by Hal Duncan
So now Peter braves to suggest this must be Loch Ethane, and these hills around em the Cool’uns, why, they must be halfways into Strathweird. And Foxtrot concedes as how maybe’s the Land of Nod might’ve flouted his calculations of distance by sun angles and strides. And Squirlet allows as how maybe’s the Land of Somewhere Safe might’ve hid that turn to be took even from her. But not to fuss, they agrees. They could keep heading south to the coast, take the long way round, or cut east over the hills to this here inlet, where Strathweird meets Slide.
South seems the safest route – for all of half an hour before’s they’s galumphed into schlurping marsh, footstuck and sunkslogging, eventually having to heave Janiemalinky’s longpins free and all ending up in a great floppety splat of a heap, flailing and filthed.
– Fuck this to fucking fuck, says Flashjack.
– Oh, this is the parson’s pickle, says Peter. The perfect parson’s pickle! I shan’t go a step further!
And they all agrees he has a point, eh, it’d be crackers trudging on through this, so it’s a sharp left and onward, upward, Squirlet ahead, peepers peeled for a sneaky mountain pass.
All day they treks and scrambles, stinked with sludge and slickery with sweat, clambering up and up by corries and ridges, to the very peak of Mount Blabbing, scamps, the very peak. It’s a well weary bunch as comes plodding down t’other side, following a trickle as becomes a burn as becomes a cascade as becomes, oh, the flabbergasting phantasmagnificent Dunachin Falls they stands beneath, scamps, in its thundering steamy spray, gobsmacked. Because that water...
– It’s hot, says Lily. It’s a hot waterfall.
– A hotterfall! says Peter.
So, showered, soothed, they’s lazing peaches-and-creamy dreamy when’s the centaurs attack.
• 7
– Well, if it’s not one thing, it’s another, says Peter.
Hands and feet lashed, plonked across a centaur’s back, he looks down at Lily bouncing in her net – looking jolly well peeved too.
– Bloody groanhuffs, she grumps. What chance is there against Adolf when your own Allies scrobble you?
He can’t argue. For all’s their mythicality, their brawny human uppers and horsie bodies, brown-flanked with great white fluffy feathering on their fetlocks like Clydesdales, well, the khaki canvass saddlebags, helmets and Lee Enfields slung over shoulders instead of quivers are summat of a giveaway. Also the prattling in Polish.
Led into the great stone fort of Dun Winkle overlooking Loch Slappy, Foxtrot still trying to wheedle em mulish centaurs – vital mission, old boy, really, we’ve no time for this delay – the Situation don’t get any more auspicious in terms of them groanhuffs as ought to be helping our heroes even so much as not being a bleeding hindrance, cause their Commanding Officer, sat up on his stone throne, is a Sir Godfrey whose literal snorty bullheadedness is... most likely not a good sign. And true to form:
– Nazi elves? says this minotaur to Foxy. Pishposh and balderdash, boy! Balderdash!
– No, children, says he, there’s a greater threat by far, I say. A ruddy dragon, what!
Lily and Peter looks at each other, then at the two cheery satyrs, one bepectacled and one beer-bellied, what Sir Godfrey has at least been foxtrotted into dispatching by motorbike and sidecar up to Dun Tarakin for a sortie. He couldn’t possibly, he blusters, spare another soul on such rumours though – rumours! Gossip and tittle-tattle! There’s a dragon abroad, what!
– A dragon? whispers Lily. Really?
– Tell the truth, whispers Tubbs, I think he’s gone a bit barmy.
– Bonkers even, whispers Goggles.
– Doolally.
– It’s not an unmitigated disaster, says Foxtrot as the wee steamboat flotilla putters over Loch Slappy.
– We’re on a dragon hunt, says Squirlet. With a monomaniac minotaur.
– I have a plan.
– I hope it don’t involve slaying any dragons, says Flashjack. Just cause yer burns some shit down, don’t make yer a monster.
– It’ll be fine, old boy. I doubt we’ll even see a dragon.
– I should feel quite miffed if I were hunted, says Lily.
– We won’t even be on the hunt.
– The rifles don’t seem very sporting, says Peter.
– Look, we’re only here for the boat, says Foxtrot.
• 8
So the burning boat goes BOOM! just a little laters, down in the loch, and through the ’splosion of flames as makes Flashjack’s eyes go wider than the sight of his Puckerscruff’s pert tush comes the bloody great flying lizard that weren’t quite as much, as it turns out, the figment of Sir Godfrey’s imagination as Foxtrot anticipated. Shrieking and soaring in it comes, for another dive at the chaos of rearing centaurs all stuck in the gorge what cuts in from the beach to its cave. At the mouth of which, Sir Godfrey’s remains is smelling right roast beefy.
– Nice plan, mutters Squirlet, somewhere’s under the crush of em all crammed into a nook betwixt the biggest rocks to hand, ducked down from the centaurs’ gunfire and the cricket ball globs of napalm death now strafing the shingle of fancy silverware as is the dragon’s hoard. Again. So, no. With that gorge being but a narrow gouge in the shorefront cliffs, they didn’t quite get the chance to dawdle behind, sneakily circle back, nick a boat, and offsky for Dun Scaith. And, yeah, with its sides being thirty foot high and sheer, they might be a bit trapped now.
– Yer an SS Jaguar 100 in the skies! roars Flashjack, stood up with his arms outstretched in adoration. A Triumph Tiger T100 with wings! Oh, lookit him, Foxy! Squirlet, just lookit that gorgeous beast!
Fireballs pounding the beach in a beeline their way, eight hands and two otter paws drags Flashjack back down just as the dragon swooshes overhead and into a sharp turn straight up, corkscrewing in the air so’s its blue underbelly and green back flashes in the sunlight, before it’s turned, poised in the air, then diving again, roaring.
– I’m going to call him Spitfire, croons Flashjack.
– Run! Now!
On the loch, them routed centaurs is back on the last steamboats, hightailing it, and with the dragon after em, it’s our heroes’ break. A crevice clocked by Squirlet! They sprints, scrabbles, squidgeting emselves up, nimble Lily first, then... Clambering onto the clifftop, leaping atop an outcrop, right hand raised in Victory V-sign, whole sodding fist afire like a flaming torch, Flashjack roars.
– Burn, baby, burn!
The dragon turns, sees, comes rocketing toward em – Flashjack! You fucking – only to slam to an halt before the scallywag, pinions pounding air. And it raises its head, roars exultation back.
• 9
Oh, but, scamps – just when’s it seems bonce-bogglingly okay, just when’s Lily and Peter is stood jawdropped at the sight of the scallywag up on his peak of precipice, so wild and fiery the fucking dragon beating its wings in the air beyond knows him for a kindred soul, just when’s Foxtrot and Squirlet is goggling speechless at their impetuous hellion’s bloody unbossable recklessness not aktcherly getting em all barbecued... then, scamps, then, it’s Janiemalinky Longpins humphs the rucksack with the Stamp up onto that clifftop, and hauls herself up to stand.
In the shining armour of a knight.
It’s Peter who sees it coming, Peter who hurls himself at Janie – Look out! – her head still only half-up as she rises. Peter who slams cannonball into her and knocks her flat – near sends em both over the edge, by fuck, back down into the gorge, but saves her, scamps, from a flame-grilling he don’t even stop to think might not kill her. Would that dragonfire melt armour, scour her Stamp right off? Or would the charred cinder of her just scream till she’s sprung back? He don’t fucking care, scamps, just slams her from the fireball’s path.
It’s Lily who dives to another angle of support for these scruffs they’s fallen in with, Lily who don’t stop to think how’s she don’t owe them scruffs nuffink, Lily who just acts on her instincts as the stray she surely is, to defend her new
crib mates, to mind their backs, to fight. Lily who rolls and dives for her sharpshooter’s rifle, and brings it up to her shoulder, that Springfield Trapdoor, with the barrel pointing straight at the dragon’s head now, even as Flashjack’s throwing a palm out each way to halt the calamity, screaming at em:
– Nooooooo!
Oh, and he spins, that scallywag, in a lightning blur, one hand reaching for the bullet, the other for the fireball, like as he might catch em, pluck em out of the very air. He spins so fast yer has to slow it down to even imagine it, him twirling as the hot lead goes by him on one side and the fiery spitball goes by on the other. And he almost does it, scamps, almost. His fingertips fucking well taps that bullet as it passes. His palm fucking grazes the fireball. But it ain’t enough, scamps. Not for one.
• 10
– Oh, fly, boy, fly, sobs Flashjack. I’ll help yer burn every fucking toff in his Tin Man suit to a bleeding crisp, nick yer every silver spoon from every stately home in all of Old Blighty, if yer just flies like the fucking clappers for us, mate.
Astraddle the dragon’s shoulders, hunched over to cling to its neck with one hand and cradle Lily’s blackburnt form in the crook of his other arm, he urges Spitfire onward with every breath. It weren’t the dragon’s fault. He weren’t to know. It were Flashjack fucked up. Oh, for once he shoulda thunk.
A scamp and a scrag clamped in the talons of his forefeet, stray and scofflaw clasped in his hindfeet, Spitfire is heavy in the air, burdened beyond his sleek fighter’s build, but he hammers it hard, scamps, low over water darkening with dusk, over ripples reflecting the deep blue sky. He hammers it hard for the coast of Slide, for the castle of Dun Scaith, perched there on a plug of basalt as is an isle at high tide, cut off from the mainland moors but for the stone arches of support for its drawbridge. For Lily’s life, Spitfire flies.
– Fuck off! Flashjack shouts at the ginormous raven what seems to be follering em over the loch. Fuck the fuck off! he shouts, twisting to fire a warning shot from his highwayman’s flintlock. Yer ain’t having her!
Oh, Keen and Able has to be at Dun Scaith, eh, scamps? They has to be hid in that Fortress of Shadows: Keen, Dinguses, Baccy, first and fiercest of all tweaked to hellion, who’ll grin to the scallywag’s defiance of death; Able, sweet Apple, soft Pillow, Keen’s gentle brother, who’ll pity the poor stray. Oh, they’ll can make-believe Lily healed, for sure.
So Spitfire flies.
So you listen, scamps. There might’s be metaphorical dragons what raids villages and eats virgins, but the truth behind em’s pogroms and crusades, mate; it’s the fuckin knights, raiding and claiming they’s hunting monsters – as we’s their hunted monsters now, huddled here tonight. So don’t you believe a word from em groanhuff cuntfuckers when’s they projectifies their own crimes on some innocent beastie like Spitfire as only ever nicked the odd dinner set, torched a manor house or three.
No, scamps, that Spitfire struck back at his attackers, but gentled and friended by Flashjack...?
How he flies!
Part Six
• 1
Meanwhiles, scamps...
On the battlement of her great tower, she stands, the Scáthach, the Shadow, as give that castle its name, the Warrior Maid as taught Cuchullain himself to fight, even give him his mighty barbed spear. On the battlements of her great keep, where’s once that Faerie Flag flew high, where’s once she brung her fierce-Fixed kin fallen in battle, dreaming in delirium as they slipped toward death, and cried out, Turn and knock! and as they did so, oh, the Land of Somewhere Safe were opened to them.
Oh, them were the days, a thousand yonks ago!
Ferocious gaze fixed to the west, on the setting sun and the dragon rushing in out of it, on the scruffs and strays that dragon carries, on the magics they carries, in an empty wishsnuff tin, in a Silver Chanter and a Silver Cloak, in the very Stamp itself – cause she can smell the wishsnuff and the cloak, hear the chanter’s whistle, feel the Stamp upon her chest – she stands, craned forward over the parapet’s edge, every inch of her singing: Come on! For she can taste the terrible acrid burning pain of a stray struck down in valiant fight.
To her belt goes her hand, to the two great horns what Keen hacked off so’s to hide himself. Not to the left horn though, no, scamps, for that’s only to be blown in times of battle, to summon Keen’s each-uisge, his kelpie cavalry, the wild horses from the waves what drags invaders to their death. That’s only for a scruff to use, and only one them kelpies deems wild enough to follow.
No, it’s the right horn she grabs, scamps, as will heal any what sips from it.
– To me, laddie! To me! she cries. Throw her down!
And Spitfire’s turning the tightest spiral dragon ever turned, to hang in the air above the tower, so’s all’s em kids carried by him can see her stood there in her crow-feather cloak, a Rake who took the Stamp long afore Ripper Vicky’s Empire, afore even the Children’s Crusade, who took the name Erin O’Morrigan after a life of battles she’d have no more of, mistakes she’d never make again. They sees her face, and Flashjack just knows to trust; he’s tossing Lily down to be caught in a flourish of cloak even as Peter cries out:
– Lady Fay!
• 2
With Foxtrot and Squirlet dropped to roll like paratroopers, Peter and Janie dumped to stumble and stagger, Flashjack somersaulting to land in a crouch, they all comes haring across the tower’s flat roof to where’s that Rake cradles Lily in her lap to gloogle whisky from a hipflask into the horn, tip a sip of it between the lips of an otter so awful burned, scamps, oh, yer wouldn’t hardly imagine it possible she still lived. But glory be, ickle ones, glory be! Live she did, and live she would, the whole horror of her healing before their very eyes.
They gawps as silver fur springs back, as Lily gasps – the Stamp! – gawps more as that Rake... boops Lily’s snoot with a knuckle and the cloak unfurls, limbs, bod and bonce all popping back to scampsize – Well, I never! – but Erin O’Morrigan ain’t any less indomitable than Lady Fay. With a flurry, she’s swooping em up:
– Well, come ye in, bairns! Well met and welcome! Ye’ve kept the Stamp safe, lassie? And my Flag? Grand, grand!
And in a dervishy whirl, they’s downstairs – Sit! Sit! – at a fingerclicked feast.
– Tuck in!
And as they does... She fabbles of this land.
It were one Rammarty Joe, she says as they chomps, brung the Stamp to Albion’s isles, asking sanctuary from the savage locals, Fumers by name. A good Rake he were, but Fixed browbeaten, broken, so when he warns against abusing the Stamp, them Fumers just laughs and nabs it, starts Fixing themselves, tweaking themselves to giants. Then Fixes some slaves, naturally, to serve em. Scruffians and Rakes of days of yore.
Dunnians they was dubbed, for the muck they was held as, the forts they was held in, but just like their laters, they resisted... rebelled.
And, oh, they dreamt.
Twas a sore comeuppance them Fumers met, at the hands of an hellion tribe sprung roaring from nightmares, led by Nod and the Doggedy – Able and Keen – with Lookit McKeen Longhand as them brothers’ champion, ringleader of all rammies. Weren’t no battle ever won against Lookit’s Lance, his crew of warriors so bloodthirsty only opium pounded from poppy seeds could calm em. Wild and free, they was, scamps, halfways in the Land of Nod, fed from the Doggedy’s Cauldron, and the world lit afire for em with the burning sword of a truth none can escape and none resist: freedom.
• 3
She’s afire herself as she fabbles it, scamps, oh, cause if Lookit were the hero of them ancient Scruffians’ rebellions, the Morrigan were a nemesis sprung from the darker wilds of Rakes’ revenges. At the head of her table in the Great Hall she sits, as they tears into chicken drumsticks and strips hambones, munches sausages, and it’s halfways the fire in her eyes lighting it all, as it’s that in the hearth, or the torches on the walls. But they can see the Shadow in her too, the flicker of dark, as she comes to how this Appleland fell.
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For hundreds of yonks, see, theirs were the dream keeping Albion just. Every Boss of every gingery Scot, black Irish or bastard British whatever, every Boudicca or Arthur, weren’t none of em some king or queen, but just a chief as earned election by savvy and spunk. And had it validated by what’s they called the Stone of Feels, the Stone of Skins... the Stone of Destiny. To Appleland, they’d all come, to have the Stamp read em, so’s the truth of em could be noseyed upon it, that stone singing out how honourable they was – or not.
But then...
Called himself Saint Mithras, he did, the one who came, perhaps some thousand yonks ago, perhaps yesterday, with a glamour of lies befuddling the very history of the land.
See, scamps, when yer groanhuff dreams themself as white rabbit, or fish, or unicorn, they ain’t surprised at that, is they? Yer’s had such dreams yerselves, eh, where’s yer memories shifts to fit actions, where’s even from one tick to the next, what yer remembers happening to yer changes, rewrote like yer was tweaking yer Stamp.
Well, now the whole Land of Nod’s had a thousand bleeding yonks of it rewrote.
So what she minds, as in a dream... don’t quite add up: a lionheaded hellion coming ashore on a coracle, promising summat called Christmas if everyone just went to sleep; Rammarty Joe disappearing with the Stamp; Lookit gone hunting for him; Keen and Able lost in a game of Hide-and-Seek – must’ve hid so well, scruffs said, they forgot where they put themselves; bloody battles with comrades turned enemies, her last loyal fellows falling one by one, scrubbed; herself walking away from it all, into the waking world.