Quest Beyond Time (7 page)

Gone was the open bushland, gone the river with the sky above it, gone were the plains. They were in the forest now and whoever lived there made no attempt to clear the undergrowth. The trees grew thick, and the bushes crowded. It was dense, dark, and dripping wet.

Mike and Katrin moved through it, thrusting their way through the entangling bushes, impeded by the length of the rolled hang-glider. Occasionally, on either hand, Mike glimpsed the squared shapes of ruined buildings. This place had once been a town or city. Now it was rain-forest. In his mind’s eye, Mike saw what had happened. The pavements had cracked, the winds and birds had brought seeds, trees had grown in deserted streets. The roofs of buildings had fallen in, leaving the ruined walls standing for a time. Leaf-litter had piled up, rain and fire had done their work, old trees had fallen and given their trunks and leaves as food for more vegetation.

Then people had come. At first, they would have been the weak, the dispossessed, driven from the easier life of the valleys by stronger tribes. But then they would have come to know the forest, learned to survive within it, been driven to cannibalism either for ritual or simply to get enough meat. And now, centuries later, the Forest People were no longer weak, no longer dispossessed. They were lords in this place, and Mike and Katrin were the fugitives.

They had been travelling for perhaps two hours when they crossed a path. To Mike, it was a gift from whatever gods ruled this terrible place. To Katrin it was a source of danger.

As they reached the edge of the path, she stopped, gesturing to Mike to do the same. Then she dropped to one knee, and took her bow in her left hand and slid an arrow from her quiver with her right.

She looked up the path one way and down it the other.

‘Let’s use it. Get out of here.’ Mike had been feeling the forest closing in on him like darkness itself. He wanted to be in the light and air once again, away from the smell of rotting vegetation, and those other smells which hung in this place like an invisible mist, smells which he could not identify and therefore feared. He wanted to be out of there. Badly. The path was the way.

But Katrin shook her head. ‘That path’ll kill you.’

‘What?’ He could not believe it.

‘A path is what you get ambushed on.’ The way she said it, he could almost hear the quotation marks. It sounded like something she had been told since she could understand language. It was like the way she avoided being silhouetted on a ridge. It was fieldcraft so engrained by her clan’s way of life as to be almost at the level of an instinct.

Mike looked up and around. The place made his flesh creep. But he knew that his best chance of getting out of it alive was to trust Katrin’s instincts. ‘Okay.’

‘I’m crossing. Count three and follow. Fast.’

She took off like a sprinter from the blocks. She disappeared on the other side of the track. Mike counted three, and sped across the track. When he broke through the bushy wall on the other side he found Katrin had been covering his move, her bow half drawn, ready for anything. He grinned at the set expression on her face.

‘What’s funny?’

‘Us. It’s like playing cowboys and indians when I was a kid. Sort of embarrassing.’

‘Em-barrass-ing?’

‘Like making you ashamed.’

‘You’d be more em-barrass-ed if you’d gone up that track and ended as somebody’s dinner.’

‘Guess I would.’ Now he was even more embarrassed at taking lightly her efforts to keep them alive.

They moved again.

It happened perhaps an hour later, perhaps not so long. Time had become distorted in the forest.

Katrin had been moving along, looking from side to side, back, and also up. She had counselled Mike on this. ‘Remember. They never look up.’

‘Who don’t?’

‘The people who don’t survive. They never look up.’

After that, Mike had got into the habit of looking up. Even then he did not see it first. Katrin did. She froze, and nodded in the direction of her line of sight. Mike looked, but all he saw was a faint movement in the upper foliage of some tall trees ahead of them.

‘What?’

‘They’ve seen us,’ she said.

‘Where’s the nearest exit?’

‘Come on!’ She hurried the pace.

Mike followed, and then he saw him too. He was a pale human male, dressed only in a loin cloth. The hair and beard were full-grown, and he had the muscles of a gymnast. There was a knife at his belt. He was in the upper levels of a tree, ahead of them, looking down. He was fifteen metres away, but Mike never forgot the face. That was what chilled him. The face would haunt his dreams for years to come.

It was malevolent. Evil.

At the sight of it, Mike felt the breath go from him as if he had been punched in the stomach.

And the Forest Man smiled at him.

The teeth had been filed into points.

Mike was frozen where he stood. Katrin grabbed his arm and pulled him off balance. Mike started moving again.

With a terrible, easy grace, the Forest Man swung on a vine to a tree above their heads. He looked down at them, smiling.

‘Out! Out before sun sets!’ The voice was high, and chattering.

Katrin was moving her bow to her left hand.

‘Death if you do that! Death! Death! Death!’ The Forest Man looked up and around, and from the treetops around there was a
chittering
echo of, ‘Death! Death! Death!’

Mike knew then that they had been followed for some time. Perhaps since they entered the forest. All the precautions had been for nothing, and they were surrounded by the forest’s cannibal inhabitants.

‘All around,’ chittered the creature in the tree. ‘Brothers. Death! Death! Death.’

‘I thought you slew all who came here!’ Katrin’s voice rang with challenge.

‘Just keep it cool, will you?’ Mike murmured. ‘No stuff about spitting on his mother’s womb or anything?’

‘Not Murrays! Not Clan Murrays!’ And again there was an echo from the unseen members of the speaker’s band. ‘NotMurraysNotMurrays NotMurrays…’

‘Why not Murrays?’ she asked.

‘Who cares? Let’s get out of here!’ He had a terrible suspicion that if the reason did not accord with her ideas of honour, she might reject the safe passage they were being offered.

‘Murrays led fight for Covenant! Murrays have start till sundown. Then eat!’ The Forest Man bared his terrible filed teeth. ‘For what do we say, Sister Murray? But that all meat is black in the dark?’ And with a hideous giggle, the creature grasped the rope it had arrived on, and swung back, and out of sight into the foliage.

Mike and Katrin looked at each other, and then back toward where the creature had been. It was gone. But from the trees they could hear the whisper, ‘Sundown, sundown, sundown sundown …’

They ran.

For their lives.

And as they ran, they heard the movement of the people in the trees above them and in the forest around. They ran at the bottom of a great rolling bubble of rustling leaves which moved with them as the Forest People followed them. They were enveloped by that faint zoo smell that Mike had noticed upon entering the forest. It drove out the scent of decay and became the only smell around them as they ran.

And ran for the edge of the forest.

The sun was dropping down the sky.

The light was fading.

And Mike and Katrin ran with the whispering and rustling in their ears.

They ran, enveloped by the invisible company of forest dwellers.

‘Hungry Hungry Hungry,’ came the whispers.

‘Sun is setting Sun is setting Sun is setting,’ answered the whispers.

‘Hungry Hungry Sun is setting Sun is setting Hungry Hungry . . .’

Mike had thought he had known fear before entering the forest. He had been wrong. In future all fear would be judged against this desperate race in the fading light with the vision of filed teeth in his mind, and the sound of whispering in his ears.

What he did not know, and what might have put a keener edge on his fear had he known, was that at their finishing line, at the forest’s edge, two River Yobbies waited patiently on horseback. Where they waited, the forest finished in an abrupt line, as if the land had been shaved by a giant razor.

Here was where they waited, a little over a bowshot back from the forest’s edge. They scanned the trees. If their quarry was not out of the forest by nightfall, they were dead. If they came out, they would be dead. The Yobbies waited.

In the forest, the light was fading, and Mike and Katrin ran. Mike had never run a race like this. He could taste exhaustion like metal in his throat, and his heart leapt in his chest like a wounded beast.

And they ran.

Ahead, they could see the fading light of day beyond the forest’s edge. They ran for it, ran for their goal.

But around them, the pursuit was louder.

And louder. The rustle became a dinning at their ears. The thump of feet landing on boughs and the squeals and giggles of their pursuers were the loudest noises in the world.

Twenty yards to go, and the light fading fast …

. . . and silence!

Deadly silence. They ran into the silence as they might into a wall.

Then the Forest Man slid down a rope and stood on a branch just above their heads.

‘Too late! You lose!’

‘It isn’t sundown yet!’ Mike yelled.

‘Hungry! Tell lies!’ came the high-pitched shout as the Forest Man launched himself at Mike.

Mike threw out his shoulder and charged. For one terrible instant, he felt the Forest Man’s fingers reaching for his throat, and the zoo smell enveloped him, but his shoulder struck the creature to one side and he and Katrin were running together for the forest’s edge with the cry of, ‘Come back dinner!’ chirruping behind them.

They burst from the forest’s edge at a run, leapt a shallow ditch and ran on. Behind them they could hear the disappointed high-pitched shrieking of the Forest People.

And before them, a terrible roar of pleasure issuing from two Yobby throats.

Mike and Katrin turned to see the Yobbies charging at them on horseback. Their swords were out, and swinging. Mike threw down the hang-glider, and waited.

‘Back!’ Katrin yelled.

‘
Back?’
But Mike was already turning and running with her, back toward the forest and its dreadful inhabitants.

They were almost at the forest’s edge. They could hear the excited chittering within the dark confines of the trees, the sound now equally balanced with the drum of hooves behind them, then, ‘Down!’ Katrin yelled, and dropped into the shallow ditch they had leapt across moments before.

Mike dropped down beside her.

For one moment, they lay huddled there as the hoofbeats shook the earth on which they lay, and then there was a darkening of the sky as the horses leapt the ditch.

Mike turned to see the momentum of the Yobbies’ charge carry them into the forest itself, and then he and Katrin were up and running in the opposite direction.

Behind them they could hear the roar of the Yobbies and the screams and shouts and chatterings of the Forest People.

They grabbed the hang-glider, carrying it between them, and forced their exhausted bodies in a flat run for the horizon, leaving the Yobbies and the Forest People to sort things out between them.

As they ran, the sun slid down beneath the horizon, dying in its own flames.

Once, in the life he lived before his glider went through the hole in Time, in that life that now seemed so far away and long ago, Mike’s father had taken him to an old mining town. For a day or so they had explored and fossicked among the old mullock heaps, and Mike had been fascinated by it all. Most, he had been fascinated by the heaps themselves, and the way they looked as if the earth itself was bulging out of its clothes in various places.

Now he wondered whether they had come upon an old mining settlement. They were travelling by moonlight when they came upon a landscape of grass-covered heaps and hillocks. They were both exhausted. They had slept in a boat and then had had the day in the forest, and the desperate race against the setting sun. They had not been able to camp near the forest for fear that the Yobbies might somehow survive their encounter with the Forest People and come back looking for the people who had arranged it.

So they had pressed on, and now they had come by moonlight into this strange bulging landscape.

They each felt safe there, and each knew the other felt safe, so they put down the hang-glider and dropped down with their backs on the slope of one of the hillocks.

‘I’m beat!’ Mike said, and breathed the clean night air.

‘We have to steal a horse,’ said Katrin.

Mike found himself agreeing wholeheartedly. ‘Why not?’ he said and threw his arms wide. Then, ‘Ow!’ he exclaimed. He had hit his knuckles against something very hard. It was something which, moreover, gave off a hollow note like the sound of banging a steel oil drum. He brought his hand back and sucked at his skinned knuckles. He was about to say something to Katrin about it, when he heard a voice from inside the hillock.

‘Who knocks!’ The voice was deep. It rang like a bass drum.

Mike looked at Katrin, though he knew it was not she who had spoken.

‘Who knocks!’ The voice came from inside the hillock again, but this time it seemed closer. It appeared to be coming from just where Mike had skinned his knuckles. He sat up and looked at the place.

There was a door in the hill.

A round steel door.

Before Mike could comment, the door flew open and an extraordinary little figure bounded out. It was a man about four feet tall, wearing armour and brandishing a sword. The sword was about the size of Katrin’s shortsword but looked full-size in the little man’s hand. Although he was short, he was very broad. He had big broad hands and feet, and a broad blazing red beard thrust out from under his helmet.

‘Answer or die!’ the little man boomed.

Mike was really too tired to argue, and anyway, he had been threatened with death so often that day that he was quite getting used to the prospect. ‘If you must know . . . Mike knocks.’

‘Mike?’ the little man roared in tones of great scorn. ‘Is that a name or the sound of a dog’s belch?’ He turned his attention to Katrin. ‘What’s that tartan, girl? Can’t see in this light.’

‘Murray,’ she said.

‘Murray.’ The little man sheathed his sword. ‘I’ve made some very fine swords for the Murrays. Name’s Woodcat. You’d better come in to dinner.’

As abruptly as he had leaped from the door, he turned and clanked inside. Mike and Katrin stood. Mike looked doubtfully at the hang-glider. ‘If the Little People live here, it’s safe,’ Katrin told him, and led the way through the circular doorway.

The first thing Mike saw when he entered Woodcat’s underground house was the wall of a skyscraper.

It was unmistakable for anything else. They were inside the hill, and yet there, facing them was a skyscraper wall. The aluminium cladding was polished to a high sheen, and the windows were intact. In this one moment Mike realized fully what changes there had been since the time he came from. What he had thought were hillocks outside must be the covered tops of buildings: skyscrapers covered by earth in the five hundred years since he was born. He was again torn by a desolate emptiness inside, by a longing to see father, mother and friends, all dead now for half a thousand years.

He stood facing the wall of the buried building. The windows were curtained from the other side, in most cases obscuring the view. One curtain was, however, pulled back and Mike could see that one room of the former office block was now a bedroom, dominated by a giant four-poster bed. A doorway had been cut through the skyscraper’s wall to provide access to this room, and a well-finished wooden door stood slightly ajar. The other three walls of the room, including the one which held the circular doorway they had just come through, were of white-washed plaster.

They were standing in a homely kitchen. There was an iron fuel stove in one comer and by this a woman smaller than the armoured man was cooking something in a pot. The smell it gave off made Mike’s mouth water. The smell of the stew mingled with the smell of fresh bread and lavender.

‘They’re Murrays,’ the little man Woodcat was saying.

‘One day you’ll do that and they’ll be Yobbies,’ said the woman, and turned to face them. She was smiling. She was a pretty little person with a face the shape and sweetness of an apple. ‘Come in! Come in! Murrays are always welcome. Restless breed you are to be sure, what are you here for and not seeing to your farming and fishing like honest people?’

‘I need food,’ said Katrin, ‘but I won’t stay. I have the Sickness.’

‘The Murrays fought to give us the Covenant,’ the little woman answered. ‘You will stay. Kinship and Covenant both demand it.’

‘I . . .’ Katrin began, and then she was falling. Mike moved fast, caught her, and lifted her. He found himself amazed that so brave and strong a person should weigh so little.

‘Bring her here, man! In here!’ Woodcat had the door to the bedroom open and was beckoning. Mike carried her through and put her down on the bed. ‘Isolde!’ yelled Woodcat.

‘I know better what to do than you can tell me!’ replied his wife. ‘You leave the lass to me!’

Woodcat grinned at Mike and pushed him out the door again and into the kitchen.

‘You two sit down by the fire,’ Isolde said, ‘and I’ll feed you. But I don’t want advice.’

Woodcat winked at Mike and led him to a chair. Mike sat, and the tiredness filled him again. He looked through the ancient window of the skyscraper to where Isolde was now fussing over the unconscious Katrin.

‘Will she be all right?’ Mike asked.

‘First time she fainted?’

Mike nodded.

‘She’ll be right in the morning again. For a day or two.’ Woodcat paused. ‘Where are you heading?’

‘The Island. For medicine.’

‘And how do you hope to get there?’

‘I have a hang-glider. A kite. It’ll bear me. And her.’

‘Never heard of such a thing in my life! How would you get steel slim enough?’

‘We use aluminium. It’s lighter.’

The little man shot a look at him. ‘You don’t sound like a Murray. And no Murray ever made a tool, let alone a flying machine.’ He paused. ‘You come from Other Parts, I reckon.’He started to take off his armour, piece by piece. He grinned at Mike who was sitting, devising his answer. ‘Just trying my armour on when you knocked.’

‘What would you say if I told you I came from Before?’

Woodcat paused, and then quickly drew the tips of his right index and middle fingers across his closed eyes from left to right. Then he looked at Mike severely. ‘I’d say you was drunk, or you’d been meddling with things a decent soul don’t meddle with. Let’s just say you come from Other Parts.’

He finished taking his armour off, as Isolde came from the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

‘She’ll sleep now till morning, and then we’ll feed her.’

‘They’re off to the Island,’ her husband told her.

‘Well, that’s one chance better than none,’ his wife replied and started ladling stew out of the pot into earthenware bowls. She served them and then went to have her own while sitting by Katrin.

When she was gone, Woodcat turned to Mike again. ‘When you came in first . . . you knew what that wall was, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Skyscraper.’ Mike was hoeing into his stew. He had never tasted anything so delicious in his life.

‘You seen one before. In Other Parts.’

Mike nodded. ‘Mmmm. We have them.’

‘Most wouldn’t know it, you see.’ He paused for a moment and looked at the wall with pride. ‘We been mining that old building, us Wood-cats for … four generations. My great grandad found it. Didn’t suppose to be here, you see, wasn’t on the old maps. Well, I say there was things that didn’t get on those old maps. And this was one of ‘em.’ He chuckled. ‘And didn’t it cause a to-do when he found it! And they others!’ His gesture took in the general area. ‘Caused a to-do, it did.’

‘You’re a metalworker.’ Mike had been worried about something from the time they had set out, but he had seen no answer to the problem until now.

‘There’s some say I’m old Wayland himself come to life again,’ Woodcat chuckled. ‘But you know what? Young . . . what’s your name?’

‘Mike.’

‘Young Mike From Other Parts? You know what? I’d sooner be a Murray.’ He gestured at the armour. ‘I’d sooner be a warrior.’ He grinned again. ‘But born a Little Person, live a Little Person. You can be Little without being small, eh Mike?’

The grin was infectious. Mike grinned back at him. ‘I’ll buy that.’

‘I wouldn’t use that turn of phrase round the Clans, Mike. They don’t like buying and selling.’

Mike chuckled. He liked Woodcat.

‘What was it you wanted done in metal?’

‘My kite’s designed to carry one. I want to make a few alterations. So it’ll carry two.’

‘Let’s get to it then.’ Woodcat stood and stretched.

‘I can’t. . . give you anything for the work.’

Woodcat moved over to him and spoke quietly. ‘You say to my wife that you need a guide. And that’ll be payment enough.’

Mike looked at him in question.

‘My wife, Isolde, she’s a very fine woman. But set in her ideas. She doesn’t think a Little

Man should be a warrior. But I’ve always thought. . . if I had the chance to go on a bit of a hopeless quest, like . . . that I’d grab it. And this quest you’re on . . . looks hopeless enough. Even for my tastes.’

Then he chuckled, and slapped Mike on the arm. ‘Where’s this kite of yours?’