In The Grip Of Old Winter (18 page)

Peter didn’t know what to
say. Wulfwyn’s stare frightened him.

After another silence the
outlaw said, “How might one small, unarmed boy help the Eorl Oswald and his
kin? Is it these coverings on your body? Do they hold some unknown skill?”

Peter shook his head. “This
is what we wear in my time. They’re just - clothes.”

Wulfwyn pointed to the
backpack. “A weapon?”

Peter reached to pull it
closer and Wulfwyn grabbed his knife.

“This isn’t a weapon.” Peter
let go. “It’s my backpack, for carrying things. I’ll - I’ll show you.” Careful
not to move too fast, he eased the button along the drawstrings that opened the
backpack’s top and unclasped the buckles. “I’ve got sandwiches and a thermos of
hot chocolate and a torch.” He tipped up the backpack to show Wulfwyn and the
outlaw leaned forward to peer inside.

“Shall I show you the torch?”

Wulfwyn’s brow knitted into
tighter lines and Peter guessed that he didn’t know that word. He tried to
explain. “It’s a light - like a flame - only not.”

Wulfwyn gave a brisk nod.
“Show me this flame.” His hand stayed gripped to the knife’s hilt.

Peter lifted out the torch.
“It works with a switch. I press it like this and the light...” The bright beam
dazzled Wulfwyn, who sprang back as if he’d been hit.

“Oops, sorry. I didn’t mean
to blind you.” Peter played the light across an overhead branch and then into
the shadows around the tree’s roots. “It’s just a torch, so that you can see in
the dark.”

Wulfwyn recovered from the
shock and knelt. He held his hand out and Peter passed the torch across.

Wary of the beam’s
brightness, Wulfwyn squinted into the light. Satisfied that it didn’t harm, he
shone the light across the same branch. He pointed it close to the ground until
the beam narrowed and brightened, hard and white. Then he shone it at the iron
pot in the middle of the glade and a sheen of light reflected off the pot’s
round sides. “This is not flame. It does not burn. It sees far away.”

Peter knelt too. “It works on
batteries. They last a long time, but you have to change them when the light
goes dim.”

Wulfwyn shook the torch and
the beam zigzagged through the trees. “How is it that it does not see?”

Peter took a moment to
understand. “There’s a switch on the side.” He shuffled closer. “That big black
button. Press it and the torch will go off.”

The outlaw peered at the
button and prodded it several times with his finger.

“You have to press quite
hard,” said Peter.

Wulfwyn exerted more pressure
and with a click, the light went out. He peered into the lens, pressed it
against his ear and then turned the torch over and over in his hands. With his
fingertip, he picked at the torch’s rubber casing and then pressed the button
again. He switched the torch on and off several times, mesmerised by the sudden
appearance and disappearance of the light. Then he handed it back to Peter.
“This sees further than flame and can show what you want.”

Peter dropped the torch into
his backpack.

Wulfwyn sat. “This is no
weapon. You have not knife or bow. There is no deceit upon your brow and yet
you are one against many. For such a one your purpose appears ill. Give reason
to your claim.”

“You mean about rescuing Eorl
Oswald and Leonor?” Peter sat down opposite Wulfwyn. How to explain Bear and
the way time passed at different speeds in different Ages and the seal-amulet
and the barghest? He didn’t understand most of what had happened and to think
up a sensible explanation made his head whirl. “I heard your plan with Eorl
Oswald about bringing Leonor here and setting a trap for Eorl Bosa.”

Wulfwyn’s eyes glittered.
“How did you hear this?”

Peter pointed to the other
side of the glade. “I hid behind a bush in the ravine. I followed Eorl Oswald
here. Before that, at Oswald’s manor I’d seen Eorl Bosa and heard him say that
he wanted - a union with Leonor and after he left, she was really upset and
begged her father not to let it happen.”

Wulfwyn stared back. “And
Leonor came to you - why?”

He didn’t know how to make
the outlaw understand about ghosts. “Not exactly - she doesn’t know I’m here.
It’s just that - she sounded so upset that I wanted to help.” His confidence
faltered.

“This is strange that you
help Leonor who you do not know?”

Peter flustered. “Well, I
didn’t know, I mean how to help - then I heard you talking to Eorl Oswald and I
thought that if she came here, she’d be safe - and I thought that was what happened.”

Wulfwyn’s face darkened.
“Show me the means of your help.”

Peter swallowed. He feared to
show Wulfwyn the seal-amulet. He might recognise it, understand its potential
and take it. Perhaps the thermos flask or the tin foil round the sandwiches
might be substituted as possible weapons, but he dismissed these ridiculous
thoughts in an instant. He had no choice and he reached into his pocket and pulled
out the seal-amulet. “I was going to use this.” He needed to ask the question.
“Are you waiting for it?”

Wulfwyn’s face contorted into
a frown and then into a scowl. He squinted at the dull red disc and the silver
shapes that flowed across its surface. He made no attempt to take it. “I have
not laid my eyes upon such a weapon. To fight with this is strange. Show me its
use. How is it that these,” and he pointed to the silver marks, “are not
still?”

To admit that he didn’t know
how it worked revealed him to be a liar. Wulfwyn’s reaction proved his
ignorance of the seal-amulet’s existence and therefore its strange
possibilities.

“I’ve only used it once,”
said Peter. “I made the barghest run away when it attacked Eorl Oswald after
the Eorl left you...”

His body tingled. That time
then, this time now, centuries ago, Eorl Oswald died, but because he saved him
with the seal-amulet, events that happened afterwards, then, now, centuries
ago, never occurred.

The meaning of Bear’s words,
to be wary of his actions when he used the seal-amulet, resonated loud and
clear. The tiniest difference made by the seal-amulet wiped out whole histories.
For people who lived then, now, centuries past, would know nothing about them,
because they didn’t happen. It made him dizzy to think about and he shut his
eyes.

“Is this what you do to make
a fight?”

Peter focused on Wulfwyn’s
angry tone to stop his brain from exploding. He thought he might go mad if he grappled
with the meanings of the seal-amulet’s capabilities but, like a long length of
twine that winds a kite back to earth, his focus returned to the here and now,
the then, centuries ago, where he too lived a part of his life; where the
possibilities to change history beckoned.

He opened his eyes. Wulfwyn
crouched before him, his knife drawn.

***

Peter held up the
seal-amulet. “This isn’t mine. The carrier gave it to me. This belongs to
somebody else and she wants it back, but I mustn’t give it to her. I made it
work once and I tried to help the outlaws when the knights attacked, but I
couldn’t make it work in the same way.” Panic, that Wulfwyn refused to believe
him, made his legs tremble. “I can’t understand it.”

Wulfwyn rotated the knife’s
tip. “You speak of the carrier and Eorl Bosa and...?”

“A spae-wife. From far away,
across the sea, where the land is cold. I think it might be Norway or Sweden.”

The outlaw tipped the knife
up and down. “I have heard of such a one, in old tales told around a fire. Even
so, how can it be that this,” and he pointed the knife at the seal-amulet, “is
with you and not with her?”

“Because the carrier...”
Peter floundered as a new idea blossomed. If the spae-wife didn’t have the
seal-amulet, then the spae-wife didn’t exist, in this time or any other unless,
like him, she moved through time without the seal-amulet’s aid. Bear said that
she escaped and hid and now walked upon the land again. That might mean she
walked in Bear’s time, Leonor and Oswald’s time or his time, or all three,
because she followed the seal-amulet, determined to claim it back. She might
appear anywhere, at any time. He spun round to face the ravine.

Wulfwyn demanded; “What
troubles you?”

Peter clasped the seal-amulet
between his hands. “I think I understand a bit more about what this means.” He
ran the chain through his fingers. “Though I still don’t know how it works.”

Wulfwyn’s gaze fixed on the
distant ravine. “What did you hear?”

“I didn’t hear anything,”
said Peter, “I just wanted to be sure. The carrier crept up on me when I listened
to you and Eorl Bosa and I didn’t notice him until almost too late.”

Wulfwyn’s tone hardened and
he rose. “Is this so?”

“He gave me the seal-amulet
and now he keeps trying to get it back.”

The outlaw stepped past him
and peered across the glade. “That might be so or not. I am thinking that the words
you speak explain how this hidden place came to Eorl Bosa’s knowing, because
the carrier took a chance.”

Peter shuffled round to face
Wulfwyn’s back. “He heard the plan and told Eorl Bosa?”

“Aye.”

“It’s the seal-amulet the
carrier wants, I’m sure.”

Wulfwyn sheathed his knife.
“The carrier’s ways serve only the carrier. His allegiance is to no man and to
every man. With one hand he helps, with the other he takes. None trust him, yet
he lives, for once met, even by chance, his broken form may benefit a man with
profit that he did not know before.”

Peter dug his palms into the
seal-amulet’s hard edge. He’d led the carrier into the ravine, revealed the
outlaw’s hiding place and then let him escape to tell Eorl Bosa. No, he mustn’t
take all the blame, for Oswald showed the way first.

Another odd thing, time in
whichever Age he appeared, always moved forward. He might be able to change the
outcome of events in a past Age, but not the events that had already passed in
that Age. A trigger, the extreme weather Farmer Brunt said, released a
repetition of events from a certain point. If he did nothing else in this Age,
Eorl Oswald always survived the barghest’s attack.

“Did Eorl Oswald bring Leonor
here?”

Wulfwyn’s shoulders slumped.
“He did, though such an action proved to be folly.”

“What happened?”

The outlaw strode past Peter
and sat. “Eorl Bosa’s men came up the common way and more came by a far route
through the trees. Some knowledge of that difficult path,” and he jerked his
thumb at the forest behind, “is needed if you are not to be lost or stumble
into a swamp.”

“The carrier?” suggested
Peter.

Wulfwyn shrugged. “Who is to
say? There are many who live beside these trees who know the secret paths
between. And who, for a token or a promise, will show the way.” He drew his
knees up to his chest. “Surrounded, taken by chance, our will to save the Eorl
Oswald and his kin carried no luck. To save our lives needed all our skills.
Many died and those that lived, fled. I returned. What news, I wondered, from
Eorl Oswald’s manor, but there are none here but you?”

Peter rotated the seal-amulet
round and round in his fingers. “I saw the fighting, well some of it, because I
was trying to understand how to make this work. There were too many knights in
armour. And... and they charged the outlaws on the common way with their
spears.” He glanced up, but Wulfwyn gazed into the middle-distance. “I don’t
think many escaped.”

“It is as I feared.” The
outlaw faced him. “It makes me wonder that you might fight. Even with this -
trinket.”

Peter didn’t meet his gaze.
“Where are all the bodies? I didn’t see any on the common way either.”

Wulfwyn’s frown softened.
“The knights are quick to drag them out of sight. They fear the flare of
rebellion if dead kin are found. They throw the corpses in some new-dug pit,
concealed from all but those most gifted with nature’s lore, those that
recognise the broken patterns upon the forest floor.”

Peter wondered if those pits,
now full of skeletons, still existed in his time? He’d ask granddad if he’d ever
dug up any bones. “Where did the knights take Eorl Oswald and Leonor?”

“I did not see. Eorl Bosa’s
manor lies to the east. His men there may keep them under guard, for he is sure
to accuse Eorl Oswald of treason against the Norman King.”

“We’ve got to rescue him. And
Leonor. She doesn’t want to marry Bosa. Can we go there?”

Wulfwyn snorted. “One man,
one boy, what can be done against men in metal?”

It didn’t sound hopeful,
Peter agreed, but even if they crept close, just to have a look, that must be
better than doing nothing. “There might be a secret tunnel, or perhaps we could
disguise ourselves?”

“You tell me you have seen
Eorl Oswald’s manor?”

“Yes.”

“Water runs around Eorl
Bosa’s walls. The earth banks stack as high as a tree’s branches. There is no secret
path, for men cross the water on a bridge that commands easy sight to all who
step upon its wooden boards. To see Eorl Bosa’s manor, even at many paces
distant, is to know the meaning of safe-keeping.”