The lot was like the rest, if anything more neglected. It was heavily overgrown and strewn with rubbish, everything from neat domestic piles tipped straight through the fence and black plastic sacks which all appeared to hold horribly dismembered corpses, to great loose swathes of soiled and shredded refuse, and even chunks of machinery. Rusting and anonymous, they poked up like strange growths among a sea of grasses, fireweed and purple willowherb at least five feet tall and in places higher, concealing the treacherous contours of the rubble beneath. The huge corrugated flanks of the sheds presented an interesting contrast, one in modern pastel shades on a brick foundation, the other in the bare galvanised metal of the fifties, rusting now and heavily patched, apparently decaying from the ground up. It was this one Jyp headed for, still silent I followed, sucking my palm and trying to remember my last tetanus shot. Even in that fresh wind the place stank as we passed through, but there was a worse atmosphere about it, something that Jyp evidently felt as keenly as I did. The grasses whispered like voices in the gathering dark, and looking back I saw one patch ripple against the wind, as if something was moving beneath, following closer and closer on our heels. Jyp saw it too, and I heard his breath hiss between his teeth; but he only plunged silently on.
As we reached the side of the older shed he seemed to pull himself together and walk with his usual calm swagger; too much of it, perhaps. In many places the wall patches themselves had half-rusted and been overlaid with others; here and there they’d gone on rusting, and left a gaping, jagged hole. Near one of these the grasses seemed to grow thinner, and a clear space was marked with a wide scar of ash. Here Jyp stopped, and booted the decaying wall, raising a thunderous boom.
‘Up, Stryge! Up and out, you mangy old spider! There’s callers in the parlour!’
For a moment nothing happened, and Jyp was just about to kick the wall again when something stirred and scrabbled behind it, and gave a groan so dry and rusty I thought it was the metal giving way. Then out of the jagged gap, like a beast from a den, rolled a hunched-up form that I only knew was a man by his mane of white hair. His limbs began to unfold, very like a spider’s, and I saw he was wrapped in an ancient and filthy-looking black coat, tied about the waist with a scrap of greasy rope, which hung down below the knees of his baggy greyish trousers. The boots beneath were ancient and cracked across both soles, the hands he dug into the earth like a mole’s claws, crooked and hard. He crackled as he moved, like dry leaves, and the stench of him struck like a blow. He lifted his head slightly, squinted at us without looking up, his very posture full of furtive cunning. All in all, a tramp, a bum, as typical a no-hoper as ever I’d seen, and as pitiful. I couldn’t help looking my disbelief at Jyp. This?
But Jyp’s face was a pale mask of alarm in the dusk, and he shook his head in sharp warning. Then the old man coughed once, a terrible hacking rasp, heaved himself up on his hands with alarming energy and glared right up into my face. I was so shocked I stumbled away. Beneath the ingrained dirt the face was hard and square, deeply lined, the brow high, the nose a blade and the mouth a thin colourless slash above a jutting arrogant chin; the clear grey eyes drove into mine like a clenched fist. Madman, was my half-formed thought; psychopath –
I wanted to turn and run. But they held me as a snake holds a rabbit, those eyes, and suddenly I saw the intelligence that blazed out of them, alert, cold, malign, mercilessly perceptive. Tramp and madman faded from my mind; all I could think of was ascetic, anchorite, philosopher or high priest. But of what awful belief?
‘Doesn’t like the look of me,’ rasped that rusty voice. Rusty, but clear, magisterial; I was less surprised than I would have been a minute ago. There was just the trace of an accent at times, though what kind was past telling. ‘Get the brat out of here, pilot, and yourself after. What’ve I to do with him? I owe him nothing. There’s no service he could owe me. What use’d I have for a pretty clothes-rack, an empty shell, a hollow man? And there’s a stink on him I don’t like –’
At the end of my tether, I snapped back ‘That just makes it fucking mutual, doesn’t it?’
The old man sprang up with a truly frightening snarl. ‘Out! Or I’ll spill his brain like a stale heeltap!’
Jyp’s hand caught my arm, tightened. ‘That’s enough, Stryge you old shrike! You mayn’t owe him anything, but you owe me, still – and I owe him, threefold! So save the insults, okay? And the spilling bit. There’s plenty to Steve here, and I know it. And how about a little help?’
The old man grumbled and muttered, Jyp cajoled, pleaded, even obliquely threatened when the old man turned that alarming gaze on me again. But only obliquely, and I noticed him glance behind him after that, more than once, at the waving grass. At last the Stryge sat back on his haunches, sunk his head on one arthritic hand and growled ‘Ach, have it your own way! He’s been messing with Wolves, that’s obvious, so he’ll want to know where they are – or where something is –’ He looked up and my skin crawled under the icy perception of that glance. ‘Or maybe somebody, eh? Halfway through a Wolf’s bowels by now, no doubt. Go look for him up there –’ Probably he read something in my reaction, because he chuckled unpleasantly. ‘For her, then, and leave me be! D’you have anything of hers? No? Anything she gave you, then?’
‘I don’t think so –’ We gave gifts occasionally, flowers on her birthday, a tie at Christmas, nothing more. Then I remembered the old filofax calendar I hadn’t thrown away because the currency tables on the back were so useful, and produced that.
‘Very romantic!’ sneered the old man. ‘Now do some work for once in your lives – build me a fire here! Boil me up some water from the tap there!’ Jyp and I glanced around the revolting lot and exchanged dismayed glances. ‘Go on!’ cackled the Stryge. ‘A little dirt’s never killed me. There’s wood by the wall, there; and paper enough!’ I gathered the wood, while Jyp impaled foul bits of paper on his sword, street-cleaner style, and together we got a fire laid and lit on the ashen patch. Meanwhile the old man sat hunched over the calendar, brushing his fingers slowly against it and crooning softly. Jyp came back with an oil can full of dubious water and rested it deftly among the sticks to heat.
‘If he thinks I’m going to drink any bloody potions …’ I whispered to Jyp, and then jumped as he clutched my arm. Another figure stood at the edge of the firelight, and for a moment I was afraid we’d attracted attention from the road. But this was a figure as scruffy as Stryge, a much younger blond man in a torn donkey-jacket and tight ragged jeans. Lean-faced and sallow, his sparse beard pointed but unkempt, he stood surveying us with narrow, hostile eyes. Stryge looked up and grunted something, and the young man padded over and squatted down beside him, gazing up at him with a peculiar intensity. Jyp’s grip tightened.
‘What’s he got to be here for?’ he hissed at Stryge. ‘I’m not staying here with him – get rid of him! Lose him –’
The yellow-haired man spat back a volley of curses in a thick Irish accent, and sprang up to face him.
‘Jyp, no!’ I hissed, hanging onto him. ‘If he can help –’
‘Enough!’ thundered the Stryge, with a force I wouldn’t have credited. ‘Sit, Fynn! And you also, pilot! Upon pain of my utmost displeasure!’ Jyp’s knees seemed to fold under him, and he slumped to his haunches beside me. The young man ducked down, cowed, by Stryge’s side. ‘Fynn will do you no harm while I’m here, be assured of that.’