The wind from the Atlantic was sharp and gusty, driving a fine mist into their faces and through every crack in their clothing. The weather had cleared all but the most determined of tourists from the viewing area at Land’s End. The fine drizzle and mist shrouded the rocks below in a blanket of mysterious vagueness. The Atlantic lay somewhere behind the narrow visual horizon imposed by the mist. One assumed, Sam thought, that it was there. An existential assumption, based on informed guesswork.

But who knew that it was really there? Who could know?

Sam liked fog: a metaphor for life. Visibility constrained to a narrow confine.

Behind: the past, already sinking into the oblivion of inexact memory.

Ahead: the future, its shape already discernible in outline, yet beyond the veil it was unknown—and if one forged ahead too quickly who knew what might emerge at breakneck pace, to collide with one’s assumptions about what there was?

To the right and left: the confines of one’s current mental horizon, limited by physical perception, the constraints of contingency, imagination or the lack thereof.

Yes, Sam liked fog—and here, at Land’s End—after their sojourn through the relics of a past so deep in the fog that nobody could ever hope to know what was ‘real’—the fog seemed to epitomize a fundamental truth about what he had learned in the last two weeks. How much was legend and how much wasn’t? Or maybe that was the wrong question. Should it be: what was it that gave rise to such persistent legend? The assumption here, of course, that there was indeed something: a moot point. There were those who would argue that it needed nothing to originate legend but imagination. Another fairly tale: of heroes, villains, fair maidens, love, hate, generosity, greed, loyalty, betrayal, hope, fear, life, death, sex, peace, war, violence, forgiveness, retribution, curiosity, misunderstanding, reconciliation, ambition, surrender, cowardice, courage, and whatever else happens to strike one’s fancy.

Was that all? Just a figment of someone’s imagination, amplified through popular tradition? Geoffrey of Monmouth, the insignificant priest who needed a metaphor for the flock and something to suck up to his superiors: of Christian conquest and the dawning of a new age?

Or was it Artorius, the Roman general, who became a hero who drove back the invaders from the north, and then was elevated to the status of legend? Who could tell? Who dared to be definite about such a thing?

During the last few days Sam had come down on the side of ‘legend based on real people’. It had the ring of plausibility. Precedents abounded. The Bible. The Koran. Gilgamesh. The Vedas.

Plausibility did, of course, not make it true. Truth was concealed in the impenetrable fog of time, erosion, decay. That’s where it would stay. Forever.

Just like…

The thought came unbidden, and tainted Sam’s romantic, almost dreamy, mind–set.

Land’s End. It was here that ADLER and their European counterparts had had a meeting some fifteen years ago.

Sam had worked hard to reconstruct what had happened. A contact at the FBI had provided some interesting snippets of information, allowing Sam to piece together the shadowy details of a curious mystery.

Spring 1985.

ADLER’s four premier leaders—from Texas, Minnesota, Kansas, and California—went to the UK to meet up with a European contingent of neo–Nazi bigwigs from across northern Europe to discuss the possibility for coordinating their activities on an international scale: to work toward an organization that would—in some hazy utopian future where the lower races were finally relegated to the inferior position where they belonged—provide the foundation for a world ruled by the superior races.

They thought they were being subtle about their trip, taking pains to avoid attracting the attention of the FBI or other undesirable, liberal, Zionist, nigger– and spik–infested, authorities. Their tickets were booked separately. They left from different airports on different days, flew to different destinations in Europe, hired cars, and drove to their final goal, a little town called ‘Helston’ in south–west Cornwall. The meeting place was not chosen at random, but was imbued with symbolic significance. All the participants had agreed that meeting in the land of King Arthur was very much within the spirit of their association. If there ever had been a good Aryan, it must surely be Arthur, who’d kicked the shits out of the southern barbarians. This at least was their interpretation of hazy historical conjecture.

A number of hotels and guest–houses in Helston and environs had rooms booked to accommodate the participants; the bookings, like everything else, arranged independently, in order to avoid attracting any attention by undesirables: in this instance Interpol or Special Branch; or whoever had them in their sights. The men brought their womenfolk: it looked more realistic. The ADLER members were presently joined by others from Germany, France, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria.

Despite their paranoia and careful preparations, their meeting was, of course, no secret, except in their wishful thinking. Just about every word uttered by any of them was duly recorded by at least three different police organizations, who were rubbing their hands at the idiots’ delusions. Meetings had been arranged on a small–scale basis only. Attendees met apparently at random, being thrown together in cafés, bars, restaurants or during their sightseeing. The whole pussy–footing around profoundly irritated the conference partners, so that in the end—after having talked themselves into the belief that they had thoroughly fooled the authorities, who really didn’t have a clue of what was going on—they decided to damn it all, and have a grand meeting after all: a picnic on the grassy area beside the car park at Land’s End, watching the autumn sun set over the Atlantic—where they could see any observers from a mile off and the wind snatched up their words and blew them away before even the most sensitive of directional microphones could possibly pick them up. And if they couldn’t prove anything illegal about this meeting: the truth was that without good reasons those liberal, mixed–blood bastards couldn’t touch them. Not in England anyway.

One sunny afternoon a fleet of rentals converged upon the car park. The few legitimate tourists enjoying the view across the waters to mythical Lyonesse were soon put off by the bunch of intense, unsmiling creeps who appeared between them like aliens from outer space. Put off by this unsavory horde the legitimate visitors departed in some haste. The ADLER men congregated to one side leaving the women to organize the ‘picnic’, which consisted mainly of bags of crisps procured from a Helston grocery shop, dainty sandwich wedges prepared at short notice by one of the local guest–houses for an exorbitant price, and lots of cans of beer—which, once emptied, were duly thrown into the crashing waves, despite an abundance of trash receptacles strategically placed around the parking area and picnic ground alike.

The party, however, was to remain incomplete, its discussions inconclusive. This was the fault of two important ADLER members, Larry Unterflug from Minnesota and Clint McDermott from California. Larry and Clint, accompanied by their wives Shareen and Darienne, never arrived. In fact nobody ever saw them or their rentals again; something which later created a great deal of grief for the remaining members of the conference in general, and for ADLER in particular. The rental agency’s insurance company also could not have been pleased.

A mystery, to be sure. Maybe they got lost in the fog? Maybe hell had swallowed them up—though it might have been expected that it also had spat them out pretty soon after when its denizens came down with stomach trouble.

“What are you thinking?” Rita tightened her hold on his arm.

“I’m glad I came here,” Sam said, half–truthfully.

“Pity about the fog,” Harry said.

“I like fog,” Helen told him. “It’s…”

Harry chuckled. “Like life, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Harry gave Sam a crooked grin. “See, you two do have something in common.”

Yeah, right! And pigs have thirty–minute orgasms. The situation with Helen hadn’t become any better during the trip. Not any worse either—which was something to cheer about. She still didn’t smile at him, but she didn’t snarl either. Really controlling herself. Of course, Sam had worked hard on it as well.

Harry laughed. “Come on, you two! Peace! Just for the last day! Think you can manage it?”

Sam gave Harry a shut–up–or–I’ll–punch–you–out look and turned to Rita. “There’s something about this place.”

“Yeah. It’s wet and I’m getting chilly.”

“She’s right,” Harry said. “Wanna go? We’re not going to see Lyonesse today.”

“Or ever,” Rita pointed out.

Sam could have stayed in this spot for hours, just having the drizzle blow around his face and stare into the misty swirls and eddies. But—apart from Helen maybe, who cast a final, strangely yearning glance at the rocks and the crashing waves below—they all wanted to go; and that was fair enough. The idea of a hot shower and an early dinner was tempting.

Of course, there was always the danger that Harry, who would probably get inebriated on their last night, would also use the occasion to make a thing of the fact was it was Sam’s birthday. His fortieth to be exact. Rita knew about it—but she’d promised to respect his wishes. Understood the motives. Sam’s birthday was a taboo subject: since it was also the day of Katie’s murder. He could not possibly celebrate it—ever again.

An intoxicated Harry was, however, not likely to pay much attention to such sensitivities. He rarely did. Alcohol, to Harry, was a verbal diarrheic. Whatever he thought of would probably be instantly verbalized. Sam was in no mood to have anybody toast to his welfare. Especially not a lubricated Harry—or Helen.

Sam briefly considered pleading tiredness. Maybe a migraine. He decided against it. It was their last evening together. They’d had a good time, despite the occasional bickering between him and Helen. It would be churlish to bow out now because of his tender sensibilities.

In the event it turned out not to be too painful at all. They had managed to score a table in a corner of the Helston Arms. The meal, typical stolid British fare, had been passable. The wine, such as Sam conceded to consume, was adequate. The whiskey might have been, too, but Harry would have to be the judge of that.

The room was filled with the reek of booze and smoke. Especially smoke. Cigarettes, cigars and pipes combined to produce an atmosphere more toxic than Jupiter’s. Europe had a long way to go to catch up with the US in implementing policies to protect those folks who chose not to die of smoking–related diseases. Sam reckoned that he had inhaled more carcinogens during this holiday than he had in the previous decade. Everybody smoked, and the pitiful few that didn’t accepted it. Evidently the Surgeon General’s Report had never made it across the Atlantic. Neither had every other bit of research into these matters. Or maybe these people were just abysmally stupid. Maybe that’s why Europe was such a dump. Lots of history, but a dump. The crap almost threatened to smother the charming aspects of the place.

Sam watched a fat, noisy man at a nearby table expel a stinking cloud of cigar smoke. Driven by an errant gust of air, occasioned by the briefly opened front door, it chose to waft in their direction like a dirty blob of blue–gray ectoplasm.

“Hold your breath,” he advised Rita, who wrinkled her nose and nodded.

Harry nudged Sam in the side. “Gotta die of something, old buddy.”

“Yeah, well, not of this shit,” Sam told him. “I’d rather pick the manner of my death.”

“Nobody picks the manner of their death,” Harry declared, his voice a tad slurred, but still coherent. “Time will…”

He was going to say something else, but didn’t. Instead his face turned to Sam. His eyes widened.

Shit! Here it comes.

“Sam!” Harry chuckled and poked him in the shoulder. “Sam, my man! You thought you’d get away with it, huh? Thought Harry wouldn’t remember! You sly sonofabitch!” He laughed loudly. “Gotcha!”

Sam grimaced. “Let it be, Harry. Please.”

Harry shook his head and reached for his whiskey glass. “No way!” He raised the glass. “Here’s to you, Sam. Happy birthday. How old are you now? Forty? Fifty? Who knows, eh? Who cares? Way I see it you could be in the terminal stages of Alzheimer’s and you’d still fly those damn helos. You’ll die in one of those infernal fuckers!”

Sam glanced at Rita who regarded him compassionately, her lower lip between her teeth. From his peripheral vision he saw that Helen, who had been silent for quite a while, sat up straighter and studied him with more deliberation than she usually did. He glanced at her and found her eyes narrowed and thoughtful. She hadn’t known. Well, it would have been nice if it could have stayed that way.

Harry slammed his glass against Sam’s on the table, knocking it over in the process. The remainders of the Coke spilled across the table cloth. Sam reacted quickly and turned up the cloth to stop the liquid from dribbling into his lap. He stood up the glass and shook his head.

“Thanks for that,” he said. “Now can we let it rest?”

Harry ignored him and waved to a waitress. “Hey!” he shouted, loud enough for heads to turn in his direction. “C’mere! A drink for my buddy Sam, the craziest fuck who ever flew a helicopter! Makes them dance like prima ballerinas on speed!”

The waitress, a full–busted freckled redhead in a long–sleeved cotton top that displayed her impressive mammaries to their full advantage, came over, dropped a cloth on the spreading blotch of Cola and mopped it up, then hovered. Harry waved at Sam. “Get him anything he wants. It’s the man’s birthday, you know? Forty years and still he flies and shoots them neo–Nazi fuckers.”

The waitress, clearly bemused by Harry’s ramblings, glanced at Sam. Sam shook his head. “Nothing, thanks.” He nudged Harry. “Time to go bed, I think. Long day tomorrow.”

“No way!”

“Yes way!” Sam declared. He winked at the waitress. “Thanks, but no thanks. Gotta go.” She smiled at him just a tad longer and with a bit more warmth than she had to. A hint of a suggestion that blew away as she glanced at Rita. Regretfully she swung around and headed off in the direction of the bar.

Sam looked at Rita. She grinned crookedly. “I’ve got to keep an eye on you!”

“No you don’t,” he said.

“That’s nice,” she said and smiled at him. The smile should have warmed his heart and set it aflutter, bearing as it did the promise of a night of immensely satisfying sexual congress. And more. It wasn’t just sex. Rita was serious about him; not just as a partner, but as the focus of genuine love. Sam felt a pang of guilt and something else—maybe sadness—when he admitted to himself that the vacation had done nothing to stimulate more profound feelings. Why could she not see that he was a lost cause? Why persist in hoping? The truth was that he just wasn’t capable of the kind of deep emotional passion she deserved. Not anymore.

Life was so damn difficult; especially when it came to those you cared about. How much easier to deal with those you detested. Like Helen. With her it was clear–cut and simple. Personal chemistry screwed up beyond repair. Chalk and cheese. Fish and flesh. Whatever.

He glanced at Helen again. She was leaning over the table, saying something to Harry in a voice too low to be heard over the din in the pub. When Helen noticed Sam’s attention she glanced at him and gave a curt shake of her head, then returned her attention to Harry, laid a hand on his right arm, and said something Sam couldn’t catch.

He looked at Rita, who shrugged. He reached across the table and patted Harry on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get to bed. Long drive tomorrow.”

“Party–pooper!” Harry accused him. “Fun–killer!”

“He’s right,” Helen said firmly.

Harry stared at her. “What did you say?”

Helen looked like she’d bitten on something sour. “Let’s go.”

Harry turned his head to consider Sam for brief, inebriated moment. “Gotta do what you gotta do.”

Sam patted him on the back. “Right.”

The weather outside had totally gone to the dogs. Or cats. Or whatever. The drizzle was thin but so dense that by the time they reached the Range Rover only a few steps away they were soaked.

Sam drove the few blocks to their hotel, which was a modern abomination with none of the charm of old Cornwall and all the stolid dullness and insipid decor of internationalized accommodation. Harry followed Helen’s guidance without further protest. Sam and Rita left them at the door to their room.

“Sleep tight,” Sam told them.

“I’m going to have some sex!” Harry muttered.

Sensitive, discreet Harry, Sam thought. When intoxicated, Harry’s lack of tact was without compare. He almost felt sorry even for Helen, who made a point of not looking at them as she unlocked the door to their room and took Harry’s arm to pull him inside. Her face was flushed and angry. Harry wasn’t going to get laid, that much was certain.

Sam and Rita proceeded to their own room, a couple of doors down the hallway. When it had closed behind them Rita turned around and put her arms around Sam’s neck. In the still–dark room, she was a sleek silhouette against the pale rectangle of the window. She smelled of smoke and booze from the pub, but then so did Sam, and anyway it didn’t matter, because underneath she smelled of woman, and her hands and mouth were doing things that left no doubt what she wanted—and somehow he wanted it, too—if for no other reason but to yield to her desire; to make her as happy as he could—even though he was a pathetic cad who didn’t even have the guts to tell this lovely creature that he didn’t love her and never would.

But how could he hurt her so, when what she wanted was…this…Here and now. From him and nobody else.

And so he slid his hand under her jumper and loosened her bra and cupped her breasts—and as her tongue penetrated deeply and roamed around his mouth and she moaned softly and their breath became one, he carried her to the bed and did his best to conceal the despair he felt; the guilt; the feeling of inadequacy and his own failure.

He didn’t think she noticed. Her climaxes felt real. So were his own. Both of them.

~~~

“Let’s have sex!” Harry flopped down on the bed, where he lay on his back and groped to unzip his fly.

“Shut up!” Helen hissed.

“What’s the matter?” Harry’s hands stopped fumbling. He lay still, staring up at her with wide, slightly unfocused, eyes and an expression of incomprehension and hurt.

Helen turned to the bathroom. “Just…go to bed!” she snapped as she closed the door behind her. She sat down on the toilet to attend to her bodily functions and to get away from Harry.

What was it with him? What was it with her for that matter? Did she really want to marry this guy? After the last couple of weeks her previous impressions of who and what ‘Harry’ was had been…not so much ‘revised’ as…’adjusted’. He was a sweet guy, no doubt about it. Kind, considerate, generous, affectionate, sensitive—unless he was in this state, of course, when he was still kind and affectionate, but more in the manner of a randy ape than a human being.

The solution appeared obvious: get Harry to stop drinking more than he could handle. She had a feeling that the elegant simplicity of the proposition hid its flaws, the first of which was that Harry simply wouldn’t do it—despite many reiterations of his love for her and how he would do ‘anything’ to make her happy. She had already hinted at such matters—and come up empty handed. Harry had slid away like an eel, not disputing the need, and yet somehow not actually agreeing to her implied suggestions. The signs were clear and Helen found them disturbing.

Still, she loved him.

Or did she?

The question had reared its head several times during these last two weeks. She had agonized over it many a sleepless night. Her chronic insomnia, a feature of her life for as long as she could remember, had not been helped by the thoughts roaming around in her head. Five hours of sleep on a good night. Three, sometimes less, on a bad one. The last two weeks had been an unending sequence of bad ones. As long as sex took up a significant part of the waking period that was all right, but when she had obliged Harry by lying beside him quietly, instead of getting up and doing what she would otherwise have done—reading; listening to music; watching TV; working with her laptop, maybe surfing the web for her favorite sites, both work–related and for entertainment—those nights had seemed to be never–ending. And it was going to be one of those nights.

She knew it. She just knew it!

Maybe the most troublesome aspect of her relationship with Harry was that passion, which had never figured all that prominently, was rapidly fading into unnoticeability. Helen frowned. Maybe ‘passion’ was the wrong word. Or maybe it wasn’t. Damned if she knew. It had something do with being touched, not just on the surface but somewhere near her core—so that she actually felt something. Anything at all. To be brought to the point where she might actually lose this damn control she seemed to have over everything having to do with her emotions. Stirred, even if it was to loathing or detestation, like the kind she felt for Sam. If she could only muster a similar depth of emotion for Harry everything would be work out just fine. The drinking wouldn’t matter, because it would be dealt with. It wouldn’t be an effort to make an effort, but a joyous labor of love and engaged affection and sheer interest in another human being.

She buried her face in her hands, sick in her heart with the hopelessness of it all. Sitting on the toilet, feeling sorry for herself.

What a pathetic creature.

Was she crying? She raised her head, sniffed, and tore off a few sheets of toilet paper which she used to daub at her eyes and the runny makeup and her equally runny nose.

Later she stood in front of the mirror and just stared at herself—and couldn’t even get worked up over her own pathetic misery anymore. Nothing mattered. Whatever had gone wrong had gone wrong—maybe a long time ago, when her mother left the baby at the doorstep of a Manhattan church. That was an excuse, of course, but it would have to do.

Why do you bother? With Harry? With anything?

Why take another breath? Maybe dying, maybe the last moment of her life when she knew that this was the irrevocable step…maybe that would stimulate a visceral response of some sort. Of course, the act of suicide was counterproductive. What if she did feel something beyond indifference? What if she started to care? What if she then died, and never had a chance to make something out of what she’d found?

She knew why she took another breath.

And another.

All of which didn’t solve her immediate problems, of course.

What ‘problems’? She didn’t have any problems! Everything was…fine. Her traveling companions were…nice.

That’s hardly a ‘visceral response’…

Funny how life insisted on not obliging.

I do have a problem.

The last two weeks had distanced her from Harry. Familiarity had bred, if not contempt, then at least a troublesome form of indifference. The truth was that, while she’d do anything in her power not to hurt Harry’s feelings, if he were gone tomorrow she might feel sad, maybe even lonely—having lost a means to satisfy her natural urges, which had always been remarkably alive, despite everything else in her sometimes feeling dead—but that was about it. It’d pass quickly enough. There’d be someone else.

I wish…

Wish what?

Maybe that someday, somehow, she wouldn’t be able to think that about someone—even if she wanted to—but that she simply couldn’t.

That would be nice…

Helen terminated the tête–a–tête with herself by turning away from the mirror and her image. She hesitated before opening the door. What would she say to Harry? She definitely didn’t want the ‘sex’ he’d been offering so grandly. The mere memory of him lying there, unzipping his fly, was a grotesque obscenity. Of the things she really didn’t want to do right now this ranked even below…

No way!

Her hand touched the door handle.

Sam and Rita were probably having a good time right now.

Screw them!

Helen shook her head, opened the door, stepped into the room. Harry was still lying on the bed, one hand on his crotch, near his open fly. The other arm was flopped across the bed. His eyes were closed and he was snoring fitfully.

Small mercies!

Should she move him?

Her gaze fell on a somewhat stuffy, but possibly not too uncomfortable, cheap armchair. Helen paused, thought, then took the chair and dragged it so it stood near the window. She turned off the light and sat herself down in the chair, staring out at the night outside, where the mist and the fine drizzle swirled to errant gusts through the halos of light cast by the spare array of orange–tinged street lights—growing thicker and more impenetrable even as she watched.

~~~

Sam couldn’t sleep. This was unusual: insomnia was not on the list of his many problems. But sometime during the early hours of the morning he’d woken up. Rita was draped over the other side of the bed, snoring softly. It wasn’t that sound which had woken him though. Something else…something that didn’t let him back to sleep.

Maybe a dream? He closed his eyes and tried to sink back into whatever had been there before awakening.

He seemed to remember…a song? Woeful. Yearning.

Sam closed his eyes and sank deeper into the memory; snuck up on it gently, to stop it from blowing away like smoke in the wind. Dreams did that. You had to sidle up on them, so they didn’t even know you were there.

A mirror–like surface of water. Above it a dense, swirling fog. Faces in the fog.

One face…

The image retreated behind a veil.

An intimation of a caress; like a feather, only it touched his soul with a sad, yet almost siren–like, quality. The face of a beautiful woman, ethereal and lovely. Fading in and out of existence, created by the whorls of mist dancing across the waters.

The water itself. A lake of sorts. Maybe like Loe Pool, which they’d visited yesterday. Not a particularly spectacular place. Just a tidal pool with a boardwalk for the tourists who came here to ogle yet another ‘Arthurian’ site: Loe Pool being one of the candidates for the mystical place whence Excalibur had emerged and whereto it had been returned.

Sam opened his eyes.

Of course! The whole Arthurian thing was finally getting to him! Harry’s endless commentary. Harry Petrowski: Encyclopedia Arthuriana. Standing there, gesticulating excitedly.

The Lady of the Lake. Loe Pool: Excalibur’s final resting place.

Nice story. Boring place. About as dull as it could get; especially when one saw it surrounded by video- and digital-camera wielding tourists. But Harry was in his element. The guy was an endless well–spring of Arthurian lore. Sam wondered what Rita thought about it. Or Miss Pain–in–the–Ass. Or the rest of the tourists getting the benefit of Harry’s commentary.

Rita muttered something in a dream of her own and rolled onto her back. Sam turned his head and looked at her. Her upper torso was uncovered, and the dim light from the window highlighted the round shapes of her breasts and cast into sharp contrast the dark nipples.

Sam wondered how she would react if he touched her now; kissed her nipples, or maybe roamed further down. Knowing Rita, she would probably continue sleeping. Rita slept well and soundly. Unless he persisted, of course, in which case, if precedent was anything to go by, she would eventually respond favorably.

Sam decided against waking Rita. He pulled up the blanket to cover her and got out of the bed. She muttered something in her sleep, then fell silent again. He padded to the window, peered out at the dense grayness. The rain seemed to have stopped, but the fog was so dense that the street lights were only diffuse halos of light. Sam looked up. The sky displayed the faintest hint of something other than reflected illumination. He picked up his watch from the bedside console. Almost six.

Unbidden, the image of the dream–lake returned. With it came an almost real auditory sensation of the woeful song, tinged now with a new note. A beckoning. Almost a summons. A temptation.

Come…for I will show you things…

A face of swirling eddies in gray fog.

He looked at his watch.

Six o’clock.

Plenty of time to…

What?

Harry wouldn’t wake up for another couple of hours. Rita, too, would sleep on unless awakened. Neither of them were morning people. Helen…who cared?

Sam came to a decision. He scribbled a note for Rita and left it on the bedside console. He got dressed and went to the toilet, put on a water–proof parka, took the car–key, and quietly left the room. He tiptoed down the hallway and the stairs. The young guy at the reception was snoozing, but woke when Sam came past. Sam told him he was going for a walk. The youth regarded him with bleary–eyed incomprehension. Sam let himself out. He stood for a few moments, soaking up the ambience: the fog; the dreary, yet romantic, clamminess of it all; the sense of something…old…surrounding him. It was at these moments that he actually felt something that was more than a tourist’s curiosity; when the minor irritants didn’t matter anymore, made insignificant by a sense of history. Mystery maybe. Whatever it was that had prompted him to come out here and now.

He went to the Range Rover and opened the door. He hesitated. The fog was so thick, it might not be such a good idea to drive. Maybe he should walk.

Not enough time. Not if he wanted to go to Loe Pool for one last visit. Leave here with a sense of…what? Something else but memories of pubs and hordes of tourists.

Sam shrugged and turned the key in the lock. The engine kicked over and came to life. He reached for the gear–shift when there was a knock on the passenger side window. Sam looked and saw Helen.

Shit!

She opened the door.

“What are you doing?” Her tone was civil. Barely.

Sam sighed. The best laid plans of mice and men…

“Going for a drive.”

“In this?”

“Yeah.”

She hesitated.

“Where you going?”

“Why?”

“Just asking!”

“Just…down the road.”

He put his foot on the brake and shifted the automatic into ‘D’.

She didn’t close the door. Yet.

He glanced at her again. She was wearing her green water–proof jacket and looked as if she’d been up for ages.

“Anything else?” he asked, none–too–friendly.

Her internal conflict was plainly visible. Strange she didn’t hide it better. She usually did. If anything went on beneath that mask it was always kept well away from the surface. Not so this time—which in itself was strange enough.

“Mind if I come?”

“What?”

“Got a problem with that?”

“Yeah.” He wasn’t really going to say that, but it just came out. Bang!

She stared at him. A series of expressions flitted across her face. Astonishment. Disappointment. Anger. Detestation.

She shook her head. “Screw you, too!” she snapped. “Why do you have to be such a jerk!” She slammed the door and stalked off, heading away from the hotel and into the fog.

Sam sat frozen for a few moments.

Shit!

What was it with her anyway? Did she expect him to be happy about her inflicting herself on a private moment like that? What was she doing out here? How did she know he was out here?

Damn her!

He jammed the automatic back into ‘P’ and turned off the engine. He left the car and looked around. As she strode away her outline was rapidly fading into the fog. Sam muttered a soft curse and jogged after her.

“Hey! Wait!”

She ignored him and continued walking.

“Helen!”

“Damn you!” She didn’t turn around.

Sam stopped and fought a brief battle with his pride. Helen merged into the fog again.

“I’m sorry!”

Her footfall halted. She was an indistinct shape in the halo of one of the street lamps.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

A moment passed. Sam started to turn away. Let her do as she pleased. It was better that way.

She started moving. Sam waited.

She halted a couple of steps away from him. Her face was in shadow.

Sam gave her a crooked grin. “Don’t make too much of it,” he said. “But…” he sighed “why don’t you come?”

“Wow!” she said softly. With a ring of suspicion: “What do you want?”

Sam was about to give snappy retort but bit it back. Something wasn’t as it usually was, and this bothered him.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just… Look—you want to come or not? Your choice.”

Helen heaved a deep breath and expelled it again.

“Where were you going?”

“Loe Pool.”

“Why?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. Just…”

She nodded thoughtfully. “You felt it, too.”

“What?”

“Something. Whatever. Maybe because it’s the last day…” Shrugging. “I don’t know. Just something…”

“Maybe we don’t want to go home after all,” he suggested.

“Yeah. Maybe.” She looked around. “Not exactly ideal driving conditions.”

“We’ll live. It’s not that far.”

“I hope you drive as well as Harry says you fly,” she said and started walking in the direction of the car.

Sam followed.

They took the A394 south, then doubled back at the junction with the A3083. A short distance later they came upon Degibna Lane which led to the Pool. The fog was so dense here they almost missed it. The Range Rover crawled along at a snail’s pace. The sign said The Loe and it was just as well it was there. They turned left and continued to at a snail’s pace along Degibna Lane. Sam briefly turned off the headlights, hoping the incipient daylight might make things easier to see. It didn’t and he turned the lights on again.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Helen remarked.

Sam glanced at her. She didn’t appear overly perturbed or tense. Just curious.

“What did Harry mean when he said we had something in common?” she wondered.

“The fog–thing, I suppose.”

“Yeah…”

She fell silent again. Sam caught himself thinking that, as she was now, she wasn’t such an irritant at all.

“Why’d you get up so early?”

She shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“I bet Harry hasn’t got that problem,” he noted.

“He doesn’t.”

Something in her tone made him look at her. She was staring straight ahead, her face tense. There was something else, too, but Sam couldn’t figure what.

The Range Rover bumped over something rough on the road. Sam jerked his attention back to steering. It wasn’t just ‘something’ rough! Sam braked and brought the Range Rover to a halt and placed the automatic into ‘P’.

“What is it?” Helen wanted to know.

“Don’t know.” He opened the door and saw that the car stood, not on the paved surface of a road, but on a muddy rutted track.

“What…”

“What’s the matter?”

“I have no idea,” he confessed. “Seems we—” he grimaced “—lost our road…”

How do you ‘lose’ a piece of road? It was foggy but not that bad!

Sam closed the door again. “Shall we turn back?”

“Might be an idea.”

Sam started a multi–point turn.

“Look!” Helen exclaimed.

Sam braked. Ahead of them the fog was thinning rapidly, revealing before them a heavily forested area. They were on a track of sorts, leading into a gloomy opening at the base of the trees.

“Where are we?”

Sam opened the door again and looked behind them. A wall of dense fog, starting maybe thirty yards behind the car, blocked out the view in the direction whence they’d come. On the opposite side stretched a forest he couldn’t recall having seen yesterday. The trees were huge, looming shapes emerging from the thinning fog. Pines? Some kind of cypress? In Cornwall?

And…

“You notice something?” he asked Helen.

She tore her gaze away from their surroundings.

“I notice a lot of things,” she snapped. Her expression softened a trifle. “I’m sorry. There was no need for that.”

He decided to let it go. “It’s warm!”

“You’re right.”

“That’s why the fog is thinning.”

“That’s…weird…”

“Yeah.”

They ought to go back. Turn around and retrace their route. It should be less than a hundred yards. Degibna Lane wasn’t that long and they had been driving going very slowly. He didn’t understand one bit of this.

He looked up. The tops of the trees remained swathed in a dense mist, waiting for the sun to come up and burn it away. It would be a while yet.

“The fields aren’t tilled,” Helen said suddenly.

He looked around. She was right. The whole thing was getting spooky.

“What now?” she said.

He looked at her, found her glancing sideways in askance. He wondered what she was thinking. Or why he should care. She had wanted to come. Every action had consequences. In this instance…

“How lost could we possibly get?” he said. “It’s maybe a mile to the Pool. We’ll get back in time no matter where we go.”

She made a dubious sound. “I was just thinking,” she said. “What if this isn’t Degibna Lane?”

“What else can it be?”

“Dunno—but this isn’t how I remember it!”

Again, she was right. Still, the facts belied theory. They were here. Where else could they be going but toward the Loe?

“I am curious though,” she confessed. “We’ve got a four–wheel drive, right? Haven’t really used it during the entire trip.”

This, too, was true.

Their eyes met. He thought, incongruously and somewhat surprisingly, that, no matter how much of a pain she was, he’d rather have her here than anybody else; including Rita and/or Harry. This came as a bit of a shock. But he got the impression that she was no sissy. He wondered how she’d function at the controls of a helo. Women on the whole made for mediocre helicopter pilots. Something about not being able to empathize with the machine. Of course, a lot of males had the same problem. And if they did, helicopters would sooner or later scare the shits out of them, and then it was all over. Lost nerves. Back to fixed–wings and thinking in linear fight paths and flap–angles.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing.” He engaged the four–wheel drive and put the automatic into ‘D’. “Shall we?”

“By all means.” She actually seemed to be looking forward to this.

Good! A little bit of adventure before returning to daily chores.

~~~

The Range Rover bumped over the rutted track, slipping and sliding on the moist muck. Helen glanced sideways at Sam, making sure he didn’t notice she was doing it. His face was a mask of concentration and attention. As he drove his eyes weren’t just in the road, but everywhere else as well. Especially on the approaching forest, now looming maybe a couple of hundred yards before them; like a fortress, the tree–line sharply demarcated, with no thinning out or transition. The track led into a gaping dark hole, left there by the trees, which curved around it like the arches of a gothic cathedral. The Range Rover’s lights pierced the darkness inside, found yet more fog, obscuring what lay inside.

A frisson ran down her spine. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Not that she had any reason to think so, but what she felt was another matter. She turned her head to say something to Sam—then stopped herself. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her spooked. He’d probably laugh at her. Maybe not to her face, but still…

“Are you all right?”

Damn! He’d noticed after all. Even sounded solicitous. It was probably a trap. She wasn’t going to fall into it. If he thought…

The car stopped about a hundred yards before the edge of the forest.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

Sam opened the door and looked back the way they’d come.

“What are you doing?”

“Look back there!” He pointed.

She did and saw a blank expanse of fog—maybe twenty, thirty yards behind them.

“Is it moving?”

Sam nodded. “It’s just as far behind us now as it was back there.” He stared at his hands resting on the steering wheel. He looked up at the cathedral entrance, then at Helen. His eyes were wide and thoughtful.

“I’m going to try something,” he said.

He put the gearbox in reverse and started to back up the car.

“What are you doing?” she wanted to know.

“Experimenting,” he said curtly.

“With what?”

“The fog.”

The Range Rover approached the boundary of fog, which hung there like a massive wall of fluffy cotton wool. Sam stopped the car almost precisely at the point where they would have entered it. He put the automatic into ‘P’, opened the door and jumped out.

“Where are you going?” she shouted. She leaned over to the driver’s side to see what he was doing. He had picked up a short stick from the ground and was pushing it into the soft soil beside the trail. Satisfied with his work he straightened and looked at her.

“All right, let’s go.”

“Are you going to explain this?”

He climbed into the car and she retreated to her seat.

“It’s just a marker,” he told her. “See, when we were back there and started moving toward the forest, the dense stuff was about maybe twenty yards behind us. It still was when we got to the forest. We backed up and it didn’t move back.”

“Huh?” Was he serious? “Of course it didn’t. What do you think? It’s not following us! Don’t be ridiculous!”

Harry had said that Sam was a bit odd sometimes, but he’d never hinted that the guy was a weirdo. A pain in the ass, yes—but she’d always thought of him as basically…well, ‘together’. And now this!

Sam nodded. “Yeah. I thought so, too.” He pointed at the wall of fog behind the car. “Then why, given that it moved along at about our speed—say ten miles per hour or something like that—did it suddenly stop just as we stopped? Of course, it didn’t back away either.”

“You’re nuts.”

Sam grimaced. “Maybe. But shall I make a prediction? Something totally ridiculous? And what if it comes true?”

“Like what?”

“Like if we start moving now it’s going to start moving as well. Not right now, but once we’re about twenty to thirty yards away from it. That’s why I put the stick in the ground. It’s a marker. Once the fog swallows it we know it’s started moving again.”

“What are you saying?” She didn’t know what was worse: that he should talk about this preposterous hypothesis as calmly as he did—or that she should actually even think of it as anything but errant nonsense. Fact was that she didn’t. The whole thing was…wrong.

What have we gotten into?

“You’re not taking this seriously, right?”

Sam shrugged. “I saw a fog–bank like this once. Harry saw it, too. The whole crew did.”

“What? Where?”

“Caribbean.”

The matter–of–fact way in which he said it scared her more than anything.

“Let’s do this,” he said and started driving. “Keep an eye on that stick. Tell me when it disappears.”

Wordlessly she turned around and looked out through the wide rear window to where the stick stood out clearly against the wall of fog.

And then it was gone!

She made an involuntary exclamation. Sam braked hard. He opened the door again and looked back.

“Thirty yards sound about right?”

“Shit.”

Sam looked at her, his face serious.

“Shall we try this again?”

She took a deep breath. “No.”

Sam nodded. “Quite. I think there’s no need, is there?”

Something like a tight band was wrapped around her chest, and got tighter with every breath she took.

“You all right?” he asked; and this time she didn’t care if he might be enjoying himself at her expense. Now she just needed to know she wasn’t going insane.

“I remember what it was like,” Sam said softly. “Approaching that thing. It just…sat there; something like a mile across and maybe half a mile high. Right there in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the clearest day you can imagine. We were flying patrol, searching for a dope–runner boat we knew was there somewhere. And then there was this…thing. We pulled closer and flew around it. Harry and Tom, our navigator, said it gave them the creeps just looking at it. Karl, the gunner, looked spooked, too.

“I knew what they meant. This thing…”

Sam shrugged. “We reported it in. They told us to have a closer look. We were maybe a hundred yards away…and it just…vanished.”

“Vanished?”

“Just like that. From one moment to another it was gone.”

“Shit.”

“That’s how I feel about this.” He pointed at the wall of fog behind them. “Except this isn’t going to go poof.”

To think that less than an hour ago I was feeling sorry for myself for leading such a boring life!

“What are you saying, Sam? Just what exactly are you saying?”

Don’t get hysterical!

But she sounded like she was. Her voice: becoming high pitched, loud. She forced herself to calm down.

“We could turn around and drive into this,” he suggested. “Somewhere behind there is the road and the hotel and…whatever.”

“You think?”

“Well, I would hope so.”

She looked at the forest and the gaping hole swallowing the track.

“Or we could allow ourselves to be…herded…”

“‘Herded’?”

“What else do you want to call it? Looks like it to me!”

“This is nuts!”

Sam took a deep breath. She suddenly realized that his relatively calm demeanor was not entirely genuine. At some level he was just as freaked out as she. The thought provided an odd kind of comfort. It brought them to a similar level. Two human beings suddenly transported from their normal lives into the Twilight Zone.

Sam was looking at her intently. She realized something else then: that he needed her support as much as she needed his. By some stupid freak chance she had ended up been thrown together with a guy she disliked more than anybody, and they had come to rely on each other.

Thank you, fate, for being such an ass!

“What do you want to do?” he asked her.

“What do you want to do?”

“The truth?”

“That would be nice.”

“I want to see where this is going.”

She nodded. What else? Despite the spookiness of it all, she was kind of curious. Maybe there was even some anticipatory excitement. Indeed—and was this a case of watch what you ask for? when last night she’d wished for something to…touch…her—something visceral…

Well, here it was: served up on a platter. Ask and you shall receive.

“Think we’re still in Kansas?”

Sam shrugged. “I don’t know.”

They stared at each other for another couple of breaths. Then Sam pulled the seat–belt over his shoulder and clicked the buckle into place. “Shall we go?”

“Let’s.”

The forest closed around them. The headlights picked out parallel rows of massive trunks flanking the slightly curved track which, underneath the shielding canopy, was comparatively smooth, level, and dry, littered with the shedded needles of years. The Range Rover followed the gentle bend of the track, until they saw a brightness that was more than reflecting fog. Sam turned off the headlights.

“The light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.

“Or the train.”

It turned out he was right. They emerged into yet more gray fog, but this was comparatively thin, and the advance of daylight was unmistakable. The track once more turned muddy and slippery. Behind loomed the wall of the forest.

“Shall we go on?” he asked.

“Might as well.”

The track wound this way and that through an area of sparse shrubbery, ferns, tufts of tussock. Every now and then the looming shapes of larger trees, contorted and twisted, some of them no more than hints, barely seen in the mist. And more ferns, their fronds rearing taller than the Range Rover, dripping with moisture.

“It is warm here,” she said and wriggled out of her jacket.

And then the track came to an end. Just like that. At the edge of a lake, to be precise.

Loe Pool?

What else was there? Despite the differences Sam knew this was the place. The water line was higher than they remembered. The edge of the Pool was level with the land, dotted with clumps of tussock and more fern. No board–walk in sight. No car–park.

Sam turned off the engine. They undid their seat–belts and got out of the car. Sam came around to Helen’s side and together they looked across the waters, which disappeared in swirls of fog that were growing brighter even as they watched. The light played strange tricks with the eddies and whorls, giving them a life of their own as if…

A jolt went through Sam. Memories of dreams…

A tinkling sound, somewhere across the water. It grew in strength until it seemed to fill the air around them. Yearning and beckoning, all at the same time. Just like he’d remembered…

A far–off splash. A flash on the water, a whirling sparkling…thing…rising from the calm surface through the gray strands of the mist. Rising higher in a graceful arc, and into the rays of the sun where it became invisible for a moment, then continued on its trajectory and, with a last display of flashes and sparks, disappeared in the fog to their right. A few moments later—from somewhere in the distance, but not too far off—a sharp sound, as of something metallic striking stone.

The tinkling ceased. A silence fell, so complete that for a few moments they didn’t even dare to breathe, for fear of disturbing its perfection.

Finally Helen let out her pent–up breath.

“What was that?” she whispered.

“You’re right,” he said.

“What?”

“This isn’t Kansas.”

He took off his jacket and threw it into the car. “Pity I haven’t got my camera. Nobody’s going to believe this.”

Again they looked at each other. They knew what the other was thinking.

If we get a chance to tell anybody.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

“Are you?”

“I don’t know.” He pointed in the general direction of that last clanging sound. “While we’re here…”

She glanced at the car. “Should we…”

Sam shook his head. “We need it here.”

“What for?”

“So we know where the track starts. We need the car as a marker.”

“That’s not going to do us much good if we wander off on foot and can’t find the car again! How about using a stick again?”

“Too easy to miss.”

Sam chuckled. “Technology,” he said, went around to the driver’s side and took out the key with the security remote. He held it up for her to see. He pointed it and depressed a button. A couple of sharp beeps.

“What kind of a range has this thing got?” she wanted to know.

“Enough—I think.”

They headed off along the lakeshore, in the general direction of the brief noise, which, Sam thought, sounded like maybe a falling metal object had hit a boulder. Behind them the mist had swallowed up the car. Sam turned around and operated the remote. A beep echoed across to them.

“Satisfied?” he asked her.

“Sort of.”

They continued for maybe another hundred yards. It was hard to tell. Their horizon had less than half that radius.

Then they stopped dead.

“What the…”

His notion of a metal object striking a rock had been more than accurate. Except that he hadn’t anticipated the object to be a sword—and even less that it should be impaled into a man–high boulder like the proverbial sword–in–the–stone. On the other hand, so he told himself, there was an insane logic to it all. Given the context it would have been stupid to expect anything else. More reasonable, maybe—but stupid anyway. Moving further into the Twilight Zone.

“Shit!” She grabbed his arm.

“Yeah…” He really didn’t have anything more profound to contribute.

A moment passed. Helen let go of Sam’s sleeve. They approached the object with cautious steps; as if it was going to jump out of the rock at any moment.

It didn’t.

They stopped before the boulder and started up at the sword sticking out of it. Close up now Sam saw that the blade was shiny, untarnished by rust or scratches. The hilt was large enough to be gripped by one hand. It looked…Roman. A legionnaire’s weapon maybe.

Without needing to communicate the issue they started looking for a way up the rock. On the other side they found a number of rough steps hewn into the stone.

They looked at each other. Sam motioned. “After you.” Helen gave him a wry look, shrugged, and preceded him to the top.

The tip of the sword was one with the rock. It was hard to tell its length, but Sam guessed there was maybe another foot of steel. The blade was thinner than he had expected. Legionnaire swords were somewhat broader and stubbier. Still, it probably wasn’t too heavy to wield with one hand.

“I don’t want to say it,” Helen said softly, “but I guess somebody has to.”

“Say what?”

“That this is insane.” She looked at him, like she was searching for something. “Sam, what are we doing here? You and I? And this…thing?” She shook her head. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

He gave her a crooked grin. “Why not?”

“Are you saying it does?”

Did it? Not in any sense he could figure out easily. Still…

“We’re here. Both of us. Unless we’re dreaming this…”

“Which we are not.”

“N–no.”

“You’re not sure?”

He dug in his pockets and came out with a crinkled piece of paper, which he unfolded. It was a register receipt from last night at the pub. He read out the name of the pub and the details of his purchases. Twice.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re not dreaming,” he declared. “At least I’m not. Which leads me to suspect you’re not either.”

“And you know this how?”

“Ever tried to read something in a dream and have it come out the same twice?” He shook his head. “Can’t be done. But I did it just now. So I’m not dreaming.” He pointed at the sword. “Meaning that this is really here—as are you and I.”

She grimaced. “Has anybody ever told you you’re a real pain in the ass?”

He chuckled. “You have. Repeatedly.”

“Well, you are! Do you know how…infuriating it is to have someone like you around?”

“What did I do?”

“You think you have all the answers!”

Sam laughed. He couldn’t help it. “I don’t…”

“Sshh!” She raised a restraining hand.

Sam stopped laughing. “What?”

“Hear that?” She cocked her head to one side, her gaze far away as she listened.

A rumble of sorts, growing almost imperceptibly louder. Heading this way—whatever it was.

He looked at the sword and reached for the hilt. His hand closed around it and he jerked. The blade bent but the sword didn’t budge. He felt Helen’s eyes on him and let go of the hilt. “I guess I’m not Arthur,” he noted wryly.

She looked at it thoughtfully, grasped the hilt and pulled—only to be foiled like he had been.

The rumbling had taken on a subtly different tone. Over the continuous—and growing—noise he could now distinguish a number of syncopated beats. The sound was vaguely familiar. Like…

“Horses!”

“Heading this way,” she completed.

“I think maybe we should leave.”

“Let’s.”

Both cast a last look at the sword. Sam felt an odd kind of…regret…at something not done that should have been done. They hesitated; looked at each other.

“There’s a third possibility,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You failed. I failed. But this thing…it was put here for us! I know it! How? I just do!” He pointed. “So, it’s got to be the third possibility. You hold it, too!”

“What?”

“Do it!”

She glared at him, but reached out and grasped the hilt. His right hand closed over hers.

The sword came out of the rock like it was soft butter.

They stood there, their hands on the hilt, staring at it.

“Now we leave.”

“Take the damn thing!” She let go of the hilt. Sam lifted the sword. It was lighter than he had thought it would be.

They didn’t bother with the steps, but jumped from the rock onto the soft ground and started running. The ominous sound behind them grew. The sword slowed Sam down, but he held on to it. Somewhere, something told him that this is why they were here: to take this thing, and to take it away from those who made the sound.

How he knew didn’t matter.

He knew.

He fumbled for the car key and pushed it into Helen’s hand. She pointed the remote and kept on pressing the button, aiming it here and there, trying to elicit a response. Then, from ahead, came the beep of the Range Rover.

“You drive!” she shouted and handed him the key as they ran.

He held out the sword, which she took. They reached the car. Sam opened the door and fumbled to get the key into the ignition. On his left, Helen clambered into the car and maneuvered the sword onto the back seats. She settled in her seat, looked up.

“Shit!”

Sam glanced up. The fog spewed forth a column of about a dozen riders. Tall figures, covered in a black armor of sorts, their heads shrouded in equally black visored helmets. Not like knights: more like a cross between Roman cavalry and Samurai. Their huge black chargers bore down on the car.

The engine kicked over and roared into life. The charge slowed and came to a halt. The horses veered aside, closed into a circle around the Range Rover. The dark riders drew swords from scabbards. Sam jammed the automatic into ‘D’, floored the gas pedal, and turned the wheel to the right until it locked. The Range Rover jerked and jumped. The wheels kicked up a barrage of soil and stones. Sam righted the wheel and kept his foot on the accelerator. The Range Rover leapt forward like a living thing and gained the track.

A crash. The sound of breaking glass. Helen screamed. In the mirror Sam saw a long sword probing around in the rear. The back window had been shattered to smithereens. More blows rained down on the roof and the sides. More sound of shattering glass.

Don’t let them figure out about the tires!

He kept his foot flat on the floor. The Range Rover lurched and heaved, threatening to get out of his control. Sam eased the foot off the gas and focused on the track.

Stay on the track!

The Range Rover handled superbly given the circumstances. But the chargers were naturally better equipped to handle the terrain. From his peripheral vision Sam saw them gaining.

We’re going to die!

No—damnit! Not here, and not now. Not when he was responsible for Helen as well. He was not going to fail again.

The sword!

Without taking his eyes off the track he shouted at her.

“Take the sword!”

“What?!”

“Take it! Use it!”

“I can’t!”

“You want to die?!”

Damn him! What did he expect her to do. Take that damn sword and wave it around or something? The way they were being jolted about she’d probably injure herself!

Another blow on the roof. And another. She looked up and saw it buckling. Another rear window smashed. The Range Rover’s engine howled in protest. The hooves of the huge horses pounded the ground beside them.

“Do it!” he shouted at her.

Fuck you, Sam!

The rider who’d pulled level with her raised his weapon. She stared at the impenetrable mask and flinched aside as he brought it down. The weapon cut into the roof right above her head and stuck there. He wrenched it out and lifted his arm again. The Range Rover lurched to the left, impacted on the horse. The animal screamed as it was thrown aside: an almost human sound. The rider, eerily silent in his efforts, attempted to control it. He slammed into the trunk of a small tree and was thrown off. Helen craned her neck to see him get up off the ground—only to be run down by his companions, who redoubled their efforts and soon pulled alongside.

Helen reached around with her right hand, found the hilt of the sword as it bounced about on the back seat. Her hand closed around it. She pulled it around the seat, got it wedged, fumbled as the car bounced about and another blow landed somewhere on the roof, managed to get the weapon free and finally had it in the front, holding it as far away from her as she could, stuck at an awkward angle, the tip on the floor before her.

“The window!” she shouted. By some miracle the passenger side window was still intact. Sam did something. The electric window rolled down. A rider raced up alongside and raised his weapon. Helen, not thinking but just doing, pulled the sword up, managed to push it out the window, poking its jerking tip at the rider. He saw it coming and tried to jerk aside. Too late. The blade sliced into his abdomen like a hot knife into butter. He roared: the first sound she’d heard out of their pursuers—an unearthly howl that ended a moment later as he toppled off his horse and the body bounced along the ground before disappearing from her sight.

Helen, stunned by what she had done, almost let go of the sword—but something made her hold on, pull it back and into the safety of the car. Her victim’s blood dripped off the gleaming blade.

She heard Sam shout something. She tore her gaze away from the blade, turned around—to see that they’d come to the forest. The Range Rover swerved onto the dry segment of track, the wheels caught hold, the car accelerated forward. She looked around. The riders charged into the tunnel opening, filling it with their presence, relentless and lethal.

The fog in the tunnel had almost disappeared. The Range Rover bolted through the passage, it’s headlights picking out thick, striated trunks from the stygian gloom. Then they were at the other side—plunging straight into the wall of fog.

Helen heard someone scream; realized it was she; bit down on the other screams that were just waiting to come as they careened blindly through the impenetrable grayness.

And then it was all over. Another jolt. The car swerved and skidded. Bright sunlight shone down from a cloudless sky. Before them the gray strip of…a road?

The car clambered up the embankment, it’s wheels spinning, gripping, missing, gripping again. Then they were on the asphalt. The front wheels gripped tightly. The car jumped forward. Sam controlled the resultant skid and jerked the car onto the road. Another swerve and he had it under complete control.

Then he braked.

“What are you doing?!”

Sam gave a curt shake of his head and looked back through the wrecked rear of the car. She followed his gaze; saw a thick wall of fog. As she watched it dissolved.

And then she heard thundering hooves. Out of the vanishing fog charged the riders. They noticed the car and started in their direction.

“They don’t give up, do they!” Sam hissed. The engine howled as Range Rover pulled away, showering their pursuers with a hail of churned–up gravel. The riders veered aside, then pulled up and stared after the receding car.

Helen heaved a sigh of relief and leaned back in her seat—then noticed that she was still holding the bloody sword in a tight grip. She glanced at Sam whose attention was focused on the road, carefully maneuvered the weapon onto the back seat and dropped it there. She leaned back in her seat and wiped her hands on her jumper.

Sam slowed down again and presently pulled off the road into farm track which led through a small copse of trees. When they had gone far enough to be out of sight of the road he stopped and turned off the engine.

The silence was deafening.

They looked at each other, breathing heavily, the adrenaline rush slowly ebbing away, leaving them fatigued and limp.

Helen’s eyes, Sam noticed, were wide—the pupils dilated, staring fixedly at his face, but quite possibly seeing nothing. He knew the signs. He reached out. She jerked back. Sam shook his head and continued the motion, touching his hand to her cheek. Again she jerked, but he left it there. The worst thing about shell–shock was the sheer distance of other human beings: a distance that could best be bridged by the simple expedient of touching someone.

The touch worked. Her eyes lost their unfocused mien. She blinked. Her facial muscles relaxed. He leaned over and put his arms around her.

“It’s all right,” he said softly.

Still she was stiff and unyielding, but he held on and presently she seemed to relax—and then she dug her face into his shoulder and started sobbing.

When it was done and the spasms stopped he let her go. She straightened, sniffed, and wiped her eyes.

“I’m fine.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

She swallowed, leaned back, closed her eyes, took a couple of deep breaths. She opened her eyes again and looked at him.

“I just killed someone,” she said tonelessly. “With…this…” She looked at the back–seat…and made a small exclamation.

Sam turned around and tried to see what had alarmed her.

The back seat was…empty.