TWENTY-FIVE
SALISBURY PLAIN, THE WINTER SOLSTICE, 2022 AD
An anxious afternoon and early evening had finally passed. Darkness had descended over Salisbury Plain but the full moon was rising to cast its pale quicksilver glimmer over the landscape. The remarkably few clouds for December must have pleased and suited the proposes of the Brotherhood of the Wand, whose black-cloaked acolytes were already gathered in the henge. I studied them through my night vision binocular. There were at least three hundred of the brethren. I shuddered to think how so many misguided people could share the same perverse vision of a new ice-enveloped world, conceived for the material benefit of an elite.
I wandered over to Knoll Down, my ears alert for any sound that might reveal a betrayal of my presence. I
