Harvest (43 page)

‘The task is great, the struggle to win it will be a hard one, but that is what we must and we will now do! Let us now begin!’

This was met by a great cheer and clapping and the crowd retreated as Blut instructed those around the table as to what they must next do.

Blut finally stood up to go and rest, but before he could do so, there was a commotion at the great doors from the foyer, the crowd parted, and in stumbled Bedwyn Stort, in a
state of breathless haste.

‘Have I missed anything?’ he cried.

‘Ah, Mister Bedwyn Stort, I presume?’ said Blut.

‘I am he. But . . . ?’

‘You have missed nothing too serious,’ said Blut amiably, ‘when it is set against the work you do! In fact your timing is perfect. I have a question for you.’

‘Lots of people have, but I am busy and have news to impart, so if you don’t mind I shall leave again.’

This provoked good-natured laughter from Stort’s many old friends and Blut’s very new ones.

‘My question is simple,’ said Blut, ‘and requires a single word answer: yes or no.’

Blut applied to Stort that same steady gaze that had already quelled and calmed so many that morning.

Stort wrinkled his face, contorted his eyes, sought to find a way to drag himself from the gimlet stare he would have preferred to avoid.

‘A question?’ he said vaguely.

‘Indeed,’ said Blut.

‘Well, I really, I mean I would prefer, if, well if you
must
. . . but who
are
you? I have never seen you in my life and I only came here because someone said there was
another meeting of some kind which I was meant to attend, but quite frankly . . .’

‘Mister Stort,’ said Blut firmly, ‘far be it for me to drag you from your work but what you have to say may affect greatly the plans we are about to put in place. Please answer
with a plain yes or no.’

‘If I must,’ said Stort.

‘Do you know where the gem of Autumn is? Yes or no?’

It was no easy thing for Stort to answer anything simply. In his world there were no simple answers until there were simple questions, and on the matter of the gem such simplicity had been hard
to find.

‘Yes or no?’ repeated Jack very unexpectedly.

‘Who is this personage?’ cried Stort.

‘I think, Stort, old chap,’ said Barklice in the understanding way he had, ‘that you should give an answer. It’ll make things easier.’

‘What was the question again?’ said Stort, in evident distress and difficulty to be so pinned down.

Blut repeated it. The room stayed hushed.

Stort stretched himself upwards, as if reaching for the answer, then he gyrated sideways, as if he had lost it. Finally he grabbed a chair and sat down opposite Blut.

‘Do I know . . . ?’

‘We all know what the question is, Stort,’ said Igor Brunte sharply. ‘It’s the answer we’re waiting for.’

Stort sighed, shook his head wearily and finally said, ‘As a matter of fact . . .’

‘Just one word,’ said Blut.

‘I don’t,’ said Bedwyn Stort, ‘but . . .’

‘But what?’ snapped Brunte.

‘I am getting closer,’ said Stort apologetically.

There was a brief silence which Blut himself broke.

‘Good,’ said Blut cheerfully, ‘that is excellent! Gentlemen, ladies, citizens of Brum, we have a city’s reputation to save while Mister Bedwyn Stort, with the help of his
good friends, has a gem to find! I have every confidence that we will find success in both these endeavours! To work!’

T
en days into the journey to Samhain, the weather worsening, Sinistral wanted firm land under his feet and a fire on a wild shore. A more sheltered
resting place might have seemed more suitable just then but he had been cooped up below ground for so many years, and now on the small craft, that real weather and land underfoot would be a joy to
him.

Borkum Riff had been unsettled from the moment they had set off. Not by the sea, that was his natural element, but by the talk of the past with his father before they left, mention of things he
didn’t want mentioned, and shadows that blew about him in the high winds and had him glowering as he hefted his body into the wheel, eyed the strong sails and took the food his crew made
without a word.

‘Brot!’

They brought him more.

‘And hot brew.’

They brought him more.

It was made of forest fruits, garnered by the wyfkin, rendered into cubes powdered with cinnamon and mace.

He had no alcohol aboard, never had, and damn his passengers. But that brew they had in stormy weather was better than intoxication. It grabbed a hydden’s innards and made ’em fierce
against the weather.

But five days out he became unhappy and now it was ten he was unhappier still.

‘We’re being shadowed,’ he declared suddenly one night, ‘closer than a babby to the breast. Keep watch for ’in.’

They did, slowing and gibing, turning and cursing, pausing at dawn to let the follower catch up, then setting more sail to shake him off.

‘Bastard,’ said Riff, ‘that’n comes close in the dark and watches our light but come the dawn ’in’s off and about beyond our sight.’

‘Who could it be that follows?’ asked Sinistral, amused that Riff was perturbed by something so simple, peering into the dark where the follower lurked, standing tall at dawn to
catch sight of a sail.

‘Nobody,’ they said, spitting into the waves.

‘Don’t do that aboard my craft!’ Borkum Riff roared. ‘Yer don’t gob into your mother’s face so don’t into my sea. Use the spittoon.’

‘Stupid,’ muttered Bjarne, a sailor himself, ‘because we clean out the spittoon in the sea anyway . . . What’s the difference?’

‘Respect,’ said Borkum Riff.

They made landfall for fresh water and a stretch on the east side of Sark, in a wide cove Borkum knew. Next door was a much smaller inlet, where they hauled in the craft. Cut
off at high tide, not visible over the great overhanging cliffs above, it was a place that screamed with gulls, roared with waves and sent shudders through a sailor’s bones.

But the bigger cove was where they camped, up on dunes above high tide. Slaeke Sinistral was well enough now and better still for being ashore and stretching his legs.

There were steep, steep concrete steps up the cliffs, winding in and out of the rotten ground to the top where there was a road.

‘Nice view,’ said Sinistral after his first climb up.

‘ ’In’s gone,’ said Riff, with evident relief. He meant their followers. ‘I don’t like shadows out at sea. But weather’s bad and we needed
respite.’

He said no more.

He could be gentle at times but there was no need to show that to the crew.

‘Fourteen days to Samhain,’ said Sinistral one evening. ‘How many days can we stop here more and still be sure of getting to Samhain in good time?’

‘Three or four. Better to get where we’re headed early and heave to in a cove as we’re doing here.’

‘Make it three.’

That night there was a cliff-fall in the smaller cove and they found the watch on the boat knocked clean out with a smile on his face.

The crew laughed themselves silly but Borkum Riff wasn’t amused.

‘It’s the follower’s shadow,’ he said, ‘making mock of us, sending shards down upon our heads.’

Sinistral shrugged, slept all day, ate good fish in the evening and climbed his concrete steps to the heights above as if he was young. He stayed up on top a long, long time and Riff swore he
heard him laugh on the wind.

Slew said, ‘That’s just gulls.’

It was Riff who was right. Sinistral was still grinning when he came down.

‘You should go on up, Borkum,’ he said, ‘there’s a view and a half up there.’

‘What’s the view of?’ asked Slew.

‘And the half, what’s that?’ Riff wanted to know.

They went up as the sun set, so on their side it was nearly dark. But as they reached the top, its pink rays came into their eyes and the wind caught them hard.

‘For Mirror’s sake!’ cursed Slew. ‘He could have warned us.’

It wasn’t the wind he needed warning about, or the setting sun, nor even the view. It was the fact that the top was no more than three feet wide before it dropped away sheer down to
another cove, smaller than their big one, bigger than their small one, both flooded with sun that made the sea bright.

‘Bastard!’ roared Slew, but Borkum laughed to see what they saw far below.

It was the follower’s craft, set well and fair, bobbing and bright.

On the shore was a fire, better than theirs, and on the sand was their follower, dancing with a lad. Well, he was trying to. He had a sailor’s gait and strength and was not made for the
ballroom floor. But she held his hands and they swung about and the crew made music with a tuble and girdhe.

‘Might have known it would be her,’ grumbled Borkum, ‘might have known! My Lady Leetha likes her little surprises, always did. She’s the one was following.’

He looked neither quite angry nor quite relieved but a good bit of both that she was there and alive.

Slew, he noticed, looked as sick as a pig.

‘Who’s the lad she’s dancing with?’ he said through gritted teeth.

By the Mirror, you look like Sinistral
, Riff told himself, but he knew for a fact that the rumours weren’t true. Sinistral was never Slew’s father.

‘That lad is one of my sons,’ said Riff, ‘which is why he can follow me so close to the wind. Might have known Leetha would take him on to skipper. Best there is next to me.
Maybe better these days.’

Slew was still scowling and looked so angry that if he could have ripped a few big rocks off the cliff he might have thrown them down at her.

‘Why?’ asked Riff. ‘What you narked about? What’s she to you?’

‘The Lady Leetha,’ said Slew, ‘is my mother.’

Riff nearly fell off the cliff in surprise.

‘Your
mother
!’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Well you better, Borkum Riff, because it’s true. And there she is doing what she never did with me: dancing with your son!’

Riff stood dumbstruck a while before a smile came to his dark face and crinkles to his eyes.

‘Leetha’s your mother, Slew! Well, that explains a lot!’

His face closed up again.

‘Explains what?’

Borkum backed off but he was laughing too. My Lord Sinistral had steered them both into dangerous waters.

‘
What?!
’

‘Don’t matter.’

‘You know who my father is?’

Borkum was never one to tell lies. He steered true because he was true.

‘I do,’ he said.

‘Tell me.’

He shook his head and said, ‘That’s for her to explain, or Sinistral, not me.’

They looked at Leetha far down in the cove, the dancing stopped, the crew making food, Borkum’s boy and she staring out to sea.

‘There’s something else you should know, and that I can tell you.’

‘What.’

‘That lad, my boy, old enough to be skippering now.’

‘What about him.’

‘He’s her boy too. He’s your half-brother.’

This time it was Slew’s turn to nearly fall off the ridge. He swore into the wind, he shouted, he screamed like the gulls. Maybe he wept, maybe he did break up a few rocks, but he never
hurled anything down.

‘You mean you and her . . . ?’

‘Yes,’ said Borkum staring him straight in the eye.

Slew swore more, then he shook his head, then he cursed and kicked the rocks.

‘You’re laughing,’ said Slew.

‘Yes, I am. Your mother Leetha is the best you’ll ever get, and you can swear and curse if you like, but if you take my advice, and I’ve had time to think about it,
you’ll laugh and be content.’

Slew didn’t laugh.

‘Why should I?’ he said eventually.

‘Because you reap what you sow and a harvest of tears don’t make for friends.’

Slew frowned and stayed silent a time.

‘What’s your boy’s name?’ he asked grudgingly.

‘Herde Deap,’ said Riff, ‘after the sound.’

‘Which sound?’

Riff pointed across the water, way out west towards Englalond.

‘The great water out there, Herde Deap, we named him after that.’

Slew stood silent a very long time.

Borkum, as true and warm a hydden underneath as ever was, put a strong hand to his shoulder and said, ‘Learn to laugh, lad, and she’ll give you joy all your life as a mother, like
she gave me as a lover. Don’t rail against a natural phenomenon like Leetha; you’ll never win. You go with the tides, and the wind and the moon and sun and you go with Lady Leetha. If
she’s your mother, be proud. That’s what I told Herde the day he was born and ever since.’

‘But he’s got to see her from time to time . . .’

Riff shook his head.

‘See them down there? This voyage is the first they’ve ever had. Dancing’s the first time. Standing staring at the sea’s the first time. Make it happen, Witold Slew. Let
yourself laugh.’

And Sinistral too was laughing when they got back down.

‘Have a nice time, gentlemen?’ he asked innocently.

‘My Lord,’ said Borkum Riff, ‘for the first and only time in my life I’m going to give you advice. Give us our food and then some more and say not a word – not a
single word – until the sun comes up again.’

Sinistral heeded the advice.

But later, walking the shore, youth in his stride, they heard him laugh with the sea and the wind and the rising tide.

He opened his mouth to speak when he got back but Riff shook his head, put a finger to his mouth and then called out, ‘Not a word, my Lord, if you want to live!’

N
ews of the fact that the new Emperor of the Hyddenworld had switched sides and was now in Brum electrified its citizens.

His rescue from imprisonment with Arthur Foale from under the noses of the Fyrd made a great story, but it was his words after the War Council that really impressed. An edited version of these
taken down verbatim by one of Festoon’s clerks was published as a broadsheet and disseminated throughout the city:
The task is great, the struggle to win it will be a hard one, but that is
what we must and we will do! Let us now begin!