Middlesteel, hobnobbing with all the quality and listening to all those boring bills being read in parliament, then who’s going to be looking after your family?’
The farmer’s heart leapt. Even they wouldn’t? A fourth thug emerged into the room with the farmer’s son struggling in his grip, one hand covering the boy’s mouth, the other clutching a pheasant-skinning knife.
‘Please!’ the farmer begged.
‘What, you thought we were joking?’ said the ringleader. ‘Thought we’d come a-visiting your home at night for a bit of sport, did you?’
‘Please!’
The shadows in the room were growing longer, thicker. Like mist. But no one noticed. The farmer was struggling desperately under the weight of the thugs holding him down, the others were too giddy with the excitement of the kill.
‘Shut up, you’ve got another two lads, you’re not even going to miss one of them.’
‘You can’t do this!’
‘I feel your pain,’ laughed the ringleader.
‘And I feel your evil,’ hissed another voice, as the thug holding the farmer’s son stumbled back into the shadows of the room. They were both enveloped and disappeared, a second before the grip holding the farmer fast seemed to slip away and he was free.
The farmer backed away as the ringleader and the remaining thug glanced hastily around at the shadows of the room, hundreds of them, swelling and moving like the surf on the sea. Solid. Black. Laughter seemed to bubble out of those shadows, but there was no happiness in it. It was a pit to hell opened in that room, the echo of a fallen soul rising out of the depths. But where was his lad, and where was the thug who had been holding him?
Twisting a knife around in his hand, the ringleader seemed to be trying to locate the sound of the terrible laughter. There was an explosion of light from one corner, blinding the farmer, then a series of wet slaps. As the dots cleared from the farmer’s eyes, he realized the only other person left in the room was the ringleader, the shadows twisting and circling around him.
‘You’ve carried your squire’s message for him this night,’ laughed a dark voice. ‘I have one for you to take back to him.’
There was a snap-snap-snap of light – like the powder flash on a camera – the shadows and the light merging to become an angular figure striking at the gang’s ringleader. The farmer turned his head to avoid the shower of splintering glass as the thug was forced to leave by the window.
The room seemed to return to normal, the intense light diminishing to a sparkle on the handle of a pistol – one of a pair – holstered on a figure wearing a jet-black riding coat, his face covered with a dark executioner’s hood.
‘My son?’ trembled the farmer, looking mesmerized at the three corpses lying on the floor of his bedroom.
‘Back in his room,’ said the figure. ‘A child’s mind is a very flexible thing. He’ll remember nothing of this night.’
‘Dear Circle,’ said the farmer, ‘what have you done, man? There’s three dead here. The squire has the county constabulary in his pocket, they’ll—’
‘The county magistrate is due a visit from me, as, I believe, is the squire.’
‘You can’t interfere with justice!’
The terrible laughter returned to the room. ‘They only know about the law; I shall explain what justice is.’
‘You’re him, aren’t you. The one they talk about.’
‘Look out of the window,’ said the hooded figure. ‘What do you see?’
The farmer stood in front of his shattered window. There was the gang’s ringleader, crawling across the glass on a broken leg, moaning, trying to reach his horse. And a dense fog was forming – seeping out of the woods, fingers of it probing along the ground like the legs of a curious spider. It was a marsh fog. The farmer looked around, but the three corpses had disappeared.
Vanished too was the Hood-o’the-marsh. Only the broken window remained as evidence that the farmer hadn’t dreamt the whole break-in.
* * *
Walking into the woods, the Hood-o’the-marsh allowed himself a smile, shouts from the squire’s mansion echoing behind him as the great house’s retainers spilled into the night, waving their blunderbusses and birding rifles. Someone was yelling to douse the lanterns, more of a hindrance than help on a nighttime pursuit. Not that it would do them any good, any more than cavalry redcoats would be able to help the bloody figure of a county magistrate in a dressing gown, stumbling towards town and the garrison. He owned the night. Not much of a recompense for losing the ability to sleep, to dream.
Which was why the silhouette of the woman waiting at the top of the hill took him by surprise. Nobody could sneak up on him. Nobody. Not since he had found… both pistols were suddenly in his hands as he advanced, treading silently towards the woman. After all these years, could it really be her?
‘Mother, is that you?’
There was no answer. He could feel nothing from her, as if she had no weight on the world. No evil. No goodness either. And there was only one person – if you could call her a person – who had ever registered on the Hood’s senses like that.
‘Mother, if—’
‘I am not the Lady of the Lights,’ said the silhouette. ‘But perhaps you should recognize me anyway, Oliver Brooks?’
He moved closer. There was just enough moonlight to see that the silhouette was wearing what looked like leather armour covered by bronze chainmail – archaic, the very picture of a warrior maiden from the cheap woodcuts of a child’s novel.
‘Enough of this.’ Oliver pointed his two pistols at her but they vanished from his hands, reappearing in her own. The light reflecting from the pistols became twin suns, blinding him. As the light dwindled he saw that the pistols had changed form, one becoming a trident, the other an oblong shield with the crude face of a lion cast on it. The lion of Jackals.
Oliver gaped. ‘They’re mine.’
‘No,’ said the woman. ‘They are mine. As are you, Hood-o’the-marsh.’
‘You are an Observer then,’ said Oliver.
‘No, I’m not one of them,’ said the woman. ‘I’m a local girl. Did you never wonder where those two pistols of yours, so carefully passed down the ages from master to master, actually came from? It is my work you are about, Oliver Brooks.’
‘Is it, indeed?’ said Oliver. ‘Then return those two pistols and I’ll be about it once more.’
‘Time enough for that,’ said the woman. ‘There are more important matters to attend to than corrupt guardians and local magistrates. Have you not felt the wrongness in our land?’
Oliver gazed down at his empty hands. She knew that he had.
‘There is an ache in my bones,’ continued the woman, ‘and I fear what
