Awakening (Hyddenworld Quartet 2) Read online

  His stave shimmered, its carvings crackling with blue light.

  ‘They were giants-born, Jack,’ replied Stort, ‘from whom humans and hydden came by blood and by deed. They were the originators of mortal kind and the word you said you heard you did not quite complete. What “Neandertalrastplatz” means is a place where one of the Great Ones was buried. Your ancestors were here, Jack, and that’s why we were brought here.’

  Jack was silent, as were they all. He felt connected to the Earth and to the past, yet very present in the here and now.

  ‘We should not forget,’ he said, ‘that humans have honoured this spot. Whatever the name of he or she who was buried here their spirit is with us now. Let us honour it for a time before Feld shows us the way to go.’

  They stood up in silence, feeling that this was as good an omen as there could be. A giant-born leading them from one of his ancestors’ resting place. Their determination to do what they must in the days ahead felt all the stronger for knowing that and seeing with their own eyes that his stave was alive with the power of the past.

  ‘Some say that a spirit will linger about a place, especially a wise one, for many centuries,’ observed Stort, ‘to give what help it can to those that follow, until a Great One comes along and frees it to journey on, knowing another will see the tasks of mortal kind fulfilled.’

  Feld said, in no way lightly, for there was a gravity about the place, the night and themselves, ‘Yet I doubt that any spirit would still be here after 180,000 years, unless it was a truly Great One waiting for another just as great.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘be that as it may, we will honour it with fire.’

  He found some newspaper in a bin, gave them each a sheet to scrunch up and set a small flame going with a single lucifer. He placed it on the ground and invited them to join theirs to his. ‘We keep the flame alive until we all have shared our spirit here. That’s the way ’tis done.’

  How he knew this he did not know, but he felt driven by the same ancient impulse as he had on the night when Judith was born and he made an offering to the gods.

  His flame leapt up as Barklice, next Stort and finally Feld added their paper.

  ‘We honour you,’ he said, placing a last ball of paper on the burning ashes of the others.

  As he stood up once more, staring at the flame, his stave began to tremble and the flame on the ground, whose life was surely almost done, grew bright, taller, bluer, so much so that they all stepped back a pace.

  Then the light began playing about the carving of his stave again, brighter now, crackling louder, jumping from one of them to another, circling their circle until the flame on the ground, higher than they were now, whooshed up into the sky, a wind catching their hair and cloaks, a great flash across the sky, to north and south, until as suddenly as it came, it was gone.

  Jack stood transfixed, the others around him in awe.

  ‘We honour you,’ he said again, adding, ‘A Great One has finally returned home to the Mirror this night. Let us remember him as we seek the gems of great Beornamund, which is now our quest.’

  They stood in silence a few moments more before Jack commanded General Feld to take them on.

  ‘I will, Stavemeister, I will!’

  Feld explained that the site they were on lay between the River Emscher, a little to their north, and the Rhein-Herne Canal, to their south. These waterways ran east–west and Feld led them eastward, along the narrower Emscher.

  It was not what most hydden would call a river at all, but a man-made conduit on a large scale, cleanly landscaped with grassy banks rising sharply on either side and the occasional bridge spanning them, quite high above their heads. The riverbed itself was artificial and looked like an oversized gutter.

  It was artificially lit, but not greatly so, and the occasional human who came that way, on bicycle or foot, was easily enough avoided.

  They walked fast and steadily, with barely a word said. The night remained clear and not quite warm, and though their position between the two rising banks of the river obscured the wider view, they occasionally caught a glimpse of human structures, factories, and a power station. Unlike those in Brum these were modern, clean-lined, and a few brightly lit in yellows, reds and greens. It was impressive.

  From time to time Feld scaled the right bank to get a broader sense of where they were.

  ‘We’re not going to arrive at the entrance to the Bochum tunnels until past dawn, so we may have to hide up if the day is bright and our route gets busy with humans, which I think it will. So this might be a good moment to show you something.’

  They followed him up to the top of the embankment, from where they could see how vast the metropolis they were in really was.

  ‘It’s really a number of human towns joined together: Essen, Bottrop, Gelsenkirchen . . . Bochum is where that group of taller buildings is,’ he said, pointing to the south-east.

  ‘The hydden city of Bochum is to the right, under the collieries between that nearer town, Wattensheid, and human Bochum itself. So it’s a lot more subterranean than Brum. As for the area straight ahead, there are the tunnels Bochumers do not go near as they are occupied by the Remnants.’

  ‘The hydden not under the Empire’s control?’ asked Jack, who remembered Feld’s briefing. ‘But that’s a larger area than Bochum itself !’

  ‘Much larger,’ said Feld, ‘and largely unknown to civilized hydden. Same goes for the area to the south and east of Bochum, over to our left . . . but I’ll point that out later.’

  Dawn was breaking and they went back down to the river path and journeyed on.

  ‘If we can we’ll avoid the Remnant tunnels,’ Feld told them as they went. ‘They’re a law to themselves and it’s too dangerous to go there without guides and protection. They’re largely uncharted and the Fyrd rarely go into them.

  ‘There have been plenty of attempts to subdue the Remnants, but it’s proved easier to take control of a whole continent than those mysterious tribes and their tunnels. There’s no one alive who knows the whole system or will ever know it. It’s evolved over centuries over hundreds of square miles as humans have successively dug and abandoned shafts and entire collieries one after the other.’

  As the sun began to rise Feld increased the pace.

  They left the Emscher by way of a rail track that ran east of Gelsenkirchen and then south into Bochum. From that they reached the Huller Bach, a small tributary river of the Emscher which had a course that led them towards the centre of Bochum itself.

  The area was a mix of light industry, housing and very rough open ground, occupied by industrial buildings in the past, now mostly gone. It was excellent hydden country but the routes were complex and slow work.

  ‘You wouldn’t think that one of the great cities of the Hyddenworld is as good as under our feet,’ said Feld, his normal mask of military efficiency giving way suddenly to a boyish grin, ‘but in fact, if I can just get my bearings . . .’

  He darted up high again, looked about, came down, hurried forward, turned a corner towards a large rainwater outlet pipe blocked against animals – and hydden too it seemed – by a metal grille.

  ‘Nearly in! Stay here . . .’

  He hurried up the bank into grass and shrubs and disappeared.

  Five minutes later they heard the sound of echoing steps coming towards them and Feld appeared on the other side of the grille.

  ‘Some things never change,’ he said. ‘It was like this twenty years ago!’

  He reached up to the top, then to the sides, and released some swivels.

  The grille fell back sufficiently for them to clamber through, but he didn’t let them.

  Instead he came back outside.

  ‘This isn’t Brum,’ he said, ‘and if you go down there without knowing what’s up here you’ll be disorientated in minutes. So my friends . . .’

  They kept low while he found a high point from which they could survey the surface as the sun rose. It was a wastelan
d of old workings, torn-down factories, steelworks, the remnants of giant chimney stacks, brush land, almost nothing.

  ‘Bochum lies under that,’ he said. ‘Now look to our right . . .’

  ‘The south,’ said Barklice automatically, ‘using the sun.’

  Feld nodded.

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘A security fence.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Beyond it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing but . . . I can’t make it out,’ said Stort.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Just birds in the air . . . wheeling around . . . seagulls?’

  ‘Seagulls and rooks,’ said Feld. ‘What you’re looking at is the biggest open-air tip in these parts. Can you smell it?’

  They could: acrid, sweet, filthy, faint.

  ‘That’s because the wind’s blowing away from us . . . we’re lucky. Now, the most important place in hydden Bochum is its Great Hall, from which four tunnels radiate. In those tunnels, with the Hall as the centre, most of the Empire’s business is done.

  ‘The Hall reaches the surface right in the centre of the dump you’re looking at, but you’d hardly know it. On the ground it’s just the footings of a demolished building. Inside, those footings act as the roof, complete with high windows. Humans never go near it. It’s fenced off because it’s toxic, the dump is used occasionally for ordinary waste by humans in masks. The deep interior where no humans go is where the footings are. So . . . we’ll go down into the tunnels here and make our way to one of the big tunnels that lead to the Hall. Hopefully you won’t get lost!’

  ‘But we can get discovered?’

  Feld shook his head.

  ‘Bochum’s no different from any other hydden city except that it’s overtopped by wasteland and toxic tips. People come but . . . they don’t so easily go. People aren’t checked in, they’re checked out. So getting in is not a problem . . . and today, from what I heard just now, there’s a market or something on. The place is busy. Let’s go.’

  They went inside, pulled the grille to, and immediately the hum of the human city outside was replaced by the quieter sounds, mainly voices and feet, of the hydden city below.

  ‘I don’t have good memories of this place after childhood, so let’s make this as short and sweet as we can, Jack. Barklice, give me the charts.’

  They moved along the pipe until they found a dry spot.

  ‘Right, this is what they call Level 1. Level 2, the one on which the Great Hall stands, is below us and the entrances are about here . . .’

  He pointed to a few spots on the chart.

  ‘As you can hear it’s a busy time . . . the days around the Summer Solstice always are. This is the market end of the city, or one of them. Guards keep an eye on things like the stavermen do in Brum, but it’s usually free and easy. They’ll assume we’re buyers from one of the towns nearby. Leave the talking to me.’

  ‘Do they talk English?’ asked Jack.

  ‘German and English. This is lower Saxony,’ said Feld, ‘and Frisia is beyond that. It’s as good as the home of English!’

  They moved off quickly, tired now, wanting to rest.

  There were stairs down, rather dank, but they led to a light, well-lit concourse, busy with people.

  ‘This way,’ said Feld.

  Ahead was an open gate, but with some bored-looking guards nearby. As Feld predicted, they were only checking people out.

  They joined the crowd, reaching the gate together, along with a few others. The guards barely looked up and they passed through feeling immediate relief.

  ‘You see: easy,’ said Feld.

  There was a crash behind them and a raising of voices. For some reason the guards had closed the gate. The group hurried on, turned a corner and found themselves facing six Fyrd who had formed a line to stop them. Each was armed, two had crossbows cocked.

  When they looked behind them there were as many Fyrd again. Armed, grim.

  ‘I thought you said . . .’ began Jack.

  They turned to the front again.

  ‘Where are you from?’ said one of the Fyrd.

  ‘Bottrop,’ said Feld, ‘just friends out for the day.’

  ‘Yeh,’ was the cold reply, ‘sure you are. Now, get in there.’ He pointed to a side tunnel, its entrance well guarded.

  ‘Things seem to have changed,’ said Feld.

  39

  RESERVOIRS OF TIME

  Judith’s behaviour suddenly changed.

  From hiking in the woods and out on the moors she had spent a few days at home, skulking in her room, glowering at everyone, snappy, and walking down to the village, such as it was.

  ‘What she does there I have no idea, Arthur,’ Margaret said. ‘I mean what is there to do?’

  Back in the cottage Judith would sit all day by the guttering, ill-built fire, poking at it.

  Then, late one afternoon, she suddenly screamed, literally screamed. Not as a child any more, nor quite an adult.

  Something had hurt her, deep down.

  When Katherine asked her what was wrong she replied, shockingly, ‘How the hell am I meant to know?’

  When Margaret told her not to be rude she replied, ‘It’s the focking fire, it wears a man down,’ and laughed stupidly.

  That was not a word the Foales or Katherine ever used, and the phrase that followed it was puzzling.

  Her behaviour was anger-making and no one wanted Margaret to get angry. It was out of character and the doctor had told her that if ever she had another fall she was to get right back in touch.

  Then Judith got up and said to no one in particular, ‘Oh Christ, I’ll deal with it.’

  She left the house and slammed the door.

  ‘What did she mean, Katherine, she’ll “deal” with it?’ said Margaret in a measured voice.

  Katherine sighed.

  ‘I’ve lost all track of what age she’s meant to be.’

  ‘Pubescent, maybe slightly older,’ murmured Arthur, looking at a chart, ‘I’d say. Not being an expert on teenage behaviour . . . Actually I don’t know any more either . . .’

  He looked enquiringly at Katherine, who looked delphically back. It was woman’s stuff and he wasn’t going to ask.

  ‘Yes,’ she said finally, ‘she’s started or something. That’s probably why she’s so difficult. How do I know? – I’m not much more than a teenager myself, though sometimes I feel like an old woman. And she’s a Shield Maiden, which in this case does not help.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Arthur, not at all sure he understood but hoping he did because he was not going to ask for details. He smiled ruefully, so did Katherine.

  ‘She just needs time and space,’ she said, ‘and lots of hugs. And she misses Jack. I do too.’

  ‘Well, all right!’ snapped Margaret. ‘I still think that kind of behaviour is unnecessary and rude.’

  It was evening, already dark, and the still Byrness air outside was alive with the midges that had been keeping them all indoors. The fire, which was needed against the evening chill of June in the high borderland, was guttering as usual.

  Katherine said, ‘She’s probably cross about the fire, and I understand why. It’s hopeless. I have stopped trying to work out what Judith means or doesn’t mean. I doubt she knows herself, and anyway I doubt she cares. A storm doesn’t mean anything. It just is. Judith is like that. She just is. She’s gone and she will shortly come back, or not, as the case may be. When she does we’ll know what she meant.’

  ‘You sound like Jack,’ said Margaret.

  ‘Good! But you—’

  ‘I’m not talking about me,’ said Margaret, ‘not to anyone. There’s no point.’

  Margaret had had another fall, two in fact, that morning. She said it was a slip, but the others feared it was something more.

  ‘I’m not going to any doctor here in Scotland; I don’t understand a word they say.’

  ‘We’re not in Scotland, my love,’ said Arthur, ‘we’re—’<
br />
  ‘Well, it feels like it,’ she said sharply. ‘But it’s not me we should be worried about, it’s Judith. Where does she learn those words? She doesn’t know anyone to teach them to her, it’s so . . . so . . . horrible!’

  ‘The radio probably,’ suggested Katherine, ‘she listens to it in her room.’

  Living with Judith was more of a trial for the women than Arthur. Her unpredictability washed over him but they took it personally, though Katherine was becoming more philosophical by the day.

  As for the fire, her comment had made him laugh. Also it was absolutely spot-on. She got the phrase ‘deal with it’, he guessed, from the forestry worker who lived by himself a couple of hundred yards down the road. He was a big, taciturn, brooding man who kept two fierce dogs which tore at the flimsy fence that was all that kept them in as they tried to get at passers-by.

  If that man was the source of her vocabulary it was a matter for concern. As for the dogs, that was something else entirely. Arthur had been scared of them until he walked that way to the shop with Judith. To his horror she ran at the fence, banged and kicked at it with her hands and feet, and shouted and snarled at the dogs. Briefly they tried to leap over the fence, presumably to rip them both apart.

  But suddenly Judith fell silent and growled, a deep, guttural growl. The dogs stopped barking and then they whined, pleadingly as if trying to find a way to stop her climbing over the fence and tearing them with her teeth.

  ‘Bastards,’ she said, a word he had pretended not to hear.

  They had carried on, and, coming up the road, carrying an axe, they met the brooding man.

  He waved at Judith and she waved at him.

  ‘He owns the dogs,’ she had said, ‘and by the way, his fire works a treat.’

  The fact was that even if Judith could be labelled a teenager she was, by any normal standards of behaviour and appearance, an intimidating one. A man of God, meeting her in a country lane, might make the sign of the cross for protection.

  She was large and strong and walked in the same hunched-forward way her father did, as if she was about to lift rocks, scatter the enemy, climb Big Ben and hang on with her left hand and arm while holding a screaming human being in her right and eating him, or her.