Richard Cowper - The Twilight of Briareus

DAW BOOKS, INC.
DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHER

Avenue of the Americas
New York, N. Y.

copyright , 1974, by Colin Muhhy

A DAW Book, by arrangement with the John Day Company and Thomas Y, Crowell Co., Inc.

All Rights Reserved.

Library of Congress Catalogue Number 73-19470.
Cover art by Kelly Freas.

For RACHEL
and the Children of the Twilight
Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born
Matthew Arnold
Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse

I recognized the place a good twenty minutes before we set eyes on it. The wind dropped soon after we left the abandoned village and, as the snow veils thinned, wisping away to disclose the low hills to the north, I paused. Margaret who was following a pace or two behind me, looked up. What is it, Cal?

Slowly I shook my head. Maybe I muttered. And at that moment the clouds drew apart and the sun elbowed its way through. At once everything clicked into focus. I knew.

I glanced round at Margaret and caught that tell-tale flicker in her grey eyes which said, far more clearly than any words could have done, Please, God, let him be right. I grinned, pulled off my left mitt and felt inside the slit pocket of my parka for the map. As I bent to examine it a sprinkling of fine snow cascaded from my fur cap and blotted out the grid. It seemed an inauspicious sort of omen. I blew the snow away and laid my finger on the point on the chart which approximated to where we were, moved it across to the pale fawn area which denoted the hills and then began circling slowly westward. Margarets fur-capped head bent beside mine and the barrel of the .22 repeater she was carrying nudged my shoulder. My roving finger came to rest on a tiny patch of blue among a group of stylized cartographic trees. Margaret peered down. M-o-y-n-e, she spelled out. Does it mean anything to you?

Not yet, I said. But theres nowhere else within range. As I spoke the sunlight paled abruptly. A breeze sprang up, the familiar snow clouds thickened and the hills withdrew. I folded the map, thrust it back into my pocket and fumbled my hand into its glove. Easing the straps of my rucksack on my shoulders I looked around. There should be a drive off to the left somewhere, I said. Probably beyond those trees.

Cal ?

Um?

What if its if youre ?

I helped her over the verbal threshold. If Im wrong, you mean?

She nodded.

Well, it wont be the first time, Skeet. If I am well just have to push on further north. I patted her arm clumsily with my muffled hand. But I dont think I am wrong. Not this time. Maybe its not Moyne, but its round here somewhere. Ill bet my life on it. I grinned at her and she smiled back, a little tremulously, nibbling at the luxury of hope.

I took a firm grip on the five foot blackthorn which I used for plumbing the drifts and, as I did so, an odd thought struck me. I do believe its my birthday, Skeet. June the fifth.

Is it?

Well, its June all right. They told me that at Peterborough. And that was four days ago. Hey, I must be forty-five! I never thought Id make it.

A few flakes of snow shaken from the low apron of cloud drifted past my shoulder.

Come on, said Margaret. We dont want to get caught out here in a blizzard.

As we plodded off up the track beside the tumbledown wall I was assailed by a poignant memory of the last time I had been in this region of England all of fifteen years before. Mad summer 83! I recalled the great blue mounds of slumbering trees; bone-white corn quivering in the liquid heat haze; the scent of crushed wild peppermint flowers along a river bank where Laura and I had stopped to picnic; and it was all as remote and unbelievable as the Arabian Nights. I found my eyes were searching the snow-bandaged twigs of a thorn bush for signs of buds and I actually found some. Perhaps the nightmare would end and the world would come back to its senses again. But even as I toyed with my daydream I knew it for what it was. Whatever the future held for us it was not the past. Too much had altered.

We found the turn-off more or less where I was expecting it. Snow had drifted like a petrified wave against the long white gate so that only the top bar and the curved bracing post were visible. I ploughed my way forward and probed with my stick till I struck a buried chain. Plunging my arm down into the drift I felt the solid weight of a padlock. Over the top, Skeet, I said.

She handed me her rifle, clambered on top of the gate and dropped on to the other side. I passed the gun back to her and watched her wade forward through the drift and out on to the track beyond. As she stamped to rid herself of the clinging snow a dog howled in the distance. Hardly had the sound registered on my ears before I caught the purposeful click-click as Margaret worked a shell out of the magazine. Using the bars of the gate as ladder-rungs I heaved myself over and forged along her wake through the drift. I reached her just as another anguished howl rose and fell and rose again to die away at last fitfully in the distance.

Margaret eased off her right mitt and stuffed it into her trousers pocket. Are they after us, do you think?

I doubt it, I said. More likely to have picked up those pony tracks outside the village. Still, theres no point in us hanging about longer than we have to.

I thought there werent supposed to be any packs this far above the snow-line, she said. Do you think theyve sensed a change in the weather?

Maybe, I shrugged. Or maybe theyre homing mutes too.

Id meant it as a joke but Margaret didnt laughwhich wasnt altogether surprising in the circumstances.

We couldnt have progressed more than a couple of hundred yards down the drive before we heard the baying again. This time there was no doubt in either of our minds as to what was the probable quarry. Of course wed both had experience of dogs before but never this far north of London and such stories as wed heard had seemed to belong to the usual travellers Apocrypha. Below the snow-line the packs still tended to keep to a wary distance and to leave men alone. I prayed fervently that the same behavioural pattern applied up here too.

To add to our difficulties it started to snow againnot really heavily, but enough to gather in the horizons of our world to the point where it was difficult to be certain where the tree-line ended and the driveway dipped. I consulted the map again while Margaret screwed up her eyes and peered into the shifting gauze of snowflakes that had been drawn across the track behind us. The drive should drop down on the other side of that hump, I said. Theres a stream which feeds the lake coming in from the north west, and there seems to be a bridge marked here. The house is beyond it and round to the right. Can you see anything?

Snow, she muttered.

I thrust the map back into my pocket, seized my stick and crunched on through the folded drifts. Twice I stumbled over branches that earlier storms had torn from the wayside trees and then buried from sight. Beyond the crest of the hump where the prevailing wind had scoured the snow from the exposed slope, we found the going was easier. We broke into a lumbering jog-trot which carried us round a slow, right-hand bend through what appeared to be a rhododendron shrubbery and there, just as I had known it would be, was the lake and the bridge and the house.

I stood for a moment peering at it while my panted breath plumed up like smoke. Pilgrims rest, Skeet, I grunted, and the words were still hovering frozen in the air when a chorus of savage yelping spilled over the ridge-crest at our backs.