Harvest Page 36

  The sound of the sea roared up from the cliffs; dogs barked down the lane; humans drove by along the roads, the lights of their cars, red at back, white to front: such an affront to the dark.

  ‘Shall we chase them, crash them, hurt them, Mistress?’ begged the Reivers.

  ‘No, there’s something else we must do.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now. Stort, if you were here already this wouldn’t have to be. You’re not late with the gem but you’re not early and Earth is not pleased. It’s half your fault and now . . .’

  ‘Where to, Mistress?’ said the Reivers, mounting their dogs, gathering behind her.

  ‘Half Steeple,’ she said. ‘Time’s come for the Earth to show her teeth, time for us to get things ready. But I’m aching and tired and age is withering me and I miss what I can never have. I miss Bedwyn Stort.’

  ‘Shall we lead? We know where that place is.’

  ‘Are we coming back here? We like this place.’

  ‘Of course we damn well are, for Mirror’s sake and for mine, this is where the gem is. Stort’s taking so long.’

  ‘You love him, Mistress . . .’

  She screamed her rage at them and said she didn’t and chased them with kicks and pokes and bit their ears and shouted so loud her spittle fell on them and they screamed too.

  ‘I don’t,’ she said.

  You do.

  43

  CLUES

  Stort woke after only an hour’s sleep, things swirling in his mind.

  She was swirling, round and round a single word, which came to him out of the monograph of Brief’s that he had read, about ã Faroün.

  Brief said that ã Faroün said, ‘We all crave to go home and that’s the sadness in the music I make and in my lutenist eyes.’

  There was a lot in that sentence that woke Stort up, but the word the Shield Maiden was circling, the Reivers and the dogs as well, all angry in his waking dream, was ‘home’.

  ‘Home is where,’ Bedwyn Stort pronounced as he sat up in bed in his nightshirt, wide awake and excited by the sense that he might have made a breakthrough, ‘it’s where we all crave to go to at Samhain. The end and the beginning of our year. We start at home as children and we want to end up at home when we die. The bit between is just journeying from and to.’

  He got up, very quietly.

  Jack wasn’t there because of what was happening in . . . in . . . less than an hour. Just enough time.

  Very quietly because Katherine was there, and so was Cluckett, and he knew they both had instructions to keep their doors open and listen out for Stort in case he got it into his head to go night walking.

  So Stort eased off his nightshirt, winced at the threat of making noise, and eased on his drawers and vest, giggling slightly as he sometimes did. He saw the comedy of himself.

  Then, realizing he had no shirt to hand and not wanting to go out without one, he tiptoed absurdly down his own corridor, past Cluckett’s open door, into the kitchen – where his hip caught the handle of a saucepan and nearly brought it to the floor – and got a shirt.

  He eased that on as well, wrinkling up his face at each imagined nearly noise and tiptoed again, his thin shanks of legs looking as ridiculous as he imagined they did as he reached his room again.

  Stort had decided to go to the Library while he still could. He wanted to try and track down the sources Brief used.

  He wanted to find out more about ã Faroün because, as that excellent fellow Blut had suggested, or seemed to, it might be the clue to what he was missing. It felt like a great big splinter in his brain which he couldn’t quite reach to pull out.

  Stort’s jacket was over a chair so he put that on. He had no hat except the nightcap that he wore in winter in bed, but that would do. No one was likely to see him in Brum at that hour. All busy with war, and all he wanted and needed to do was to make the ten-minute walk to the Library and check in the stacks to see if he could find out the name and location of the place ã Faroün had once called home.

  A lot of material had been evacuated to Wales but not more modern things like Brief’s notes on ã Faroün and some of the less important-seeming manuscript scrivenings of the lutenist himself. A mistake perhaps, but choices had to be made and Thwart had made them.

  Stort had lit the candle by his bed when he woke. He stepped into his shoes.

  Now he used it to light his way to the front door, which presented the challenge of bolts. Great big things which Cluckett liked to shoot at night with relish, and pull back in the morning with glee.

  He managed them in silence by easing them back and forth slowly, the house somnolent and dark behind him and his face contorting with the effort of being quiet.

  Stort loved liberty and there was a pleasure in stealing into the cold, deserted night with his jacket on against the chill, and his nightcap too, its bobble bobbling.

  He realized with a thrill of horror that he had forgotten to put on his trews. His skinny legs were bare to the October night air. But he couldn’t go back, not now. He had better hurry on and the sooner he got there, the sooner he would get back. Anyway they would all leave Brum in the morning, after which it would have been too late.

  Ã Faroün.

  Home.

  Samhain.

  No problem had ever been as intractable as this one, but for love. That was difficult. Stort stopped, insights came thick and fast. He added ‘love’ to his list.

  Love.

  Why had he dreamed the dream he had? Why had he remembered this one, since he rarely remembered dreams?

  Oh, but she looked old and sad in his dream and he wanted to be with her and . . . and . . .

  But even in his thoughts, which no one else could know, Bedwyn Stort was too shy to put his arms around the one he loved.

  ‘I would like to be with her this Samhain, gem or no gem. Just to be near so she knows I’m not far.’

  The Main Square was deserted but for the guards at the Residence. A solitary flame-light flared in one corner and the light was on in the Residence. Across the Square from it was the Library, its windows dark and its great doors, which had never been the same since the earthquake in the summer, loomed.

  For a horrible moment he thought he had left the keys in his trews but they were round his neck, along with his Chime. He felt it, as he often did, and remembered Judith’s little hand when she gave it him while still a girl and put it round his neck.

  And the taste of the small sweet tomatoes which she stole from Arthur’s tomato patch as a child, to pop into Stort’s mouth.

  ‘Taste them!’ she had cried delightedly,

  He had done as she’d commanded. It was in those moments that he shared simple joy with another for the first time in his life and his innocent heart began to know the depth of an overwhelming love that, when she became an adult, turned to such torment for him.

  He mounted the Library steps, looked round and – bang! – there it was again, the certainty that there was something here, right there, that he was missing.

  He turned back to the door and unlocked it.

  He closed it quickly, lest someone see, and locked it up again.

  Now he was free in the dark, free to do what he liked best, which was finding things.

  He lit the gas lights down to the stack-room steps which spiralled down and down and led him to other worlds. Stort’s pale shanks shivered in the flickering flames but he didn’t care.

  44

  SPECS

  Late in the evening of October 23rd, Niklas Blut took a final turn around the Main Square of Brum. He walked alone but for two guards who kept a discreet distance behind. The crowds parted for him, hushed and filled with a dread expectation.

  Nobody now doubted that the invasion was about to happen. The intelligence indicated it and Blut’s grim face as well.

  As he turned back towards the Residence someone shouted, ‘Good luck, sir!’ and a broken sound of clapping echoed around the Square.

  He turned
and said quietly to those near enough to hear, ‘I will make an announcement very shortly.’

  No wonder then that when he climbed the steps back up into the Residence, a rough, blustery, late Autumn wind at his heels, he did so reluctantly and with a heavy heart. The War Council presented a circle of now-familiar faces, silent with expectation.

  ‘We are, I believe, as ready as we can be. Which is as well. The time has come for me to hand over the running of this Council, which it has been my great honour to steer through the historic deliberations and decisions of the last days, to the one among us who is most competent to take us into war: Igor Brunte.

  ‘I can now confirm what many of you already suspect: the invasion of Brum will begin tonight, or, more accurately, at just past two tomorrow morning.’

  It was handover time.

  Ten o’clock at night and the invasion four hours away. The War Council was giving way to Igor Brunte’s rule. Had it been a war on a national scale Blut might have stayed in charge. But it was a battle over a city, in a city, and it didn’t need emperors but soldiers who knew what they were doing, had clear command, and their plans and assets in place.

  So over to Brunte.

  A steady east wind was driving rain into the sides of the Residence; a staccato sound against its windows.

  Brunte took the chair.

  ‘There’s a crowd outside, my Lord Blut,’ he said, ‘and it would be good if you went out and spoke to them. By eleven they need to be gone.’

  Festoon agreed.

  ‘You have become popular, my Lord,’ he said. ‘The right words will be useful at this stage of things. The citizens need a final uplift.’

  Blut nodded. He was working on it. But it was hard to think of inspirational words to order, certainly ones which could compete with what he had said spontaneously on the first day he came.

  Now they all knew what was happening and who was doing what and why.

  The invasion of the city by the Fyrd was due to start with the arrival of a freight train at Lawley Street Station at six minutes past two, half a mile east of where they now sat.

  It had been part of Blut’s strategy to convey the idea that nobody knew anything about the Fyrd plans and that all was panic and chaos in the great city. He guessed the Fyrd had spies and their reports would be heard and read by Quatremayne.

  The advantage to Blut of the Fyrd strategy, and its only flaw, was that it was nearly impossible to change the timings of the trains that would bring the troops in. That element of surprise had been completely lost once the strategy was known in Brum.

  But even had Quatremayne thought that Brum knew his plans, and been able to change them, he would not have done so. He had the overwhelming advantage of numbers, firepower and skills. His forces could not be beaten. Resistance there might be, but his victory was inevitable.

  As night deepened, the city and its remaining inhabitants stayed calm. Flares had been lit in the Main Square in the expectation that a crowd of those not immediately involved in defence and already in position might gather as a final testimony to the city’s fighting spirit. They had, and the flares danced and spat with the wind and rain.

  Much was afoot.

  A few hundred yards to the north-east, across the Digbeth branch of the Brum Canal Navigation, in the shadow of Old Corporation Wharf, the bilgesnipe were making their craft shipshape, as maritime folk like to do, ahead of the very special role it had been agreed with Blut and the Council of War that they would play. Under the leadership of Arnold Mallarkhi, Old Mallarkhi himself being now too old for such a task, they were to provide transport for forces and supplies during the initial stages of the battle.

  Later, when the retreat was sounded, theirs would be the task of getting folk away to fight again in the days or months ahead.

  The location gave them instant access in four directions: along the River Rea, which ran north–south, and up and down the Warwick and Birmingham Canal, which went east–west and whose aqueduct passed over the Rea above the wharf.

  Meanwhile, in tunnels below, far from the prying eyes of any spies, with only trusted locals in the know, a temporary kitchen had been set up for the duration of the battle. The bilgesnipe would take supplies to all key points while the hefty Fazeley Street porters, renowned for their strength and speed, could load and unload and carry food and arms to places the boats could not reach.

  A hundred yards to the north of the wharf, and eight hundred to its west, in the old Cattle Market and Worcester Street Cattle Market respectively, Brunte’s forces and Pike’s stavermen were gathered, armed and ready. They were well placed to advance at speed and in force on three of the four arrival points of the Fyrd: Lawley Street Goods Station, the Curzon Street Goods Yard and New Street Station.

  The fourth arrival point, which lay further off, was Snow Hill Station. A special force combining Brunte’s and Pike’s people lay in wait nearby for them.

  These different groups, which between them contained the best and most skilled fighters available to Brum, would make some of the greatest sacrifices of life and limb. But none of these forces, not even their field commanders, yet knew the exact target against which they would be deployed by Brunte and Feld. There was good reason for this.

  On the outskirts of Brum, along the key railway lines, temporary telegraph offices had been set up to alert Brunte’s command centre in the room below where they now sat, as to which trains had passed through and what their estimated times of arrival would be.

  The intention was to move in Brum’s forces, starting with those under Brunte’s command, only when those alerts had been given, making it impossible for the Fyrd to know in advance where the strongest defence or attack they might face would be.

  These movements would be by foot and very fast. Retreat would be the same – or rather, tactical withdrawal to another point where, combining with other forces, sudden and heavy attacks could be made.

  It was a strategy only possible in a complex urban jungle such as Brum. In open country, the Fyrd would prevail very quickly. But in Brum the hope was they would hardly know what had hit them, or from which direction it came, before the attacking force had evaporated into the alleys, conduits and along the canals, to do the same thing somewhere else.

  ‘The aim,’ Brunte had made clear to his force in a final message conveyed by his commanders in the field, ‘is threefold. First, to slow down and pin down the enemy. Second, to make them think we have much greater forces than they imagine. Third, to sap their morale by making it difficult for them to assess our strength, understand and predict our strategy, and then inflict real damage on them out of proportion to our numbers. A fourth, more general goal, is to leave the Fyrd in absolutely no doubt that Brum is not a place they wish to be – ever.’

  No one doubted that a general retreat would be sounded probably sooner than later. When it was, Brunte’s forces would then be made subordinate to Pike and his stavermen, whose knowledge of Brum’s labyrinthine escape routes was unsurpassed. Their role would be to get the military out as quickly and safely as possible and then go back in to undercover positions long since worked out and assigned.

  It was then that different, longer-term tactics would be employed to harass the occupying army.

  There were details Blut liked.

  One was the decision to pick ten fit youths to act as runners, carrying messages to and from where they might be needed. They were given red and white uniforms to be visible so that when needed they could be quickly found. A risk, but a reasonable one. Their survival, like their usefulness, depended on their speed.

  They had been chosen on the advice of Bratfire, the son of Barklice, who laid claim to being the fastest thing on two legs in Brum and could vouch that those he had chosen were ‘not half bad too’.

  Barklice had been put in overall charge of them, which he did not relish and Bratfire resented, which he let Pike and Brunte know loud and clear.

  ‘Dad finds routes, he don’t run ’em. ’Ow’s he t
o know which best to send when it comes to Old Brum and New, Deritend and Digbeth, New Station and Lawley Street? He don’t.’

  Then, when he was assigned that day by Barklice to Blut, in the mistaken belief that the best of the runners should be with the most senior people, he complained even more.

  ‘Not that yer not important, Mister Blut, but there don’t seem to be much happening round the Residence or you. Just folk with bits of paper whispering. No action.’

  ‘Well, that might change,’ Blut had said.

  ‘And it might not,’ said Bratfire, standing kicking his heels and eating and proving his point.

  But Blut was right; things had changed.

  When he got back from his visit to Bedwyn Stort he realized that Barklice couldn’t do two jobs at once. Standing by to act as route-finder to Stort to aid his escape from the city was a better use of his talents, so on Blut’s return to the Residence and before this meeting, he had called Bratfire in.

  He felt the dialogue was worth sharing with the Council. War and battles were about strategy and big things. But it was individuals who did the work and it was as well to remember it.

  When he had summoned Bratfire he came looking eager but glum.

  ‘You said you knew the runners who your father is in charge of?’

  ‘Yes I do, every one.’

  ‘Is there anyone in Brum they all respect?’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Look up to?’

  ‘Not Dad, he’s too old.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  ‘If they don’t do what I say they know I’ll clobber them, so they do.’

  ‘You, then?’

  ‘Yes. Me.’

  ‘What would you do if you saw a Fyrd?’

  ‘Tell ’im to piss off.’

  ‘Ten Fyrd?’

  ‘Run like hell to the nearest corner, get the lads, sneak up on ’em and . . . and . . .’

  ‘What.’

  ‘Depends where, when, how, time of night or day, what gear we have to hand, if there’s an escape route and what mood I’m in and who’s with me.’