‘Who’s he?’
‘He’s like . . . in charge of things, I think. His Bride of the Day will be chosen tomorrow too, so be warned. It might be you!’
‘What’s he like? Very old? Wise? Cruel? His title makes him sound he might be one of those things.’
‘I’ve never met him but they say he’s large, very.’
‘I like tall men,’ said Katherine playfully.
‘I didn’t say tall, I said large. But I mean he’s fat. Very. You had better go before they come . . . If you run and they catch you, they’ll probably give you over to the Sub-Quentor for punishment. Not recommended!’
The sound of the footsteps sharpened and now became metallic. Someone was descending some metal stairs.
‘Will you help me get away?’
Hais shook her head. ‘If I do and they find out, I most certainly won’t get back to Deritend in time for my big day.’ There was fear in her voice now. ‘You’ve got to go. If they even think I’ve been talking to you . . .’
The footsteps got louder and nearer.
‘Run, Sister Katherine!’ said Hais desperately. ‘Run back to your room!’
Katherine did, reaching the door to her cell just in time to slip back through it, put the shoes back where they were and dive onto the bed.
She did not have to pretend to be asleep for long. In moments the long hours of her journey and the changes during it caught up with her once more and she slept again.
62
AT THE WEST GATE
The clinkers were advancing horribly over Jack’s body down from his head and up from his feet and he realized that, if he did not break free of the paralysis that had gripped him, they would soon reach his privates, and then . . . then . . .
‘No!’
He woke up, regained movement and brushing them off his body he sat up and – bang! – fell back on to his plank again.
‘Jack, wake up! We’re here now!’
It was Barklice tugging at one end and Pike at the other, trying to get him to roll of the plank.
‘I thought the clinkers were getting me,’ he muttered, reality breaking in.
They laughed. ‘Hurry, the train only waits here a minute or two.’
Sleepily Jack did as he was told, his head feeling thick and his body stiff. He pushed his portersac and stave down onto the track below and followed them.
‘Bring your plank as well,’ called Barklice. ‘It must be stored ready for someone else to use.’
He found Brief and Pike standing together in the convenient shelter of a huge, empty, wooden cable reel which lay on its side beside the track. The rain thundered down all around them.
‘Let’s have the planks then,’ said Barklice who, without any complaint about getting himself even wetter, took them one by one and secreted them under some concrete slabs nearby. He then wandered off to see how things were looking beyond the track.
‘You’ll know where they are hidden by the broken ragwort and rosebay willow herb,’ explained Pike, ‘should you have need of them in the future. That’s our tradition. Failing which, shove ’em anywhere convenient but use your common sense!’
‘The planks you mean?’
‘That’s right, so other travellers can find and use ’em. I take it you do know what ragwort looks like?’
Jack nodded, and the willow herb too. He had identified both with Katherine, during some stage of their wanderings.
His head was now clearing. ‘Where are we exactly?’
‘On the approach to Brum’s West Gate. It’s only three hundred yards further along the track, down the embankment and on the right-hand side,’ said Pike. ‘But, of course, we can’t just stroll up and ask the Fyrd to let us in. We may well have to find some other way, but that’s Barklice’s job.’
Jack peered along the track towards the city and then through the tall metal fence separating it from a road below. Heavy traffic was sloshing along, with headlights switched on early, windscreen wipers struggling furiously. Over the right-hand side he could see a water course, the water risen so high it was lapping at the edges, the wind catching the wavelets and turning them to spray.
Barklice now rejoined them, his cloak streaming wet.
‘The river’s very high, but it’s not backing up yet. If the weather’s been like this all day, then the Bilgesnipe are doing a good job controlling it. But getting into the city unseen with Jack was never going to be easy, gentlemen, which is why I arranged for some backup before we left.’
Brief, a bit too tall for the sheltered space they were huddling under, stood leaning forward on his stave and seemed preoccupied. The others said nothing either, while they waited for him to speak. Stort had sat down and, having slipped a green plastic shopping bag over each of his feet, was securing them tightly with string just below the knees.
There was, Jack was beginning to realize, an old-world courtesy about them all – evident in the way that, having sensed that Brief was about to say something important, they let him do so in his own time; and also in the easy acceptance they showed for Stort and his eccentricities.
‘Who are these Bilgesnipe, Mister Stort?’ whispered Jack, squatting down beside him.
‘ “Stort” will do, so drop the honorific. They’re water folk primarily. They live and breathe water, and keep Brum working at times like this when flooding becomes a danger. Be warned, Jack, they’re very inventive but inclined to passion, and they sing a lot, which can sometimes be annoying. But don’t ever accept the help of such hovellers if you’re not ready to pay in cash or kind for their services.’
Just then, Brief finally spoke.
‘Gentlemen, I suggest we go carefully from now on. Clearly the city will be flooding, but there may be greater danger than that – to ourselves in particular and therefore to our mission.’ He spoke slowly and cautiously.
‘What aren’t you telling us, Master Brief?’ said Barklice.
Brief’s face still gave nothing away. ‘I have an inkling that things – great things – may be afoot in Brum today. It may be wiser that I say no more than that for now. However, let us observe the gate and see what we can deduce about the state of things within, from there. It may be, Mister Barklice, that we will need your special knowledge of the routes into Deritend.’
They moved off cautiously, keeping to the shadows under the wall that edged the embankment on its watery side.
Jack, fully recovered from his bone-rattling rail journey, felt good in himself and excited too. He was nearer to finding Katherine now, and more comfortable in this new world in which he found himself.
Despite the remorseless rain and the lash of water all about, he was glad to be back within a city. Its sounds were those same ones he had grown up with, and familiar too were its broken shapes and silhouettes in the murky afternoon, its chiaroscuro of light and shadow, its very smell, its ordered chaos, its busyness, its sheer life.
He felt alive and strong and ready for anything.
‘We cross the track here,’ Pike turned to him, pointing at a run of shadow from a tall building which loomed over the track. ‘Go one at a time . . . and be very alert on the other side. This is a favourite spot for Fyrd to try to catch us out.’
‘Not on a night like this,’ said Barklice with confidence.
They crossed the line and were soon at a vantage point that allowed them to easily survey the West Gate, though at first Jack could not see what they meant by that. Eventually he worked out that what they were all focusing on was a rectangular hole in a wall halfway down the embankment towards the river. It was blocked off by a gate but, as his eyes grew used to the dark, he could see dim lights moving back and forth there.
Pike produced a bulky monocular from his pack and examined the scene carefully.
Barklice was doing the same, using his circled hands as if they were binoculars.
‘Try it, Jack,’ he murmured.
Jack did and it worked, cutting out ambient light and drawing the eye to the scene they
needed to focus on.
Pike took his time and eventually said, ‘Something’s up, eh, Barklice? Something’s definitely not right. There’s no guards on the gates and they’re . . . damn me if they’re not ajar! There’s even folk coming out!’
It was true.
There were people emerging through the great gates, some carrying bundles, a couple holding their children’s hands, hurrying down through the undergrowth to the river’s edge where they became impossible to see, it being so dark.
‘Eight o’clock left!’ said Barklice grimly. ‘By the guard door . . .’
Jack spotted it at once: someone lying face down on the ground.
‘It’s a guard! And there’s another one at two o’clock. Got it?’
Pike sat back and lowered his monocular. ‘The revolution’s started and I’ve missed it!’ he said.
‘You’ve missed very little, Mister Pike,’ Brief murmured, ‘since what’s going on here began less than an hour ago.’
Barklice pulled back into the shadows and silently led them closer. The open gate and the motionless bodies were now easy to see, but for the moment there was no one else in sight.
‘You were saying, Master Brief?’ said Pike in a low voice.
‘I wasn’t going to say anything yet, but now I see I need to. This is not a revolution that you’re witnessing,’ said Brief slowly, ‘it’s an insurrection. Which is to say a revolt against the Fyrd from within their ranks.’
‘Led by who?’ asked Pike.
‘I have no idea,’ said Brief unconvincingly.
‘Against who?’
‘That I do not know either.’ He was plainly lying.
‘Who is your informant?’
‘I cannot say – yet.’
Pike looked furious. ‘And I am meant to be your chief staverman.’ he said ironically.
‘Mister Pike,’ said Brief carefully, ‘I was told of the possibility of this happening on condition I revealed it to no one, and only because the person who informed me was aware all this might happen before we got back from our mission. In which case we might be walking blind, as it were, into a very dangerous and unsettled situation. We could not have known in advance that Mistress Katherine would be abducted and brought here. What we do know is that powerful wyrd is abroad that affects all of us, and that these two young strangers are now in our care – and in Brum’s too.’
He brought his great stave of office diagonally across his chest, and held it there with both hands. It seemed to Jack that it glimmered in the half-light of this rainy afternoon.
‘This is not your fight, Jack,’ Brief went on, laying a hand on his shoulder, ‘nor is it your dear friend’s. But, with each moment that has passed since I met you and we began our journey here, I have become more and more convinced that your joint mission is to fulfil that ancient prophecy from Beornamund’s time and, in some way as yet unknown, to find the Shield Maiden and deliver to her the gem of Spring. How Brum is involved, or this present trouble, or even ourselves, or this ceaseless strange rain, I know not!’
He turned then to Pike, who had calmed down a little. ‘As for this insurrection I know only that no citizen of Brum is better placed in terms of experience, or knowledge of the city, and the trust others place in him, than yourself, Mister Pike, to see to matters of fighting and the like as they affect the good of our community.
‘What I also know is that the experience of history, on which I myself can speak with some authority, shows that nothing is predictable and much now depends upon our individual and collective strength. We must act right, trust in each other, recognize our true friends, know our real enemies, and then hope that courage, common sense and determination will see us through.’
‘Aye,’ said Pike, mollified, ‘I’ll second that. And there’s something else which history tells us, and even if I’m not much of a reader, I know it’s true. Fights and battles, like wars, are rarely over quickly. What’s happening here in Brum today may take weeks, months or years to reach a conclusion, eh, Master Brief?’
‘It may, Master Pike. It may.’
‘But you still won’t tell us the name of your informant, Master Brief?’ prompted Barklice. Like Pike, he did not appreciate being excluded from such secrets.
‘I will only tell you this. The person who gave me this information is cleverer than any of us in some respects, and when the time comes he will need our support to see him through. Now, Barklice, how are we going to get Jack and ourselves into Brum without running into trouble with the Fyrd?’
‘Deritend’s the place to go,’ said Barklice, ‘and unfortunately there’s only one way to get there quickly and still avoid the Fyrd.’
He looked at the surging canal. ‘All we need is the professional services of one of the Mallarkhi, the Bilgesnipe family that covers this side of Brum.’
‘You are having me on, Mister Barklice,’ said Pike, shaking his head. ‘You can see from here that the canal’s dodgy in this wind and rain. Once we turn off it into one of the sewers that lead to Deritend, you can start searching for our bodies, for we’ll never come out alive.’
Barklice ignored him and clambered down the embankment. They worked their way through a metal fence, repaired with barbed wire, and crossed carefully through rough and muddy ground to the canal’s edge.
Here they found a small huddle of shivering folk taking shelter among dripping bushes. Pike called a greeting, and several peered at them from the shadows, staves ready in some hands, dirks in other. Then one ventured nearer, had a good look at them, and turned to cry out to the others, ‘It’s Master Brief himself. And Mister Pike with him! Mercy be, but we’re saved at last!’
Others came running from the damp shadows and soon a gaggle of hydden, clutching their possessions and children, had gathered around them hopefully. Some nursed injuries, while a few seemed too infirm to be still on their feet.
To Jack they looked poor and downtrodden. The light of the hope that kindled in their eye on seeing Master Brief was the brightest thing about them.
‘Please lead us away from the city to safety!’ one implored. Others began to weep and wail.
Brief calmed them sufficiently to ask what had happened.
‘Nobody rightly knows,’ one of them replied. ‘We got word the Fyrd were coming to seal the gate, and that set up a panic and there was fighting when Fyrd actually arrived. We’re the lucky ones because we live near the gate and were able to get out . . . Please, it’s not safe for you to go into Brum, so stay with us, for nobody would dare harm you.’
Pike inquired, ‘You actually heard they were going to seal the gate?’
‘Everyone was running and shouting . . .’
‘It does sound like there’s a sealing order,’ said Pike grimly, ‘and you know what that means! It means blocking off certain of the tunnels, which will cause flooding and likely deaths as well if places can’t be evacuated. Work to do, Master Brief! We can’t dawdle here.’
Brief turned to the group of refugees and said, ‘My friends here and I have urgent business in Brum, but the safest place for you people to go is up-canal, not back down it with us. Lie low a few days and Pike here will send word up Northfield way to tell you when it’s safe to return. Good luck, my friends, but we must go now.’
‘You’re never venturing into the sewers, Master Brief?!’ insisted one of them, alarm rising in his voice. ‘The level’s so high on the canal itself that you’ll not get safely through into them. And if there’s backing up from the river to the east, you’re all going to be drowned!’
‘We must try,’ said Brief calmly.
They left the refugees to the mercy of the elements, and pushed on through towards the canal. They heard its uneasy, angry sucking sound before they finally saw it on the verge of breaking over its banks.
‘Barklice,’ growled Pike, ‘this does not feel good. Anyway, who’s going to be acting ferryman on a night like this?’
‘Old Mallarkhi is a personal friend of mine, and very rel
iable. As I said before, I left him clear instructions that I would be needing transport this afternoon, and he’s never let me down, just as I have never let him down!’
Barklice let out a soft call, like that of a female coot in season.
No response.
He tried again, a little louder.
Again no response.
‘Just as well,’ said Pike with relief. ‘We’ll now have to walk it, which is going to be a lot safer.’
There was a further horrible sucking sound from the canal below.
‘She’s regurgitating,’ said Barklice in a low voice, ‘and that means we’ll just have to wait but be ready. Our boat’ll be along once she spits back down. Be ready one and all, be ready, for the boat won’t be able to linger on a backing river!’
The canal sucked yet again, like water going down a vast plughole, and dragging everything in its wake.
‘Barklice, are you really sure this is a good idea?’ It was Brief expressing doubts this time.
‘Am I still alive after all these years of journeying, Master Brief?’ cried out Barklice, annoyed at being doubted. ‘Clearly, I am. Have we got back to Brum in good time? We have indeed. Do I try and do your job, Master Brief, or yours, Mister Pike? I do not! So, yes, I think it’s a good idea. Therefore you shall now sit and you shall wait, and you shall trust in my ability to get you where you wish to go in one piece, just as I shall trust in your common sense and co-operation in the final stage of our journey to Deritend – which will not be easy, and certainly involves risks, but is not helped one bit by your moaning, groaning and constant doubts. Do I make myself clear?’
With that, Barklice sat down with his back to them, and everyone else sat down too, suitably chastened and daring to complain no more.
63
OLD AND NEW
The hydden city of Brum lay just below the centre of modern Birmingham, whose human inhabitants went about their business in ignorance of the fact that one of the most historic cities in the Hyddenworld existed right under their noses.
Some parts of Brum were actually in the open air, visible to any human who cared to look, though not without great difficulty. These places were buried away in shadows, cut off by the projections and overhangs of buildings, or located around nearly inaccessible corners.