jsmn_kinkmeme | ☆ Round Two!

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☆ Round Two!

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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 that 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.

Ooh. Love a fic where you have No Idea what might happen next.

I'm loving this! It's all making sense, I love it. Keep going!

The getting-along part with insights into Childermass' disposition and Grant's experience was really awesome.
Can't wait to read more!

They hadn't ventured far onto the moor before Grant began to realised that something wasn't right with Childermass. The man had started out at a strong pace, drifting across the heathers with his greatcoat flapping behind him like the wings of a ragged raven or some similar creature, but he began to falter before very long at all. Not all at once. Only an odd pause in his stride here or there. Grant, who had been keeping half an eye on his own feet to avoid the ten billion or so rabbit holes scattered around beneath the scrub, had taken a couple of minutes to notice it. Once he had, though, it became increasingly more obvious the further they went. Though he seemed to be trying to hide it, there was definitely something not right with the man.

Grant finally caught up with him when he stopped short below a rocky outcrop, reaching out to grab at the side of a boulder seemingly in an effort to hold himself up. He had his eyes closed. He opened them once Grant came abreast of him, straightening his shoulders instantly and defiantly, but they'd definitely been closed. His face looked paler than it had a few minutes ago, too. Grant frowned at him.

"What's wrong?" he asked, more than a little baffled. Unless the lady he'd quarrelled with had shot him very recently, there was nothing that should be doing this much damage to the man just from a little scramble across some scrub. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Childermass growled. He looked away at Grant's sceptical expression, nodding downslope of them towards a little hollow. "We're getting close. There's something--"

He cut off, what little colour he'd had left abruptly draining from his cheeks. His hand scrabbled at the rock as he slumped sideways, his eyes gone distant and glassy. Grant lunged forwards to grab hold of him, bracing him back against the boulder and holding him up as his head lolled to one side. Childermass tried to protest this. Grant had that impression, anyway. It didn't come out as more than a vaguely distressed grunt.

"Good god, man, what the hell's wrong with you?" he barked out. "When you said you'd been shot, I didn't think you'd meant recently!"

Childermass gave a barely audible snarl. He shoved away a little from Grant, trying to get his weight braced back against the rock instead, and then had to squeeze his eyes shut once more, his hands knotting into fists at Grant's chest with his head bowed over them. He looked to be in pain, a rolling wave of it, like someone had jostled an old injury of his. It made no sense to Grant at all, but he did his best to hold the man up through it. He gripped Childermass' shoulders, and wondered at the trembling he could feel in the man's arms.

The attack, whatever it had been, subsided after a moment or two, leaving Childermass wrung out and shaking slightly against him. Grant let him, for a little second, and then gently propped him back against the boulder so that he could see his face. Childermass glared back at him from behind lank strands of hair, his skin ghost-pale and sheened with sweat. He seemed to be waiting for something. Grant had no idea what.

"What's wrong?" he repeated, more quietly now. "You have to tell me, or I can't help you. What the devil is this, and where did it come from?"

Childermass blinked at him, a sticky, painful looking motion of his eyelids. Another shudder rolled through him, though this one not so bad, and Grant almost reached out to try and shake an answer out of him. The man's eyes flickered, maybe sensing the intention, and then Childermass smiled at him, a black sort of a smile that bore closer resemblance to a snarl.

"Magic," he rasped, resting his head back against the rock and turning it in the direction of the hollow. "There's someone ... something down there. I've not ... I've never felt the like. It's coming off the bloody thing in wave--"

He cut off, his eyes actually rolling back in his head as his knees finally buckled, and Grant snapped. The thing in the hollow was causing this? Fine. That was more than enough direction to be working off. He dropped to one knee in front of Childermass as he crumbled, caught his shoulder up under the man's stomach, wrapped his arms around buckling knees, and heaved the man back up into a carry in one smooth motion. Childermass made a desperate little 'urk' sound as his weight came down on his stomach, but was apparently too far gone to actually protest the manoeuvre. All right then. Decamp, now.

It was not a smooth retreat. Moorland was not the easiest of terrains to stagger across with a sick man across your back. Grant persevered, though, and the further they got from the thing behind them, the more justified his actions appeared to be. Childermass stopped making distressed noises, gradually going slack across Grant's shoulder instead of taut and shaking like a bowstring, and then after a minute or two he seemed to come back around again. He came aware, enough to realise exactly where he was and what was happening to him, and promptly almost crippled them both trying to get down off Grant's shoulder. Grant dropped to one knee with an aggravated grunt, and tipped the man forward onto his rear in front of him. If looks could kill, he'd have been hanged, drawn and quartered on the spot.

"What the bloody hell do you think you're doing!?" Childermass snarled, scrambling backwards on his rear away from Grant. He stopped half a second later, his expression flickering and colour fleeing from his cheeks once more, and rolled onto his side instead, dropping his head down between his arms to pant desperately for a minute.

Grant, winded himself, simply sat back on his heels and let him. He cast a look back over his shoulder, scouting the way they'd come, but there didn't seem to be anything moving behind them. Childermass' attack seemed to be reaction, this time, not a fresh assault. All right. They could breathe a minute then. They could afford to catch their breath.

"... I thought," he said, after a long second. "I thought I was getting you away from whatever seemed to be damned well killing you back there." He scrubbed a hand across his face, before leaving off to give a bit of a glare himself. "The next time you feel something like that coming on, tell me to get you out faster! I don't enjoy watching people get attacked by something I can't see, and you're no good to anyone in a heap on the ground!"

No damned sense, that's what magicians had. One and all. They'd none of them any bloody sense whatsoever!

Childermass stopped shaking, although he didn't look up just yet. He leaned forward on his arms, his head stooped from his shoulders, and seemed to be thinking that through. Or something, anyway. He lay there half on his side, his legs sprawled out towards Grant, and just had a think to himself for a minute or two. Grant, with no damned clue what the hell was going on out here, had bugger all choice but to let him.

"... I didn't expect it to be that bad," Childermass said at last. He looked up, his eyes exhausted in a pale face, but there was defiance back in his expression, and maybe something of apology as well. "It shouldn't have happened like that. One attack, maybe. I've never been hit over and over like that. It's once and constant, until I've got used to whatever magic it is. Not like this. It felt ..." He shook his head, a helpless expression appearing for half an instant on his face. "It felt like it was taunting me. That thing. It felt like it knew I was there."

Grant raised his eyebrows, casting an instinctive glance back towards the hollow. Well. That was not good news. An enemy who knew where you were never was, and one that felt compelled to taunt you about it even less so. Especially if even just that taunt had damn near crippled a man. He didn't want to know what an actual attack from it would look like.

He looked back at Childermass. The man stared back at him, pale and grim, and Grant found himself raising an eyebrow wryly. "Why," he said softly, "do I begin to get the impression that we are somewhat overmatched out here, Mr Childermass? Why do I begin to think that this is not going to end well for us at all?"

Childermass closed his eyes, letting out a ragged breath. He pushed himself back over onto his back, laying back in the heather in grim exhaustion. "Because it's not," he said bluntly, speaking largely to the sky. "That thing ... I don't know what it is. Not a fairy. We'd be dead already if it was a fairy. But it's something, something old and strong and ... and blasted wicked, and until I know what it is, frankly there's not a lot I can do about it."

... Again with the good news. Grant climbed stiffly to his feet, walking over to stand above the man. Childermass twitched vaguely, a half-instinctive shy away from his boots, and glared angrily up at him from the heather. Grant shook his head, not even bothering to wonder anymore, and simply leaned down to offer the man a hand up. After a cautious second in which Childermass appeared to be trying to see into the back of his skull, the man accepted it, and allowed himself to be pulled achingly to his feet.

"So," Grant said, steadying him carefully. "What do we do about it, then? I don't suppose you'd happen to have any ..." He waved one hand, those gestures Merlin always seemed to make. "Anything big enough to make it think twice?"

Childermass grimaced. "I'm not Jonathan Strange, if that's what you're asking," he growled, standing back a bit to scrub his hand through his hair. He looked away for a minute, staring back down the slope towards whatever lurked in the lower hollow, a distant, considering expression on his face. "Attack magic is not my strongest suit, and even if it were I'm not sure how much good it would do. We need to figure out what that thing is and what it wants. Then we need to stay alive and get the hell off this moor until we can figure out what to do about it."

Grant blinked, taking that in stride. So. A scouting mission then, likely followed by a very rapid retreat. All right, he could probably manage that. The question was ...

"Can you afford to get that close to it again?" he asked quietly. Childermass looked at him, bristling once again, but he was still approximately the colour of curdled milk, and there were shadows like bruises under his eyes. He held himself in a careful, casual stoop, as though he were perfectly fine, but in all honestly he looked like one stiff breeze would crumple him like a bit of paper. "I'm serious. If getting close to that thing is going to kill you in itself ..."

"It will not kill me," the man ground out, straightening back up determinedly. "I have something of the measure of it now. It will not happen like that again."

Grant shook his head, only partly in exasperation. "If it's as strong as you seem to think it is, I'm not sure you're going to have much choice. If going down there is going to put you back in that condition again, I don't think it's a risk you can take."

Childermass turned to him, coldly and fully. Grant almost took an instinctive step back for a second, there was such a hard and angry determination in the man's eyes. "I don't think you quite understand this," he said, very softly while he looked at Grant. "That thing has been hunting people. Our people, on our land. We do not have Jonathan Strange. We do not have Mr Norrell. There is nobody else to try and stop it. If that thing kills me, then somebody else will have to go down there and try again, and if it does kill me then frankly they're not likely to do much better. There isn't a choice here, Major Grant. You are coming or you are not, but someone with magic is going to have to go down there, and I am what you currently have. Now you can live with that and work around it, or you can turn around and go home. One or the other, and I'll thank you to make up your mind quickly."

Grant stared at him. He wondered, distantly, if he had been entirely correct in his earlier impressions, if Childermass would really have made such a terrible soldier as all that. There was loyalty in him, he realised, all the way down to the bone, and apparently he was more than willing to risk death in its service. Maybe he wouldn't have done so badly in the army after all.

For half a second, too, Grant remembered Merlin. In the windmill, particularly, that strained, determined, half-terrified expression that had been on his face. Looking at Childermass, he remembered another magician going to war, and felt a rush of such bitter and sudden grief that it nearly crippled him in his turn.

They'd no time for that, though. There was no time to be remembering past battles while you were still in the middle of the current one.

"... Do you at least have some way of sneaking up on it so that it doesn't immediately kill us both?" he asked, closing his eyes to rub a knuckle along his eyebrow, trying to ease the headache that was suddenly blooming. He nearly missed the surprise on Childermass' face because of it, looking back up only just in time to catch the edges of it. Childermass blinked at him, nonplussed, and Grant had to resist the sudden urge to slap the man a little bit.

It passed, after a second, and suddenly Childermass was smiling at him, a wild, combative sort of a grin. Something seemed to shimmer around him, some shift in the air, and it was suddenly very hard to make him out. He wasn't gone, not exactly, it was just that Grant didn't seem to want to look at him suddenly. Things seemed to catch the corner of his eye every time he tried, bits of heather, or clouds, or the rise of a hill that was abruptly the most fascinating sight in the universe. He shook his head, as if the sensation were akin to the temporary deafness after a cannon blast and he could clear it if he only tilted his head far enough.

Childermass took pity on him, then. He let it fall, whatever it had been, and stood before him as whole and pale and casually insolent as before. He stood there, a brown crow of a man on the Yorkshire moors, and offered a little smirk that would have had every ranking officer in the army ordering him a flogging on the spot. He knew it, too. Grant could just see that he did.

"This is Yorkshire," Childermass told him, with that smug little smile. "This is my country, sir, and it'll stand by me. I might not be able to kill that thing down there, but I do think I'll be able to get a lot closer to it than it should like." He paused, tilted his head curiously. Not so much challengingly, now, as almost accepting. He thought for a minute, and then held out his arm towards Grant, a half-question on his face. "Will you be coming with me, then? Chances are, we'll not be coming back. Are you along with me, Major Grant?"

Grant didn't even think. He stepped forward to grip the man's arm, holding it firmly and exasperatedly in his hand. "Do you think I'd prefer to explain to Mrs Strange if I wasn't?" he asked wryly, and then shrugged a little bit. "Besides. We already know I can pick you up and carry you if I have to. There'll be that comfort at least if we have to run anywhere in a sudden hurry, as I rather suspect we shall."

Childermass' expression froze a little bit, something very much disapproving flickering across it, but he brushed it aside quickly. He stepped forward, that sense of oddness sweeping up around him again, around them both, and then he turned back towards the distant hollow and the strange, wicked thing inside of it.

"Lay on, MacDuff," he murmured softly, letting go of Grant's arm at last, and flashed Grant one last little grin before striding off to death and danger once again.

... Magicians, Grant thought, with a strange sort of fondness as he hurried after him.

They were all damned impossible. Every last one.

Yes, yes, I approve of this very much.

OP here :) this is so great, it's plotty and lovely and I like how you write both Childermass and Grant and I just feel so lucky that somebody not only picked up my prompt but whose so good at writing and so quick. (It's like winning the prompt Lotto or something)
I read it through twice already and am really looking forward to seeing where this goes :)

Author!Anon here. I'm so glad you're enjoying this. I've never written Grant before, but he seems to be working out reasonably well. It's a lovely prompt, and I'm enjoying writing this story ;D

He caught up to Childermass at the rock outcrop once more, though this time at least the man seemed to be waiting for him instead of about to keel over. Grant looked him over anyway, trying to gauge how honest he'd been about being able to handle this. Childermass looked back at him knowingly, a thin little smile on his lips, but he was standing strong. His jaw had tightened, his face was pale, but there was no sign of a reoccurrence of the previous attacks. Grant shook his head ruefully, and had to offer the man a small nod of acknowledgement. Childermass was a man of his word, apparently, no more and no less.

Childermass looked away at that, an odd expression on his face, but he shook it off quickly, and nodded downslope. "Stay by me," he said softly, holding out one hand as though to pull Grant nearer, though he didn't actually touch. "To hide us both, you'll have to stay close. Stray too far and whatever's down there will be seeing you clear as day. Understand?"

Grant raised his eyebrows. Not at the idea of staying close, he'd no objection to that, on magical grounds or otherwise. Under the circumstances, it was only sensible. It was that the man seemed to think he hadn't been planning on staying close anyway, and for far more practical reasons. He could hardly hold the man up the next time that thing struck at him if he was halfway across the moor from him, could he? He didn't say this, though. He had the idea that it would try Childermass' pride just that bit too far for comfort. If the magic was going to offer him a handy excuse, though, he'd take it and with good grace.

"As you say, sir," he said blandly, standing somewhat deliberately at attention. "You're the magician. Do lead on."

He got a lovely glare for that. If there was anything Childermass knew, it was polite insolence when he heard it offered. He straightened a bit, though, in his temper. He narrowed his eyes and stood that little bit straighter, and that was nice enough reward as well. Grant smiled sunnily at him. If you had to walk into magic and danger, after all, you might as well do it in a good mood.

"... You know, I never did like the army," Childermass growled, and there was a spark of something old and genuine in it, behind the reluctant humour. "Keep up, Major Grant, and keep quiet. We'll not be stopping for tea along the way."

He strode off then, angling sideways to the hollow somewhat, rather than straight towards it. Grant, marching cheerfully at his heels, was rather pleased at that. The man knew a bit of something about what he was doing, anyway. As they drew closer, something seemed to shift in the air around them again, around Childermass in particular, and Grant had the idea that the man had kicked his spell up a notch. He wavered a little, a small tremble running through him, and Grant stepped in close to him instantly, but he did not stop. He moved again, skirting the lower rim of the hollow towards a better vantage point, and did not falter at all.

And after a moment, as they finally reached that better vantage point, Grant became sufficiently distracted that he might not have immediately noticed if the man had.

The hollow was full of dogs. That wasn't exactly the first thing he noticed, but it bore mentioning. The low dip in the moorlands was absolutely thick with them, sitting still and silent as sentries in concentric circles around the centre. There must have been scores of the animals, ranging from small to terrifyingly large, each perfectly placed and perfectly still, waiting with eerie focus for something to command them. All the dogs in Yorkshire had to be in there, and the sight of them spurred an entirely primitive reaction in Grant, a very animal instinct altogether. He stepped up beside Childermass, grabbing the man's arm in quelling agitation to pull him to a halt. He needn't have bothered. Childermass had already come to a dead stop, his spine ramrod straight and his eyes wide with realisation.

Childermass wasn't looking at the dogs, though. He was staring, wild-eyed and barely breathing, at the thing that stood in their centre. The thing Grant had been trying not to look at, the thing he'd caught a glimpse of as soon as they cleared the hollow's rim and from which he had immediately and entirely instinctively deflected his attention, searching for something less distressing to stare in horror at.

It was a dog. Sort of. It was in essence a dog, if the dog's ancestors had perhaps mated with a bear and a corpse and a scion of hell somewhere along the line. It was pitch black and absolutely huge, the size of a horse or greater, and something came rolling off of it in waves. Magic, maybe, like Childermass had said, or malice either. Evil. Grant would not have been surprised if this thing's evil was an entirely tangible thing. It was monstrous. Utterly monstrous. It was easily the most wicked-looking thing Grant had ever seen, and he had once watched corpses rise up and speak in the tongues of hell.

"... Ah," Childermass said, very faintly. He leaned into the hold Grant had on his arm, though Grant wasn't sure he was actually aware of that. He'd set to trembling again. He might have gone pale, too, if he hadn't already been about as white as he could go and still be a living man.

"Ah?" Grant asked, very, very quietly. Nothing flinched, in the hollow. None of those dozens of ears so much as twitched. He was quiet anyway. He wanted to duck to cover, too, or better yet run while the running was good. He didn't, though. He had better discipline than that, and kept very still under what he hoped was the shield of Childermass' spell. "What does 'ah' mean? I'm guessing nothing good."

Childermass looked at him, slowly and very carefully. He tried a smile. It was a very crooked sort of an expression. "Not good, no," he agreed softly. He reached up to shove his hair out of his face, before glancing back to the thing before them in visible trepidation. "It's a barghest. A faerie creature. They've not been ... The Raven King drove them out, while the North was his, and there were none while magic was still lost to us. It's, ah. It's said that none who see one with their own eyes live for very long afterwards."

"... Ah," Grant echoed, rather faintly himself. His hand had tightened, largely without his leave, around the man's arm. He looked back at the thing, sitting monstrous and happy in its hollow, and then back at Childermass. "And why is that, then? A curse of some kind?"

Childermass looked back at him. There was a wild humour in his eyes, the cheerful hysteria of a man who knows he might very shortly be dead. It was oddly fitting look for the man, Grant thought absently. It suited him very well.

"I rather think it's because the barghest hunts them down and eats them," Childermass said wryly, in the most perfect temptation of fate Grant had ever seen, and right then, just exactly on cue, every damned dog in the hollow jerked to attention. The barghest stirred, rippling to its feet as though summoned by the thought, and it grinned in utter malice as it drew itself up to its full and monstrous height. It didn't look at them. It still didn't seem to realise quite where they were. That was the only reason Grant didn't grab the other man and bolt right then and there, for all the good it maybe would have done them.

The sound the creature made was not a bark. It was not quite a roar, either. It was a low, blood-curdling howl, a great baying noise as though a thousand animals had spoken with one voice, and every dog there leapt to its feet at the sound of it, turned where they stood, and came flooding abruptly out of the hollow in all directions. A score of them rushed past where the pair of them stood, baying furiously all the while, and Grant fumbled uselessly for his sword, desperate to try and defend them.

Childermass stopped him. Childermass spun furiously towards him, stepping in front of him and seizing him violently about both arms, and incidentally placed himself between Grant and the barghest in the process. Grant did not appreciate this gesture, he didn't appreciate it at all, but Childermass stared at him with such furious command that he had to fall still, albeit with very ill grace. The man's eyes closed, a stiff, strained expression crossing his features, and the air around seemed suddenly very thick indeed. Magic, Grant realised slowly. The spell that kept them from all eyes and ears that might want them. And noses, too, he hoped suddenly. They stood in the middle of a vast pack of dogs, a vast hunt that wheeled around them, baying in the overcast afternoon, and Grant realised with a grim sinking in his stomach that they had almost certainly walked right into a trap.

Childermass swayed forward against him, his hair clinging wetly to his face and his features damn near permanently bleached of colour. Grant caught him under the elbows, leaving his sword still in its sheath, and held the poor bastard up while he trembled. Effort, he hoped. Not an attack. Though that might shortly change.

Again, the thought summoned the creature. Again, it moved to their despair. The barghest turned its head with slow, grinning malice, sweeping the area in search of them, and as it searched its shape abruptly flickered. It changed, became for half an instant not a monstrous black dog but a monstrous pale lion instead, and then a hideous corpse-like woman, her head held negligently in one hand, and then a headless man instead, his hollow eyes burning like the gates of hell. With each change, Childermass flinched violently in Grant's arms, his shaking increasingly until he could no longer stand by himself. All his weight tipped forward into Grant, who caught him and pulled him close against his chest, trying desperately to keep the man on his feet. He knew a moment of despair, a horror for the moment when Childermass would lose consciousness, the spell would drop, and that blasted creature would fall upon them.

Childermass was apparently not quite so easily felled, however. He snarled viciously under his breath, clinging with what strength he still had to Grant's shoulders, and the air around them fairly writhed with whatever magic he was doing. Gradually, his tremors seemed to lessen, his body flinching less and less no matter how often the thing behind him changed its shape. Soon, they stopped altogether, leaving him limp and panting in Grant's arms, but defiantly unmoved by the creature's efforts. His jaw was set near to breaking, but it became clear that he had, at least for the moment, successfully managed to erect some defence against the barghest's assault.

It still didn't leave them in the best of positions, of course. They were surrounded on all sides, the barghest's hunting pack in all likelihood scouring the moors around the hollow for any sign of them, and Childermass looked about dead on his feet. Grant honestly didn't know if he'd survive another assault of that magnitude, and unless they found a way out of here very quickly he had no doubt that one would come. There was no give in the man in his arms, though, not an inch of surrender to the inevitable, and despite his awareness of the situation Grant could not help but feel a surge of triumphant pride at their little victory regardless.

They were outmanoeuvred, but they were not outmatched yet. He could work with that. He'd seen battles come back from worse. Not much worse, admittedly, but let's try to keep morale out of the latrines, shall we?

"... That. Was not fun," Childermass rasped, pushing weakly against Grant's chest as he tried stubbornly to get his feet under him once again. Grant almost didn't let him. There was pride and there was idiocy, after all. There was such a thin, pale set to the man's face, though, that he didn't dare damage his determination just yet. He steadied him, instead. He kept him close and gripped beneath his elbows to hold him on his own two feet. He saw gratitude for it, in that moment. He saw a very genuine sort of thankfulness in the man's eyes.

"It didn't look it," Grant agreed quietly. "It was using its magic against you, wasn't it? It was trying to make you drop your spell."

Childermass nodded exhaustedly. "It knows we're here, but not quite where. It can't see us. I've done that much right at least. At this point it's a matter of endurance, however, and I ..." He licked his lips, a deep, angry shame in his eyes. "I'll not outlast it. I haven't a hope. I'm not that strong a magician."

I'm not Jonathan Strange, came the unspoken rider to that. I'm not a war magician. But then, Grant thought, Merlin hadn't initially been one either. He'd had to learn, the hard way, in mud and blood the same as the rest of them. The learning curve for war was as sharp for magicians as for anyone, and there was only one real sign that you'd mastered it.

"We're not dead yet," he said gently. He paused a little until Childermass glared back up at him, and held his gaze in steady encouragement. "We're not dead and we're not captured. That's not doing so badly, given that we've apparently walked into an ambush. And we've accomplished part of the mission, as well. We know what the thing is now. All we have to do is figure out how to escape to report back, preferably without dying horribly in the process, and we'll have done as good a job as any general could ask for."

He had decent hopes in that direction, too. He had a certain amount of confidence in the man in front of him, and mostly because Childermass wasn't a soldier. He might have done half-decently as one, but it wasn't really his nature. He'd had been right the first time, Grant thought. Childermass was by nature a spy, a saboteur, and if there was any brand of creature on a battlefield that might have a hope of extricating themselves from something like the current situation, that was one of them. They were standing right now in plain daylight in the middle of the enemy, and nothing had seen them yet. If there was any better sign of their good chances, he'd really like to know about it.

Childermass blinked at that. He thought about it. He was still swaying badly, his skin icy cold and white as death, his brown greatcoat looking less like wings now and more like something fit to drag him to a heap on the ground with the weight of it. He looked like someone about to fly apart, kept from it only by the tether Grant held on his arms. Yet he straightened, suddenly. He closed his eyes, drew himself up. Pulled himself together, almost literally, and turned suddenly to study the thing behind him. It almost cost him his footing, Grant had to hastily and not entirely graciously juggle his grip to keep the man on his feet, but there fire back in Childermass now. There was determination, and a certain thoughtful insolence once again.

"I wonder," the man said softly, looking very fey and dangerous all of a sudden. Not like a magician, to Grant's eyes. Not like Merlin. Like a thing of the moors, instead. Like a great brown raven, about to take flight. Like a man with a plan, and God help them all because of it.

"... But it is Yorkshire," Childermass murmured thoughtfully. Nonsensically. "It is my moor. I wonder ... I wonder if it would let me go that far?"

For the wild gleam suddenly in his eyes, Grant almost hoped that it wouldn't. Almost, mind. Only almost. The barghest loomed too large in front of him for Childermass to be entirely as unnerving as he probably would have been otherwise. That didn't mean Grant was in any way reassured, however. There was just no help for it now.

Please, he thought wryly, as he kept his grip on the man's arm. Please let this not be the kind of plan that gets us all killed. Please let this plan be somewhat sane.

He didn't hold out a lot of hope, however. It just hadn't been that kind of day.

A/N: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barghest

Oh my god! I'm on the edge of my seat, this is brilliant! *rooting for Childermass and Grant*

It didn't feel like daytime, Grant thought distantly. Even standing there in broad daylight on the moors, with their enemies all around them to remind them about how very visible they should have been, it still didn't feel like daytime. Not with that thing in front of them. The barghest was a nighttime thing, a creature of the darkness. It seemed wrong, somehow unfair, that they should have to deal with it by daylight.

Not that he'd have preferred to meet the thing in the dark of night, either. He'd prefer not to meet it at all. It just felt unfair, that things like that could exist in daylight too.

"... Major Grant," Childermass called softly in front of him. He turned slightly, his arm quivering a bit in Grant's grasp, and there was something of a pale, unholy light in his eyes when they met Grant's own. He was shaking again, as much from a terrified exuberance as from weakness, and his grin wasn't really a daylight thing either. "I've just had a very foolish notion, Major Grant. Would you like to hear it?"

Grant stared at him in a distant sort of amusement. "I had an idea you might have," he said wryly. "Is it the sort of notion that will get us killed?"

Childermass chuckled. "If it goes wrong, most certainly," he said, shrugging awkwardly around Grant's hand. "Even if it goes right it'll not exactly be a pleasant journey. I'm about to ask you to take a very great risk, Major. Will you come with me? Will you follow?"

Grant had to laugh at that. Looking around them, looking at the bloody great monster looming behind the man. Would he follow? He'd already answered that, surely, or he wouldn't have ended up here in the first place. Yet there was something very serious in Childermass' expression, when he looked back at him. There was an earnest question on his face, and Grant sobered a little in the face of it.

"... To hell and back, sir," he said eventually, and entirely serious himself. He changed his grip on Childermass' arm, moved his hand down to the wrist to hold more in a brotherly clasp than a restraining grip. Childermass blinked at him, somewhat startled, and very cautiously turned his hand to return the gesture. "I'll follow you to hell and back by this stage. If only because we look to have already made it most of the way there."

Childermass smiled faintly, a little flicker of amusement, but there was still something deep and somewhat startled in his eyes. There was a very strange expression as he looked at Grant, and Grant didn't entirely know what to make of it.

It hardly mattered, after a moment. Childermass shook it off, and Grant's hand as well, and looked back across the hollow towards the barghest. A group of hounds ran past them suddenly, off to one side, and seemed only barely turned aside by Childermass' magic. It was subtle, just the slightest veering off of their course, but Grant flinched a little anyway, certain that the creature had to notice it. Surely it had to notice them sooner or later, by one means or another. They couldn't hope to hold out for much longer, standing right out in the open.

"It wasn't quite hell I had in mind," Childermass said softly, recalling his attention. Grant looked back at him, and found him staring quite intently across the hollow, towards something at the back of it. A rock, it looked like. A rock that rested just a few feet beyond the barghest itself. Oh god. Not quite hell, eh? But near as damn it nonetheless.

"You want us to walk past that thing," he said. It wasn't a question. He'd had enough experience of this day so far to not even be surprised. "Your magic is barely holding out as it is, and you want us to walk right past the monster itself. That is your plan?"

He tried a little question at the end, there. He tried to make it a little less than a certainty. He was, apparently, to be sorely disappointed. Childermass only looked at him, wan and pale and so wryly determined, and grinned a condemned man's grin. So yes, then. Yes, that was apparently the plan. All right. Grant could ... He could probably manage that.

"I think you'll need to hold me up," Childermass admitted, very quietly. "It's magic is ... There'll be a great deal, that close to it. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep my feet. Will you ...?"

"Don't be stupid," Grant said, though gently enough. "I'll carry you past it, if I have to. Just try to keep it from noticing us in the process, will you? I don't fancy being torn to shreds this afternoon. I haven't even had dinner yet."

The jest didn't quite wring the reaction he'd hoped, only the barest flicker of a smile. Childermass had turned his attention fully to the problem at hand, and he didn't exactly look that optimistic about it. Determined, most certainly, but not optimistic. Grant stepped up beside him quietly. He drew his sword, perhaps uselessly, and took a place beside the man.

"Put your arm around my shoulder," he said to him softly. Childermass looked at him, with a grim sort of anticipation, and Grant smiled carefully at him. "Put your arm across my shoulder, Mr Childermass, and let us walk."

Childermass closed his eyes, and nodded faintly. "There'll be a moment at the rock where I'll have to switch spells," he said, when he'd opened them again and carefully slung one arm across Grant's shoulders. "It'll see us. With luck, we'll be beyond it by that time. Without luck ..."

"Without luck we won't have to worry about it for very long," Grant finished, and set one arm around the man's waist, ready to take his weight at a moment's notice. "No time like the present, sir. I'm ready if you are."

Childermass did chuckle at that, grim and strained. "I'm not ready at all," he said blithely. "Walk anyway, Major. It'll work or it won't."

And with that ringing endorsement, they set out across the hollow, right beneath the very teeth of the monster itself.

It didn't take long for the toll to become visible on Childermass. Barely two steps, even. Grant felt the weight start to pull on that shoulder, felt it try to tug them both off balance, and braced himself against it grimly. They were fortunate, in one sense. With all the dogs out hunting them around the hollow, there were very few obstacles left within the thing itself. Besides the obvious one, of course. There was a sort of bleak humour to that. The way was mostly clear, because only the most hare-brained or absolutely desperate of idiots would have tried walking closer to the nightmare in front of them.

Childermass made a small noise, beside him. Pain, it sounded like, or very deep strain. The same kind of noises he'd been making earlier, when he'd fainted at the rock outcrop somewhere above them. He didn't fall, though. He leaned very heavily on Grant, but he stubbornly kept putting one foot in front of the other, his dark eyes fixed defiantly on the creature. It was focused outside the hollow, still. It hadn't noticed them at all, even as they passed less a yard to one side of it. Grant felt a surge of vicious, absurd anger at that. The damned thing was that stupid, yet it could kill Childermass just by existing. That definitely did not seem fair.

They came clear of it. They walked right under its nose to the rock behind it, and Childermass fairly staggered the last few steps to the boulder. Grant slung him up against it, getting ready to turn and face the thing for the moment of truth, but Childermass snagged his sleeve pointedly. Grant looked at him, silent and with his sword in hand, ready for anything. Childermass smiled up at him through his exhaustion, a wild, magician-like sort of a look.

"No," the man said softly. His free hand was pressed against the stone, and there was an eerie, vaguely inhuman sort of triumph to his smile. "You don't need that. It won't have time. Stay with me, Major. Stay beside me."

Grant meant to ask why. He meant to ask what the man planned. There wasn't time, however. Childermass pressed his clawed fingers against the rock, pressed them suddenly and impossibly into the rock, and suddenly all the magic in the air about them changed.

The barghest spun, a high, terrifying snarl escaping it as it noticed them, a howl of absolute fury as it summoned its animals to itself, and Childermass pulled violently on Grant's arm. Grant staggered, felt himself hang in the air for what seemed like an endless second, and then Childermass' arms came about him and the man pulled him, in his entirety, into the boulder behind him. Into more than the boulder. They sank into a sudden, absolute darkness, and Grant only distantly heard the barghest scream in thwarted fury behind them.

He didn't understand what was happening, at first. There didn't seem to be a reference point. They were moving, he could feel that, but they were moving by no means he understood. It didn't feel like Merlin's descriptions of the King's Roads, the way he'd described travelling through the mirrors. That had been on foot, after the initial transfer. This ... was not. He'd no idea what it was. Childermass' arms around him seemed to be the one fixed point in a suddenly very formless world, and he clung to them without shame, awkwardly around the sword hilt still held in one hand. He hoped he hadn't accidentally stabbed the man mid-spell. He had an idea that would be very unfortunate. Very unfortunate indeed.

He didn't know how long they spent like that. It felt like an eternity, a dark and shapeless length of time without any measure at all, but then abruptly there was light again, a great wall of it slamming across them, and it felt like no time at all had passed. He staggered, pulling Childermass close against him as his feet encountered something that felt like the ground once more, and he blinked his eyes desperately until he could see around him once again.

Then he stared. Across from him, tied to their tree, two horses blinked myopically at him, seemingly wondering where the hell he'd sprung from. Grant couldn't blame them. He was busy wondering how the bloody hell they'd ended up back on the road himself.

Before he could ask, however, Childermass finally collapsed out from under him. Grant grabbed at him clumsily, dropping his sword with a harsh clatter and hoping neither of them landed on it, and then followed the man down to the ground. Childermass flopped limply against him, his head landing with a small thump against Grant's chest. Grant caught it, once they were safely seated on the ground. He cupped one hand around it, the other arm cradling Childermass' back, and pressed that brown head shakily into his chest.

They didn't move, for a minute. Childermass had faded completely, and Grant was busy trying to regulate his heartbeat in the wake of all that had just happened. They held still. Grant cradled the other man in his arms, and took a little moment to wonder at how familiar a sensation that was becoming. He wondered, a little ashamedly, at how right it was beginning to feel.

Childermass stirred, eventually. He came aware and stirred fitfully in Grant's arms, protesting the hand holding his head in particular. Grant let that one drop, but kept the arm around the man's shoulders. After all that, he wasn't letting Childermass fall now.

"... It worked, then," Childermass rasped at last. He sounded quite surprised by this, which did not at all help Grant's spate of nerves diminish. "Huh."

That was helpful, Grant thought. That was a damned bloody helpful thing to be saying. He shook his head, a confused jumble of anger and amazement and lingering terror bubbling through him, and somehow they settled out into humour instead. They settled out into a laughing sort of joy, as he hugged the bewildered man to his chest.

"What the bloody hell was that?" he asked, grinning wildly and apparently somewhat alarming the man. "What the hell did you do?"

Childermass blinked at him in consternation. Merlin wouldn't have, Grant thought. Jonathan Strange had gotten used to any variety of reactions to his magic. Apparently Childermass had not had the same depth of experience yet. Though if all his magic was as secretive as the bulk of this encounter, maybe that wasn't that surprising. He caught up eventually anyway. He sat up, very slowly and achingly, and to be honest only successfully because Grant helped him, and blinked cautiously into Grant's amazement.

"... 'Twas the rock," he said at last, oddly stiff and hesitant about it. "It let us through, to the bedrock beneath. Bedrock carried us up here. These are my moors, you see. This is my country. I told you it'd stand beside me."

Grant blinked at him. Childermass sat in a heap in the roadway, his face gaunt and white still, his brown hair in tangle around his face. The moors rolled out around him, vast and purple and wild, and suddenly Grant could almost feel it. Not the magic, exactly, but the belonging. The man in front of him was a half-wild thing, for all his neat waistcoat and the white cloth at his throat. His aspect wasn't entirely human, in a way that Merlin's hadn't become until the very end. There was no madness to him, though. There was only a calm, steady defiance, and that cool insolence forever in his gaze.

He was a beautiful thing, Grant thought distantly. In his own way, Childermass was a very beautiful thing indeed.

"... So you did," he said softly. "I remember. You did tell me that." He paused, tried to shake himself. For God's sake, man, now was not the time to be falling for another man's charms! Especially when said man was more than half-dead and very, very wary. "That is. Ah. I'm glad they saw fit to stand with us, then."

Childermass looked at him oddly for that. Like he wished to say something cutting, but couldn't quite manage it. A strange expression crossed his face, something between pain and gratitude and outright suspicion, and then abruptly the man held out a hand to him, palm up and forearm bared. An offer of a clasp, and of something else as well.

"And you," Childermass said, very quietly. "You stood fast as well. I'll thank you for it."

Grant stared at him. He gripped the hand that was offered, because it was nothing he could willingly let fall, but still he stared in some distant bemusement at the man. Tallying up a lot of things, the way Childermass had paused to check his willingness at every step of the way, the half-wary stance the man had never quite lost throughout their little adventure, and coming to something of a very cold conclusion.

"You don't have a lot of experience with that, do you," he said softly. "People standing by you. It's something very strange to you, isn't it."

Anger came back to Childermass' expression, anger and that cold defiance yet again, but before he could say anything, a bloodcurdling sound tore out across the moors beneath them. The baying of a thousand dogs, and the roar of one incredibly angry barghest ripped out through the afternoon air, and just like that there was no time for suspicion once again.

Childermass' head dropped back onto his shoulders, an expression of purest aggravated despair crossing his still-white face. "Bloody buggering hell," he snarled out, almost more exasperated than afraid, and Grant near laughed at him once again.

"Come on," he said, leaning down to thread his arm around the man's shoulders and help him wearily to his feet once again. "I think we may need to get off this moor, don't you? And quickly, perhaps."

To hell and back, he thought lightly. They'd been to hell and back, and they were ahead of the game so far. To be honest, they weren't doing so bad at all.

Just devoured the whole thing so far, and eek, so exciting! I love Grant and Childermass and their interactions and how Grant views Childermass and the way that's changing. And the barghest is proper creepy! Can't wait to read more of this!

I am completely in love with snark on snark partnership of Grant and Childermass. Excellent work! I'm also really caught up in the story, I can't wait to see what happens next!

They needed to get out of here, Grant thought, holding Childermass firmly against his side. They needed to get off the moors in very sharp order, that much was extremely obvious. There was, however, just one small logistical problem to be dealt with first.

Childermass was clearly in no fit state to ride. Stubborn might get him a certain distance, but given how often he'd collapsed already, there was no way he'd be able to hold on at a gallop or even a fast trot while they fled the moor. He'd fall off his horse before they'd gone five miles, and that would be a fine cap to the afternoon. To get so far only to be murdered by his own trampling beast of a horse. No. That wouldn't do at all.

He gave some brief thought to simply throwing the man across his own saddle horn and riding for it, but if his attempt to throw the man across his shoulder had been anything to go by, that would earn him an honest fight, and they could hardly afford that either. He'd have to sit the man in front of him in the saddle, across his knees so he could keep a hold of him. That was hardly going to be either comfortable or dignified, and he had some suspicion that Childermass' abused dignity had already reached the end of its rope, but there was just no bloody helping it.

"Will your horse follow mine?" he asked, while they stumbled over to the animals. Childermass, who'd obviously been thinking along similar lines to him, and not liking the results any better, grimaced viciously. He conceded the necessity, however. He could apparently be a very practical man in places.

"Brewer knows how to get home," he agreed sourly. "He'll follow where I go. If you think I'm going across your saddle horn, though, you can damn well think again."

Grant blinked at him, mildly sheepish to have been caught out, and the glare Childermass sent him when he realised that was a true champion. Grant shrugged, trying to hide his smile, and was helpfully reminded by the howling from the bottom of the ridge that they should really hurry up about things.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he said, and pulled the man over to help get him up onto the horse. It was going to take some pushing. Childermass was weak as a babe, and whether he'd have the strength to pull himself up was an honest question. "Sit up on the horn for a minute, let me get in behind you. You can rest back against me once I've got my feet in the stirrups, all right?"

Childermass only snarled, and then tried, honestly and desperately, to pull himself up into the saddle. The horse shifted, startled and uneasy, and Grant had to hastily reach out and steady it. It looked for a minute that Childermass was going to fall back down, his dignity finally killed at last, when suddenly ...

When suddenly the tree the horses had been tied to, the tree itself, reached down with its branches and grabbed Childermass by his caped shoulders. It plucked him up into the air, Grant stumbling back a step which a shocked cry, and dropped him entirely artlessly into the saddle. Childermass landed with a thump, clinging wild-eyed while the horse shied beneath him, and Grant could tell by his stunned, white face that that had most definitely not been a planned part of the proceedings. Which, given that a tree had just come to life, was not at all a reassuring thing to be realising.

"... What?" he asked, stepping close again cautiously. "Did you just ...?" Somewhat hoping, you see, despite all evidence of the day so far.

"No," Childermass said, still wild-eyed. He calmed quickly, though. He turned to his head to study the tree with sharp, only mildly panicked eyes. Grant blinked up at him, itchily aware of the howling still drawing ever closer. Moving trees that plucked people in and out of saddles were something of a pressing problem as well, though. He allowed that.

"Well?" he asked, after a long second. Not hurriedly. He'd no very pressing need to be elsewhere at the moment, of course not. Childermass glanced down at him, but both his shock and his aggravation seemed to have vanished, suddenly. In their place, there was something that looked ... almost like awe. Like wonder.

"It's the moor," the man said softly, with something of a dazed expression. "It's still listening. All of it, not just the rock. It's ... It's gone and woken up."

Grant blinked rapidly, the prickling sensation on the back of his neck suddenly becoming very pressing indeed. He glanced warily around him, wondering what that meant exactly. The rocks had carried them up half a mile of ridge, and a tree had just picked a man up and dropped him where it wanted him. The moors were vast around them, and judging by the man in front of him they were not a tame place at all. He wasn't sure he was happy with the idea that they'd gone and taken an interest in the somewhat vulnerable men atop them.

But then ... then they had helped, so far. Everything they'd done, even putting Childermass up on the horse, had been aimed to help them. Childermass believed in them. He believed with utter surety that the moors would stand by him against his enemies, and they certainly had a very pressing one of those right now. They'd not been let down so far. So ... maybe that faith wasn't such an unfounded thing for the man to have.

"... Do you think they'd be willing to help us, then?" he asked the man softly. Childermass blinked down at him, a fey sort of look about him, and Grant swallowed faintly but continued on. He stepped back in close to the horse, rested his hand just behind the man's leg, and asked it of him in lieu of the moors themselves. "Do you think they might try and waylay that thing for us, just until we get clear? We'd not be leaving it with them long. When we know how to deal with it, we'll come back and do so. But if they could help us now, just to get away from it ...?"

Childermass blinked slowly at him. There was a strange expression on his face. Not an alien one, not as though something other than himself was looking out through his eyes, though there was perhaps a hint of that. He was a half-wild thing, even still, and the moors apparently spoke to him. But no. This was Childermass' own expression, and Grant couldn't quite interpret it.

".. You'll give them your word, will you?" the man asked him quietly, heavily, after a thoughtful second. "You'll promise them to return and deal with it when the time comes?"

And oh. Oh, Grant understood that, all right. That wasn't a question the moors were asking. It was a question Childermass, the man who had been so surprised that Grant would actually stand fast beside him, was asking yet again, for about the fourth time so far this day. The lack of trust might have wearied him, save that Grant had only really noticed it a few minutes before, and save that it wasn't quite distrust that he was seeing now. It was more ... a search for confirmation. It was that Childermass quite nearly did trust him, and was only holding out for one last sign that it might be warranted.

Grant wanted to give him that sign. Almost more than anything he'd wanted in quite a while, he wanted to earn the trust of this odd, defiant man, who did not flinch in the face of monsters. And it wasn't much he was being asked for. Only the completion of a job Grant had already begun, and would be damned if he didn't see finished now. So. So then indeed.

"I will," he said, calmly and honestly as he looked up at the man. "I'll give them my word to return, once we have a hope of winning this fight. I won't leave them to face a monster alone. I promise that, and please believe me when I say that I am a man of my word, Mr Childermass."

There was a small, thoughtful pause, and then Childermass said, slowly and with equal honesty: "I don't doubt it, Major Grant. I don't doubt it at all."

He held out his hand then, as though to pull Grant up onto the horse in open spite of the fact that he hadn't even had the strength to get himself up there. Before Grant could say anything about that, though, before he could give in to the urge to knock the stubborn idiot upside the head, the very earth beneath Grant's feet moved. He gave a startled yelp, nearly panicking, but then the tree reached out to him as well, steadied his shoulder with its branches, and the earth beneath Grant's feet rose up and held him comfortably level with the saddle, so that he might just casually sling his leg across it. Grant stared at Childermass, and Childermass stared right on back at him, apparently equally startled. A burst of humour bubbled up through Grant. It looked, after a second, to be entirely mutual.

"I think the moors accept your bargain, sir," Childermass said to him wryly, and balanced up on the saddle horn for a second to let Grant slide in behind him. The effort clearly damaged him, his arms shaking with the strain, and Grant was sure to settle himself quickly behind the man. He eased Childermass gently back down and then dropped his own forehead against the man's back, just for the smallest of seconds.

"I'm glad of it," he said, honestly enough, but then felt compelled to add: "Do you think we might be allowed to leave them now? This has been an interesting day, and I do not wish to finish it as barghest food. We've come close enough to that already for one lifetime."

Childermass chuckled tiredly and leaned back against him, an exhausted weight against Grant's legs and chest. "You are in command of the horse, not I," he noted quietly, but gripped Grant's hands in his own gloved ones for a second. "We will come back, when we're ready. It's promised now. This is not entirely over, sir."

"No," Grant agreed, as he twitched the reins to lead them cautiously back out onto the road, Childermass' wicked beast following warily along behind them. He wrapped one arm firmly around Childermass' waist, bound and determined that the man should not be taken away from him. "It's over for now, though, and I think it's past time for us to leave. Hold on as long you can, sir. This will not be a pleasant ride, even with all the help the moors may give."

Childermass did not answer. He merely gripped the saddle horn in front of him with fading strength, and set his jaw once more against necessity. Grant spurred the horse slowly but surely to walk, then a trot, then a gallop. Behind them, seeming to hear them as they fled, the barghest raised a furious, eerie howl, a sound that seemed to shake the very skies above them and the moors around them. Grant swallowed, leaning forward and forcing Childermass ahead of him, lying protectively across the man and the horse's back. The wind picked up, roaring past them back across the moor, and a sudden whispering rose through the heather around them, over the thunder of the hooves. The moor grew bleak and menacing, moreso even than usual, and Childermass groaned in sudden strain in front of him. The man's back went stiff, for the tiniest of seconds, and then fell limp again. The tautness fled from his arms, strength and consciousness along with it, and Childermass fainted away for the last time as the entirety of the Yorkshire moors seemed to come to sudden, vengeful life around them.

Grant, by far too inured to such occurrences by now, merely kept his head down, kept a firm, bruising grip on the unconscious man's waist, and drove them determinedly onward across the moorland's back. There were howls behind him, baying hounds, screams of fury and the incongruous clanking of chains above the wind, but they never again came close. Indeed, they faded in and out, cut off by the snarling of the wind and thrown from one end of the moors to the other, and he reflected grimly that he had best not renege on his promise, for it seemed that the Yorkshire moors were very much creatures of their word as well, and would take any betrayal on his part very badly amiss.

He'd not intended to, anyway. Childermass would not, and Grant was damned sure never letting the man back up here alone again. He was far too willing to get himself killed.

Evening fell, as they came down out of the moorlands, galloping across lower, gentler countryside at last. Grant pushed them onwards, only slowing his pace to spare the horses. He turned them on towards Starecross, towards Mrs Strange and safety. He felt a need for it, suddenly. The growing twilight fell itchily across still-raw nerves, and while he did not doubt that the moors would keep the barghest caged behind them, he had no current fondness for darkness and all that might lurk in it. He needed them to be home, or as close as came to it for now.

Childermass stirred once they cleared the moors. He groaned, scrunched painfully and awkwardly between Grant and the saddle, and blinked blearily around them as Grant slowed the horses to a panting, exhausted walk a few miles off from Starecross. He almost wished they might transfer to Brewer, spare his own animal now that the need wasn't so great, but he'd never get Childermass down and up again at this point. They'd have to settle for limping the last few miles in thoroughly exhausted fashion.

Half the house was waiting for them, when they finally made it to the gate. More than that. Every magician currently in Northern England seemed to be gathered in the yard, though how they'd known to expect an arrival now Grant couldn't have said. Mrs Strange was in the lead, though, with Lady Pole, Mr Segundus and Mr Honeyfoot right behind her. At the sight of them, Childermass very, very painfully straightened in his seat. Pride. Even to the last, the man was ruled by a certain damnable, impossible pride.

"What on earth happened up there?" Mr Segundus cried, running out to meet them and looking them worriedly over for ... wounds, maybe. Death, for all Grant knew. "The whole North must have felt that, Mr Childermass! You've woken half the moor! What happened?!"

Grant was in no mood for questions, however, and he was more than happy to say so. He pulled himself awkwardly out from beneath Childermass, leaving the man hunched and panting in the saddle, and dismounted to glare pointedly at all around them.

"In the morning," he said curtly, though he offered Arabella an apologetic bow at the same time. "Please. The matter is safely corralled for now, and we are dead on our feet. We will report to you all in the morning, but right now I must get Mr Childermass inside. The damn thing's almost killed him."

"Thing?" Segundus asked warily, though he stepped back in neat order and did not protest as Grant turned to help Childermass gingerly to the ground. Childermass protested, right enough, bitterly determined not to be weak in front of them, but his exhaustion betrayed him at the last. He half-fell down into Grant's arms, hiding his face for half a second in shame before glaring defiantly out at them, and Segundus reacted with instant, genuine gentility. "Oh, of course. Follow me, Mr Grant. If we can be assured of our safety, we will naturally deal with the rest in the morning."

"We're safe," Childermass growled, leaning weakly on Grant despite his best wishes. "'Tis a barghest, but the moors have trapped it for us for now. We've time to plan, John Segundus. Don't worry about that."

At the word 'barghest', Mr Segundus gave a little squeak, and looked as if he very much intended to worry about it, but to his eternal credit he pestered them no more. He led them past the rest, guiding them up and into the house, and left them at Childermass' room with a hurried word about seeing to it that they had water and food sent up to them at once. Grant liked him, he decided. He was a fussy sort of a creature, but he was a deeply, genuinely good man behind it. And, more to the point, he had finally led them to safety.

After the day he'd just had, there was nothing in the world that Grant was currently more grateful for.

The first thing Grant did, once water was delivered and the bedroom door finally closed behind them, was to walk Childermass over and set him gently down on the bed. The man didn't lie back. He'd decided to be stubborn again, Grant could see. Embarrassed by the scene on the way in, Childermass had very visibly decided to be stubborn.

Grant ignored it, with something like good grace. Childermass was probably owed a chance to regain his pride, after everything both up on the moor and down here. He could hardly begrudge the man that, provided he didn't do anything completely stupid because of it.

"You should get undressed," he said quietly. He'd no notion of propriety at this point, or much of privacy either when set against the need to see the man safe, and it seemed Childermass didn't much either. The man squinted warily at him for a second, but set about wrestling himself out of his coat in good enough order. Grant helped him, and with the waistcoat as well, and the shoes. Childermass definitely looked him askance for that, wondering at the man kneeling in front of him, but Grant was by this stage well past caring. He stood up carefully, more than a little achey and exhausted himself, and nodded down at the man.

"You should take that shirt off as well," he said tiredly. "It's perfectly sodden, you'll never sleep in it. Do you have a spare one around here somewhere?"

He glanced around, although the room was rather too bare and spartan looking to really allow much hope. Childermass only grunted in exasperation behind him, and pulled the sweat-soaked shirt over his head with stiff, angry motions.

"I'll be fine," he growled, balling the article up in his fists. "Just soak it in the wash basin and hang it by the window. It'll be fine by morning."

Grant would have answered that, some gentleman's instinct decrying the abuse of clothing that way, but he found himself mildly distracted by the sight of the man's chest. Or, more specifically, by the sight of a round, puckered scar high up on it, by the left shoulder.

"You really were shot," he wondered absently, recalling the story from what felt like absolutely aeons ago. He reached out, touched the mark gently. "By a woman? That was what you said, was it not? Was that true also?"

Childermass glanced down at his hand, and then back up, a rather wry expression on his face. "Technically, her grudge was with my master," he said, grimacing faintly at Grant, who was somehow not surprised by this. He'd heard enough rants about Norrell from Merlin. "She came for him with a pistol, I got between them, and this was my reward for it."

He brushed Grant's hand aside, while Grant was busy digesting that, and stood very slowly and carefully to his feet, angling himself towards the wash basin with the shirt in his hands. Grant woke up again at that, opening his mouth to protest, to say that he could bloody well manage soaking a shirt so that the man needn't fall down in yet another bloody heap on the floor, but he got such a fulminating glare for his troubles that the words never quite passed his lips.

"I'm not bloody dead yet, thank you," Childermass growled, as he turned his back on Grant to stalk stiffly to the wash stand. Grant meant to answer it, truly he did, but something caught him up short yet again. He saw something in the candlelight, another aspect of the man's body, and it silenced him all over again. It was not a happy aspect, you see. Even less so than the bullet scar had been.

Childermass' back was riddled with lash marks. Great silver weals of them, criss-crossing his shoulder blades and running sharply across his left hip and side. A right-handed man, Grant realised distantly. A right-handed man wielding a short lash or a crop, somewhat inexpertly, but very, very violently. The man's back looked to have been half torn apart.

"... Great god," he whispered, staring at the marks in dull, stupefied horror, and Childermass glanced back at him sharply. In confusion, for a moment, and then in thick, unhappy amusement once he realised what the problem had to be. A tiny, bitter smirk crossed his lips, and he turned back to the basin to start shoving his shirt somewhat forcefully beneath the water.

"I told you I'd no great love for the army," he said quietly, a light and casual humour in his voice. "Very fond of flogging, you lot. Doesn't incline a man to like you very much."

Grant stared at him, in distant horror and confusion. "But," he said, somewhat stupidly. He was too tired by far to understand this. "But you're not a soldier. I'd have sworn ..."

"No," Childermass agreed, thumping the cloth in his hand with some force. "I was a sailor once, for a little bit, but never a soldier, aye."

He paused, cut himself off and held himself trembling over the wash basin for a moment. He seemed to be thinking, to struggle momentarily with himself. Then, slowly, he turned back around to face Grant properly. He leaned heavily on the wash stand, his strength nowhere near up to this, but he turned anyway. There was a calm, fixed defiance on his face.

"I was a pickpocket," he admitted quietly, though in defiance rather than shame. "When I was younger. I picked the wrong target. A retired officer. The man had me beaten damn near half to death for it. Tied me up against his carriage wheel. I couldn't stand up for a week afterwards. It was not my finest moment, I admit. It was a bit of a clumsy lift."

He raised an eyebrow at Grant's sick expression, a twist of challenge to his mouth, daring Grant to say something about this. Grant couldn't. He couldn't even begin, and Childermass only smirked faintly in response to his silence.

"You can't tell me you're surprised, sir," he challenged softly. Despite everything that had happened today, he managed to be icily cold. The trust Grant had thought they shared fell away, and raw challenge lay beneath it. "Don't tell me you never thought at any point that I could use a good lashing for my insolence."

Grant stared at him, a sick, gnawing thing in his gut. He remembered a wild smirk, up on the moors. He remembered thinking idly, and in humour, that there wasn't an officer in the army who wouldn't have had him flogged for it on the spot. It hadn't been ... It hadn't been real, though. The man wasn't a soldier. It wouldn't have come to pass. It had been humorous, because it would never have really come to pass.

"I," he said, shaking his head thickly. "No. No, not ... Not as something that could happen. Not as something real." He moved towards the man, drawn to him as though by a string, and angled himself sideways to try and catch a glimpse of the marks once again, to prove to himself that they were real. Childermass stared at him for a second, looked up at him with something wild and angry in his eyes, before he deliberately turned himself to bare his scarred shoulders to Grant's gaze.

Grant reached out to them. He didn't mean to, his hand seemed to move all by itself. He rested his trembling fingers across the uppermost marks, and felt the man flinch beneath them. Grant felt him shake violently, half in weakness and half in rage, and he remembered the barghest all of a sudden. He remembered Childermass flinching in his arms, over and over again, as the creature lashed at him with its magic. He imagined a man, in place of it. He imagined that it had not been a monster but a human being, one of his fellow officers, striking blow after blow at this man's back. To his somewhat distant surprise, he felt a thick, molten surge of fury rise within him at the thought. Inexplicably, he felt a rush of something very hotly murderous.

"... I would kill him," he said quietly, with that strange fury in his tone. "A man who did this now. I think I would kill him where he stood."

Childermass looked at him at that. He looked back across his shoulder at Grant, a vicious, boiling sort of suspicion in his eyes. It was very plain, far more so than anything Grant had seen on the moors, though he vaguely realised that there had been small signs of it even then. Small flinches away from his boots, and stiff wariness when he came near. They'd barely shown. Childermass had challenged Grant's obvious dislike openly and with visible humour. The darkness beneath it had been barely noticeable at all.

"... If I may say, sir," Childermass said very softly. "You seem to change your opinions very rapidly. To go from disliking me to ..." He faltered, momentarily uncertain. Perhaps he had not forgotten his trust after all, for all he seemed prepared to have it forfeited. "From disliking me to not, in only the course of a single afternoon? That is a sharp turn, sir. For anyone."

Grant blinked at him, a blank, cracked-open sort of sensation in his chest. A strange emptiness, as the fury fell back a bit, and then ... then a sort of a humour. The bleak kind of laughing that had carried the pair of them all through this absolute hell of a day.

"In my defence," he said, with a wry sort of a look that Childermass, somehow, still softened to, "this was not an ordinary afternoon. By anyone's standards. And, if I may say, you are not a ordinary man. I don't think you're even an ordinary magician. It is very hard to maintain a dislike for you, when you have been so very determined to bleed for what you believe in, and myself not least of all."

Childermass only stared at him, breathing hard and shallow. His expression, in that moment, was about as tangled as his hair, and defied interpretation. Then it calmed, suddenly. Then that wild, soft determination came back across it, and Childermass turned to him fully once again. He pressed his lips together, the kind of daring that walked right beneath a monster's teeth to escape it, and he raised one hand carefully to Grant's still clothed shoulder.

"If I am wrong about this," he requested quietly, while Grant merely stared at him. "If I am reading this wrongly, I would ask that you refuse me gently, if you can. I don't think I'm up to much violence right now."

And then, without even a pause for an answer, he brought his hand from Grant's shoulder to his face. He brushed it up across Grant's cheek, held it pale and trembling there, and looked Grant askance for the smallest of moments. Grant leaned into him, without a thought. He stepped closer, and brought his arms very carefully around Childermass' waist. Tension flooded from the man, abruptly. The hard defiance fell away, and only a very tentative hope remained, as Childermass finally leaned in and pressed cracked lips to Grant's own.

He tasted of magic. Of pain, and magic, and exhaustion, of adrenalin and battle, and shaking comfort in the aftermath. He tasted so familiar, for a second, a echo back to another time and another magician, that it was almost too painful to bear. But it was not entirely familiar. There were other things in it too, other tastes and sensations. Heather and moors, a cool, steady insolence, a taste of earth and stone and laughing. A half-wild thing, a bitter thing, held shaking in Grant's arms. This was not Jonathan Strange. This was Childermass, instead, and in truth there was nothing else he could be mistaken for.

He had no strength, however. Childermass. He'd been done in before they ever left the moors, and all the strength he'd poured into this last, stubborn defiance had worn him through. He slipped down out of the kiss, his eyes a little glassy and faint, and dropped his head exhaustedly onto Grant's shoulder. Grant, with some ease of habit by now, caught him. He took the man's weight casually in his arms.

"... I'd say you're not up to much of anything right now," he said gently, and with some humour. "I'd be insulted, but I was there when you woke half of North Yorkshire to fight a faerie monster. I suppose I shall have to let it pass this time."

"Thank you," Childermass managed, with thick amusement against Grant's neck. "Most generous of you, sir." He sighed, though, and slumped inside Grant's arms. Not only tired, but disappointed. "Just my bloody luck. First bit of pleasant company I've had in ages, and I can't so much as stand up to kiss him properly."

Grant laughed, dancing them backwards towards the bed, a much happier two-step than any other so far this day. "It's not as though you won't have another chance," he noted, while he managed to get Childermass seated beneath him and then knelt down in front of him. He gripped the man's knee, smiling happily up at him. "We should get you to bed, my friend. We should let you get rested up a bit, and then perhaps we might revisit this conversation at a later date. Tomorrow morning, perhaps? Early tomorrow morning. If you're up to it, of course."

Childermass shook his head at him, a calm, happy insolence in his face, and a sly little smile on his lips. There was no more distrust in his eyes, Grant realised. Not even a lingering shadow. It would seem that, somehow, he had passed the last test of it. It made him ... more than pleased, he thought. Something strange, some heavy, aching feeling in his chest. It made him feel something very strange indeed, and he was almost half-inclined to thank the barghest for having given it to him. This chance, this opportunity. As terrible a day as it had been, he thought it nearly worth it, nearly more than that, just for that.

"I shall see what I can do, sir," Childermass said, smiling faintly at him. "Get some rest yourself, leave the matter with me, and I shall certainly see what I can do."

Well. That was a promise, then. That was a promise and, as he had found beyond doubt today, Childermass was ever a man of his word.

The day was looking up at last, he thought. This day, and tomorrow even better again.

A/N: Finished at last. I combined this last part with another prompt a bit, the one about Childermass having whipping scars and his lover freaking out about them, because we were already in hurt/comfort territory and I thought why not. I, ah, I hope nobody minds?

Wow, what a beautifully tender final scene. Is the stuff about Childermass' scars actually in either the book or the TV series, because I don't recall it? If it's something that has emerged as fandom-canon, I absolutely love it (makes sense, lends itself to all manner of fic, etc) and you have written it perfectly here, right from the backstory to how both Childermass and Grant deal with it.

Author!Anon. As far as I can tell it's a fan theory - I've only seen the show, so I don't know about the book, but I don't remember it either. I incorporated it here because there was a prompt in Round One and I really liked the idea, and it seemed to fit well with Grant, so I put it in. I didn't actually intend to originally, but the scene where the barghest attacks Childermass sort accidentally laid a pretty nice framework, and why not? Heh. I'm glad it worked for you!

I am a big ol' slut for h/c, as well as for fics with actual and excellent plots, so all the wins here.
Protective Grant and vulnerable Childermass make my toes curl, and the scene with the dogs sitting and waiting was creepy as hell. Childermass waking the moors was the hot fudge on the whole thing.

Loved this.

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☆ Round Two!

FILL: On the March, Part 1/?

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FILL: On the March, Part 2/?

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FILL: On the March, Part 3/?

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FILL: On the March, Part 4/?

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FILL: On the March, Part 5/?

FILL: On the March, Part 6/6

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