Dark Mist Rising (9 page)

He was an idiot.

But I needed him.

He was enjoying this.

I huddled in the tiny space, scratched by twigs, the reek of blood still in my nostrils and the real thing clotting on my aching temples. Tom returned in a few minutes. ‘This way, Peter.'

He led me along the lane, within the deep shadow of the hedgerow. When we left the shadows, Tom went first, running across fields silvered by moonlight. We ran crouched low, and once I stumbled and sprawled flat. Something small and fast skittered away from me in the half-grown hay.

We passed a barn but Tom whispered, ‘No, that's the first place they'll search for you.' We kept moving until I could go no further. My legs simply refused to carry me. I collapsed onto the ground beside a ditch.

‘Peter, you have to go on!'

‘I ... I can't.'

I felt him crouch beside me and then he heaved me onto his great shoulders on top of the pack he already carried and set off.

‘Put me down! You ... you can't ...'

He carried me another hundred yards. He was immensely strong, but he could not have kept it up much longer. This was a theatrical bit of business, a display of his great strength. When I wriggled off his shoulders he was panting heavily, and I was shamed into staggering forward on my own. Which may have been what he intended in the first place.

The full moon shed clear, cruel light. Once I heard shouting in the distance. Soldiers? Had the carnage in the cottage been discovered?

For the first time, I wondered why Shadow was not with us. Or was he, trailing along somewhere behind? Had the dog taken injuries I had not, in my own pain, even noticed?

‘Shadow ...'

‘Don't try to talk,' Tom said ‘We're almost there.'

‘There' turned out to be a cave on the side of a hill, its entrance hidden by bushes. Inside, it was so dark that I could see neither the cave's dimensions nor its interior. I had no cloak with me, nothing to lie upon, but Tom produced one from his pack. ‘Sleep,' he said softly, suddenly tender as a woman.

I slept.

Sunlight filtered weakly through the brush in front of the cave. Sitting up, I saw it was about the size of a cottage kitchen, but roofed low with irregular rock. A man could not stand upright. In the back, water dripped slowly down the rock, and the space smelled dank. Rocks and logs had been dragged inside to form a table and stools, such as children might make for their play. Tom Jenkins's pack lay open and its contents scattered on the ground. He'd been several days at high pasture with his father's sheep, he'd told me, and the pack held flint and steel to strike a fire, a thin blanket, small cookpot, tin tankard, pewter spoon, salt in a twist of paper. The butchering knife was gone. The
gun
he'd taken from the cottage leaned against the cave wall, but I did not know how to shoot it and in any case I had no
bullets
.

Shadow stirred. ‘Hey, boy, hey ...' I could barely get the words out. My throat was swollen, my mouth dry, my head throbbing. Every muscle ached. Worse, I didn't know what to do next. Where was I? Would Tom Jenkins return, and if he did, would he bring with him savage soldiers? If the Young Chieftain had offered a reward for the man who had killed four of his soldiers ...

The thought was like a hot sword in the ribs. Immediately I crawled out of the cave, blinking in the sunlight, to get away as fast as I could. Tom Jenkins, alone, strode towards me, swinging a full water bag.

‘Good morrow, Peter! How are you today?'

How was I? No simple answer suggested itself, but Tom didn't wait for one anyway.

‘I have water and food. Here, back into the cave – you can't come out till night. Almsbury's swarming with savages. Pepper my arse, but they look fierce! Here, you best eat.'

He was as cheerful as if returning from a morning stroll through a garden. Not sure what else to do, I retreated back into the cave. If Tom had set soldiers coming this way, he was more than capable of holding me here until they arrived. I possessed only my little shaving knife, which was about as dangerous as a woman's sewing needle. The savages had not even bothered to take it from me. So I sat with Tom in the dank gloom of the cave and drank the fresh water he'd brought in his water bag, ate the good bread and cheese, listened to him chatter as he tore into his own breakfast.

‘Got the bread from Agnes Coldwater. She's been after me to lie with her for a month or more. Too ugly, though it's a pity because she bakes the best bread and pies and sweet cakes in Almsbury. Good, ain't it? I'm going to have to stay here with you in the cave today, you know. Pretty soon my father'll miss me, the doddering old bastard! We used to play here when I was a boy, me and John Crenshaw. John died of plague three years ago. We pretended to be highwaymen and ... Here, dog, you want some cheese, boy? Shake paws, then!'

Shadow did not shake paws. His eyes fastened on the cheese and he went utterly still, as if to ensorcel the cheese, or Tom, or both.

‘He don't shake paws? Well, we can cure that, can't we. Here, boy, sit!'

Shadow was already sitting. Tom began to teach him to shake paws, using bits of cheese, talking all the while. Tom's energy was boundless. It wearied me, already weakened by pain and fear. The good food stretched my belly taut as a drum. I had just woken up, but drowsiness took me, and despite myself, I fell back asleep.

A dream came.

Not the dream of the crowned figure moving through the Country of the Dead. This was worse, a dream I had had two years ago and hoped to never have again, a dream of my mother:

She sat in her lavender gown with a child on her lap. I was
both the watcher and the child, safe and warm in my mother's
arms. She sang to me softly, a tune that I heard at first without
words. Then the words became clear, and Roger the watcher's
blood froze. ‘Die, my baby, die die, my little one, die die ...' But
Roger the child listened to the monstrous song and nestled closer,
a smile on his small face and the pretty tune in his ears. ‘Die,
my baby, die die, my little one, die die ...'

I woke with a great cry. Shadow crashed through the underbrush and into the cave, looking for whatever had attacked me. A moment later Tom stuck his head in.

‘Peter, what is it? A bear?'

‘No, I ... I ...'

‘No bear?' He crawled into the cave. He carried the savage's
gun
. The sight of it banished the last of the terrible dream.

‘Tom, you can't shoot that thing out there. It makes a great noise – soldiers will come running from miles away.'

‘I know,' he said cheerfully, ‘but I wanted to practise holding it. There might come bears. I can shoot it once we're in the Unclaimed Lands. I took metal pellets from that savage in the cottage – that's what the weapon shoots, you know, big metal pellets – and I—'

‘No! You cannot shoot that
gun
. Not even in the Unclaimed Lands.'

‘Sure I can. It ain't hard. See, you open this small chamber here and—'

‘Tom, you
cannot
.'

He grinned at me. ‘Do you always worry so, Peter Forest? Damn, but you're tetchy as a girl. Although not so pretty. Here, have some more of Agnes's cheese.'

I didn't want some more of Agnes's cheese. Tom pointed the
gun
at me, sighted along it as if along a tautly strung bow, and said, ‘Kwong!' He laughed.

I put my head into my hands.

So it was almost a relief when night came and Tom led me out of the cave. Unfortunately, the weather had changed. A cold drizzle fell and the countryside was so black that I could see neither Tom nor my own feet. But he seemed to know where he was going. He took my hand and led me, stumbling, away from the cave.

‘Tom, we can't travel in this. It's too dark.'

‘Just wait,' he said, and pulled me around the side of the hill. ‘Stay here.'

I shivered in the rain while he vanished into the black-ness. Several moments later I saw a light bobbing along. It was a small lantern, a single thick candle encased in a glass housing, with holes on each side for air. Tom said triumphantly, ‘Surprise! I got the lantern from Agnes this morning when I got the bread and cheese. I hid it to surprise you. Ain't you pleased?'

I was apprehensive. ‘If soldiers see a light—'

‘Oh, piss pots! In this rain they can't see nothing. I daresay they're all inside anyway, fucking our girls. Give you six to one odds on it. Peter, you surely can ruin a surprise.'

‘I'm sorry, Tom. I am grateful, only I think—'

‘You think too much,' he said shortly.

‘I merely—'

‘I daresay you would not have thought to ask Agnes for a lantern.'

It seemed best to mollify him. ‘No, I would not have.'

‘What do the savages want you for, anyway?'

It was the first time he had asked. I had prepared an answer designed to both fit whatever he might have heard in Almsbury and to mislead him. ‘They think I am kin to the man who led that raid upon Wellford and killed three of their number. They wish to find him through me.'

He stared at me, his eyes widening. Rain ran, unheeded, from his hair and over his face. ‘Someone led a raid on the savages?'

‘Yes. In Wellford.'

‘Where is that?'

‘I don't know.' I had made up the name.

‘And the raiders killed the savages and got away clean?'

‘So I heard.'

‘By damn, I wish I'd been there!'

He seemed to have lost track of the main idea. I said, ‘Someone described the leader of the raid to the savages and said that the man had a young cousin with one hand, so they thought it was me.'

‘But you told them naught about your cousin, right?'

‘He's not my cousin,' I said patiently. ‘He is no relation to me.'

‘Oh.' His voice held disappointment. And then, ‘How did you lose your hand?'

For this too I had prepared, devising the least interesting explanation I could think of. ‘I misjudged while splitting wood with an axe.'

‘Oh,' he said, clearly disappointed a second time. ‘I thought perhaps you were having an adventure with your cousin. Come on, then!'

I followed his great bulk through the rain, trying my best to keep within the jiggling little light of the lantern. Shadow followed me. We began the long slow climb towards the Unclaimed Lands, from which a few days ago I had descended as a prisoner.

‘You're amazing, the way you can do that,' I said, and there was sincerity mixed in with my flattery. I did not point out that he could just as well have lit the lantern anew with his flint and steel.

‘Well, I do think I'm pretty fair at it,' Tom said.

‘You are.'

‘Three to one odds that not even your cousin could do better!'

‘I'm sure not.' There was no dissuading him about my adventurous cousin. The idea had caught Tom's fancy, and therefore to him it was fact.

‘What is your cousin's name again?'

‘George.'

‘Yes, that's right. George could do no better.' Tom smiled at his embers, protected by a large flat rock suspended above them on stout twigs, while I fell asleep in the rain. A long wet sleep, to awake again at twilight, eat a cold meal and stumble after Tom. Still, while Shadow was with me, catching small game and lying beside me, I was less fearful than I might have been. And the bad weather covered our trail and made pursuit less likely. Or so I thought.