Spring (32 page)

Pike picked up the small, blackened kettle propped at the edge of the fire and filled both their cups with some liquid whose scent had such sweet allure that to Jack’s mounting hunger was now added a growing thirst.

‘We can’t just stay here any more waiting for him to wake up,’ Pike remarked. ‘It’s too dangerous, Master Brief. We
have
to make a decision soon about where to go and what to do. The Fyrd can’t be far behind us now.’

Jack closed his eyes. He had no real desire to get up at all. In fact he wanted to shut out all that had happened and the very world itself because . . . His eyes snapped open.
Why?
Why in the hour of Katherine’s greatest need did he want to have nothing to do with it and go back to sleep?

Because something had happened that he found impossible to conceive of, let alone accept.

He had been in denial. Now he must face it. His inkling of what ‘it’ was had come to him in the wood henge as the trees seemed to grow taller and the gaps between them to widen. Then, as he left the Woolstone garden with the help of Stort, the wire of the fence seemed to be above his head.

No, it didn’t ‘seem’. It was!
he told himself now.

He looked around the place where he lay and spotted what is always found by roadsides – debris from cars. It was a can of Diet Coke that confirmed what he already knew: it was twice the size it should be. So was a wrapper of a Mars bar. So, finally, was an old shoe – monstrous in size, a giant’s.

It must be that his passage through the henge had not only transported him into the Hyddenworld but, in some strange way, made him a hydden too.

But if this realization horrified him, he had no time to dwell on the fact. The hydden had continued talking but now he heard sly movement down on the road below. First some steps, then whispering, and finally the sound of somebody creeping up the verge towards him.

He turned slowly back to his earlier position and saw four figures beneath, two right down on the road itself, two more climbing furtively up the embankment towards him.

Enemies, obviously!

They were dressed in black and armed with staves, crossbows and knives which looked very sharp indeed. The one in front was no more than twenty feet from where Jack lay, and he was getting nearer all the time.

J
ack’s brain cleared at once.

He stayed just as he was, so far unseen, hidden amid the vegetation. He knew well that while surprise was of the essence, effective action was even more crucial.

He had no doubt that he was looking at some of the Fyrd that Brief and the others had been fleeing from, with himself groggily in tow. He examined the two in front carefully, and noted the course they were on, which was very slightly off-track from himself. They would reach the top of the verge just beyond his feet, which would put them out of reach of a well-delivered kick.

On the other hand, once they were up on level ground he would have lost any advantage his position slightly higher up might give him. But he could not take them on by himself and decided to take an immediate risk. He rolled over and away from them, and raised his hand silently in the hope that one of the hydden would see it.

One of them did: the ever-watchful Pike.

Jack pointed behind himself silently, and indicated the number of them with four fingers. Pike nodded and then whispered to Brief, who remained seated by the fire.

Pike then coolly picked up a couple of staves, crossed the clearing and came and quietly squatted down beside Jack, peering down the embankment to appraise the situation. His absolute calm quelled Jack’s anxiety.

He whispered, ‘Stay still, lad, but listen carefully. When I step over you to take the one in front, you follow on behind me and deal with the one further down who’s slightly over to the right. Use my bulk to hide yourself until the last moment, then go in hard. And I mean
hard
. You get no second chances with the Fyrd, understand?’

Jack nodded and eased himself into a better position, bringing a leg closer under his body so he could rise faster and more surely.

‘And then,’ continued Pike coolly, his hand lightly patting Jack’s shoulder as if to reassure him, ‘go straight on down and take the one still on the road over to the right. Got it?’

Jack nodded again.

‘Do you know how to use a stave?’

Jack shook his head.

Pike smiled. ‘You did well enough in the henge and here we have the element of surprise. He handed Jack a plain wooden stave. Then he said, ‘Just poke the end into their head, neck or privates hard as you can and they’ll not get up for a while!’ With that Pike rose up and lunged forward hard and fast at the Fyrd immediately below him.

Jack threw off his plaid, jumped up and swooped down on the second, driving the end of his stave hard at his opponent’s head.

There was no time to look back and check how effective his strike had been. All that mattered was that the Fyrd fell in front of him, and that he was able to take advantage of the momentum the slope allowed him and head straight on down towards one of the Fyrd still standing on the road.

That one’s view was obscured by the vegetation, and the sudden sound of fighting offered him no clue as to what was happening upslope. Like his colleague, he was waiting for a further command from above.

What they each got instead was a sudden, devastating assault, from straight out of the obscurity of the undergrowth, by Jack and Pike respectively.

Moments later both Fyrd were lying moaning on the ground, while the ones above had already been laid out cold.

‘Know how to restrain ’im?’ called out Pike urgently, there being little time before the first two started to come round.

He had done some martial arts so he could hold his own in the institutions he lived in in London, and knew how to hold the Fyrd in a neck lock, his head hauled back to spine-breaking point. But that wasn’t easy, because the Fyrd was a lot bulkier and stronger than himself, and began struggling at once.

Pike swiftly cuffed the other with a cord and hauled him out of sight up on to the verge.

‘All right?’ he called again to Jack.

It was not a propitious moment to intervene, since Jack merely lost concentration, and the next thing he knew the Fyrd was twisting into a better position to heave Jack off him and gain the ascendancy.

As Pike climbed back up the verge to the other two, and roped them together, Jack had all but lost the fight below.

Which he might well have done – and suffered grievous injury too, for the Fyrd was pulling out his knife in a very murderous way – had he not let his instinct take over.

He twisted the stave around and brought it down about the Fyrd’s head and whacked his knife hand hard, sending the weapon flying.

As the Fyrd grasped his hand, Jack poked him in the throat, winding him with such effect that the Fyrd collapsed back on to the ground, just as Pike came crashing back down on to the road to Jack’s assistance.

‘Well done!’ cried Pike, seeing the state of things. ‘You’re a natural born fighter, that’s for sure.’

Two minutes later all four Fyrd were safely out of sight amid the thick vegetation, cuffed and tethered, the first two still groaning, the others silent. None was likely to cause any trouble for a while.

Pike turned to Jack and reached out a hand.

‘You’ve a cool head, lad,’ he said, ‘but we guessed that already. If you hadn’t signalled to us that you’d seen ’em, I might not have known until too late. It’s good to have you with us, because I have need of another strong stave at my side for what’s ahead of us.’

They climbed back up the embankment and emerged into the clearing where Master Brief waited, stave in hand and relief on his face.

‘I think the lad’s finally woken up,’ said Pike drolly, patting Jack on the back with a smile of respect on his face. ‘But for his quick thinking, I doubt we’d have broken loose from that lot without injury. Now we need to get away from here soon.’

‘How long have we got?’ asked Brief.

‘It’ll be no more than an hour before that patrol’s missed.’

Brief looked at Jack. ‘I dare say there are a lot of questions going round in your head – there certainly would be in mine. But you can’t set off on the road until you’ve eaten something. So, Mister Pike, I suggest you make a new brew, and fix some food for Master Jack while I tell him what he needs to know.’

‘A briefing from Brief !’ said Jack with a goofy grin.

Master Brief did not smile. ‘If I had a groat for every time
that
little joke’s been made, I’d have enough to buy ten new cloaks and change left for purchasing several more staves.’

‘But none of them as interesting as that one,’ murmured Jack, eyeing the carvings on Brief’s stave and then comparing them with his own.

‘Indeed not,’ exclaimed Brief.

Jack wanted to find out more about the carved stave but Pike interrupted them with food and drink. Jack started digging in, hungrier than he’d realized.

Pike gave Jack a mug of something like sweet herb tea, then handed him a bowl of mushrooms stewed in a light, yellow-green sauce. It smelt good but he had nothing to sup it with.

‘Have some brot,’ said Pike, handing him a chunk of what look like rye bread, baked in a square shape.

‘Easier to pack in your portersac,’ observed Brief, by way of explanation. It was clear that hydden were practical by nature.

‘Brot,’ repeated Jack, and immediately began enjoying it.

‘We have a lot of ground to cover if we’re to make our rendezvous with Stort in good time, Master Brief, but we need to put Jack more in the picture.’

‘Stort’s the name of the other one of you, isn’t it?’ said Jack.

‘That’s right, Bedwyn Stort is my former pupil and now a junior scrivener in his own right,’ said Brief. ‘But in truth his real talents and passion lie in invention and cosmology. There’s none quite like him in the Hyddenworld. Anyway, back to the point . . . You just eat now while we tell you so you know what’s afoot – and, more important, what the Hyddenworld expects of you. But where to begin, Mister Pike? That’s always the question!’

‘What do you know of your origins, lad?’ asked Pike.

Jack told them that he knew he was brought to England from somewhere in Germany when he was only six, to protect him from the fate suffered by anyone who might be thought a ‘giant’.

‘There’s no ifs and buts about that, Jack. You most definitely are what we hydden call a giant.’

‘But I’m no bigger than you, Master Brief, or Mister Pike here.’

‘That’s true, for now. But it’s because you’ve come back to us through the henge portal, but there’s no knowing what the long-term effect of you entering into the Hyddenworld like this might be. Stort is of the opinion that it has no effect at all on a giant, because you possess the special ability to live in
both
worlds. But it may be that you’ll prefer the Hyddenworld because, after all, you’re a hydden deep down.’

Jack told them he indeed felt sometimes as if the human world was not his own.

‘The trouble is,’ said Brief, ‘that we doubt Mistress Katherine will feel the same, seeing as she’s human. So if you want to be with her, you may have a choice to make. But that’s always the challenge of life itself, having to make such difficult choices.’

Pike pulled out his chronometer and studied it ostentatiously. ‘Time is limited,’ he said, ‘so let’s keep to the point.’

‘What did you mean about the Hyddenworld
expecting
something of me?’ asked Jack. ‘I mean how can the Hyddenworld know anything about me?’

Brief and Pike exchange a glance and laughed.

‘You’re probably the best-known hydden alive who no one’s ever met, until now!’ said Pike. ‘Explain it to him, Master Brief.’

Brief then explained how Jack’s coming from Germany into the human world of Englalond had long since leaked out. Great things were expected of him, especially by the hydden of Brum who had a special interest in the prophecies of Beornamund concerning the gems of the seasons and danger to the world.

‘Naturally that means you’re seen as a leader against the power of the Sinistral and their Fyrd army but it is early days to be thinking of that,’ said Brief. ‘It was a pity – a tragedy in truth – that someone in Germany revealed your existence to the Sinistal. They pursued you and were aware of your arrival here as soon as we were – hence the attack on you when you were six. It was as well that the elder of your village took you into the Harz Mountains, a region that still respects the old mysteries and has a long tradition of protecting the weak and vulnerable and those who are in any way different. Those misty heights are the home of the Modor and Wita – the Wise Ones – who took you in, and trained you in the mysteries. And when you had grown too big even for them to keep you safe, they invoked their powers and summoned the White Horse and its rider, the Peace-Weaver.’

Jack shook his head. ‘Some of that may be true, and I certainly met the Peace-Weaver on White Horse Hill, but I don’t know of any so-called mysteries.’