Harvest (33 page)

Jack explained about how Stort had received the message and investigated it.

‘May I . . . ?’

‘Ask anything.’

‘Have you been able to verify the message is genuine and originates from the Professor himself? The Fyrd are good at playing tricks. They use Morse all the time. We pretend we don’t
understand it, but we do.’

‘And this helper,’ asked Brunte, ‘the one who relayed the message. Who is he?’

‘We don’t really know. Stort only has a code name for him so far. Whoever it is sounds human and must have thought the message was also from a human.’

‘That’s probably good,’ said Backhaus, ‘but we’ll check for the reassurance we need. I suggest that if it is affirmative the mission should proceed.’

‘In any case,’ said Brunte, ‘such a mission will gain intelligence from behind the Fyrd line and on that basis alone may be worthwhile.’

‘When do you want to leave?’ asked Festoon.

‘Before dark today,’ came Jack’s reply.

They left at dusk, their point of departure being a container depot known to Barklice, who had used it before.

‘The Fyrd now control the railways, which rules them out,’ he explained. ‘Trucks have their virtues if you know what you’re doing, and I do. Empty ones travel to and from
all points east from this depot, including other depots. There is one east of Coventry, which is where the bunker is located, so it’s just a question of finding the right truck. Follow me . .
.’

They dodged under massive vehicles, hid in the shadows of wheels, hurried between great corridors of stacked containers and arrived eventually at a truck rather smaller than the rest.

‘We hide under tarpaulins in the back, entrance through the side panels. Come!’

They followed him, used the back wheel to clamber up, and hid under a tarpaulin until the truck departed.

Then, safe in the knowledge that they would not be disturbed again until the vehicle stopped, they came out into the rattling, shaking darkness into which the lights of street lamps above,
headlights behind and vehicles passing on the other side came as a kaleidoscope of yellow, white and red.

Jack and Barklice were dressed in shadowed green, their portersacs empty of all but absolute essentials. Backhaus and Recker were in black fatigues and might have been mistaken for off-duty
Fyrd.

‘Deliberate,’ said Backhaus. ‘Might be useful.’

Recker was wiry thin, with wrinkly eyes that shone and smiled in the dark. His portersac seemed disproportionately large but he had no difficulty toting it.

‘Gear,’ he said ambiguously. ‘For all eventualities.’

They spent most of the journey with their backs to the rear wall of the truck, ’sacs between their feet, staves beneath to stop them rattling, weapons on their belts,
except for Barklice, who had none. Escape and hyddening was his defence.

‘. . . and not getting caught in the first place . . . now, sleep.’

Darkness fell, the journey became monotonous; they dozed, trusting Barklice would wake to tell them when to disembark.

The truck stopped twice.

The first time Barklice just listened and muttered; the second he got up to check, peering outside.

‘Next stop, be ready, it’ll be a short one. Follow me. The Lieutenant first, the Bombardier second and Jack last. Fasten your ’sacs tight, don’t want no loose noise.
Watch the staves and watch the stop: it’s sudden. Then out you go, one at a time, nice and neat. Ten minutes to go.’

They stood up, heaved on their ’sacs and stood one behind the other behind Barklice, using their staves to keep their balance, and fell silent. The lorry turned off the road right on cue
and, despite the warning, its sudden stop sent them lurching forward.

Barklice was out at once and down to the ground, using his stave to hold the tarpaulin open for Backhaus.

They dropped down easily enough, Backhaus steadying Recker, who carried the heaviest ’sac, as he landed. As Jack followed after them, Barklice set off into the shadows beyond the lay-by in
which they had stopped and they were away and out of sight before the lorry driver had even opened his door to get out.

A few yards on they found themselves on the edge of a vast ploughed field, the noise of the busy road muted by the trees and shrubs through which they had come.

It was dark where they stood but the horizon right around was lit with ambient light from roads, factories and human settlements. They had all been in such situations before and knew the drill:
pause plenty long enough for the eyes to get used to the dark, set off single file, keep a close formation, no talking once they started until Barklice stopped or one of them signalled with a touch
for all to stop.

‘Right,’ said Barklice while their eyes adjusted to the dark, ‘the great big glow in the sky behind us is Coventry. Straight ahead, across this busy road, is Binley Wood.
We’ll head one o’clock because that’ll stop us floundering into the wood and giving warning of our approach. There’s no way we’ll find the bunker at night without a
little help. That’ll come in the form of the narrow-gauge railway line that leads straight to it, probably in a slight cutting. That’s our way in. Jack takes over from there because
somewhere along it we’ll likely meet Fyrd . . . Ready?’

It was the first time that Backhaus and Recker had followed Barklice in the dark. They soon found out why he was so renowned for his route-finding skills: he moved fast, confidently, was not
afraid to stop and consider, appraised everything from wind direction and the stars to vegetation under foot to the hooting of owls as he went. He moved silently, so much so that Backhaus had to
use sight, not sound, to make sure he kept the right distance behind.

He diverted from his bearing regularly, usually because a wheel-track offered easier passage through the tilled earth, or to avoid scrunchy vegetation. It was quick, professional and
unremitting.

The night was warm, the cloud cover seventy or eighty per cent, but the sliver of the moon gave just enough light to add a silver edge to their silhouettes against the horizon.

On the far side of the field they came to a stile, though how Barklice found it so precisely the two military had no idea. He was up and over and on through a plantation of small trees at once,
the ground sloping down, the route less straight, the dark around them deeper.

Barklice slowed, stopped, reached a hand behind him to Backhaus. The others clustered round.

‘We’re near the cutting,’ he said. ‘Likely there’ll be wire, possibly a short steep drop, maybe the going will get loose, stony and therefore noisy. I’ll get
you to the track and you can take it from there, Jack.’

He set off again, more slowly now, reaching behind frequently to check Backhaus was close.

The ground steepened and he stopped.

Below was a void, out of which silver rails snaked away to their right.

‘Listen!’ he whispered.

At first they heard nothing but gradually they could make out a murmured hushing, a deep whisper, coming and going.

‘Binley Wood,’ he said, reading the landscape they were about to enter by sound and common sense. ‘The cutting falls away and the ground flattens, so we must hope the cloud
cover stays as it is . . . Now . . . be cautious: cuttings have a way of tripping folk up and causing noise.’

But they made it to the track without incident and squatted a little way off it for a break and to listen to Jack’s orders.

‘Right, I lead, Barklice to the rear, Backhaus and Recker in the middle. If we come across Fyrd, leave me to make a move with Backhaus in support. You other two watch our backs. There
should be guards but they’ll not be expecting us. Four maybe six. Arthur’s seventy and not that agile but he’s strong. I’m assuming he’s alone, maybe he’s been
forgotten, alone and trapped, his single message didn’t say. By now he might have got out or . . .’

The last alternative he did not explore.

The notion of Arthur not being alive did not bear thinking about.

‘Come on,’ he urged them, ‘let’s get him out safely and back to Brum.’

The arrival point Barklice had found was well judged. It took no more than half an hour of careful trekking along the track before they reached the wood. Its trees rose on either side of them,
whispering in the slight breeze, hiding the moon and most of the stars.

Ten minutes later the track began to sink and the cutting to rise high on either side.

Jack stopped at once.

‘This feels like the drop down to the main entrance. It’ll be guarded. We’ll circle round through the wood and lie low from a good vantage point until first light . . . Take
refreshments here and if necessary relieve yourselves too because once we’re in position, watching, we’ll need to be silent.’

They were wise precautions.

They found a spot that looked down on the entrance, though it was too dark to make anything out. There was no light, no movement, no sign of life at all, but they stayed still and silent all the
same.

A hedgehog bustled past them at midnight; a fox barked soon after. The clouds grew thicker, their drift across the sky slower, so that there were long periods of no stars or moon at all.

At two in the morning there was the pull of bolts below them, a heavy door opened and dim light spilled out.

A single hydden appeared, walked a few paces, breathed the air deeply and relieved himself noisily. Then he went back inside.

‘Could have had him with a bolt in moments,’ said Backhaus, ‘but . . .’

There was no need for an explanation.

They needed to find out how many others there were and what the layout of the bunker was and whether there were other entrances in the wood.

‘It gives me hope that Arthur’s still alive in there,’ said Jack, ‘otherwise, what are they guarding?’

T
hat same night General Quatremayne was enjoying himself.

During the previous evening and into the small hours he had had some ‘business’ to attend to of a personal nature.

Now he was wide awake and had very deliberately decided to hold some hearings in the small hours concerning members of his staff and units who had infringed rules in some way. It pleased him to
have them hauled from their iron bunks and brought before two fellow officers and himself.

His command headquarters for the invasion of Brum were located in a small area of scrubland beneath the Warwick Road Bridge in Coventry.

The spot had been carefully chosen for its advantages in directing a railway-based campaign. It was adjacent to the London–Birmingham railway line, with the north–south Tamworth line
joining from the north to form a junction a few yards in one direction, while a fourth main line, coming up from Warwick to the south, formed another junction not far the other way.

In addition, sitting very conveniently between these major junctions to the east was Coventry’s mainline railway station.

It would be very hard to find anywhere in Englalond which offered such a complex of lines, junctions and routine stopping points as the Warwick Road Bridge. It was not overlooked, and security
fences above and to the sides to stop vandalism also prevented interference with the Fyrd operation from humans.

Little wonder that on moving forward from the bunker in Binley Wood, Quatremayne felt a growing sense of relief. His new quarters were noisy with trains back and forth and road traffic above but
he could see what was going on and breathe fresh air.

There was something else.

Quatremayne’s whole life had been a professional service to the Empire founded by Slaeke Sinistral. He had regretted Sinistral’s abdication, though there were few in Bochum who had
not found the Emperor’s long-term ‘sleeps’ ultimately unacceptable, but he was used to him. He also respected him.

Blut was a different matter.

There was something about the way he looked, his spectacles, his austere neatness and the complete impossibility of unsettling him from his calm, logical approach to things that got under
Quatremayne’s skin. He had no apparent leadership skills and at a time of war the Empire needed an Emperor who had experience of battle, which Blut did not have.

‘The nearest that damn little runt has ever got to killing anything is kicking a filing cabinet and I doubt very much he’s done that!’ Quatremayne had said very recently to his
coterie of senior officers.

Naturally they laughed, whatever else they might have privately thought. It was unwise not to laugh at the General’s little jokes.

Now that he had left Blut in Binley Wood under guard of one of his best units, Quatremayne was beginning to think of a future without him, which meant of his own future as Emperor. It was going
to be much easier to give the discreet order to have Blut disposed of when Brum was taken.

Quatremayne had done that kind of thing before, though never at the ultimate level.

So the move was a welcome one marked by his change into a new uniform, a shade more regal than his previous one: it was black and grey with the usual flashes of red but with additional gold here
and there which, he fancied, looked impressive.

He was of spare build, but tall and patrician with silver hair. He was disinclined to friendliness, only smiling with his closest and most trusted colleagues who smirked with glee as they shared
some moment of mirth, almost always at the expense of their inferiors. There was a strain of self-serving and immature cruelty in them all and its fountainhead was Quatremayne. Some joke that
excluded others, some ‘uproarious’ quip, some idiocy committed by a junior: these were the things that made Quatremayne smile.

Then, too, the matter of wyfkin. One might think that the General, being so cold, did not have feelings of what his circle called a ‘base’ kind. It was not true. But his feelings
found vile and brutal expression which his minions could neither quite ignore nor quite acknowledge. Females were found for him. They left at dawn bruised, battered and frightened, feeling that the
money paid them was no recompense for the secret humiliations they had suffered.