Awakening (38 page)

Even so, when he heard the sound of pursuit he was not overly concerned. Slew was a hydden who liked to cover all eventualities. He had foreseen that difficulties of some kind might arise during his escape, though a loss of shadow power was never one he thought of. But he had already decided that back-up of some kind might be needed and he had arranged it.

Harald and Bjarne, two of the Norseners he had fought at the Muggy Duck, had been impressed by his superior fighting skills. They were brothers and their original journey to Brum had been less in the cause of pilgrimage than from the desire to find a new direction.

Slew decided they would make valuable travelling companions. His talk of opportunities in Bochum, his natural charisma, and his declared intention to leave Brum soon – he did not say why, or how soon – persuaded them to offer their services.

They arranged to meet in a low tavern in Digbeth that same morning, the Norseners having Slew’s portersac with them, lest it arouse suspicions of his imminent departure at the Library. The moment he arrived, no questions were asked as to what he had been doing, and they left.

When they reached the East Gate its keeper, the fearsome bilgesnipe Tirrikh, did ask questions. It was his job to do so.

Why were the two leaving without the friends they had arrived with? And why were they now travelling with so unlikely a companion as a hydden of the cloth?

He was unimpressed by their explanations, but three against one is no good basis on which to hold such tough-looking hydden against their will, and he let them go. Immediately they were out of sight, however, he sent a description to Pike, as he normally did in such circumstances.

Too late. By the time Pike got back to him two hours later with news of the theft of the gem the three were long gone and the chance to stop them missed.

Slew had guessed what Tirrikh’s questions might lead to, and rightly fearing that pursuit would continue he discarded his monk’s habit and took a longer and less obvious route to Maldon, where Borkum Riff had promised to give him passage back across the North Sea.

Harald and Bjarne were odd twins. The first was tall, broad and fair-haired; the other short, stocky and dark. But they were devoted to each other.

‘We were cast adrift by the murder and mayhem inflicted on our home port by the ill-starred folk of Bergen and have been looking after each other ever since,’ explained Bjarne, the more talkative of the two.

‘And wondering what to do next,’ added Harald.

‘You’ve been wondering all these years?’ asked Slew. ‘You’ve never found a cause or person to follow?’

‘Never found someone could beat us in combat like you did, Brother.’

Slew liked the title Brother. There was comfort in it, and community, and that was something he had felt in need of from the moment he stole the gem.

It sat heavily in its pouch in his inside pocket, but Slew didn’t say so. It disturbed his mind and baffled clear thinking. It washed emotions through him he didn’t like. It put doubts in his head.

So Harald and Bjarne were rather more welcome as companions than he could have expected.

‘The plural of Brother is Brethren,’ he said. ‘Let us see where this first venture of ours together may take us, and if the title Brethren might in time offer an advantage to us all.’

They reached Maldon in those same night hours that saw the conclusion of Brief’s funeral. The tide was coming in fast and the only way of crossing from the mainland was on a causeway already covered by the sea and swept by its strong current.

This was meat and drink to the Norseners, who crossed without complaint, each strong enough to hold his heavy portersac over his head all the way.

To Slew as well such difficulties seemed trivial.

When they reached the far side a brisk, cool wind whipped across the dunes and marram grass, though it was Summer.

‘A hot brew would do us good,’ said Slew, ‘but I want to cross the island and be ready at the quay for the high tide. The moon’s already on the wane and I doubt that our craft will wait beyond tonight.’

When they reached the quay where Slew had first arrived there was no sign of a boat at all. Nor any light, or sign of one.

‘Listen!’ said Bjarne.

It was the clink clink clink of a hawser on a mast somewhere out on the dark waters.

They made a small fire, shielded it such that its flames would only be visible from the sea, a sign that they were there.

‘There’s a swell, a current and a veering wind,’ said Harald. ‘Not easy conditions. Are you sure you’ll be picked up?’

‘My captain’s not the kind to let folk down.’

‘His name?’

Thus far Slew had given nothing away about the boat or its skipper.

‘Would a name mean anything to you?’

‘Some would, yes,’ said Harald. ‘We know the captains for the ports to the north which serve our own, but thisaway there’s only three names worth mentioning.’

Slew waited.

‘Sneek Larsson, Beda Hoorne and . . . well . . . you know the other I daresay?’

‘I daresay I do,’ said Slew.

‘Well, provided it isn’t him we’ll be all right, Harald,’ growled Bjarne.

‘“Him” being?’

‘That bastard Borkum Riff.’

‘What have you against him? He’s the best North Sea sailor alive.’

‘Humph!’ said Bjarne. ‘That’s what folks say, but in a storm and provided she’s had a jar or two I’d put my money on Beda Hoorne. As for Riff . . . ’

Bjarne spat his opinion at their feet.

‘He left us stranded once on the forsaken shore of Ferkingstad. We only asked for a bit of tribute for him making passage that way. Said we were no better than pirates and if we had a wyrd at all it would protect us. Freezing it was. We swore . . . what did we swear, Harald?’

‘To gut and skin the bugger like a codfish and leave him hanging out to dry in the Winter winds.’

The two laughed. Slew, however, did not. He had seen the shadow of a cloaked hydden looming out of the darkness behind them, storm lantern in hand.

‘And that’s still your intention is it,’ a gruff voice asked, ‘to gut and skin me?’

‘By the Mirror, it’s Riff himself,’ cried Harald, grabbing his stave.

Indeed it was, dressed dark and heavy against the night wind and opening his lantern’s shutter to show his face. It was impossible to say if he was half smiling or simply screwing his eyes up against the wind. His beard was as black as night.

Slew stayed Harald’s hand and Bjarne’s too.

‘These are friends of mine,’ he said, ‘so I suggest we shake hands before we leave. Let whatever happened pass. We’ve better things to do now than have an argument before we’ve even set sail.’

‘I never thought these two would fetch up on this shore,’ said Riff, ‘but provided they don’t ask for tribute here as well I’m content to let bygones be bygones and offer you a fish stew that’ll clear us all of lingering ill-feeling and warm your innards true.’

‘Offer accepted!’ said Harald, and there in the dark they shook a good hand.

‘What are you doing onshore?’ asked Slew. ‘We thought we heard your craft lying to out on the water.’

Riff smiled.

‘I thought you might return in company. I like to take a good look at passengers that want my skills afore they embark.’

He sent out a piping call like an oyster catcher roosting on the shore and got an answering one back. Soon after the craft appeared, hove to temporarily by the quay and was off almost before the last of them had boarded.

‘Get her homeward bound, lads, homeward bound!’

The crew sang in low voices as they went round on the wind and rough hands passed up bowls of stew for them all from the galley below.

‘You know the rules on this cutter, boys,’ said Riff as the boat began to take the swell up and down, up and down. ‘Spew it up and you clean it up!’

‘We know,’ said the Norseners in unison.

Slew said nothing.

The food was good, he had never been sick on or off a craft in all his life, but the gem sat heavy with him and darkened his mood, enshadowed his mind, filled him with doubt.

The craft sped on; he stayed outside with the sea wind and spray hard in his face.

‘Witold Slew, what ails you?’ asked Borkum Riff.

‘The days and weeks ahead of this strange Summer,’ muttered Slew, ‘and the seasons after that.’

‘Rough times,’ said Riff. ‘Out here we see the waves large and small, and the driving weather like that ahead of us which you can’t see but which I can hear and feel to my craft’s core. There’s been tremors and quakes across the land and underneath the sea, and one of these days they’ll have a go at me as well, and you.’

Slew felt sick.

He hunched against the wind. Three things he knew.

That the gem had not been his to take.

That Master Brief had seen through him like sunlight through glass.

That Thwart had courage and did not deserve to die, so the gem had favoured him.

Slew hunched into his unaccustomed doubts, wanting to cast off his garb and the gem and everything, as if to be clean again, his head filled with sick pain, his eyes throbbing, his dark stave just a piece of stick, his life a straw on wind.

‘Go below,’ commanded Riff. ‘We’re about to hit troubled waters.’

Slew gripped the gunnels and spewed over the side.

A member of the crew laughed, the others began to sing their strength and skill into the weather.

Someone else rasped in a low voice to another, ‘Skipper says he’s our future? Maybe, but he vomits just the same as everyone else!’

‘Come below,’ said Riff softly, ‘and try to sleep. Things will look different back on the home shore.’

33

T
ITLES AND
P
LANS

J
ack’s return to Brum, and his speech at Brief’s funeral, changed everything.

The city, which had lain so long under the threat of Fyrd retaliation, and been demoralized by earthquakes, was filled with new hope and purpose and the belief that it could withstand the Fyrd and even recover the gem.

In Festoon and Brunte they had civic and military leaders they could trust and who, having settled their differences, seemed able to work in harmony.

In the loss of the gem of Spring and their determination to get it back, they had a righteous cause against their sworn enemy.

In Jack and Bedwyn Stort they had a new generation they could get behind. The first spoke for every Brummie’s fighting spirit; the second personified their characteristic individuality, love of freedom and occasional absurdity. For these things Stort was loved just as Brief had been.

Jack’s impulsive suggestion that they leave at once for Bochum to win back the gem was tempered straight away by the sage counsels of Festoon and Brunte. But only slightly.

After an impromptu war council beside the embers of Brief ’s funeral pyre, which continued to the dawn, Jack finally agreed to defer their departure until the following evening. This was to give time for the equipment for the mission to be assembled, along with certain intelligence regarding Bochum, its tunnels and its inhabitants.

‘When you get there you’re going to need all the help you can get,’ said Brunte. ‘Only three of us, myself, Feld and Backhaus, know the hydden city of Bochum. I must stay here and Backhaus too. Feld has agreed to go with you.’

Jack eyed him, surprised.

‘You are willing to accept the command of someone untrained, younger and less experienced?’

‘I am.’

‘You do it willingly? I’d rather have no one than someone reluctant.’

‘I do,’ said Feld.

What Jack could not see were the changes wrought in him over the past year and the recent weeks following the Shield Maiden’s birth. He looked older and wiser.

Nor was it obvious to him, as it was to the others including Stort, what had happened when he had taken up Brief’s great stave. Perhaps it was the flickering embers of the pyre, or the deep reflections of ancient wisdom that came from the carvings on the stave, but his face assumed an authority beyond his years and seeming experience.

‘I accept your authority,’ said Feld, ‘but . . . as a soldier it would be easier for me if you had a title rather than a personal name. Forgive me, but I am made that way.’

Jack grinned.

‘A title? Like a rank?’

Brunte said, ‘A good point, I think,’ and glanced at Pike. ‘Mister Pike, yours is a civilian office though it involves military matters. The same goes for Jack. Any suggestions as to an appropriate title?’

Pike rubbed his stubbled chin and nodded slowly.

‘Master Brief was not just a scrivener and a librarian. It is not generally known that though he had a stave of office, the “office” or position it referred to was not that of Master Scrivener, but something else. But . . . well . . .’

‘Speak plainly, Pike,’ said Lord Festoon.