George was already starting to move boxes. ‘Good luck with finding chalk, old man. It’s not exactly High Street around here, if you haven’t noticed.’
‘Would flour do, Aubrey?’ Sophie said. ‘I saw a store dump just along the way.’
‘Perfect. I was going to stretch my legs a little anyway.’ He reached out and shuffled the papers together that held the final version of his spell workings. He stowed them in a satchel.
Caroline had a large box in her arms. She paused. ‘What do you need those papers for?’
Aubrey was so smooth, he picked up a few beats rather than missing one. ‘I thought I’d sit outside while you ready the dugout. I still have some memorising to do.’
It was only the slightest of prevarications. The spell was well and truly seared into his brain after all the work he’d done on it. What he’d actually be memorising was the best route to his selected shell hole.
He left his friends discussing the neatest arrangement of boxes and that gave him some hope. He simply couldn’t countenance the idea that his last memories of his friends would be of them arguing over the placement of makeshift furniture, so it suggested he must be coming back alive. If he had to have last memories of his friends, he wanted them to be heartfelt protestations about love, friendship and what a difference he’d made to their lives. Some tears would be acceptable, but he was afraid they would be more likely to come from George than Sophie or Caroline, so he scratched that from his imaginings. The phrase ‘life won’t be the same without you’ had a comforting ring and he contemplated that as he wandered along the duck-boards until he found the store.
The corporal in charge was suspicious until Aubrey showed his Directorate identification and after that he couldn’t be helpful enough. Aubrey settled for two pounds of flour in a brown paper bag. In the dim light of the store he made out a stamp that said it had come all the way from Antipodea. He was unaccountably pleased that as well as sending their strapping soldiers, the colonies were also sending foodstuffs. Loyalty indeed.
Aubrey found a nearby firing bay and had a quiet conversation with the captain of the Lancefield Fusiliers who was on duty. Captain Robinson was young enough to be impressed with Aubrey’s credentials and intrigued by the possibility of a magical trench raid, as Aubrey put it. He offered some suggestions to make the way easier, as well as some burnt cork for his face. He also gave Aubrey a password, at which Aubrey blinked, felt a cold wind on the back of his neck, and realised that he’d just avoided a horrible fate. If all went unaccountably well and he was able to crawl back toward the Albion trenches, he would have been in dire trouble without a password. Anyone approaching in the middle of the night was assumed, sensibly, to be a Holmlander up to no good.
A handshake, a slap on the back, a helmet thrust into his hands and Aubrey was up over the top and into no-man’s-land.
52
Aubrey had never felt so exposed. His imagination, never needing much prompting, immediately told him that dozens of snipers with supernaturally good night vision were all taking bets on which of them would be the first to bring him down.
Which would be an achievement, he thought, as he was as down as it was humanly possible to be. If he were any downer, he’d be moving in a subterranean mode. Wriggling along on his stomach, he’d positioned the sack of flour directly in front of his head, following the theory that a bullet would be better off hitting anything, foodstuff or not, before it hit him.
The next hour was a mixture of terror, panic and loss of skin. Periodic phantom attacks swept across the ruined landscape. Cavalry charges, waves of infantry, and even an elephant brigade at one stage. With each one Aubrey experienced the gut-wrenching trepidation that the phantoms had been designed to inspire. Every time a wave of attackers appeared from nowhere he huddled in shell holes or rolled up as close as he could to barbed wire barriers until he was sure that the shadowy figures weren’t real. Then he crawled on, pushing his bag of flour in front of him, and dragging the satchel with his precious notes behind him.
At one stage, Aubrey froze when, some distance away, a figure approaching his level of furtiveness made its way between two shattered trees. Aubrey watched as the stranger progressed in inches, swarming along on his belly. Since every movement was taking him close to the Allied lines, Aubrey decided that he was a Holmlander raider.
Aubrey’s heart, which had been running at a steady gallop ever since he left the Albionite trench, showed it was fully capable of a lift in tempo. Aubrey was tempted to blame the trembling in his hands on the sheer amount of blood being pumped about his body by the overactive organ, and not on fear – but he wasn’t that foolish. He was right to be afraid in a place where evidence of certain death was only too plain and too commonplace. Once again, though, all his rational thinking and appraisal had little effect on his body and its reactions. Accepting that being afraid was sensible was one thing. Trying to slow his heart was another.
Aubrey lay beside a mound of earth thrown up by an explosion and his hand moved almost of its own volition toward his sidearm. The range was extreme, so there was no point in his having it in his hand, but nevertheless something in him wanted to be armed in such a situation. Shaking, he made a fist of the traitor hand so that it couldn’t open his holster, and he peered toward the enemy raider.
A slight ‘clink’ came from the raider. In his hands, he held a cylinder a few feet long, blackened but showing a tiny gleam of metal. He pushed it ahead of him as he crawled.
After making the noise, the raider didn’t move for some time. Aubrey applauded his discretion. At night, sentries on both sides used hearing as much as sight.
The raider was moving again, but he wasn’t getting any closer to the Allied lines. Aubrey risked taking out his field glasses and saw that the raider was unscrewing the cylinder, working with both hands.
Another ‘clink’ and the end of the cylinder popped off, but before anyone from either trench could commence firing, a torrent of ghostly figures poured from the cylinder as if it were a Roman Candle. In an instant, the figures had assumed solidity, colour and shape, milling about uncertainly until the last had emerged, then they arranged themselves in a line. A cavalry charge, complete with regimental colours and a bugler, thundered toward the Albion trenches.
The raider quickly reversed and began scrambling back to Holmland territory. A wild fusillade of shots rang out from the Albionite lines where someone wasn’t willing to bet that the cavalry charge was another illusion. Aubrey pulled his head in, aiming to make himself the smallest target possible.
By the way the shots died out quickly, Albion officers had summed up the situation and declared the cavalry as unreal. He lost sight of the horses as they crested a barbed wire barrier and plunged in the direction of the trenches, and he’d also lost interest in them because of something much more urgent.
Someone was nearby.
He cursed himself, internally. He’d taken his eye off the Holmland raider, lost him in the shadows – and someone else had crept up on him.
He caught his breath. That fall of earth over there couldn’t be natural, especially since it had followed a scraping sound; the two together were enough to make his gaze dart about, trying to sort harmless shadow from Holmland raider. The difficulty was, in this frame of mind everything looked like a Holmland raider – and a battle- hardened one at that. That broken wagon, for instance. That tangle of barbed wire. And that smashed ammunition box could be two Holmland raiders at least.
He sought for some magic, something silent but disabling, but his mind was too full of the transference spell to accommodate anything else. Fragments eluded his grasp as he clutched for them.
He felt the tip of the blade touch him just behind the ear, just before he heard the voice – very soft, very deadly. ‘It would be a very bad idea to move, except to take your hand away from your pistol. Turn slowly.’
For once, Aubrey followed orders, to the letter, to see Caroline on the ground next to him. He could have kissed her, so he did.
53
They had to nestle very close to each other to fit into the tiny shell hole Aubrey had found. It had a bank
