Five witches lay in wait for me.
The rain had stopped and the clouds were in shreds. The sun had dropped below the horizon; soon the light would begin to fail.
I was now moving at a slow jog. Before long I would have to stop and snatch a few hours of sleep. As I moved into a forest, I immediately sensed that something was wrong. It was too quiet. The birds should not have been roosting yet. Seconds earlier, the countryside had been filled with song. Now, in the deeper gloom beneath the branches, all was silent.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone running towards me from behind and to my left. Without breaking stride, I swung hard, widdershins, with the base of my staff. There was a dull thud, and the satisfying feel of contact with a skull. My attacker went down and I ran on.
However, I’d made a mistake and I knew it. I heard the voice of Grimalkin in my head; a fierce rebuke filled with scorn. Fool! Fool! that imaginary voice cried. That one will get up and attack again. You are greatly outnumbered. Kill or be killed!
That was what she would have said. Now I had one enemy behind me as well as many ahead. So I pressed the button on my staff to release its blade. Next time I would show no mercy.
Suddenly a long-haired witch burst out of a group of saplings close by; she attacked, shrieking like a banshee, scattering dead leaves with her pointy shoes. She wielded a blade strapped to a pole and I saw that her lips were flecked with foam. She looked demented; insane with hatred and anger. I barely had time to lift my staff, but somehow I parried her blade and then flicked it upwards so that it arced away from her.
She ran to retrieve her weapon, but I came round in a circle and attacked quickly, thrusting the blade of my staff under her ribs and into her heart. She screamed and fell, and I ran on. I needed to get out of the trees so as to see other attackers earlier.
When I emerged from the forest, three more witches were waiting. They were Pendle witches; their brown garb, long skirts and leather jerkins marked them out as Deanes. They waited in a line, their eyes watchful, confidently wielding their long blades. They looked much more formidable than the previous two.
‘You’re a fool to follow us, boy!’ the tallest one jeered.
All three began to cackle.
‘I’ll drink his blood!’ one cried.
‘I’ll take his thumbs!’ shrieked another.
The third one drew her finger across her neck. ‘I’ll cut off his head,’ she said softly, her voice hardly more than a whisper. ‘That will please our master!’
I thrust my staff blade-first deep into the soft ground and drew the sword and a dagger – the Bone Cutter. They were more flexible weapons.
The ruby eyes in the skelt hilt of the sword seemed to glow in the gloom under the trees. Then both eyes began to drip blood. The sword was hungry.
A second later the dagger also began to bleed.
I concentrated, waiting for them to make a move.
Let them come to me . . .
They did. All three attacked at once.
THE BATTLE WAS fast and furious, and I had no time to think. All I could do was react as they pressed home their attack. More by luck than skill, I managed to kill two of them: a slash with my sword against a neck; an upward thrust with the dagger, and it was done.
The third witch ran back into the wood.
I followed. She was fast, and by the time we came out of the trees again, I hadn’t managed to close the gap. She had thrown away her weapon in the interests of speed and was heading back in the direction we’d been travelling. Then I saw the witch I’d previously stunned, perhaps two hundred yards ahead, also running away.
They were scared.
I came to a halt and sheathed my sword and dagger, waiting for a minute to regain my breath and composure. Then I turned to head back through the trees and reclaimed my staff. My whole body was trembling, a reaction to the fierce fight and having taken three lives. I felt more and more nauseous, until eventually I came to a halt and was violently sick.
It was getting dark now, so I decided to rest for a few hours. I found a copse on high ground – a little knoll that would give me a good view over the surrounding countryside. After a while a half moon rose above the eastern horizon and I used its pale glow to search for my enemies. Nothing moved. I was exhausted and settled down with my back against the trunk of a tree and my staff across my lap.
After a while I dozed, then awoke, suddenly terrified that I was under attack. But still there was no threat and the moon was much higher. Each time I nodded off, my sleep was deeper and longer, until finally I had a strange dream.
It was one of those dreams where you know that you’re dreaming. I was back at the farm. Mam was facing me across the hearth, smiling from her rocking chair. She looked exactly as she had the night before I left the farm to begin my job as the Spook’s apprentice. Her skin was pale, but her eyes were bright; apart from a few grey streaks in her black hair; she looked far too young to have grown-up married sons.
‘I’m proud of you, son,’ she said to me. ‘Whatever happens, I want you to know that.’
‘I’m sorry, Mam, if I let you down. But I could never perform that ritual. I couldn’t sacrifice Alice.’
‘There’s no need to apologize, Tom. It was your decision to make, and what’s done is done. Maybe the Fiend can be destroyed in other ways. Nothing is certain. At the moment everything hangs in the balance. You must draw upon your strengths: some came from your dad, because you’re a seventh son of a seventh son; others came from me, for lamia blood courses through your veins. You are already aware of some of those gifts, but more will become apparent as you grow up. There is one you need now; one that would not normally have emerged for many years. But I reached out to bless you with it earlier. It is a gift that a hunter needs – the ability to know the location of his prey!’
Mam began to rock back and forth on her chair, smiling at me all the while. So I smiled back, hoping the moment would never end. But the dream began to fade. I could still see her smile, and I wanted to hug her, but then she was gone . . . I woke up to the sound of a distant cock crowing and the eastern sky pink with the promise of sun. The dream was vivid and real in my mind. My head was whirling with thoughts. Was it more than just a dream? I wondered. Could it really have been Mam talking to me?
If it was, she seemed to have forgiven me for not being prepared to carry out the ritual she had decreed. She had also used the word ‘hunter’ – I would receive the gift that a hunter needs. In the first year of my apprenticeship she had told me that one day I would be the hunter; then it would be the dark that would be afraid.