A Sterkarm Kiss (29 page)

23

16A: “The Elves Are Back!”

The cattle, black, skinny, half-wild creatures, were constantly, stubbornly turning aside, trying to find some way to escape the men who pestered them. Per, riding Fowl, turned a couple of cows aside and rose in his stirrups to point and shout a warning about a cow and calf that were making a break for the hills. Swart, his gazehound, ran forward, yapped, and ran back to Fowl's heels.

The cattle weren't shy of charging the men, especially those on foot, and the horsemen had to be quick to spur in, perhaps nudging a cow with the butt of a lance, to turn it aside. It was hot work, and Per's shirt hung open, unlaced. Sweat gleamed on his chest.

Elf-Joe, shirtless, was among the men on foot, dodging out of the way of the cattle, roaring at them and clapping hands, clouting them with sticks. The slope, thank God, was leveling out and growing easier, becoming a broader, better-trodden track down into Bedesdale and the winter pastures along Bedes Water.

Children came running toward them from the ford, a noisy, shouting gaggle who made the cattle shake their heads and stomp. Joe was alarmed, but he should have known that Sterkarm bairns were used to cattle. “Elfie, Elfie!” the little voices shrilled. “Elfie-Choe!”

“Mind! Mind!” Joe said, fearful for them, but the bairns dodged the animals and ran up to him, reaching for his hands and grabbing at his knees. He fascinated them, because he'd been in Elf-Land. They thought of him as a sort of friendly monster. “Tell May!” they said. “Tell him!”

They were all shouting together, and it was hard to understand. “What?”

The oldest of the bairns, a lassie, said, “Tell May that Elven be back!”

“What?”
Joe said, incredulously.

They all shouted again. The tall lassie's voice rose above them. “Elven be on moor—they've been seen. Tell May!” They were too shy to approach the May themselves, Per being a shining hero to the small fry of the tower. But Elfie-Choe, he was even more of an outsider than them. He could do it.

Joe ran up the hillside, weaving in and out of men and cattle, yelling, “May! Per May!” Men pointed him in the right direction and added their voices to his, and here came Per, swaying easily on his horse's back, his fair hair standing on end, his face flushed as he wiped it on his sleeve.

“Elven!” Joe shouted. “Elven be back this way! They be here!”

“Elven?” Fowl circled Joe. “Be that what tha said—Elven?”

“Aye! Elven! On moor!”

Per looked astounded—alarmed—enthused. “Where?”

“Ask bairns,” Joe said, and looked around to see the children already on the other side of the ford, racing for the tower.

Per sat his horse, astonished, his mouth open. Into his mind came a woman: tall, wreathed in soft hair, golden brown and falling in heavy waves. She was heavy bosomed, broad hipped. Generous hillside curves and a generous smile. The Elf-May. Entraya.

But Elves, they'd said. Elves. Entraya was rare. Most Elves were men, and not generous but cunning, armed and out for land and booty. What's more, they could be coming only for revenge. Standing in his stirrups, Per yelled the names of various men, all horsemen, who threaded their way toward him. “Elven be back! Rabbie, Sandy—stay you here. Rest of you—with me!”

And away the horsemen went, picking their way among the scattering cattle, splashing through the ford, and then kicking into a canter as they made for the tower.

Joe watched them go, an ache in his heart that he couldn't identify—was it fear or longing? He knew that, like the other footmen, he was supposed to stay with the cattle, but—“Bugger that!” Tired though he was after the long trek through the hills, he picked up his feet and ran. If the Elves were back, he had to see. All the other footmen, seeing him go, deserted the cattle too—and Rabbie and Sandy cantered after them.

The bell rang from the tower, a clanging and clattering of iron on iron that clamored across the fields, calling people to it. Men who had been repairing the stone walls of sheep folds, and women who had been gleaning in small fields of oats, or tending vegetable plots, came trudging over the fields, calling to each other. Why tolled the bell? Hearing a thumping of horses' hooves and a jingling of harness, they pointed as Per and his company came cantering up.

Per reined in as the other riders came around him. “Elven!” he yelled at the people. “Elven be back!”

They were astonished by the news, and gaped, and chattered. Per was about to lose his temper when a lad came to Fowl's shoulder, blushing but bursting with the importance of his errand: to wait for the May and give him the news. He'd been running the words over and over in his head, trying to pack much into little. “Elven!” he said. “On Easter Fell, nigh Aldkirk. Your daddy be arming. He says gan and see!”

“Canny lad!” Per said, which made the boy blush hotter with pleasure. Per drove his lance into the turf, dismounted, and took off Fowl's headgear. Passing it to the boy, he said, “Get me a horse.” The boy ran off, followed by a friend, and Per took off Fowl's saddle. The other men of his party were unharnessing their horses. The animals were too tired, after their morning's work, to be ridden fast into the hills.

While they waited for the boys to bring them loose horses from among those that grazed all about the valley, they rubbed down the tired beasts with grass. The boys came back, proudly leading fresh horses by their reins. Per was saddling his fresh mount when Rabbie came trotting up, Elfie-Choe riding pillion behind him. Before he could ask why they'd disobeyed his orders, Joe slid down from the horse's back and said, “Take me with thee. I want to see Elven. I can speak Elf!”

“Tha canna ride bareback,” Per said. “And tha canna keep up on foot.”

“I speak Elf,” Joe said. “Tha needs me.”

“Rabbie,” Per said, “gie Elfie thy saddle and hoss.”

Rabbie had already claimed one of the fresh horses as his and wasn't pleased to give it up, but as Per came over to help Joe put on its headgear and saddle, he meekly stood aside and said nothing. Everyone knew that Elfie Joe was a favorite of Per's.

The horse saddled, Per crouched and held out his hands to give Joe a leg up. Joe didn't hesitate and, in a second, found himself on the horse's back without really knowing how he came there. It was as uncomfortable as ever, and he didn't look forward to the ride. His riding had improved, but it was always a way of getting from place to place, never a pleasure. He doubted that he could keep up with the expert riders around him, but if the Elves were back, he had to try. Per tightened his girth for him and said, “Keep up or be left behind.”

Per tightened his own horse's girth, mounted, took his lance from a grinning lad, and kicked his horse forward. All the other mounted men fell in behind him, trotting off across the valley floor, with Joe at the end of the line, gripping a handful of saddlebow, reins, and coarse mane. The watching shepherds and farmers raised a cheer and waved them off, and the clanging of the tower's bell followed them.

Elves! Joe thought, as he rose and fell with the horse's trot, jolting uncomfortably into the saddle. How many? Eight? Ten? Armed? Of course they'd be armed—no Elf in his right mind would come unarmed into Sterkarm country, not after their last meeting. Would the Sterkarms kill them? If he fell behind the ride, would the Elves all be dead by the time he came up? He hoped not. He wanted to talk to them—in English. He didn't know why. He wasn't going back to the 21st, not now, but he did want to hear English again. He had to keep up.

24

16A: A Truelove's Breast

It had seemed to make sense to send the Sterkarm horsemen through first—they were the ones who knew the terrain best, and were the most expendable—but it took ages to coax the horses into the Tube. They didn't like the look of it, the sound of it, or the smell of it. They didn't like going into an enclosed space, and they didn't like the ramp. Some of them had eventually allowed themselves to be persuaded; others had to be blindfolded. And then, when they reached the other end of the Tube, the horses didn't want to leave it. They didn't like the ramp, and the tricky bit of footwork required from them because the ramp didn't quite meet the ground. One or two were so obstinate that they had to be led back through the Tube. It was all delay, and Patterson wasn't happy.

Nor was Per. If everything had gone as he wished, he would have been first through the Elf-Gate, but Fowl was choosing that day to be particularly difficult, and Ecky and Sim persuaded their horses through before him. They cut turfs and packed them beneath the ramp, and with that difficulty removed, Fowl decided that he liked the look and smell of the green hills better than the strangeness of the Elf-Gate and the 21st, and he allowed Per to lead him down onto firm ground.

They led the horses away from the ramp to make room for others to come down, stuck their lances into the turf, and looked about as they soothed the animals. None of them spoke, but they were all thinking the same thing. These were their hills. The sound of an Elf-Cart was fading on the air, and they were on the moors above Bedesdale. Per's tower wasn't far away.

Ecky asked, “This be Elf-Land?” He grinned, but his eyes were wary.

Per, too, was wondering if the Elves were making fools of them. They had been told that this Elf-Land looked just like the real world, and many old stories said the same—but even so, he'd expected some difference. They were to fight here—to fight Elves who looked just like them, in this land just like theirs? He had never felt colder and less like fighting. And then he saw something that made his hair prickle under his helmet.

“Didst hear an Elf-Cart?” he asked.

“Aye,” Sim said.

“A blue yin,” Ecky said, and pointed. “It made off over rise, there.”

“Look,” Per said, pointing to the grassy track. The Elf-Cart had made hardly a mark. In their own world, which they'd left early that morning, the coming and going of Elf-Carts had made deep ruts. It was plain that there had been no traffic of Elf-Carts here.

From behind them came shouts, in Elvish. Turning, they saw men, Elf-Men, coming hurriedly down the ramp, packs on their backs, Elf-Pistols in their hands, to crouch or even lie down in the grass and bilberries. They recognized Elf-­Patterson and Elf-Gareth, who were making for them.

Elf-Patterson shouted out something, in an angry tone, and Elf-Gareth told them what he'd said. “He wants to know where be Elf-Cart that came through just before us?”

Per didn't feel like answering the Elf while he was shouting at him like a servant, but Sim pointed out the way the cart had gone. Elf-Patterson kicked the ground, and turned to watch the men still coming down the ramp. It was obviously going to take a long time, and there were a lot of horses to come through yet.

“Will we gan after it?” Ecky asked Elf-Gareth. “They gan slow.”

Gareth passed the offer on to Patterson, who said, “No—no!” Putting his hands on his hips, he yelled, “Hurry up—hurry the fuck up!” Maybe, he thought, he should let a small company of Sterkarms ride after Andrea. She was an untrained, unfit, fat woman: It wouldn't take Supermen to overtake and overpower her.

But no. She'd got in thick with the Sterkarms; she'd been giving the eye—and more, he guessed—to young Per. Asking them to get rough with her would only cause trouble. As for sending his own men—that would be splitting his forces. He had only a hundred men, and though his advantage in firepower was overwhelming, he needed every one of those hundred men. The mistake FUP had made previously had been to be overconfident. These people he was up against—Sterkarms, Grannams, reivers, whatever you called them—were expert guerrilla fighters. You never knew when they were watching you. Send, say, five men away from the main band and, despite their rifles, that could be five men lost, because the Sterkarms had long-range weapons too. They were called longbows, and a smart man remembered that they were still every bit as lethal as they'd been seven hundred years ago, despite bulletproof jackets. Bulletproofs wouldn't save you from an arrow through the face or neck, or through the leg.

He watched as more restless, struggling horses were brought down the ramp with agonizing slowness and wondered if he was being overcautious, even cowardly … No—he'd made his decision: Keep his small force together at full strength. Now he had to have the courage to stick by it.

“Come on, for God's sake, come on!”

In the end, some of the men and horses had to be left behind, because the horses just couldn't be persuaded to come through the Tube. Only five, but that was five men less. Bloody horses; bloody useless things. But finally they were all through, and the men were fighting with the beasts, trying to calm them—and all the progress they'd made was undone when the sound of the Tube became audible again. Its high-pitched whine made the horses prance and rear, and they took fright again when the Tube blinked out of sight. The disappearance of the Tube, leaving them on a wide expanse of alien moorland, with no way back until the Tube came on again, didn't do much for the nerves of the men, either.

Patterson came striding over to Per, Ecky, and Sim again, with Gareth hurrying to keep up with him. “Do you know where we are?” Patterson asked. “Ask them, do they know where we are?”

“Yesss,” Per said, without waiting for a translation, to put Patterson in his place. “We ken.”

“Can they take us to the Bedesdale Tower?” Patterson asked.

Gareth translated and Per, insulted, deliberately looked away. A wee bairn pulled off its mother's tit could have found the way to the tower from here.

“There be a tower here?” Ecky asked Gareth. “Like there be in Man's-Home?”

“This world be exactly like Man's-Home,” Gareth told him. “All hills and rivers and towers are in same places.” The Sterkarms looked at each other and shook their heads.

“First things,” Patterson said. “I want that bloody car and Andrea bloody Mitchell.” He waved his men on, and they followed him at a smart pace, picking up the narrow horse ride that crossed the moor in pursuit of the little pale-blue MPV. Patterson scanned the moor and hillsides around. There was a hawk in the sky, but not another living thing could he see, not even a sheep. But if there was somebody watching, some shepherd or bloody milkmaid, then this line of moving men was, he guessed, the kind of thing that would catch their eye. He remembered something he'd read while boning up on the Sterkarms—maybe it had even been written down by Andrea bloody Mitchell: “No one can enter Bedesdale without the Sterkarms' knowledge, and no one leaves Bedesdale unless the Sterkarms allow it.”

He noticed the Sterkarms, with some admiration. Some were riding, stooped low over their horses' necks; others were leading their animals, keeping close by the beast's side, so it might be taken for a horse wandering loose by itself. And they had split up, individual riders scattered over the hillside, instinctively keeping away from the skyline and moving into dips of land. Their clothes all being of soft buffs and grays, they blended into the landscape—hard to see, and if you did see them, you might, in the next instant, think you'd been mistaken. Had that been a horsemen on a distant hillside? Or had it been branches stirring in the wind, or a sheep bounding out of sight? He wished he could speak better Sterkarm, or that there'd been more money to spend in training the Sterkarms in modern weapons. He'd stand more chance of success if all his men were Sterkarms.

They made their way up and down several rises and dips, and then there was the little pale-blue MPV. As he'd guessed, bloody Andrea hadn't got far. The vehicle was off the track, such as the track was, with its nose deep in the heather and its rear in the air. The driver's door was open. Its engine was still running. Patterson wasn't surprised. You had to be a good driver to take even an MPV across country like this at speed. Well, it saved a bullet.

Patterson held up his hand to stop the men behind him and then counted off five. “With me.” The other men remained where they were, warily looking about the deserted land.

Patterson edged around the car, approaching it cautiously, and his men copied him, even though there could be no one in it except an untrained, unfit, fat woman, and probably badly hurt at that. Patterson looked at the ground near the open door, expecting to see the body lying there in the heather, but there was nothing. Slowly, carefully, he approached nearer, expecting Andrea to be sprawled across the front seats, cut and bloody—but there was no one in the car, and the windshield wasn't broken. They checked thoroughly, poking through the scrub around the car, even opening the boot.

So, quick decision—to spend time searching for that pain-in-the-arse of a woman or not? Their target was the Sterkarm tower: reach it fast, take it by surprise, destroy it. The more time they hung about searching for Andrea sodding Mitchell, the more chance there was that they'd be seen and reported, and the Sterkarms they'd come to finish would be forewarned. Even if the damn woman was still alive, what were the chances that she'd find her way, alone, across this country before them, with their expert guides?

“Okay, forget the bitch,” he said, and looked around. There was Per Sterkarm, standing by his horse's head, and at his side, usefully, was Gareth. Patterson walked over to them. “Right,” he said. “The tower.”

Andrea knew she hadn't much time. It was, as she'd suspected, much harder to control the car even than she'd been able to imagine, and the faster she drove, the harder it was. The car bounced, swayed—making her gasp as she remembered how tall, narrow, and unstable it was. She looked in her rearview mirror to see if she was being pursued yet, but all she could see was a crazy blur of sky and hills as the car jolted. She had to assume that whoever had come through the Tube behind her would be after her like greyhounds on a hare. And, of course, they wouldn't necessarily follow tamely along her track. They might get around in front of her. She looked to the side, and the steering went all wrong, the car rocked wildly, and she struggled for a blind, frantic moment before she realized that she was still upright and continuing to lurch across the moor.

If I'm the hare, she thought, I have to go to ground. Hares can't drive cars. Dump the car. Disappear.

The car lifted off the ground as it went over another rise, crashed back to the turf, lurched, swayed, and went on. Andrea braked and looked in the now steady mirror. There was no sign of anyone behind her. She opened the door, kicking it wide. Hurry, hurry—they might be galloping after her now, now, right now.

She grabbed her rucksack from the passenger seat, bunging it into the driver's seat. Leaning into the car—her hair rising on her neck as she imagined someone behind her, reaching for her—she used the rucksack to press down the clutch while she put the car into first gear. She lifted the clutch and the car purred forward. Now she stuffed the rucksack down on the accelerator and jumped back. The car rolled away down the slope of the moorland track without her, its door open.

She snatched one look all around. No one in sight. She ran across the track to the opposite side and plunged downhill, through the heather and the bilberry bushes and briars that scratched her legs and caught at her skirt. No time to care about that, or breathlessness. She had to run and jump, and keep her balance—she fell and rolled some way downhill—never mind, it was all progress.

Coming to a halt, she lay still, listening, and lifted her head slightly to peep above the scrub. A bird had put up near her, calling, but there was no other sound and no sign of anyone. Crouching, keeping low, sometimes even crawling, she continued to move downhill, through harsh scrub, over boulders, through bog holes. Any sound—sometimes sounds she made herself—would make her crouch low and hold her breath while her eyes almost twisted themselves from their sockets in trying to see in all directions at once.

Faint shouts from higher up the hillside. She flattened herself to the turf amid the bracken, screwed shut her eyes, held her breath. Waited. Her heart thumped against the ground beneath her, and she became confused—was it her heartbeat or the earth's? Another faint shout—a spasm of shock went through her, making one foot jump, but the shout was just as distant as the others.

She lay for an age, until she remembered lying in bed as a child, terrified of the wolves who lived in the cupboard, not daring to move or breathe for hours—and then she raised her head. She could hear birds, wind in the scrub, but no sounds that might have been made by men.

I'm going to get up, she thought. I'm going on my way. If I'm caught, I'm caught.

A long while later, muddy, sweaty, dirty, and thirsty, she had reached the bottom of a narrow, V-shaped valley, where a stream ran down among big boulders. What was she going to do now? Which direction was she going to head in, what was she going to eat, what exactly was the plan?

Miles and miles of nothing. Moorland, heather, fern. Deep, deep silence. Hills, steep valleys. A thin, sharp, damp wind. Far off, on a distant ridge, three black blobs—sheep—made their way upward.

Andrea had never had the Sterkarms' ability to tell one bracken-covered hillside with a stream and a sheep from another. Which way to Bedesdale and the tower? Was she even in Sterkarm country?

Was she in the right time window?

Why did you do this mad thing? she asked herself, and found tears of pure fear welling in her eyes. You could have gone back to life in the 21st. You could have gone back to Mick, and he would have been delighted, and you could have lived happily ever after. The only price she would have paid was knowing that, somewhere, on the other side of the air, murder was being done. And that would have been easy to forget about, wouldn't it? She'd ignored and forgotten murder almost every day of her life.