Harvest (58 page)

He glanced at Slaeke Sinistral but saw no clue in his eyes.

He heard the distant roar of surf and smelt the salt in the air, mixed with the smoke of the fire.

It was Samhain, the end and the beginning of things.

He had seen a township die and that was the beginning of the end of days.

What then was wise?

Death would be just and seen to be strong.

Mercy right but weak.

Blut decided that on this occasion compromise was best.

It was Samhain, and a little mercy at such a time should be shown. But resolution too.

So he ordered that Quatremayne be put in a small boat on the morrow and put to sea where the elements and his wyrd could decide what to do with him. ‘The morrow be damned!’ cried two
sailors from Carne. ‘We’ll do it right now.’

And that was best of all! They took the General out to sea until they were clear of the surf and shoved him into a skiff. They set his sail for the open sea, wished him well of the night and
watched as his craft took him into the darkness and past wild Nare Head.

As for the other Fyrd who were still alive, they were sent packing along the cliff path without a light towards Portloe, where folk don’t take kindly to strangers who wander in from the
dark and look like Fyrd. Not kindly at all.

T
he crowds of locals who had come in answer to the Beacon’s flame began dispersing at eleven, an hour before the season’s turn, when
October became November, and Samhain officially began.

They returned to their humbles and families to stoke their fires, begin their feasts and celebrate the last harvest of the year.

But up by the Beacon, which smouldered still and gave out a pleasant smoky warmth, a very different kind of Samhain began.

It was one dominated by Bedwyn Stort, but very strangely so.

He paced about and around the beacon, restive and uneasy, looking to the stars for inspiration, indifferent and silent to any approach from his friends.

‘It’s the gem,’ murmured Barklice, ‘he knows he has less than an hour to find it but I think he has no idea where it is. I have seen him like this before. He is seeking
inspiration and it’s best to let him be!’

After a while, however, Katherine thought differently.

‘This is Samhain, Barklice, time for family and friends. Not a time to refuse to talk to others and wander about on the half-lit edge of things.’

‘Even if time’s running out for the Earth and all of us?’ said Jack. ‘What happens if he doesn’t find the gem?’

‘
You’ve
got too much on your mind, Jack!’ replied Katherine mysteriously as she turned from the firelight and called out, ‘Stort!
Stort!
’

He might have escaped had she not run out into the shadows after him and grabbed his arm.

‘Leave me!’ he muttered irritably. ‘I have work to do whilst you others . . . you others . . .’

‘We others have family and friends,’ she said gently, hugging him and not letting go despite his struggles, ‘and you think you have not?’

‘Maybe,’ he admitted.

‘We’re all your friends.’

‘You are,’ he conceded, breaking free, ‘but—’

‘But what?’

‘I . . . she . . .’

He stared at the stars as his voice trailed off helplessly.

‘You’re worried that Judith won’t come?’

‘Humph! I am worried that she
will
come and that tonight of all nights I have nothing to give her. Added to which, I . . . do . . . miss her.’

‘She’ll come,’ said Katherine, hugging him again.

‘Don’t tell the others this,’ he whispered in her ear, ‘but I don’t know where the gem is.’

She laughed.

‘Barklice has already guessed that! He says you’re seeking inspiration. Maybe it’s not in the stars but in what Samhain means.’

‘What does it mean?’

They turned together and looked back towards the others, caught as they were in the light of flickering flames, the Beacon to one side.

‘Family, belonging, love, shedding, the time of darkness and deep thought.’

‘All those things,’ he said quietly, a new peace descending on him. ‘I sometimes think Barklice knows me best of all.’

‘He loves you, Stort, as we all do.’

‘That’s all very well, I daresay, but it is not helping me find what I need to!’

‘No? I wouldn’t be so sure.’

‘Well . . . just don’t tell that Sinistral that I have no idea . . . or Blut . . .’

‘Sometimes you need others, that’s also what Samhain’s about. There are things we can’t harvest by ourselves.’

‘Humph!’ muttered Stort again, but happily now. ‘Maybe it’s like the Embroidery, I just have to stop trying so hard.’

‘Very good, Stort! You’re learning at last! Now . . . I’d better get back to Jack, there’s something worrying him and I don’t think he quite knows what it is or
what to do about it. When you’re ready . . .’

‘I’ll join you soon and meanwhile hope that inspiration will come.’

Then he added diffidently, ‘Do you really think
she’ll
come?’

‘She will,’ said Katherine lightly, not looking back.

He watched after her, saw her join the others, breathed more deeply and easily than before.

‘Where are you?’ he asked no one in particular.

Where are you, Bedwyn Stort?
the stars replied.

Jack had never really met his mother Leetha, nor her two sons, and at first he did not feel he was ready to do so.

Arthur felt more like family to him than they did, for he and Margaret and Katherine had been the only family he had even known, Woolstone his only true home. The others seemed like imposters
and he did not know how to begin talking to them.

Though it was in Leetha’s nature to break the ice, that night, with the old man called Arthur that Jack obviously loved near his end, she could not see a way to do it easily.

She looked sideways at Jack, as he at her. He liked the look of her, she of him. It was Katherine who finally saw the truth of things and made things happen.

‘It’s
time
,’ she told him as his lost family stood about not meeting each other’s eyes. Adding in a whisper, ‘It’s all so blindingly obvious, Jack, and
quite exciting.’

‘What is?’ he said gruffly, staying close, terrified she would leave him. ‘And it’s time for what?’

‘Who he is, for goodness sake.
Look
at him.’

But Jack turned away, pretending to tend to Arthur.

He was discovering something that was hard to take in, almost impossible, in fact, and that was the cause of his fear.

But he glanced at Herde Deap again and whispered, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘I do,’ she said.

‘He doesn’t look like me,’ he said.

‘Oh yes, he does. Come
on!
He won’t bite.’

It was strange enough that Leetha his mother was there, smiling a smile he remembered from long before the White Horse came and brought him to Englalond. Now he saw it properly, her smile was
like home to him and he was afraid of the emotions it raised.

‘You’re shaking!’ said Katherine.

‘I’m not and he
doesn’t
.’

But Herde Deap did.

He looked more like Jack than Jack himself: same build, same hair, same eyes, same voice.

Same hands, one of which reached out and which Jack automatically took.

Deap didn’t say anything for the first seconds, but when he finally spoke he said everything.

He had Leetha on one side and Borkum Riff on the other and he said, ‘Jack, this is your mother and this your father and I’m Herde Deap, your . . .’

‘I know who you are,’ said Jack, ‘you’re my . . .’

Twin.

‘I know who you all are,’ he said, trying hard to feel nothing because to feel anything would be to feel it all.

But it wasn’t possible.

What he felt came as a tidal wave and he stood before them, with his eyes filled and a hand reaching for Katherine’s until Leetha stepped forward and did what she had longed to do every
day since she had to send him away when he was little for his own safety. She held him tight and then tighter, and she wept the tears of years’ loss just as he finally did.

‘I know who you are,’ he said again because right there, right then, for the first time, he did and in saying it he finally knew himself as well.

Borkum Riff smiled his dark smile. Their real meeting could wait. It was enough for them to shake hands and for Herde and Jack to find they liked each other and might find a way to become
friends.

A little later Jack went over to Slew, Leetha’s other son and so his half-brother, where he stood with Sinistral.

They too shook hands but there was no hope of amity, not then. Slew had killed Master Brief. Slew was the enemy. Jack had beaten Slew in a fight in Bochum and there was about their handshake the
sense that one day there would be a second bout and perhaps a different result.

But Leetha, in the centre of them, ignored all that. She had her boys and the love of her life, who was Riff, by her. If she could have danced in the ashes on the slopes of the Beacon she would
have done so. As it was she laughed with pleasure and they laughed too.

This was their Samhain.

Niklas Blut too had rarely been happier in his life. To see his Lord Sinistral up and well and nearly himself again was a joyous thing.

‘Old and bent,’ said Sinistral, who was thin and stiff these days.

‘Not bent, my Lord, but on the way,’ Blut replied.

‘You always did tell the truth, Blut. That’s why I had you come to work with me all those years ago.’

‘It was, my Lord.’

‘And how is being Emperor suiting you?’

‘Interesting, except, as you well know, I am not Emperor, just your stand-in until you are ready again. That was our agreement, I think . . .’

‘Did anyone guess?’

‘Igor Brunte did. Emperors like you don’t abdicate, they die, one way or another.’

‘I do not wish to go back to Bochum, Blut. Like Quatremayne, it became corrupt.’

‘I have thought of that, my Lord. Perhaps we should move the Imperial Quarters to Brum, city of your birth?’

‘Do it,’ said Sinistral simply.

‘So be it,’ replied Blut. ‘But first we’ll have to remove whatever Fyrd the General left in charge of the city, though I suspect that its citizens are already doing so
themselves.’

Festoon joined them.

‘Tell me,’ said Sinistral, ‘will your people like me or loathe me?’

‘Both,’ said Festoon. ‘But it will help if you wear spectacles.’

Sinistral look puzzled and then smiled.

‘Ah, Brummish humour.’

‘You should know, my Lord, you were born there.’

‘Now I shall strive to die there.’

‘Perhaps, my Lord Sinistral, perhaps!’ said Blut.

Later, as the midnight hour drew near, when much comes to fruition that is sown in the seasons gone by, Stort finally joined them and someone dared say, ‘Well, Stort, and
what about the gem?’

‘I have every confidence,’ said Stort, still evasive, ‘that its moment will come!’

But he could not hide the fact of his eyes restlessly searching the cloudy night sky as if hoping the clouds would part and an immortal hand proffer the gem that had eluded him so long.

‘I confess I am baffled,’ he told them. He was at last willing to admit, having thought long and hard about Katherine’s comment about needing others, especially at Samhain.
‘I know it’s here but exactly where I cannot say. I don’t suppose, Lord Sinistral, that
you
know anything about the gem?’

‘Such as?’

Stort shrugged and said, ‘Well, I suppose any scrap of information might help. You did know ã Faroün, did you not?’

‘I did.’

‘Did you know he was not of Arabic origin?’

‘That too. He told me when he brought me here.’

‘You have been here before?’ asked Stort, surprised and excited.

‘On this very spot. Also on the night of Samhain, a great many years ago.’

‘Celebrating?’

‘Yes.’

‘My Lord,’ interrupted Blut, ‘you are being obtuse. I think what Mister Stort is asking, or trying to, is simply whether or not you know what your great mentor did with the
gem?’

‘Well, of course I do, Blut, because he did it here when I was standing next to him.’

‘He did
what
!?’ cried Stort and Blut together.

‘Disposed of the gem. He felt the time had come for him to part with it.’

‘You saw it?’

‘I did.’

‘You touched it?

‘Ah . . . no . . . it is not for ordinary folk to do that. It requires someone rather special, with a heart that is purer than mine.’

‘What did ã Faroün do with it?’ asked Jack.

‘Did he bury it?’ wondered Katherine.

Sinistral looked around at them all, enjoying himself.

‘No, he didn’t bury it.’

He signalled Stort to come and stand by him. The two were the same height.

‘He
threw
it,’ said Sinistral.

‘Threw it?’ repeated Stort. ‘Where?’

‘There,’ said Slaeke Sinistral softly, taking his arm and pointing at the racing clouds before them. ‘
There!
Why not try it for yourself?’

He bent down and picked up a small stone from the earth at his feet and gave it to Stort with a smile.

‘Throw it as hard as you can towards the sky, as ã Faroün did, and you will see that it is not so hard to find where the gem of Autumn is.’

They had all gathered round for midnight and fell silent as Stort pulled back his arm to throw.

‘Hard,’ instructed Sinistral, ‘and high!’

The stone was dark and small and they could not see it as it flew from Stort’s hand until, by some trick of the light perhaps, its flight began to leave an arc of tiny stars, one following
after the other in a myriad that seemed to open up the sky and part the clouds and show that, where the moon shone bright, the White Horse and its rider waited.

The stone’s trail of stars fell slowly to the ground as the White Horse, which galloped faster than time itself, flew towards them such that when its two front hoofs touched the ground and
the Shield Maiden riding it hauled in the reins, the stone fell between its feet.