It was two men searching systematically through the thin strip of trees. They were drawing closer and there was not enough cover to hide in. Will looked around himself desperately. He couldn’t be found here. He was still a mile out from Bowhill, where Simon was taking the Shadow Stone.
‘I don’t like being out here,’ said the first voice, sounding nervous. ‘I heard that it is out here. That Lord Crenshaw has it patrolling the hills.’ He sounded more than nervous. ‘What if it sees us and takes us for an intruder?’
It? thought Will. And then, Lord Crenshaw. It was proof that he was in the right place. Simon was here, with his men on patrol.
There was a clump of undergrowth to his left. Carefully, he picked up a pebble from the ground under his feet. He weighed it in his hand.
‘It won’t hurt us; it knows Simon’s brand. Senses it somehow. It’s proof we’re Lord Crenshaw’s men.’
They were even closer. At any moment they would pass the tree and see him.
Did that mean Simon would see him? Will remembered Leda saying that Simon could look out of the eyes of the men who bore his brand.
Will threw the stone, hard as he could, right into the bushy clump—
The squawk of an indignant grouse with its red-topped head was loud as it exploded upward in a burst of flapping. A shot rang out almost instantly, missing the bird but echoing across the silent nighttime valley. The men had guns—
‘It’s just a grouse. You’ve dragged us out here for a grouse, you fool.’ Will stayed flattened to the tree trunk, trying not to even breathe, the voice a single step away. ‘Now you will really have brought it here.’
‘I told you, I heard someone—’
The other man swore. ‘You heard birds. This is pointless. We need to get back to the house.’
The footsteps retreated, and slowly Will let out a breath, his muscles relaxing one by one.
That had been close. But now he knew: Simon was here. Simon might have already begun, might right now be laying the Shadow Stone on the blood-soaked ground, saying whatever words were needed to release the Shadow Kings. He pushed on, towards Bowhill—
In the eerie predawn light, Will heard the sound of breaking branches, something large in the undergrowth.
It.
He could hear hooves and the snort of a horse’s breath, a horse and rider moving inexorably, as if making a slow search. And as he plastered his back to the trunk of the tree, he saw its leaves start to wither and curl.
Heart jammed in his mouth, Will forced himself to move – quietly, quietly, with no rustle of leaves or snap of a twig that might send the horse’s head jerking up. He heard the sounds circle the area where he had hidden, then turn and make for the nearby stone house. It’s following Simon’s men. He let out a breath; Simon’s men crashing through the thicket and leaving tracks behind them had bought him time.
He drew on every piece of remembered knowledge to get himself away soundlessly. There were handholds on the gritstone. That log is rotten, don’t step on it. And always the chilling thought: the memory of withering leaves and the heavy breathing of the horse.
When he reached a small rise, Will wasted precious moments scrabbling up the largest of the nearby stone boulders, scanning the countryside, his blood pounding.
Nothing in the valley. He looked up towards the bleak summit of Kinder Scout, the long, high ridge of gritstone tors where the rocks had strange names.
And there against the skyline he saw a dark figure on a horse looking out across the landscape like an ancient sentinel.
A Remnant.
His heart clutched in fear – those blank dead eyes looking out at the valley—
He saw the white breath its horse exhaled in the cold night. He recognised its silhouette, a rider with a single armoured shoulder piece that had been dug up in the hills of Umbria. If he had wondered how the horse was immune to the Remnant’s touch, he saw now that it wore its own ancient armour – the long nosepiece called a chamfron – giving both horse and rider a terrifying blank look.
It, the men had called it, but Will recalled with a shiver that there was more than one Remnant. There were three. One in the woods behind him. One high on the hill. And the other—？
He told himself to keep going. The same rules applied: Stay quiet so they can’t hear you. Stay out of the open, they’re watching. Don’t panic, you’ll give yourself away.
But reusing the same hiding places as he had all those months ago was its own horror. The hollowed-out tree where he had hidden, gasping air into his bruised throat. The outcrop of stone where he had crouched, his hand dripping blood. Each step brought him so strongly back to the past that it felt like he was travelling back in time, returning to that single, obliterating moment that he did not want to face.