I tried to move. I felt numb, as if my whole body had pins and needles. My body was twitching with the effort.
“He’s moving!” said the voice.
My body continued to twitch and jerk. “Nnnnnnngggh,” I groaned, trying to get my tongue to obey me.
“He’s alive,” said the second voice. “Call an ambulance! Get some help!”
People were shuffling around me. Across my vision, blobs of luminous colour slid past. It was like being inside a lava lamp. The light intensified and my eyes jerked open. “T-t-t-t-t….” My teeth were chattering, though I had no sensation of cold.
I could hear people moving, but I couldn’t focus. I could see vague shapes swimming in and out of my field of vision; the light burned into the back of my brain, but now my eyes were open I couldn’t close them. Someone was using a mobile phone, calling an ambulance.
“He’s lying on the floor,” he said, and then after a pause, “No, not as far as I can see.”
It felt like my arms and legs were quivering as sensation returned. I managed to twitch my arm over my eyes in a rag-doll spasm, shielding them from the intense light.
“Are you all right?” said the second voice.
I swallowed, and managed to roll over onto my side. As soon as I did, I puked noisily onto the pavement, my stomach cramping and my knees jerking upwards with the effort of chucking everything up. It was some minutes before I could hear anything other than the sound of my own retching.
“Here, I have a tissue somewhere,” said the voice.
A middle-aged lady squatted down beside me and fished into her handbag, pulling out a small pack of tissues. “Can you breathe now?”
I nodded, accepting the tissue and wiping my mouth. It was coming back to me now. I’d been next to the gates. The van had driven straight through them, flinging the gates into me and knocking me flying. Raffmir had been the passenger in the van.
“Give me a hand,” I asked hoarsely.
“I think you should wait,” said the lady. “There’s an ambulance on its way. They won’t be long.”
“I have to get after them,” I said.
“Who? The van? They’re long gone — nothing you can do about it. Just you rest there.”
I pushed myself up onto my elbow. Now that sensation was returning I could feel the bruising down my face, chest, arms, thighs… I was going to be a patchwork of black and blue.
“Get me up,” I said to the lady.
“I don’t think you’re in any position to-” said the lady.
“I said, get me up,” I growled. Something in my tone must have overridden her concern because she offered her hand and I half-crawled and half-staggered to my feet.
“Have to think…” I said, mostly to myself.
“You’re in shock,” she said. “It takes some people like this. You need to sit down and have a nice cup of tea.”
“A cup of tea… not what I need right now,” I said. “Which way did the van go?” I looked up and down the street. She was right. They were in a vehicle, with the safe. I was on foot, and I had no idea where they were going.
In my head I could hear a voice echoing hers. You are in shock. You don’t know what you’re doing.
I knew one thing, though. I couldn’t afford to be around when the ambulance arrived. I staggered away from her, into the street. A taxi swept by, horn blaring. I had a brief impression of the face in the cab, a fist raised.
“Where are you going?” the woman called after me.
I lurched into an unsteady jog, weaving towards the big stone church across the paving. Veering around, I could see I was leaving a line of red spots on the pale paving. I was bleeding from somewhere — I held out my arms to see where it was coming from, whirling around wildly, leaving a trail of bloodspots. It was like they were following me around. I wrapped my glamour around me in a vague attempt to disguise my path, knowing that the trail of blood-spots would give me away regardless. I wanted to turn people away, to get them to ignore me, but I was incapable of such subtlety. Instead I slammed together a ward of Leave me alone! and hoped for the best. Crashing open the doors into the church, I collided with an old man in the entrance porch. I barged him aside, taking the steps down to the crypt in ones and twos. I could hear the commotion behind me.
The crypt of the church of St Clement’s Dane is not a great place to hide, but there is a Way-node there. That much I remembered. I stumbled onto it, feeling it rise up under me, and it swept me away from the sounds of pursuit and unwelcome attention. The Ways welcomed me, lifting me and carrying me across the void, my direction unknown, without focus or purpose. I found myself drifting, hanging in the blackness with the sounds of lost souls echoing around me. I wavered in and out of consciousness, without sense of direction
“Something I have to do…” I heard a voice say, then recognised it as my own. I watched my out-flung hand; blue fox-fire was dancing from my fingertips. “…have to focus.”
Groaning with effort, I pulled myself through the emptiness, searching for a way out. Shadows drifted near me, edging away into the blackness as soon as I faced them. Suddenly space and gravity returned and I found myself falling forwards in complete darkness onto a hard stone floor. I remember the cool of the hard paving, the rough texture under my cheek, just before I passed out.
The square was large and open, dominated by the huge church at one end. It looked like a medieval pageant, except that the horses, the coaches and the people standing around watching were beyond what anyone would wear outside of a film set. The buildings gave the lie to that, though. These were half-timbered, but clean, with bleached wood beams and whitewashed plaster. The bells in the campanile were tolling and calling the faithful to prayer, but those answering the call weren’t just any faithful. It was a procession, the wealthy of the city gathering to make their peace with God. People were held back by ranks of men, while those in open-topped coaches and on horseback progressed slowly past. I looked around, finding the architecture uncharacteristically grand and flamboyant, at odds with my impression of the time.
At that moment I heard horsemen coming into the square — not the gentle walk of horses but an urgent clatter of hard-shod hooves on the cobbles. There was a change of mood in the crowd, a murmur that grew into alarm as the crowd scattered before mounted men. They pushed into the square — between fifty and a hundred hard men with lined faces and grizzled beards, their mouths set hard and eyes narrowed. Their weapons were undrawn, shields slung from saddles and swords sheathed, but the impression that this could suddenly change and turn into a massacre was in the forefront of my mind. Is that what I was here to witness? A slaughter?
The arrogance of the wealthy came to the fore as they turned to see these interlopers, watching them as one might watch a spectacle or a sporting event. Footmen moved in to seal the gap between the horsemen and their patrons. They had spears raised in defiance and their ranks were well-disciplined, but they might as well have stood before a tidal wave. The horsemen rode easily through them, the screams of the fallen echoing in the square, as spears were swept aside by swords that were suddenly bared, and axes hefted in battle-scarred hands. The footmen were not prepared for a mounted assault and either stood aside or were run down by the horses. Anguished cries came from the men, as unease spread through the wealthy. Suddenly their assurance was undermined, but they had nowhere to go.
The mounted men pushed into the open square in loose formation, their horses disciplined, their movements ordered. They halted twenty feet from the procession, their horses champing, shaking their heads, excited at the prospect of action. They edged into a long row facing the nobles, and halted. Questions were called from the coaches, but the line of horsemen remained tight; the silence of grim-faced men only broken by the whinny of the horses or the cries of the trampled footmen as they were carried away behind them. The crowd was silent, expectant and waiting. No one knew what would happen. They only knew they would be witnesses.