Water's Edge

Chapter XXV

The Brass Gate

All the cars drifted away like cormorants out to sea, dark blotches to the horizon. I spoke to a few of the stragglers, the marathon runners, W.I. members who knew Suggitt from donation rallies, that kind of thing, but none could think of someone who would want him dead. If they did, they assumed the environmentalists, but only in broad strokes. Nothing concrete, nothing connective.

The age of the bodies made it hard to know when people had seen them last. Hector was seen last by Matthew, and I'd keep that close to my chest. I'd see what Yazmin knew about that. And Winthrop was just an old man in a lovely cottage eking out his last days. Anyone could have been the last to see him? Benny was last seen by Joseph and he was useless.

I rubbed my eyes. They felt like grit. I just wanted to find Becky Aster and forget myself in a body I would never speak to again. I wanted to go home, wherever that was. I barely had the rent money for the flat. I had to find out who had done this, whether Edith approved or not.

That left me with the weakest tie. If the average joes of the town couldn't give me 'last seens' and 'motivations' then I wondered what on gods green earth The Hælsings would give me.

The Zodiac gave me comfort as I spun out of Thorngumwald, away from the petty troubles of the landed gentry, and out into the sticks, following the warning signs of Saxon presence. Runes carved on trees. Ribbons in the branches.

Sirius is eight-point-six light years away

Arcturus is thirty seven

The past is the past

And it's here to stay

Hedon Haven, and crude directions from the scholar. The cooling towers yawned into the sky, a dark reminder of our civilisation amongst the streams, the irrigated fields, the greenery longing for more. More what though? More care? More space? More life? I often wondered what these vast expanses of nowhere-land held, secrets and truths that the depths of the city cannot hold, and the hamlets of the countryside are too concrete to hide away. This was edgeland territory, no-man's-land for farmer, livestock, tourist, and urbanite alike.

I found a lane that had been carved recently by heavy labour vehicles. A gate had been erected from reclaimed brass and steel left over from the works that had once stood proud on these shores. It was quite ornate, modernist, spined and spiked. I turned off the stereo, kept the engine running, and stepped out to open the gate. I kept my gun holstered this time; never knew what to make of Saxons.

The gate opened with a high growl. I went back to step into the Zee when I heard movement, and coming down the road stood men and women in dirty clothes, jeans and t-shirts, but carrying make-shift stone shivs.

"Hwa fēr þær?" The man at the front said, with a scraggly beard he had just begun to grow. I hated their Saxon Patois, a broken Google Translate approximation of Old English. I took out a cigarette, leaning on the Zee's bonnet.

"I'm here to meet your... Cyng?" I tried to remember what the last tribe had called their tribe leader.

"Æfnan êower hnêaw ûser Galdorgalere Godwine Seamark?"

"Mate," I raised a hand and began to approach, and they raised their shivs, "I don't speak... whatever that is... is Godwine here?"

They smirked and began to walk down the path, "You can come. Godwine sy hêr."

They took me down the lane, and I prayed the kids wouldn't take the hubcaps off old Zee. I could tell they wouldn't let her down here. Saxons. Trouble.