Coldbrook (Hammer)(101)

The idea of being almost home drove her on.

As she made her way down the hillside, she made sure that the crossbow was ready.

Every sense alert, her breath shallow and fast, blood pumping with adrenalin, Holly moved as fast as she dared down to the valley floor. She followed the stream, pausing to glance around after every few steps. I’m going to shoot someone through the head, she thought, but they were no longer ‘someone’. These were little more than remnants, Godless and a travesty against nature. Once they might have had a life, but their stories had come to an end before she was born in a universe far away.

Approaching the breach, she caught a whiff of something terribly familiar. She gasped in surprise, a sense of unreality washing over her yet again. The scent of mulled wine brought a rush of memories. She blinked them away and advanced, the crossbow held ready before her.

The voices were low and relaxed, chatter between people who knew each other well. There were maybe six distinct voices, men and women, and none of them sounded afraid.

Why aren’t they scared? Holly wondered, and the weight of the threat behind her spurred her on. She moved forward, and when she heard the first sign of surprise in their voices she spoke up.

‘I’m no fury!’ she said.

‘Step forward!’ someone responded.

Holly held the crossbow up, swinging it left and right as she moved into the eerie glow. There were still two of them standing in front of the breach, aiming their own weapons towards her, and several more were gathered around a steaming pot to her left.

‘It’s the visitor,’ she heard one of them whisper, and she could not hesitate. She had no idea if this world’s humans could communicate across large distances, if this group knew of her escape, or whether they’d been told to stop her at all costs. She did not know anything, except that her own world was a few small steps away. And she so wanted to be there, even after everything she had been shown in the casting room.

‘Out of my way,’ Holly said, circling around them and approaching the breach.

‘We can’t let you through,’ one of them said. He stood his ground, but she could feel nervousness radiating from him in waves.

‘You’re not “letting” me through,’ Holly said, ‘I’m insisting on it. And there are furies behind me, maybe hundreds of them, and—’

‘Hundreds?’ another of them asked. A woman, she seemed less intimidated by Holly, and more in control. She’d be the one to watch.

‘They rose from the ruins,’ Holly said.

‘You went into the ruins?’ a man gasped.

‘I . . .’ Holly began. But they were whispering, and their fear was palpable. Holly glanced up and back at the hilltop, relieved to see it was still an unmoving silhouette against the strange sky.

‘They track you,’ the woman said.

‘Then come through with me.’ Holly lowered the crossbow, feeling vaguely stupid aiming it at another human being. She could never kill anyone human, she realised, and if they restrained her by force she would have to accept that. She desperately needed to get through, but she could not take human life to do so.

‘Through?’

‘There.’ Holly nodded at the breach, nestled thirty metres behind them at the foot of the hill like a haze of mist catching moonlight.

‘Travel through there has been forbidden,’ the woman said.

‘But you won’t stop me,’ Holly said. She caught a look between the two guards and their companions, a quick glance that spoke volumes. The woman guard started signalling with the fingers of one hand. ‘No,’ Holly said, and she raised the crossbow again. ‘I have to get home.’

‘We have orders.’

‘There’s no more time.’ Holly took one last look behind her. Dawn was already penetrating the dusty atmosphere, lighting up the hillsides, and she could see movement up there now.

Another series of finger signals but Holly was no longer concerned with their stand-off. They were all out of time.

Lowering the crossbow for the second time, she ran between the guards towards the breach beyond them.





3


The nights, Jayne realised, were always going to be the worst. Tired, terrified, and vaguely hungover, Jayne stirred from a dream-filled sleep and took a couple of seconds to remember what had happened. She’d once enjoyed these brief moments before the stab of pain, these seconds of reconstruction, when her waking mind would bring together the disparate strands of her life and identity to remind her who she was.