In The Grip Of Old Winter (33 page)

Bear lowered his huge head
until his brown eyes came level with Peter’s. “You have heard me speak of one
of our kindred who, overwhelmed by the spae-wife’s attack, perished?”

Peter nodded.

“His soul departed, but his
form survived. Bring him to me.”

“You mean,” said Peter, “he’s
in my time?”

“Use the staff as you did the
charred branch in the wood.”

“But who...?”

The spae-wife shrieked and a
wave of white sparks erupted out of the air. Peter slammed to the floor and
rolled into a tight ball. The sparks hit, hard as hail and stung his skin even
through his anorak and jeans. Bear growled and Godwine moaned. Each spark hurt
worse than the one before and Peter screamed and wriggled back to escape the
assault.

Bear shouted. “Run, Peter,” and
he roared and charged, head down, at the spae-wife.

The sparks vanished as the
spae-wife, distracted by Bear’s attack, rose, crouched and bent double upon her
high stool.

Peter’s eyes blurred with
tears of pain, but he staggered to his feet, picked up the staff and sprinted
towards the passage.

Bear skidded to a halt just
before the circle of branches, rose up onto his hind legs and roared again. The
air shook with rage. Godwine stumbled towards the branches too, but on the
other side from Bear and the spae-wife swivelled from one to the other,
uncertain where to aim her next attack.

Peter reached the passage
where Wulfwyn waited.

“The carrier fled,” said
Wulfwyn.

Peter panted and wiped his
eyes. “I’ve got to reach the fire.”

Wulfwyn gripped hold of his
shoulder. “Come.”

“Is the barghest still here?”

“I do not know,” said
Wulfwyn. “There is no sound from any beast.”

Did the skin-walkers die?
“Why did the carrier run away?”

Wulfwyn’s breath came hard
and fast. “I do not know.”

Peter stared wide-eyed as
they hurried through the dark. “I have to return to my own time, but I need to
put the staff into the fire first. I have to find the skin-walker who died.”
His foot slipped with a sudden twist and he stumbled.

Wulfwyn halted. “What is it?”

“Something...” Peter bent and
patted the floor at his feet. His fingers brushed against folds of soft
material. “It’s one of the skin-walkers’ robes. They must still be animals and
birds.”
If they still lived.

Wulfwyn muttered. “I did not
believe possible such as I saw. The land is changed in ways that need new
meanings.”

“It’s the spae-wife’s fault,”
said Peter. “This all started when she escaped from... from my time.” Where did
she hide? In that strange little house above the battlements - or somewhere
else?

“She did not invade these
shores with Norman knights,” said Wulfwyn. “Or set a king upon the throne whose
lands lie beyond the sea.” He started forward. “Come, brighter eyes than mine
might see well in this dark.”

The door’s outline, up ahead,
glimmered grey and Peter ran faster.

Wulfwyn pulled him back.
“Wait. We do not know what lies beyond.” He approached the fur, stopped,
listened and then swift and sudden, stepped outside, his knife held close and
ready to thrust. “Come.”

The skin-walkers fire burned.
No twig cracked or branch hissed with sap. As they ran towards it, Wulfwyn spun
one way and then another.

Peter said, “Perhaps they’re
all lying dead in the manor and we’ve just run right past them.”

“In the dark, there is little
to show what we might have passed.”

Peter stood before the silent
flames. “I mustn’t touch the fire.” The distance from the toes of his boots to
the heap of white ash at the fire’s base measured just a few inches, but his
skin didn’t sear or his clothes singe from any heat.

He took hold of the staff
with both hands, raised it above his head and then plunged it into the flames.
Sparks scattered as twigs and branches snapped in silence. Straight away, the
staff warmed. How hot might it be before it started to cool? He wished he’d
remembered to put on his wet gloves.

Wulfwyn, his back to the
fire, whispered. “The carrier.”

Peter glanced over his
shoulder. “Where?”

“Under the tower.”

Peter didn’t see him, just
dark shadows and then one shadow shifted. “Is he going to attack?” The staff
burned hotter and Peter loosened his grip.

“He watches,” said Wulfwyn.
“He knows we see him.”

Peter faced the fire and
winced. The staff didn’t glow red or smoke and no flames snaked around its
length, yet its surface burned hotter and hotter. Peter tapped his fingertips
against the wood to stay in contact. “Perhaps the carrier knows I’m going back
to my time. He might stop me, or try to come with me. Can you fight him?”

Wulfwyn tensed. “We shall
see.”

The carrier clambered out
from under the tower. At the same time, a growl rumbled, low and deep, from the
other side of the fire.

***

With a
crack
that made
Peter jump, the staff writhed in his fingers and changed shape. The young wood
glistened as black and gnarled as the charred branch. The staff’s smooth bark
concertinaed into ridges, like solid waves. It cooled fast and he held it first
in his fingers and then in his palms.

The barghest crouched, ears
flat against the top of its head and prowled closer. The carrier crept in from
the opposite side. Peter gripped the staff tight as the heat diminished.

Wulfwyn protected Peter’s
back. “Go where you must.”

Peter willed the staff to be
cold. “You can’t fight them both at once.”

“I will keep them back so
that you can escape.”

“The skin-walkers must be
close.” Peter peered left and right into the trees.

The carrier darted forward
and Wulfwyn lunged with his knife. The barghest quivered as it prepared to
pounce.

“The fates speed your
journey,” said Wulfwyn. “Do not wait.”

Cold at last, Peter pulled
the staff out of the fire. Gnarled and twisted, its end tapered to a point. He
thrust it at the carrier who ran at them again and Wulfwyn arced his knife in a
sideways sweep.

Wulfwyn yelled. “Go!”

Peter struck the end of the
staff against the ground and shouted. “Granddad.”

Wulfwyn, the fire, the
barghest, the carrier, the trees, the tower and the manor splintered and passed
from sight. The wind keened high and sharp and night and day juddered, as if
broken by time. Peter swayed, dizzy and sick and shut his eyes. Silence, except
for the crackle of a fire, and as his stomach settled, he dared to look.

He stood in the middle of The
Hall. A fire burned in the hearth and the lights on the Christmas tree
twinkled. Joy, as satisfying as a hot bath, spread from his chest and through
his body to the very tips of his fingers and toes.

The warmth of the fire
relaxed his muscles and eased all of his fears, so that he wanted to lie down
and sleep. He tightened his grip on the staff until the bones in his hand ached
against the hard wood. He’d left Wulfwyn to fight alone and Leonor slept as one
already dead. A skin-walker died in Leonor’s time, though its form survived and
he guessed that the form must be that of a wolf.

He ran out of The Hall, down
the passage and into the kitchen. The wolf, its mouth fixed in a permanent
snarl, glared from the top of the sideboard. From its size, it looked
impossible to move. He dragged a kitchen chair across, climbed up, but even at
full stretch he didn’t reach anywhere near high enough.

Peter said out loud; “I need
a stepladder, or something tall.” He’d seen a stepladder somewhere in the
kitchen - by the back door, in the alcove covered by an old green curtain. He
jumped off the chair.

With three quick strides, he
darted around the table, reached the alcove and swept aside the curtain. The
stepladder leaned against the far wall and he dragged it out and across the
kitchen floor. The metal feet scraped over the tiles. He opened the legs, but
the catch to keep the legs secure proved too stiff for his fingers to click
into position. He’d have to risk it collapsing under him and he scrambled up
the metal steps.

The back door opened and
granddad stomped his boots clear of snow and came into the kitchen. “Peter!
Back already?”

“Hello, granddad. I’ve got to
take the wolf.”

“What?”

Peter thought that someone
moved just outside the door, for a shadow skimmed across the snow.

Granddad came closer, his
hands raised to encourage Peter to climb down. “Look - I think you should stay
here now. We’re all that concerned, what with your dad and all... I see you
still have that medallion.”

Peter swallowed. “Is dad at
the...” He didn’t have time. “I’ve got to help Wulfwyn. He’s fighting the carrier
and the barghest.” He took hold of the wolf’s front paw, placed the end of the
staff on the sideboard’s wide shelf, shut his eyes and said, “Leonor.”

The wolf’s fur, cold and hard
as bristles, softened. The stiff ankle joint loosened. Peter heard a soft thump
as the wolf flopped down, no longer a specimen stuffed with sawdust, but an
animal with guts and blood and claws.

Peter opened his eyes. The
manor, the tower and the skin-walkers fire stood further away. Confused, it
took him a moment to understand that although he’d returned to The Hall in
granddad’s time, he’d then run through to the kitchen. That meant the staff let
him travel to wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted, but he appeared in the
same place in the time he travelled to as from where he started. It gave him
much more freedom then having to walk to the charred branch in the wood.

Odd though, that he’d grown
too. He wobbled and gripped the wolf’s paw tighter. The stepladder leaned at an
angle into the sideboard which leaned back against the stepladder. Several
plates on the shelves slid from the vertical to the horizontal, though none
fell or broke. The wolf lay as if asleep, its mouth and eyes closed.

Peter placed his hand on the
ladder’s shiny steps, steadied his balance and climbed down fast. Huge snowflakes
drifted past, slow and steady.

Wulfwyn, the barghest and the
carrier sprang into view from around the other side of the fire. Wulfwyn
parried every attack, either with a lunge or a wide sweep of his knife. Yet he
defended with every stroke, one step back at a time, one side protected by the
fire. A lucky bite from the barghest or a jab from the carrier and he’d be down
and finished.

Peter didn’t know what to do.
He’d brought Wolf as Bear asked - now what? Did Bear want him in the manor?
What needed to be done to make Wolf wake?

The carrier fell, defeated by
another strike from Wulfwyn, but as he rolled out of reach and flipped over
onto his stumps, he spotted Peter. With his arms used like crutches, he sped
across the short space between them.

Peter lifted his staff. He
must strike first. His shoulders brushed against the stepladder’s legs and he
climbed the first two steps backwards to gain some height.

The carrier leapt and Peter
brought the staff down onto the man’s head, but too soon and he missed, lost
his balance and with the momentum of the blow, slipped. He plunged to the
ground and landed on his side.

The carrier hit the
stepladder with such force that it tipped, rocked and then fell with a
crash.
The carrier fell too, tangled in its legs. The sideboard, now unsupported,
teetered at a sharper angle and the plates slid from their shelves and dropped
into the snow. The sideboard’s speed increased and it slammed into the
stepladder and the carrier with a loud
crunch
. The carrier screamed
once.

The wolf rolled off the top
shelve and into the snow at Peter’s side.

Peter, winded from his fall,
sat up. The barghest, head raised, ears pricked, stepped back out of Wulfwyn’s
range, all its attention focused on Wolf.

Wulfwyn sprinted from the
fire across to Peter. He hooked a hand under Peter’s arm and hoisted him onto
his feet.

“We have to get Wolf to
Bear,” said Peter. “And then he’ll wake up.”

The barghest crept closer and
snarled. His eyes darted from Wolf to Peter to Wulfwyn as if uncertain which
one posed the greater threat.

A blur of orange darted out
from between the trees and snapped at the barghest’s rump.

The barghest yelped at the
unexpected attack and spun round. Fox slunk behind the fire and out of sight.
The barghest gave chase and then skidded to a halt, spun round and focused on
Wulfwyn, loped towards him and then charged.

Wulfwyn pushed Peter back.
“Stay behind me.”

“I can fight,” said Peter. He
held the staff in both hands, like a sword, with the sharp end pointed at the
barghest and ready to thrust. Another movement, under the tower and his staff
wavered as he peered harder.