Harvest (17 page)

It was one of the mysteries of travelling between the human and the hydden worlds that outcomes were not predictable, let alone logical. He knew that from previous experience.

Clothes, for example, ought not to shrink in tandem with the mortal wearing them. Usually they did, yet occasionally they did not. A matter he once discussed with the late, wise, Master Brief,
who could only speak theoretically, since he had never travelled between the two worlds, but felt it might have to do with perception or illusion – ‘or both’.

On this occasion, Arthur’s clothes had
not
shrunk, and the wet and muddy ‘rags’ he was covered in, as a tent might cover a child, were his human clothes.

For this Arthur was prepared.

His formerly tiny leather ’sac was now the right size and inside were the trews and jerkin, underclothes, jacket and some shoes that he had brought for just this situation. He changed into
them quickly and ate the chocolate he had packed for sustenance, found some plasters and covered a cut on his hand that must have happened during his escape. Then he moved on to immediate
practicalities.

If he was right, and this was London, it was not the best of places for a hydden ally of Brum to have fetched up. When the Fyrd originally invaded Englalond, Slaeke Sinistral, the Emperor who
had been raised in Brum and wished it to be left just as it was, ordained that the City, as they called London, become the new capital. It had never been more than a garrison town and civilians,
especially from Brum, rarely ventured there.

So much
, Arthur told himself,
for the theory that a journeyer through the henges arrives where he needs to be. I thought of the gem of Autumn and I end up on the Thames’s muddy
shore!

He decided he needed to get out from where he was as soon as possible.

He dug in his ’sac once more and found a digital watch he had put there, not to wear – it now looked giant-sized and the strap was far too big – but to see what time had passed
since his escape from RAF Croughton. He had gone through the wire fence on Saturday September 23rd.

‘And it is now . . .’ he said, examining the watch carefully before making his pronouncement aloud, ‘. . . it is now Sunday October 1st.’

He was shocked. In his transition from one world to another he had lost a week of his life.

‘Humph!’ he murmured. ‘Can’t do that too often or there’ll be nothing left!’

He stared about moodily.

‘Out of the frying pan into the fire,’ he muttered, though, looking at the murky water beyond the narrow stretch of shore, he took comfort from the fact that there was no immediate
danger of being burnt thereabout. Drowned, more like.

Arthur looked up at the pipe again and saw in some alarm that there was a weedy tide line not far below it, which meant it was way above his head.

He immediately felt alarm, having read somewhere that the tidal range in London was very great, its pace very rapid.

He stood up, satisfied he could not be easily seen down in the shadows he was in by anyone on the embankment above, nor from the barges which, he now saw, were plying the great river. He peered
to right and left, looking for a familiar landmark.

He might have hoped to see something familiar like Tower Bridge, to help him locate himself. As it was, the embankment wall was so sheer and high he could see nothing over it. The opposite bank
yielded no easy clues that he recognized, just the lights of modern buildings. But then he had not been to riverside London for years.

He moved along the shore and out from under the bridge into the light and immediately had a clear view upstream to what he recognized as the smooth, modern lines of London Bridge. That meant
that the more famous Tower Bridge, with its two crenellated towers, was immediately above him. Sure enough, as he moved further away he could see the towers and chains soaring overhead.

As for the embankment just behind him, he now saw the closed, grim portal of the Traitors’ Gate. He had arrived in the very shadow of the Tower of London. What such a location might have
to do with finding the gem of Autumn he had no idea, but here he was and he must make the best of it.

He went to the water and saw that it was creeping in over mud, gravel and old cobbles at an alarming rate. He knew that a tide took six hours to go out, six hours to come in and this one looked
as if it was already well advanced.

Time was therefore running out.

He looked back again at the embankment wall and realized that it would not be long before the water reached it, and not long after that that it rose in a swirling and lethal way above his
head.

Time to leave.

Which was not a course of action he would have chosen just then. From his previous ventures in the Hyddenworld he knew that henge-travel was tiring and disorientating and it was best to lie low
at first and take things slowly.

The river splashed eagerly up the filthy shore and a tongue of it ran up towards him. He stumbled back too late. It overtook him and filled his shoes with muddy water.

He dug inside his ’sac for more food and water and untied his stave, which was attached for safekeeping to it. Relatively small before, it was the right size now and ideal for a hydden
wayfarer, who might have need of it for many purposes, not least frightening folk off.

His other things were there as well – a hydden compass, a bivvy bag, liquid soap, a flannel which now seemed the size of a small towel, a raggedy hat against wind and rain, writing
equipment, a notebook and a good many other items small enough to be useful in the Hyddenworld.

The tide threatened his feet again. It seemed that the river had noticed he was there, sensing that his back was almost literally to the wall. Like a blind, predatory monster it sent tentacles
of water after him, trying to grasp his ankles, to pull him down.

As he began wondering with increasing desperation what to do, there was a gurgle high above his head and a great globby spew of watery something came pouring out of a hole he could barely see,
in a deluge that nearly flattened him.

‘It is the outlet of a drain or sewer!’ cried Arthur Foale with relief. ‘If something can come out, I can go in!’

He reached up even as the last of the shore was inundated, got hold of the slippery lip of a huge pipe with one hand, and a rusty chain of some kind with the other and, holding himself, for he
had not strength enough to raise himself up, he let the swirling, rising water do the rest.

Twice did he suffer a deluge of filth from the pipe, twice did he hold on fast, spitting muck from his mouth but unable to let go a hand to clean his eyes or ears for fear of losing his grip
with the other.

The current tried to pull him away but he held on fast until at last his chest got level with the pipe and he was able to pull himself to the darkness within. It was echoing, crawling, foul and
without light.

The water continued to rise behind him and he realized that if he did not move on up the sewer it might yet get him and he would be drowned.

But what if it were blocked by a grille? The horrid idea caused him to turn back, though the space was too small to make that easy, but as he did so a wave of water rushed in at him and he knew
there was no going back.

If there had been light ahead it would have helped, but at least he was alive and could travel in the darkness in the hope that eventually he must find respite. The water could not follow him
forever.

He heard it behind, and the horrible pattering as of a thousand clawed feet ahead, and a sudden deep
drip-drip-drip
before there came a ghastly sound like the clearing of a giant’s
diseased throat as, gathering his phlegm, he ejected it from his mouth.

Which it might as well have been, for another great gob of whatever it was before deluged Arthur and tried to force him back the way he had come. He clung on, pressed on, closed his eyes and
mouth, sensing that the tidal water was not far behind, slipping and sliding his way forward in the hope of finding something not so much better but a little less vile.

He had little doubt that he was now advancing under the vast complex that was the Tower of London. He moved on more easily now, the tunnel larger, grateful for a sudden shaft of light from far,
far above, just at a point where the sewer bifurcated to left and right.

Which way?

He turned left, began running again, a panic overtaking him as he thought the tide might come after him even there, even now. Running, floundering, crawling towards the bowels of the Tower, to
where no hydden past or present, unless they were insane, would ever wish to visit by the subterranean route.

For a while he drove himself on, impelled by the sense that what lay ahead must surely be better than what lay behind. Then:
Stop!
a little voice told him.
Go no further! Take stock!
Consider your options!

Arthur was in no state to listen to the voice of common sense. In any case, the sounds in the horrible tunnel had changed in nature and pitch. They were high now and seemed like screams right
behind him.

Stop, Arthur, journey no more!

He slowed, his reason trying to impose itself upon his panic.

The sewer turned, a sluice gate presented itself as an obstacle, he climbed over it and
whoosh!
. . . he was off and away on a smooth and slippery surface, in total darkness once again,
sliding and turning, his hands finding no purchase, his feet unable to gain friction, tumbling down and up and along towards the screams and cries.

Light!

Blinding as if it was a torch to his eyes.

Thump!

A bang as if he had been thumped by a hammer of concrete.

Shouts!

As if they were right in his ears.

Then a grip of iron!

As if an ancient implement of torture had been closed about his leg.

He opened his eyes and peered about as best he could and saw a nightmare come true: he was an actor in some medieval depiction of hell.

There was the rack, the hook and the red-hot brand.

There was a fiery furnace so hot that the filth on him began to steam and dry at once.

‘What in Mirror’s sacred name, my friends, have we here?’ said a voice that had a raspy unpleasantness to it.

He was dragged to his feet, his hands were tied and he was hooked to a metal ring in a wall and hauled aloft before gaining full consciousness again.

Slowly, as he swung helplessly about, two things became certain.

First that he was in a chamber full of Fyrd dressed in black leathery clothing, their heads shorn neat and sleek.

The second was that they were all in a human medieval torture chamber, for in addition to the rack there were chains, iron maidens, fires, spiky things and unspeakable hooks hanging and swinging
near his face from the high ceiling from which he himself swung.

To one side was a great hole through which, he surmised, he had just fallen. A chimney perhaps, to allow the smoke of the fires of torture to escape.

‘Well, lads,’ said the Fyrd who had a leather cannikin of ale in his hand, which he supped deep and cheerfully before saying more, ‘we was saying, were we not, that all we was
lacking was a victim. Well, now it seems one has been delivered to us. What shall we do with him?’

‘The rack!’ someone cried.

Arthur stared down as the rough, wooden bed-like structure, with ropes and ratcheted wheels, swam into view.

‘The Maiden!’ said someone else, forcing his head round so that he stared into the opened metal body, with rough and rusted spikes inside, onto which he must be horribly impaled as
the body-shaped door was closed on him . . .

The fact that the torture instruments were of human size and the Fyrd were merely taunting him did not lessen the horror he felt at the sight of them.

But then: ‘Let it be the brand,’ said a deeper voice, waving something that smelt hot and acrid under his nose, singeing his beard and making him cough with the smell of his own
burnt hair. Flames at the end of a stick danced in front of him.

‘Yes, the brand, the brand!’ they cried ever more loudly as Arthur struggled uselessly to escape from the burning heat near his eyes.

Fire can hurt a hydden as easily as a human. Size was of no consequence now.

‘
Noooo!
’ he heard himself cry as they loosed the chain and he began to fall.

T
appity-tap, tappity-tap, tappity . . .

Niklas Blut, Emperor of the Hyddenworld, drummed his fingers impatiently on the metal top of the desk in his new, but he hoped temporary, office. He had no intention of staying there for a
second longer than he needed to, meanwhile . . .

Tappity-tap, tappity-tap . . .

Such signs of stress were unusual in Niklas Blut and had taken him by surprise. He liked being in control, not for the power of it so much as the pleasant feeling of orderliness it instilled in
him. But since he had arrived in Englalond with General Quatremayne’s forces, he had lost that feeling entirely. He was now sitting in his quarters in the City, trying to work out a way or
ways to get it back.

His discomfort had begun the moment he discovered the extent of the Fyrd’s ‘pre-invasion’ activities in Englalond, at which point he knew he had been cleverly outmanoeuvred by
the General.

The invasion, he now understood, was already well under way. True, the assault on Brum was some way off, but the preparations for it were very far advanced and were being planned long before
Slaeke Sinistral had even abdicated.

Quatremayne had not lied directly but by default.

Had Blut or Sinistral known his full plans, they could and would have dealt with him. Sinistral would have demoted him, or worse. Blut would not have agreed to cross the North Sea and so put
himself in the power of the General, which he now was.

Tappity-tap, tappity-tap . . .

So he sat in silence and the belief that, since miracles do not happen, not really, he was going to have to find a way out of the situation he was in, if he was to regain control over a General
who had gone too far – before he went further still and did the inevitable: oust him, probably kill him, and assume power for himself.