Waywalkers: Number 1 in Series by Catherine Webb

knows you don’t like using Portals! He called in the valkyries to watch ferry ports and hired mercenaries to watch the airports!’

    ‘Mercenary humans, or spirits?’

    ‘Both! Some natural wizards, mostly spirits.’

    That stood to reason. Mercenaries, wild spirits, were mainly the ones against whom Sam had established his networks. They obeyed nothing but their desire for magic to feed on, or serving the strongest master.

    He shook the valkyrie harder. ‘Tell him I didn’t kill Freya. Tell him to leave me alone!’ he shouted, unmoved by her struggles. He laid his hand over her forehead. Her eyes flickered shut, and she slipped to the deck and lay there, face down in the water.

    Sam re-sheathed his dagger, trembling with cold. For Thor to have his valkyries watch every port was to stretch them thin indeed.
He must really be angry.

    Returning to the warmth of the inner decks he collected his bag without a word to the astonished barman, and hurried down to a cubicle in the men’s lavatories. He took off his wet black coat and replaced it with the green anorak. In the shop he purchased a different rucksack, describing him as a ‘world trekker’, and piled his belongings into that. He’d put on the baseball cap, but ruled out buying a pair of sunglasses, in gloomy February.

    Holidaymakers are often disappointed by their arrival in Calais. After leaving Dover, which for the most part was bombed flat and poorly rebuilt, they usually want to arrive in a gleaming port where, for preference, a man wearing a silly hat is selling wine and garlic. Not so with Calais. From the port it’s straight on to a motorway which commands views over railyards and industrial estates. The bus to the centre of town goes past advertisement hoardings, and giant steel sheds in which foothills of builder’s cement are stacked for some unhappy day when the world finds itself needing that much of the stuff. The first indication of being in another land is the red-brick town hall, make-believe Flemish medieval, with a colossal clock tower. As the more cynical tourists point out, it surely isn’t Dover Castle. But it is different.

    The bus’s final destination was the town’s two stations, one international, the other regional. Sam bought a ticket and ran on to the Paris platform, catching the last train seconds before the whistle went. But surely not too soon. When would his trance on the valkyrie have worn off? Was it known even now that he’d got off the ferry in Calais?

    Did he dare sleep? he thought as the train clunked out of the station. Or were there more enemies out there, waiting for him? Because of a crime he hadn’t committed? Or for some truth whose discovery had got Freya killed?

    Sam resolved to stay awake.
     
    It had been on another train journey, Paris to Orleans, when he’d first decided, all those years ago, to intervene. He’d done so reluctantly, knowing how dangerous interference was in mortal affairs.

    His travelling companions were a woman in a hat and a neat suit, sitting up straight, her face empty. Either a spy or an informer, he decided in a flight of fancy. A man wearing rough, greasy clothes, with uncombed hair and dirt on his hands and face. A pair of giggling young children, pressing their noses against the window and trying to see the darkened landscape rush by. Another woman, in a shabbier suit, sat with her husband. An indelible little frown was etched on her brow.

    Sam had known he would intervene sooner or later. He’d seen the cratered homes in London, heard whispers about concentration camps, witnessed the Warsaw ghetto. In his heart he knew the only thing holding him back was fear. Even now, he feared mortals.

    ‘Papers.’ A German soldier, speaking heavily accented French, entered the carriage. Sam’s Luc Satise ID was briefly examined, and given back. The papers of the frowning woman and her husband were inspected, however, and not returned. Outside the closed compartment door the