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Chapter 4: Rites
It was another hour before they reached the lightning-blasted tree where their packs had been hidden. The moon was scudding towards the horizon, throwing a faint blue glow over the forests around them. Caldwell thought of the blue light from the cemetery, and felt the fear crawl down the back of his neck afresh.
Wicker showed no sign of fatigue when they reached the packs. He slung the still-unconscious Merida off his shoulder and got her propped up against the packs while Caldwell huffed along and dropped to his knees beside them. The professor could feel his heart hammering at his chest, rapid and unforgiving. The wilds did not agree with him.
They got one of the spare woollen jerseys from the packs, dragging it down Merida’s arms and over her head and chest, before wrapping her legs in one of the oilskins. Caldwell gently drew her hair away from her face, wincing as he felt the bruises there. The Germans had certainly been working on her prior to the ritual. He took off his own cap and tucked it over her hair, and was just reaching for his journal when she woke.
Her scream had barely started before Wicker clamped a hand across her face, silencing her in an instant. She struggled, eyes wild with shock, but the Scot was relentless.
“Merida! We’re here from Special Operations - we got your message.” Caldwell grabbed one of her arms, and tried to restrain her. She was kicking now, writhing in their grasp, but unable to make progress against the two men. “Please stop resisting, we came to rescue you.”
Her struggling ceased, a candle snuffed out in the dark, and she fell still. Caldwell felt her arm starting to shake, and realised that she was crying.
The men let go - Wicker with doubt in his eyes, Caldwell with embarrassment - and gave her some space. Caldwell never knew how to deal with crying women. It never seemed right.
Wicker gave her one last look and returned his attention to the forests around them. His rifle was still in his one hand, and there was something dangerous in his eyes as he kept looking back at the trail they had left behind them in the forest.
“We need to get moving again. We can’t stay here.” His voice was low. “Get her on her feet, professor. The hourglass is against us now.”
“I’ll deal with it.” Caldwell had no idea how to deal with it. He did know what else needed to happen next though, and drew his knife. “Before you go, I just need some of your blood.”
Wicker had his left sleeve rolled up and presented the arm to the professor within moments. Their time together in Dublin had left him with a fair bit of experience about how these things worked. The questions were unnecessary by now. Caldwell felt between the ridged scars until he found a clear patch of skin, and quickly made a short but deep cut. He dabbed one end of his last bandage in the upwell of blood, before tearing off about a foot and using the rest to wrap the wound. The bloodied length went into a pocket.
Wicker set off after that, back the way they had come, and absorbed into the shadows within moments again. Caldwell kneeled next to Merida, whose sobbing had started to subside. She had her bandaged arm clutched to her chest, pressing it tight against the jersey.
“Merida, I need you to listen to me carefully now. My name is Professor Caldwell, and I’m here to help you.” Caldwell slowly took her good hand in his, and was comforted by the fact that she did not pull away again. Eyes round with shock stared back at him in the darkness. “The people that were hurting you, are chasing us now. We need to keep moving, but they can track us with their rituals. So I need something from you to help me stop those rituals.”
He showed her the knife in his other hand, and felt her tense up.
“I just need a drop of your blood, and then I can stop them. Otherwise they will follow us no matter where we go, and they will never stop hunting.”
“Can you do the same rituals?” Her voice shook, soft and weak compared to the screams that had burst from her before. “Will it help?”
“Yes I can, and yes it will.” He kept the knife up where she could see it. “Where do you want me to make the cut?”
Her hand trembled as she withdrew it from his hand, before turning it wrist-up and presenting the forearm. He gently pulled the jersey sleeve back, feeling how cold her skin was despite the garment, and repeated the short cut that he had made on Wicker’s arm moments before. She gave a brief cry of pain, then bit her lip into silence as he patted the same bloodied length of bandage over the new blood. In the moonlight, her blood was black against the blackness that had come from Wicker.
“Here now, press that against your other bandage for a bit. I’m afraid we’re running short of bandages.” He helped her to press the cut against the other bandage wrapped around her withered arm. He checked that bandage as well, making sure it covered the blackened skin. “Does it hurt?”
A quick shake of her head, but her lower lip was still between her teeth.
“It’ll just be a moment now. We should be all done and ready to move by the time Wicker is back.” Caldwell made the third cut on his own left forearm, wincing at the slice of the steel across his flesh. The last end of the bloodied bandage strip went over the wound, and turned black as the blood seeped in. “Now I just need to say some words, and then make a quick fire.”
He had no bandages left for himself at this point, and just gritted his teeth as he dug the journal out of his pocket. There was a page in the back, one he had prepared especially for emergencies like this, and once he found it he tore it out without hesitation.
The words felt strange in his mouth, icy marbles that threatened to stick to his tongue and rip his lips off, and he forced himself to concentrate on each syllable, each hiss, each guttural croak. The journal page fluttered in an unseen wind, trying to rip out of his hand as he read the words in the darkness, and by the time he forced the last word out both his hands and his mouth were numb with cold.
Merida watched, silent and hunched over, as he slowly wrapped the page around the bloodied bandage, and then fumbled for the lucifers in his pocket. The little sulphur sticks rattled inside their waterproof tube, and he lost the first one to the forest floor before he managed to get the second one out. He rasped it across the dry side of one of the packs, and the little stick guttered into flame within seconds. It felt painful to look at after the darkness that still surrounded them.
Page and bandage alike caught fire when he applied the little flame, and they watched it burn on the forest floor between them. It seemed to cast less light than the little lucifer had, throwing forth shadows instead of brightness, and burned with a speed that defied expectations. When it finally collapsed into ash, there was a sigh through the forest, and Caldwell felt something lifting from the back of his neck.
The necromancer must have been fast, even when wounded.
“Is it done?” Merida’s whisper barely reached him. She still had her arms crossed over her chest, pressing wounded forearms together. “I felt something, like a ghost, across my back…”
“The man you were dealing with must have been tracking us, yes. What you felt, was his presence lifting.” Caldwell struggled to his feet, legs already stiffening after the flight through the forest and the minutes of awkward kneeling. The cold in his mouth and hands was slow to fade. “We will be safe now, for a while. By the time he can find us again, we should be miles away.”
“Good. I want to go home.” Merida’s voice broke, and she looked away. Caldwell thought he saw fresh tears tracking down her stained cheeks. “I want to get out of this place.”
“I’m sure Command will be able to arrange a break, or something.” Caldwell had no idea how Command did, in fact, handle cases like this. How does one treat an agent that had been interrogated by powers like these? “Let’s just get back home first.”
Between the poncho and a spare webbing strap, they managed to make her a kilt-like wrap to keep her legs covered. They had nothing for her feet except spare socks though, and Caldwell was fretting about this new issue when Wicker reappeared.
“We need to get a move on.” The Scot had his rifle slung, and was busy cleaning his knife with a square of cloth. Fresh mud turned his face into a midnight mask. “They’re not that far behind us now.”
“We have a problem. She can’t walk barefoot like this. She’ll never be able to keep up.” Caldwell saw the midnight mask pull down into a frown. “We need to find shoes, somewhere, or we won’t get far.”
Wicker cursed, something in the back of his throat that rattled and spat, and turned back the way he had come from moments before. Swift footfalls tracked him as he ran off.
Caldwell dug the spare revolver rounds from his pack and reloaded his weapon, before shrugging the pack back on. Despite everything they had taken out of it, it did not feel any lighter. Merida shivered beside him, her cut arm now wrapped in a section taken from his torn trouser leg.
“How far is our extraction point, professor?”
“Three days on foot, if we are lucky. Double that if the Germans show up in force, and we stay lucky.” Caldwell grimaced, glad for the darkness hiding the doubt on his face. “I suspect we might have upset them a little, with this rescue.”
“I don’t want to go back.” Merida’s voice was bleak. “I can’t. I can’t go through it again. That man wants…”
She fell silent, and a fresh bout of shivers wracked her shoulders. Caldwell wanted to reach out and comfort her, but - she was a stranger, and also a fellow Special Operations operative, and who knew how she would respond to a man’s touch after whatever had happened to her in captivity? The state of her clothing - or lack thereof - at the cemetery had already sent his mind down paths he did not find proper to consider. Not to even mention whatever the ritual had tried doing to her arm - or what it could have done to the rest of her, had it not been interrupted.
There were two shots in the distance, followed by silence, and then another shot. Caldwell felt his heart start to quicken again. If they lost Wicker, the escape attempt would become an entirely different matter. Without his fieldcraft, the wilderness of France would quickly become a much greater challenge to their planned rendezvous with the fishing boat on the coast.
Ifs.
So many ifs.
They waited in silence, minutes inching past, and suddenly Wicker was with them again. He was panting, softly but persistently, and Caldwell realised that he had never seen the Scot tired before.
“Boots.” A hand thrust out of the darkness, with two jackboots dangling. “We need to move. Now.”
The boots were a size too big, but they padded them with extra socks, and Merida managed a grim smile once they were on. Wicker had his backpack on by that time, and was feeding extra rounds into the open bolt of his Enfield.
“Not too much trouble, I hope?” Caldwell ventured, once Merida was on her feet again.
“Trouble is trouble. We go now.” The Scot slid the bolt shut, and rose in one fluid motion. The backpack hump that transformed him from man into hunchback seemed not to affect him at all. “Don’t get lost.”
He set off to the north, and Merida and the professor followed. The moon had disappeared over the horizon while they waited for Wicker to return, and the forest’s darkness was complete now. Branches lashed and clawed at Caldwell as he trotted along behind Merida, whose shape he lost in the dark more often than not. Only the occasional scuff of a boot or the creak of a twig brought him back in line. Wicker was as silent as ever, and Caldwell realised what he must sound like to the bigger man when they were moving.
Well - that’s why they had Wicker in the first place, after all. Their needs had brought them to him, and him to them. The rest was history now, as far as Command reckoned.
They walked and panted, and panted and walked. Hunger gnawed at Caldwell, but there was no time to rest. He could feel sweat trickling down his back between the backpack straps and the carry frame, while his fingers tingled from the cold. He was not sure if it was the cold of the night, or the cold of the ritual that still clung to them. He rolled his tongue over his teeth and gums as he walked, but the numbness there was gone.
It must have been the night air, then.
Dawn was greying the sky somewhere to their right when Wicker finally stopped. Morning mist was rising from the land, bringing the greyness of the predawn with it. They were at the crest of a hill, with a wooded valley ahead of them. Caldwell squinted and spotted farmland hedgerows in the distance.
“We’ll camp here for now. No lights, and no noise.” The Scot crouched next to a fallen stump, shucking his pack behind it before rising again. The rifle never left his hands. “I’ll go have a gander down in the valley.”
“How does he do that?” Merida watched the vegetation where Wicker had disappeared. Nothing moved.
“I have no idea, frankly, and I’m far too tired to ask.” Caldwell collapsed next to the same stump, and slowly shrugged himself out of the pack straps. His shoulders flared with pain. The forest was dim around them, and filled with damp swirls. “Let’s have something to eat first, then I’ll take first watch.”
Merida sat down on the other side of the stump, and watched as he dug through his pack for the food tin. The lid creaked as he slowly peeled it off, revealing dark, sugared bread inside. He offered the first portion to her, then took the second for himself. A gulp of water from his canteen chased it down, and his stomach finally quieted.
After finishing her bread, Merida got up and came to sit next to him. Her shoulder felt terribly thin as she slowly leaned into him.
“I’m cold, and tired. Excuse my bluntness, professor, but would you please put your arm around me?”
Caldwell obliged, feeling mildly embarrassed, as the agent snuggled up against him. He heard a soft sigh, and when he eventually looked down, her eyes were already closed. Only the gentle movement of her jersey showed how deeply she slept.
The professor used his free hand to draw his revolver, and kept it in his lap as he studied the forest around them. The trees wavered as he blinked, and the morning mist curdled around everything in slow waves.
He blinked again, slower this time, and realised that he was looking down at his lap. Moisture beaded on the barrel of the revolver.
He blinked one last time, and this time his eyes did not open again.
Next chapter TBC
I love the vivid dark descriptive nature of the tale.