Dark Ages. John Pritchard
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warrior’s pride would only go so far. For a moment she felt flattered; then second thoughts took hold, and gripped her hard. If he needed her along – a saint, as he supposed – what kind of evil powers did he need protecting from?
‘Where?’ she asked, her heart already thudding.
He turned away and pointed: at West Down, and the slopes that rose beyond it.
She felt a thrill of icy pins and needles. ‘Not in the dark … ?’ she ventured, trying not to sound appalled. I can’t do that, she thought at him. I won’t.
He shook his head. ‘The downs are sleepless, once the sun is set. I have crossed the tracks of things that walk in darkness. We must claim the thing we seek before the nightfall.’
The glimmer of relief was cold and faint. His words awoke the memory of shadows at her heels. She swallowed, wiped her mouth. ‘We can’t go on yet. Not until the flags come down. The soldiers will be moving round till then …’ Her mind raced onward, mapping out their course. The range was closed till five or so. How many hours of daylight would that leave … ?
‘Whose is the scarlet banner on the roads?’ he wondered.
‘It’s no one’s … Just a warning.’ She hesitated. ‘Your banner was the black one … wasn’t it?’
He looked at her, and nodded.
‘Rafen … ?’ she asked cautiously.
He searched her face. ‘I know we are unworthy. I ask that you will pray for our redemption.’
She hesitated, staring back. His grim expression tightened at the pause. But then he let it twist into a wry, self-mocking smile.
‘Nor would the Bishop do so.’ He turned away; then wheeled again towards her. His voice had been resigned and low, but now it rose in tone, and grew more bitter.
‘“What would your petition be?” he asked me. “Pray to kill and return alive. I cannot intercede for that. I will not pray for you.”’ He pointed as he said it; but Fran sensed he was mimicking this Bishop, and pointing at the shadow of himself.
She moved without thinking: grasped his sleeve. He looked at her askance, arm still extended.
‘What’s to forgive?’ she whispered.
‘Shinecraft. Murder. Treachery. You know what we have done.’ Gently now, he disengaged himself. ‘Our chronicle is ashes now, and we shall soon be dust.’
Again she felt those pricking pins and needles, but was afraid to ask him more. If she showed her ignorance too much, she’d give herself away. He might begin to think that she’d deceived him.
She’d never claimed to be a saint. But nor had she denied it.
A breeze crept through the summer leaves above them. The real world fell back into its place. Fran swallowed down the lump in her throat, and made a show of looking at her watch. Nearly quarter to five already.
By the time they’d got to Westdown Camp, the trackways onto Larkhill would be open.
3
They’d walked as far as East Down Wood before she tried again.
They were following a gritty road that cut across the contours to the north. The sinister plantation was a sunken field away – as hostile as a square of troops deployed on open ground. Shadows filled it, guarded from the sun. The croak of rooks came drifting from the trees.
Beyond, the empty grassland looked innocuous enough. She could see the distant copses to the south, where Greenlands was. So different to the gulf of night she’d fled across before, and yet the view still made her tense and clammy. Greenlands, though unseen, was an ominous presence: as repellent as some village with the Plague. No way could she go nearer, she might catch it …
(Or be caught)
More cawing from the rooky wood, as if to spread the word.
Light thickens … said a dry voice in her head: a trigger-phrase that brought the whole quote with it. Lines she’d learned while studying Macbeth, way back in blissful ignorance at school.
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.
Swallowing, she glanced towards the sun. The south-west sky was flushed with marigold. They had perhaps two hours.
Athelgar walked just ahead; his pace was slow but steady. Whatever he was searching for, he hadn’t got a fix on it as yet. At least there was a method to his mode of navigation – but it didn’t make her feel too confident. Whenever they’d come to a parting of ways, he’d simply flipped his coin to choose between them.
This way would take them east, to Prospect Clump: a high point on the road to Redhorn Hill. Fran turned to look the way they’d come; the dusty track smoked palely in the sun-light, quite deserted. She looked towards the wood again. The rooks were growing fainter, as the ragged block of shadow slid away.
‘Was it you who took the Raven, then?’ she asked – so suddenly, she caught herself off guard.
Athelgar glanced back at her, and nodded.
Necromantic power: that’s what Lyn’s book had said about it. Fran shoved her hands down deeper in her pockets – as if to brace herself against the throbbing in her belly.
‘And is that why you can’t rest?’
Again his pensive face came round. A shadow of perplexity had crossed it.
Fran gestured quickly, caught him up. ‘Please. I … just don’t know the whole of it. We don’t see everything.’
Ooh!, her conscience squealed at her. You fibber!
‘You know the power the Raven has,’ he said.
Instinctively she nodded, and he offered nothing further. On they trudged, uphill. The – silence of the Plain closed in: immersed them like an ocean. At length she had to break it, like she simply had to breathe.
‘How did you come to capture it?’ she said. Then: ‘Sorry …’ as she saw his sombre look.
But Athelgar just raised his hand. ‘Of course you do not know these things. I envy you that blessing.’
They kept on walking; he with his head bowed. She sensed him calling memories back up towards the surface: awaiting them like vomit from a sourness deep inside. Fran waited too, her own mouth dry and bitter.
‘You know I am from Wessexena Land,’ he said at last. ‘But in those days I bore arms for Holy Edmund, in the east. Edmund, king, as he was then. The Danes had taken York, and festered there. Edmund raised our sword-force to resist them. We heard tell of the Raven, and his black and evil power. Land-Waster, they called it. But we had faith in Christ, and this was stronger … we supposed.
‘Then the Raven came south. It over-shadowed all the Eastern English. Holy Edmund fell, and all his kingdom was laid waste. I wished to die beside him there, I had no use for life. But something in my dreaming called me back to my old country. It told me that our war was not yet done.’
Fran glanced at him; then looked ahead. The ragged shape of Prospect Clump loomed closer by the minute.
‘Our sword-force was the last one to escape. We fought for every place along the road: field and weald. They lost us at the last – and many men we cost them in the losing. But night was falling all across the land …’
She listened, fascinated. The Chronicle she’d read was a voice from the past; but Athelgar’s was speaking in the present – here and now. She almost smelled the mud and sweat. Her mind’s eye saw his shouting face, bespattered with bright scarlet.
‘The shadow spread like blood upon a cloth,’ he went on slowly. ‘Now only Alfred,