Soon after dawn I had my first piece of good luck. Beside the path was a pond; the earth around it had been churned into mud by cattle – and there were a dozen or more fresh tracks; the majority clear imprints of pointy shoes.
I could find no trace of a man’s boot. I thought Lukrasta might be with the witches, Alice his prisoner, but I knew Alice’s tracks well and saw no sign of her either. That made my heart drop into my boots – I’d hoped that in following the witches I would also find Alice.
Half an hour later, I faced my first threat. But it wasn’t witches.
As I passed a farm, a big farmer suddenly stepped out from behind a barn into my path. He had broad shoulders and well-muscled arms, but a bulbous belly hung down over his leather belt.
‘You a spook?’ he demanded belligerently.
I nodded.
‘Well, where were you last night when you were needed?’
He was angry and unreasonable, so I tried to placate him.
‘On my way here,’ I replied calmly.
‘Well, you’re too late to be any use to me. There were witches here last night – dozens of ’em. Helped themselves to three pigs and most of my hens. What are you going to do about it? You owe me compensation. It’s your job to stop things like that happening.’
Most people are nervous in the company of a spook. They think that we’re contaminated by the dark. But very occasionally we get angry reactions such as this. The man’s livelihood had suffered, and he wanted to take it out on someone. I looked young and I was smaller than him, so I would do.
With a snarl, he stepped towards me, hands outstretched, intending to grip my shirt front. I dodged to the side and ran towards the gate that led to the next field. I could hear his heavy boots pounding across the grass behind me. He was fast for a big man: he would catch me as I clambered over the gate.
I didn’t want to hurt him, but I had to do something. I spun quickly and rapped him twice with the base of my staff: one blow to his left shin; the other to his right forearm. He dropped to his knees with a groan, which gave me a chance to climb over the gate. I ran on, and when I glanced back he was still on the other side, shaking his fat fist at me.
Soon it started to rain, a cold wind blustering into my face from the west. If anything, this drove me on faster. I ran all morning, pausing to catch my breath only briefly. Twice I found the tracks of those I pursued. They were still together, and three or four new witches had joined the group.
The third time I found their tracks, it was at a crossroads. They were heading south. Liverpool seemed the most likely port for a boat to Ireland. Would they have already arranged passage? They’d been hunting Grimalkin for many months. It could well be that plans were already in place to return the Fiend’s head to Kerry.
By noon I was exhausted and desperately in need of rest, so I sat on the edge of a ditch in the lee of the wind and the rain, and nibbled at the cheese my master had given me. I remained there no more than five minutes. After slaking my thirst with the icy-cold water of a nearby stream, I ran on.
All morning, desperate thoughts had been churning around inside my head – mainly fears for Alice. Perhaps I’d been mistaken, and her pointy shoe prints had simply been obscured by those of her captors? That made me run even faster.
I’d also speculated about the Wardstone and what might happen on Halloween. What was it Mab had said about something that would change the world?
Finally, as the late afternoon gave way to evening, I ran on without thought, numb and weary, driving myself on in pursuit of my enemies. I thrust to the back of my mind the fear that when I caught up with them I would achieve nothing. It was all very well for Grimalkin to send me off after them; to say that only I could retrieve the Fiend’s head. But the odds against me were too great. How could I defeat so many? How could I hope to rescue Alice as well? I began to wonder if they knew that I was following them. Witches could long-sniff the approach of danger; this didn’t work against seventh sons of seventh sons, so I was safe from that, but of course they might have a scryer with them. Someone with even half the ability of Mab Mouldheel would see that I was on their trail. Then again, there were many non-magical means of protecting themselves against pursuit.
Once the witches knew that they were being followed, they might wait in ambush. A couple of them would peel off to the side and make their way back towards me. It would be impossible to tell that this had happened until it was too late.
That’s exactly what they did.
But there were more than two.
Five witches lay in wait for me.
The rain had stopped and the clouds were in shreds. The sun had dropped below the horizon; soon the light would begin to fail.
I was now moving at a slow jog. Before long I would have to stop and snatch a few hours of sleep. As I moved into a forest, I immediately sensed that something was wrong. It was too quiet. The birds should not have been roosting yet. Seconds earlier, the countryside had been filled with song. Now, in the deeper gloom beneath the branches, all was silent.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone running towards me from behind and to my left. Without breaking stride, I swung hard, widdershins, with the base of my staff. There was a dull thud, and the satisfying feel of contact with a skull. My attacker went down and I ran on.
However, I’d made a mistake and I knew it. I heard the voice of Grimalkin in my head; a fierce rebuke filled with scorn. Fool! Fool! that imaginary voice cried. That one will get up and attack again. You are greatly outnumbered. Kill or be killed!
That was what she would have said. Now I had one enemy behind me as well as many ahead. So I pressed the button on my staff to release its blade. Next time I would show no mercy.
Suddenly a long-haired witch burst out of a group of saplings close by; she attacked, shrieking like a banshee, scattering dead leaves with her pointy shoes. She wielded a blade strapped to a pole and I saw that her lips were flecked with foam. She looked demented; insane with hatred and anger. I barely had time to lift my staff, but somehow I parried her blade and then flicked it upwards so that it arced away from her.
She ran to retrieve her weapon, but I came round in a circle and attacked quickly, thrusting the blade of my staff under her ribs and into her heart. She screamed and fell, and I ran on. I needed to get out of the trees so as to see other attackers earlier.
When I emerged from the forest, three more witches were waiting. They were Pendle witches; their brown garb, long skirts and leather jerkins marked them out as Deanes. They waited in a line, their eyes watchful, confidently wielding their long blades. They looked much more formidable than the previous two.
‘You’re a fool to follow us, boy!’ the tallest one jeered.
All three began to cackle.
‘I’ll drink his blood!’ one cried.
‘I’ll take his thumbs!’ shrieked another.
The third one drew her finger across her neck. ‘I’ll cut off his head,’ she said softly, her voice hardly more than a whisper. ‘That will please our master!’
I thrust my staff blade-first deep into the soft ground and drew the sword and a dagger – the Bone Cutter. They were more flexible weapons.
The ruby eyes in the skelt hilt of the sword seemed to glow in the gloom under the trees. Then both eyes began to drip blood. The sword was hungry.
A second later the dagger also began to bleed.
I concentrated, waiting for them to make a move.
Let them come to me . . .
They did. All three attacked at once.
THE BATTLE WAS fast and furious, and I had no time to think. All I could do was react as they pressed home their attack. More by luck than skill, I managed to kill two of them: a slash with my sword against a neck; an upward thrust with the dagger, and it was done.
The third witch ran back into the wood.
I followed. She was fast, and by the time we came out of the trees again, I hadn’t managed to close the gap. She had thrown away her
weapon in the interests of speed and was heading back in the direction we’d been travelling. Then I saw the witch I’d previously stunned, perhaps two hundred yards ahead, also running away.
They were scared.
I came to a halt and sheathed my sword and dagger, waiting for a minute to regain my breath and composure. Then I turned to head back through the trees and reclaimed my staff. My whole body was trembling, a reaction to the fierce fight and having taken three lives. I felt more and more nauseous, until eventually I came to a halt and was violently sick.
It was getting dark now, so I decided to rest for a few hours. I found a copse on high ground – a little knoll that would give me a good view over the surrounding countryside. After a while a half moon rose above the eastern horizon and I used its pale glow to search for my enemies. Nothing moved. I was exhausted and settled down with my back against the trunk of a tree and my staff across my lap.
After a while I dozed, then awoke, suddenly terrified that I was under attack. But still there was no threat and the moon was much higher. Each time I nodded off, my sleep was deeper and longer, until finally I had a strange dream.
It was one of those dreams where you know that you’re dreaming. I was back at the farm. Mam was facing me across the hearth, smiling from her rocking chair. She looked exactly as she had the night before I left the farm to begin my job as the Spook’s apprentice. Her skin was pale, but her eyes were bright; apart from a few grey streaks in her black hair; she looked far too young to have grown-up married sons.
‘I’m proud of you, son,’ she said to me. ‘Whatever happens, I want you to know that.’
‘I’m sorry, Mam, if I let you down. But I could never perform that ritual. I couldn’t sacrifice Alice.’
‘There’s no need to apologize, Tom. It was your decision to make, and what’s done is done. Maybe the Fiend can be destroyed in other ways. Nothing is certain. At the moment everything hangs in the balance. You must draw upon your strengths: some came from your dad, because you’re a seventh son of a seventh son; others came from me, for lamia blood courses through your veins. You are already aware of some of those gifts, but more will become apparent as you grow up. There is one you need now; one that would not normally have emerged for many years. But I reached out to bless you with it earlier. It is a gift that a hunter needs – the ability to know the location of his prey!’
Mam began to rock back and forth on her chair, smiling at me all the while. So I smiled back, hoping the moment would never end. But the dream began to fade. I could still see her smile, and I wanted to hug her, but then she was gone . . . I woke up to the sound of a distant cock crowing and the eastern sky pink with the promise of sun. The dream was vivid and real in my mind. My head was whirling with thoughts. Was it more than just a dream? I wondered. Could it really have been Mam talking to me?
If it was, she seemed to have forgiven me for not being prepared to carry out the ritual she had decreed. She had also used the word ‘hunter’ – I would receive the gift that a hunter needs. In the first year of my apprenticeship she had told me that one day I would be the hunter; then it would be the dark that would be afraid.
Mam had been giving me important information. She said she had reached out to unlock the gift. Somehow it all made sense. That was why, lying in my bed in the Spook’s house, I’d had the strange feeling that something was wrong. And, yes, I’d known exactly which direction to take. My new gift had led me to the cottage where Grimalkin lay gravely injured. It was lovely to think that I might really have been talking to Mam, and for a while I was filled with hope. But as the seconds became minutes, the dream seemed less substantial; soon I felt it was merely wishful thinking. What was I doing fooling myself and wasting time? I sat up and cursed myself for sleeping right through the night. The witches would be even further ahead now. Wasting no time, I ate half the remaining cheese and set off west again. This time I didn’t run; I would save that for later. My legs felt stiff, and I contented myself with a fast stride to loosen them up.
I thought about Lukrasta again. He had abducted Alice – Grimalkin had been unable to do anything to stop him. What had happened when he attempted the ritual with the Doomdryte? And more importantly, what might Alice be suffering now? I thought fearfully. I felt helpless. He could be anywhere, and even if I could find him, what could I hope to do against such a mage?
By late morning I was getting worried. I hadn’t found the witches’ tracks again; I was now crossing meadows and rough pasture rather than following lanes and tracks. This meant they could already have turned and headed for the coast. I estimated that I was presently about four miles from the sea, heading south, somewhere between Formby and Liverpool.
I came to a halt, filled with uncertainty. Then, very suddenly, there was a flash of light behind my eyes and a pressure on my forehead – and I knew precisely where they had gone. It was something very similar to the feeling I’d had back in my bedroom in Chipenden – the conviction that something was terribly wrong. Now I felt that certainty again. I knew where the witches were – the direction they had taken with the Fiend’s head. This was surely the gift that Mam was talking about in the dream – the gift that a hunter needs: the ability to track a prey without signs, to pinpoint its location.
They hadn’t gone west to the sea. They were continuing south and were passing east of Liverpool. Where could they be bound? In my mind’s eye I tried to conjure up the maps I’d studied in the Spook’s library, all of which had perished in the fire. Beyond Liverpool lay the County border, and beyond that, county after county – over two hundred miles to the south coast.
That made no sense at all. They needed a port on the west coast to take a boat over the Irish Sea.
I began to run again. Wherever they were heading, I would eventually find out because I could sense their location in my head. For a while they seemed to have changed direction and were heading east, but after a few hours they veered back towards the coast and continued south again.
I came to a wide river, which I guessed was the Mersey: as I forded it, I wondered how the witches had managed to cross over. One possibility was that they had witch dams in place; in Pendle these were used to temporarily hold back running water. They would have had to make a detour east to where the river was narrower. That explained their earlier change of direction. The delay meant that I was closing in on them once more.
After a while, in the far distance, I saw a walled city with a castle and the tower of a cathedral. We were beyond the County border now and, again drawing on my memories of the Spook’s maps, I guessed that the city was Chester – though I’d never travelled this far south over land. If that were the case, it also had a river called the Dee.
Sure enough, I sensed my enemies head east again, no doubt to use another witch dam. I simply forded the river, which meant that I was drawing near to my prey. Beyond the city the witches turned directly west.
Soon I saw mountains ahead, and glimpsed the sea in the distance to the north. We seemed to be following a coastal plain, a wide strip of flat land between the mountains and the water. And now I was on a track that eventually gave way to a wide road. It was muddy, so I slowed down and walked on the grass verge. The occasional cart trundled past, its wheels adding to the deep ruts, but nobody gave me a second glance.
Eventually I came to a large sign that had been nailed to two posts proclaiming:
CYMRU
I remembered that word from my master’s maps. It was in another language: the name for the country that we called Wales. I was entering a foreign land, with its own customs, language and – no doubt – dangers.
I sensed that the witches were no longer moving; they had made camp for the night. I had two choices. Catch up with them now and attack under cover of darkness, or wait one more night and rest to gather my own strength.
I decided on a compromise.
I would rest for a while and then press on. I moved some distance from the road and settled down as best I could
. I didn’t have time to set traps for rabbits, so I finished off the rest of my cheese and drank some cold water from a stream. I intended to sleep for about three hours before setting off west again.
I awoke suddenly after just one hour, immediately fully alert. Although my physical senses told me nothing, I had a sudden flash of light inside my head and a pain above my nose.
Something was amiss. I sat up quickly and stared into the darkness. The moon was covered by clouds: I could see nothing and hear nothing. But danger was out there and it was creeping towards me.
I came up onto my knees and reached for the sword that I had placed on the grass beside me before lying down to sleep. My gift was telling me precisely where my enemy was.
A witch was crawling stealthily towards me; she was now less than ten feet away.
No, not the Destiny Blade, I decided; a spook’s primary weapon was more suited to dealing with this threat. So, leaving the hero sword where it was, I seized my staff, released the blade at its tip, ran straight towards the witch and stabbed downwards, piercing her back directly over her heart and pinning her to the ground. She had no time to scream, but I felt her body twitch beneath my staff, and she gave a little gasp.
I knew instantly that she was dead: the inner certainty I had of where she was simply ceased. It went out like a light. I wondered if it was the soul or life force I could detect? Whatever it was, I knew that I’d put an end to her.
I fumbled for my tinderbox and lit the candle-stub I always carry. I looked at the dead witch, holding the light close to her face. I was almost certain that she was one of those who had fled after the attack the previous day. That made me wary. Perhaps the other one had come back too?