Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2) (42 page)

“Ah, shaddup, you miserable git.” He kissed her and that surprised both of them.

“We owe ourselves a bleedin’ big piss-up,” Veitch said, his arm tight around Ruth’s shoulders. She was smiling wanly, still scarcely able to believe what she was hearing.

But they all agreed Veitch was right. Swept up in their jubilation and relief, they turned towards the south and began to move out of the city.

They had travelled barely a quarter of a mile when it became apparent they wouldn’t get far on foot. Church and Veitch had been supporting Ruth, but with each step they were doing more dragging than carrying.

They eventually halted on a corner while Veitch and Laura disappeared down a side street. Forty-five minutes later they pulled up in a pristine Transit.

“Who’d you kill for that?” Ruth croaked.

“God, even half-dead she’s Mother Superior.” Laura raised her eyes in an exaggerated response.

They loaded Ruth in the back and made her as comfortable as possible, then Church Joined Laura and Veitch in the front. “Just like old times,” she said, without a hint of sarcasm.

Beyond the reach of the Old Town, the streets gave way to well-heeled neighbourhoods where the houses were rambling and set well back from the road, and beyond that were the plain, structured streets of suburbia. By 2:15 a.m., they were crossing the ring road, enjoying the balminess of a warm summer night after the chill environment of the Cailleach Bheur.

Unlike most English cities, the built-up area ended abruptly and they were plunged immediately into rolling green fields punctuated by peaceful woods. The tires sang on dry roads through tiny villages. Away to the east, the remnants of the haar still clouded the horizon, but overhead the skies were clear and iced with stars.

At the sign for Roslin Village, Laura glanced over her shoulder to see Shavi’s chin droop on to his chest. He was normally so bright and optimistic, it pained her to see the dismay etched into his features. More than anything, she wanted to clamber over the seat and give him a hug, but there was no way she could in front of the others.

After a long journey through thick woods, they entered a desolate valley plain where sheep wandered morosely over the clipped, yellow grass. In the distance the hills rose up steeply while, nearer to hand, train lines cut a swathe through the heart of the valley. At 4 a.m. they broke off to make camp for the night. Veitch and Church had been determined to keep going until dawn, but the decision was made for them by another technology failure which left the van drifting aimlessly on to the verge. They pushed it for a little way until they found a lane which led behind a small copse of trees where they could hide; even after their success, paranoia still hissed in the background. They’d abandoned all their clothes, camping equipment and provisions at the hotel, so they made themselves as comfortable as they could in the confines of the van. Tom was particularly concerned about Ruth, but she appeared to be sleeping easily enough. After their exertions, they drifted off within an instant of resting.

By the time they rose the sun was high in a clear blue sky and the interior of the van was beginning to bake. Although still weak and exhausted, Ruth was much brighter. They helped her outside where she propped herself up against a wheel and before too long she was exchanging banter with Shavi and Church and baiting Laura and Veitch. On the surface it was like old times, but something had changed; where there had been malice, now there was affection, however well-hidden.

They were eager to exchange details of their experiences. Veitch was reticent in his description of his assault on the castle, and when Ruth emphasised the extent of his bravery his ears turned red. They all did their best to boost Shavi, but his account of Maponus and the thought that he was still at large cast a chill over them all.

Tom listened carefully, then said, “He is beyond our remit now. If anyone can find a way to restrain him, then it would be the Bone Inspector. He has knowledge denied to you and I, and it was his people who imprisoned Maponus initially.” He paused. “But he is just one man.”

“But Maponus cannot be killed-we saw,” Shavi stressed. “None of the gods can.”

“No,” Tom agreed, “not in the way you mean. Although the lowest of the Fomorii, the troops, if you will, can be eradicated, as Ryan found out at the castle.”

“How can we be guerrillas if we can’t hurt the ones that really matter?” Laura protested. “We’re just an irritation-“

“Situation normal for you, then,” Veitch muttered.

“We’ve done what we can,” Laura continued, “done a good job. Can’t we leave it up to somebody else, now? We’ve earned a rest, haven’t we?”

Nobody seemed comfortable debating this line and the conversation drifted on to Church and Tom’s encounter beneath Arthur’s Seat.

“It was the weirdest experience,” Church said. “The way reality, time, space, everything, seemed to be fluid in proximity to such a powerful source of the blue fire.”

“Maybe that’s how reality really is,” Ruth mused. “God knows, we’ve had enough proof we can’t trust our senses to perceive anything correctly. When you think about it, it’s scary. We’re prisoners in our heads, completely at the mercy of our brain functions, and beyond that little bit of bone, the universe might be completely different to how we imagine it.”

“There is a line of scientific thought, currently growing in popularity,” Shavi mused, “that suggests time does not exist. We perceive it as flowing constantly because that is the way our brains have been structured to understand it. But we are really living in all times at once. That would explain precognition-“

“But how does it work?” Ruth said.

“I wish you lot would shut up-you’re making my head hurt,” Veitch said irritably. “Talk, talk, talk, like a bunch of bleedin’ students. Things are how they are, that’s all. We’ve got more important things to think about.”

A hawk hunted for prey over an area of scrubby undergrowth in the middle distance. The image triggered a succession of disturbing thoughts in Church.

“Tom and I weren’t alone beneath the Seat,” he said.

“Yeah, the old git took along the chip on his shoulder,” Laura said tartly.

“The one who took Ruth was there.” Church flashed a glance at Ruth, not quite knowing how she was going to react.

Veitch bristled. “What did he look like?”

Church exhaled through the gap in his teeth. “You know what he looked like. A bloody big wolf, just like Laura said. With yellow eyes and everything.”

“You should never have left the path, little girl,” Laura said to Ruth with a faint smile. From the corner of his eye, Church caught Veitch watching the two of them intently, coldly.

Church nodded to Tom. “You tell them what you told me.”

Tom took off his spectacles and cleaned them on his shirt. Without the glasses he looked less like the sixties burn-out case and more like the erudite, thoughtful aristocrat he was. “When the old gods have …” There was a long, jarring pause while he searched for the right word. “… adjusted someone, it is often difficult for the mind to fully fix their shape. It’s as if something fundamental has been altered on a molecular level, something so in opposition to nature it seems to set up interference patterns for the senses. The first few times you see something like this, unless you’re prepared, it’s like a punch in the stomach. To make sense of it, the mind gives it a shape which is closest to the essence of its being-

“So it’s a wolf at heart?” Ruth asked. There seemed to be a stone pressing at the back of her throat.

“Is this the origin of werewolves?” Shavi interjected.

Tom shook his head. “The Lupinari are different. This creature was mortal once. And the ones who have been altered sometimes seem so enamoured of this inner self, they grow into it. Physically.”

“I’ve met a few guys like that,” Laura said. “They don’t need a full moon. Just seven pints.”

“You don’t remember anything?” Church asked Ruth.

She shook her head. “Just Laura-“

“Laura?” Veitch’s voice was a whipcrack.

“Laura was around somewhere. That’s all I remember.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, weighing the evidence. And then, once they had exhausted all possibilities, they were forced to turn to Ruth again, although none of them wanted to hear what she had to say.

“How was it in there?” Church asked tenderly.

She smiled weakly. “Oh, you know … You can guess.”

He nodded. “Do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head. “I just want to get back on my feet.”

“I might be able to help there.” Tom gave her a faint smile, but it was warm and honest, a rare sight. He headed off into the countryside. They watched him for a while, dipping down occasionally to pluck something from the ground.

“Hmmm, grass and weeds. You’re in for a treat,” Laura said. “What is it with the old git? He knows all about these herbs and shit like he’s some old witch.” Ruth flinched, but no one noticed.

“He’s had a long time to learn.” Church continued to watch Tom. Their relationship had always been abrasive, but he had respect for the Rhymer’s wisdom.

“He learned it from the Culture, the people of the Bone Inspector,” Shavi said. “It is age-old knowledge, from the time when people were close to the land.”

“We need to sort out the way forward.” Veitch cut through the small talk sharply.

“What’s to sort out? I’m so hungry I could eat you.” Laura let the double- entendre hang in the air teasingly, her sunglasses obscuring her true meaning. “Calm down, big boy. That wasn’t meant in a nice way.”

“Laura is right,” Shavi said. “Hot food first, then provisions, camping equipment, clothes. We need to replace everything we left at the hotel.”

“Yeah, because that city is not going to look very pretty after the air-raid,” Witch said sharply. “We need to find a place to lie low while we work out what we’re going to do. Somewhere the Bastards can’t find us.”

Church nodded in agreement. “We should head south.”

“Yeah, I’m sick of heather and tartan,” Veitch said. “And all the bleedin’ Jocks hate us anyway.”

Tom returned half an hour later with two handfuls of vegetation while Ruth was vainly searching the sky for her owl. He used the wheel brace in the van to pound them into two piles of pulp. One he applied as a poultice to Ruth’s finger, the other he made her eat, despite her protests.

“Stop whining,” Laura said. “As soon as you get past the gag reflex it’ll be fine.”

Eventually she ate it, and she did retch noisily for a while, but nothing came back up. They helped her back into the van and she fell asleep as soon as they set off.

The journey was not easy going. They stopped at a roadside cafe for a large meal that doubled as breakfast and lunch, before they were hit by two technology failures, lasting two hours and forty-five minutes respectively. In Peebles they used their credit cards to stock up on everything they needed, but the shop assistants were wary of taking the plastic; with the failure of the phone system it was impossible to check their validity, and everyone seemed to suspect the whole system was collapsing anyway. To recognise that fact was a blow too far so the cards were swiped in the old-fashioned way, with an unspoken prayer that everything would sort itself out soon. But it was obvious to Church and the others that the balloon was on the point of going up.

As they passed through Melrose, Tom waxed lyrical about his home area until Laura yawned so loudly and repeatedly it brought him to cursing. Jedburgh passed in a blur and they crossed the border in late afternoon.

There was a heated debate about which route to pursue after that, but everyone bowed to Veitch’s strategic decison to head into the wide open spaces of high hills and bleak moorland that comprised the Northumberland National Park. They swept from the rolling fields of the Scottish Lowlands into a majestic landscape of purples, browns and greens, brooding beneath a perfect blue sky. It was a place of rock and scrub, wind-torn trees standing lonely on the horizon, and a howling gale that rushed from the high places as if it had a life of its own.

The hardiness gave way to the pleasant shade of the Border Forest Park, where the play of light and dark through the leaf cover on to the windscreen made them all feel less hunted. There was a deep peace among the thick woods that was a pleasure after the omnipresent threat of Edinburgh.

While Shavi drove, Veitch took charge of the map book. He made them follow a circuitous route through the quiet villages that must have added fifty miles to their journey, but he insisted if there was any pursuit it would make their destination less apparent. Laura noted tartly that he’d already baffled the rest of them about where they were going.

They eventually came to a halt at an abandoned railway station at High Staward, eight miles southwest of Hexham. They loaded all their possessions into four rucksacks which Church, Veitch, Tom and Shavi shouldered with much protesting. Laura taunted their lack of manliness, and even Ruth tossed out a few quips, and eventually they were marching along a footpath northwards through the deserted countryside.

Veitch had selected the location after careful study of the maps, and they all had to agree it was so off the beaten track it was as good a hiding place as any. They plunged down into thick woodland where the dark lay heavy and cool and the only sound was the eerie soughing of the wind, like distant voices urging them to stray from the path. A mile later they emerged to a breathtaking sight: the Allen Gorge. Four miles long, its precipitously steep sides soared up two hundred and fifty feet, covered with so many trees it looked like an Alpine landscape. Secluded pathways wound along the riverside and away into the trees.

“We could hide here for weeks if we wanted.” Veitch’s voice held a note of pride that the reality matched up to his expectations.

They followed a path into the area with the thickest tree cover and then ploughed off into the wild. They finally halted when they couldn’t see the path clearly any longer. The tents went up quickly in a circle, and at the heart of it Veitch dug a pit for a fire.

In the early evening sun, Church and Shavi went exploring. They found an outcropping rock in a clearing on the side of the gorge where they had majestic views over the entire area. They were both instantly struck by the immaculate beauty of the place.