were following a gritty road that cut across the contours to the north. The sinister plantation was a sunken field away – as hostile as a square of troops deployed on open ground. Shadows filled it, guarded from the sun. The croak of rooks came drifting from the trees.
Beyond, the empty grassland looked innocuous enough. She could see the distant copses to the south, where Greenlands was. So different to the gulf of night she’d fled across before, and yet the view still made her tense and clammy. Greenlands, though unseen, was an ominous presence: as repellent as some village with the Plague. No way could she go nearer, she might catch it …
(Or be caught)
More cawing from the rooky wood, as if to spread the word.
Light thickens … said a dry voice in her head: a trigger-phrase that brought the whole quote with it. Lines she’d learned while studying Macbeth, way back in blissful ignorance at school.
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.
Swallowing, she glanced towards the sun. The south-west sky was flushed with marigold. They had perhaps two hours.
Athelgar walked just ahead; his pace was slow but steady. Whatever he was searching for, he hadn’t got a fix on it as yet. At least there was a method to his mode of navigation – but it didn’t make her feel too confident. Whenever they’d come to a parting of ways, he’d simply flipped his coin to choose between them.
This way would take them east, to Prospect Clump: a high point on the road to Redhorn Hill. Fran turned to look the way they’d come; the dusty track smoked palely in the sun-light, quite deserted. She looked towards the wood again. The rooks were growing fainter, as the ragged block of shadow slid away.
‘Was it you who took the Raven, then?’ she asked – so suddenly, she caught herself off guard.
Athelgar glanced back at her, and nodded.
Necromantic power: that’s what Lyn’s book had said about it. Fran shoved her hands down deeper in her pockets – as if to brace herself against the throbbing in her belly.
‘And is that why you can’t rest?’
Again his pensive face came round. A shadow of perplexity had crossed it.
Fran gestured quickly, caught him up. ‘Please. I … just don’t know the whole of it. We don’t see everything.’
Ooh!, her conscience squealed at her. You fibber!
‘You know the power the Raven has,’ he said.
Instinctively she nodded, and he offered nothing further. On they trudged, uphill. The – silence of the Plain closed in: immersed them like an ocean. At length she had to break it, like she simply had to breathe.
‘How did you come to capture it?’ she said. Then: ‘Sorry …’ as she saw his sombre look.
But Athelgar just raised his hand. ‘Of course you do not know these things. I envy you that blessing.’
They kept on walking; he with his head bowed. She sensed him calling memories back up towards the surface: awaiting them like vomit from a sourness deep inside. Fran waited too, her own mouth dry and bitter.
‘You know I am from Wessexena Land,’ he said at last. ‘But in those days I bore arms for Holy Edmund, in the east. Edmund, king, as he was then. The Danes had taken York, and festered there. Edmund raised our sword-force to resist them. We heard tell of the Raven, and his black and evil power. Land-Waster, they called it. But we had faith in Christ, and this was stronger … we supposed.
‘Then the Raven came south. It over-shadowed all the Eastern English. Holy Edmund fell, and all his kingdom was laid waste. I wished to die beside him there, I had no use for life. But something in my dreaming called me back to my old country. It told me that our war was not yet done.’
Fran glanced at him; then looked ahead. The ragged shape of Prospect Clump loomed closer by the minute.
‘Our sword-force was the last one to escape. We fought for every place along the road: field and weald. They lost us at the last – and many men we cost them in the losing. But night was falling all across the land …’
She listened, fascinated. The Chronicle she’d read was a voice from the past; but Athelgar’s was speaking in the present – here and now. She almost smelled the mud and sweat. Her mind’s eye saw his shouting face, bespattered with bright scarlet.
‘The shadow spread like blood upon a cloth,’ he went on slowly. ‘Now only Alfred, king, held out against them. The Danes came from the west, and thought to trap him. But we were waiting there for our revenge.
‘We met with Edmund’s murderer, and killed him in his turn. We took the witching-Raven, and we used it. It flew for us at Waste-Down, and we held the slaughter-field. It has led us in our war-play ever since. And that is why men call us Ravensbreed.’
She was still chewing all that over when they reached the lonely junction. The single metalled carriageway stretched out in both directions. Southward, sloping down towards the Bustard vedette; and north, across the wilderness of heath.
Athelgar’s coin spun up again, and dropped into his palm. Fran quickly checked her watch. The Bustard was two miles away, at least. It was almost time to think about heading back. They’d be off-range before dusk, of course they would; but her skin had started crawling, and she knew it wouldn’t stop until they were well on their way.
‘This way,’ said Athelgar – and started northward.
She felt her stomach lurch. ‘We … need to be turning back soon,’ she said, as calmly as she could.
He glanced at the sun. ‘We have daylight enough.’
‘It’ll take us a while to get back, though …’
He turned, came back to join her. ‘We must find what is calling us. I think a brother-Raven has concealed it. Disclosing it, we may find him as well – and then the rest.’ He stared into her apprehensive face. ‘Five hundred years have passed since we were woken last from sleep. What danger is abroad, that we be summoned back here now?’
She hesitated; swallowed. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Nor I. So we must both be ready – lest it take us unawares.’
Adjusting his furled coat, he set off along the gently sloping road. Fran followed, with a last glance at the safe, familiar country to the south. Distant buildings slumbered in the sunny evening haze. Too far away already. Getting further.
The way ahead was desolate, a wasteland. Just north of the bedraggled clump, the route forked left and right. Each way looked as barren as the other. Fran stared up at the weathered fingerpost, as stark as an old gibbet. West to Market Lavington. Due north, across the heights, to Redhorn Hill.
Athelgar’s fingers turned the coin. Its silver glinted flatly, like his rings. He tossed and caught it; nodded to the right. The bleaker choice (of course, she thought). It seemed a road to nowhere.
