martin/booksnew
martin/booksnew
1
0
Fork 0
mirror of https://gitlab.silvrtree.co.uk/martind2000/booksnew.git synced 2025-03-13 07:30:00 +00:00
Code Issues Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Ch5 & 6

Browse Source
This commit is contained in:
unknown 2015-07-15 14:50:51 +01:00
parent aed1cec3d4
commit dc0587de5e
4 changed files with 1325 additions and 352 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

702
build/mythlands/OEBPS/ch01.xhtml
View File

@ -1,358 +1,358 @@
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Mythlands</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href="page-template.xpgt" />
</head>
<head>
<title>Mythlands - Chapter 1</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href="page-template.xpgt" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="text">
<div class="section" id="xhtmldocuments">
<h1>1</h1>
<body>
<div id="text">
<div class="section" id="xhtmldocuments">
<h1>1</h1>
<p>
The high stone wall that circled Cromwath Blackwood had drawn him with a powerful and mysterious gravity, ever since he'd been a small boy.
</p>
<p>
Now Jack Flint was going to break all the rules, ignore all the warnings and climb the wall to see just what was in there behind the wall.
</p>
<p>
He and his best friend Kerry Malone had planned it for weeks, curiosity and apprehension jangling in them both. The wall around those dark trees was old and high and every kid here on the Ardmore peninsula had heard the tales. Nobody really knew for sure, because nobody went in there.
</p>
<p>
"Maybe it's caves," Jack said as they sauntered down to the bus-stop after school. A cool sea breeze mixed salt in the scent of autumn heather on the air. High above, a jet contrail split the cold blue sky. "Or old mine workings that people could fall in. Anyway, we'll find out for ourselves tomorrow."
</p>
<p>
"No," Kerry said, shaking his head. "I think it's a haunted house. That's why they built the wall."
</p>
<p>
"You wouldn't build a wall for that," Jack insisted. "You'd just knock it flat. Caves are the best bet. Remember that boy who went in and got lost for years?"
</p>
<p>
"If it ever happened," Kerry countered. "That was years ago. I don't believe it."
</p>
<p>
They were all set for tomorrow. They had ropes and flashlights ready in Kerry's rucksack, and the fishing rods as a cover story. Nobody would be any the wiser, so long as Aunt Clarice didn't keep Jack around for weekend chores, and as long as the Major's gamekeeper didn't see them scaling the ivy that grew on the south wall. There was always the chance that the Major himself would be up in the turret of the big house with his brass telescope trained on them. With luck, Jack thought, they'd be up and over before anybody noticed. The thought of it made him tingle with excitement. At last he'd find out what was the secret behind the wall.
</p>
<p>
<em>Cromwath Blackwood</em> . Every place has its legends, and here on the peninsula, where the standing stones stood like ancient guards along the crest of the ridge where the edge of Scotland met the sea, the Blackwood was the focus of many a childhood story. Jack had pondered on the walled coppice since he was just a kid, living with Aunt Clarice in the lodge house on the Major's estate. In his imagination, when he was small, there were monsters there. Dragons. Caves of treasure.
</p>
<p>
Now he was older, he knew it would be something more mundane than all of that, but still the Cromwath Blackwood tugged at him, fired up his curiosity. It was secret. <em>Forbidden</em>. It was something he and Kerry could share, their own secret, and in a small harbour town like Ardmore secrets were always hard to come by and even harder to keep.
</p>
<p>
Nobody they knew had ever gone over that wall and gone inside. There were stories a plenty and the one Jack liked best was the one about Thomas Lynn, who was reckoned to be about fifteen, a few months older than Jack and Kerry Malone. Some said it happened sixty years ago, before the war and some said it was before the Great War and nobody knew for sure when it happened, if it ever really did happen.
</p>
<p>
Thomas Lynn had ignored all the warnings, so parents would tell their children. He climbed the big wall one autumn night and went into the Blackwood&#8230;and then he vanished.
</p>
<p>
And he'd been gone a long time, whenever it was.
</p>
<p>
The next time anybody saw him was when he was found up beside the old stone cairn on the top of Dumbuie Hill, a good ten miles away. And when did turn up, so the story went, it looked as if he'd been sucked into to some kind of hell and it had spat him out again.
</p>
<p>
<em>He was in a hell of a state,</em> one of the old hands down at the fishing quay had told them one Saturday morning when Kerry was earning some money unloading boxes of fish.
</p>
<p>
"He was burned bad all down one side of him," the old fellow had said, "The skin on his bones melted like tar."
</p>
<p>
He cocked an eye at them. "An' toes an' fingers gone, like they'd frozen off, or maybe <em>chewed</em> off. Who can tell? Worst was the stuff growin' on him. It was like a poison fungus rooted right in him, suckin' the life out. A woeful way to die, I can tell ye."
</p>
<p>
He took a suck on his pipe, covering it against the smirr of rain coming in off the sea. Kerry sat on a box in his threadbare sweater, blue Irish eyes bright with interest.
</p>
<p>
"Wherever it was he found himself, it musta been a place none of God's creatures should ever go," the old fellow went on. "Poor soul was slobberin' an droolin'. Mad as a hatter an' he was stone blind."
</p>
<p>
The deckhand had knocked his pipe on the gunwale and squinted down at them against the sparkle of the rising tide. Both Jack and Kerry sat, fascinated, not quite believing the tale, but <em>wishing</em> the story was true.
</p>
<p>
"The mystery was," the fisherman went on. "When they found him up on the hill, it was ten years after he disappeared. Ten whole years. Can you imagine that?"
</p>
<p>
Both Jack and Kerry nodded. It was an old story, but it still gripped them.
</p>
<p>
"His brain frazzled an' his eyes burned out like he'd seen a vision o' hell," the deckhand said, nodding himself, agreeing with his own story.
</p>
<p>
"And he was not one day older than he was on the day he climbed over that wall."
</p>
<p>
He left that hanging in the air. They hadn't heard that part of the story before. Ten years and not a day older. Story or not, that was a big one to get the mind around.
</p>
<p>
"So where had he been?" Kerry wanted to know.
</p>
<p>
"Somewhere nobody should ever go," the old fellow said. "Nowhere on this world, that's the truth of it."
</p>
<p>
"How does anybody know he went in the Blackwood?" Jack finally asked. His dark hair was a contrast to Kerry's mop of brown curls.
</p>
<p>
The deckhand shrugged. "It was afore my time, I grant ye, but folk seen him, an' the sight scared the bejasus out of them."
</p>
<p>
He waved a finger at them. "Don't you boys be thinkin' of goin' up there in those trees, mind. Remember young Tommy Lynn, an' you pay heed."
</p>
<p>
"You believe any of that?" Kerry Malone asked. He was almost the same height as Jack, with a smattering of sepia freckles across his nose and an Irish accent to match, even though he'd lived here on Scotland's west coast since he was six. "All those old fishers, they believe in kelpies and little people and the Loch Ness monster."
</p>
<p>
"There has to be something in there," Jack insisted. "They put a wall round it to keep people out."
</p>
<p>
They were almost down to Ardmore Road that snaked round the shore. They couldn't see the Blackwood from this distance, but it was there all right, dark and mysterious.
</p>
<p>
"That wall's been there for hundreds of years," Jack said. "Nobody knows how long." He turned to face Kerry. "Maybe it wasn't built to keep folk out."
</p>
<p>
"Why build it then?"
</p>
<p>
"I can see it from my bedroom. Sometimes I've seen the tops of the trees whipping about when it gets dark, like something's shaking them, even when there's no wind. And when I was a kid I heard things in there.
</p>
<p>
"Now you're winding me up."
</p>
<p>
"No," Jack said flatly. "It was at night. I heard something. Like screaming. Real high and shuddery. And people wailing and crying. I had nightmares for weeks."
</p>
<p>
Kerry still looked skeptical, but Jack went on.
</p>
<p>
"I think maybe they put up the wall to keep something <em>in.</em>"
</p>
<p>
He let that idea float.. Kerry walked with it until they reached the corner.
</p>
<p>
"Aye maybe. But there isn't a wall high enough to stop a Malone."
</p>
<p>
"Sure," Jack said. "Tell that to your Dad."
</p>
<p>
Kerry collapsed a fit of laughter and that broke the moment. Jack was his best friend, so he could make a joke about the luckless Fergal Malone, odd-job-man, drinker and poacher who was having an unplanned three-month holiday in Drumbain Jail. They'd sent him up for using dynamite from the quarry to blow a few salmon from a pool in Brander Water, and almost blowing himself up in the attempt.
</p>
<p>
They had been best of friends since they'd been six years old, when Kerry's dyslexia slowed him up in school and Jack used to try to help him with the letters in the reading books. After that, Jack had read the kids stories to him and then, when the Major let him use the library up in the big house, he'd share the adventure stories, tales of the old Celtic heroes and the battles they fought in Scotland and Ireland in the mythical days of long ago.
</p>
<p>
For an orphan like Jack Flint and the son of a ne'er-do-well like Kerry, it might have been an odd friendship, but as the Major told him on their long walks up on Brander Ridge, you couldn't pick your friends, not your real friends anyway.
</p>
<p>
They were still laughing when they turned the corner of the lane, schoolbags slung from their shoulders, and almost barged into the crowd of older boys hanging around the bus-shelter.
</p>
<p>
Both of them stopped laughing when Billy Robbins turned round and saw them. He stepped out to block the way.
</p>
<p>
He was big and beefy, red-faced, red-haired and freckled and the bane of many a boy's existence here in Ardmore.
</p>
<p>
The village huddled around the harbour, between the ridge and the grey Atlantic ocean and there was nowhere to hide from a bully like Billy Robbins who had thrown his weight about ever since Jack had started school. His old man owned the boatyard where Kerry's mother worked as a cleaner, aside from the sewing jobs she took to keep the house going while Kerry's dad was away. She really needed the cleaning job in the boatyard and Kerry wouldn't risk it for her.
</p>
<p>
"Hey, here's Malone!" Billy bawled, and Jack felt his stomach tighten. "The illegiterate bogtrotter."
</p>
<p>
Jack hated it when Billy made fun of Kerry's dyslexia. It wasn't Kerry's fault his brain managed to scramble up the letters into a jumble, but that didn't make him stupid. Far from it. But Billy Robbins thought it just the best of laughs to point it up.
</p>
<p>
"What the hell are you doin' here?" He pulled his I-pod earpiece out and spun the thin cable around his finger. "They got a special bus for you window-lickers."
</p>
<p>
A couple of girls in nearby sniggered that high-pitched way and Kerry's cheeks went bright red. Fiona Dunbar was one of the girls, and maybe she hadn't laughed, but she was there, watching, and Kerry was suddenly wilting on his feet with embarrassment and shame.
</p>
<p>
"Are you hearing me? We don't want any raggy-arsed Irish tinkers stinking up the bus."
</p>
<p>
Billy nudged one of his cronies and took a pull on his cigarette. Robbins and his pals were a year older, and while Jack was tall for his age, they were bigger yet, and heavier. And Robbins was meaner than any of them.
</p>
<p>
"Hey Stevie," Billy asked one of the others. He wasn't finished yet. "What's DNA stand for?"
</p>
<p>
"Dunno?"
</p>
<p>
"National Dyslexic Association.." He pointed up at the sign on the bus shelter. "He thinks it says <em>Sub</em>. Am I right, bog-trotter? Can't read, can't write, backside hanging out of his pants."
</p>
<p>
Everybody laughed this time, or most of them. Jack looked across, past Kerry's bright red ears, and saw Fiona Dunbar was turning away and she wasn't laughing. Inwardly he thought <em>good for you, </em>and he wished Kerry would take his eyes off the ground and see it for himself. But Kerry never moved. He kept staring at the ground, fists clenched, face burning, shoulders twitching with the need to hit out and the tension of holding it back.
</p>
<p>
"Turn around, rag-bag," Robbins said. He shot a hand out and grabbed Kerry by the shirt. "Show us the patch on your pants."
</p>
<p>
Robbins was wearing a pair of trainers that probably cost as much as Kerry's whole wardrobe. He grinned widely, his acne-scarred skin stretched like pink gravel. The peach fuzz on his cheeks made him look piggish and mean.
</p>
<p>
"Real cool, tinkerboy. Your old man's got more style and he's wearing jail stripes."
</p>
<p>
Kerry said nothing. Robbins used his bulk to pull him slowly backwards and forwards.
</p>
<p>
<em>Do it! Go on! </em> Jack's back teeth were clenched and grinding. He'd seen Kerry haul fishboxes all day down at the harbour. His hands were calloused and rough from hard work. If he wanted to, he could give Robbins a run for his money.
</p>
<p>
"What did I tell you already?" Robbins demanded. "Bogtrotters don't get the bus with us. You stink of piss and fish. Now take a hike, you an' the bookworm. The walk'll do you good. You put a foot on that bus and I'll kick your raggy arse off, hear?"
</p>
<p>
"<em>Go pick on somebody else, you fat bully!"</em>
</p>
<p>
Jack heard himself say the words as if they were coming from somebody else. As soon as they were out of his mouth, he wished he could have bitten them back and swallowed them out of sight. He'd taken two unbidden steps forward, suddenly quivering with righteous anger at Kerry's humiliation, two steps that put him just within Robbins reach.
</p>
<p>
A beefy hand shot out and grabbed him by the school tie. The other casually shoved Kerry away. It happened so fast Jack hardly saw it coming. His heart leapt into his throat as Robbins swung piggy eyes on him. Robbins took a slow draw on his cigarette then flicked it at him. It bounced off his jacket in a flurry of sparks.
</p>
<p>
"<em>Oho!</em>" he said. "We got a big mouth here." Billy didn't sound angry at all. He sounded <em>pleased. </em>"What was it you just called me?"
</p>
<p>
Jack tried to pull back out of the grip. His heart was thudding so hard he could feel the pulse in his ears. Robbins flexed his arm and pulled him close enough to smell stale cigarette smoke and whatever he'd had for lunch.
</p>
<p>
"You sayin' I'm fat?"
</p>
<p>
"I told you to leave him alone." The words just blurted out. Jack wished he could put a brake on his tongue. "He's done nothing to you."
</p>
<p>
"Nothing? <em>Nothing</em>?" Robbins worked up indignation. "His old man stole from my old man, didn't he? You call that nothing? And this low-life Irish scum-bag son of his is just as bad.
</p>
<p>
He held Jack close, eyes almost hidden by fat cheeks. He was still grinning, but there was no joy in that grin. Jack thought he could read some disturbing expression in those eyes and felt the back of his legs begin to tremble. For the first time in his life he thought he recognized madness in another human and it really scared him.
</p>
<p>
"Want some action, Pink Lint?" Robbins had his own rhyming name for Jack.
</p>
<p>
Jack felt the tight anger wrestle with the swelling fear. Just because Kerry couldn't read, just because he was <em>dyslexic</em>, that didn't make him stupid. Just because he wouldn't fight didn't make him a coward either. Robbins pulled him very close and Jack wished that he'd kept quiet but his mouth had worked before his brain could stop it and while he was suddenly scared, he knew it would be a real mistake to show it now.
</p>
<p>
Without any warning, Robbins suddenly shoved him away. Jack turned to run, but the rest of the bigger boys had surrounded them and hands pushed him back again towards Robbins.
</p>
<p>
He twisted to keep his balance and swung right into the swinging fist that caught him such a thud that everything went black for a second. The force knocked his head back against the shelter and made little bright lights spiral like tinsel in watery vision. He ended up on his backside with a jolt that gnashed his teeth.
</p>
<p>
"That's not <em>fat,</em> Lint-boy," Robbins grated.
</p>
<p>
He grinned, showing small teeth. "That's pure muscle."
</p>
<p>
Jack groggily shook his head. Robbins pulled him up by the shirt, violent enough to pop two buttons which whizzed away. He drew his fist back for another punch. Instinctively Jack raised a hand to protect his face and his palm caught Robbins, purely by accident, square on the nose.
</p>
<p>
Billy Robbins staggered back cursing, hand to his face, eyes wide in fury and surprise. Jack was just as surprised. He'd never hit anybody in his life, even if it hadn't been intended. Robbins roared and came at him, fists cocked.
</p>
<p>
He jabbed a hand out and grabbed Jack's shirt again, dragged him forward with such force that the collar ripped, raised his clenched fist and brought it down again on Jack's cheek. The blow rocked him back, ears ringing. Jack tried to squirm away. Another punch almost dropped him flat.
</p>
<p>
One of the girls called out for Robbins to stop, but Jack knew there was no stopping him at all. Robbins might have had the looks of a pig, but was mean as a stoat and all his cronies were egging him on. Whatever Jack had seen in his eyes, a kind of blankness behind the mean glitter, that had sent a chill through him.
</p>
<p>
Robbins raised the fist again. Jack cringed away from it, tears smarting in his eyes from the first blow, but couldn't twist out of the grip on his shirt.
</p>
<p>
Then Kerry moved in fast and grabbed the clenched fist in both hands. Robbins let out a mad howl and spun like a bull, swinging Jack right off his feet.
</p>
<p>
Kerry hung on to the fist as Robbins wheeled, dragging both smaller boys with him. Kerry's complexion had changed from red to almost pure white. It was hard to tell whether it was fear or anger.
</p>
<p>
"I'll bloody <em>kill</em> you," Robbins bawled. "I'll tear both of you apart."
</p>
<p>
Jack didn't doubt that at all. In that moment, he knew there was something broken inside Billy Robbins. Some crack in there that festered with poison.
</p>
<p>
He pulled, hard as he could, dragged himself free of the grip and spun away, tripped and went sprawling. He heard the sound of a pulpy blow landing hard. In a second he was back on his feet. He grabbed his bag, full of schoolbooks, bit down on his fear and the panicky urge to run and save himself.
</p>
<p>
He darted in between two of the older boys.
</p>
<p>
Robbins had Kerry by the throat, thumbs pressed against his windpipe, his face swollen with animal fury, mouth twisted into a mad snarl.
</p>
<p>
"Come on Billy," somebody said, worried now.
</p>
<p>
"Sure, man. He's got the message. Let him go."
</p>
<p>
Robbins was beyond listening. Both hands were clenched on Kerry's throat, and his big shoulders bulged with the effort. His face was warped in a strange grimace. Kerry's was purple now and his eyes were so wide Jack thought they would pop out. His knees began to sag as he hauled for a breath that just wouldn't come.
</p>
<p>
"He's <em>killing</em> him!" It came out in a screech. Jack was suddenly so scared he couldn't swallow.
</p>
<p>
Kerry grunted, tried to pull the hands away. Nobody else made a move. Nobody dared.
</p>
<p>
Jack ran in and swung his bag, hard as he could. It caught Robbins on the back of his knees with such force that they buckled forward and suddenly he was down on the roadside, with Kerry on top of him. One hand pulled free to try to break his fall and Kerry twisted out of the other. Robbins landed with a thud, and his breath went out of him. Kerry rolled over him gasping for breath, scrambled to his feet just as Robbins was turning. A big hand tried to grab his ankle, but he was too quick.
</p>
<p>
Jack hauled him to his knees, to his feet, kept hauling until they were out of the melee.
</p>
<p>
"Run!" Jack bawled. Behind them Robbins was roaring incoherently. He sounded like a mad beast.
</p>
<p>
They ran. Jack dragged Kerry by the sleeve, forcing to run with him, as fast as they could. A half-brick whizzed past Jack's ear, close enough to hear, heavy enough to crack his skull. He ducked and they ran on, round the corner, along the road, as far as they could before they had to stop for breath.
</p>
<p>
"He tried to strangle you," Jack managed. "There's something not right with him. He's really crazy."
</p>
<p>
Kerry was still panting, hands on his knees. Finally he got enough air into his lungs.
</p>
<p>
"No bother." Kerry gasped. He was grinning now. "Sure, I was just lulling him into a false sense of security before I made my move."
</p>
<p>
Jack looked at him. Big red pressure marks were clear on his throat.
</p>
<p>
"I had him just where I wanted him," Kerry said, his eyes bright with bravado, but his voice dripping irony.
</p>
<p>
And suddenly, despite it all, they were laughing so hard they had to hold on to each other to keep from falling.
</p>
<p>
"Come on," Kerry said when it subsided. "We'll hitch a lift home and save the fare. And look&#8230;." He dug a hand into his threadbare jacket pocket and pulled out a crushed packet of cigarettes. "I'm having one of these, just for my nerves."
</p>
<p>
"Where did you get them?"
</p>
<p>
"I swiped them when he was down," Kerry said, grinning. "You can't miss your chances in life."
</p>
<p>
He winked at Jack. "We'll need them when we go over that wall."
</p>
<p>
The high stone wall that circled Cromwath Blackwood had drawn him with a powerful and mysterious gravity, ever since he'd been a small boy.
</p>
<p>
Now Jack Flint was going to break all the rules, ignore all the warnings and climb the wall to see just what was in there behind the wall.
</p>
<p>
He and his best friend Kerry Malone had planned it for weeks, curiosity and apprehension jangling in them both. The wall around those dark trees was old and high and every kid here on the Ardmore peninsula had heard the tales. Nobody really knew for sure, because nobody went in there.
</p>
<p>
"Maybe it's caves," Jack said as they sauntered down to the bus-stop after school. A cool sea breeze mixed salt in the scent of autumn heather on the air. High above, a jet contrail split the cold blue sky. "Or old mine workings that people could fall in. Anyway, we'll find out for ourselves tomorrow."
</p>
<p>
"No," Kerry said, shaking his head. "I think it's a haunted house. That's why they built the wall."
</p>
<p>
"You wouldn't build a wall for that," Jack insisted. "You'd just knock it flat. Caves are the best bet. Remember that boy who went in and got lost for years?"
</p>
<p>
"If it ever happened," Kerry countered. "That was years ago. I don't believe it."
</p>
<p>
They were all set for tomorrow. They had ropes and flashlights ready in Kerry's rucksack, and the fishing rods as a cover story. Nobody would be any the wiser, so long as Aunt Clarice didn't keep Jack around for weekend chores, and as long as the Major's gamekeeper didn't see them scaling the ivy that grew on the south wall. There was always the chance that the Major himself would be up in the turret of the big house with his brass telescope trained on them. With luck, Jack thought, they'd be up and over before anybody noticed. The thought of it made him tingle with excitement. At last he'd find out what was the secret behind the wall.
</p>
<p>
<em>Cromwath Blackwood</em> . Every place has its legends, and here on the peninsula, where the standing stones stood like ancient guards along the crest of the ridge where the edge of Scotland met the sea, the Blackwood was the focus of many a childhood story. Jack had pondered on the walled coppice since he was just a kid, living with Aunt Clarice in the lodge house on the Major's estate. In his imagination, when he was small, there were monsters there. Dragons. Caves of treasure.
</p>
<p>
Now he was older, he knew it would be something more mundane than all of that, but still the Cromwath Blackwood tugged at him, fired up his curiosity. It was secret. <em>Forbidden</em>. It was something he and Kerry could share, their own secret, and in a small harbour town like Ardmore secrets were always hard to come by and even harder to keep.
</p>
<p>
Nobody they knew had ever gone over that wall and gone inside. There were stories a plenty and the one Jack liked best was the one about Thomas Lynn, who was reckoned to be about fifteen, a few months older than Jack and Kerry Malone. Some said it happened sixty years ago, before the war and some said it was before the Great War and nobody knew for sure when it happened, if it ever really did happen.
</p>
<p>
Thomas Lynn had ignored all the warnings, so parents would tell their children. He climbed the big wall one autumn night and went into the Blackwood&#8230;and then he vanished.
</p>
<p>
And he'd been gone a long time, whenever it was.
</p>
<p>
The next time anybody saw him was when he was found up beside the old stone cairn on the top of Dumbuie Hill, a good ten miles away. And when did turn up, so the story went, it looked as if he'd been sucked into to some kind of hell and it had spat him out again.
</p>
<p>
<em>He was in a hell of a state,</em> one of the old hands down at the fishing quay had told them one Saturday morning when Kerry was earning some money unloading boxes of fish.
</p>
<p>
"He was burned bad all down one side of him," the old fellow had said, "The skin on his bones melted like tar."
</p>
<p>
He cocked an eye at them. "An' toes an' fingers gone, like they'd frozen off, or maybe <em>chewed</em> off. Who can tell? Worst was the stuff growin' on him. It was like a poison fungus rooted right in him, suckin' the life out. A woeful way to die, I can tell ye."
</p>
<p>
He took a suck on his pipe, covering it against the smirr of rain coming in off the sea. Kerry sat on a box in his threadbare sweater, blue Irish eyes bright with interest.
</p>
<p>
"Wherever it was he found himself, it musta been a place none of God's creatures should ever go," the old fellow went on. "Poor soul was slobberin' an droolin'. Mad as a hatter an' he was stone blind."
</p>
<p>
The deckhand had knocked his pipe on the gunwale and squinted down at them against the sparkle of the rising tide. Both Jack and Kerry sat, fascinated, not quite believing the tale, but <em>wishing</em> the story was true.
</p>
<p>
"The mystery was," the fisherman went on. "When they found him up on the hill, it was ten years after he disappeared. Ten whole years. Can you imagine that?"
</p>
<p>
Both Jack and Kerry nodded. It was an old story, but it still gripped them.
</p>
<p>
"His brain frazzled an' his eyes burned out like he'd seen a vision o' hell," the deckhand said, nodding himself, agreeing with his own story.
</p>
<p>
"And he was not one day older than he was on the day he climbed over that wall."
</p>
<p>
He left that hanging in the air. They hadn't heard that part of the story before. Ten years and not a day older. Story or not, that was a big one to get the mind around.
</p>
<p>
"So where had he been?" Kerry wanted to know.
</p>
<p>
"Somewhere nobody should ever go," the old fellow said. "Nowhere on this world, that's the truth of it."
</p>
<p>
"How does anybody know he went in the Blackwood?" Jack finally asked. His dark hair was a contrast to Kerry's mop of brown curls.
</p>
<p>
The deckhand shrugged. "It was afore my time, I grant ye, but folk seen him, an' the sight scared the bejasus out of them."
</p>
<p>
He waved a finger at them. "Don't you boys be thinkin' of goin' up there in those trees, mind. Remember young Tommy Lynn, an' you pay heed."
</p>
<p>
"You believe any of that?" Kerry Malone asked. He was almost the same height as Jack, with a smattering of sepia freckles across his nose and an Irish accent to match, even though he'd lived here on Scotland's west coast since he was six. "All those old fishers, they believe in kelpies and little people and the Loch Ness monster."
</p>
<p>
"There has to be something in there," Jack insisted. "They put a wall round it to keep people out."
</p>
<p>
They were almost down to Ardmore Road that snaked round the shore. They couldn't see the Blackwood from this distance, but it was there all right, dark and mysterious.
</p>
<p>
"That wall's been there for hundreds of years," Jack said. "Nobody knows how long." He turned to face Kerry. "Maybe it wasn't built to keep folk out."
</p>
<p>
"Why build it then?"
</p>
<p>
"I can see it from my bedroom. Sometimes I've seen the tops of the trees whipping about when it gets dark, like something's shaking them, even when there's no wind. And when I was a kid I heard things in there.
</p>
<p>
"Now you're winding me up."
</p>
<p>
"No," Jack said flatly. "It was at night. I heard something. Like screaming. Real high and shuddery. And people wailing and crying. I had nightmares for weeks."
</p>
<p>
Kerry still looked skeptical, but Jack went on.
</p>
<p>
"I think maybe they put up the wall to keep something <em>in.</em>"
</p>
<p>
He let that idea float.. Kerry walked with it until they reached the corner.
</p>
<p>
"Aye maybe. But there isn't a wall high enough to stop a Malone."
</p>
<p>
"Sure," Jack said. "Tell that to your Dad."
</p>
<p>
Kerry collapsed a fit of laughter and that broke the moment. Jack was his best friend, so he could make a joke about the luckless Fergal Malone, odd-job-man, drinker and poacher who was having an unplanned three-month holiday in Drumbain Jail. They'd sent him up for using dynamite from the quarry to blow a few salmon from a pool in Brander Water, and almost blowing himself up in the attempt.
</p>
<p>
They had been best of friends since they'd been six years old, when Kerry's dyslexia slowed him up in school and Jack used to try to help him with the letters in the reading books. After that, Jack had read the kids stories to him and then, when the Major let him use the library up in the big house, he'd share the adventure stories, tales of the old Celtic heroes and the battles they fought in Scotland and Ireland in the mythical days of long ago.
</p>
<p>
For an orphan like Jack Flint and the son of a ne'er-do-well like Kerry, it might have been an odd friendship, but as the Major told him on their long walks up on Brander Ridge, you couldn't pick your friends, not your real friends anyway.
</p>
<p>
They were still laughing when they turned the corner of the lane, schoolbags slung from their shoulders, and almost barged into the crowd of older boys hanging around the bus-shelter.
</p>
<p>
Both of them stopped laughing when Billy Robbins turned round and saw them. He stepped out to block the way.
</p>
<p>
He was big and beefy, red-faced, red-haired and freckled and the bane of many a boy's existence here in Ardmore.
</p>
<p>
The village huddled around the harbour, between the ridge and the grey Atlantic ocean and there was nowhere to hide from a bully like Billy Robbins who had thrown his weight about ever since Jack had started school. His old man owned the boatyard where Kerry's mother worked as a cleaner, aside from the sewing jobs she took to keep the house going while Kerry's dad was away. She really needed the cleaning job in the boatyard and Kerry wouldn't risk it for her.
</p>
<p>
"Hey, here's Malone!" Billy bawled, and Jack felt his stomach tighten. "The illegiterate bogtrotter."
</p>
<p>
Jack hated it when Billy made fun of Kerry's dyslexia. It wasn't Kerry's fault his brain managed to scramble up the letters into a jumble, but that didn't make him stupid. Far from it. But Billy Robbins thought it just the best of laughs to point it up.
</p>
<p>
"What the hell are you doin' here?" He pulled his I-pod earpiece out and spun the thin cable around his finger. "They got a special bus for you window-lickers."
</p>
<p>
A couple of girls in nearby sniggered that high-pitched way and Kerry's cheeks went bright red. Fiona Dunbar was one of the girls, and maybe she hadn't laughed, but she was there, watching, and Kerry was suddenly wilting on his feet with embarrassment and shame.
</p>
<p>
"Are you hearing me? We don't want any raggy-arsed Irish tinkers stinking up the bus."
</p>
<p>
Billy nudged one of his cronies and took a pull on his cigarette. Robbins and his pals were a year older, and while Jack was tall for his age, they were bigger yet, and heavier. And Robbins was meaner than any of them.
</p>
<p>
"Hey Stevie," Billy asked one of the others. He wasn't finished yet. "What's DNA stand for?"
</p>
<p>
"Dunno?"
</p>
<p>
"National Dyslexic Association.." He pointed up at the sign on the bus shelter. "He thinks it says <em>Sub</em>. Am I right, bog-trotter? Can't read, can't write, backside hanging out of his pants."
</p>
<p>
Everybody laughed this time, or most of them. Jack looked across, past Kerry's bright red ears, and saw Fiona Dunbar was turning away and she wasn't laughing. Inwardly he thought <em>good for you, </em>and he wished Kerry would take his eyes off the ground and see it for himself. But Kerry never moved. He kept staring at the ground, fists clenched, face burning, shoulders twitching with the need to hit out and the tension of holding it back.
</p>
<p>
"Turn around, rag-bag," Robbins said. He shot a hand out and grabbed Kerry by the shirt. "Show us the patch on your pants."
</p>
<p>
Robbins was wearing a pair of trainers that probably cost as much as Kerry's whole wardrobe. He grinned widely, his acne-scarred skin stretched like pink gravel. The peach fuzz on his cheeks made him look piggish and mean.
</p>
<p>
"Real cool, tinkerboy. Your old man's got more style and he's wearing jail stripes."
</p>
<p>
Kerry said nothing. Robbins used his bulk to pull him slowly backwards and forwards.
</p>
<p>
<em>Do it! Go on! </em> Jack's back teeth were clenched and grinding. He'd seen Kerry haul fishboxes all day down at the harbour. His hands were calloused and rough from hard work. If he wanted to, he could give Robbins a run for his money.
</p>
<p>
"What did I tell you already?" Robbins demanded. "Bogtrotters don't get the bus with us. You stink of piss and fish. Now take a hike, you an' the bookworm. The walk'll do you good. You put a foot on that bus and I'll kick your raggy arse off, hear?"
</p>
<p>
"<em>Go pick on somebody else, you fat bully!"</em>
</p>
<p>
Jack heard himself say the words as if they were coming from somebody else. As soon as they were out of his mouth, he wished he could have bitten them back and swallowed them out of sight. He'd taken two unbidden steps forward, suddenly quivering with righteous anger at Kerry's humiliation, two steps that put him just within Robbins reach.
</p>
<p>
A beefy hand shot out and grabbed him by the school tie. The other casually shoved Kerry away. It happened so fast Jack hardly saw it coming. His heart leapt into his throat as Robbins swung piggy eyes on him. Robbins took a slow draw on his cigarette then flicked it at him. It bounced off his jacket in a flurry of sparks.
</p>
<p>
"<em>Oho!</em>" he said. "We got a big mouth here." Billy didn't sound angry at all. He sounded <em>pleased. </em>"What was it you just called me?"
</p>
<p>
Jack tried to pull back out of the grip. His heart was thudding so hard he could feel the pulse in his ears. Robbins flexed his arm and pulled him close enough to smell stale cigarette smoke and whatever he'd had for lunch.
</p>
<p>
"You sayin' I'm fat?"
</p>
<p>
"I told you to leave him alone." The words just blurted out. Jack wished he could put a brake on his tongue. "He's done nothing to you."
</p>
<p>
"Nothing? <em>Nothing</em>?" Robbins worked up indignation. "His old man stole from my old man, didn't he? You call that nothing? And this low-life Irish scum-bag son of his is just as bad.
</p>
<p>
He held Jack close, eyes almost hidden by fat cheeks. He was still grinning, but there was no joy in that grin. Jack thought he could read some disturbing expression in those eyes and felt the back of his legs begin to tremble. For the first time in his life he thought he recognized madness in another human and it really scared him.
</p>
<p>
"Want some action, Pink Lint?" Robbins had his own rhyming name for Jack.
</p>
<p>
Jack felt the tight anger wrestle with the swelling fear. Just because Kerry couldn't read, just because he was <em>dyslexic</em>, that didn't make him stupid. Just because he wouldn't fight didn't make him a coward either. Robbins pulled him very close and Jack wished that he'd kept quiet but his mouth had worked before his brain could stop it and while he was suddenly scared, he knew it would be a real mistake to show it now.
</p>
<p>
Without any warning, Robbins suddenly shoved him away. Jack turned to run, but the rest of the bigger boys had surrounded them and hands pushed him back again towards Robbins.
</p>
<p>
He twisted to keep his balance and swung right into the swinging fist that caught him such a thud that everything went black for a second. The force knocked his head back against the shelter and made little bright lights spiral like tinsel in watery vision. He ended up on his backside with a jolt that gnashed his teeth.
</p>
<p>
"That's not <em>fat,</em> Lint-boy," Robbins grated.
</p>
<p>
He grinned, showing small teeth. "That's pure muscle."
</p>
<p>
Jack groggily shook his head. Robbins pulled him up by the shirt, violent enough to pop two buttons which whizzed away. He drew his fist back for another punch. Instinctively Jack raised a hand to protect his face and his palm caught Robbins, purely by accident, square on the nose.
</p>
<p>
Billy Robbins staggered back cursing, hand to his face, eyes wide in fury and surprise. Jack was just as surprised. He'd never hit anybody in his life, even if it hadn't been intended. Robbins roared and came at him, fists cocked.
</p>
<p>
He jabbed a hand out and grabbed Jack's shirt again, dragged him forward with such force that the collar ripped, raised his clenched fist and brought it down again on Jack's cheek. The blow rocked him back, ears ringing. Jack tried to squirm away. Another punch almost dropped him flat.
</p>
<p>
One of the girls called out for Robbins to stop, but Jack knew there was no stopping him at all. Robbins might have had the looks of a pig, but was mean as a stoat and all his cronies were egging him on. Whatever Jack had seen in his eyes, a kind of blankness behind the mean glitter, that had sent a chill through him.
</p>
<p>
Robbins raised the fist again. Jack cringed away from it, tears smarting in his eyes from the first blow, but couldn't twist out of the grip on his shirt.
</p>
<p>
Then Kerry moved in fast and grabbed the clenched fist in both hands. Robbins let out a mad howl and spun like a bull, swinging Jack right off his feet.
</p>
<p>
Kerry hung on to the fist as Robbins wheeled, dragging both smaller boys with him. Kerry's complexion had changed from red to almost pure white. It was hard to tell whether it was fear or anger.
</p>
<p>
"I'll bloody <em>kill</em> you," Robbins bawled. "I'll tear both of you apart."
</p>
<p>
Jack didn't doubt that at all. In that moment, he knew there was something broken inside Billy Robbins. Some crack in there that festered with poison.
</p>
<p>
He pulled, hard as he could, dragged himself free of the grip and spun away, tripped and went sprawling. He heard the sound of a pulpy blow landing hard. In a second he was back on his feet. He grabbed his bag, full of schoolbooks, bit down on his fear and the panicky urge to run and save himself.
</p>
<p>
He darted in between two of the older boys.
</p>
<p>
Robbins had Kerry by the throat, thumbs pressed against his windpipe, his face swollen with animal fury, mouth twisted into a mad snarl.
</p>
<p>
"Come on Billy," somebody said, worried now.
</p>
<p>
"Sure, man. He's got the message. Let him go."
</p>
<p>
Robbins was beyond listening. Both hands were clenched on Kerry's throat, and his big shoulders bulged with the effort. His face was warped in a strange grimace. Kerry's was purple now and his eyes were so wide Jack thought they would pop out. His knees began to sag as he hauled for a breath that just wouldn't come.
</p>
<p>
"He's <em>killing</em> him!" It came out in a screech. Jack was suddenly so scared he couldn't swallow.
</p>
<p>
Kerry grunted, tried to pull the hands away. Nobody else made a move. Nobody dared.
</p>
<p>
Jack ran in and swung his bag, hard as he could. It caught Robbins on the back of his knees with such force that they buckled forward and suddenly he was down on the roadside, with Kerry on top of him. One hand pulled free to try to break his fall and Kerry twisted out of the other. Robbins landed with a thud, and his breath went out of him. Kerry rolled over him gasping for breath, scrambled to his feet just as Robbins was turning. A big hand tried to grab his ankle, but he was too quick.
</p>
<p>
Jack hauled him to his knees, to his feet, kept hauling until they were out of the melee.
</p>
<p>
"Run!" Jack bawled. Behind them Robbins was roaring incoherently. He sounded like a mad beast.
</p>
<p>
They ran. Jack dragged Kerry by the sleeve, forcing to run with him, as fast as they could. A half-brick whizzed past Jack's ear, close enough to hear, heavy enough to crack his skull. He ducked and they ran on, round the corner, along the road, as far as they could before they had to stop for breath.
</p>
<p>
"He tried to strangle you," Jack managed. "There's something not right with him. He's really crazy."
</p>
<p>
Kerry was still panting, hands on his knees. Finally he got enough air into his lungs.
</p>
<p>
"No bother." Kerry gasped. He was grinning now. "Sure, I was just lulling him into a false sense of security before I made my move."
</p>
<p>
Jack looked at him. Big red pressure marks were clear on his throat.
</p>
<p>
"I had him just where I wanted him," Kerry said, his eyes bright with bravado, but his voice dripping irony.
</p>
<p>
And suddenly, despite it all, they were laughing so hard they had to hold on to each other to keep from falling.
</p>
<p>
"Come on," Kerry said when it subsided. "We'll hitch a lift home and save the fare. And look&#8230;." He dug a hand into his threadbare jacket pocket and pulled out a crushed packet of cigarettes. "I'm having one of these, just for my nerves."
</p>
<p>
"Where did you get them?"
</p>
<p>
"I swiped them when he was down," Kerry said, grinning. "You can't miss your chances in life."
</p>
<p>
He winked at Jack. "We'll need them when we go over that wall."
</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</div>
</body>
</html>
</html>

496
build/mythlands/OEBPS/ch05.xhtml Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,496 @@
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Mythlands - Chapter 5</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css"/>
<link rel="stylesheet" type=
"application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href=
"page-template.xpgt"/>
</head>
<body>
<div id="text">
<div class="section" id="xhtmldocuments">
<h1>5</h1>
<p>
"I don't think it's earth at all," Jack said, sinking back in pain and exhaustion and the darkness came and swallowed him up.
</p>
<p>
Dreams came, awful dreams of great crater-eyed crows wheeling and flocking, flitting between standing stones. A cold was creeping through him, an aching,
somehow <em>deadly</em> cold that he knew was reaching for his heart with an icy determination.
</p>
<p>
The crows wheeled outwards across a battlefield where beasts grunted and squealed and creatures that looked like grey, warted men battled with thick stone
clubs against real men, true men in leather armour and helmets. The screams of the dying and the beasts and the harsh cawing of the crows swept like a
storm across the broken bodies and the fighters, the birds wheeling tight and turning the sky into a creeping darkness that reached from the light towards
him, a fluttering arm seeking him out to crush him in shadow.
</p>
<p>
He backed away, terrified as the lead crow came winging in and landed on his shoulder, crater eyes festering and wet beak lunging for his own eyes.
</p>
<hr />
<p>
He was yelling in fright when Kerry woke him, shaking him by the shoulder. His eyes flicked open and pain sizzled across his skin.
</p>
<p>
"Jack, man. Wake yourself." Kerry was bent over him. "Come on Jackie boy, wake up."
</p>
<p>
He swam up and out of the dream, breath backed up in a tight, dry throat. His shoulder and chest ached with a pain that ached deep inside him, under skin
and muscle and bone. His left arm twitched.
</p>
<p>
Somewhere in the distance a dog was howling, or something that sounded like a dog, shivering the air with its hollow sound. Who could tell what it was? The
awful dream faded and fragmented as Jack shook himself away from it as he came awake in a shadowed forest and realized where he was, even if he didn't know
quite where they were at all. They were still here, still under the trees where they had run from the killing ground.
</p>
<p>
"You were yelling," Kerry said. "Gave me a freakin' scare so you did."
</p>
<p>
"I was&#8230;I was dreaming."
</p>
<p>
"Must have been a real beauty."
</p>
<p>
It was darker than it had been and shadows were growing around them, real shadows. Somewhere above them, there was still light in the sky and maybe
moonlight, but the branches grew thick and intertwined and it wasn't easy to tell.
</p>
<p>
"We have to move," Kerry said, nodding to where the trees grew thick and the undergrowth even thicker. "That howling out there, it's getting closer."
</p>
<p>
Jack got to his feet, shook his head to clear it and moaned at the stiffness in the side of his chest, where his ribs felt glued together in ice.
</p>
<p>
"You really don't look too good." Kerry put a hand to his shoulder. Jack could hear the concern in his voice.
</p>
<p>
He mumbled something, trying to ease the ache away, not wanting to let Kerry know that it hurt <em>deep.</em> They had enough to worry about and he had got
Kerry into this. He had to get them back home again. <em> </em>
</p>
<p>
"Let's move." He shouldered the satchel and Kerry hefted his backpack and they began walking slowly and warily between the great gnarled trunks deeper into
the forest in the opposite direction of the echoing howls that sounded too much like wolves for Jack's liking. They followed an animal trail, dodging
thickets of thorny vines that snatched at their hair and clothes and around them was the smell of wet wood and rotting leaves.
</p>
<p>
The trees crowded thicker as they moved and overhead things flitted unseen.
</p>
<p>
The whole place smelt different. It <em>felt</em> strange and so unlike the forests that grew alongside Brander Water. The smell of rot and growing things
and musky blooms came wafting on the still air. Roots as thick as tree-trunks snaked out from the leaf-litter and great mushrooms, big as footballs swelled
amongst them, eerily white in the wan light.
</p>
<p>
They kept going, while Jack tried to figure out a direction, but the compass in his head, the one that always told him where he was and where to go, was
failing him, and that was scary too. It meant they really were far from home.
</p>
<p>
Somewhere in the hidden sky, a moon glowed, but the high leaves blotted out much of the light. In the dark spaces, fireflies danced sickly green, and
despite the still air, the thick leaves up above seemed to whisper secrets in the shadows.
</p>
<p>
Jack felt slow fingers of anxiety trail up and down his spine. The nausea inside him rolled and every now and then he felt the need to lie down, but he
fought against it, and the crowding darkness that squeezed inside him and he saw, in his mind's eye, the bloated face of Billy Robbins as the dark oozed
out of him.
</p>
<p>
He had been <em>touched </em>by that dark.
</p>
<p>
He felt the cold of it in his bones and he wondered how long it would be before it ate into him and left him stiff and pale-eyed and dead on the ground. He
tried his best to shake the images away, and plodded on, staggering and stumbling a lot, until his knees began to tremble with the effort of keeping
himself upright.
</p>
<p>
Eventually after what seemed like miles, they came to a dell where a small stream tumbled into a crystal pool, lit by a rising moon that managed to beam
through the leaves around the clearing.
</p>
<p>
"This is far enough," Jack said flatly. "We have to rest."
</p>
<p>
"Suits me," Kerry agreed quickly. "My feet are killing me."
</p>
<p>
Together they set up camp in the bole of a forest giant and Jack tested the water. It was cold and clear. Kerry lit a small fire and opened a tin of beans
for both of them and afterwards he leant back against the tree, nestled in its spreading roots and lit one of Billy Robbins' cigarettes. In the light of
the fire, in his rabbit-skin Halloween costume, he could have been a stone-age hunter, but for the smoke rings he was trying to blow in the still air, and
the heavy short-sword that he had dug into the ground at his feet.
</p>
<p>
"There's fish in the stream," he ventured, trying to sound positive. "And I saw rabbit trails. Or some kind of trails. We can put a few snares out and
we'll be eating like kings."
</p>
<p>
"We have to get back home," Jack said. "We left the Major. We shouldn't have run."
</p>
<p>
"We never had much of a chance, did we? He shut the door on us."
</p>
<p>
Jack eased himself back in the hug of big roots, feeling the shadows crowd around beyond the firelight. "I don't know where this is, but it's not home. The
Major must know something. If we get back soon enough, maybe he'll have sorted everything out. He can tell us.
</p>
<p>
Guilt over-rode the ache in his ribs. He felt a coward<em>.</em>
</p>
<p>
"What happened to the ringstones? There must have been ten of them."
</p>
<p>
"Thirteen," Jack stated. "Twelve spaces between them. We just went through and ended up here, wherever this is. How it happened, I haven't got a clue. I
felt something. Like I was turning inside out."
</p>
<p>
"Felt like the first night on a trawler. Made me want to puke."
</p>
<p>
"But however we came through, I don't think we can back that way."
</p>
<p>
"Maybe it's like a bank," Kerry suggested. "On a time lock. We could wait until the manager turns up."
</p>
<p>
"Good idea," Jack said, concentrating on the problem and not on the pain inside him and not feeling confident at all that they <em>could </em>get back "We
should have another look and see if anybody shows up. But first, I think we should have a look at what we've got."
</p>
<p>
He looked steadily at his friend. "We're really on our own."
</p>
<p>
Kerry opened the backpack and drew out the little telescopic fly rod along with the rope they'd planned to use to scale the wall around Cromwath Blackwood.
He had a little torch for exploring whatever it was they had hoped to find and an old cigar box with thick line and fishing hooks and a shopping bag with a
few cans of corned beef and some biscuits he'd filched from the Major's kitchen.
</p>
<p>
"And I got the walkman I won at cards and a pack of fifty two, in case we get bored," he said lightly, trying to make the best of it. He pointed to the
satchel the Major had pushed into Jack's hands. "And what's in that?"
</p>
<p>
The satchel lay between them. It was old, with thick patterned leather that looked like scales from something big and armoured, like a crocodile. Jack
opened the catch, felt inside and drew out a book. It was small and thin and leather-backed, and even older than the satchel. On the front were some
wriggly signs he couldn't read. The leather was carved in the same way as the standing stones.
</p>
<p>
Inside the pages were blank and felt as if they were made of thin crackly skin.
</p>
<p>
"The Major said it was important. But it doesn't look like it's going to be much use." He put it on the bag.
</p>
<p>
Kerry picked it up, held it to the light and the embossed lettering stood out in sharp relief.
</p>
<p>
"<em>The Book of Ways</em>," he said.
</p>
<p>
"What?"
</p>
<p>
"That's what it says."
</p>
<p>
"Stop kidding around, man. We have to think." It took Kerry all his time to read a page of a book and even then he struggled with words.
</p>
<p>
"The Book of Ways," he said again. Then he stopped, eyes wide.
</p>
<p>
"Now I know it's a dream now Jack man. Yours or mine, whosever it is. Must be if I can read that. An' I swear I can."
</p>
<p>
He opened it, stared at the blank pages. "Bit of a swiz though. Just a name and nothing in it." He slung it back on the satchel. "It can't be that
important."
</p>
<p>
The book landed at a slant. Very quietly the back cover opened and the pages riffled all by themselves until it reached the first page.
</p>
<p>
They both leant forward together.
</p>
<p>
A shape began to appear on that first page, darkening the surface very slowly, almost like a photograph developing in the darkroom.
</p>
<p>
"There must be a computer chip in it," Kerry said. "Look at that."
</p>
<p>
The picture became clearer, darkening onto the fine old leather page. As they watched, fascinated, two standing stones carved with grotesque shapes and
strange lettering, stones exactly like the ones they had seen on the moor, <em>un-</em>faded into being. Between the stones was nothing at all.
</p>
<p>
"Neat trick," Kerry lifted the book up and held it between them.
</p>
<p>
Even as he spoke, a script appeared above the image, scrolling onto the page as if written by an invisible hand. Jack could make no sense of it at all.
</p>
<p>
"The Farward Gate of Temair." Kerry mouthed the words slowly. "That's what it says."
</p>
<p>
Jack's breath came out long and slow. He was shaking his head in disbelief or dismay when Kerry looked up from the book.
</p>
<p>
"No," he said softly. "It can't be."
</p>
<p>
But Kerry's eyes had dropped back to the old book again. New letters, or what seemed to be letters to Kerry, were scrolling on, line by line, directly
beneath the etching of the two rock pillars. They came to an end eight lines down. Kerry's fingers worked along the line and he read out haltingly.
</p>
<p>
<em> From Farward set for set of sun</em>
</p>
<p>
<em> First step on travail just begun</em>
</p>
<p>
<em> But journey-man be well aware</em>
</p>
<p>
<em> A shadow wakes in far Temair.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>Perils from the shadow's wrath</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>Lurk to lure from righteous path</em>
</p>
<p>
<em> Steel your heart and brave your fate</em>
</p>
<p>
<em> Ere you find the Homeward Gate</em>
.
</p>
<p>
"What do you think that means?"
</p>
<p>
Jacks face had paled to ghostly in the firelight. "If it means what I think it does, we're in real trouble."
</p>
<p>
"As if I never knew that already," Kerry nudged him on the arm. "No, but really, what sort of trouble, apart from all this weird stuff."
</p>
<p>
"You remember the stories I used to read? The Celtic ones."
</p>
<p>
"Aye. Cahoolin and all them loonies an' witches." Kerry sat, leaning on the sword. It seemed part of him. "Sure, they were just fairy tales."
</p>
<p>
"Temair was from <em>before </em>Cuchullain<em>.</em> It's the oldest name for the Celtic kingdoms in the legends, when the Fomorians were beaten and
thrown out."
</p>
<p>
He shook his head in denial. "No. This is impossible. Temair doesn't exist. Temair was the old Celtic kingdom, but long before the Celts ever came. It was
Ireland and Scotland before the sea came up and split them apart. You must have made a mistake."
</p>
<p>
"Maybe," Kerry agreed. "You know what I'm like with words."
</p>
<p>
"That word. <em>Travail</em>. How do they spell it?"
</p>
<p>
"I dunno," Kerry shrugged. "I can get a sense of it, but don't ever ask me to spell it. I don't even know what the letters are." He held the book up and
mouthed the word again. "When I read it, I get the feeling like it's trouble, or hardship, something like that. It doesn't sound like a picnic, for sure."
</p>
<p>
"That's travail all right. I don't know what the rest of it means, but if it is right, then we can't go back the way we came."
</p>
<p>
"How do you mean?"
</p>
<p>
"The Homeward Gate. The one we came through, it disappeared. Don't you think it means there's another gate somewhere else?"
</p>
<p>
Jack blew out a slow breath. "It means there's another gate somewhere that will take us home. And we <em>have</em> to get home. I have to find the Major."
</p>
<p>
Kerry shook his head this time. "You don't believe any of this, do you?" He stopped himself short. Those bodies had been real, men and beasts both. "I
could smell them", he muttered. "And this sword." He hefted it, heavy in his hand. "That's for real."
</p>
<p>
But Jack was thinking back, back to the hike up Brander Ridge with the Major. <em>The universe is stranger than we </em>can <em>imagine,</em> he'd said. <em> </em>And this was stranger than anything he had ever imagined. As strange as the dark that had sucked its way inside Billy Robbins and then come
oozing out in a muttering, occult flow.
</p>
<p>
<em>Thin places.</em>
That's what the Major had said. Despite the ache inside him, Jack thought about that. <em>Thin places where worlds meet</em>. It was all too puzzling, all
of it. And frightening.
</p>
<p>
"So what now?" Kerry broke in to his thoughts. The howling was distant now and it was getting darker in the trees. Up in the canopy, things rustled, but no
breeze stirred the flames. Ghostly moths the size of sparrows fluttered in to the light, and whirring insects hummed juicily up against the ear. Now and
then a big dragonfly, bigger than anything they'd seen at Stoneymill pool, would zoom in on clattering wings. Eyes seemed to watch them from the darkness.
</p>
<p>
"I reckon we should get some sleep and think about it in the morning." Jack twisted on to the side that gave less pain, aware of the ache crawling over his
ribs as if he'd taken a heavy blow, even though it had just been a <em>touch. </em>His mind was abuzz and he couldn't sleep. He lay a long time, thinking,
as the shadows rolled in and small things moved out there in the undergrowth unmoving.
</p>
<p>
He started when Kerry shook him by the arm.
</p>
<p>
"Jack!" Kerry hissed close to his ear.
</p>
<p>
"Whassamatter? Jack was groggy and drained, as if he was coming down with the flu, but he knew it was something else, something worse than that.
</p>
<p>
"There's something out there. I heard it. I can feel it. We're being watched." Jack reached for the bow.
</p>
<p>
"It's too dark to move out there," he said. "We'll get lost or fall down a hole. We best set up a perimeter."
</p>
<p>
"Like in <em>Predator</em>?"
</p>
<p>
Kerry dug in the pack and brought out the rope and the thick nylon line he used for rabbit snares and together they set some trip wires, just in case.
Kerry used his weight to bend down sturdy saplings and Jack helped him fix them with spring nooses that would snare anything that kicked away the notched
stick that held them down.
</p>
<p>
He had seen Kerry set them up before, back home, wherever <em>home </em>was now. Anything that stumbled into it would be caught when the saplings sprang
back and tightened the nooses.
</p>
<p>
They gathered dry branches to lay all round beyond the fire, so they'd crackle if anything came near. Finally Jack sunk down onto his haunches, drained of
strength, breathing hard.
</p>
<p>
"I'd better take a look at that," Kerry said, kneeling beside him. The leather jerkin Jack had made from the old jacket was puckered and twisted close to
the neck. It seemed to have shriveled from heat.
</p>
<p>
Kerry helped peel it off as Jack winced with the movement then, when he'd pulled the shirt aside, he let out a long slow breath.
</p>
<p>
From Jack's shoulder to just above his heart, what looked like a bruise was risen and welted on his skin, not blue, but grey and going on to black in the
centre, and risen up from the skin in twisting knots. It stretched like a wide hand, dark, too dark against the pale skin, blistered and already peeling.
</p>
<p>
It looked poisoned.
</p>
<p>
"I don't like the looks of that," Kerry said. "We have to get you some help."
</p>
<p>
He rummaged in the bag and brought out the flask with his father's illicit whisky and soaked his last paper tissue. Jack lay back.
</p>
<p>
"This should kill the germs," Kerry assured him. "It'll kill just about anything."
</p>
<p>
He dabbed gently at the blackening skin and Jack let out a howl, so loud and sudden that Kerry pulled back and the howl faded into a moan as Jack slumped
against the root as the firelight spangled through sudden tears. He blinked them back and closed his eyes, waiting for the hurt to die away. A wave of
dizziness looped through him and he felt the dark closing in from beyond the fire glow and he could do nothing but let it take him again.
</p>
<p>
It was pitch dark when he came round again, gasping for breath and aching all over as if cold toxin was pulsing sluggish through his blood. Kerry was
beside him, dabbing his brow with water from the stream. He made him drink, holding the canteen to his mouth and the cool sucked some of the pain away.
</p>
<p>
"You have to stop scaring me like that," Kerry told him, trying to be jocular, but just sounding miserable and afraid. Jack could swallow the water, but he
couldn't eat any of the beans left in the can. A sick feeling roiled in his belly and he clamped down on it, trying to get his mind into gear so he could
think. The ring of stones was gone, but if the old book, however implausible, however <em>impossible,</em> was in any way correct, there might be a way
home, somewhere in this strange place. How far away, he couldn't imagine.
</p>
<p>
They would have to find it, find it quickly and get back home.
</p>
<p>
He didn't know how they could do it, not from those eight lines in strange script, but they'd have to try. He was scared at the prospect, scared at the
idea of being stuck here where broken bones of beasts and men littered the hillside and glowing eyes watched them from deep in the shadows. He was on the
cusp of sixteen years old, and he was afraid. All his life he'd read about his heroes, the great warriors of old. Now he was laid in the bole of a tree,
with a sickening poison spreading under his skin.
</p>
<p>
He might have been dressed like his hero, but he didn't feel very heroic. Not in the least.
</p>
<p>
It was the dead of night when he was suddenly aware of Kerry rising to his feet beyond the flickering fire.
</p>
<p>
"What's wrong?"
</p>
<p>
"I heard something," Kerry whispered. His eyes were fixed on the intense darkness beyond the fire. "We <em>are</em> being watched. I can feel it.
Something's out there. The hairs on the back of my neck are going walkabout."
</p>
<p>
Above them, something flew on whooping wings and they both started, staring into the canopy, but the crows hadn't followed into this dense part of the
forest.
</p>
<p>
A twig snapped. The sound was just a faint <em>snick</em> out beyond the glow of the embers. Jack's eyes flicked in that direction and he thought he saw a
shape flit from one thick trunk to another. Above them an owl screeched and in the ferns a small animal made a thin cry. Kerry was jerking his head left
and right with every sound, hands clasped round the pommel of the sword.
</p>
<p>
Then without any warning a loud, piercing screech ripped the night. There was a whooshing sound and a wooden snap and out there branches thrashed violently
back and forth.
</p>
<p>
"We've caught something." Kerry hoisted the sword and Jack forced himself to his feet. They darted round the far side of the tree, pushed through the ferns
and honeysuckles. A thin shape was grunting and twisting furiously, one limb caught in a noose where the sapling had pulled up to a stretch. The left hind
leg was caught in another and both saplings whipped and bent as it snarled and thrashed, trying to pull free,
</p>
<p>
The two of them ran forward and Kerry raised the short sword, ready to strike at the squirming shape when there was a flash in the moonlight and one of the
twine cords snapped and sprung the sapling back like a whip. The thing cried out, high and desperate.
</p>
<p>
Jack made a grab for it and it twisted away from him. The flash came again and the noose binding its leg parted like thread. It turned, screeching, came at
him and he saw a curved glitter, a mere flicker of something sharp, like a claw. He fell back as the shape landed on him and the claw came stabbing down.
</p>
<p>
It caught the satchel that had swung over his chest and the thing grunted as the sharp curve stopped dead.
</p>
<p>
Kerry dropped the sword for fear of hitting Jack in the gloom and launched himself at the tumble of bodies. He landed heavily across both of them. The
shadow kicked and snarled, scratching with a free hand while Kerry held on desperately to the one holding the blade. It fought like a cat. It was thin and
wiry and surprisingly strong. It kicked at him, twisting back and forth, grunting with the effort and he still held on.
</p>
<p>
The beast squirmed again, kicked like a mule and caught Kerry on the thigh, but he rolled with it, dragged the thing off, spun it away from Jack and they
crashed, tumbling, through a patch of ferns, down the steep bank of the stream and landed with a thud on the shingle beside the water.
</p>
<p>
The sharp flicker came again. A paw shot out and raked across Kerry's face, going for the eyes. Something clattered to the stones and Kerry saw it was a
blade. He made a grab for it, and the creature was on him, scrambling and clawing and finally Kerry lost patience and threw a punch as hard as he could.
</p>
<p>
The creature fell back into a bush and let out a moan. Kerry snatched the knife up, heavy in his hands. The long blade caught the moonlight reflected from
the stream and he got the thing in a head-lock and dragged it out, ready to slice and finish the thing quickly.
</p>
<p>
His hand raised up and the thing squealed, still struggling, high and scared and angry, like a trapped cat, kicking and clawing to get free.
</p>
<p>
The moonlight caught the blade on the way down.
</p>
<p>
Jack's hand clamped around his wrist and the point stopped just under the thing's throat. Another inch and it would have done its work.
</p>
<p>
Jack held tight.
</p>
<p>
"It's a girl," he finally said.
</p>
<p>
"Don't hurt her."
</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

477
build/mythlands/OEBPS/ch06.xhtml Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,477 @@
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Mythlands - Chapter 6</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css"/>
<link rel="stylesheet" type=
"application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href=
"page-template.xpgt"/>
</head>
<body>
<div id="text">
<div class="section" id="xhtmldocuments">
<h1>6</h1>
<p>
Kerry was so surprised he loosened his grip on the dark shape. It screeched again and spun away, but he grabbed fast and caught a leg, dragged back and
held tight. Jack reached and pulled down a wide hood which shadowed the face. The small figure pulled free and stood on the shingle, hands down on splayed
knees, hauling for breath. Moonlight limned short amber hair.
</p>
<p>
"I thought it was a cat," Kerry said. "Or a wolf."
</p>
<p>
The girl, wiped water from her face and stood there, leaning against the roots of a willow tree, chest heaving with effort.
</p>
<p>
"A wolf?" she finally spoke. "A wolf would have had your throat."
</p>
<p>
She had a lilting accent that reminded Jack of the western Irish, or even the Scottish islands, but he was surprised that he could understand her at all.
</p>
<p>
"And I'll have it too." She stuck a hand inside the short cape and another knife flashed, thin and sharp.
</p>
<p>
Jack simply put a hand on her shoulder.
</p>
<p>
"We won't hurt you," he said softly. "Take it easy."
</p>
<p>
"You trapped me like a beast. You expect me to believe you?"
</p>
<p>
"We're lost here," Jack said. "I don't know this place. We just took precautions, that's all. You could have been anybody. Anything."
</p>
<p>
She considered this for a moment, then nodded and sank to her haunches.
</p>
<p>
"There's worse than me in these woods, believe me. I've seen them." She held on to the knife, and her eyes kept shifting from Jack to the blade in Kerry's
hand, as if she was gauging the distance, estimating her chances. Jack kept his hand on her shoulder.
</p>
<p>
"We've got no fight with you," he said. "We don't want to fight. But we don't want you to use that on us."
</p>
<p>
She breathed out, considering.
</p>
<p>
"First, tell me who you are, and what you're doing wandering the darkwood?"
</p>
<p>
"You came sneaking up on us," Kerry said. "You tell us who <em>you</em> are."
</p>
<p>
She turned her face up to them and Jack could see how slight she looked there, hood fallen on to her shoulders, breath still coming in shallow gasps. In
the moonlight her hair had the sheen of new copper.
</p>
<p>
"I am Corriwen Redthorn," she said.
</p>
<p>
"Is that supposed to mean something?" Kerry was still on an adrenalin high. He'd never talk to a girl like that in Ardmore.
</p>
<p>
Jack held out his hand. "I'm Jack Flint. And this is Kerry Malone."
</p>
<p>
She looked warily at the hand, checking him out for some sleight, saw none, and slowly reached far enough to touch his fingers. Her hand barely brushed his
and drew back fast. Her eyes, even in this light, were luminous green. It was only the briefest touch, but Jack felt a shudder ripple through him, like a
jolt of hot electricity that shook him to the core as if he'd touched a live wire.
</p>
<p>
When he found his voice, all he could say was: "We're kind of&#8230;lost."
</p>
<p>
She drew herself up, considering a response, holding his eyes with hers. Finally she seemed to come to a decision.
</p>
<p>
"I am Corriwen Redthorn. The last Redthorn," the girl said. She reached again and this time she took his hand in hers and held it tight as if afraid that
he might disappear. "And I have been lost for a long time."
</p>
<p>
A long silence stretched between them. The girl's simple statement was so bleak, so empty of hope, that Jack Flint felt his heart do a slow lazy flip
inside him.
</p>
<p>
"Well, we're all lost together," Kerry said beside them.
</p>
<p>
"Listen, I'm really sorry about the face." He kicked at the shingle with his toe. "I thought you were something else."
</p>
<p>
She turned towards him as if he'd just appeared, and whatever it was that sparked between Jack and the girl snapped when she released his hand. She drew
herself up and they could see she was wearing a hooded cape that came almost to her knees. In the dark here, it was perfect camouflage.
</p>
<p>
"It was dark, and you had a knife," Kerry said defensively. "You could have been anybody."
</p>
<p>
"Well, I suppose I could." she agreed, "You have to stay in the shadows here. Like an animal. It's the way to stay alive."
</p>
<p>
"Can't be that bad," Kerry said. "It's not the jungle."
</p>
<p>
She glanced at him, as if puzzled by the word, then turned back to Jack. "And what are you doing here on the far side of Temair?"
</p>
<p>
"Temair." Kerry said. "There's that word again."
</p>
<p>
"I was talking to your master," Corriwen Redthorn said .
</p>
<p>
"Master? Me?" Jack felt a smile work on him. "No. No. We're pals. Friends."
</p>
<p>
"But this boy wears skins, and you have the plaid." She looked Kerry up and down, "And why is he carrying a man's sword? Is he a squire?"
</p>
<p>
"It's fancy dress," Kerry started. He didn't want to tell her where he'd found the sword. "We were at a party."
</p>
<p>
"It's a long story," Jack butted in. He was relieved that they wouldn't have to fight any more tonight, and puzzled by the odd sensation that had jolted
him when she'd taken his hand. "Let's get back to the fire."
</p>
<p>
She ate as if she was starving and did not lift her head until the can of beans and the slices of corned beef were finished. She looked as if she could
have licked the last of the tomato juice from the can. Jack handed her a tin mug with dark tea and she sipped at it, hugging the sides to savour the heat.
</p>
<p>
"Whatever this is," she said, in that lilt that he still couldn't decide was Irish or highland, "it puts heart back into a soul. All I've had is a fish and
a coney or two. And a bristlehog and I hope never to eat another."
</p>
<p>
They watched her sip slowly, a slender figure huddled in her cape and hide boots. Her legs were thorn-scratched. The two thin-bladed knifes nestled against
each other in a twin sheath on her belt. Kerry put another couple of logs on the fire and Jack waited until she had finished the tea before he spoke again.
</p>
<p>
"So where on earth is this place?" he asked. "We thought somebody was trying to ambush us and we set some snares."
</p>
<p>
"So you're gamepoachers then?"
</p>
<p>
"No. We're just lost." He thought for a minute while she scanned his eyes, trying to assess him for truth. "We came here through a&#8230;some kind of
gateway, and here we are. We want to go home."
</p>
<p>
"Aye, and wouldn't we all if we had a home to go home to," she said softly. Jack heard a deep and melancholy sadness in her. "Here's three of us and far
from home, and little chance of getting it back."
</p>
<p>
"So what are you doing here?" Kerry asked. "Wandering around the trees all by yourself?"
</p>
<p>
"I'm hunted," she said simply. Above them, a stutter of dry lightning strobed through the canopy, and she raised her eyes up. The light flashed back green.
</p>
<p>
"I came to find my brother." It was barely a whisper. "My brother Cerwin. He stood for Redthorn House and the Dalriada against the mountain people. The
Scree. But my uncle Mandrake tricked him. Cerwin did not know Mandrake led the Scree and fell into a trap."
</p>
<p>
She reached a tentative hand and clasped Jack's fingers in her own, holding tight as if she was afraid of falling.
</p>
<p>
"I found my dear brother and his wasted army on the moor. They had fought hard and sold themselves dear. I never saw such a sight. The Mandrake's Scree
have been on my heels since."
</p>
<p>
"I think we saw the place," Kerry said. "On the hill. There's dead bodies all over the place. The smell would have knocked you down."
</p>
<p>
Jack punched him on the shoulder and Kerry stopped talking, but the girl simply nodded. "The best of them lie rotting where they fell. My people and the
foul Scree and their beasts, a spread for the roaks and ravens."
</p>
<p>
"What caused it?" Jack asked gently. Another flash of lightning flickered overhead and illuminated the immense trunks that seemed to march away into the
far darkness.
</p>
<p>
"My uncle Cadwill, my father's twin brother was the cause," she began. "Always the jealous one, twisted and turned with bile because he was the younger by
mere minutes. The Redthorn sword could have been his but for those ten minutes, and a terrible thing that would have been. Now he has the sword and the
Scree armies. He calls himself the Mandrake now, and he has put them over the Dalriada, his own people."
</p>
<p>
"Who are these Scree then?" Kerry couldn't contain his curiosity.
</p>
<p>
She drew her eyes away from Jack's. "They are the Fomorians. Banished to the north mountains back long ago. Savage and soul-less beasts they are."
</p>
<p>
Jack drew in his breath. He had read of the Fomorians in the Major's library. They were in the oldest Celtic legends.
</p>
<p>
"I think we saw some of them on the moor," Kerry said. "Look like they hit every branch fallin' out the ugly tree."
</p>
<p>
"They fight for Mandrake now. Some say he found riches and pays for his army."
</p>
<p>
"I don't get this," Kerry said. "You're some sort of princess, right?"
</p>
<p>
"My father was the Landholder, if that's what you mean."
</p>
<p>
"And we've walked right into a war zone? Between you and these ugly-bugs?"
</p>
<p>
She nodded, her face registering surprise at his ignorance.
</p>
<p>
"So this bad uncle Mandrake, he's killed your family and taken over. What's that all about?"
</p>
<p>
"It's about power and evil," she said simply. "Mandrake is evil and he wants power. I'm the last of the Redthorns and until I am dead, he can't be sure of
the power. That's why he's hunting me down."
</p>
<p>
She paused as another flash of lightning lit her face, then quickly turned to look out past Kerry into the dark forest. Jack saw her body tense like a
spring, felt it in the tightening grip on his fingers.
</p>
<p>
"What's wrong?"
</p>
<p>
"Something's coming."
</p>
<p>
"I hear it," Kerry said. Jack heard nothing at all. He sat still and listened.
</p>
<p>
The far night birds had gone silent. The forest around them was suddenly still.
</p>
<p>
Then he heard it, a vibration in the air, so deep and low it was felt as much as heard.
</p>
<p>
"Thunder?" Kerry whispered. Corriwen Redthorn shook her head. The lightning had been far away, silent flickers in the night.
</p>
<p>
The vibration came again and now Jack could hear it clearly. It did sound like distant thunder. The girl sat stock still, straining. Her body was as tense
as a bowstring.
</p>
<p>
Jack felt the shiver in the ground under his haunches.
</p>
<p>
"Can you climb?"
</p>
<p>
He turned towards her. "Climb&#8230;?"
</p>
<p>
The rumble was louder now, closer. The ground trembled. Out in the dark, he heard the rustle and crack of trees whipping back and forth, branches snapped
underfoot.
</p>
<p>
The girl was suddenly on her feet in one liquid motion, looking right and left. Jack heaved up, gasping against the ache in his chest. The satchel was in
his hand. Kerry was beside him. He snatched up the backpack and drew the sword from the ground.
</p>
<p>
"What's happening?" Kerry asked. "An earthquake?"
</p>
<p>
She moved fast, tugging at Jack's sleeve, pulled him with her beyond the fire to a big gnarled tree that might have been a beech, its branches contorted
like muscular limbs.
</p>
<p>
"Climb now," she said urgently, bushing him towards the lowest branch. "The beasts are running."
</p>
<p>
The noise was like thunder now, not distant, but suddenly very close. Jack heaved himself up, grunting against the ache and stiffness in his bones. Kerry
pushed him from underneath until he was athwart the thick bough. He boosted the girl up and then followed easily.
</p>
<p>
"Higher," she ordered. "Climb, man. Up and up."
</p>
<p>
The branches were so thick that climbing was relatively easy. Jack made it up one, reached another, felt her hands urging him onwards, until he was twenty
feet above the forest floor. He stopped, panting for breath. He could have done this in seconds only the day before. Now it drained him of strength.
</p>
<p>
The tree began to shudder as if it had quick life of its own and the hairs on the back of his neck rose in hackles. Out beyond the firelight shadows were
moving fast, crashing through the undergrowth. He could hear them bawling in panic. Saplings whipped from side to side.
</p>
<p>
The first big animal thundered through a thicket and sent up a spray of leaves under its hooves. It came towards the fire and then veered away from the
light. Jack got a glimpse of jagged antlers spread so wide they would have spanned a room. One tine caught a reedy trunk and simply lopped it off in the
passing. They could hear the gasp of breath and see steam rising from its flanks as it ploughed on. Right behind it a cluster of smaller deer rippled past
and were gone into the shadows beyond.
</p>
<p>
Yet the thundering grew louder, and out in the distance Jack heard the howling and snarling that had first sent them deeper into the forest. Before he
could speak, another great beast lumbered, bawling into the clearing. It was as black as night with great scythe-shaped horns curving out on either side,
heavy enough to completely destroy the thicket as it crashed through. Behind it a whole herd of big animals came in a phalanx, side by side, smashing the
thorns flat. Thick hides and heavy horns shuddered the tree they were in. Out there, a whole tree came crashing down and Jack wondered what could have been
big enough and panicked enough to do that.
</p>
<p>
Something smaller came whipping out of the undergrowth, snickering in fear and loped right across the clearing straight through the fire. Sparks and embers
fountained upwards. Flames caught dry leaves and flickered upwards in seconds. A small bush burst into flames and a runnel of fire climbed a dry
honeysuckle creeper. Smoke billowed up towards them.
</p>
<p>
"Fire," Jack said. He tugged at Kerry and pointed down. "We have to get out of here."
</p>
<p>
"You'll get squashed flat, man." The big black bulls, whatever they were, came on and on, churning up the leaf-litter, snorting and grunting in herd-panic,
wheeling to the left when they smelt the smoke.
</p>
<p>
And out there, the snarls and howls were getting louder. It was clear to Jack and Kerry that whatever made those awesome sounds was what caused the
apocalyptic stampede.
</p>
<p>
As soon as the big black herd had crashed their way past, leaving a trail of devastation and splintered trees behind them, Corriwen Redthorn began to move,
hand under hand, back down the tree.
</p>
<p>
"There might be more things," Kerry said.
</p>
<p>
"There <em>are</em> more things," she said flatly. "And you don't ever want to meet them." She used one hand to point in the direction the big animals had
fled. "We follow them."
</p>
<p>
"What's coming?" Jack asked. He really didn't want to meet what made those slavering, vicious noises out there.
</p>
<p>
"The Scree," she said, already three great limbs below him, and moving with lithe ease. "They're scouring the forest."
</p>
<p>
"What do they want?" He looked down and she paused.
</p>
<p>
"They want <em>me</em>," she said. "But they'll take you both, so climb down Jack Flint. You're going to have to run."
</p>
<p>
His heart sank. He had trouble enough walking, and the climb had drained him.
</p>
<p>
"Come on Jack," Kerry said when they were on the churned ground. Over to the left, the fire had taken hold of some fallen branches and flames were reaching
upwards towards a thick pine. Already the scent of burning resin was heavy on the air. Kerry snatched at his sleeve. "I'm not ready to roast."
</p>
<p>
They moved then, following in the wake of the great herd, with the howling and snarling too close behind them. The ground was soft, churned by hooves, but
logs and branches and trunks criss-crossed where they had tumbled. They got to a clearing and Jack had to stop for breath. He felt as if a vice was clamped
around his ribs. Kerry was jittering with the need to keep moving. The girl dashed across the clearing, hair glinting in fine moonlight.
</p>
<p>
A huge shape crashed out of the bushes straight towards her and she skidded to a halt. Jack got a glimpse of a great flat snout and pairs of curving tusks
all in a row. Red eyes glinted in moonlight and bristled hackles ridged along a humped back, just behind a thick spiked collar. Behind it, a grey, manlike
figure that was squat and muscular hauled at a length of chain.
</p>
<p>
The tethered beast grunted, so low Jack felt it vibrate in his belly and then came charging at her, twisting its head in jerking lunges, trying to catch
her with its tusks. The handler grunted something alien that sounded like grinding stones. Corriwen pushed herself backwards. Jack saw a flash and one of
her knives was in her hand and his mind was telling him the little knife would do no good at all.
</p>
<p>
Before he even knew it, he had the bow off his shoulder and an arrow nocked on the string. The grey handler stepped forward, unshipped the leash and the
tusker came powering forward, squealing and slavering as Corriwen threw herself backwards, rolling over and over, just inches from those wicked scythes.
The handler, the Scree, whatever it was, raised a big wooden club edged with spikes of stone.
</p>
<p>
"No," Jack bawled and ran forward as Corriwen tumbled desperately away. The motion caught the great hog's beady eye and it wheeled like a top, swung its
ugly snout and one of its tusks sliced through the side of his jacket like a razor as he leapt to the side.
</p>
<p>
The grey man raised his club, and brought it down on Corriwen as she rolled. It hit the ground with a shattering thump and Kerry dashed in, slashing down
with the sword with such force the haft of the club cut clean through.
</p>
<p>
The hog's momentum carried it right past Jack into a thicket and it wheeled, sliced through twigs and branches and came at him again. He raised the bow,
drew back and let the arrow fly.
</p>
<p>
It caught the thing in the eye. It was purely an accident, <em>surely an accident,</em> Jack thought, but the shaft buried itself right in that glittering
red bead, right up to the black flight feathers.
</p>
<p>
The beast screeched, swung its head, still running, its humped back powering up and down. It came straight towards him and Jack threw himself to the side.
It thundered past, five, six, seven steps then twisted madly and caught the handler with its leading tusk, scoring a gaping slice up its thigh. Then,
before it could turn on them again, it flopped snout down into the churned earth. Its back legs scrabbled mindlessly, sending up bows of soil, and then,
miraculously, the motion stopped.
</p>
<p>
The Scree roared in fury. Two others appeared beside him, one wielding a broad axe. The second had another club. They leapt into the clearing, both
converging on Jack. He tried to nock another arrow, but they crossed the distance in barely more than the blink of an eye. Up close he saw a broad warty
face under a narrow skull. It had the texture of sandstone, and eyes so black they looked like holes into night. It snarled at him, raised the axe and he
tried to pull back.
</p>
<p>
The axe came swinging down. He saw it in almost slow motion, the torsion of thick shoulder muscles, the bulge of forearms, and there was nothing he could
do.
</p>
<p>
Then Corriwen Redthorn flashed in beside him, and her knives glittered in the moonlight. She was in past him, arms a blur and out on the other side, light
as a fawn and spinning like a ballerina.
</p>
<p>
Blood spurted from the squat thing's belly. Jack saw two lines, one across the abdomen and another under a thick armpit that opened up like zippers and the
creature staggered backwards as the axe swung to the side, missing Jack's head by a scant inch. It continued onwards as the thing spun, grunting, and
caught its companion on the knee. Bone crunched. Something flew off into the bushes and the third creature looked down at its severed leg with an
expression of dull bewilderment. It tried to take a step forward and toppled sideways. The first one roared and came running in. Kerry caught it with a
swipe of the sword and for a second or more it stood there, vacant surprise clear on its ugly face. Its jaw was trying to work but no sound came out. From
under its chin, blood drenched a studded leather jerkin and without a word the thing fell face-first into the dirt.
</p>
<p>
Corriwen spun again, fast as a stoat, flicked her knife at the crippled creature that thrashed and snorted in the leaf litter. Whatever she did, it stopped
snorting and thrashing. It quivered for a second and then flopped like a puppet whose strings have been cut.
</p>
<p>
"Move," she said, "if you want to live."
</p>
<p>
Kerry hauled at Jack and they followed her out of the clearing. Behind them, the howling was so near Jack could almost feel breath on the back of his neck,
and that helped force him onwards, stumbling over fallen trunks and using others as pathways through the tangles. Every now and again he would look back
and see the shapes blundering through the scrub and bushes until they reached a rise where mossy rocks poked through. He stopped for a second, gasping for
breath.
</p>
<p>
"Go on," he urged Kerry and the girl. "I'll never keep up."
</p>
<p>
He nocked an arrow and put another two beside him, waiting on one knee on the rise, even as Kerry dragged at him. Below them, two Scree came running in,
with a huge dog on a chain. It snarled and snapped, fangs jagged and white in the moonlight.
</p>
<p>
Jack took careful aim and planted a barb in the hound's chest. It screamed, high and wavery, turned and savaged its handler, going for the throat. The
other Scree tugged at it, hands round its neck and the dog rounded on him, snapping at a thick arm. The Scree bawled, trying to shake it loose. Jack
snatched up the arrows and let Kerry haul him along the track, forcing him onwards behind the running shape of the girl.
</p>
<p>
They found a deer track that made the going easier, but Jack's chest was aching badly now, ribs constricted so tight that every breath was like fire. He
thought he could taste blood, but he forced himself on. Behind him the howling and snarling seemed to fill the whole forest.
</p>
<p>
Then they were slip-sliding down a steep slope. Kerry tumbled head over heels, landed miraculously on his feet, shook his had and grabbed Jack's arm as if
nothing had happened. Over the lip the slope steepened and they were not running any more, but sliding through thick leaves. Ahead of them Jack thought he
heard water, but all his attention was on the sounds behind them. They hit the flat, three of them all in a tangle that knocked the wind out of Jack and
sent a searing pain twisting inside him, so fierce it made him cry out.
</p>
<p>
"It's the river," Corriwen cried. "Into the water. Don't stop." She urged them both, tugging at their sleeves, pushing them ahead of her.
</p>
<p>
The water was cold, shallow but cold and they were out ten feet, fifteen feet before it started to deepen.
</p>
<p>
"Into the deep," she said, gasping. "The Scree sink."
</p>
<p>
Kerry jammed the sword through the loop of the backpack. He was up to his waist, then up to his chest.
</p>
<p>
"I hate to say this," he said. "But I sink as well."
</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

2
build/mythlands/OEBPS/contents.xhtml
View File

@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title>Full Proof : Contents</title>
<title>Mythlands : Contents</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="imperaWeb.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type=
"application/vnd.adobe-page-template+xml" href=