Harvest (56 page)

They proceeded slowly and in silence, the wind strong in the shrubs and trees above their heads, the sea glimpsed below as the path twisted and turned.

Until at last, the safety of dusk upon them, they reached the stream whose valley the path had been following and picked their way along it through tussocky grass and gorse down to the shore to
which it tumbled.

‘Take care,’ said Katherine, who still led the way. ‘These rocks are slippery and dangerous and a twisted ankle now might be a death sentence.’

They finally reached sand, the surf’s roar fifty yards beyond them, the breaking waves almost invisible in the gloom.

‘What now, Stort?’ said Jack. ‘What do you remember from your dream?’

That Stort remembered anything at all from his strange encounter with the Embroidery astonished him, but that was Stort. Each had their strengths and the visioning instinct of the seer was one
of his.

He gazed back up the cliff they had clambered down and then further along it.

‘Not that way,’ he said.

The other way, to their left as they faced inland, the cove widened to a sandy bay.

‘Pendower Beach,’ said Stort. ‘Have to go there to get the view inland I think I saw.’

‘We’ll be exposed,’ said Jack.

‘But barely visible in this light,’ said Katherine. ‘Let’s do it; the Fyrd will catch up with us eventually if we stay here so it’s best we see the lie of the land
if we’re to go back up to the Beacon and rescue Arthur.’

They waited another quarter of an hour for the dark to thicken, during which time Jack used his torch, hunched among rocks and the sharp smell of seaweed to study the map.

‘You saw what you called a fort in your visioning?’ he prompted Stort.

‘Dreaming, I’d call it. Yes I did, on a low bluff. Not much of one.’

Jack peered closer.

‘It must be this. There’s a second and bigger stream coming down in the cove, its valley less twisty than the one we’ve come down. At the top of it is an earthwork called
Veryan Castle.’

Katherine peered closer, trained in map work by Arthur.

‘Fanciful name,’ she said. ‘Probably Iron Age. Looks as if it’s got ramparts like the ones on White Horse Hill. They would make it easy to defend.’

‘My thought too,’ said Jack. His finger moved a half-inch to the east.

‘There’s the Beacon, on this scale not more than three hundred yards or so beyond the fort.’

They saw a light on the cliffs above, on past where they had come down. Their mis-direction had worked.

‘The Fyrd!’ said Jack. ‘Right, time to move on and see what we find.’

They kept near to the cliff until it faded away where the bigger stream came down and across the sandy shore. The shore to their left eased away and they veered along with it, taking them
further from the higher ground above. Beyond that was a road, a couple of houses behind it and, nearer the beach, the dark and lifeless windows of a hotel complex. It was deserted.

‘It seems the humans have left even this distant place,’ said Stort.

‘If it wasn’t for Arthur,’ said Blut, ‘those buildings would offer us options to hide. As it is, whatever else may be suggested, I cannot leave him up there by himself
much longer.’

They all agreed.

Stort stood and stared up the bigger valley, or as much of it as he could see.

There were trees on either side at the lower end, their branches swaying as silhouettes in the wind from the sea. Further inland the valley had the usual deep Cornish hedges either side, as it
rose steeply to the bluff that had to be Veryan Castle.

The torches on the cliff above had disappeared, but moments later they saw them bobbing about as they made their rapid way down.

The sand about them lightened suddenly and they saw faint shadows of themselves.

The wind had shifted and the clouds with it, revealing the moon.

‘They’ve probably seen us,’ said Jack, ‘but we can’t be sure if there aren’t more up this valley. But they won’t expect us to go back up so soon. If
they catch us halfway up it we’re done for. If we can get to the ramparts of the fort we stand some kind of chance.’

It was, he knew, a slim one, very slim.

They had done well to get this far unscathed and in different circumstances they would have got clean away by now.

Jack said, ‘I’m going up to see what I can do for Arthur, but I don’t think you others should all follow. Lord Festoon, you’re more valuable alive than dead! Emperor
Blut, you are too. As for myself – and Katherine and Stort – it’s in the wyrd of our quest for the gems that we take these risks. You should not take them too.’

Festoon grunted, Blut took his glasses off and wiped them.

‘I think I speak for both of us,’ he said coolly, ‘when I say that we have no intention of spending this Samhain night with anyone but you. Wyrd is a strange thing and in my
experience serves justly those who have faith in it and act honourably. Lead on and let us get to somewhere we can stand and fight. Not that I have ever shot a crossbow in my life!’

Jack was about to lead them on when Stort, who had been staring up the darkened valley, said, ‘The Beacon was alight, aflame, I saw it clearly in my dreaming. I felt its heat. That is
what’s needed, Jack, but don’t ask me why.’

The wind grew stronger and began gusting about them as a front went over.

The clouds that had parted now came together again and lowered, feathery at their base and picking up the ambient light of Falmouth and Truro off to the north-west to make them lurid.

They set off up the beach to the road and from there found a path with a fingerpost pointing the way they were going. A human house to the right had broken windows and a garage, its doors open
and bent by the wind.

Jack stopped them briefly and went to hunt about inside.

‘What are you looking for?’ someone asked when he returned.

‘This!’ he said, holding up a red petrol container. He pulled things from his ’sac and put it inside. ‘There’s another one you could take, Stort. We want a flaming
beacon, so we’ll have one!’

They passed through the trees on the lower slopes and headed uphill, Jack taking the lead, Katherine behind. The wind roared up the valley behind them, colder now and salty.

They looked back and saw the bobbing lights down by the house. Beyond them the sea was lit by the rising moon, white and shining where the great surf was and the white horses further out. Dark
in-between.

The slope got steeper, their breathing heavier and quicker, chests hurting, legs aching, each silent in their effort to keep going. Behind them the lights came quicker, not gaining fast but
gaining. Inexorable.

They reached the bluff where the castle had to be in a final steep climb and stood leaning on their staves, gasping for air.

The Fyrd themselves could not be seen, just their lights, five of them.

‘Which probably means there’s nine or ten there,’ said Jack, ‘one torch between two. Now . . .’

He went forward onto the flat scar of the fort, its rampart deepening to their left and on the far side of the flat area presenting a wall of sward.

He and Katherine took off their ’sacs and quickly surveyed the ramparts.

‘This is the entrance area, which is why the path leads here. They’ll have to come this way too. We could defend it from either side using the crossbows.’

They rapidly discussed the pros and cons; there were very few pros indeed.

‘We can hold them back, we might get lucky and maim or kill some, but we’re too few to defend this place for long,’ said Jack. ‘As for heading on to the Beacon,
we’ve seen how tough that can be.’

The lights below were steadily getting nearer.

The moon higher.

The wind stronger.

‘A suggestion,’ said Blut. ‘I do not think I shall do well with a crossbow and I never did learn to wield a stave. Let me take that fuel and see what I may do at the Beacon. No
doubt the Fyrd will see me but it takes moments to scatter and light petrol.’

Festoon said, ‘I can take one of the crossbows. Can’t be that difficult to shoot.’

It was, Jack knew, as risky and crack-brained a plan as he had ever heard. If they didn’t get stopped and killed before reaching the Beacon then Arthur would get burnt by Blut or shot by
Festoon and all three die unpleasant deaths. But if they stayed at the fort then Arthur had no chance at all.

‘You’ll do a better job at slowing them down than we can,’ said Blut persuasively, taking up Jack’s ’sac.

It was too large for him and the weight really too much. Yet he looked as brave and bold as a fighting Emperor should, his spectacles catching the moonlight, his grey eyes sharp and focused.

‘In fact, Stavemeister,’ he said asserting that same striking authority they had first seen in Brum, ‘this isn’t a request, it’s an order from your
Commander-in-Chief. Arthur saved my life, the least I can do is to try and save his.’

Jack had neither time nor energy to argue. In any case, his instinct was with Blut.

‘You know which way to go?’

‘I can read a map,’ he said, ‘and I had a good look earlier. My spatial memory is good. Good luck to all of you. Festoon, my friend, let us be gone!’

J
ack, Katherine and Stort had the advantage of darkness and height. They conferred at once.

‘If we can get a couple of shots in and fell or hit at least one of them they won’t be in a hurry to come forward. We keep it up until they begin to, or look like they’re going
to try to get round, and you and Stort join me on the high side. That gives us more options and me the advantage when it comes to a stave fight. I will fire first so there’s no confusion. I
will aim for the nearest to me. Aim for the throat or groin, it’s where they are vulnerable. Whatever you do, join me the moment I whistle.’

They spoke in whispers, eyes glancing downslope as the torches got ever nearer until they suddenly went out. The tactics agreed and confirmed, they went to their positions.

Then there was silence.

‘They’re working out if anyone’s here,’ whispered Katherine.

The silence continued but for the roar of the surf far below and the never-ending wind in the trees nearby. Their eyes strained to see movement, watering from the wind and effort of staring, the
dark forms of the hydden jumping, shifting, hard to keep in vision.

Then one moved, followed by another.

Coming forward up the hill, crossbows glinting in the moonlight.

They walked confidently and easily, clearly thinking there was no one there.

Katherine readied herself to aim at the one nearest to her. She could not deploy the crossbow fully without exposing herself, so she waited for Jack’s shot.

The two figures came nearer in the dark, beginning to loom, easy in their upward stride, forbidding in their presence. Katherine’s heart thumped, Stort gulped, silence reigned but for the
surf and wind and finally the tread of the Fyrd on the steep path. The others below them were a solid, shadowed mass.

She looked from where the throat of her target must be to his groin. That seemed easier but it was lower and she would have to stand up to get her shot in. She decided on the throat.

They came nearer still, Katherine sure that they could hear her short breaths, her beating heart.

Then a soft
thwump!
and Jack had fired.

She rose, Stort’s hand on her back to keep her steady, and fired from the hip.

Jack’s target had spun round, his crossbow dropped. Katherine’s seemed not affected at all, yet he did not fire nor continue walking. He just stood motionless.

‘Load it,’ she said to Stort, taking up her stave, guessing what Jack would do next.

She was right.

He was up and out and thrusting hard at his quarry before he dropped back to his position. The Fyrd fell back, Katherine’s fell to his knees, speechless. She did as Jack had done and
thrust her stave into his face.

As he fell back there was a
thwump thwump
from below and a bolt shot past her right side.

But something else happened which made the sound of the crossbows seem no more than soft whispers.

There was a roaring sound on the slope behind them and the low clouds above their heads turned orange-red.

Blut had done his stuff.

The Beacon was ablaze and the Fyrd on the slope below them were suddenly more visible, not from direct light but the ambient light of the clouds above.

Jack watched carefully, counting.

There were six below, so he had overestimated.

He fired another shot, another Fyrd went down, and he signalled to Katherine.

It was time to try to make it to the Beacon.

The hydden folk of Cornwall are like no other in Englalond. Dark, swarthy, strong, good-natured, they can sail a boat as well as till a field, neither gracefully but each with
good effect.

They stand together fiercely but, unless threatened, they are welcoming to strangers.

Family matters, land as well; of the seasons Samhain is the most important.

And this was Samhain, the time when families gather, coming from afar.

The yearning brings them home, that same yearning which Stort rightly guessed lived always in ã Faroün’s heart.

With the yearning goes a deep, deep sense of duty to their own folk, duty to those oppressed, and reverence to land and sea.

No wonder that if there is anywhere in the Hyddenworld that a sailor would rather go down, if go down he must, it is off the Cornish coast, for help will come more surely than the wind and
waves.

So too on the land.

If help is called for, those rough, good folk respond without thinking, for they know that if and when they need it, their people will do the same for them.

None more, in all of Cornwall, than the hydden thereabout the remote peninsula called Roseland, in the centre of which Veryan sits with its ancient Beacon standing on a nearby hill. They help
each other on sea and land and would almost kill for the privilege or die in shame if they did not respond to a call for aid.

So it was that on that Samhain evening, when families were gathered close together in expectation of the midnight hour, they paid heed the moment the cry went up, ‘The Beacon’s
aflame!’