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‘He had the strength to pull you out?’

Pike shook his head. ‘A hundred folk working together couldn’t have got me out. The ground, you see, was treacherous, so they couldn’t have got near without sinking in it themselves. I thought I was properly done for.’

‘So how . . . ?’

‘I’m coming to that. You know what the lad did next, calm as you please? He makes himself comfortable on the nearest solid ground, pulls out a slate and chalk from his pocket, for the purpose of working a few things out, produces a chronometer from another pocket and proceeds to time my rate of sinkage.

‘Naturally, I cursed a bit, but he calmly says, “Mister Pike, I advise you to stop fidgeting, and spread your arms out horizontally. That’ll slow you down a bit.” I did as he said, but even so I continued to sink.

‘“Do something!” says I, beginning to get desperate, for the mud was up to my chest by then. He ignored me, his brow furrowing, and it was then that the humming began.’

‘Humming?’

Pike nodded, his gesture a mixture of weariness and affection.

‘He hums whenever he’s working out a problem. Only trouble is there’s no hydden alive less able to hold a tune or even produce a harmonious note, come to that. Stort’s humming is an agony to all about him, and I almost began longing for that mud to rise right up over my ears. Hum, hum, hum . . .

‘I may have cursed a bit and he may have said, “More haste less speed,” or words to that effect. I know we both got angry with each other for a while. By then the mud was up over my chest, and with the pressure of it even breathing was becoming hard.

‘Then his infernal humming suddenly stopped – always a good sign as I have since discovered – and he stood up and said, “I know what I need. We have seventeen minutes, twenty-three at the most, depending, I suspect, on how deeply you breathe. Try to keep your chest well expanded while I’m gone.”

‘With that he set off in that lop-sided gallop that passes for Stort running, and he headed across the fields to Wardine. I continued to sink and, as the mud reached my chin, I cursed the Mirror and all that reside within it, including Master Stort, Wardine, Master Brief, book-learning and much else beside.’

The Peace-Weaver nodded sympathetically. ‘You must have been terrified.’

‘I was,’ said Pike, ‘but be that as it may . . . as the mud reached my mouth, Master Stort reappeared with some villagers carrying poles and ropes, and various other things they had assembled at his instruction. In no time at all they had rigged up a sort of . . . well, I would say it was . . . a
contraption
.’

‘Actually, Mister Pike, it was a block and tackle,’ interrupted a voice off to their right. It came from the black bin-bag, and it seemed Master Stort was about to emerge.

Pike grinned. ‘Whatever it was, he and those others rigged it up, and they somehow got a rope under my arm, pulled steady at the tackle he had made, and about thirty seconds later I popped out from all that mud like a cork from a flagon of fermented mead. And ever since that day, he has my loyalty and trust in all things. Eh, Stort?’

The bin-bag shuffled about a bit, and the nose disappeared inside.

‘Yes, thank you Mister Pike,’ came a muffled voice. ‘Our wyrds are as one, yet together make more than two! That’s a riddle as well as being a mystery!’

‘Yeh, well . . .’

Pike went back to sit with the other stavermen; the bin-bag continued to rustle and shift.

‘It must be said,’ Brief continued quietly ‘that Stort has an independence of spirit bordering on the eccentric. It’s a quality not helped by the fact that he sincerely believes that everything he does is entirely logical.’

‘Is that such a problem, Master Brief?’ asked Imbolc.

‘Yes, it is, because it means he does not know how odd his behaviour can seem to others, like wearing a bin-bag for a cloak. He’ll merely argue that it’s easier to carry.’

‘He’s right, of course.’

‘And he won’t carry a fighting stave, because he insists that fighting is not the best way to settle disputes, and that history shows it just provokes more of them.’

‘He’s right about that too.’

‘Maybe he is,’ sighed Brief, ‘but that kind of thing is hard for others to take, especially those of his own age, amongst whom, you’ll not be surprised to learn, he has very few friends. But Pike’s right about his gift for predicting things.’

‘For example?’

‘Things big, things small, from weather change to who’s about to come round the corner next. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough I daresay.’

‘So let me guess. You went off to see him in Wardine for yourself, and then brought him back to Brum to study further under your direct instruction?’

‘In a nutshell, yes,’ confessed Brief.

‘And now he’s led you here?’

‘Thanks to you, Imbolc, it would seem. But quite what we can expect to
happen
I have no idea.’

He waited for Imbolc to enlighten him. Peace-Weavers don’t suddenly turn up in the back of beyond unless they have a very good reason. Brief was feeling increasingly uneasy.

All Imbolc said was, ‘I am here merely as an observer. I cannot influence a thing, merely watch and take note, even though . . .’

‘What?’

‘I know only that what will happen here will influence all our lives, and therefore Mister Pike is right to be wary, as you are right to feel nervous. When Shield Maidens begin to show themselves we’d better all watch out . . .’

They looked around expectantly as if they thought that the critical moment would come just by talking about it.

What happened instead was that Master Bedwyn Stort finally cast off his bin-bag and emerged.

He was indeed an extraordinary sight, with his wild hair and beanpole legs and arms. He said nothing but looked about for a moment and then went straight to the far end of the railway arch, looked out at the violent sky and began to hum loudly.

A tuneless, disturbing, thinking kind of hum.

A hum to get right to the heart of things.

He raised one foot to scratch the calf of his other leg and all the while his humming intensified.

Then suddenly it stopped and he put his foot back on the ground, whereupon he turned round to face them.

Imbolc stared at him curiously, recollecting their previous close encounter in the mist of Waseley Hill.

Most eleven-year-olds would wear ordinary clothes: a pair of short trews, perhaps, a light tunic of some kind, and an ordinary style of boots. Their most distinctive feature, usually, was the stave they all carried, on which they stuck various emblems and marks denoting which town or village they came from, what gang they belonged to, and even their size of fortune.

Stort looked nothing like this.

He wore a suit of such ancient design that Imbolc had to cast her memory back to the late nineteenth century to remember when she had last seen anyone wearing such, and that was a human, on a walking vacation in the Alps. The suit comprised a jacket, trousers and waistcoat – the buttons mostly missing – whose green tweedy material looked so rough that it seemed more fitting to scour pots with than wear close to the skin. It was obviously home-made, the stitches sewn so crooked and loose, while the arms of the jacket were of slightly different lengths.

I do believe he’s made it himself!
Imbolc thought in surprise.

The innumerable pockets were all bulging with contents: a thin strip of coiled car tyre was trying to escape from one, and some plasticized wire from another. A computer part kept company with a piece of vaguely medical-looking red rubber hose, and the black bin-bag was now thrust in alongside them.

The slate Pike had recently mentioned protruded from the breast pocket of Stort’s waistcoat along with some pieces of chalk and several sharpened pencils of human manufacture; while, secured through a buttonhole on his lapel, a chunky silver chain disappeared into a waistcoat pocket, where it was doubtless attached to a chronometer.

But that was as far as Imbolc’s observations proceeded, because suddenly the boy spoke up and his voice was urgent.

‘Got to get out of here,’ he urged. ‘Er, very soon.’

Mister Pike went over to him and they conversed in low voices, Stort gesticulating in an oddly disjointed way, while Pike nodded and looked even grimmer.

Then the staverman turned to them. ‘When Master Stort says “soon” he means “now!” That means we have to move straight away.’

‘Where to?’ said one of the stavermen.

‘Up above,’ said Pike tersely. ‘On top of the bridge.’

‘But we’ll get cold and wet,’ protested another of them.

‘And down here you’ll get even colder, because you’ll be dead,’ said Pike.

With that, they all moved.

Fast.

Except, strangely enough, for Bedwyn Stort, who stayed right where he was, staring at Imbolc.

‘Have we met before?’ he asked, frowning.

‘Yes,’ said Imbolc, ‘but I looked a little different.’

He came closer, peered into her eyes and then at the pendant that hung from her neck. Normally she kept it covered, but it had somehow worked loose and was now plain to see on her jerkin.

‘The old woman on Waseley Hill,’ he said eventually. It had been given to very few mortals to make the connection.

‘The same,’ she admitted.

‘You’re the Peace-Weaver!’ he said, with all the excitement of discovery.

‘Am I?’

‘Looks like it,’ said Stort. ‘Same eyes and same pendant. This arch is no longer a good place to be.’

‘Thank you for the advice, Master Stort,’ she said.

They followed the others out into the rain, up the embankment to the rail track above.

T
wo hundred miles to the north, Clare Shore pulled into the car park of the health centre in Thirsk where her husband Richard worked as a doctor.

It was a Friday and the plan was for Richard to get off early to avoid the weekend traffic, so they could head south and stay overnight in London for a wedding they were attending the following day. With luck their journey should take just three hours, so they would get to the house of the friends they were staying with by early evening.

But as Clare climbed out of the car, the sky, which had been dark and threatening all day, grew darker still and the expected downpour began in earnest.

‘We’ll make a run for it,’ she decided, grabbing the hand of Katherine, her five-year-old daughter. They got inside, breathless and laughing, the rain now torrential.

Clare was medium-height, dark-haired, cheerful-looking. Katherine was fair, unlike her mother, but tall for her age, and thin, which she got from Richard. She wore corrective glasses which made her look too studious for such a young age.

‘He’ll be a few more minutes,’ one of the receptionists told Clare. ‘You’d better wait for him here in the dry. You’re only going to get wetter if you go back to the car.’

The reception was now nearly empty of patients, except the stalwarts undaunted by the weather. Once they had sat down, Katherine stared through the plate-glass window at the rain outside and then up at the strange black-purple sky.

Sitting opposite there was a boy about her age doing the same thing.

The two children looked at each other appraisingly. Katherine gave the boy a half-smile, and he smiled back at once as if recognizing her. She looked away, not yet ready to make friends. He was dark, stolidly built, with a confident but wary air about him. There was a small neat backpack made of dark leather on the floor by his chair.

Their brief exchange of glances became more frequent, as if he was somehow watching over her.

Clare watched this interaction with interest. Katherine did not make friends easily and for her to smile at another child, and especially a complete stranger, was unusual.

But there was something else.

Clare happened to know that the same boy had been there for at least two and a half hours already, because he had been sitting in the same chair earlier that morning when she popped in to have a word with Richard about their journey.

Feeling the natural concern any mother feels for a child left alone for so long, she got up to ask a woman at reception about him.

‘He’s waiting to be picked up and taken down south,’ she explained. ‘We’re keeping an eye on him until his new case worker gets here. She’s coming all the way from London, but there’s thunderstorms on the M1, and the traffic is chaos, and maybe that’s the cause of the mix-up.’

‘What mix-up?’

‘The lady who brought him had to go, but said she would come back to see the pick-up had been made, but she’s not checked back in yet, and some mobiles are down, so . . . Anyway the boy, he seems fine. Been good as gold.’

‘Which part of London is he meant to be going to?

‘His case worker’s from Wembley, I think . . . but she’s still not responding.’

‘Wembley’s near . . . where
we’re
going,’ Clare blurted before she could stop herself.