I reminded myself why I was here and focused upon the far hilltop. This time it was easier to slip behind the curtain of reality and re-emerge on the far side. There was no rush. I didn't feel flung across space as I did on the Way. It was only a step. Raffmir waited patiently, his gaze focused far out where the purple hills merged with the grey cloud.
"You're right. It is impressive."
"What? No word of thanks? No gratitude?"
"Tell me first what you would have in return. There is something, isn't there?"
"I offer you my assurances. I would ask nothing from you that you would not give, and gladly. There, that is generous, is it not?"
I smiled wryly and shook my head. "I have no idea, Raffmir. But I will wait to offer my thanks until I know what it is you want in return."
"I desire only your trust, and your silence. The time will come soon enough when you will have to choose and it is never an easy choice between love and honour. I do not envy you."
"Tell me why I must choose, then."
"I offer you gifts and your first response is to ask for more. Your gratitude knows its bounds, cousin. But it must wait in turn, like all else. We cannot reach the end without passing through the middle."
"I thought that's what we just did," I said, looking back across this valley.
"A bad analogy. I have shown good faith and more besides. It is enough for one day. Come, I will return you to your seaside banishment."
I followed him across the ragged grass to the Waynode.
"Follow closely, and this time, try to exhibit some style."
He stepped on to the Way-node and swirled away without pausing. I followed close behind. We slingshotted around the first node and away towards the second, but instead of following him onward, I entered the node and arrived, wrapping myself in concealment. It was another high hilltop, somewhere in the Welsh borders, maybe.
Reorienting myself, I stepped quickly away, taking a side route away from his path. I had other plans and they did not include having Raffmir shadow me wherever I went. The next node-point was a barrow mound in a meadow, open to the sky, the smell of wet grass rich in the summer air. I diverted again. He would wait a little while for me to follow and then, perhaps, retrace our journey. If he tried to follow me, I wanted to make it as difficult as possible.
This time, I used his technique of skipping across the nodes and using their momentum to accelerate out again, making the most of the momentum and maximising the distance. There was no time to consult the codex, but I had a vague idea of direction and I used the node-points to guess my route. Nevertheless, I took a couple of unintentional wild detours, unable to quite control the helter-skelter freefall. I hoped that would only make me harder to follow.
I ended up in a woodland clearing, the steady drone of cars indicating some main route close by. I moved out of the clearing quickly, using a fallen branch to brush across my footprints, heading towards the road. It was afternoon, but I was counting on the midsummer daylight lasting late into the evening. It would be bright enough to be seen on the road for a while yet.
I'd hitched rides as a student. Before I'd learned to drive or had the money for a car, I'd stood on motorway junctions with a cardboard sign hoping for lifts. I knew the roads around Kent and the south-east fairly well. Sometimes my patience was rewarded, but often lifts were a short distance only or not quite in the right direction. I had been marooned on deserted junctions in appalling weather, so the sound of the busy road was encouraging. I tramped out of the woods on to a fourlane road with fast-moving cars.
The traffic was moving too quickly where I emerged, so I walked along the grass verge, keeping the traffic on my right so that I would head vaguely southwards. The cars and trucks rushed past, buffeting me as they passed. I knew that drivers were unlikely to stop unless they could get a good look at you as they went by and there was somewhere safe to stop. If I was lucky, one of them would decide I wasn't a drunk or a weirdo and pick me up.
After fifteen minutes' walking I came to a large roundabout. I had done better than I thought and had come out on the A5 somewhere south-east of Ashbourne. There was no sign of anyone following me, but I guessed that if Raffmir wanted to follow me without being seen then he could manage that. I stood on the hard shoulder, close enough to be seen by cars coming off the roundabout but not so close that they would be unable to stop without the car behind rear-ending them.
I took the first lift offered, which may not have been a good idea. The truck driver was Polish and grinned insanely the whole time. His truck cabin looked and smelled as if he lived in it. After twenty minutes of trying to get me to talk about football, which I neither knew nor cared about, he put the stereo on and filled the cab with thrash metal. We stopped at a set of lights just outside Derby and he passed over a pack of tablets. The writing on the foil was obscure, presumably Polish; it certainly wasn't English.
"You like, yes?" he asked me.
"I don't think so, no."
"Is caffeine, with spike for the head." He tapped the side of his temple and nodded knowingly.
I couldn't decide whether they were pep-pills or drugs. "I think I'll be OK without, thanks." I passed them back to him.
"Better," he said, "not sleep and drive."
I agreed that would be bad. He turned up the music to a point where it would have been impossible to sleep even without the pills. When he reached the M69 near Leicester, he was turning off, so I asked him to drop me at the roundabout. Climbing out of the cab, I thanked him for the lift.
"Good journey, my friend." He offered his hand and I shook it.
He rumbled away, merging with the moving traffic. I stood on the slipway back on to the M1 and waited for another lift south. I could have made my way to a Waynode and travelled much quicker from there, but this way it would be much harder for Raffmir to follow me. I had carefully not discussed my journey in the cab, so even if he used the rear-view mirror to eavesdrop he would not be able to find where I was or in which direction I was headed. Part of me liked the idea of him cringing to the sound of thrash metal while trying to eavesdrop on our conversation.
My next lift was a blue BMW and the guy driving it was wearing sunglasses, even though it was overcast. He drove fast, staying in the outside lane and rarely dropping below eighty. He talked incessantly about the car, how much fuel it used, where he bought it from, how much he paid for it, what torque it produced, on and on.
"I'm gonna have it chipped," he said.
"Chipped? Is that so they can track it if it gets stolen?"
"Nah, it's already got that. That was the first thing I had done. You have to with a car like this, don't you? Nah, I'm talking performance chipped."
"You've lost me." It wasn't the first time, either.
"You can have the engine management chip upgraded. The standard chip cuts out at six thousand RPM and limits the fuel intake. By upping the chip you can get another thirty brake horse at four K and wind it up to six eight hundred."
"Won't that damage the engine?" It was fairly powerful as it was. What was he going to do with even more?
"Not if you're careful."
He flashed his lights at a car that didn't get out of his way quickly enough, and then roared past when there was barely room to pass.
"Best be careful, then, eh?" I suggested, gently.
"Oh, I'm always careful." He grinned as the car accelerated past ninety again.
I spent the entire trip on the edge of my seat, wondering whether the next close shave would turn into a multi-car pile-up. He dropped me in North London. It was a relief to stand on solid ground. He roared away, ramming the car up through the gears.