Chapter Text
The Yorkshire moors rolled out around them in undulating purple waves, a landscape that would have seemed designed to give a man seasickness had there not been a certain earthy groundedness to it at the same time. It was beautiful, in its way. It was vast, remote and bleak and open as the sky, and really quite lovely to look at.
It was also very short of cover. The soldier's instinct itching at the back of Grant's skull couldn't help but think that they couldn't have picked a more exposed position if they'd tried. He kept half-expecting a rifle shot to shatter the silence any minute, and a sniper's bullet to introduce itself very abruptly to his spine. He shouldn't. He knew that. This was bloody England, he shouldn't be worrying about enemy guns here. But they were up here hunting god-knew-what, some strange magical thing, and he was feeling just a bit uneasy about it, all right? By rights this was more Merlin's territory than his. He shouldn't be up here at all.
It had been Mrs Strange that had asked it of him, though, and he'd not been able to refuse her. There was nothing much she could ask of him that he would refuse now. Since they'd found each other in Italy, since they'd clumsily tried to comfort each other through their shared grief at Merlin's loss, he'd found himself unable to countenance bringing her any more dismay.
So here he was. Riding along this damned ridgeline across these damned moors, hunting some damned blasted fairy thing that had been spreading havoc and alarm, and with John damned Childermass riding sullenly along at his side.
Though he supposed he couldn't blame the man too much. Childermass had been all set to go alone, readily if not exactly happily, before Mrs Strange had put her foot down about letting him go wandering about the moors unarmed with some hideous thing on the loose, and promptly volunteered Grant to keep him company. Grant was not usually overly concerned with other men's pride, but he allowed that being told you needed a minder to go wandering around your own native moors might be a bit of a blow. Childermass struck him as the sort of man who did not like being minded. He'd seen the sort before. They made damned poor soldiers, usually, but pretty decent spies and saboteurs. The kind you saw most often behind enemy lines, at their ease wearing other men's coats, watching everyone around them with cool, insolent eyes.
Grant didn't like the man much. It was mostly an instinctive reaction, he couldn't say he'd actually spoken to the man much at all yet, and given the current atmosphere that looked unlikely to change any time soon. He'd no real cause for his dislike so far. It was that calm insolence in the man's eyes, though. It reminded him of those other men. The ones who crept about in the shadows, not caring whose colours they wore, and brought down whole armies with no more than words in the right ears. They were useful men, to be sure. They'd been the saving of the army more than once. He'd no personal liking for them, though, and he couldn't help but feel towards Childermass the same way.
And he guessed that at least part of the man's reserve right now was that he knew it, too. Grant had never been overly good at keeping his opinions from his face. He doubted it would have taken Childermass long to realise his vague dislike, and armour his own in response to it.
Which left them here. Riding along together in uneasy silence, out in the open where anyone could take a shot at them, and hunting something that nobody so far had even been able to describe, save that it was monstrous and terrifying and came up out of nowhere to drag you down and do horrible things to you. It was no wonder, Grant thought ruefully, that every hair on the back of his neck was on end, and all his nerves were jangling as if waiting for a rifle's retort. Not the most comfortable of missions he'd ever undertaken, no.
"... Stop here," Childermass said abruptly, reining his great beast of a horse in at the same moment, with no care to whether Grant had been prepared to do the same. Nearly a full length past the man, he managed to pull up and turn in the saddle to glare. Childermass only stared blandly at him, wholly unimpressed, and swung himself down from his saddle without another word, landing on the roadway with casual grace. Grant turned his horse with neat, cavalry steps to face him properly.
"Is there something wrong?" he asked bluntly, unable to keep from giving their surroundings a quick glance-over just to check. There was nothing in the vicinity, though. He'd been travelling with his nerves enough on edge that he'd have noticed anything amiss. As far as he could tell, there was nothing to separate this section of the roadway from any other for a mile in either direction. There was no reason to stop that he could see.
"Not sure," Childermass answered, almost absently. Grant looked back at him, mildly surprised by the lack of hostility. Childermass looked genuinely distracted, though. He'd climbed onto the verge of the road and was turning vaguely in place, looking for all the world like a hound trying to scent something in the air. "I felt something. Came up to one side of us. It was only a brush of it, though, and it's gone now. I can't find it again."
Grant felt momentarily sceptical. He'd felt something? Grant had seen a great deal of magic by this point, you didn't survive the Peninsula at Merlin's side without it, but he'd never seen anyone claim to feel an enemy coming. Well, actually he had, there'd been a fellow during the fall-back to Lisbon that half the camp had sworn could sense an enemy attack coming long before it arrived. Grant had never put too much store by it, though. Instinct was one thing, but precognition was another.
He could see that Childermass was being entirely serious, though. The man hadn't even looked at him, not giving two ha'pennies whether he was believed or not. He was purely focused on seeking out whatever had distressed him so, and there was such a genuine sense of danger about him that Grant couldn't quite help but allow for the possibility. He dismounted, slipping down on the side of the horse opposite to the direction Childermass was hunting in, and walked the animal closer to the man as mobile cover.
"Do you have any inkling what it is?" he asked, taking on a more professional air, and Childermass actually glanced at him in vague surprise. Grant shrugged uneasily in explanation. "Look, I don't have much experience with hunting fairies, or whatever this is, but I did fight beside Merlin in the Peninsula. I've seen what magic can do, and I've no interest in getting on the wrong side of it. If you know what this is, I'll follow your lead."
Childermass blinked slowly. That was a bit more than startled, he looked actually stumped. What, had he never seen a man be reasonable before? Grant was a soldier. Personal dislike was one thing, and all very well, but it must never be allowed to interfere with the mission at hand. Grant would never have survived long in Wellington's army if he'd not learned that. He'd stood beside more than a few men whose guts he'd outright hated, and he'd held alongside them in the face of the enemy. He'd been lucky in his commanders, and in allies like Merlin, but a man didn't get a choice about most of the fellows he stood beside. What had Wellington called them? The very scum of the earth, but they'd had his back, so long as he'd had theirs. That was what the army meant. That was what uniforms were for.
Which was probably why Childermass didn't seem to have had much experience of it. The man actually turned towards Grant, opening up enough for Grant to realise that he'd previously been standing half-guarded as he approached, as if Grant might be as much of a threat as whatever was out there on the moors. As if he'd half expected Grant to ...
"Forgive me, sir," Childermass murmured, with an odd little half-smile. "I was under the impression that you didn't think that much of me. Most men I know wouldn't take instruction from someone they considered their inferior." He reached up absently, rubbing idly at one cheek. "Indeed, some of them have been given to taking extreme objection to it."
Grant blinked at him in turn. There was that insolence in the man's eyes again, the one that made him think of men behind enemy lines, and he wondered abruptly if there was more than one reason for that. He had the sudden impression that the thing they were hunting was not the only dangerous thing on the moor right now, and that a man who believed himself among enemies might not be the best man to have at your back. There was no need for it, either. He'd come out here to keep the man safe, for Mrs Strange's sake, whether he liked him or not. He'd stand by that, and therefore by Childermass, come hell or high water. Might be no harm to make that very plain.
"... You're the magician, are you not?" he said after a moment. Childermass raised an eyebrow at him, and Grant smiled back, cheery and calm. "This is your mission, sir, and my orders are simply to keep you safe for its duration. To be blunt, what I think of you means bugger all. I have my orders, and I intend to obey them."
Both eyebrows went up now. The man had a very eloquent face, and at the moment it said absolute volumes about disbelief and wariness and a certain amount of reluctant amusement. It seemed to be the latter that won out in the end, though. Childermass looked away from him, out over the moors, and pressed his lips together against his smile.
"You are aware," he said mildly, "that however much she may resemble one, Mrs Strange is not in fact a general?"
Grant grinned at him. "Absolutely, sir," he said. "Would you like to tell her or shall I?"
Childermass chuckled. "Indeed not," he said. "The last woman I had a disagreement with shot me in the chest. I think I shall pass on that for now." And then, while Grant was still digesting that little tidbit of information, he hopped down off the grassy mound at the road edge, and clapped his hands decisively together. "We need to get off the road, I think. It was heading that way, out over the moor. Might be best to go on foot, if you can manage it. And keep that sword to the ready, I think. Not the pistol. I don't think this is the kind of thing you shoot at."
He'd moved off before Grant could even begin to answer, heading for his horse and starting to lead it towards the nearest thing resembling a tree in the vicinity. For a second, Grant wondered if he should remind the man that he was not a general either. It seemed a bit counter-productive, though, given the conversation they'd just had and the way Childermass at least seemed to have broken from his sullenness a bit. Besides. They had a monster to hunt, and they weren't going to catch it standing around here.
Grant closed his eyes, just for half a second, and reached up to rub the bridge of his nose. All right. Orders were orders, after all. Shut your trap and march, soldier.
Shut your trap and march.