‘You’re not hungry again?’ Blue asked in astonishment. ‘At a time like this?’
Henry looked at her blankly, then realised what she was going on about. ‘No, no – this is a kitchen and in a kitchen there are knives. Chalkhill won’t have left us any other weapons, but he might have overlooked something here.’ Since there were no knives on obvious display, he began to pull out drawers.
Blue said, ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ She began to pull out drawers as well. In a few moments they were both equipped with lengthy knives and Henry was also carrying a chopper. ‘Do you think this’ll be enough to fight off the prickleweed?’ Blue asked.
‘I haven’t finished yet,’ Henry told her.
He led her back into the gardens and they walked to the edge of the estate. He gripped the low boundary fence with both hands and began to jerk it violently.
‘What are you doing?’ Blue asked him.
‘I’m trying to break off a piece of this fence,’ Henry said. ‘Actually I’m trying to break off two pieces…’ He renewed his attack, more violently this time.
Blue watched him. After a moment, she asked, ‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘Because the wood is spell impregnated to keep out prickleweed – you can see the plants don’t like to come near it at all. I thought we might be able to use it as shields.’
‘Clever husband!’ Blue grinned. She turned and began to walk back towards the house.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To see if I can find some rope or string,’ Blue called over her shoulder. ‘If we’re going to use shields, we’ll need something to carry them by. I thought I could make us a handle.’
She returned with a coil of rope in time to find Henry ripping out a piece of fencing and now in the process of breaking it in two so they could both have shields. Blue cut the rope to size with her kitchen knife and looped it in a cross over the piece of wood. Once knotted, it meant she could carry the makeshift shield on her arm. She stared at the gap in the fencing. ‘Won’t the prickleweed get in?’
‘Oh yes,’ Henry said. ‘But not before we’re gone.’ He looped his own piece of rope in imitation of Blue’s and hefted his shield on his arm like a hero. ‘With a bit of luck, it may have eaten the entire place by the time Mr Chalkhill gets home.’ He took her hand and led her away from the gap in the fence to the entrance gates of the estate. Beyond them was a short, straight stretch of roadway, clearly spell protected since it was free of vegetation. But then the roadway ended and the prickleweed began. The road itself was obviously not a real road at all, but just a landing strip for ouklos. ‘I’m going to open the gate now – are you ready?’
Blue swallowed and drew her knife. ‘Yes.’
Henry began to open the gate. ‘As far as I know, the Broads aren’t all prickleweed. It can’t grow on rock, for example, and it avoids anywhere with Border Redcaps. Some of the thorn and shrub give it a run for its money as well, although we probably couldn’t get through there anyway. But there are bits and pieces of roads, if we can find them.’
‘Are there?’ Blue looked at him in surprise.
‘Just remnants,’ Henry said. ‘I came across it in one of the Realm histories. Apparently there was a proper network at one time, all magically protected. This was before they developed flying spells. Once that happened, people stopped using the network and it fell into disrepair. But there are still parts of it left and some of them even have their spell coating. I figured if we can get past the worst of the weed surrounding the estate, we might try to find the old roads and see how far they can take us. Might not be the most direct way, but…’ He looked at Blue, letting the sentence trail.
‘Hard to believe we’re so close to the city,’ Blue said. ‘If only we had a flyer.’
‘Well, we haven’t. So we do it the hard way.’ He grinned at her. ‘Chin up, old girl – we’ve been through worse.’
It was meant as a sort of joke – not that Blue would know English people used to talk like that. She didn’t grin back, but stared instead along the open road that stopped so abruptly in the seething mass of vegetation. ‘Henry…’ she said.
‘Mmm?’
‘Just in case…’ She looked up at him soberly. ‘You know…’
He knew all right. For all the knives and shields and brave talk of old road networks, their chances of crossing the Broads alive were slim. ‘Mmm,’ he said again.
‘I want you to know I never regretted a single moment of our life together since we married,’ Blue said quietly. ‘I want you to know I love you.’
He took her hand and they walked together along the landing strip outside Chalkhill’s estate. When they were a few yards from the weed, their hands parted as they arranged their knives and shields. The prickleweed leaned in their direction, as if it somehow sensed their approach. There was something else in the Realm history about the Broads, something about the weed he hadn’t told her. It didn’t strangle you, as many people thought. It secreted a toxic resin on to its thorns and used them to inject it underneath your skin. After a few moments, as the resin reached your bloodstream, you began to feel calm, then lethargic, then downright tired. A creeping paralysis would spread through your body, affecting every part except for your eyelids, your heart and your lungs. Thus, you remained wide awake, capable of seeing, hearing, feeling everything as the prickleweed crawled over your skin and flayed it, piece by piece, to reach the nutrients beneath. It was a brutally slow death, often taking days or even weeks, and, according to the history, perhaps the most agonising you could possibly experience. It occurred to him that if Blue was attacked while he still retained his freedom of action, he might use his knife on her to spare her the horror. He shuddered.
‘I love you too, Blue,’ he said quietly as they walked together towards the weed.
The prickleweed backed away from their shields.
‘That looks hopeful,’ Blue said in a tone of surprise.
‘It does, doesn’t it?’ Henry was just as surprised. He stopped to consider the situation. ‘Our problem is going to be our backs. Once we start to move through the weed, it can attack us from behind. But maybe we could try a trick the Romans used…’
‘What are Romans?’
‘Ancient civilisation in the Analogue World. If they were surrounded in a battle, the legionnaires used to fight back to back. That way, the shield didn’t just protect your front, it protected the man behind you; and his shield protected you. If you and I went into the prickleweed back to back – sort of shuffled along and kept turning like a wheel and kept the shields up firmly and made sure our backs never lost contact and slashed out with our knives and were really, really careful – we might be able to work our way through.’
‘Or else,’ Blue said, ‘we could break off some more fencing and tie shields to our backs as well.’
Henry looked at her with his mouth open, realised what he was doing and closed it again. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘we could definitely do that.’
They returned to the fence and Henry broke more pieces off quite easily. They roped them to their backs and bottoms. ‘How do I look?’ Henry asked, grinning.
‘Very fetching,’ Blue told him. ‘Do you think it’s going to work?’
‘Actually I think it might. I’m surprised nobody’s tried this before – I mean, not tying fencing to your backside, but a spell-coated suit you could wear on the Broads.’
‘I suppose flying is easier,’ Blue said. ‘It’s not as if anybody wants to stroll through the Broads on a nature ramble.’
‘No, I suppose not. Shall we try it?’
They walked off the landing strip with some trepidation, but fronds of prickleweed snapped violently away from them as if stung. After they’d gone close to a hundred yards, Henry began to giggle. ‘This is so easy,’ he said. ‘I think we’re even heading in the right direction. Now all we need to do is find a road.’ He turned to smile at Blue.
‘I think I’ve scratched my hand on something,’ Blue said, frowning.