Witch Crag (24 page)

Kita found herself riding next to Arc the next morning as they headed towards the ruined city. She wasn't sure how this had come about, but she was glad to be there. She was drawn to him, she kept looking at him, to find him looking back at her. Then she'd look away. But somehow he was the only one she didn't feel like a freak with. Vild was as calm and kind as she'd ever been, but what had happened to end the battle seemed to stand between them like a wall. And even Wekka treated her with – what? Diffidence.
Distance
.

Arc rode easily now, moving with his horse rather than trying to control it. He and Kita kept each other's pace. Behind them came the sheepmen, with the flamboyant old horsemen determined to outpace them. The witches all ran or rode together, two to a horse; Quainy and Raff were among them. They all had bundles of plants that they'd gathered the night before; Comfrie was pleased with their haul, she said it would make excellent smoking through the decrepit alleys and tunnels of the city.

Pitch and a few other farmers had insisted on staying with the army, despite the urgent need for them on their homelands. He said they were representatives of their tribe in the new union, and everyone respected this. Many fighters might be needed, after all.

Soon, they'd veered off the scrubby grasslands and were riding along the great road from the south, the road that the city hordes had cleared for the invasion. The emptiness of it, a sterile gash in the wilderness, and the echoing sound of their hooves, seemed eerie, ominous.

“How you doing, tree rat?” asked Arc, pulling his horse a little nearer to hers.

“All right,” she said. “Considering.”

“Considering you've just become the most powerful witch on the crag?”

She flinched at that, as though he'd hit her. Then she laughed, relieved. He had the courage to be honest, to tell it straight, and she welcomed it. “Yes,” she said. “Considering that. You're not afraid of me then?”

“Terrified.
Witch rage
. I heard Vild talking about it. I'm bloody terrified.”

Kita laughed again. “It's – supposed to be the birth of a witch's skills. They come in in a pretty crude way.”

“Crude or not, I was glad it happened! So . . . when it's all mellowed down . . . you can see into the future, sense what people are up to, all that stuff?”

“I suppose so. What did Vild say about it?”

“Oh, that it had been immense, and you needed time to recover, no one was to hassle you, that kind of thing. But it's clear they see you as a top witch now.”

“Oh my lord. That's so frightening.”

“Kita, I'm just as afraid of the role I've taken on.”

“But you stepped up so well, you never seemed
afraid
. . .”

“I don't know how I got through yesterday. I don't know how I
did
that. Any more than you know how you did . . . what you did.”

She considered, comparing the two, seeing the link; her horse slowed a little. Then she said, “It was worse for you. It must have been. You had to keep on and on, screwing your courage down harder. I just got taken over. It wasn't
me
, what happened.”

“I could say the same about me fighting, Kita.
Leading
. I wasn't me. I'd let go of
me
.”

There was a silence, then he asked, “What did it feel like, Kita? Witch rage? How did it happen?”

She couldn't breathe. She was longing to tell him it was when she'd seen his life threatened. She was longing to tell him everything had leapt into life when she'd seen that – to be absolutely honest too. But up ahead Flay was shouting, “I can see the infernal place!” and the army stirred and quickened, and Arc kicked his horse on to a canter, Kita following.

Ahead of them was the hideous, towering city wall, made of ruined cars and jagged metal. They rode closer, and soon Kita could see the gap she'd run through with Quainy and Raff, when there were horses behind them, all that time ago.

This time, though, there were horses ahead of them. Twenty or more, wandering nervously, cropping on the grass outside the city, reins torn and hanging loose.

“They're ours!” shouted Pitch. “I'd recognize them anywhere.”

“They've been abandoned,” said Arc. “That may be a good sign. Pitch, can you distribute them among the army?” Then he wheeled his horse round, and faced everyone.

“This is it!” he shouted. “The last haul. Those riding two to a horse, one of you dismount. I want us to go into this sewer spread as wide as we can, I want us to sweep it clean. If we're attacked, then it's all in, and finish it fast. When we've passed right through, we retrace our route, while the witches burn their smoke. We'll call for peaceful survivors – the children and the oppressed – to come out and join us. We'll give clear warning that we mean to burn the place to ashes. Are we agreed?”

There was a low, determined cry of assent from everyone, while the horses shifted in place, sensing their riders' eagerness to move.

“Then let's go,” said Arc, and he sucked in a deep breath and added, “We've done work to be proud of these last days. Alone, we'd have been eaten. Standing together – allowing our differences to shine – we survived. I'm proud to have been part of this. Now,
let's finish it!
”

He trotted forward towards the open gateway in the ugly metal gap, calling to Kita, “Stay beside me, tree rat!” Unhesitating, she kicked her horse forward, and side by side they rode into the rotting city.

It was a slow, gruesome progression. They passed corpse after corpse lying in slicks of congealed blood, whose death wounds could only have been caused by the teeth of dogs. But of the dogs themselves there was no sign.

The sickly-sweet smell of death was overpowering, nauseating. Kita noticed a fresh, astringent tang mingling with it, and saw that several of the witches were holding bunches of burning herbs.

“You all right?” asked Arc.

“Yes,” she answered.

They forged on, a great, loose-linked swathe of them, losing sight of each other briefly when they had to navigate alleys and great piles of rubble, but always coming back together again to keep the line.

The silence was uncanny. There was no movement at all apart from the steady forward progression of the army. They went right through the centre of the city with its alleys and hovels, but saw and heard nothing. Kita found herself wondering where the Manager's quarters were – whether they'd pass by them. Whether they'd pass by Raff's beautiful metal horse.

Then they were out in the open at the other side of the city, crossing the great, concrete killing plains, where rival gangs of killers had fought for amusement and Quainy had danced to save their lives. Chilled, Kita reined her horse in. “Arc. . .” she breathed.

“What is it?”

“I feel – something bad.”

“This space is bad. I remember it, from when I came here.”

“No, it's more, it's –
get ready!
”

“Draw your weapons!
” Arc yelled.

That moment's notice saved many of their lives. From behind the crumbling walls sprang almost fifty of the toughest and cruellest that the city spawned. Wounded, bleeding afresh, they came at Arc's army mad with battle lust.

But the witches were ready with their arrows. And those that survived the arrows were hacked down by the sheepmen and the farmers and the old warhorses of the horsemen tribe. It was all over in ten minutes, with only two men lost to the allies and one horse with a gash to its leg that Comfrie set about binding tightly.

More bodies lying bleeding on the ground.

The army paused to pull out their water bottles, and everyone slaked their thirst. Then Arc waved them on. “To the far side!” he called. “We have to be sure, we have to cover every stretch of this poisoned place.”

Slowly, grimly, they paced across, past the wall at the far end, through the final winding corridors, until rubble gave way to grass under their feet and they could see forest ahead of them.

“We're done,” breathed Arc. “We can turn around.”

When they'd crossed back over the concrete field, and ramshackle roofs began to close them in once more, some of the witches pulled bundles of plants from the bags they'd slung over the horses' backs. They handed them out to each other, holding them like torches. Then Wekka ignited them. “Try not to inhale this smoke too deeply!” she cried. “It will do you no harm but it will make you lose focus. Now, witches – come.”

They walked in advance of the army, waving the burning bundles. A strange, hazy, purple smoke rose from the burning plants, and started to fill the air, billowing, swirling, engulfing the army as it walked forward.

“City dwellers!” called Arc. “We have no argument with you survivors. We know you were kept down by the few with power. Their thugs have had their lives ended by dogs. It's over! Come out, bring your children out – start a new life on our farms.”

Silence. No movement. And all the time the purple smoke was growing, thickening, sliding along the ground and through doorways and into cracks and holes.

“Be warned, when we reach the far side of this place, we'll burn it!” Arc cried. “We'll burn it to the ground. Take your chance to join with us.”

Still nothing. No sound, no movement. He turned to Kita. “All right, you try,” he said. “Try a witch's voice.”

Kita urged her horse forward. Then on an instinct, she slipped from its back, and led it. She knew it wasn't just her voice that Arc wanted her to use. She breathed in, inhaled the rich muskiness of the smoke, felt it fill her mind. She felt calm, hopeful – this must be what the witches intended for the city dwellers.

But she had not lost focus. The other witches were drawing closer to her, and all of them were walking too, leading their mounts if they had them. Focusing with her.

“A new time is beginning,” she called out. “Your children have the chance of a new kind of life. Things are changing for all the tribes – the sheepmen, the horsemen, the farmers and the witches. A new union is coming. A transformation. Be part of it. Come out. Bring your children out. I swear you won't be harmed.”

She walked on, staring at the ruins and rubble as she walked by, imagining people crouching there, hidden, scared. . . She willed them courage from the hazy smoke, willed them to come out.

In the hovel to her left, a small movement – a thin hand drawing back a ragged curtain. A woman towing three small children came slowly out into the open.

“Don't stare at her,” breathed Kita. “Just let her join up.” She focused harder, slowing her pace down further. A young girl carrying a baby hurried up beside her; then three skinny boys darted out and fell in behind Arc's horse.

“We're leaving now,” she called. “Leaving this stinking place. Come with us!”

Stooped, shadowy people, all with children, and some little children on their own, were materializing out of the smoke on all sides of the army. They were calm, smiling, relaxed, because the purple smoke had done its work, and Kita's magic had, too.

The jagged boundary wall was looming up in front of them now, with its gateway on to the great city road. Wekka nodded to the witches and, as everyone surged forward, they drifted backwards into the city, retracing their steps, to throw down their smoking bundles and ignite the ruins.

Once they'd left the burning city a mile or so behind them, Arc steered his horse off the road into a rough clearing in the woods, where a stream fed a marshy lake. He had two children perched in front of him; every horse was carrying someone from the city. “Dismount!” he cried. “Let's refresh ourselves and let the horses drink. Then we must gather round – we've decisions to make.”

The children, forty or more of them, ran towards the lake, lay down and lapped thirstily. The adults and the horses followed more sedately behind. Then the army unpacked its small supply bags and handed food out to the city people, who grabbed it gratefully and shared it with the children who came darting over. They devoured it all ravenously. Afterwards everyone grouped around Arc in a great circle. It was a strange echo of the council of war they'd held, all that time ago, only five days ago, in front of the sheepmen hill fort.

Arc beckoned to Wekka, Pitch and the self-promoted leader of the horsemen warriors to step into the centre with him. He turned and bowed his head to Kita, and she joined them too.

“I believe this is the real end now,” he said, looking around at everyone, including them all in the council. “And just as well, as we're all half dead with weariness. Welcome to the city dwellers. The carnage for you has been overwhelming: nine-tenths of you, more, wiped out.”

“We're glad to see the back of most of 'em!” a young boy yelped.

Arc smiled. “You made a good choice, to leave your old home. The next choice is where you go now. And that's dependent on your wish, and that of the tribe you want to join. We sheepmen can take thirty of you. A few more, maybe.”

“I cannot promise here and now to take anyone from the city,” interjected the old horseman, pompously. “It must come to the vote. That is the way we horsemen do things.”

Kita and Arc exchanged a look. The vote, they knew, would not go the way the old horseman expected. Jayke and Onga and Lilly would have set change in motion already; refugees would be welcomed into the horseman fold.

Pitch cleared his throat. “Well, we'll take as many as want to work on our farmlands. It'll be hard pickings at first while we get things going again, but the more hands we have, the more food we can grow. And you'll be treated equal with the rest of us.”

“You have my boy already!” a scrawny woman cried, bitterly.

Pitch bowed. “Then I hope you'll be united with him. Taking children as slaves is something we regret, and behind us now. All will be equal, as I say.”

“Madam,” said Wekka, “we have city children at the crag, being brought back to health – your boy may be among them. If he's not with the farmers, please send to us to see.” A bow was exchanged between the two women, then Wekka continued, “We welcome to the crag any who understand our ways and wish to contribute to our work. Come and speak to us! Two of your young women have already joined us.” She waved an arm towards two girls standing with Vild. “And one man – sir, can you uncover your face?”

A skinny, cloaked figure at the edge of the group reluctantly pulled back his hood, to reveal a skull-thin face, a white plait sprouting from one side of his head, and a long, spiky earring on the other.

Several of the witches gasped. “The vision from my dreams!” cried one.

“The powerful presence!” another called out. “He haunted me. . .”

Raff stepped into the ring. He strode across to Geegaw, took hold of his arm, shook him violently, then yanked him forward. “As we told you before, witches,” he said, “this is Geegaw. He worked for the Manager, one of the most powerful, devouring men in the city.”

“I didn't have a choice!” sobbed Geegaw. “He made me!”

“How did you manage to save your miserable life, at the end?” Raff demanded.

“We hid, the Manager and I. Then the dogs came. He was a much better meal for them than little me. A meal for all of them,
all
at once—”

Raff groaned. “Spare us the details. And give me my knife back.”

Reluctantly, Geegaw pulled a knife from out of his cloak and poked it forward for Raff to take.

Raff turned round to the witches, holding it high. “This is a sheepman's knife. I stole it from the man who used it to slit poor Finchy. He's since paid the price, in battle. What shall I do with it?”

There was a muttering pause, then Vild spoke up. “Give it back to the sheepmen,” she said. “It's just a knife. There will be more trouble, from marauders and thieves, and it will be of use.”

Raff marched across to Arc, and presented the knife to him. Arc bowed, and took it. Then Raff said, “Careful, witches, if you take this city creature back with you. He does have what he calls
vision
– some kind of mind skill, in line with your skills. But up till now, he's only used it for evil.”

“Only because no other path was in front of me!” squealed Geegaw. “
And
I saved your life, ungrateful boy!”

Raff shook his head, smiling. “You're right, you did. And you got me a sculptor's job.”

“Two things not entirely evil, then,” said Vild. “Don't worry, Raff, we're more than a match for Geegaw. If he gets tricksy, he'll find out just how tricksy the witches can be.”

“Oh, hoop-
la
!” carolled Geegaw.

“People!” cried Wekka, glaring at Geegaw. “To our purpose again. A new time has begun. There will be movement and visiting, flow and trade, education and discussion between all the four tribes. But right now we must finish deciding who is to go with whom. So we can return to our homes and rest, before the next stage.”

“Then let's break off this council,” said Arc, “and talk to each other individually, and decide.”

Everyone began talking at once. Pitch made a beeline for three strong-looking boys, and began recruiting them; other lads, shy and admiring, headed for the footsoldiers. Kita's archers were surrounded by girls, calling out questions; many of the women with young children were nervously approaching the witches.

And Vild came gliding over the grass to Kita. “How are you, dearling?” she asked.

“Exhausted,” Kita muttered.

“I'm not surprised. You were – you were
elemental
, the way you ended the battle. Awe-inspiring. And the way you called to the poor city dwellers to come out of their hiding places – none of us could have won them over the way you did.”

Kita didn't answer. She stared at the ground, as two tears forced their way from under her eyelids.

“You need to rest,” Vild soothed, putting an arm around her. “We'll be back at the crag soon. And you shall have a deep, hot bath with rosemary and lavender in it, and as many rabbit pasties as you can eat, and fresh clothes . . . then
sleep
, sweetheart. Curled up next to Moss. Sleep for days, if you want to. And only when you feel better, quite recovered, will we talk about what's to be done.”

“What's to be done?” muttered Kita. “What's to be done with
me
?”

“Well, yes, my lovely . . . what else? It's all different, now. You've moved it all on. And you're scared, scared of what overtook you, but we can help you, work with you. . .” She stroked Kita's arm, gently. “That power that came through you, Kita – there's been nothing so intense since I was a young girl. I'd just gone to the witches. Three of them, gathering herbs in the woods near the hill fort, were seized and slit by the headman. Do you know the story?”

“Yes,” muttered Kita. “The bloodstained clothes that floated down in the night. It terrified me, as a child.”

“Aggie did that,” said Vild, solemnly. “She's dead now, dear Aggie. But back then she was in her prime. She was in the woods, too – she saw it all. She watched over their bodies, keeping the dogs and crows at bay. She said the rage in her was like a white-hot core, burning and lasting. When night fell, she stripped the corpses of their clothes. There was a wind that night. She let it lift the clothes in her arms; she focused her rage on it. And the clothes flew up and over the hill-fort walls, carried by the wind and the power of her mind. The fear she put in the sheepmen that night saved many more of us from being killed. And what
you
did, dearling. . .”

“I know,” mumbled Kita, “I know.”

“I've only just started to dream of how your power might be used. We're starting to harness our power to desire, not rage, Kita – you could do that too. Imagine water, wind, fire – harnessed and directed for the good of all. Imagine your power used to bring about change among people, too. We can all move forward together, sweetheart. Bring about this great change we long for – together.”

Kita took in a great, shuddering sigh, then she croaked, “I just – I need to be on my own now, Vild, all right? Just for a bit.”

Vild withdrew her arm, and turned towards her. She took Kita's face between her hands, and looked for several moments into her eyes. “Nada warned me you had your own path to follow,” she said. Then she smiled, beautifully, and walked away.

Kita stood and watched her go, then she turned and hurried into the trees behind the lake. She was longing to be on her own.

But someone was following her.