The Forever Man (W.A.R.P. 3)

But that voice had grown very faint of late, and Riley hurried towards the inhuman sound, for he knew that was where Albert Garrick would be.

Riley’s enormous-enraged-creature theory soon proved to be spot on when he emerged into a soggy field. And at the far side of a green-scummed lake loomed an enormous creature, which first put Riley in mind of the tentacled Martians described by H. G. Wells in his terrifying serial The War of the Worlds, but then, as the creature’s head emerged briefly from the fog, he saw that it matched more closely another of Wells’s favoured monsters: the giant squid.

And ranged around this beast, which seemed to suffer no discomfort from the lack of its natural element, were Garrick’s dozen. Like straw dolls they were in size, and batted about just as easily by stray tentacles that caught them as they fled. If that wasn’t enough to bring a smile to a Puritan’s face (though these particular Puritans being swatted by a giant squid were probably not in a smiling mood), Riley would be damned if that wasn’t Albert Garrick himself having the senses shaken out of him by the creature; being pulled in nice and close, he was.

Riley hunched down among the reeds and clutched the axe handle tightly in both hands.

This was not the time to rush in swinging. This was the time for watching and waiting. Perhaps this great beast would do his work for him.

Which doesn’t make you any less of a murderer, said Riley’s little voice. You had the bad intention and that’s what goes down in your ledger.

Nevertheless, it was of some comfort to Riley that the creature seemed intent on rending Garrick limb from limb, and wouldn’t that be a weight off the boy’s mind? But that was not how it turned out. In spite of the odds, Garrick was more than a match for the giant squid and literally wore it down, sucking the juice right out of its skull, until both figures were obscured by the mist and Riley could make out nothing but shifting shapes in the shadow.

I ain’t one jot surprised, he thought bitterly. For if there is anything in this universe that can kill Albert Garrick, I ain’t encountered it yet. Even the blooming wormhole gave him an easy ride. Some people get cat’s eyes or animal parts and all Garrick gets is powers and comprehensions.

There was a flash from within the mist, then a booming gunshot that sounded loud enough to be cannon fire and for a split second Garrick was illuminated as he flipped backwards into the lake.

Riley didn’t even bother hoping.

If a giant blooming squid can’t do the big job, then a barker ain’t gonna manage it.

But perhaps all this chaos could work in his favour. Garrick saw himself in the role of hunter here, not hunted. And a smart fellow with a shiny axe in his hand might be able to turn that fact to his advantage.

And so, even though his heart pounded like the clappers of Big Ben and his hands shook so furiously that he almost dropped the axe, and for a full five minutes he underwent a fit of anxiety the like of which he had never known in spite of his travails, Riley determined to press on. He was on a mission now. All his life he had been hiding from Albert Garrick, which had ill served him to say the least. Now he must turn the tables on his old master.

Garrick felt the swamp water pour down his gullet and into his lungs, and his instinct was to cough but he fought it. The particles would attack the invading liquid, he was sure of it, as this was not the first time he had been submerged or partially so. Indeed, on one occasion when the world had known and feared him as the Red Glove, a pirate with a reputation to rival Blackbeard’s, he had been caught away from his ship in a little cutter and blasted to Davy Jones’s locker by a rival gang’s cannonball. The pilot had died of course, and Nubs Lewis, a Taff with no fingers but a genius with explosives in spite of that, ended up dead too. Garrick had simply settled on to the seabed with the wreckage and then walked ashore, marvelling as the time particles fashioned some form of gill mechanism in his throat that enabled him to breathe.

He wondered what the particles would do now, when he was barely submerged and his lungs were filling with gloopy marsh mud. To his delight his organs convulsed and drove the liquid out through his mouth like the plume of spray from a whale’s blowhole.

‘Thar she blows,’ he cried, then flapped his arms to come upright in the water. As he stood, something – a small pebble or the like – plopped from his person into the water, and with his magician’s reflexes Garrick scooped the object out of the murk. He saw it was the bullet that had lodged in his brain barely a minute ago, and he marvelled that with all these repeated bashings and shootings he wasn’t losing something of his intelligence, like a horse-kicked village idiot.

Perhaps I am, he thought. For how would I know it?

But he was not.

It is more powerful I am becoming and none can harm me.

But this was not true, and he knew it. The wormhole would have melted him like butter on a pan this time had it not been for the silver. For some reason the precious metal had the same effect on the wormhole as it had on vampires and werewolves.

And how did one kill a werewolf?

You shoot the shaggy blighter in the heart with a silver bullet, that was how.

If only … If only.

There was silver enough. But did the wormhole have a heart to shoot?

Perhaps I could summon the heart.

‘Master Witchfinder,’ said an anxious voice, and Garrick glanced up from his thoughts to see a bunch of so-called militiamen wading his way, concern writ large on their rustic faces. Concern, or perhaps it was fear. These were generally the expressions that greeted him. Never happiness. Perhaps gratitude from clients who had sought his particular services over the years, but the gratitude was tainted by greed, or base relief, or even revulsion for the assassin that they themselves had hired.

Not that Garrick felt sorry for himself. Not for a moment. He had striven for long decades to establish his fearsome reputation over and over again. Only once had he tried the goodly man life and it had not agreed with him, nor with those around him when his patience finally broke.

Garrick smiled at the memory. It was amazing really, how quickly monks could run in those ridiculous sandals.

‘Do you yet live, master?’ asked the lead idiot, as though Garrick were not standing there before him breathing. In all probability, what the dolt meant to ask was: But how do you yet live?

‘I do, praise the Lord,’ he said, ‘for there is work to be done. One witch-born creature has been vanquished, but the witch herself remains and it is of the utmost importance, I say to you all now, that she be taken alive. And should one of you panic and loose a shot in her direction, loose so much as a nasty glare in her direction, then that person shall be deemed to be in collusion with the witch, for I want her unharmed. Is that understood?’

This was a confusing argument indeed for simple country folk to grasp. The Witchfinder appeared to be saying that if anyone harmed the witch they would be considered her confederate, whi

ch was not the usual run of things.

‘Be you saying that the one who harms the witch is a friend of the witch?’ asked the leading man.

‘Yes, I be saying exactly that,’ said Albert Garrick, mocking their old ways of speech. ‘Exactly that dost I be saying. With mine own mouth from whenst came the words.’

The militiamen stood silently for a moment in the murk and mist like ancient pagan statues, water lapping gently at their thighs, afraid that more beasties would emerge from the water, but still more afraid to move before the Witchfinder gave the word.

Garrick let them suffer the chill for a few moments, so his words could penetrate. On no account must Chevron Savano be harmed, for she was the means he would use to finally rid himself of the wormhole.

Chevron Savano and her Timekey.

‘Now, good men of Mandrake,’ he said eventually, when their jaws had begun to knock together from the cold. ‘Now we hunt.’

And hunt they did, throughout the day, late into the afternoon, with little to show for it but bone weariness and gnawing hunger. There were incidents that Albert Garrick would consider minor but which scared the wits out of his militiamen. A flock of tiny lizard-birds descended on them, pecking hands and faces with their tiny beaks. But the poor creatures were wormhole-stupid and easy prey for musket-shot and pike. Though the militiamen suffered no serious wounds, they were shaken to the core by this attack of devil birds, a notion that Garrick encouraged, for it strengthened their dependence on him.

The second attack came from the marsh water; this time it was no giant squid but an oversized toad, which seemed almost comical until it began to speak the King’s English.

‘All right, boys,’ the toad said, a Scot by the sound of him. ‘I was looking for the chipper and then, bang, I’m crawling out of some kind of a swamp.’

That was as far as the poor creature got before the lead militiaman cried, ‘A talking toad!’

And another: ‘A Scotch toad. Have at it!’