The Turnarounders and the Arbuckle Rescue (48 page)

Ralf was just contemplating Shunning her again when Brindle began to teeter on the sty’s edge. Cabal barked excitedly but it was Astrid who lumbered towards her. The old dog’s eyes, though rheumy, were filled with purpose. Years of abuse and near starvation made their way to the front of her doggy brain. Astrid rose on to her hind legs and with her two forepaws gave the wobbling woman a sharp push. Brindle shrieked in anger and frustration then fell backwards into the food trough.

‘Brindle’s in the pigswill!’ Charlie Duke squealed, deliriously.

Ralf passed Alice the bag containing Brindle’s document stash and notebook. ‘We’ve got to go and find Alfie. Can one of you take this to Burrowes or Sergeant Minter at the Hall? It’s all the information they’ll need to send Brindle straight to jail.’

‘Charlie’ll go,’ Alice replied, handing it over.

Ralf nodded ‘As quick as you like, okay?

Charlie gave a final breathless hiccup, wiped the tears of laughter from his face then took off.

‘They’ll never believe you!’ Brindle tried to yell after him but her voice was a weak gurgle.

‘What should we do about her?’ Valen asked.

‘Shut her in the kennel,’ said Ralf firmly. ‘Astrid, Alice and the others can stand guard until Minter gets here.’

Two long Shifts and they were on the Dark Ferry Road. On their right, cows grazed serenely in lush green fields. Across them, faintly, they heard the church clock strike one. To their left was Chax Forest, a wall of shadow, deep and forbidding, separated from the road by an eight-foot barbed wire fence. Hanging on it, a stark warning notice stopped them in their tracks:

Ministry of Defence

Live Ammunition!

DANGER OF DEATH

No Trespassers.

‘Wolf?’ Leo ventured.

Ralf looked at the expectant faces of his friends. ‘We have no choice,’ he said.

A cloud covered the sun and Leo’s face was in shadow as he nodded grimly.

Valen pushed her wild hair out of her eyes and grinned. ‘Well come on then,’ she said. ‘We’re running out of time.’

Shocked at their trust in him and in awe of their bravery, Ralf took a deep breath.

‘Go on Cabal!’ he urged. ‘Find Alfie!’

‘This must be it!’ Valen exclaimed, when the dog nosed off the road. ‘Alice said it was around here and Cabal’s got a scent.’

In the few minutes they’d been looking, more clouds had drawn in, rolling across the sky like a vast black wave. Frowning in the half
-light, Ralf followed Cabal off the road and into the bushes around the fence. ‘I can’t see,’ he said. ‘Have you got your torch, Leo?’

Leo had. He directed the beam into the undergrowth. It illuminated an arrow drawn in chalk at the base of an old elm tree. ‘Clever Alfie!’ Valen exclaimed with surprise.

‘Show us, Cabal!’ Ralf commanded. ‘Good boy!’

Cabal spent a moment sniffing at the grass verge, darted into the bushes and disappeared behind them.

‘Cabal?’

For a second it seemed as though the dog had been swallowed by the woods but then, to their relief and surprise, he appeared, panting – on the other side of the fence. The three rushed forward. It took a second’s scrabbling about in the undergrowth to locate the hole. A straight slit, so neat it could only have been achieved with cutters, had been sliced into the wire.

They exchanged worried glances but none of them spoke. They didn’t need to. Ralf pointed. A stub of crumbling white, the remains of Alfie’s chalk, was crushed into the ground by the side of the fence hole. He was in there. And if they were right, so was Charles Hart. There was no question that they would go on.

Much later, when Ralf looked back on it, his rational brain told him the events of that fateful day took no longer than that – just twenty-four hours. But there, in the whispering shade of the woods, it seemed time stretched, pulled out like an ever extending elastic band. It felt as though they would be there forever.

They crept forward through dense undergrowth along a narrow track but, after a minute or two, they entered the forest proper. Tall pines gave way to deciduous trees that towered over them, making them small and vulnerable. Ralf’s natural inclination was to hurry, but they were hampered by deep trenches in the forest floor, which they had to Shift over or climb. Everywhere they looked were jagged craters, sandbagged bunkers and yards and yards of barbed wire. Sections of the wood had been destroyed completely by artillery fire and craters had been blasted into the ground to fill with rainwater and mud. Around them the trees were bent, broken, splintered and scorched. It was a stark reminder of the type of destruction that might follow if they weren’t successful.

They continued warily, picking their way through shards of shrapnel and shell casings. All the while, Ralf kept his eyes on Cabal, who darted left and right, sniffing the ground, focused only on Alfie’s scent trail. Ralf’s mind was a jumble of worries and his stomach churned at thoughts of Alfie and the danger he might be facing but he fought to keep his attention on the problem at hand. The forest looked deserted but it was possible there were men on manoeuvres and they kept their ears pricked for sounds of movement.

They were deep into the forest when Cabal stopped dead at a barbed wire fence. He growled and barred his teeth when Ralf tried to walk past him. It was only when Leo spotted the broken tin sign concealed in the grass that they understood the reason for the dog’s distress. A skull and crossbones, white on red, warned
‘DANGER! MINEFIELD!’
It had been hacked from the wire and, from the looks of the boot prints all over it, deliberately trodden underfoot.

Valen gave a low whistle as she examined the wire. ‘This is freshly cut,’ she said. ‘Gadd and Oyler are really serious about not being followed, aren’t they?’

They moved on, giving the pitted area a wide berth but a few minutes later Cabal came to another abrupt halt. Ralf held up a warning hand.

‘What’s that up ahead?’ Leo whispered. ‘Do you see the shadow? Is it a building?’

‘Hodge Farm,’ Ralf said. ‘It must be. Hey!’ he called, remembering something. ‘Watch where you step! It was right near here that Captain Keen fell down the denehole!’

Ralf made as if to walk on but Cabal turned, growled and bared his teeth. There were no more signs and Ralf could see nothing out of the ordinary. He didn’t think it was another minefield. He took a couple of steps forward and called softly to his dog but Cabal growled again. Ralf listened.

Dead silence. No rustling of leaves, no wind, no pattering of animal feet, no flapping in the trees above. There was no noise at all. But there was a strange smell. That ozone smell again but underneath it was something else – something bad, like the petrol scent of foxes. Ralf felt the now familiar prickle on the back of his neck and his eyes darted around in the dim light, trying to see where the danger lay. It was his ears, though, that alerted him. From somewhere in the distance, down the track ahead of them, came a sound. A pattering, rustling. It was quiet at first. Low. Then it grew in volume to a shushing rush, like the sound of rain. Ralf actually looked upwards, expecting to feel the first few drops on his face but he remained dry. Cabal snarled but this time, midway through, the growl tapered off to a whimper.

Ralf’s eyes peered ahead, down the path that Alfie must have taken. The shadows in front of him condensed. They moved. They grew. What a few moments ago had seemed just the dim light of the forest was now thick, viscous black. Ralf’s neck flared electric hot. Leo gasped. Valen moved next to him and he was shocked to see that the fists she raised were shaking. Suddenly Ralf understood. As he squinted down the path again he knew. There was something down there. Something big. Something unnatural.

They stood stock-still. Frozen. There was a sudden movement on the path ahead. A badger broke from the cover of a bush. Thin, matted with earth, its fur bristled in fear. It managed three desperate steps towards them when a tentacle of darkness shot out to snare its hind leg. Ralf watched in horror as the animal, eyes wide with terror and foaming at the mouth, was dragged back along the path. More tendrils of shadow flung themselves round the animal and it thudded sickeningly to the dirt. The Shadows rushed now, rolling over it like a wave and the badger shrieked, a high unnatural sound that peaked in a gruesome wail. As they watched, mired by their own fear, the badger weakened. Its cries became barks and coughs and the life was sucked out of it. The animal’s eyes rolled back in their sockets. Its small body crumpled into an empty husk of fur and skin.

The Turnarounders, forgetting their purpose, forgetting everything except the urgent need to get away, broke and Shifted. Cabal bolted after them.

They crashed away, heedless of noise, flailing over uneven ground. Over the sounds of their own desperate escape, Ralf heard clearly a soft pattering in the leaves all around them; saw slinking Shadows wherever he looked. He threw a glance over his shoulder to see trees flashing behind him in a blur and a wave of shadow rolling towards them. For one appalling second he was convinced he saw eyes. Two terrible golden eyes searching him out, but then nothing. His own eyes whipped forward once more to see spots of shimmer appearing in the bushes either side. Figures appeared, colours washed out, half in this time and half in their own, they were transparent but they were there nonetheless. A masked rider on a black horse, a long skirted girl carrying an old-fashioned milk pail, a group of short, dark haired folk who wore only skins and animal fur, a terrifying woman with a blue, painted face and hair braided into the semblance of horns. They winked in and out of Chax Forest in a matter of seconds.

Shifting grew dangerous as trees became more closely packed and they were forced to run. Ralf’s blood pounded through his veins. His breath came in ragged gasps of utter panic. He didn’t know how long they ran. It could have been seconds or years. He only knew he never wanted to stop. Directly ahead of him another Fall opened in a window of silver green light. Out of it, his arm thrown forwards in a gesture of warning, stepped a Warrior of
the Hidden.

Ralf, Leo and Valen skidded to a halt, hearts lurching in shock. Cabal gave the man a huff of greeting then lay at Ralf’s feet, waiting. The Warrior studied Ralf carefully, taking in his white-blond hair and mismatched eyes.

‘The Lone Wolf!’ breathed the Hidden man in the Old Speech. He raised his fist in a circular motion of greeting and his pale eyes flashed silver as he took in Leo and Valen in turn. ‘Lionhawk and the White Swan! Never did I think to see you together again. The Athraig walk abroad once more!’

In soft leather breeches, a bow on his
back and feathers in his hair, the Warrior looked very much like a native Chief from an American history book. There were differences, though. His black hair had a bluish sheen and a live, glossy magpie perched upon his shoulder. The Turnarounders stared in wonder, incapable of speech. They knew this man but their memories of him were too old, buried too deep to help them.

‘You are very near to what you seek!’ the Warrior exclaimed.

Valen pointed back the way they had come. ‘We can’t get past!’

‘That way lies death,’ the Hidden man said sadly. He gestured to another path that twisted away from them into t
he trees. ‘Run North as far as the Old Chestnut, then West.’ he nodded to the path down which they’d fled only moments before. ‘Hurry! They grow stronger every minute,’ he warned. The magpie on his shoulder ruffled its feathers and gave a low, knocking ‘Craaak!’ The Warrior tensed and looked behind him through the shimmering door of the Fall.

‘I am discovered!’ he
cried. ‘Go now!’

‘But the S
hadows!’ Ralf shouted. ‘What are they?’

‘Do not think of them!’ the Hidden man urged. ‘Your Fear lends them power!’

The light behind him flared and a breath of wind stirred the trees. The Warrior took an involuntary step backwards. The edges of the Fall started to shrink and the wind grew. Loose leaves swirled upwards from the forest floor and were sucked through the opening.

‘Do not open the door of your mind, Wolf!’ The Warrior urged. He was being dragged backwards as he spoke. The magpie on his shoulder took off and disappeared back through the Fall but the
Warrior continued to fight the power that sucked him away from them.

‘Mind is Life!’ he cried, over the rushing of the wind.

‘But who
are
you?’ Ralf yelled. His feet slid towards the open Fall. Valen and Leo reached out for him but they were being pulled towards it too.

The Hidden warrior’s feet were torn from the ground and he was sucked backwards into the rapidly diminishing Fall. Even the roar of the wind, though, could not drown his reply.

‘I am Two Rivers Running!’ he cried. ‘I am your friend!’

The Fall collapsed in on itself and the light winked out. Wobbling and hanging on to each other,
the Turnarounders slithered to a halt – directly in front of the yawning mouth of a denehole.

‘He saved us!’ Valen gasped, eventually, nodding at the broken boards at the top of the yawning chasm of an open denehole. ‘One more step and we’d have fallen in to that!’ Ralf could only clutch his side and gulp for air.