Jasper Fforde - Early Riser

My heart was thumping, but oddly not quite as heavily as when I went in to retrieve Mrs Tiffen. I figured Fodder had seen plenty of action, and losing a Deputy on their first day wouldn’t reflect well on his judgement. We opened the first shock-gate, and once that was secure behind us and we’d donned boots and coats, Fodder spun the locking wheel, opened the outer door and stepped into the Winter. It was still snowing and just light enough to see, but the visibility was barely twenty feet. Fodder didn’t pause for a moment and started to march as quickly as he could through the swirling snow, keeping tight to the exterior wall of the museum. I followed as close as I could and as fast as I could, but the Schtumper was heavy, and I wasn’t as strong or as fit nor possessed of such a long stride, and quite soon Fodder was lost to view. All I could hear was the panting of my own breath, and all I could see were swirling flakes and the wall of the museum to my right. I didn’t stop, though, and after about another half a minute of running almost semi-blind, I ran into the back of a static Fodder and bashed my lip against the butt of his Thumper so hard it brought tears to my eyes.

‘Careful,’ hissed Fodder. We were now at the back of the museum, outside an oak-banded rear entrance door, which had been thumped recently – the ice was clear like glass where the accreted snow had melted and then instantly refrozen.

‘Not a hope of getting in here,’ said Fodder. ‘They were trying to draw us out.’

‘And?’

‘They succeeded.’

He kicked a couple of backpacks that had been left in the snow.

‘Two of them, I’d say.’

Fodder examined their tracks in the snow and walked off with me close behind. I found it mildly disconcerting that he was moving away from any visual reference point, but as he said, you have to know the town like the swirls on your wintercoat. We moved along for perhaps five minutes, following the tracks that were almost obscured by the fresh falling snow, and within a hundred yards or so we came across the entrance to the Talgarth Jollity Funfair, which was not much more than a brick-built ticket office and turnstile. Fodder opened the door to the office and beckoned me inside. The room had only a counter, various posters advertising other local attractions – gliding, local flour mill, pony-trekking – and a desk with several chairs. The floor was dusty and strewn with fliers, blown from their shelves. Fodder stopped and crouched, as did I.

‘Got a compass?’

I nodded.

‘They’ll return this way when they think we’ve gone,’ he whispered. ‘Stay here, and in precisely six minutes, go outside and fire the Schtumper to the east. That will give away your position, so you are then to retreat thirty paces towards the museum, and if anything comes out of the snowstorm that isn’t me, let them get within knockout range and pop them. If they’re armed, then full choke to kill.’

‘It’ll end the truce,’ I said.

‘If it’s Lucky Ned,’ said Fodder, ‘then him being here is breaking the truce. Six minutes, yes?’

‘Six minutes.’

He then stepped out of the door, hopped over the turnstile, looked around, and walked silently away into the gloom. I moved backwards to sit against the wall of the ticket office next to the door so I had a view of the outside, then stared at the radium glow of my watch hands as they crept round. I expected to hear the muffled whump of a Thumper or the harsher whap of a Bambi, but there was nothing. Not a single sound reached my ears as I lay crouched, the cold from the floor gradually creeping into my leg.

I thought of Mrs Tiffen, who had been redeployed, then Josh and how he wasn’t happy with it. Then Lucy Knapp and her pride at working at HiberTech, and Aurora and what it might actually have been like – physically and psychologically – if I had bundled with her. I thought of Toccata and her aggressive manner, then about Laura’s desire to see Wintervolk proven, the somewhat-unhinged Jonesy with her fictional nostalgia and Fodder with his much-needed nightmares, and then Birgitta. Finally, I thought about how I should have heeded everyone’s advice and let Mrs Tiffen go. Logan would be alive right now and I’d be back in Cardiff, safely watching the Winter from indoors, and not crouched in an empty room during a blizzard, armed to the teeth and with orders to kill someone.

At the appointed time I stood up, stepped outside and checked which way was east. I lifted the weapon, leaned forward to counteract the kick, and pulled the trigger.

I knew that firing a vortex cannon into a snowstorm would be an impressive feat, and I wasn’t disappointed. The localised temperature increase that accompanied the sudden pressure change melted the snowflakes instantaneously, and there was suddenly clarity in the air – a momentary cone of perfect vision, rolling away from me in a languid manner. I could see the wooden lattice of the roller coaster and a brightly coloured hoarding advertising thrills and spills, then the helter-skelter beyond, and an ice-cream kiosk. The view did not last long. The melted snow turned back to ice as soon as the pressure equalised and the world reverted to nothing more than a swirling white mass.

I pushed the second thermalite into the battery chamber, then counted thirty paces back towards the museum, the track we’d made on the way out now only visible as smoothed-off dents in the undulating white carpet. I stood there, safety off, thumb on the choke button, wondering who or what would come through the snowstorm toward me. A good five minutes must have passed and I heard a thud, then another, but I wasn’t expert enough to tell from which weapon they had originated.

All of a sudden I was aware of the squeak and crunch of something moving in an untroubled fashion through the snow, less than thirty feet away to the left of me. They made no attempt to move silently and seemed to be lumbering rather than walking, and at a reasonable pace. I was put in mind of a large herbivore, which wasn’t possible – Megafauna would never be awake, and even if they were, they would not be out in this. Only Villains, womads, Consuls and idiots ventured out in a snowstorm in the Winter.

I swallowed down my fear and as the sound drew closer I decided to tempt providence and hail whoever it was. But as soon as I opened my mouth to speak the footfalls abruptly stopped and I heard a shuffle in the snow as the figure turned to face me. I couldn’t see them, but I somehow knew that whoever it was could see me. Or sense me, at any rate. I was also acutely aware that this wasn’t Fodder. I had put my hand in my bag to pull out the camera that Laura had given me when a voice made me jump.

‘I wonder if you wouldn’t mind awfully dropping that weapon?’

I had been so fixated on the presence to my left that I had not been paying attention, and a figure had crept up on me out of the snow storm and was now holding a Bambi to my head. He was dressed in the mismatched blend of clothes that was the adopted uniform of the Winter Villain: much-mended ski salopettes with a mammoth-wool tweed jacket under a down-filled puffa, criss-crossed with belts of thermalites. He had large boots, again mismatched, a sturdy tea cosy for a hat which was embroidered ‘A gift from Whitby’ and was missing his nose – frostbite, I figured. There was also a scar the thickness of a little finger that ran from his forehead to his chin by way of his left eye – which held a cracked monocle.

‘Well, take me to Mansion House ball and dance me the Dashing White Sergeant,’ he said in the cut-glass tones of the English upper classes, ‘I seem to have bagged myself a Novice.’

I’d never met a Villain before, so didn’t quite know what to say – and he was right, I was still a Novice, despite what anyone said.