Alys Clare - The Way Between the Worlds

‘Herleva came from over that way,’ I said, despite everything smiling back at him. ‘I spoke to an old Chatteris woman who sells cheese to the nuns. She told me Herleva was from up beyond Lynn. She and the dead man might have known each other!’

‘And they might not,’ I thought I heard him mutter. He took my hand and patted it. ‘That’s a start, I suppose,’ he said kindly. He could have added, even if it’s not much , but he didn’t.

We went on standing there. In time, we saw a boat approaching, and the ferryman agreed to take us across. I sat down in the stern, wrapping my shawl tightly round me against the chill air rising off the water.

My brief excitement had leaked out of me, and now I felt even lower than before. Hrype was right to be dismissive; so what if Herleva’s home was roughly in the same area as the place where the man in the fen had died? It really didn’t amount to very much and barely qualified for Hrype’s it’s a start .

And there was so much more I had to worry about. There we were, moving steadily across the misty water, and my poor sister lay deadly sick on the other side. Was she still alive? Again, I sent a tentative thought in her direction, and this time I received no reply at all. I buried my face in my shawl; I did not want Hrype to see my tears.

There was Rollo, too. I no longer heard his summoning voice in my dreams, and in my waking mind I knew, with no room for doubt, that something had happened to him. He had called to me for help, and I had failed him. Now he was gone: out of my head, out of my life, out, perhaps, of this world.

The sky was darkening as the sun finally set. All around the little boat, the water was dark and sinister, no glimmer of light on its black depths. Despair took hold of me, and for a dreadful moment I was tempted to give up on the horrible struggle of my life and throw myself into the fen’s cold embrace.

Then there was a gentle bump as the boat came alongside the little quay. The ferryman jumped out to make his craft secure, and Hrype climbed ashore after him. He turned back to me.

He said, so softly that I hardly heard him, ‘Nobody is dead yet, Lassair.’ And he held out his hand.

If he was telling me my dearest sister was still alive, that was, of course, something to rejoice over, although if she was as sick as we had been told, life could turn to death in the blink of an eye.

He could not be speaking of Rollo. He didn’t know Rollo was in danger; nobody did except Gurdyman and me, and I was all but sure now that the danger, whatever it was, had overcome him.

I thought about it for a couple of heartbeats. Go on? Give up? Then I took Hrype’s hand, jumped out of the boat and on to the Chatteris quay.

Rollo was attacked when he was in sight of the great sea that lies off the east coast of Britain. He had made his way steadily and swiftly, usually keeping the Wall in sight over to his left. As well as providing a clear aid to going in the right direction — due east towards the coast — he had discovered that what tracks and roads there were in that lonely and largely deserted country were better maintained near to the Wall.

They laid an ambush for him. The sun was setting in the west behind him, for he had been encouraged by the sea’s proximity into travelling on later than usual. Darkness was rapidly descending. He was approaching a place where the road ran down into a shallow valley, on each side of which were stands of ancient trees. Up there in the north country, spring was late in coming and the trees were only just showing the first signs of leaf. Rollo would not have thought that the stark trunks and all but bare branches could have provided places of concealment for even one man, let alone four.

It was his horse who first sensed danger. Named as she was for an entity with supernatural powers, perhaps elements of a particularly keen awareness had rubbed off on the mare. As she bore Rollo down into the valley, she must have heard, seen or even smelt something which, wise horse that she was, she knew ought not to be there.

She had been going along at a smart trot, affected by her master’s mood and as keen as he to reach the coast and turn south. Suddenly, she stopped, so abruptly that Rollo was almost unseated.

‘Strega?’ he said softly. ‘What’s the matter?’

The horse, of course, could not answer. She gave a soft whicker, and a shudder ran under the skin of her shoulder. A variety of possibilities ran like fire through Rollo’s mind: was she exhausted? Had she picked up a stone in her foot? Was she throwing up lame?

He was about to dismount and check her over when at last, and far too late, he finally took in the topography of the place where Strega had so abruptly stopped. His heart pounding, he looked on down the road and saw the stands of skeletal trees on either side. Somebody made a small movement just as he was staring at the trees on his right.

He pressed his heels into the mare’s sides and said to her urgently, ‘On, Strega, on!’ Still she hesitated. He leaned forward on to her neck and said, as close to her ear as he could, ‘Yes, I know, I’ve seen them. Now go !’

She needed no further urging. Just as abruptly as she had stopped, she started to move again, her sturdy strength taking her from standing to a full gallop in moments. Her speed took the ambushers by surprise, and it was only when they had been flying down the track for some moments that Rollo heard the whoops and yells of the men who had lain in wait as they left their hiding places and raced after him.

He knew quite soon that two were no threat, for they were mounted on old, broken ponies whose laboured breathing was audible across the rapidly increasing distance between them and Rollo. Soon his swift glances over both shoulders told him that it was now between him and the two remaining men.

He knew what he would have done in their position. The track went on through the valley in a wide curve to the right, and the shortest distance to the far end was to cut across the curve. While the land inside the curve did not look secure enough for Rollo to risk it — what would happen if he floundered in a patch of boggy ground or if Strega failed to clear the fast-flowing stream that rushed through the valley? — he would, had he been one of the pursuing pair, have taken that chance and hastened to cut his quarry off as he hurried along the road.

He heard a shouted conversation between the two men, although they spoke in a language he did not understand. He was pretty sure what they were saying, however, and very shortly afterwards, he saw with dismay that his assumption was right. One man remained right behind him; his horse was perhaps not quite as swift as Strega, but it was close. The second man cracked his fist down hard on his horse’s rump, yelled something in a high, wild voice and, with a fierce tug on the reins that had his horse jerking its head in pain, plunged down off the track and across the green grass of the valley.

Rollo’s years of experience had taught him not to waste time worrying about things that might not happen. The second man was now some distance away, and Rollo would deal with him when the time came. For now, the man behind him was alone.

Rollo pulled Strega up, drew his sword and spun round. The man had less secure a control of his mount, and it seemed, in addition, that Rollo’s unexpected move had taken him unawares. Leaning back in the saddle in what appeared to be a hopeless attempt to slow his horse’s pace, he kept on riding, straight at Rollo, a long, wickedly pointed knife in one hand and a shorter stabbing knife between his teeth. His dark eyes blazed with blood lust; he was going in for the kill.

As the man drew level, Rollo nudged Strega with his knee to make her step aside. There was little need even to swing his sword — he could simply have held it out — but he swung it anyway.