Weaveworld

4

‘Shadwell,’ she said.

‘No time to enjoy it,’ Hamel remarked grimly. ‘We’ve got to get back before they start to move out.’

‘Move out?’ she said. ‘No, we mustn’t do that. The Scourge is still here. It’s in the hill.’

‘No choice,’ Hamel replied. ‘The raptures are almost used up. See?’

They were within a few yards of the trees now, and there was indeed a smoky presence in the air; a hint of what was concealed behind the screen.

‘No strength left,’ Hamel said.

‘Any sign of Cal?’ she asked. ‘Or Nimrod?’

He gave a short, dismissive shake of the head. They were gone, his look said, and not worth fretting for.

She glanced back at the hill, hoping for some sign that contradicted him, but there was no movement. Fog still held court at the summit; the upturned earth around it was still.

‘Are you coming?’ he wanted to know.

She followed him, her head throbbing, the first step taken through snow, the second through thicket. There was a child crying in the depths of the hideaway, its sobs inconsolable.

‘See if you can keep her quiet, Hamel,’ she said. ‘But gently.’

‘Are we going or aren’t we?’ he said.

‘Yes.’ she conceded. ‘We have to. I just want to see Cal back first.’

‘There’s no time,’ he insisted.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I heard you. We’ll go.’ He grunted, and turned away from her. ‘Hamel?’ she called after him.

‘What?’

‘Thank you for coming after me.’

‘I want to be out of here,’ he said plainly, and went in search of the sobbing, leaving her to return to the lookout post that offered the best view of the hill.

There were several Kind keeping watch there.

‘Anything?’ she asked one of them.

He didn’t need to answer. A murmur amongst them drew her gaze to the hill.

The fog cloud was stirring. It was as if something in its midst had taken a vast breath, for the cloud folded upon itself, growing smaller and smaller, until the force that haunted it became visible.

Uriel had found the Salesman. Though it was Shadwell’s body that stood in the mud of Rayment’s Hill, the eyes burned with a seraphic light. From the purposeful way it surveyed the field there could be little doubt that the distraction which had made it mild had passed. The Angel was no longer lost in a remembered void. It knew both where it was and why. ‘We’ve got to move!’ she said. ‘The children first.’

The order came not an instant too soon, for even as the message ran through the trees, and the fugitives began their last dash for safety, Uriel turned its murderous eyes on the field below Rayment’s Hill, and the snow began to burn.