Ancient Images (36 page)

    The engine spluttered, caught, coughed fumes at the two figures, obscuring her view of them. The fumes drifted away as the car jerked forward. The figures were still at the can. As the glow of the taillights gave them back to the dark she saw them clawing the film onto the tarmac and beginning to tear it to shreds.

    The other can would delay them for a few minutes, but then would they follow her? They mightn't hunt her down just for knowing the secret of Redfield, but wouldn't they for seeking to prevent bloodshed there? She drove down onto the flat land, trying to keep her mind blank in case it betrayed her, forcing herself to concentrate on the route. More than once she missed her way on the lonely roads. She felt like a puppet able only to drive, capable of flying apart in panic if she let her thoughts even momentarily loose. She was afraid to glance in the mirror or out of the windows beside her, a fear that seemed to grip her tighter and tighter by the scruff of the neck.

    The edges of the landscape turned grayer as the approach of dawn raised mist from the fields. The dawn itself was muffled, but at least it allowed her to dare to glance around her. As far as she could see, she wasn't being followed, though there was no telling with the fields of wheat around her. Her head throbbed with reaction to all that she'd been through, a throbbing that spread through her body, threatening worse if she relaxed. She couldn't, she hadn't time. The sun rose through the mist, turning the fields red, and she was nearly in sight of Toonderfield, surely she was. She prayed that the convoy was approaching on another road, still safe over the horizon behind her. Then the road she was following sloped up to a crest that showed her Toonderfield, among fields that looked bathed in blood, and she saw that she was too late.

    

    

    The convoy was halted at Toonderfield. The line of vehicles wound back out of the small wood to the police car, the caution on the tail. She could see no vehicles on the far side of the trees. The sight of the convoy, lying still as a snake whose head had been cut off, made her desperate to find out what had happened. Perhaps it didn't resemble a beheaded reptile so much as a creature whose skull had been supplanted by the copse, a new green head that was too large. She managed to take slow regular breaths which just about kept her calm, and drove along the deserted open road as fast as she dared, toward the green clump that was darkened by the reddening of the landscape.

    She braked hard at the last curve, before she came in sight of the police car. She mustn't risk being detained for speeding. She swung the car onto the verge and climbed out onto the slippery grass. By now she was so anxious she almost neglected to lock the door. She ran down the sloping curve, and saw that the police car and the vehicles ahead of it were unattended.

    The sight of so much desertion made her heartbeat falter. She ran past the police car, past muddied sunbursts, painted smiles that looked as if someone had hurled mud at them. The vehicles seemed to smell of exhaustion. By the time she reached the outer edge of Toonderfield she was panting and half suffocated. She didn't want to lean on any of those trees; she gripped her knees to steady herself while she caught her breath, and then sent herself forward. There had to be people not far ahead, close enough to reassure her. She mustn't be afraid of the wood.

    A greenish twilight that smelled of oil and worn-out metal closed around her as she ran under the trees. A cramp gripped her stomach as if she were about to start her period weeks early. The convoy blocked her view of the left-hand side of the copse, but that needn't mean that anything was lurking there, waiting for her to come abreast of one of the gaps between the vehicles, any more than the trees to her right concealed something. Every upright shape that wasn't immediately identifiable as a tree trunk reminded her of the scarecrow figures she'd seen in the copse. Once she thought she heard whispering above her, as if things perched in the trees were planning to leap down at her, but it must have been a wind among the leaves.

    At last she saw daylight ahead, past the leading police car. A fifty-yard sprint under the trees, and she was able to see Enoch's people. They were crowded together just beyond the police car, and gazing toward Redfield. She ran faster, her body trembling with the effort and with panicky anticipation. She was nearly at the head of the convoy when she saw Roger.

    He was in the passenger seat of the second vehicle, a van painted with green clouds. In the side mirror his face looked bemused, dissatisfied, rather helpless. She was abreast of the van before he blinked at the mirror and caught sight of her. She saw him gasp and smile and feel immediately guilty, as if he'd failed her. He leaned stiffly toward the window and rolled it down, and murmured to her while he gazed ahead. "It's several kinds of great to see you," he said.

    He let his hand stray down the side of the door, and she covered it with hers. "Same here, and I'm so glad you're safe."

    "Oh, I'm safe enough. Why wouldn't I be? I looked so forlorn these guys had to take pity on me, and I've spent the night finding out how much we have in common. They trusted me enough to leave me in their van," he said with unexpected bitterness. "Only I guess they did a better job persuading me than I did on them, since you'll have noticed I didn't convince them they should stay away from here."

    He levered himself up to stare ahead more sharply. "Another few hours and I might have, but I didn't realize we were so close. I think Enoch was beginning to take notice. I figured I had to go slow or he might realize I was coming from you."

    "I know you had to," she said, and pressed his hand. "What's happening out front?"

    "He's scouting the land."

    He sounded as nervous as that made her feel. "I'd better go and see," she said, and stopped him when he made to open the door. "You stay here. We may still need them not to realize we're together."

    She sprinted up the last of the slope. The police from both cars were keeping Enoch's followers grouped at the edge of the wood. As Sandy ran out of the shadow of the trees, several people turned to her. All of them looked anxious, especially the women; perhaps they were feeling the thirst of the land in their guts, as she was. Nobody seemed to recognize her. Arcturus and his mother were on the far side of the gathering, and didn't notice when she went as unobtrusively as possible to the front, to see what everyone was watching. As soon as she was able to see along the road to Redfield, her throat grew tight and dry.

    Enoch was several hundred yards down the road, marching toward the Ear of Wheat as if he was almost exhausted, swinging his arms like lead weights. His bristling head was thrown back; he might have been sniffing the air. A few minutes' walk ahead of him, lined up on both sides of the road past the Ear of Wheat all the way to Redfield, the townsfolk were silently waiting.

    Perhaps they only meant to make the convoy feel unwelcome. Perhaps that was how the police interpreted the situation, and so they were keeping Enoch's people back rather than escort him, but couldn't they feel the threat of violence in the air? Both they and Enoch might be assuming that Lord Redfield could control his people, but if one of the townsfolk so much as stepped in front of Enoch, Sandy could see that his people would surge to protect him. It would take many more than four policemen to hold them back, let alone to prevent the bloodshed whose imminence seemed to have stilled the wind, making the land breathless.

    The sun had risen above the mists. The fields brightened as if the wheat were eagerly awakening. Again Sandy had the sense of watching a ritual, Enoch the victim marching toward the gauntlet that was to carry out the sacrifice, the townsfolk stiffer than scarecrows, figures erected to carry out the will of the landscape. Her feeling that everyone in sight was subservient to an invisible power filled her with sudden furious panic. She hardly realized she had started forward, opening her mouth to scream at Enoch to come back, until a policeman grasped her arm, not ungently. Presumably he realized she wasn't with the convoy. "You'll have to wait until this is over and done with," he said.

    There was movement and a whisper in the crowd. Arcturus and his mother had recognized her. Sandy tried to look as if she was irrelevant to what was happening ahead, and cursed herself for distracting attention from Enoch's plight: how could that prevent the violence whose approach seemed to parch the air and the eager fields?

    She heard Enoch's folk murmur uneasily. They were staring past her, uncertain how to take what they were seeing. Whatever it was, it made the policeman let go of her arm. She sent out a prayer for Enoch, too swift to be composed of words or even to have a specific destination, and made herself turn and look.

    Enoch had halted about a hundred yards short of the first of the townsfolk, raising his head further, as if he smelled something. Several townsfolk swung watchfully toward him. The landscape brightened around him, the watching faces seemed to take on the color of wheat, and Sandy felt Enoch's people growing tense. If the nearest of the townsfolk even made a move toward him, the police would be swept aside. She could see that his people were concluding that they should never have let him go so far on their behalf.

    Then he took a step forward. He held up his hands and addressed the men on either side of the road. He must be trying to placate them, but had he forgotten how unwelcome the convoy was everywhere? They stared at him for so long that Sandy lost count of her racing heartbeats, and then they called out to their neighbors in the line. Their voices were carried away by a wind from the restless fields. By now her heartbeats were so loud that she could have thought they were the sound of the landscape.

    Enoch moved again, and she gnawed her knuckles. He turned his back on the townsfolk and began to trudge toward the copse. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, loud as a town crier. In the midst of the unquiet fields under the huge sky, even such a voice seemed small. "We won't go here," he shouted. "This land wants us too much."

    Perhaps Roger had convinced him after all, but had Enoch sensed the nature of Redfield too late? The townsfolk were still watching him, they could still come after him if the sight of his retreat enraged them or otherwise tempted them to attack. His people seemed bewildered, which could mean dangerous. Then he gestured at them, pushing with his hands as if the air were thickening in front of him. "Go back to the vehicles," he shouted. "This isn't the place for us. We aren't safe here. I've thought of somewhere else."

    Something in his voice told Sandy that he hadn't, that he was so anxious to take them out of Redfield that he was lying. If she could hear that, wouldn't they? But though they were muttering, some of them complaining, they were straggling disappointedly toward the trees. Far more reassuringly, the townsfolk were moving toward Redfield.

    She was suddenly afraid that the police would oppose the change of plan, but they seemed ready enough to escort the convoy out of their jurisdiction. Reassured, she turned to watch Enoch. Someone ought to see him safe along the road and let him know that he wasn't alone, though she thought it best not to allow him to recognize her. As his people retreated toward the vehicles, she stepped into the shadow of the trees, from where she could see him more clearly than he could see her.

    And that was why she alone saw the scrawny form that rushed out of the wheat and tore at Enoch's throat.

    

    

    Her shock seemed to freeze the moment, brightly displaying what she was helpless to prevent. She saw Enoch recoil as the figure reared up, a scarecrow all the colors of a decayed tree. Its ragged head was level with his; he must be staring straight into whatever it had for a face. It must be that sight which paralyzed him, made him stand like a resigned victim while the nails through which the sunlight gleamed slashed at his neck.

    Enoch roared in pain and horror. His hands flailed at the attacker and tore away part of its head, and then he tried either to grapple with the figure or hurl it away from him. To Sandy it looked grotesquely as though the two of them were dancing a couple of steps of a forgotten dance. The scarecrow figure lurched away, a flap of its head wagging, and Enoch either fell or lunged at the figure, grabbing one of its legs as he sprawled on the tarmac. She heard a crack, which at that distance sounded like a trodden twig, before his grasp must have slackened. Dragging its broken limb, the fleshless shape scuttled three-legged into the wheat.

    Enoch's yell had brought the nearest of his people running out of the copse, but they weren't even level with Sandy when the track through the wheat disappeared. Enoch lumbered to his feet and marched unsteadily toward the trees, one hand clutching his throat. The hand looked like a red flower, blooming. As Sandy ran to him the watchers began to murmur, and a woman screamed. "Stay back," one policeman said loudly. "There was nobody anywhere near him. He must have done that to himself."

    "He didn't," Arcturus cried. "I saw. It was a dog."

    The policeman was trying to prevent further violence, Sandy realized, but couldn't he have said something less contentious? At least the citizens of Redfield hadn't halted their retreat toward the town. The landscape seemed to heave up with the motion of her running, as if Enoch's wound were wakening the fields. She thought she saw a trail of his blood on the road. Did it count if it fell on the tarmac? Mustn't it reach the soil? The fields rustled like locusts, the air grew parched around her; she stared about wildly in search of figures in the wheat. The fields surrounding Enoch were still brightening, bristling in anticipation of his blood. She felt sick, almost out of breath. She thought she tasted the rusty flavor of the special Redfield bread.