Chapter Three

Tom and Harry watched the road as Heather hid herself. The rider came along the road slowly, his horse trotting gently at an easy pace as it passed between the trees. As he came closer they could see the hilt of a sword by his side, one hand rested on the pommel as the other held the reins.

Harry took the lead and made his way back to the path signalling to Tom to stand ready. The girl had wrapped her cloak tighter around her shoulders and was muttering under her breath.

'Good afternoon,' Harry said to the rider, stepping out into the road some distance away so as not to startle the horse.

The rider drew his mount to a standstill. 'Greetings,' he said with a curt nod of his head, 'by the Rowan Tree.' His voice was gruff with a rough accent. He dug in a pouch for a moment before tossing a flat, grey, metal disc towards Harry who caught it easily before glancing at it.

'Forgive me, I am a stranger here, I don't know your customs. Would you like this back?' Harry asked.

'Aye,' the rider grunted, dismounting and walking his horse forwards. 'You've passed the test of iron, that's good enough for me. They call me Albanac,' he added tipping his hat.

'I'm just a traveller, making my way with a couple of friends …' Harry hesitated for a moment and tossed the iron disc back to the rider who tucked it away in the pouch once more.

'Well met, Traveller,' Albanac said, leading the heavy, dark-grey horse forwards, 'are your friends near?'

Harry nodded but before he could speak Tom and the girl stepped out of the trees. Heather's left hand was gently grasping the hilt of the dirk, but her movements were relaxed and easy. She spoke up calling out to them, 'We offer yeh bread and hospitality.'

He tipped his hat to her in turn with a small smile, 'It would be my pleasure, lady. You're all from these parts then?'

'Round about,' she said shortly, her hand slipped to her side and she smiled cheerfully.

They worked their way back to the pool of water. As she ducked under the moss covered branch of a fallen tree Tom stepped close to whisper, 'Why did you do that?'

'What?'

'Offer him food. We do not have much for ourselves,' he hissed. 'Or is there an advantage to this?'

She blinked confused, 'Well he can't harm us, now can he? I'd lay ten to one odds he's a mercenary, dangerous folk they are.'

Tom shrugged, she had confirmed his theory: there was either a set of cultural norms to be exploited here or a form of normalised ritualistic magic. Nevertheless, his ignorance galled him. 'Why?' He asked as they returned to the dry rocks where they had been sitting.'

'Why what?'

'Why does that make us safe? What would happen to him if he attacks us?' He asked, trying to draw the answer out of her.

'He'll owe a debt, if he breaks the covenant his luck'll turn. Same as ours now that we've offered it in hospitality. We can't hurt him; he can't hurt us. For now, any roads,' she said simply settling herself back down. Tom sighed but let it drop as Albanac and Harry came closer.

He watched her for a moment, she seemed composed, calm even. He was grudgingly impressed. Most people he had known whined more when their families were killed. He had been dreading days of screaming and sob stories, but the girl was coping remarkably well. It might simply have been shock of course, but for once Harry seemed to have picked a stray without the usual faults.

Harry and Albanac followed them into the glade and as Albanac tied his horse to a nearby tree the girl fished a piece of bread and a lump of hard cheese from her pack. Albanac laid his sword down on a flat rock, tossed his hat down beside it and sat, accepting the bread with a nod of thanks.

'Rare to meet gentle-folk in these parts,' he said with a smile only for Heather to flinch, 'nay, fear not. I dun' mean the Good Neighbours or their ilk. Manners are rare, 'and worthy of praise.'

Somewhere between the trees a bird called, a soft, wood-pigeon like coo. Heather paused for a moment, listening before answering, 'Tis my pleasure. They know me as Heather. Have you come far?'

'A tidy step. From Lady Severn's latest game. 'How's the road?' He asked, mulling over his food, slowly nibbling at the edge of the cheese, surprisingly daintily, Tom thought.

'Fair, fair. Only a few mishaps,' she said busying herself with finding their gourd of water. 'How has your road been?'

'There's been nowt foul or fair worth the mention,' he hesitated for a moment before adding, reight strange though. Met a lad who said he'd passed Death on the road near enough to twilight and Death'd given him a terrible look.'

Tom twitched slightly. 'Do you expect me to believe you can meet Death himself on the road?'

Albanac shrugged, 'It's been known. Anyhow things aren't reight. Men, women and childers taken at midday …' he shook his head, frowning. For a moment he looked upwards, catching Tom's gaze before shivering. 'I reckon tha knows better than I.'

'Might I ask something?' Harry said, flicking a smooth pebble into the water. There was a plop and it sank, ripples slowly expanded outwards. Albanac nodded, watching the ripples. 'Who, or what, are the Gentry? You both seem terrified of them.' He ignored Heather's flinch as she made a small sign with her left hand.

Albanac dug a tobacco pipe from a pouch and filled it before starting to light it. He glanced up towards the sun. 'Harm may come of it, but it's safe enough for now. Understand though, 'tis best not to name them.

'There are many, high and low. Low is dangerous, but no more than any bear or wolf. Red thread, rowan and iron'll guard you well enough from most of their kind.

'High though …' he succeeded in lighting the pipe and put it to his lips, slowly coaxing smoke out of the tobacco before gently inhaling, 'That's where the true danger lies. They're old and strong. Most wear the shapes of men or women. Sun up, sun down, they care not. Only met a few but tha doesn't forget them in a hurry. Like a cat with a mouse they are. You might live, if you amuse them enough.' He sat back, chewing on the pipe slowly as he puffed at it, sending small clouds of smoke spiralling into the air.

Harry frowned, mulling over Albanac's words, 'What are they though? Daemons? Gods?'

'Some'd say yes to both. I heard once that long ago there were a great war between three hosts: the host of the damned, the host of the blessed, and the third part were those who did not care a jot. Still that's nought but a legend. A question for a question though: where is tha from that tha doesn't know the Hill Dwellers?'

'We came from another world into this one. It was … different. There … we, we weren't welcome anymore. Time to seek fresher shores and so on and so forth. So here we are pilgrims and travellers in a strange land,' said Harry, his hand rising to trace the scar on his forehead.

'The Pilgrim and the Traveller? I like it,' Albanac said with a firm puff of smoke from his pipe. 'You look like scholars and wise-men the pair of you though. I'd be a mite careful on the road if I were you.'

'Thank you …' Harry said giving a polite nod. 'And don't look so sour Old Man,' he said shooting a glance at Tom, 'as names go it could be worse.'

'I were thinking,' Albanac said slowly, 'Ole Bill,' he gestured at the horse, 'and I could do with company on the road. Four's safer than three or one. Would tha care to walk with me aways?'

'To be sure,' Heather said, rousing herself, 'ye'll swear no harm to us whilst we go?'

'And,' Tom added, 'answer one more question.'

'Certainly, provided it does me no harm and I might ask one in return,' Albanac said.

'Why are you called Albanac? I was under the impression names were not used,' Tom asked.

'That's me own business. I'd take it kindly if it weren't mentioned again. No reason that a man mightn't use a false name though,' Albanac said shortly. 'Will tha travel with me or no then?'

'We'll travel with you.' Tom said, smiling, 'I was only curious.'

Dusk was falling when they came to the river. It ran beside the road, snaking back and forwards to their left. Fiery sunlight played across the swiftly flowing water, passing through the thinly scattered trees. Albanac paused, holding his horse still as he considered the water. 'We might cross here. I doubt anything lurks in water flowing this fast.'

'We don't have the clothes for it,' Heather pointed out, 'yeh might be fine, but the rest of us will freeze tonight.'

Harry smiled, 'Don't worry …'

'We can just find a bridge. There must be one along here,' Tom said, interrupting the younger man, shooting him a warning glance. 'At some point the road must cross the river.'

'Aye, but what will we find here?' Albanac asked softly, his fingers running over the pommel of his sword. 'Bridges are powerful places after all.'

'We haven't a choice,' Heather said, 'unless you wish to part ways.'

Albanac hesitate for only a moment before only a moment before shaking his head, 'Nay lass. Let's just get there afore nightfall.'

The sun had dipped to the horizon by the time they came in sight of the bridge. It was long, low and roughly shaped with shallow steps leading up to the curved arches which stretched over the water. At near end of the bridge two tall, misshapen pillars stood on either side of the bridge. Small water-flies buzzed above the surface of the water, the wide flat rocks and amongst the bull-rushes which grew around the banks.

Albanac came to a standstill, peering at the bridge, 'Something ain't reight. Listen. I'll go up to the bridge, if there's anything waiting it should reveal itself. Heather, lass, do ye know the washerwomen trick?'

'I do at that,' she said with a thin smile. 'Any signal?'

'If I take off my hat,' Albanac said after a moment's thought. 'The pair of you had better stay back. Scholars have no business in this.'

Harry opened his mouth to speak but Tom's hand closed on his sleeve. 'Of course, if that is what you advise,' the older man answered for them. They stepped back into the bushes on the side of the road as Heather crept down to the water's edge pulling one of the spare blankets from her pack.

Albanac walked down the road his left hand holding onto the horses' reins, his right hand resting lightly on the pommel of his sword. As he approached the bridge the stones shifted, unfolding. They were two small trolls, each stood about eight feet tall at the shoulder. They carried heavy maces which they had been holding close to their chests as they knelt. From where Tom and Harry stood they were barely more than silhouettes.

'Are you sure we shouldn't help? He only has a sword,' Harry observed.

'If necessary I am sure we can step in. However, this could be a valuable learning experience, and I would prefer that they learn little or nothing of what we can do,' Tom said, taking a seat on a nearby fallen tree.

'Sometimes you can be too calculating for your own good. What if a time comes when they find out anyway?'

'Then we tell them that we were uncertain of what use we might be so soon after our arrival in this world,' Tom said smiling lightly as he watched Albanac approach the trolls. 'Come on, let's get a little closer.'

Albanac bowed slightly to the two, hulking creatures. Their skin was mottled green and blue, heavy scales covered their backs and shoulders. 'Good evening gentle-folk,' he said, touching his fingers to the brim of his hat. The reins slipped from his left hand and the horse took a few steps away from the trolls, its hooves dancing on the ground.

The larger troll looked at him, large eyes blinking in the growing gloaming, 'Pay toll.'

'Aye? Now what toll would that be?' Albanac asked cocking his head to the side, loosening his sword in its sheath.

The troll pointed to the horse with its mace. Albanac shook his head slowly, 'I need that horse tha sees. I need to get away from here fast like.'

'Why?' The troll asked slowly, swinging its head back towards Albanac.

'Ain't ye heard there's a Washerwoman upstream?' The mercenary said, shifting his stance so that he was facing the larger troll with his right-hand side. He whistled softly, the horse trotted nervously side to side, wandering between him and the smaller troll.

'A Washer at the Ford?' The troll asked, taking a step backwards, glancing from side to side.

'I think it were coming this way,' Albanac reached upwards and plucked the hat from his head, tossing it to the side. 'It'd be better to move on.'

'Toll first,' the younger troll said after a moment's consideration. 'Then move.'

There was a wet slap of cloth on stone from down amid the rushes. It was barely audible over the babble of the river. Albanac reached up letting his cloak slip off his shoulders. Then the slap of wet cloth on stone came again. The trolls twitched, looking downstream and Albanac moved.

Albanac slid forward drawing his sword in one smooth motion. Holding the blade point down he slipped beneath a wild, surprised blow from the big troll's mace. He whistled, the horse reared, its iron shod hooves cracked down on the smaller troll's arm, the troll fell backwards screaming. Albanac's sword rose in a swift, smooth arc, slicing through the troll's soft belly. The wound flickered with fire where the steel touched it and the creature howled in agony.

The mace fell from the larger troll's fingers. It clutched at its belly, falling to its knees. Albanac stepped back and ran his blade through the troll's throat. Blood, black in the failing light, dripped from its mouth and then Albanac drew the sword back. The troll fell forwards, dead. The smaller troll, still wailing from the wound to its arm, looked stared in horror at Albanac as he rose, sword dripping with blood. After a moment's indecision it dropped its mace and threw itself into the river, disappearing beneath the water's surface.

Harry and Tom sauntered down the road towards the bridge as Albanac carefully wiped his blade clean and checked the edge of the blade for nicks and chips. Heather climbed up from the river, wringing the blanket dry.

'What is a Washerwoman?' Tom asked as they came within earshot.

'Why, it's a lady who washes clothes,' Harry replied with a weak smile as he leant against the bridge. Tom rolled his eyes.

'They're, they're … well difficult to explain,' Heather said, slapping the blanket on the stones of the bridge to further dry it. 'Trust me when I say yeh dinnae want to meet them. If yeh meet a woman down by the river get away from her. By and large they do no harm, but most folks find it uncomfortable. Some say they can kill a man; others they just show the future. The shirts they wash … they are the shirts of the dead.'

Tom nodded, Harry nudged him in the ribs and Tom sighed. 'Oh. Yes. Thank you.'

As they walked away from the river, down the road Tom turned his head for a moment. He could have sworn that he had heard the wet slap-slap of cloth on the river stones.

The sun was just beginning its descent when they crested a long hill the next day. Below the hill lay a long valley. From the hilltop Harry could see the road cutting a white line down the slope and along the valley floor. For once it seemed prepared to deviate from its absolutely straight path as it curved around the low mounds of tumuli. Here and there lay groups of stones, bare to the sun and from the hilltop like huge, rough-hewn tables. Old, gnarled olive trees peppered the valley floor. In the distance, Harry could just about make out grey and white dots which might have been yet more stones.

The wind that blew up from the valley and the long lake which lay to the side of it, not far from the road, was cool and refreshing as it washed over them. Harry, however, could not suppress a shiver as they stared down from the ridge. Beside them the horse fidgeted, hooves dancing up and down nervously. Albanac took off his hat and scratched his head for a moment before replacing it. Tom, however, seemed unaffected; he stood to one side his eyes closed as he enjoyed the breeze.

'What is that down there?' Harry asked when no-one seemed inclined to move down the hill.

Albanac scuffed at the short grass with the toe of his boot. 'That'd be the Great Necropolis, the Valley of Tombs. The Old Folk buried the dead there long ago. Oft there's a price to be paid for passing through such places.'

'What kind of price?' Harry asked.

'Changes. Mayhap there'll be none today. Anyhow we ain't got another road as I see it,' Albanac said firmly. 'I've passed this way a time or two reight enough and nought has happened to me.'

'Couldn't we go around?' Harry asked, he took a step back from the peak of the hill, unwilling to look down into the valley any longer. 'It doesn't look hard going.'

Albanac raised one thick eyebrow at him. 'On the west there are the Grey Barrows; on the east the Laughing Marshes. It'd take weeks to skirt those.'

Harry hesitated but decided not to ask any further. There was something in the set of Albanac's jaw which put him off. He stretched slightly and cracked his fingers.

'Well the day's not getting any longer. Might as well get on with it,' he said and started off down the hillside. The road turned into wide, shallow steps which had been invisible from the top of the hill and which made the going far easier than Harry had expected.

The sun was slowly dipping towards the edge of the distant hills beyond the lake, sending lines of golden fire running over the black waters. The wind was colder in the valley; the touch of the dark lake-waters had chilled it. The tombs which sometimes came close to the road were many and varied in their shapes and styles. Some were like little beehives, or giant eggs, with fragile looking shells of white clay; others were great slabs of mossy stone, and then there were the long, low, grassy mounds. The last were almost unnoticeable at times, but the larger ones were almost hill-like; in their sides there were embedded squat arches of dark, grey stone.

Unconsciously the four of them walked closer together. Albanac's hand rested loosely on the hilt of his sword and Harry quietly unsheathed his wands. Heather wriggled her fingers, stretching them as she glanced from side to side peering through the trees.

'You seem ill at ease, Boy,' Tom said casually. Out of all of them he seemed the most comfortable with the morbid landscape.

'Too many traumatic experiments in graveyards,' Harry said shortly.

'You really need to move on. It was only once,' Tom said dismissively.

'I think you're forgetting the time you destroyed the graveyard at Godric's Hollow just to stop me visiting my parent's graves …'

'Ha. The good old days, they were quite something weren't they?' Tom said with a twitch of a smile.

Harry glowered at him. 'That's without mentioning the inferi incident …'

'What are inferi?' Heather asked interrupting the two of them.

'Walking corpses. Sort of puppets under a necromancer's control. Pray you never meet one. The only thing they fear is fire,' Harry muttered.

'That's dark magic,' Heather said with a shudder looking around them. 'I do not like to think on it. Not with the mist rising an' all.'

'Mist?'

'Over there,' she said pointing to the left where pale white tendrils of mist were rising from the lake-cum-river's dark waters. It snaked through the olive trees, spreading out in front and behind them, lit by the glow of the setting sun.

Harry swallowed nervously and picked up the pace. The sound of birdsong and crickets had died away leaving only silence. 'I hate bloody mists,' he hissed at Tom.

'Careful Boy, you'll make the children think we have bad luck. In any case it would be far worse if it were literally a "bloody mist",' Tom mused, but he too had drawn his wand. 'I wonder how much blood you would need to fill a valley this size with mist.'

'Surely that depends on how thick you want the mist to be,' Harry said, 'or how high, or both. Quite a lot of factors really.'

'I suppose so. Then there's the question of how threatening it would really be. I mean, yes the concept of a "blood mist" is good but a fine layer of blood can end up looking almost pink to begin with, if you aren't careful.'

'I'd imagine that might actually end up being more sinister as a result. Slow realisations over sudden shock value and so on,' Harry said. Around them the mist was creeping outwards and spreading up at an alarming rate, filling the air around them with a pale haze. 'Do you think this is natural?'

Tom shook his head, 'There is a sound, almost at the back of my mind, like a fiddle playing. Yet I know my ears can hear nothing of the sort. This is not normal. Can't you hear it?'

'No,' Harry said bluntly.

Heather shook her head, but Albanac shrugged, 'Nae sound, but there's a feeling at the back o' me neck. We ought to hurry.'

The conversation fell into silence as they began to stride onwards, almost jogging along the road which slowly vanished underneath the layer of mist as it thickened into an all-consuming fog. The sun was low, the fading light only added shadows to the thick white blanket which spilt from the lake. It was not long before Tom could hardly see the others in front of him, and even the noise of the horse's hooves and their breathing became muffled in the dense fog.

He ran his fingers over the grip of his wand, it was reassuringly solid in comparison to everything else. Harry, he thought, was slightly ahead of him, his figure little more than a grey shadow in the fog. It occurred to him a moment later that the shadow was not moving and then he was standing beside the grey, green bark of an olive tree. Droplets of water dangled from its leaves. Tom looked around slowly, there was no sign of the others. He knelt till he could see the ground, it was covered in short, tough grass.

'Damnit,' he swore softly. 'Homenum revelio.' The magic flickered on the end of his wand and died. He swore again. It was impossible to tell if they were merely beyond the reach of the magic, or whether the spell simply refused to work in this world.

He looked about. There was nothing to see, save for the olive tree and the fog. Then there was a shout from his left. He turned towards it; the words were indistinct, but it was Harry's voice. He strode towards where it had come from as nonchalantly as he could. In the back of his mind twisting music danced. He shook his head distractedly trying to concentrate. The cry came again, Tom followed it, walking into the black waters of the lake.