Читать книгу Dark Ages - John Pritchard - Страница 26
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Tilshead Tea-Rooms hadn’t changed a bit.
Sitting by the window, gazing out into the sunny village street, Fran felt her instincts fusing with the past. She might have come here last weekend, not four long years ago. She couldn’t help but straighten, every time she heard an engine – a hollow feeling growing in her stomach. A farmer’s truck would clatter by; the void would fill again. But she’d keep her hearing focused on the noise, until it faded: dispersed across the still air of the Plain.
The room was dark with polished wood: a refuge from the sunlight. Silence filled it, seeping from the panelling and beams. An antique clock ticked drily in the background. It seemed she had the whole place to herself.
She glanced down at her untouched plate. Her mouth felt dry, too dry for scones; her stomach much too sour for jam and cream. She poured herself a splash more tea, and turned her gaze towards the road again.
The proprietress had welcomed her with friendly, searching eyes. Fran sensed that she’d been recognized, but guessed the woman couldn’t place her face. That suited her just fine, of course: she didn’t want to talk. Just sitting at this window brought back memories enough.
Didn’t you use to come down with Indra and the others? The unasked question hovered as the cream tea was brought through. But Fran’s smile had been fleeting, and the other woman hadn’t pushed her luck.
The old clock kept on ticking in the corner.
An army Land-Rover bowled past; Fran’s pulse-rate leaped again. She thought about the last time she’d had tea here, along with Paul and several other Watchers. They’d just been starting on the scones when a packet of Hummvees rattled past outside. A moment’s startled silence; then Crash, thud, Bloody hell! and they’d all been piling out onto the pavement. She remembered that last glimpse she’d got: the mottled iron cockroach-shells, and lights like dim red eyes. But the vehicles were clear, and heading north towards Gore Cross: their dismal, diesel clatter fading slowly in the fields.
The Tea-Rooms had grown used to scenes like that.
She felt a quirky glimmer of nostalgia. Memory was a comforter, especially when it drew old friends around her. But as she sat, and watched the road, their grinning faces dimmed, the banter dwindled – leaving her among the empty chairs.
The shadow of the Hummvees seemed to linger, like a stain. Part of the bleak atmosphere that overhung the land. As if those evil armoured bugs had gone to ground somewhere.
She tipped her face into the light; it warmed her skin, but couldn’t reach her heart. Because now, of course, she knew what really lurked out there. Waiting for the dusk, perhaps. The rising of the moon.
She lowered her gaze, and sipped her tea … and wondered, very calmly, when he’d deign to show his face.
2
With afternoon now wearing on, she thought about some old haunts of her own. Points around the range where she had watched from. Places that still called to her, their voices zephyr-faint.
Other ghosts were waiting there. The shadows of her past. To stir them up would pass a little time.
Finishing her tea, she pulled Lyn’s jacket off the chairback. She hoped the lady wouldn’t mind about the untouched scones. Pausing at the door, she looked around the empty room. The ghosts were here as well, amid the dimness and the dust-motes. She tarried, as if waiting to be noticed. Then turned away, and left them to their unheard conversations.
Outside, the day was bright but fresh; she shrugged into the jacket’s fleecy warmth. The Black Horse down the street was where she’d booked in for the night. Perhaps she’d still be waiting here tomorrow. She had no way of knowing when he’d put in an appearance.
Perhaps he wasn’t coming back at all.
She glanced up and down the street, but Tilshead seemed deserted. Empty country slumbered all around it. Would she be relieved, if she had come down here for nothing? She almost dared to hope for such an outcome; then realized it would bring no hope at all. Tense though she was – not butterflies but hornets in her stomach – she knew she had to raise this ghost again.
She walked past Lyn’s parked car (blessing her again for the loan of it) and strolled on out of the village. The convoy route curved northward, but she took the westbound fork, towards Breach Hill. A lesser road, and quieter still, with hedgerows blocking off the Plain’s expanse. She passed the old brick water-tower, set back among the trees; a bird sang out in solitary vigil. But trees and bushes petered out before she reached the crest.
The place was as exposed as she remembered: just barren, windswept heath on either side. Cruisewatch cars would park here at the roadside, looking north across the dreary slopes of Imber. She halted with her hands deep in her pockets: gazing off towards Fore Down and Imber Firs. The breeze was stronger here, stirring her hair like unseen fingers.
She stood there for a while, but saw no movement. Nothing walked amid those miles of grassland. The dark, contorted copses kept their secrets. At length she turned, and started slowly back.
A sombre shape was waiting by the roadside: in the shadow of the trees, beside the tower. Fran saw him, and stopped dead. The hornets in her stomach bared their stings.
He watched her for a moment; then came forward. Her nerve-ends quivered briefly with the impulse to retreat. She overcame the instinct and stood her ground. And Athelgar himself seemed almost wary: approaching her with reverential steps.
He wore his grimy coat more strangely now: hitched up and wrapped around him like a shawl. More comfortable like that, she guessed. A closer imitation of the medieval cloak.
How weird this modern world must seem to him.
He dipped his head in greeting, but his eyes remained on hers. He had his warrior’s pride, she thought – whatever awe he felt.
‘Well met, my lady Frances.’
‘Fran,’ she said, as drily as her dry mouth would permit.
He nodded slowly. ‘Vrahn,’ he said: a soft, distorted echo. His rough and rustic accent was becoming more familiar – enough for her to register an oddness to the sound. As if it were a foreign word for him.
He paced around her thoughtfully. ‘I see that you are now dressed for the road.’ He sounded quite impressed as well as awed. She guessed he wasn’t used to girls in trousers.
His own dark clothes were dustier than when she’d seen him last: the chalkiness suggestive of much tramping round the Plain. ‘Have you found what you were looking for?’ she asked.
‘Perhaps.’ He turned away, looked back towards West Down. ‘The troops who muster round this place: more warriors of the king?’
‘Yeah.’ She tried to see them through his ancient eyes: their helms, and muddy livery, and horseless iron carts. ‘So what did they make of you?’ she went on curiously.
A faint smile touched his lips. ‘They have not seen me.’
The dust was in his hair as well; or was he turning grey before his time? The light found paler bristles in the shadow of his beard.
‘There is something in the wastes,’ he said. ‘The call is growing stronger.’ He fumbled in the pouch around his neck, and came up with a coin: the antique one he’d tossed, back at the crossroads. ‘I think that it is metal kin to this.’
Fran looked at it again, and saw how thin it had been worn: as if by years of slow, obsessive rubbing. He turned it in his fingers even now.
‘You haven’t been to get it then?’ she prompted.
‘I … will not go alone,’ he said – and glanced towards her.
She wondered what it cost him to admit that. A warrior’s pride would only go so far. For a moment she felt flattered; then second thoughts took hold, and gripped her hard. If he needed her along – a saint, as he supposed – what kind of evil powers did he need protecting from?
‘Where?’ she asked, her heart already thudding.
He turned away and pointed: at West Down, and the slopes that rose beyond it.
She felt a thrill of icy pins and needles. ‘Not in the dark … ?’ she ventured, trying not to sound appalled. I can’t do that, she thought at him. I won’t.
He shook his head. ‘The downs are sleepless, once the sun is set. I have crossed the tracks of things that walk in darkness. We must claim the thing we seek before the nightfall.’
The glimmer of relief was cold and faint. His words awoke the memory of shadows at her heels. She swallowed, wiped her mouth. ‘We can’t go on yet. Not until the flags come down. The soldiers will be moving round till then …’ Her mind raced onward, mapping out their course. The range was closed till five or so. How many hours of daylight would that leave … ?
‘Whose is the scarlet banner on the roads?’ he wondered.
‘It’s no one’s … Just a warning.’ She hesitated. ‘Your banner was the black one … wasn’t it?’
He looked at her, and nodded.
‘Rafen … ?’ she asked cautiously.
He searched her face. ‘I know we are unworthy. I ask that you will pray for our redemption.’
She hesitated, staring back. His grim expression tightened at the pause. But then he let it twist into a wry, self-mocking smile.
‘Nor would the Bishop do so.’ He turned away; then wheeled again towards her. His voice had been resigned and low, but now it rose in tone, and grew more bitter.
‘“What would your petition be?” he asked me. “Pray to kill and return alive. I cannot intercede for that. I will not pray for you.”’ He pointed as he said it; but Fran sensed he was mimicking this Bishop, and pointing at the shadow of himself.
She moved without thinking: grasped his sleeve. He looked at her askance, arm still extended.
‘What’s to forgive?’ she whispered.
‘Shinecraft. Murder. Treachery. You know what we have done.’ Gently now, he disengaged himself. ‘Our chronicle is ashes now, and we shall soon be dust.’
Again she felt those pricking pins and needles, but was afraid to ask him more. If she showed her ignorance too much, she’d give herself away. He might begin to think that she’d deceived him.
She’d never claimed to be a saint. But nor had she denied it.
A breeze crept through the summer leaves above them. The real world fell back into its place. Fran swallowed down the lump in her throat, and made a show of looking at her watch. Nearly quarter to five already.
By the time they’d got to Westdown Camp, the trackways onto Larkhill would be open.
3
They’d walked as far as East Down Wood before she tried again.
They were following a gritty road that cut across the contours to the north. The sinister plantation was a sunken field away – as hostile as a square of troops deployed on open ground. Shadows filled it, guarded from the sun. The croak of rooks came drifting from the trees.
Beyond, the empty grassland looked innocuous enough. She could see the distant copses to the south, where Greenlands was. So different to the gulf of night she’d fled across before, and yet the view still made her tense and clammy. Greenlands, though unseen, was an ominous presence: as repellent as some village with the Plague. No way could she go nearer, she might catch it …
(Or be caught)
More cawing from the rooky wood, as if to spread the word.
Light thickens … said a dry voice in her head: a trigger-phrase that brought the whole quote with it. Lines she’d learned while studying Macbeth, way back in blissful ignorance at school.
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.
Swallowing, she glanced towards the sun. The south-west sky was flushed with marigold. They had perhaps two hours.
Athelgar walked just ahead; his pace was slow but steady. Whatever he was searching for, he hadn’t got a fix on it as yet. At least there was a method to his mode of navigation – but it didn’t make her feel too confident. Whenever they’d come to a parting of ways, he’d simply flipped his coin to choose between them.
This way would take them east, to Prospect Clump: a high point on the road to Redhorn Hill. Fran turned to look the way they’d come; the dusty track smoked palely in the sun-light, quite deserted. She looked towards the wood again. The rooks were growing fainter, as the ragged block of shadow slid away.
‘Was it you who took the Raven, then?’ she asked – so suddenly, she caught herself off guard.
Athelgar glanced back at her, and nodded.
Necromantic power: that’s what Lyn’s book had said about it. Fran shoved her hands down deeper in her pockets – as if to brace herself against the throbbing in her belly.
‘And is that why you can’t rest?’
Again his pensive face came round. A shadow of perplexity had crossed it.
Fran gestured quickly, caught him up. ‘Please. I … just don’t know the whole of it. We don’t see everything.’
Ooh!, her conscience squealed at her. You fibber!
‘You know the power the Raven has,’ he said.
Instinctively she nodded, and he offered nothing further. On they trudged, uphill. The – silence of the Plain closed in: immersed them like an ocean. At length she had to break it, like she simply had to breathe.
‘How did you come to capture it?’ she said. Then: ‘Sorry …’ as she saw his sombre look.
But Athelgar just raised his hand. ‘Of course you do not know these things. I envy you that blessing.’
They kept on walking; he with his head bowed. She sensed him calling memories back up towards the surface: awaiting them like vomit from a sourness deep inside. Fran waited too, her own mouth dry and bitter.
‘You know I am from Wessexena Land,’ he said at last. ‘But in those days I bore arms for Holy Edmund, in the east. Edmund, king, as he was then. The Danes had taken York, and festered there. Edmund raised our sword-force to resist them. We heard tell of the Raven, and his black and evil power. Land-Waster, they called it. But we had faith in Christ, and this was stronger … we supposed.
‘Then the Raven came south. It over-shadowed all the Eastern English. Holy Edmund fell, and all his kingdom was laid waste. I wished to die beside him there, I had no use for life. But something in my dreaming called me back to my old country. It told me that our war was not yet done.’
Fran glanced at him; then looked ahead. The ragged shape of Prospect Clump loomed closer by the minute.
‘Our sword-force was the last one to escape. We fought for every place along the road: field and weald. They lost us at the last – and many men we cost them in the losing. But night was falling all across the land …’
She listened, fascinated. The Chronicle she’d read was a voice from the past; but Athelgar’s was speaking in the present – here and now. She almost smelled the mud and sweat. Her mind’s eye saw his shouting face, bespattered with bright scarlet.
‘The shadow spread like blood upon a cloth,’ he went on slowly. ‘Now only Alfred, king, held out against them. The Danes came from the west, and thought to trap him. But we were waiting there for our revenge.
‘We met with Edmund’s murderer, and killed him in his turn. We took the witching-Raven, and we used it. It flew for us at Waste-Down, and we held the slaughter-field. It has led us in our war-play ever since. And that is why men call us Ravensbreed.’
She was still chewing all that over when they reached the lonely junction. The single metalled carriageway stretched out in both directions. Southward, sloping down towards the Bustard vedette; and north, across the wilderness of heath.
Athelgar’s coin spun up again, and dropped into his palm. Fran quickly checked her watch. The Bustard was two miles away, at least. It was almost time to think about heading back. They’d be off-range before dusk, of course they would; but her skin had started crawling, and she knew it wouldn’t stop until they were well on their way.
‘This way,’ said Athelgar – and started northward.
She felt her stomach lurch. ‘We … need to be turning back soon,’ she said, as calmly as she could.
He glanced at the sun. ‘We have daylight enough.’
‘It’ll take us a while to get back, though …’
He turned, came back to join her. ‘We must find what is calling us. I think a brother-Raven has concealed it. Disclosing it, we may find him as well – and then the rest.’ He stared into her apprehensive face. ‘Five hundred years have passed since we were woken last from sleep. What danger is abroad, that we be summoned back here now?’
She hesitated; swallowed. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Nor I. So we must both be ready – lest it take us unawares.’
Adjusting his furled coat, he set off along the gently sloping road. Fran followed, with a last glance at the safe, familiar country to the south. Distant buildings slumbered in the sunny evening haze. Too far away already. Getting further.
The way ahead was desolate, a wasteland. Just north of the bedraggled clump, the route forked left and right. Each way looked as barren as the other. Fran stared up at the weathered fingerpost, as stark as an old gibbet. West to Market Lavington. Due north, across the heights, to Redhorn Hill.
Athelgar’s fingers turned the coin. Its silver glinted flatly, like his rings. He tossed and caught it; nodded to the right. The bleaker choice (of course, she thought). It seemed a road to nowhere.
They reached an open barrier, with a warning sign beside it. She paused to stare at it; then kept on walking.
DO NOT LEAVE THIS ROAD
DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING
IT MAY EXPLODE AND KILL YOU.
Unexploded Military Debris said a notice on the verge. Another showed beyond it, then another. Every fifty yards there was one waiting at the roadside. The effect as they trudged onward was progressively unnerving. Fran felt herself hemmed in and driven forward – as if this was a path through a minefield. The grim, forbidding aspect of the grassland was redoubled. She turned and looked behind them. The isolated signpost seemed as tiny as a matchstick.
Athelgar was flipping his coin repeatedly now: he seemed absorbed with it. She let him catch it one more time, then quickly touched his arm.
‘Listen … We have to turn back now. It’s miles to Redhorn Hill.’ And pretty soon, she knew, they’d reach the point of no return. No way from that but forward – through the wildest, deadest area of the range.
He offered her the coin, as if in answer. It gleamed in his half-gloved palm. She stared at it uncertainly.
‘It has come down crosses eight times out of ten,’ he said. ‘We must be close now.’
The sun was still a yellow ball; the western sky engorged with blazing light. How long before it started turning orange? We’re really going to cut it fine, she thought.
‘See,’ said Athelgar, and pointed. Startled by the sudden word, she looked along the road – and saw them waiting. Hulks of mangled metal, lying close to the verge: like the carcasses of monsters that had crawled out here to die.
Just three wrecked tanks, she realized. Used for target practice now.
Athelgar had stopped, and stood there, staring. ‘It is like the tale of Beowulf,’ he murmured.
