Fireball (3 page)

An innocent question, but he resented it. He stared about him without answering. Brad went on: “If it moved us from one part of the wood to another, I suppose it could just as well have taken us further. To another wood. Another country even. You think those sheep could be Australian?”

“That's ridiculous.”

“I know. But I'm starting not to be able to tell the ridiculous from the normal.” Brad drew a deep breath. “Well, wherever we are, I guess we might as
well keep moving. We're bound to get to some place with people if we walk far enough.”

There was more woodland on the far side of the open land, ahead and to the left, but only occasional clumps of trees to the right. Brad set off that way, and after a brief hesitation Simon followed him. They approached sheep, which first stared at them and then moved away. They seemed to be on the small side, but had quite large black horns. The ground continued to open out. They were coming down into a valley, and he saw the distant gleam of a river. Something tugged at his memory and then was lost.

“Head for the river,” Brad said.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

What he had really meant, Simon realized, was why do as you say? What gives you the right to make the decisions? He was only a stranger in this country. Providing, of course, this was England. He looked all around again and saw them, about a quarter of a mile back but heading this way. Horsemen—five or six.

He took Brad's arm and gestured. Brad said with relief: “Great! People.
They can tell us where we are and the right road to somewhere.”

They were oddly dressed, Simon noticed. It was difficult to pick out the details of clothing at this distance, but it didn't look right. Not the casual hacking gear you would expect to see in the Home Counties, certainly. Some kind of cloaks?

He said: “As long as we can be sure the natives are friendly. Can we?”

Brad paused. “I get you. Might be an idea to duck back among the trees and watch this bunch go past?”

They started moving quietly uphill. There was a rise of ground which would soon cut them off from the view of the horsemen, provided they had not already been spotted. Then there was a cry, unintelligible but sounding peremptory. Simon looked back as they automatically quickened step. The horsemen had changed direction to follow them. And they had urged their animals into a canter.

Brad had seen it, too. He said: “Run for it! Into the wood . . .”

Simon did not need telling. He pounded uphill, ahead of Brad. He could hear cries from their pursuers and felt the beat of hooves on the ground. The
edge of the wood was about fifty yards away—a long fifty yards with the horsemen closing in.

Brad was falling behind. Simon thought about slowing to let him catch up, but fear kept him running hard; another glance back had shown an arm raised and a glint of what looked horribly like a sword. Then he heard a grunt and looked round to see Brad trip and fall heavily.

Simon was almost at the trees, and the horsemen were near enough for him to hear the panting of the horses as well as the shouts of the riders. He ran on, and branches whipped his face. He pushed through bushes and heard a clamour behind him. But the din lessened bit by bit as he struggled on through the undergrowth. When at last he leaned, gasping, against the trunk of a tree to get his breath back, he could hear no other sound apart from birds.

•  •  •

Simon gave it a long time, at least half an hour, before he started cautiously picking his way back through the wood, and he frequently stopped to listen. The final dozen or so yards to the point where the trees ended he took very warily indeed. When he poked his head out at last, it was in the half
expectation of hearing a triumphant cry and seeing a menacing figure in front of him. There was nothing but the empty slope, grazing sheep, the river in the distance. No horsemen, and no Brad.

He sat down on the grass and thought about that. He couldn't possibly have saved him. If he had stopped and turned back . . . by the time he had reached Brad the horsemen would have been on top of both of them. What help would it have been to Brad for him to be caught as well? There was no flaw in the argument. All the same, going over it again didn't make him feel any better.

What had happened to Brad anyway? They hadn't killed him, or if they had, they must have taken the body with them. Actually the place where he had entered the wood, where Brad had fallen, was a bit further up the slope. He got to his feet and went there, examining the ground closely. No sign of blood. Perhaps the horsemen had been friendly; perhaps he'd been a fool to run away. He remembered the glint of steel; they hadn't looked friendly. And if they'd merely stopped to pass the time of day and tell Brad the way to the nearest railway station, Brad would have come into the wood and called him.

For that matter, where
were
they? Brad's notion of their having been transported by some atmospheric freak seemed less and less reasonable. Horsemen waving swords on the fringes of Greater London—or anywhere in Great Britain . . . unless they had dropped in a spot where a film or TV company was on location, it was crazy. And there was no sign of cameras or a film crew. Not Britain, then. Not Europe or America, either. Somewhere remote, like Afghanistan? But how, and why?

It had to be the fireball that had caused it. Not by picking them up and putting them down, like a playful typhoon, but in some quite different way. A gateway? Could they have passed through it and come out in a different place? But a place where you got run down by barbarous-looking horsemen with swords. Place—or
time
? A gateway to the past. Or maybe to the future, and a new Dark Age after the world had blown itself up as thoroughly as some people had suggested it might.

Simon shook his head, unhappy and bewildered. Compared with either of those, the notion of being transported across just a few thousand miles to Afghanistan seemed both more likely and
overwhelmingly attractive. He looked down to the valley. Time had been passing while all this was going on. It was getting towards evening; the sun, though obscured by thick cloud, must be well down in the sky. Dusk and then night were not far off, and there must be a better place than this in which to face them.

He set off in the direction Brad had chosen earlier—towards the river. He slogged on, becoming aware as he did so of the growing pangs of hunger. Lunch was a long time back—or a thousand years in the future? He closed his mind to that and walked faster.

The river was further away than he had imagined, but he reached it at last. This was a river untouched by man, swirling and gurgling and lapping against marshy banks. A trout rose to take a late fly under a rapidly darkening sky. Which way? When in doubt, downstream. Not that he felt it was likely to make any difference. He was tired and hungry, and very depressed.

Dusk thickened. It would be night soon, a night without yellow windows or streetlamps or even the cold beams of car headlights. Without paved roads
and sidewalks, too. He slipped in a patch of mud and recovered himself on one knee. The river, almost invisible, had a melancholy, unfriendly sound.

He had almost gone past before he saw it—a squat, low building on his right. He hesitated only briefly before turning away from the river to investigate. His fingers found stone, and then a flat roof, within his reach. Not a house, not big enough for a stable even. But there was a kind of window: unglassed, an aperture only. Simon peered inside. A light flickered, a candle he thought at first, then saw it was a primitive form of oil lamp. It stood on a stone slab, and other things stood beside it: rough pottery plates bearing a round loaf, slices of meat, fruit.

Hunger overcame caution. He whispered: “Anyone there?” No reply, no sound at all from the shadows inside. His stomach growled at him. If he reached in, past the lamp, he could grab the loaf. He had almost done that when his arm brushed the lamp. It skittered off the slab, crashed to the stone floor, and went out.

Simon stood still, his heart pounding. If there had been anybody inside, that would have roused
him. Nothing happened; he could hear only the distant noise of the river. That food . . . he could no longer see it, but he knew where it was. The window was just about wide enough to crawl through. He did so, feeling for the stone table and finding it. And the loaf . . . He tore it in half and broke bits off to chew. The bread was coarse and dry, but satisfying for all that. He found the meat, too; it tasted like cold pork. His hand touched something else, an earthenware jug, and when he lifted it, it gurgled. He tried it cautiously. Wine! A bit on the sour side, but it quenched his thirst. After eating an apple, he was quite full. And very tired. There was obviously no point in trying to go on further in the dark; he might as well bed down here. There were stone flags under his feet, but when he probed a little further, the surface was more yielding. Beaten earth, he guessed. Not exactly a feather bed, but weariness made a good mattress. He curled himself up on the ground. He wondered again where he was—or when—and what had happened to Brad; but not for long before he fell asleep.

His sleep was heavy. When he awoke, it was to a lancing brightness; he opened his eyes and
immediately closed them against the dazzle of early sunlight. Shielding with his hand, he was aware of the sun's rays streaming in through the small window.

He took in his surroundings. It was a single room, about twelve feet square and no more than seven or eight feet high. Around the walls oblong stone boxes were stacked on shelves in tiers. The only furnishings were the stone table on which were the remains of the food he had eaten and another longer stone table carrying one of the boxes. There was a sickly, sweetish smell; he had been aware of it last night, but it seemed much stronger now.

Simon got to his feet and went to the table with the box. It was between five and six feet long, two or three feet across, a couple of feet in depth. The top was open, but a lid of stone, rimmed with what looked like lead, lay beside it.

Inside the box was a statue, or rather a kind of high relief; the surround was white stone, but a human figure rose out of the centre. It was the effigy of a sleeping woman, hands folded on her breast, dressed in a white robe. Behind her head were ranged small jars and glass bottles with silver tops, a comb
and silver-backed brush. Weird, he thought. He put a finger to the white surround. It wasn't stone but something softer. Plaster of paris?

The figure had been brilliantly carved. In the dimness, the folds of the robe looked like real cloth. And the curve of the pale cheek . . . a youngish woman, in her twenties probably, and pretty. He touched the cheek with his finger, too, and at once whipped it away, in horror. That wasn't stone either. It had indented under the light pressure of his finger: not stone, but cold dead flesh.

He knew now what place he was in: a charnel house, with coffins ranged all around and this latest one not yet sealed. The food and wine had been left as grave gifts, along with the ornaments and toilet articles. He had an urge to be sick, an absolute need to get out. The aperture by which he had entered was the only exit. Simon scrambled through it, kicking the stone table away behind him, not caring what noise he made. He fell out into the open, picked himself up, and stood for a moment deeply breathing in fresh air. The next thing he knew, there was a heavy step beside him, and before he could turn around to see who it was, an arm was against his
throat like an iron bar, bruising and choking.

The events that followed were confusing and unpleasant. There were three other men apart from the one who had half choked him, and they drove him up a hill, belabouring his legs with sticks. There was a house at the top, but he was too dazed to have any impression beyond the fact that it was large and rectangular in shape. A wooden trapdoor was opened at the base of a wall, and he found himself being thrown down into a cellar. He hit the ground with a thump that slammed the breath from his body. The trapdoor slammed shut, leaving him in near blackness.

Someone already down there spoke to him in gibberish. He saw no point in trying to answer, and the other did not persist. He started trying to work things out. He had been discovered emerging from a family tomb. And tombs, everywhere and at all times, carried a heavy taboo, which he had, unwittingly, broken. He had, in fact, committed sacrilege, and whatever sort of society this was, punishment was liable to be severe.

His companion started talking again. It was still gibberish, but by repetition some bits took on
significance. One phrase, for instance, spoken with the inflection of inquiry. “Foggy tea wash?” Something like that. Simon thought about the possible punishment. In a primitive society it could well be death, which put a very high premium on any possibility of escape.

He felt his way round the cellar, inch by inch. The walls were of brick, the bricks smaller than the ones he was accustomed to, but very firmly cemented in. He broke a fingernail on one. Brick, and then wood. A door: That was something. He went over it, inch by inch. It was of heavy timber, barred with iron. He found an iron lock, a keyhole, a heavy metal ring. After a long time of trying, he had to accept the fact that it was either locked or bolted on the other side, and that no one short of a superman was going to get it open from here.

The only other interruption in the brick was the hatch to the outside, through which they had been thrown. That was of heavy timber, too, and as firmly bolted. The glimmer of light round the edges was wafer-thin. The increasing stuffiness showed how little even of air it admitted.

During his exploration, the man with him had
stayed where he was but with occasional bursts of unintelligible speech. “Foggy tea wash” occurred several times, still with the note of inquiry. He was asking if Simon was a foggy tea wash. Foggy, or fuggy? It came to him suddenly, a recollection of a hot afternoon and old Gargoyle (George Argyle, junior Latin master) droning on.
Fugitivus
—a runaway. More specifically, a runaway slave!