Hour of Need
Michael Pryor
1
‘You’re the one who betrayed us! I always knew it was you!’
Aubrey Fitzwilliam flinched as the accusation echoed on the rock walls of the cave that had been their home for almost a month. Slowly, he put aside the spellcraft notebook and climbed to his feet, trying not to startle the wild-eyed Holmlander. A restraining spell was on his lips but he was unwilling to use magic unless he had to, not with the magic detectors around Dr Tremaine’s estate below.
‘Traitor!’ von Stralick snarled at him. ‘You, and the rest of them! Everywhere!’
Softly: ‘I’m not a traitor, Hugo.’
‘Liar.’ Fists clenched, Hugo von Stralick, the ex-Holmland spy, advanced. ‘We have photographs.’
‘Put the stone down, Hugo. You’re sick.’
‘Hah! Sick, am I?’
A grunt, then the stone thumped into the wall not far from Aubrey’s head. He sighed. Von Stralick may have been sick, but enough was enough. Aubrey lunged and caught him around the waist. A feeble blow or two landed on Aubrey’s back, then von Stralick faltered, groaning. His knees buckled and Aubrey had to move quickly to avoid falling on top of him.
‘Traitor,’ von Stralick murmured as he lay stretched out on the rocky floor. His eyes fluttered, then closed. His face was a disturbing chalky-white. He was shivering, too, and when Aubrey touched his forehead he was dismayed at how hot it was.
Alarmed, he dragged von Stralick back to the pile of tree branches that was his bed and arranged him as comfortably as he could. Von Stralick’s lips moved, a meaningless stream of half-words and names, as if he were alternately reading from a street directory and a poorly compiled dictionary. What had begun as a simple cold, a few days after they’d found the cave in the crag, had worsened gradually until the Holmlander had collapsed while working on their sketch maps of Tremaine’s estate. In the days since then, Aubrey had been dividing his time between tending him, finding food and water, and working on the spells that could win the war, all in isolation.
Aubrey had thought von Stralick had been getting better, but it had obviously been wishful thinking. The fever and the delirium hadn’t broken. Aubrey was now worried that the ex-Holmland spy was going to die.
Aubrey lifted von Stralick’s head and held up the canteen. Water dribbled out of his mouth, but Aubrey thought he swallowed a little. He sighed at the prospect of the water wasted, knowing he’d have to collect more, spending hours holding the canteen to the rock crevices to catch the remnants of the frequent rain that swept across the heights. When he was so close to finalising the construction of his spells, he hated losing time like that.
The weather had been trying. In this northern part of Holmland, summer had hurried off the stage and autumn had well and truly taken its place. The nights had become decidedly chilly, the rain more frequent, the days noticeably shorter. None of this had helped von Stralick’s condition.
Aubrey studied von Stralick’s face. The spy’s teeth were bared as he shivered, and Aubrey decided he had no choice but to risk a gentle heat spell.
He’d been avoiding magic. With Dr Tremaine so close, Aubrey hadn’t wanted to do anything that could alert the rogue sorcerer to their presence, not before he was ready to implement the spells he’d spent so much time over. With von Stralick this ill, however, he had little choice.
He composed himself and reworked a basic Thermal Magic spell, adjusting the parameters for location and dimension to encompass von Stralick’s wasted frame. Aubrey tugged his filthy jacket around him as he took care with the intensity variable, to provide a gentle warmth rather than a roasting heat.
Von Stralick’s shivering faded as the spell began to work.
Aubrey nodded and ran a hand through his hair – hair that had long forgotten its military cut and was starting to resemble the pelt of one of the more disreputable forest animals, the sort that skulk about around the roots of trees waiting for something to die and fall from the branches. He was glad that the only human being in close proximity was insensible, for he was sure he smelled dreadful. If he looked anything like von Stralick’s red-eyed, grimy, dishevelled appearance, he was ready to apply for a position as understudy to the Wild Man of Borneo.
Aubrey monitored the heat spell, and was relieved. Von Stralick had settled. Aubrey chewed his lip for a moment, then touched the Holmlander’s forehead. It was much cooler, and he allowed himself to hope that some sort of crisis had passed.
He picked up his spellcraft notebook from where it had accidentally been kicked during the struggle. His pencil was worn to a stub, but the break from his magic preparation had been useful in refreshing his perspective. When he studied the intricate spell formulation he’d been working on, he realised that it was nearly finished.
What had begun as a mission to find Dr Tremaine’s estate and to confront the rogue sorcerer had suffered a major setback with von Stralick’s illness. After the Holmlander collapsed with fever, Aubrey had no choice but to nurse his companion. As his condition worsened, Aubrey had much time on his hands – but using this rare gift, he had formulated a daring move that could end the war with a single stroke.
2
The Crag that overlooked Dr .Tremaine’s retreat was high in the Alemmani Mountains. It caught the wind, no matter from what direction it came, and it constantly reminded Aubrey that this part of Holmland was the natural home of ice and snow – and probably bears and wolves. ‘Forbidding’ was the kindest thing that could be said about it, but its dramatic outlook probably appealed to the rogue sorcerer. That, and the relative isolation.
After leaving Stalsfrieden, their three-hundred-mile cross-country scramble had taken Aubrey and von Stralick more than a fortnight. They’d become expert in avoiding Holmland troops, but Aubrey had come to understand that ‘living off the land’ sounded altogether grander than the reality, which was actually a constant scrounging for food and water. Occasionally, while pawing at the leaf mould in the darkness of woods, he’d wished he’d studied mycology instead of magic, just so he could have known the difference between the edible mushrooms and the attractive ones that end up driving people mad. Unwilling to court such a fate, he had to forgo mushrooms as a possible dietary addition.
On their journey, four days after leaving the ruins of Baron von Grolman’s golem-making factory, it had been von Stralick who had insisted on finding some news. While Aubrey hid in what proved to be a mosquito-infested bog, von Stralick, after doing his best to improve his bedraggled appearance, strolled into the reasonably sized town of Pagen and bought a newspaper.
Aubrey had been sickened by the triumphant headlines that crowed over his father’s disgrace. More correctly, of course, it was Aubrey’s disgrace: ‘the traitor son of Albion’. He took some solace in that it confirmed that Caroline and George had arrived home safely, because Sir Darius had implemented Aubrey’s plan: he had denounced his own son before the Holmlanders could publish their photographs. Aubrey was now, officially, the blackest of black villains in Albion. He was the son of privilege who had turned his back on everything the nation had done for him.
When Aubrey stared at the headlines, he could almost hear the cries for his blood, the press running riot; he only hoped that his father’s pre-emptive action meant that he could stand firm, positioning himself as the wronged father of an ungrateful son, and that the public would feel sorry for him.
Aubrey wasn’t confident, however, that this would mean that he would be treated as a hero in Holmland. Traitors rarely were. If he dared to make himself public, a cell was no doubt waiting for him somewhere secret and unofficial, and a messy, undignified fate would soon be his.