The Book of the Crowman Read Free Page A

energy that rolled off Pike when they discussed the boy, the fact was that they were running out of time.
    In three years of searching, coming tantalisingly close to capturing the boy so many times, they still didn’t have him. Sometimes, in the small hours, when Pike’s engine was a faint rumble of snores from across the room, Skelton wondered if they were doomed. So many of the cataclysmic prophecies had already come true: the earthquakes and epidemics, the floods and landslides. In those anxious and debilitating insomniac watches, Skelton could almost believe that if they didn’t stop Gordon Black soon, the Crowman’s work would be complete and the Ward would be as extinct as everyone else. By morning, though, such thoughts would always have disappeared to the realms of paranoid fantasy, where they belonged.
    One thing Skelton was certain of: once they had Gordon Black, the world would be the Ward’s. Forever.
    Taking a deep breath, Skelton reached for Pike’s shoulder, ended up with his waxy, swollen fingers on the bigger man’s biceps. Pike’s eyes watched the contact, the coals of fury still smouldering in his gaze.
    Skelton swallowed and spoke.
    “Listen, Mordaunt…” For a moment words escaped him. He swallowed again. “You know I feel the same way as you about the boy, about everything. But look around, man. There’s not much world left to save from the Crowman. Look at these youths, their lifeblood joining the torrent of such that Gordon Black has already spilled. Three years, Mordaunt. Three years and we haven’t seen him, haven’t so much as grabbed at his coattails.”
    Pike’s slab of a hand, cold and vicelike, removed Skelton’s from his arm. Death crouched in his eyes.
    “What are you saying?”
    It took all he had but Skelton held his partner’s gaze. He thanked God for love and the strength it gave him. He became formal once again, his partner’s superior – just as he’d always been when they were in uniform.
    “We’re going to change our approach, Pike.” And, as Skelton’s heartbeat clattered on, bearing feelings he had no words to express, it came to him what they must do. He took Pike’s arm again, only for a moment. “Walk with me,” he said. “I have an idea.”

2
    As the sun sets behind the hovels and squats on the far side of the river in Shep Afon, Mr Keeper and Carrick Rowntree sit on the soft silt and smoke their pipes beside a small fire. A little farther up the riverbank, wrapped in a blanket, Megan sleeps, exhausted by the effects of the sacrament and the journey it took her on. Sometimes she murmurs or cries out, kicking weakly at the sandy earth and causing Mr Keeper to cast her a concerned glance.
    “We could take a room at one of the inns,” he says. “She’s been through a lot.”
    Carrick looks unconcerned.
    “What could be more renewing than being cradled in the arms of the Earth Amu?” he says.
    Mr Keeper shakes his head.
    “I know. It’s stupid of me. But she’s been through such a lot. And she’s still so young. I want to… make it up to her. She deserves a reward.”
    “A night spent on one of Shep Afon’s splintery pallets is no reward for one who seeks the Crowman. Look at her, Aaron. She’s at home right where she is. Besides,” says Carrick, patting something hidden inside his tunic. “You know as well as I do that Megan has already taken her reward.”
    For a while there is no sound but the plunge and slop of the market town’s creaking waterwheels and the distant murmur of trader’s voices raised in cheer as they throng the taverns around the hub.
    “It took me years to see our work as anything other than a curse,” Mr Keeper says eventually. “Even now there are days when I think things might have been simpler if I’d stayed in my apa’s smithy. He was a bastard to me and never taught me a damn thing worth repeating but I’d have known, of a morning, what was in store for me between sunrise and nightfall. Hell, Carrick,