Ma felt a terrible sadness for Judith Sharky. The poor woman cradled her teenage son as he bled from the stump of his arm and drifted into unconsciousness. When his eyelids managed to open, the young man wore that same misted look Fin had the morning Ma found him under the apple tree.

  Except for the time of the crossing, they’d never had need of a healer in the town, and, well, those that didn’t make it played their part for the peace and security of the next generation. That didn’t mean you didn’t fight for life. It’s in the fight for a thing that its value is earnt. As such Amos Bungy, Herne bless the old farmer, was trying to do his best. Animal husbandry armed him with a rudimentary knowledge of tending wounds. He was dousing the stump with a bottle of whisky and trying to tie off veins and stitch loose flesh with the sewing kit Sharon Loxley, the barmaid, had scavenged from somewhere. His hands were shaking, and Judith Sharky was weeping, telling Jack it was going to be alright. She could just as well have been saying it to the rest of the locals scattered around the pub wearing haggard faces of shock. None of them believed it either.

  The irregular tattoo of thuds and scraps at every door and window around the ground floor grew louder, rattling them in their frames. All the glassware and bottles behind the bar chimed in convulsive fits as the earth shook. Sharon the barmaid was a woman torn between too many obligations, until a pint glass jumped its moorings and shattered on the ground. The young woman flinched and caught Ma’s eye. Someone else in the bar stifled a scream of surprise.

  ‘Up off your fannies.’ Ma hefted a spade and garden fork and thrust them into the hands of Aethelred and Emma Ready. They blinked uncomprehendingly at the gardening tools. Two more glasses crashed to their deaths.

  ‘Colin Barstow pry your arse away from the fire and help me hand these out!’ Ma said.

  Colin had copper red hair that was beginning to silver over the ears, and a ruddy completion from helping on the Tunstall farm. He wasn’t the sharpest chisel in the toolbox, but he was strong and reliable. Ma had scavenged what weapons she could from the farm. Mostly what she could throw quickly in the trailer from the tool shed: gardening tools, old threshing implements, some lengths of wood left over from Toby putting up fences last spring in the low fields, two hammers, nails, and a sledgehammer.

  With something solid to occupy their hands, and the old matriarch in their ears, the refugees started to come around, like sleepwalkers finding themselves not in their beds and realising reality and dreams can be equally as strange as each other.

  ‘Are all the windows and doors secure?’ Ma asked the room.

  ‘Until you barged in.’

  Ma whirled on Mrytle Graves. ‘Is the door locked again?’

  Mrytle was all beak for nose and hawthorn bush for a haircut and a personality equally as sharp. Still, she flushed and mumbled at her feet, ‘No thanks to you.’

  ‘Do you want to give me back that pair of garden sheers then, dear? No? I thought not. Be a pet and shut your trap until it has something helpful to say. Sharon! Sharon!’

  ‘Yes, Ma.’ Sharon eyed the hooked sickle Colin had thrust into her hands.

  ‘Are the windows and doors secure?’

  ‘I… I think so...’ She had to shout over the chattering glass.

  The crash and tinkle of a window breaking immediately contradicted Sharon. The barmaid paled and backed away, toppling over a clutch of bottles. She flashed a panicked looked at Ma. ‘The toilets,’ she said.

  Myrtle quailed, ‘They’re going to get in’

  A jarring thwack, unlike all the others, shook the shuttered window next to the pub’s double doors. Another thwack was followed by the rusted scream of wood being levered before splintering. Thwack, and the glinting corner of a butcher’s cleaver winked at every single patron who’d turned in silent dread to face it. Shrill and keening, Mrytle Graves screamed.

  ###

  Grundig Fletcher mused on how much Wrymals were like people: thick as pig shit and easy to manipulate. A few symbols painted on a wall in their blood, and they’d follow you like cattle at feeding time. At least they didn’t drone on about whatever mundane gossip was entertaining their feeble minds while you were trying to enjoy your pint. At least the storm and the natural inclination of sheople to flock brought them together: where else other than The Stag and Snake?

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  Fletcher looked up at the pub’s sign swinging wildly in the gale. He grinned through the grimy paste of sand and blood that covered his face and body. The sandpapering action of the wind had replaced constable Twigg’s blood with his own, burning off patches of his flesh. The more he bled, the thicker the paste became, as if he was shedding his skin to make way for a new one, a new him. The true him.

  He strode forward and pushed a wyrmal out of the way. The stupid thing fell, smacking its head sickeningly on the pavement, before slowly rising to its feet as if nothing had happened. Dozens of wyrmals had followed Fletcher there. They beat at the windows and doors or clawed at them, snapping fingers as much as their nails tore loose. Buggerin’ dunes, they were stupid. Given enough time, however, they would likely get through. But Fletcher was impatient, and this time wasn’t going to be like all the other crossings, wih a couple of stags and a whole lot more snakes contributing to the sacrifice. No, this time, Fletcher would give Sugnar an offering she hadn’t had since the time of Hardrada and Nywn. Lorimers weren’t the only ones who could drive a bargain. He’d learned to listen to the hissing whispers. They were in the cutting of every animal’s throat and the incising of their corpses into joints of meat. They were in the breeze westering off the dunes. And they were in the ire and envy at the heart of every squabble and every piece of gossip that were the sympathetic parasites of every small town since time began. Since his Sally had left for the bed of that walking tree stump, Toby Tunstall, Sugnar’s wishes had grown clearer and clearer to Fletcher. The way was made plain. Not a drop of blood, but a fountain, a deluge of it would tip the balance and free her. Free them all, or at least what was left of them. If it meant Fletcher was the last man standing, so be it. The storm could last for days. He could take his time, working through every home, cutting their throats, or let them scream while the wyrmals fed. But before all that, there was the pub, where so many had helpfully gathered. That would have been a fine defensive strategy had it been a normal crossing. Numbers would have been in their favour against the mindless few that would have typically succumbed to Sugnar’s infestation. But Fletcher had seen how to spread the infection to swell their horde, and so, with the balance tipped, he set to his work with a smile on his face.

  The green paint on the wooden shutters felt unnatural under his sausage fingers. He rubbed the smooth surface, picking his spot. Dead centre, where two boards met, like the space between vertebrae. His cleaver found its mark. Two more strikes and his blade penetrated the marrow of the pub, and he heard a scream. Sheople, the same as all cattle, bray when the slaughterman comes.

  ###

  The water was thigh deep and bone cold. Nush’s feet were numb. Her clothes were soaked, and her teeth chattered. Submerged up to his chest, Runkleskink waded ahead, pulling her along. The tunnels were a labyrinth, turning every which way, branching off in all directions. Most were lit by torches, others by acrid oil lamps, smoking blackly. Some were illuminated by antique gas lanterns that hissed as they hurried passed.

  ‘This way, this way, quickly,’ Rundleskink said, taking them into yet another passage with a lower roof. Nush had to duck, and the walls closed in so that she wanted to press her hands against them. The ground wouldn’t stop convulsing. Cracks along the walls and above their heads showered down dirt if they were lucky and jets of water if they weren’t. This was one such tunnel, and at the bottom of a short flight of uneven steps, the water was deeper, rising over Nush’s waist. It caught her breath.

  ‘Shit! Bugger! Arsehole! That’s cold.’

  Rundleskink was swimming with his head above water. He looked back. ‘Hurry, we haven’t long.’

  Nush waded forward. ‘Bugger, bugger, bugger,’ she said to herself. ‘Are you sure you know where we’re going?’

  ‘Of course, I do,’ the Wyrdsmith’s shrill voice came back from the near dark, because this tunnel was lit by nothing more than the moon-thread lacing the walls, and half of that was under water.

  The passage curved, and Rundleskink disappeared around the bend.

  The panic, which had already taken up residence in Nush’s chest, leapt into her throat, as if she was about to vomit up a nightmare. She’d be left alone down there, lost in the dark. The tunnels were getting smaller, water rising in an unstoppable tide. Cursing, she waded in up to her chest as the ground slopped away.

  ‘Sod it!’ she said and pushed off into a breaststroke. ‘Don’t leave me; don’t leave me.’

  Around the bend, the ground brushed her kicking feet and Rundleskink stood at the top of another short set of steps. But the perspective seemed off. Nush put down her feet and her head hit the roof.

  ‘Ow, mother f…’ She rubbed the top of her head and bent at the waist. By the time she got to the top of the steps it was clear she would have to crawl on her hands and feet. At least the tunnel was dry. Yep, a dry but very narrow, very low tunnel, with barely any light. Perfect, just shagging-well perfect.

  ‘Don’t dally,’ Rundleskink scolded.

  Nush crawled after him. ‘I’m going as fast as I can. Where are we going?’

  ‘Back to your world.’

  ‘Great but where?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’ She wished she hadn’t asked. Their underground world jarred violently. Rundleskink lost his footing and Nush was pitched into the wall, spitting salty profanity. A fissure opened and a blade of icy sea water cut a diagonal across the tunnel.

  Rundleskink shouted his answer back to her. ‘On whether we can find a way out before we drown.’ And he splashed away into the dark.

  ‘Wait!’ she called, not caring how desperate and dependent she sounded. Reaching the blade of water, she closed her eyes and crawled past it. Rundleskink had reached another juncture, beckoning urgently.

  She was panting from the effort and yet her teeth chattered. The tunnel was definitely getting smaller too. Claustrophobia had crept up behind her and wrapped its smothering dead arms around her chest and throat. She made the turn and found Rundleskink staring at something, his coal-black skin gleaming in a light emanating from the wall. Once she reached him, she saw what he saw.

  There was a short egress from the tunnel. The elf reached out one of his long fingers, with its pointed nail, about to touch the bright stream of light.

  ‘Is that what it looks like?’ Nush asked.

  His reply was dreamy and distant. ‘Information. Ideas. People.’

  ‘I was going to say The Matrix, or web code at least.’

  ‘Web… Code?’ the Wyrdsmith said, transfixed.

  ‘You know, the world wide web? Streams of data. But what’s it doing here?’

  ‘A web!’ The wyrdsmith said in a breathless whisper. ‘Streams of data! Yes.’

  He dipped his finger into the flow of light rippling with numbers and symbols. A gasp mixed with pain and delight escaped his fat, grey lips, and stung he withdrew his hand. The dreamlike sheen left his blackbird eyes and he blinked, shaking as if someone had walked on his grave. ‘Oh, no! No, no, no,’ he shook his head. ‘So cold. So black. You mustn’t.’

  ‘Rundleskink!’ Nush grabbed his shoulder.

  The wyrdsmith gave a start.

  ‘I take it we can’t get out that way?’

  Rundleskink gave the stream of light a distrustful glare. ‘Not you, and I would not want... Although…’ He began to reach towards the light. ‘Perhaps?...’

  ‘Runkdleskink!’

  His grey tongue wet his lips and with effort he drew himself away. ‘No, we press on. There is another way.’