Crik (55 page)

He is going to die; the words drove repeatedly in Jack’s head, a frantic gallop that picked up speed with the falling hammer.

Mr Swizleback, standing still, with his mouth still open, his breath misting before his lips, whistled. The sound, both high and piercing, punched into the Myrm’s armour, buckling the bronze chest plate, as though the man had shot a high-powered dart from his mouth. With a thud, the hammer fell to the ground, forming a deep depression in the grass. Falling, the Myrm’s dying eyes registered shock.

The tracker’s surprising defence afforded Jack a momentary respite, in which he saw the onrushing army of armoured creatures divide around Bill’s grandmother. They flinched from the blue light, as though, yes, he knew, they are afraid of her. Pouring around her as an island splits a river in two. He saw too how the creatures’ eyes could not bear looking at her; they turned their heavy masks aside and rushed on, almost as though even being close to Grandma Poulis hurt. Nevertheless, the sheer numbers besetting them dwarfed her presence. Marooned from the people of Crik, she attempted to push through the fighting, when Kyla and the unnamed Ghost Walker cut her off.

Eager, Jack wanted to see what was about to happen, when Yang bowled an attacking Myrm to the ground and sank his sabres into the exposed neck. Although he wanted to thank his shadow, another high whistle blast from Jeff Swizleback stopped him. Bill screamed, jamming his hands over his ears. The Myrms pressed in hard, desperate to end the battle. Men, and a few women, screamed as clubs and swords smashed into the defensive circle. A series of bangs and lights tore through the night as the retaliating villager’s threw their Narmacil given Talents into the fray. In this turmoil he spotted Malcolm Belson, who had changed the lower portion of his body into that of an enormous snake, the coils of which strangled an eagle faced Myrm. His brother finished off the Myrm with a snapping bite from a hooded cobra’s head. Graham saw him watching and winked a black eye, spreading back his scaly lips in a smile that revealed curved narrow fangs that dripped with venom. Shuddering, he was grateful the twins were his friends. Beside him, Bill had grown quiet; concerned he turned to check on his friend.

Bill faced neither the fight nor where two Ghost Walkers accosted his grandmother. He ignored the zombies pulling down the screaming Myrms. Instead, the injured villagers lying on the ground had him transfixed. Noticing his friend’s puzzlement had Jack hunt around for its cause. A low stationary mist hung in the darkest reaches beneath the spur of land rising above the path. The thin mist, Liza conjured, swaddled a group of small children. Stretched to cover the infants negated the mist’s effectiveness; he could see the children and Liza as indistinct shapes amongst the billowing vapour. He doubted her Talent would be enough to protect them. Continuing with his search, he noticed that the Doctor was kneeling beside his mother. Why would the doctor care about someone who was dead when others cried out for his skills? Confused he took a step away from the defensive ring. First one-step, and then another.

‘Yin,’ said Bill.

Despite the battling bodies, the night was still ice cold. Great plumes of steam billowed from the Myrms’ bodies, almost as though fires smouldered beneath their worn armour. Jack’s own breath froze in the air. The Doctor laid a hand on his mother’s forehead and consulted his timepiece. A small stream of frosted breath rose to meet the Doctor’s brass watch. Everything, sounds of fighting, the Belson twins snatching another victim, Bill shouting at his side, pointing frantically at the injured villagers, seemed so distant. Reminding him of smoke drifting up from a lit candle, he saw his mother take another breath. She was alive.

The moment of paralysi
s
Jack experienced at the revelation that his mother lived, slowly left him. Now running, he weaved his way through the panicked villagers, passing Grandpa Poulis without a glance, desperate to reach her. That she lived was beyond any hope, a dream taken form. Vaguely he was aware of Bill at his side pointing a stiff arm at his mother. He never heard Bill’s words, either because of the chaos of the battle, or the greater turmoil within his own head.

Doctor Threshum stood at his approach. ‘Slow down young Jack.’ The Doctor held up a hand like a stop sign.

‘She’s not dead.’ Jack’s statement came out sounding like a question, or an accusation; he needed the Doctor to reassure him before he could totally accept the fantasy, that he was not too late to help her after all. He looked down at his mother’s pale cheeks, then to her sealed eyes. Desperate, almost frantic, he looked again for the misted breath that had given him hope. She looks dead; the thought hit him so hard he felt his legs wobble.

The Doctor steadied him with a firm grip. ‘Your mother has a nasty bang on the head. I suppose her injury saved her life.’ Jack’s quizzical look brought a sardonic smile to Doctor Threshum’s bloodless lips. ‘Your mother was among the first these monsters captured, and of those she remains the only one not hanging from a branch. Mistaking her for dead, they left her. Not much fun in stringing up someone who can’t feel any pain.’ The Doctor confided this grisly fact without emotion.

Jack had stopped listening. Blood seeped through his mother’s bandage, turning the white cloth a dull maroon. Apart from a single speck of brilliant crimson, appearing like ink glistening in its pot. The blotch of colour absorbed him more than the cloth had soaked up the blood, fixing him to the spot. Darkness spread around his vision in a swirling tide.

The Doctor gave him a hard shake. ‘Don’t you faint,’ he warned. ‘Given half a chance these beasts will kill every one of us.’ He sounds scared thought Jack. Hate for the man’s cowardice mustered in his throat like a clod of phlegm. Then he realised, the Doctor did not fear for himself, but for the people under his protection. Anger left him as suddenly as it had come. ‘We need you and your shadow.’

Jack blinked, dumbstruck. ‘What can I do?’

‘By surviving the woods you have proven yourself capable,’ said the gaunt man, turning to the children behind them. ‘The outer defence is beginning to buckle under the attack. When they fail, as they surely must, you will have to act.’

‘Inara will help when she breaks through,’ said Jack, seeking an avenue to slink away from any responsibility beyond helping his mother.

‘She’s busy with her own fighting,’ said Bill, his eyes anxious. ‘Yin, listen to Doctor Threshum, the hunters are losing ground. They won’t collapse all at once, but it will only take one of those things to get behind the men to kill the children.’

Jack wanted to say the children had Talents; they could defend themselves, only he knew how foolish, and selfish, that would sound. The youngsters may in fact have formidable abilities, some deadlier than those used by the hunters, however, would a child stand and face the menace that had come out of the Red Wood? If they ran in an attempt to escape, then the rampaging beasts would strike them down before the thought even occurred to them to use their Talent.

Trembling, his eyes suddenly wet, he looked away from his mother. Wiping irritably at the tears, he faced his fear. Stay here and do nothing while others died, or leave her, the choice lay before him like a cruel jape. ‘Look after my mother.’ The words, escaping his throat in a croak, betrayed his feelings. He could only glance at the Doctor’s deep lined face. All he wanted was breakfast with his mother, him having burnt toast while she arranged a few new houseplants into the corners of the kitchen. With the blaze from the burning village still colouring the sky, there was no chance of his daydream becoming a reality any time soon.

Doctor Threshum, never one to give false hope, whispered, his hushed tones carried his hesitant words like a cold breeze intruding into a warming room: ‘I can only administer what aid I can. Head injuries are tricky to deal with at the best of times.’

Jack looked from the sorrowful face of the Doctor to the children. They stood nestled beneath the old gold and green sentinel, huddled within Liza’s mist. The tree will not offer them sanctuary; the Ghost Walkers had uprooted every tree in the Wold. He refused to look higher than the children’s cowering heads; he did not want to see Miss Mistletoe.

Bending down he touched his mother lightly on the head and brushed his lips against her cheek. ‘I am home,’ he told her in a whisper. He wanted to say more, to apologise for what he had done, to beg for forgiveness; only he knew she would not hear him. The coldness of her skin made him bite back a rising cry. Straightening, he strode away from the injured people, leaving the Doctor, without another word, to take care of them, holding back tears as he went.

Bill trotted to keep up with Jack’s lengthening strides. ‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

Jack pointed ahead to a raised mound.

‘Why? The children are by the tree, not out there.’

‘That’s right,’ said Jack. ‘Pick up all the stones you can carry.’

Without further argument, Bill did, and before long, both his and Jack’s arms were laden with sharp rocks. ‘Yang can take on one of the Myrms,’ said Jack, ‘we saw him defeat Raglor. He may take on two or three at once; I don’t know.’ Despite Bill standing at his shoulder, he had to shout over the clamour. ‘We can’t get the children to safety. Even if we could sneak them through the surrounding beasts, the Myrms would hunt us down. The hunters will be their focus; wanting them gone before Inara joins us.’

‘She is almost here,’ answered Bill.

The corpses filling out Inara’s army were, for the most part, shambling wrecks. Bone and sinew showed like the inedible remains of a chicken on a dinner plate. They crept inexorably through the ranks of Myrms sent against them, as unrelenting as ground frost, a death as bitter as winter. Fresher bodies amongst the throng, those who had not died too long ago and who had escaped the worst of the ground decay, were ugly things. Most wore skin that had now turned green and sallow yellow, with their extremities eaten away by the things that lived in the ground. As was the custom, a sewn representation of the person’s Talent adorned the burial clothes. Guessing his would show a shadow, Jack prayed, a long time from now, that his mother would have a badge with painted flowers. From these badges, sewn onto sleeves and jacket breasts, he fancied he recognised a few of the old villagers. He studied the badges more than their faces, for those who had not yet moulded in the underground graves had visages too horrid to study. Spotting Inara upon Black, laughing, and whirling her hands over her head, delirious, had him biting his lip. Grouped about her, screaming, their armoured helms discarded, and their pelts matted with blood, were those Myrms who had already fallen. Screams of the raised Myrms froze the blood. Driven by madness these wretched things descended upon their own, clawing them with their bare hands. One grey furred Myrm, with a howling wolf mask, sank to the floor beneath dozens of mud-splattered bodies. After its struggles had abated the frenzied mob lost interest in the bloodied corpse. There it lay still, forgotten amongst the carnage. Only a fly hovering over its congealing blood witnessed the eyelids close then open. Screaming, it tore off the wolf head and joined its fellows as they targeted someone new.

‘We’ll stay here,’ Jack said, feeling sick. Rain, having abated, left behind pools of water scattered over the pocked crown of the mound. His and Bill’s arsenal of stones now filled the puddles. The knoll, which rose to the height of a man, allowed a better vantage of the battle. From atop the elevation he saw the entire tumult. Standing back, keeping away from the fighting, stood three of the five commanding Myrms; the other two had joined the force fighting Inara. Each wore a stag helm, hiding their features with a magnificent rack of antlers and impassive stares. They looked so formidable; their presence made Jack quake in fear.

‘If anything breaks through the line, start throwing the rocks. Get its attention on us and away from the children.’

Bill listened in silence. On the mound, it seemed as though they were separate from the battle, transformed into observers. The twins had now turned into a scorpion, snapping with sharp claws, while the other struck with a poisonous tail. Other Talents beat at the pressing Myrms, sending back the hairy brutes with flashes of colour and loud shrieks. A tear split the ground, swallowing two denizens of the Wold before a plump girl, who Jack recognised from an outlying farm; her mother made the best lemon cakes. Jeff having appropriated a sword dealt a deadly riposte to a clumsy attack. Three Myrms lay clutching their bellies at his feet, with another four beyond his blade’s range with punctured chests. Despite the Doctor’s foreboding, Jack clutched at the idea that they could win.

Then he saw Justice join her sisters, completing a triangle around Grandma Poulis. Pale blue light, appearing like ice, had shrunk to encompass only the four women. The Ghost Walkers joined hands, siphoning off the blue light while their own cold colours deepened. Grandma Poulis dropped to her knees.

‘Grandma,’ cried Bill.

Jack held Bill’s arm, stopping him from leaving the mound. ‘We can’t get to her,’ he said. The fighting line separated them; she may as well be on the other side of the Wold for all the good they could do.

‘Send Yang through the line to help her,’ Bill cried.

‘Don’t you remember,’ said Jack, his heart heavy in his chest, ‘Yang can’t do anything against the Ghost Walkers.’

‘What’re you talking about? She needs our help. Yang can slip through the line.’

‘The Ghost Walker’s power drives Yang away. When he fought Raglor back in the Wold, their light had pushed him from the Myrm Chieftain. My shadow can’t help her.’

Standing to his side Yang gave an affirming nod, his shadow hair falling in a flop over his eyes.

‘If it was your mother over there, you’d try.’

If his mother was in danger, he had little doubt that he would command Yang forward; his panicked mind would allow him to do nothing else, discarding all rationale in a futile hope. He had a moment to ponder why he did not feel that way now; after all, a few minutes ago he had loved Grandma Poulis with an all-encompassing passion, one that precluded even thoughts of his own Mother. Then he realised he no longer stood within the blue hue. The night felt colder without it, sinking into the marrow of his bones. If not for the realisation that he could help his mother, he would surely feel bereft. Understanding made him look around at the stark faces huddled in groups. Their palpable fear nourished the sense of abandonment they all felt. Without Grandma Poulis they lost heart, without her warmth they became vulnerable.

The line creaked as a hunter fell; and broke when a second fair haired man from Grenville fell with a sword thrust to the belly. The Myrms spilled through the gap with howls of triumph.

Jack snatched Bill, turning his friend to face him. ‘We will go to your grandmother when we can,’ he promised. ‘Now we must protect those we can help.’

Jack let go and hunkered down to fish rocks from the puddles at his feet. When he brought out a handful, Bill stooped down to gather his own supply. He could have hugged Bill in that moment. As he surmised, the Myrms largely ignored the old men and women, and paid little attention to the cries of the youngsters who found themselves outside Liza’s protective mist, in favour of beating the hunters into submission.

‘Don’t throw any rocks until we have to,’ he said.

A small boy scampered past, his white pyjamas shining bright. A bronze eagle caught sight of the movement, as a bird of prey spots a frightened rabbit. The eagle staring after the boy could be the same one that had brought Bill and him to the tree. Great mounds of muscle bunched on its back when it turned on the small boy. Jack recognised the boy as the Delver’s kid, the one who could find anything. One autumn day Bill had rolled his favourite marble; the one with the red cat’s eye; down a gutter clogged with dead leaves and fallen twigs. Hitting the obstruction the marble had disappeared. Bill had looked for nearly half an hour for the little glass ball when up strolled the Delver’s boy. He could not have been more than five at the time, must be seven by now, thought Jack. Having asked Bill what he was looking for, the boy at once pointed down the street to Betty Granger’s house. Being the heaviest in the set the marble had bulled through the blockage and rolled all the way down the street. Eventually it had rebounded off the granite slab, which served as Betty’s front stoop, and dropped into another, larger, nest of brown leaves. Although Jack knew the boy’s Talent had merit, he also knew it amounted to little in the face of the Myrm’s strength.