Nor were they the only folk who saw it.
Arnold Mallarkhi, surfing the huge waves into shore at speed, was very surprised suddenly to see the Beacon light up, even as he caught sight of two cutters to right and left, racing inshore as he was doing the same.
His eyes widened and his teeth flashed.
‘More sail, Terce,’ he called out, ‘and sing us a song. They be pirates on either side and they’ll cut us up into little pieces and make a stew of our best parts if we let ’em. Meaning we must get ashore afore they do and run like hell! That there Beacon’s a signal to ’em to take us alive!’
Borkum Riff, generally reckoned to be the best skipper south of Reykjavik, couldn’t believe his eyes. Nor could Herde Deap.
Out of nowhere a beacon flared on the hills above. As it did it showed that in the darkness and foam, and seas like he’d rarely known, skipping along as if he was on a holiday jaunt, except faster, was a craft that should be inland. He had rarely seen such seamanship.
What was more, it was gaining and gaining fast, which a skipper out of Den Helder did not appreciate.
Yet more odd, and it made him think the sailor was a ghost come early for Samhain, was that the sailor wore a turban, while handling the reefs was a monk, big and strong, and he was singing a shanty in a voice so rich it might have come out of the craters of the moon.
‘Not havin’ this,’ said Borkum.
‘I was hoping,’ said Lady Leetha in the other boat, to Deap, ‘that you might get to the shore before Borkum and Sinistral but it seems to me . . . is that another craft?’
‘It’s a madman,’ said Deap, ‘trying to run our fellow boat down and on that tack and against these waves . . .’
His voice gained a sudden urgency.
‘Hold on, Ma, we’re going to save Pa!’
Then, in the next few waves they all surfed and raced, half-turned, feinted, and set straight on again as if dead heat in a race, and finally came ashore as one, crashing through the breaking waves and running up the shingly sand.
‘That was dubious my new-won friends,’ cried Arnold, when he realized they were friends not foe and let his sabre fall.
‘Aye,’ growled Riff, ‘what shore you be from?’
‘Brum,’ replied Arnold, inexplicably. ‘Now we’ve folk to help, and you?’
‘We too,’ the others said.
‘What folk?’ laughed Leetha into the wind.
‘Ever heard of Jack, of Katherine and Bedwyn Stort?’ said Arnold cheerfully.
Slew looked pale; Leetha amused; Sinistral calm.
‘Perhaps.’
‘Can you guess where they’ll be?’
‘Up there,’ said Slew, ‘where the flames are.’
‘Searching,’ said Arnold mysteriously.
‘What for?’ wondered Leetha as they set off.
‘A gem,’ said Lord Sinistral.
General Quatremayne, who had been in the party pursuing Jack and the others, was pleased when the Beacon went up.
Certainly he had lost two more of his best Fyrd with a third wounded, but he saw by the light of the flames that his quarry were in flight and they numbered only three.
The cause of the Beacon burning he did not know or much care. Its light seemed providential and he had no doubt that his soldiers on the Beacon would do as he had ordered if in any way threatened: kill Arthur Foale and await reinforcements with confidence. The force against them was wily but puny and he was sure that by midnight and the start of Samhain control would be his and Blut his prisoner. If he was still alive. If not he did not care.
‘Give chase!’ he commanded, ‘and catch them before they reach the Beacon.’
As he charged on up the hill and made it to the fort, and from there across the easier ground towards the Beacon, he could not but be in awe of the flames raging there.
The whole thing was alight, trees and all, and in the foreground, lit up like sitting ducks in bright sunshine, were three of the hydden who had caused them such annoyance.
The Beacon itself was too much in flame to allow anyone on top of it. Instead, he saw now, two figures stood to one side: his Fyrd, no doubt.
‘Catch ’em and do not kill ’em,’ he roared at his guards as they ran ahead.
The two figures were Blut and Festoon and they had Arthur lying nearby and were sheltering him from the heat and flames.
They had every reason to feel pleased with themselves.
They had hurried over the hill towards the dark Beacon. Blut had crept to one side, Festoon had walked boldly on the other, calling out, in the Mirror’s name, for mercy, kindness, salvation and a chance to see his stricken comrade.
‘Are you Blut?’ they had called down to him.
‘I am,’ he lied in his most majestic way, ‘and I come to give myself up.’
As he said this he saw the real Blut light a lucifer and throw it unseen towards what looked like harmless vegetation beneath a tree on the west side of the Beacon.
As he did so he dived in the opposite direction, an
d it was as well he did, because after only a moment’s run-around of blue flame, and then a sickening moment of nothing at all, the petrol container glowed briefly red before it exploded in a ball of flame.
Festoon himself fell forward with the blast.
The Fyrd atop the Beacon fell sideways into flames and out of sight and Arthur Foale, on his hands and knees on the further slope of the hump, felt his hair singe as a sheet of flame shot over him.
Weak, badly hurt already, his feet useless, he had the presence of mind to roll down the slope away from the flames, grunting and gasping as he went, right to where Festoon lay.
Blut hurried round, his left hand his only defence against the fierce flames. He dragged Arthur further out, helped Festoon crawl away and searched frantically for the crossbow to use against the two Fyrd when they appeared.
They never did. Their screams were heard as the flames ran through the vegetation round them, a brief agonized silhouette in the light, then nothing but the fire’s roar.
It was then that Festoon and Blut saw Jack and the others running towards them, the flames so bright that they might as well have been running into day.
They saw as well the Fyrd behind, close enough now to suddenly stop pursuit, kneel down and ready their crossbows.
One of them looked at Katherine, another at Stort and a third at Jack.
It was no good Blut and Festoon shouting a warning, for the roar of flames, fanned by the wind, was far too loud.
Perhaps Jack and Katherine saw their gaze and guessed what was happening.
As the kneeling Fyrd steadied themselves and took aim and Quatremayne stood next to them with pleasure, they turned about to face them and came together, instinctively protecting Stort who, they felt, was more important than they were.
The one who was aiming at Stort, his view impaired, shifted his attention to Blut behind, whom he recognized from the flashing spectacles.
Quatremayne raised his arm triumphantly. A running fight had turned into an execution. His quarry were perfectly framed by the fire and they had nowhere further to run.