"Lady Margaret," said Dane. Then he stood erect, and looked
about him. What had changed? Had he heard something? Even a slight sound
would carry a long way in the still air. And then he realised it was not
a sound but its absence that was worrying. Hadn't the birds been singing
earlier? He recalled B-movies in which the phrase "It's too damn quiet!"
had been the inevitable precursor to Something Nasty. A Red teamer might
well be stalking him. He reluctantly went back for his gun, and, feeling
idiotic, thumbed the safety catch off. Then he read on. What was Lady Margaret's
surname? Dove-something? Or perhaps what looked like a V was a half-W?
A hand clasped his shoulder. He screamed and spun round, at the same time
trying to grab his gun but knocking it into the bracken. "Bill!"
said Tracy, her eyes wide behind her mask. She stumbled backwards and fell,
with comic suddenness, onto her backside. He leaned against the monument
and slid to the ground. His voice was loud and angry in the uneasy silence.
"Christ on a bike, don't ever do that again!"
For a second they stared at each other, two cowards in a shadowy wood. Then
they burst out laughing, and with many a tearful "Now, stop it!",
and lots of 'shushing', tried to avoid catching the other's eye for the
best part of a minute.
"Oh God," said Bill finally, "I thought that was my first
heart attack for certain."
"I'm sorry, Bill," said Tracy, moving over to plonk down next
to him. There was just room for both their backs against the squat monolith.
"Never mind; no harm done," he replied, reaching for his flask
again. "Here, get that down you, kidder. Good for the nerves."
Tears came to her eyes as she took a healthy swig.
"Oooh, that's better."
She handed the flask back and he took a wee dram before secreting it again.
"So we both had the same idea, eh? Get away from the nutters."
She nodded, and smiled, slightly shamefaced to be caught sneaking off, but
glad of his company, Bill thought. He flattered himself that Tracy liked
him - not fancied, of course, but she looked on him as a slightly disreputable
uncle. It had been clear for some time that she was a bit scared by Rex,
and considered Colin a creep. So here they were, two deserters. Which, he
realised, meant twenty-five percent losses for Blue army without an enemy
shot fired. How very tragic.
"I'm surprised you came right up here, though," Tracy said suddenly.
"Why's that?" he asked, puzzled.
"Well, didn't that bloke tell us it wasn't safe?"
Dane cast his mind back to the introductory briefing. His powers of concentration
hadn't been at their shaky best, given that the session had taken place
at the ungodly hour - for a Saturday - of eight-thirty. They'd been issued
with their protective masks, told how to load and fire their guns, and each
had been given a taste of what a shot felt like when you were hit in the
back. When it came to her turn to be shot, Tracy had squeaked, to general
amusement. And, yes, now he thought about it, hadn't the older of the two
instructors said something about sticking to the valley if possible and
not going up the north ridge? Dane couldn't recall if he'd given a reason.
He did recall that the older bloke had had a local accent while the younger
man, who'd briskly moved on to tactics, had not. Funny the things you remembered.
"Yes, well," he said lamely, "perhaps there are potholes
or something. Might be dangerous to go crashing around in the bush."
But would there be potholes on top of a hill? He vaguely thought not.
"Here's a laugh! I thought I saw one of that other lot, a while back,"
Tracy said, nodding towards the way she must have come upon him. The route
lay along the ridge, through the trees. The undergrowth looked quite dense
- an ideal place for a sniper to hide. You could hide a regiment in there,
in among the green-black shadows.
"You saw one of Red team?" he asked, thinking, "Who else,
you old fool?"
"Well, I could have sworn - you know how they're covered in bits of
grass and stuff, camouflage? Looks daft. Anyhow, I thought it was
a bloke and I shot at him. I hit him and all, I did! First time, Pow! like
Clint Eastwood. Only he doesn't close his eyes when he shoots, does he?"
She giggled, and he smiled and shook his head.
"Anyway, when I looked again there was nowt there! Just blue paint
on the tree. So I must have been seeing things. Daft or what?"
"Well, at least you've tried. More than I have."
And so saying, he lumbered to his feet and started casting about for his
gun. It took him a while to retrieve it, as he was in no hurry to resume
hostilities. But he supposed they would have to go back to the Centre in
a while and claim they'd got lost, or something. When he turned to ask Tracy
if she had any better ideas, he saw she was squatting before the monument,
tracing letters with a tentative forefinger.
"Here, I didn't know they had divers in them days," she exclaimed.
Intrigued, he hunkered down beside her and looked where she was pointing.
Sure enough, the word was apparently "divers", but he had a feeling
that wasn't its meaning. He tried to decipher the entire line, drawing on
years of crossword addiction and scrabble playing.
He felt himself squinting, as if that would restore the erased lettering.
But it did, or at least some trick of the mind seemed to recreate the mutilated
words. The absence of moss on that one side made it easier. Of course, the
inscription must be on the north side, where moss won't grow...
"Did- with two dees and an ee, I suppose - something Divers
Arts, erm, Inspire Her - Retainers? Did with, or did by?
Anyway, Did By or With Divers Arts Inspire Her Retainers. Yes. And then,
see this next line? They were - well, that probably says 'untiring'. Yeah,
must be."
Tracy looked impressed, if slightly baffled.
"What're retainers?"
"Well, soldiers - a private army, really, drawn from the feudal lord's
estates - fighting men tied to the land. In this part of the world, back
in the year dot, all the big nobs had them. This Lady Mags seems to have
been a bit fearsome, even by the standards of the time. Funny that the inscription's
in English - if it's from the fifteenth century, I'd have thought it ought
to be in Latin. Maybe it was carved later for some reason."
The girl mulled this over for a moment, then asked: "So what war's
it a memorial to? I mean, who were they fighting?"
"Oh, the Scots, probably - see, down here it says they slew the Scots
- erm - to a man, that must be. Yes, and something about the English being
heavily outnumbered. Just a skirmish, really, not a battle."
"But why fight over this?" she asked, looking round at
the desolate landscape. She had a point. But maybe, he hazarded, it had
once been a key defensive spot on a big estate, an estate that had long
since been run down until there was nothing left.
"Or perhaps the Scots came back to finish the job," she remarked,
losing interest. She stood up, stretching, and Bill was about to do the
same when something flew over his head. A paint-shot? It must have been
- but hadn't it made the wrong kind of noise? Before he could recall what
it sounded like, Tracy had screamed and fallen clumsily backwards, clutching
with both hands at her throat. Dane thought: somebody on Red team's spotted
the ridge, and they're not sloping off for a sly fag. Then, as he was crawling
over to her on elbows and belly, he realised what the sound in the air had
been like. An arrow. Which was impossible. It was just a freak acoustic
effect that had made a pellet swish so loudly - the same freak effect that
made the second shot equally loud, now, as he reached the prone girl.
Why wasn't she moving? Then she moaned slightly and he felt intense relief.
Of course, she'd just fainted - it was shock on top of the exertion and
liquor. He pulled down the high, heavily-padded collar of her jacket. There
was a red mark at the base of her throat. A round mark, very small, not
at all the sort of bruise you might expect from the dissipated impact of
a gelatine ball. And where was the red splash of dye? Had the pellet failed
to burst?
It was time to stop fooling himself. Dane threw himself flat as the wind
of a third arrow - yes, definitely an arrow - tickled his left ear. Was
there a mad archer out there, joining in with the pretend-battle? There
were certainly enough nutcases in the world these days, so why shouldn't
one be up in the hills for a day out? But surely an arrow would have gone
straight through Tracy's collar, and her throat? Perhaps the archer was
shooting from a great distance; but the accuracy of the shafts suggested
otherwise. It made no sense. But either someone was out to kill them, or
playing silly buggers in an incredibly reckless way.
Tracy moaned, telling him they were in the trees. Of course they were. Well,
he was - Dane hoped he was facing just one lunatic. "Quiet,
now!" he told her urgently. Some detached part of his mind commented
ironically on this new-found decisiveness - like a boozy old gunfighter
showing his mettle. Robert Vaughn, eat your heart out. The thought of guns
made him grope for Tracy's pistol where it had fallen. With painful clarity,
he realised he had one chance. A blast in the face from a paint gun would
make even a lunatic think twice. It took time to string an arrow. After
the unseen maniac's next shot, then, would be the moment.
Another whistling sound, and this time the shaft spent its energy in the
bracken near his face. It was, he saw with surprise, a wooden arrow. The
detached part of him mused that it must be old, to look so much like a straight,
thin branch, its flights like withered leaves. But he was already rising
to his haunches, looking back along the line the shaft had taken for the
archer, his pistol levelled with his right hand and steadied with his left.
There was no-one there of course. He relaxed, but then tensed again. No-one
had silenced the birds once more. No-one had stirred that low bough. No-one
was moving now, out from the cover of the trunk. It was No-one formed of
dappled sunlight and shade; No-one unreasonably assuming shape, becoming
a body of brown rust and rotten leather, with a face of blurred mossy hollows;
No-one raising a man-high bow of rough, wild wood with a fleshless hand,
as the other tensed beside a ragged flap of ear. Forcing himself not to
think for a vital, timeless instant, Dane sighted and pulled the trigger.
The recoil jolted back along his arm and shoulder. His shot struck what
was no longer a nose, completed its ruination. Spurts of pastel blue spattered
from eyeless sockets and toothless mouth as the figure loosed its arrow.
It hit him square over the heart.
He walked among pale trees under a colourless light. Dreaming, he took no
comfort from knowing that he dreamed. It was important not to look directly
at the trees, not to look straight at their faces - great-eyed faces with
down-turned mouths. He could see them out of the corners of his eyes. There
were men in the trees. Not among them, but in them, enslaved for
all time; and he felt the pain of their bondage - human limbs bound by those
of wood, veins which should have carried blood bearing instead thin sap,
nerves entwined tortuously among centuried roots. Tied to the land.
There were also men among the trees, though, he realised. The first
he saw was a round-faced young man in an old-style tin helmet, pack on his
back, carrying a rifle with a fixed bayonet. The soldier moved nervously
through the wood for a few moments, but then put down his rifle, unslung
his pack and sat down with his back to a tree. Dane wanted to cry out but
no sound would come as the soldier unpacked his tobacco tin and began rolling
a cigarette. Mouths opened in bark, and branches groped.
Dane turned away, only to see another man - this one seemingly older than
the first, and in old-fashioned country clothing - crouching in a glade.
He had a shotgun, and was apparently stalking something, or perhaps someone.
The hunter, if that's what he was, couldn't see that something was stalking
him - a stick-thin figure which, to Dane's relief, spent most of its time
flitting from shadow to shadow. It creaked slightly as it jerked along.
Dane set his face dead ahead, on the path he knew he must follow; the path
that led out of the trees. Then he realised there was a wind blowing, stirring
the leaf-litter and bracken, rustling among the branches that arched over
him. There were words in the wind, words sung by a thin, hateful voice which
seemed compounded of many voices, as if the leaves and branches themselves
were singing. He didn't want to hear them but he had no choice:
And then, as he came to the end of the pathway, he understood, and the
cold, pale light became a whitewashed ceiling, and the keening song faded
before anxious voices asking him if he could hear them, if he was in pain,
and did he know what day it was?
"Yes. No. I think so, now," he said.
"There are stories," said the instructor, after his younger colleague
had gone to recall the rest of the players. He paused for a moment, and
Dane fought down his impatience. The man was one of those rare folk who
weighed every thought carefully before speaking it, or leaving it unspoken.
"Yes, and there have been accidents. Nothing recent, though. And nothing
serious since we started the wargaming. People seeing things, that's all.
If I'd thought..."
He paused again then, unable or unwilling to say what he might have thought.
And after all, Dane considered, it's only one day a year. He must have told
himself that a hundred times.
"These stories," asked Dane, finally; "did one involve army
manoeuvres?"
The man looked at him for a moment, then seemed to reach a decision: "Aye,
in the War. Shock, they said. The army hushed it up. Lots of lads got killed
on manoeuvres, anyway."
"Was there something about a hunter, before that? Maybe last century?"
Once more the other paused carefully before replying: "Not a hunter.
A keeper. That was in the days when keepers sometimes had nasty - accidents.
Especially the buggers who shot poachers and bragged about it. He wasn't
even on his master's land when he... So the story goes. There are lots of
stories, like I say."
"But it's always worst for those who are out to kill? Or who've been
trained to, maybe?"
The other didn't reply to this, but rose, saying he must go and help call
off the skirmish. However, as he reached the doorway of the Centre's small
first-aid room, he stopped briefly and, without turning round, said: "There
are rules".
A moment after he left, Tracy came in with two mugs of tea. Earlier, Dane
had overheard her telling the instructors that she'd seen him collapse and
tried to revive him, before running to the Centre for help. Perhaps that
was how she remembered it. Why not? Memory had a way of scarring over some
things, and perhaps that was all to the good.
"Better for you than whisky," she said ruefully, perching on the
bed as she handed him his mug. He realised what their version of events
would have to be. Tiredness, too little to eat that morning, and the Drambuie
in bodies unused to exertion, would serve to explain when the ambulance
arrived. And it was a little enough mishap they'd both had, when all was
said and done. Best let it lie, and maybe one day it would be forgotten.
Perhaps, soon, he would remember it as the morning he had a suspected stroke.
So they chatted for a few minutes, and then Tracy left to phone her boyfriend
and tell him about her day's adventure. As she went she told Dane he should
get some sleep. He realised then that he was really tired, and so was dozing
lightly when he heard the returning combatants. There seemed to be a lot
of running about, real headless chicken stuff. Why did so many voices have
to be raised over one old fool's fainting fit? Surely that couldn't be a
woman crying, almost hysterical? He felt angry at the fuss, half-ashamed
at being the cause of it. Then - as he heard the first sirens in the distance
- Tracy burst in, horrified by her news but thrilled to bring it.
It was nearly dark by the time the police had finished checking the scene
- for what that was worth - but finally they took away the bodies. Statements
had been taken from everyone in the meantime, of course, and Dane had said
what little he could. But he knew, as he climbed aboard the coach taking
him home to urban sanity, and without looking back at the woods, that he
could never tell them what really mattered: that Rex had had that real killer
instinct, and Colin had played the good soldier to the end.
Copyright © 1997 David Longhorn
October 1997
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