He slowed the horse and looked around him more carefully. The path was cut into a slope. To his left, to the north, was the hill down which he’d come, to his right the ground fell away, the steep slope broken by tree trunks and heavy undergrowth. This was when common sense came to his aid. There must be a valley nearby, and if there was a valley, it meant there was a stream or even a river, either of which he could use to confuse anyone if they were tracking him. The path was leading Joe down to the water.
He spurred the horse forward into a lolloping canter. It was a much rougher ride than his previous mount, but he knew that this one was fresh and that was what would count.
It did not take long for the path to level out beside a brook. Joe urged his horse into it. The animal skittered as the cold penetrated its forelocks, but he used his spurs again, and it stepped into the water and began daintily splashing as its hooves hit the gravel bed of the stream. He encouraged it to carry on walking downstream, but it was not happy. Ahead the trees thinned out, and he saw a ford with a road leading eastward up the opposite side of the valley. He could either carry on downstream or he could see where the road led. Not feeling confident of his ability to keep the horse to the water, he took the road. He let the horse have its head, and it thudded up the hill.
The trees dwindled as the road continued uphill. The horse, for all its enthusiasm, slowed as they reached the hilltop, allowing Joe to get his bearings. He had emerged from the forest, and far in the distance he thought he could see the chimneys of the house where he had been imprisoned. The forest seemed still and silent, but Joe was sure that by now, Eidolon was tracking him.
He could see fields, but the land before him was mostly grassland and forest. He could see no sign of habitation, although he looked for plumes of smoke or clearings. It didn’t matter. It was time to get moving. He wasn’t sure quite what he was going to do about shelter on a cold November night, but there were still several hours of daylight to be had, and he’d better make the most of them.
It was a shame that horses didn’t come with a fuel gauge. Joe had no idea how far his beast had come or how far it was going to be able to take him. He decided to keep to a steady trot with an occasional canter rather than trying to ride the animal flat out, even if it did mean he’d be giving any pursuers a chance to catch up with him.
The emptiness was eerie. No birds sang, the hedgerows were still and there was scarcely a breeze beyond that caused by his passage through the air. Back home, there was always noise—traffic, voices, snatches of music, shouts, cries, airplanes, rattling, banging, motors, lawnmowers, footsteps on pavement. Here, the only sound was the pounding of the horse’s hooves. Back home, sooner or later, he’d have come to a signpost or a postbox, a streetlamp—some sign of human occupation. Perhaps this world was so empty because it was part of Eidolon’s dream, but all the men visiting Eidolon must have come from somewhere. They must need to go somewhere. There had to be people in this place. Of course, there might be bandits who would see an isolated traveler and do away with him, especially a richly dressed man with an expensive sword and fur trimmings.
Behind him, the sun was sinking fast, and the horse was becoming restless, turning its head homeward as if considering making a break for freedom. It was a relief to come upon a deserted stone hut, large enough to lie down in, even if it was on the bare earth. What he was going to do now, with no food, no tinder box, nothing to give the animal, he wasn’t sure, but he was sure that it was time for him and the horse to stop.
He dismounted. He had no idea how to take the saddle off, nor was he sure that he’d be able to put it back on again, but it seemed mean to leave the saddle on the animal. He looked beneath it and found a set of buckles and straps. He undid them and the horse shook itself with relief as he lifted the saddle off its back. He lifted the reins over its head and wondered how to stop the animal from wandering off in the night. Then he saw a rusted iron ring screwed into the wooden frame that served as an entrance to the hut. He fastened the reins there and was relieved to see the animal began immediately cropping the tufty grass around the hut.
It was only when he sat that he realized how stiff he was. His arm still ached, and the cold was beginning to bite at his extremities. If Eidolon found him now, Joe would hardly be able to stand up, let alone defend himself. Running away was one of the crazier choices he could have made, but perhaps it had bought him a little time to work out what to do next.
Chapter Eighteen
Titan
At first, Joe dozed. There was nothing else to do—no meal to prepare, no means of making himself a fire, no teeth to brush. He thought of Mum always in the kitchen fiddling about with food, and Ben and Liesel bickering, all the usual routines and chores and comforts, and Nell. He cleared his mind. He had plenty to tell Nell. He needed to remember the route he had taken this afternoon. He had to forget about his own thirst and hunger and work out what to do next.
The shivering soon began. He rose and paced round the hut and the horse in widening circles, even though every bone and muscle creaked. It was better to be walking and aching than sitting, aching and freezing. As he walked, images of Eidolon flashed at him—in T-shirt and jacket at the nightclub, standing on the deck by the pool, in that doctor’s coat, in ruff and velvet for the banquet, in fur and velvet for the hunt. Joe tried to imagine him in the robes first of a vizier then of an executioner. It was easy to picture him with a sword raised high over some unfortunate victim’s bowed head, ready to sweep down. He’d smile just as he had done in the nightclub as he lifted possessions from handbags and pockets.
Whether Eidolon had followed Joe into his dreams or Joe was intruding on Eidolon’s made no difference. If Joe tried to break out of this dream, he was almost certainly exposing people to Eidolon in some way. Joe couldn’t work out how the guy had tracked down Smokey and insinuated himself as a doctor in the hospital, but he had. Then there was the great porcelain basin. The guy got everywhere.
But when he was in Joe’s world, he couldn’t be in his own. So the thing to do was to find out Dr. Dolon’s duty roster and work out when the registrar would be at work and when he would be kipping at the hospital. It was time to visit Smokey again.
Joe made his way back to the hut. The horse had lowered itself down to the ground. Joe stroked its neck and nose. Liesel had such a thing about horses, always clamoring for a pony and saying that he’d been prejudiced against the animals, but now that he’d had to depend on one, he felt a surreptitious fondness for this one as well as the bay that had resisted the boar so stoutly. The horse whickered. Joe positioned himself against its sturdy body. Curled together, the two creatures fell asleep.
* * * *
The hospital smelled simultaneously clinical and grimy. Joe waited, leaning on a wall in the empty hallway outside where Smokey was, until he was sure that no one was around. He walked onto the ward. It was dark and there was very little noise. He could only hear the hum of a heating system—what a relief to be warm again—the persistent but forlorn shriek of a telephone ringing and remaining unanswered and someone snoring and snorting in their sleep.
Smokey was in a four-bed ward, each bed curtained off. Joe eased through the curtain and stood by Smokey’s bed. He was still attached to a machine monitoring his heart rate and breathing, but he was not unconscious. In fact, his eyes were open—terrified, dark pools of panic. Joe approached his bed.
“Joe, is that you?” His whisper was hoarse. “Jesus, you scared me. I thought it was that creepy doctor again.”
“Can you see me?”
Smokey gave him a ‘what are you on’ look. “Yeah. ’Bout bloody time too. What the hell are you wearing, anyway? If you’ve got time to play fancy dress, you’ve got time to help me.”
“I’m not having anything to do with your stash. Whatever you’ve done with it, you’re going to have to sort it out on your own.”
“It’s too late. I’ve sold most of it, and the pigs have got what was left. They searched my room and they’ve found it, but that Dolon guy, he wants it too. And Charlie Meek is going to try to take a chunk out of me. I’m in deep shit.” Smokey was more indignant than repentant. The man in the bed opposite stirred, his snore cutting short then resuming.
“Where did you get hold of it in the first place?”
“In the villa. Didn’t you see it? Someone had wrapped it up and dumped it in the freezer—a kilo, wrapped up like it was coffee.”
“Why did you take it?” whispered Joe.
“Because when I saw what it was, I knew I could make a killing.”
“But didn’t you think that someone would notice if it disappeared? And get just a little bit shirty?”
“It was put there by a crook who deserved to have it nicked. What were they going to do? Run to the cops and say their coke had vanished? It was perfect.”
Smokey was so exasperating. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t seen enough mafia movies to know that stealing someone else’s gun or drugs or women or territory would lead to major trouble. But no, Smokey figured he was invulnerable.
Joe unhooked the chart at the foot of Smokey’s bed and began reading the patient’s notes. The man in the bed opposite stopped snoring. It was a relief, until he started making a much more worrying noise, a sort of gurgling, choking sound.
Joe left Smokey and checked out the really sick guy. He had been propped up in his bed and was struggling for breath, clutching his throat and making desperate retching sounds. Joe began pulling at cords and pushing buttons by his bed, switching on the light and a TV before finally locating an emergency buzzer.
He returned to Smokey. “I’ve got to go. There’ll be nurses all over this place in a minute or two.”
Joe shrank into a doorway as two nurses made for the ward, muttering about poor old Mr. Garside, that chest infection still playing up. Joe found the reception desk where they’d been sitting and checked the files. There was one for Smokey, fuller than the notes at the end of his bed. And even better, typed up with Dolon’s signature at the bottom. Then Joe noticed a white coat hanging on a peg. He slipped it on and snapped the poppers shut over his doublet and hose getup. Then he walked away, taking the folder with him, reading all the while. He walked down the stairs two floors and found a floor plan of the hospital. It was clear enough, but he couldn’t begin to work out where he’d find Dolon. He sat down on a bank of chairs in another hallway, dumping the file beside him. He stuffed his hands into the pockets of the white coat. And there was the answer. A pager.
He picked up Smokey’s folder again and checked the details more thoroughly. He found Dolon’s pager number and even better, a list of his duty nights when he’d definitely be in the hospital. Joe smiled. Dolon was at work. He walked briskly down a corridor and found another vacant reception desk.
There were three phones. First, he tried simply punching in the pager number. It didn’t work. But then he found an outside line and the pager responded. He put down the phone and walked away. No one stopped him. He left the hospital and headed home. He didn’t know what else he could do. He didn’t know what to expect.
He was walking down a quiet street when he dissolved. At first, he tingled, then he felt that he was disappearing, as though he was walking into invisibility—his nose, his fingers, his feet, then his chest and chin and arms—until he’d been absorbed into his body back home. He was in bed, lying face down under the covers, but instead of his usual singlet and pajama bottoms, he was naked. It was just after four in the morning.
Joe didn’t wake up until Ben was standing over him, shaking and tugging at him. “Didn’t you hear your alarm? It’s been going for the past half hour. Mum’s going mental.”
Joe groaned and shoved his head under the pillow. His head felt heavy and his body still ached all over. In fact, it ached more than ever. He winced as he shifted around and levered himself out of his pit. His right shoulder and upper arm felt as though they’d been wrenched out of position, and he was surprised to see that his right arm was still the same length as his left. His inner thighs felt as though hot skewers had been used to fasten his legs to his body. Standing up was a slow and hideous process of unfurling himself from the bed. He stumbled to the shower. Gradually, the heat and steam of the water worked on him, unknotting the tangled tendons and muscles that had never previously been so mauled. Today would definitely be a slow-motion day, but at least there was now a possibility that he would survive it.
Getting dressed, getting to the bus stop, getting to the school gates were all agonizing. Ben noticed and badgered Joe with questions that he shrugged off, his whole being concentrating only on maintaining some movement. Irritating Ben wasn’t intentional, but it did have its satisfactions.
School did not start well. He’d made it to his form room safely enough, but on the way to his first lesson, Charlie Meek, now accompanied by two different acolytes, accosted Joe in the corridor. The three boys shoved him against a wall, and Meek hissed at him, “Your mate is dead meat. I told him in the hospital and I’m telling you now. I’m the only one who deals here. You got that?” He opened up his jacket and showed Joe a knife handle. “You get in my way, you try selling on my patch, and I’ll cut you.”
Joe refused to lower his gaze, peering into Charlie’s pink-rimmed eyes with resignation, waiting for the oaf to finish mouthing off.
“You disrespecting me? You got that, dickface?”
“I have that, dickface. Are you finished?”
Charlie gave a Rottweilery snarl but his sidekicks restrained him. They waited until he was calm, then released him. Charlie twitched so that his jacket realigned itself with his sloping shoulders. He took off his baseball cap and smoothed his hair, then popped his hat back on. Joe wished he had a rapier again so he could take a quick stab at the track-suited bottom that swaggered away from him, not that anything he did today was going to be quick.