The Spook's Sacrifice (7 page)

'Why do you think he changed his mind, Mam?'

'John Gregory is a brave man who always puts duty
above personal needs and wishes. And that is exactly
what he's done on this occasion. He's seen what his
higher duty is and placed it above his own beliefs. But
he's been forced to sacrifice some of his principles, and
for a man like him, that's very hard.'

Despite what Mam said, I wasn't totally convinced
that it was only that. The Spook had always maintained
that you couldn't make alliances with servants
of the dark. Something else must have changed his
mind – I felt sure of it.

The days passed and we continued south, always
keeping the coast in sight. Once a storm
threatened and we put into port for shelter, but mainly
the weather was sunny, with a good following wind.
Then, as we sailed away from the cliffs of our homeland,
preparing to cross the Channel, I could hear what
sounded like thunder in the distance.

'Another storm?' I asked.

Bill Arkwright shook his head and frowned. 'No,
Master Ward, those are big guns. Eighteen-pounders if
I'm not mistaken. There's a big battle taking place close
to the sea. Let's hope it's going our way.'

The invader came from an alliance of countries to
the east and southeast of our island. It was strange to
be so close to the battlefront yet be sailing beyond it
into open sea.

After completing our crossing of the Channel, we
sailed straight into a big storm in the Bay of Biscay.
Thunder cracked and boomed overhead like the
cannon-shot we'd heard previously, and forked
lightning rent the sky, the ship tossed hither and
thither upon the furious foam-flecked sea. I wasn't
the only one who feared that we would drown, but the
crew took it in their stride and we sailed on into calmer
waters, the air growing warmer by the day.

Eventually, moving through a strait that Mam called
the Pillars of Herakles, we entered the Mediterranean,
a vast inland sea.

'Who was Herakles?' I asked Mam. 'Was he a Greek?'

'That he was, son – a hero and man of great
strength,' she answered. 'The strongest man in the
whole world. See that huge rock to the north? It's
called Gibraltar, and it's one of the two pillars.
Herakles picked it up and threw it there!'

I laughed. It was preposterous! How big would he
have to be to do that?

'You can laugh, son,' Mam chided, 'but Greece is a
land of many strange stories – more are true than you
might believe.'

'But not throwing the rock!'

Mam didn't reply; she simply smiled mysteriously
and turned away. But before she'd taken half a dozen
paces she beckoned me, so I followed her down to her
cabin. She hadn't invited me in before so I wondered
what she wanted. It had to be something she needed to
say to me in private.

Mam led the way into the gloom of her cabin, lit a
lantern and placed it in the middle of the table, motioning
for me to sit down opposite her.

'Now, I think this is the time to tell you a little more
of what we face in Greece,' Mam said.

'Thank you,' I replied. 'It's been troubling me that I
don't know much about it.'

'I know, son, but I'm afraid there's lots that I don't
know either. I'm worried that the Ordeen might pass
through the portal before we arrive. As I said, she visits
every seven years, but not on exactly the same day.'

'So we have no way of knowing for certain when
she'll come?'

'No, but close to the time there'll be unmistakable
signs. First birds and animals will flee the area. Then
the sky will turn yellow and whirlwinds will sweep
away from the point where the portal opens. It has
always been so. Three days and three hours later, we
will all be dead or the Ordeen will have been
destroyed.'

'Do we really have a chance of success, Mam?' I
demanded. It was terrifying. So much depended on
what we were preparing to do.

'Yes, son, we do. But it'll be a close-run thing. When
the Ordeen appears on the plain south of Kalambaka,
her intention will be to ravage that town, slay its
inhabitants and take their blood. Those who escape her
servants will be slain and devoured by the maenads.
None will escape.'

'What about the folk from the town, Mam? Why
do they live there if this happens every seven years?'

'Their homes are there, son, and they're poor. All
over the world there are people who live close to active
volcanoes or in areas afflicted by earthquakes or
floods. They have no choice. In Kalambaka at least
they know approximately when the danger will come
so they can flee the area. The roads will be thronged
with refugees. Of course, some leave it too late to
escape; others, the old and the sick, simply cannot
travel. And this time, because the power of the Ordeen
has increased so much, thanks to the Fiend, even the
monasteries will not be safe. The attack comes from
both land and air. Flying lamia witches, the vaengir,
will find the heights of Meteora no obstacle at all. The
Fiend has been sending increasing numbers of them to
the Ordeen's side, but at least my sisters won't be
amongst them. He is their enemy too.'

'And what happens when the portal opens?' I asked,
filled with curiosity. 'Have you seen it happen?'

'Once, son. Just once, many years ago, before I met
your dad. But I'll never forget it. First a pillar of fire
will extend from the ground to the dark storm-cloud
above. This usually fades to reveal the Ord within.
Then torrential rain will fall, cooling the stones of the
citadel. It is then that we must go in. All entities passing
through a portal from the dark need a little time to
adjust and gather their strength,' Mam explained.
'That was true of the Fiend last summer, remember. It
gave you time to flee from Pendle to the protection of
my special room in the farmhouse. So we must take
advantage of the same time-lag here. Before the
Ordeen and her followers have their full powers, we
must break into the Ord and destroy both her and
them. It's our only hope.'

As our journey progressed, the crew's indifference to
their unusual passengers turned to open hostility. The
captain explained that they had begun to fear and
mistrust the Pendle witches. One of the sailors had
gone missing on night watch. It had been in the midst
of a storm and he'd probably been swept overboard,
but they suspected that the witches had taken the poor
man's life to satisfy their need for blood. So the voyage
grew increasingly uncomfortable and we were all
longing for it to be over.

True to his word, the Spook had discontinued my
lessons and hardly spoke to me. Alice, he could not
bear to look at. Once, when we were talking on deck,
he raised his eyes, tutted and went back down to the
hold.

So Arkwright took it upon himself to continue my
training, concentrating on physical skills as he had
back at the mill. But it was a whole new experience to
fight with staffs on a deck that pitched and rolled with
the swell.

As we got closer to Greece and the temperature
increased, the Spook began to sleep up on deck, away
from the oppressive heat of the hold. And finally he
began to speak to me again. It started with a nod and a
half-smile, but before long he was giving me lessons
once more so I now had the benefit of two spooks
training me.

'Get out your notebook, lad,' he said to me as, under
a cloudless evening sky and with a light following
wind, we sailed across the Straits of Otranto,
approaching the Greek mainland at last.

'Well, I mentioned fire elementals to you back in the
County and said I'd tell you about them one day,' he
went on. 'We don't have them back home, probably
because the weather is so wet. Even in summer we
rarely go more than a week without a heavy downpour!
But Greece is hot and dry then, and in those
conditions fire elementals can thrive. As I say, they are
very dangerous and sometimes take the form of
glowing orbs, some translucent, others opaque. Take
careful note of what I'm saying because we're certain
to meet them in Greece: they'll come through the
portal with the Ordeen.'

I dipped my nib into the pot of ink and began to
write as fast as I could. This knowledge was soon
going to be very important.

'As a general rule, the opaque ones are hotter and
more dangerous,' continued the Spook. 'Indoors, they
often float close to the ceiling but they can also move
very fast and are almost impossible to dodge. Contact
with them can result in severe burns – and often in a
painful death. In more extreme cases such elementals
can reduce their victims to ashes almost instantly.

'And that's not all, lad. Others, called
asteri
, are
similar in shape to a starfish, with five fiery radiating
arms. These elementals cling to walls or ceilings and
drop onto the heads of unsuspecting victims. And once
they make contact, you're as good as dead.

'But it's not all bad news. Fire elementals are
notoriously difficult to defend against, but a metal
alloy blade with the correct percentage of silver can
cause them to implode. A spook's staff is particularly
useful. Failing that, water can seriously weaken a fire
elemental and send it into hibernation until conditions
are drier. Water is a very good refuge when under
attack.'

The Spook paused to give me time to write everything
up in my notebook. When I'd finished, my
curiosity finally got the better of me. Why had
my master sacrificed his principles to join us on the
journey to Greece? I knew he wouldn't want to talk
about it but I had to ask anyway.

'Mr Gregory, why did you finally come with us?
What made you change your mind?' I asked.

He looked at me, his face filled with anger. Then his
expression became sad and resigned. 'Your mam wrote
to me and told me things I'd rather not have heard.
Things I didn't want to believe. After her letter arrived
at Chipenden, I struggled with my conscience for a
long time and almost left it too late.'

I wanted to know more, but before I could speak
there was a sudden shout from the lookout far above
our heads. We stood up and gazed over the starboard
bow. As we were very near the coast of Greece, I
thought it meant that land had been sighted.

But I was wrong. The crew began to scurry up the
rigging, unfurling every last inch of available sail. A
large ship had been spotted to the west, sailing out of
the setting sun. It had black sails and was closing on us
rapidly. Fast as the
Celeste
was, it seemed that this ship
was even swifter. Our crew were agitated and worked
feverishly, but still the vessel drew steadily nearer.

The captain watched it for a while with his spyglass.
'It's a pirate ship – we've no chance of outrunning it
before dark,' he said, scratching at his side-whiskers.

'And I don't fancy our chances if it comes to a fight.

We're heavily outgunned.'

The pirate ship was bristling with cannon, whereas
we had only four guns, two on each side. No sooner
had he spoken than we heard a gun being fired. A
cannonball hit the water close to our bows, sending up
a big plume of spray. The pirates clearly had the
armaments to sink our ship with ease.

Bill Arkwright shook his head and smiled grimly.

'It's not as bad as it seems, Captain. Just don't return
fire. We certainly can't win any fight that involves an
exchange of cannonfire, but it won't come to that. The
last thing they want is to sink us. They'll want this ship
as a prize. No doubt they intend to cut our throats and
throw us to the fishes, but when they board us they'll
get a nasty surprise.'

He turned to me with a grim smile. 'Go down into
the hold, Master Ward, and let the young ladies down
there know the situation.'

Wasting no time, I went down to tell the Pendle
witches what was afoot. Grimalkin was sitting on the
steps sharpening one of her throwing knives.

'We're already preparing, child,' she told me. 'Mab
scryed the threat hours ago. To be honest we're anticipating
the fight with relish. We've spent too long
cooped up down there and my sisters thirst for blood.'

I saw some of the other witches below her, their eyes
glinting cruelly as they licked their lips with relish at
the thought of the fresh blood that was soon to be
theirs. Their fingernails looked as sharp as the blades
they were honing, all weapons ready to rend and
pierce human flesh.

Back on deck the Spook was standing beside Bill
Arkwright, both of them readying themselves for the
fight ahead. Arkwright always looked forward to
cracking heads. He was actually smiling in anticipation
of the impending action. I released the blade
from my staff and moved forward to join them. The
Spook gave me a nod and Arkwright gave me a pat on
the back in encouragement.

The captain and most of the crew were lined up
between the masts, gripping cudgels, but they seemed
to have little heart for a fight. We would certainly be
glad of the Pendle witches' help. My mouth was dry
with fear and excitement, yet I was determined to do
my best; but at that moment I felt a firm hand on my
shoulder. It was Mam.

'No, son,' she said, drawing me away from the
others. 'You keep well clear of this battle. We can't take
the risk of you being hurt. You have more important
things to do in Greece.'

I tried to argue but Mam would not be persuaded. It
was frustrating that others were free to take risks but
not me. I resented being mollycoddled, but I had to
obey Mam. So I stood at her side, furious that I
couldn't take part in the coming battle.