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Stort turned to Brief for an explanation.

But Brief was looking as thoughtful as he was and just as confused.

‘I thought it was the arrival of the Shield Maiden we were here to bear witness to,’ he muttered.

Seconds later, after a few light flames flickered out of the crushed front of the car, it exploded in a ball of flame shooting into the air. By its dying light they saw that the windscreen and the front end of the car’s roof had completely gone, exposing the seats, in which three figures still sat immobile, two in the front and one behind.

Brief turned to the Peace-Weaver. ‘Who’s inside that burning car?’ he asked her urgently. ‘Who
exactly
?’

She hesitated. This was not how it was meant to be. But then . . . she suddenly relaxed. She almost smiled.

Wyrd had its own way of working things for good and for ill; for worse as well as for better; for the least important person, and also for the entire Universe. And in the Mirror were reflected all things.

‘I think the Shield Maiden is in there,’ said Imbolc, sure now that her search was near its end – or at least at its proper beginning. She knew Beornamund’s prophecy too.

It was Stort who acted. Before Pike and the others could stop him Stort slipped behind them and along the bridge to where he could climb over the parapet and jump down onto the embankment on the same side where the boy had been thrown.

He was away into darkness before the others had even realized he’d gone, crashing his way down through the vegetation of the embankment – aiming to break the most ancient of the Hydden-world’s taboos.

While from out of the wreckage and flames came the strangest of sounds, pitched just so its insistent sound could be heard above everything, even the wind.

It was the sound of a mobile phone ringing.

Then it stopped.

R
oger Lynas, the officer in charge of Jack’s case, stared at the phone he had just put down. Outside the weather was bad. The road reports were appalling. Now, worse still, the Shores weren’t picking up his calls.

This had always been a strange case and he felt, for reasons he could not work out, that he was not only out of his depth but the case itself was hurtling out of his control.

One good thing was that Dr Richard Shore and his family were known to him.

The other positive was that the police checks done on the mysterious Foales, whose number had been in Jack’s backpack, were as good as they get. No criminal record, no offences of any kind, good references all around. In fact it turned out that Arthur Foale was, or had been, a semi-public figure. Lynas thought he recalled seeing him on telly talking about the Dark Ages.

How he and his wife were connected to the boy Jack, Lynas had no idea, but intended to find out. Meanwhile they were the best option he had where Jack was concerned, and his primary concern was the lad’s welfare.

He had promised to keep Mrs Foale informed, and he decided to do so now. He picked up the phone again and tried the Foales’ number. He got an answer straight away.

‘Just to say Jack’s on his way to London now, and as soon as he’s arrived I’ll let you know. If you’re free tomorrow . . .’

‘I’m free any time,’ said Margaret Foale, ‘but . . .’ she hesitated.

‘What?’ Lynas was trained to notice anything and everything.

‘It’s the weather. It’s bad now and the forecast says it’s getting even worse. It’s not the best evening to be travelling, so couldn’t Jack have been brought down tomorrow?’

Lynas smiled slightly. She sounded like a worried parent. That was a good sign. ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine,’ he said.

Wind thumped against the side of the building he sat in, which suddenly shook with the strength of it.

Lynas went to his office window and stared into wild darkness at an indifferent world: trees, people, buildings, cars, clouds and beyond it, far beyond it, the Universe itself.

‘It’s certainly a wild night, Mrs Foale, but Jack is with a doctor and his family known to me and will be safe I’m sure.’

‘Well . . . that’s good then,’ said Margaret Foale doubtfully.

‘Yes,’ said Lynas, hoping his reassuring words worked more successfully for her than they did for him.

As he ended the call the building was hit by violent wind again.

R
ichard Shore slowly emerged back into consciousness. He found himself still sitting in the driver’s seat but with the roof of his car gone and a dark patch of sky above him. The car was surrounded by the light of flames shooting up all around, and the hiss of steaming rain.

Puzzled and bewildered but not yet feeling the pain of any injuries or burns, instinct made him rise, his seat belt melted away and the air-bag, which had briefly blown up, now deflated.

He turned very slowly, flames licking at his lower body, to see his wife Clare scrabbling uselessly at her seat-belt fastener. He reached down through flames to try and free her, but failed, and his hair started sizzling in the intense heat.

He turned further still to look behind him, and saw that Jack had inexplicably disappeared, but Katherine was still there, sitting calmly, probably in shock but seemingly unhurt.

Richard turned back to Clare, moving so slowly that time itself might have been on holiday, and saw that she had now half-turned to try to reach out towards Katherine, except that the seat belt prevented her.

She began screaming desperately at him, but her words remained silent, his eardrums, like the rest of him, still in shock and trauma.

Then, inexplicably, his wife’s beautiful dark hair darted one way and then another, tugged by the hot and violent gusts of wind all about them, and her eyes closed as her hands wandered aimlessly here and there through the flames, becoming increasingly useless.

It was then that Richard’s world speeded up again, and his hearing returned, and he heard another explosion and saw the sudden roaring of flames.

Then, astonishingly, he heard something else, and if anything restored him to his senses it was that sound: the cool, calm, voice of the man inside the radio he could no longer see, still reporting the news. Then that too was gone.

Richard reached down and slid his own arms under Clare’s flailing arms. With a strength born of panic and love and the primeval need to keep his wife alive, he heaved her bodily from her seat and shoved her through the now non-existent door at her side.

As he did so both the arms of his jacket burst into flame.

‘I feel no pain,’ he told himself aloud and wonderingly, ‘not a thing.’

One of his eyes blistered with heat and turned blind.

He then turned back to where Katherine sat and tried to free her too, but failed. Instead he half-dived, half-fell out of the car after Clare, picked her up again and threw her onto the far verge well clear of danger, before returning to the car and instinctively turning towards Katherine’s door, so as to open it and set her free.

But the door handle had already turned black with heat.

On the verge onto which he had been thrown, Jack finally came to, and at once sat bolt upright.

His eyes took in the wreckage of the car and then what looked like a rag doll on the opposite verge, its hands moving ever so slowly. With a shock, he realized it was the woman, the girl’s mother.

Nearer to him, but on the far side of the car, he saw a figure in flames trying to wrestle open the girl’s door.

Then Jack saw Katherine still stuck in her seat, though his own door was gone, all that part of the interior now no more than a tangled skein of springs and metal struts that had once been his seat.

But Jack did not hesitate further.

He leapt up and began to run back towards the burning vehicle, each step seeming to take a lifetime as the flames from the front of the car started to encroach on the seat in which she was still trapped.

Then, hearing her scream as the flames now almost reached her, Jack found himself running faster still.

Richard’s world, briefly so fast and urgent, had begun to slow down once more, as the scalding pain heralding his own descent into a darkness from which he would never return began to overwhelm him.

Even then the instinct to save his child’s life was more powerful than the desire to save his own.

He reached for the handle of Katherine’s door, but as he gripped the hot metal he smelt his own flesh burning and felt his fingers curl into uselessness. He saw Katherine’s face staring out at him through the glass, and realized she was so afraid, so frightened now, in a way no child should ever be . . .

Then a moment of terrible, heavy sadness as the darkness closed in around him – creeping up his body, into his head and then blinding his other eye – a feeling of despair that might have been the last thing he knew, except that he saw her turn her head away from him to look the other way and reach a hand out towards the boy, who was suddenly there now, there to help her, there to see her to safety.

Which was the last thing Richard knew before darkness came, pain fled and he was no more.

At that same moment Jack reached the ragged gap in the car where the passenger doorframe on his side had been, and saw the man through glass, a dark form surrounded by orange, slowly sinking away and out of sight on the far side of the car.

Katherine, hearing him shout, turned in Jack’s direction and reached out her hand. Jack took it but for a moment he didn’t think he’d be able to move her. He leaned further in, grabbed her arm and pulled harder still. The buckle of her seat belt burst open, and he was finally able to heave her out of the car and right over himself as the flames erupted brightly again from the footwell in the front.

She fell on to the road, beyond the blazing car, and he landed on top of her with a thump.

She rolled out from under him and, as he tried to heave himself to his feet, he felt her hand clutching at his jacket, hauling him upright.

Then, together, back on their feet, the flames rushing after them, they ran from the road and the exploding car towards the same verge where Jack had lain before, heaving, pulling, shoving each other up the slippery grass into the darkness above.

At the end, as Jack felt something like hot water coursing down his back, he kept her moving ahead of him and sheltered from the worst of it until, with one last desperate exertion, they reached the top of the manmade embankment and tumbled down its far side into blissful darkness.

Jack felt himself slip again into unconsciousness and, as he did so, Katherine took hold of him with one hand while in the other she clutched his little leather bag as if, in the midst of all this tragedy, pain and death, it was the most important thing of all.

It was then that she looked up and saw them coming across the field, three strangers in black, looming and purposeful. They were not much bigger than herself but they were broader, stronger – and seemingly adult.

She let go of Jack and the bag, and stood up in the dark, the flames of the wrecked car still lighting up the sky on the other side of the embankment they had slithered down. She took up position in front of Jack as if to protect him from them.

‘No!’ she said quietly.

But the Fyrd, three of them, faces shining in the firelight, eyes dark-set and glittering with night, came on until they were almost within reach. The leader, taller than the others, was sleek of hair and had an unpleasant smile even more distorted by the flickering light of the flames. His eyes were cold.

‘It’s not you we want but the boy!’ he announced, his voice an icy whisper in the dark. One of them had a knife in his hand.

‘
No!
’ she said again.

The other two moved closer.

One was an ordinary Fyrd, stern, fit, in his thirties, with a flat, emotionless gaze.

The last one, the one with the weapon, was different. He was younger and looked as if he came from tough Polish stock. He was broader of body and face, his expression a natural smile, his hair curly and dark, his eyes hazel and his manner warm. But his eyes were gimlet-sharp, his hands large and strong, his stance firmly grounded. He was dressed in the light grey uniform of an untried Fyrd, one seconded to a senior officer to watch and learn. The only weapons such trainees were permitted to use were knives, of which he wore two, to front and back respectively.

He stood silent and respectful, shadowing his leader.

It was the other who now spoke.

’We want to look at the boy,’ he said.

‘
No!
’ cried Katherine again, her eyes defiant, her little form protective over Jack. ‘
Noooo!
’ she screamed.

It was then that Bedwyn Stort arrived.

He had as good as fallen down the embankment from the bridge in his haste to reach Katherine and Jack before the Fyrd did.

Now, breathless from running, scratched by brambles, his trews half falling down, his tunic torn open by barbed wire, looking completely shambolic, he pushed Katherine behind him before raising his fists to the Fyrd in an apparent attempt to engage all three of them at once.