by Hal Duncan
Why, there’s even one groanhuff bungling of a fabble what ain’t just concocted around some fudged fancy of Peter, but ’members the whole dark deed, cause back in the year Hardly Anyfink At All AD, there’s a tale tattled of these sailors who’s passing an island called Peace when’s they hears a voice ringing out: Pan is dead! Great Pan is dead!
Gob’s truth! Slickspit, you look it up on yer iPhone doohickey. So you tell me if that don’t prove this here fabble of The Land of Somewhere Safe is true. Independent verification, mate. Even groanhuff history records it!
But oh, scamps, it’s a dark midnight with a message of murder clanging across this land what’s meant to be a playground, cause with the turn of Christmas Eve to Christmas Day, this were the birthday of Mithras being rung out with the deathday of that hornpiping horned pagan flighty funster of the forests. Why, it’s an ugly fucking flimflam sermon of this scruff what’s half Keen, half Able, and all fucking play being slain on the altar of this imperialist travesty of everything Joshyer Cripes ever stood for. Glad fucking tidings, my arse...
It’s a Nazi Christmas allegory, scamps!
• 2
When’s he springs back, mind, gasping awake after hours of pain and darkness, Peter don’t know diddly of this, no more’n his comrades camped out on the hillside, dug in for a siege but itching for assault. When’s he jolts aware into flashbacks like he’s still in the horror – wild-eyed and panting, scrabbling back against a wall until he clears his noggin, focuses as Foxtrot learnt him – he don’t know why Blackstone’s smirking, looking back at him from the balcony outside... some sort of bell tower he’s in, it seems.
He savvies that smirk can’t mean nuffink good, though.
– Come, dear child, says Blackstone. The view is quite inspiring.
As Peter edges forward, he clocks how’s the balcony overlooks the Old Man. Why, they must be near enough in that monstrous pediment’s point.
– Impressive, no? says Blackstone. It’s said a priest once summoned the Devil himself upon it, harnessed him, rode the horned fiend all the way to Rome and back, to fetch the truth of when Easter should be celebrated. Ha! I rather think they’ve muddled Empire with Reich, when with how, and Easter with Christmas, but I do believe, dear child, you’ve carried my truth quite effectively.
Beyond the Old Man and the sea, beyond a mainland hazed as if behind some veil, the sky’s lightening.
– A new day comes, says Blackstone. An end to Scruffian lawlessness. The ultimate new beginning.
And talk about an utter cock, scamps. The way he crows... of an end so endy, it’ll reach right back to scrub the Land of Nod afore it’s even begun. And in place of Somewhere Safe, it’ll be his Father’s Land. Imagine it, scamps: all history’s enslaved scruffs never having nowhere’s to escape in slumber. Think how’s they’ll lose hope, how many Liberatings might never happen!
– You absolute... fucker, blurts Peter.
Blackstone’s smug liony gaze stays on that Old Man.
– A sleeping giant’s thumb, he purrs. A collossal Heathenry sunk in slumber. Where Wickedness was harnessed, ridden by Piety to bring the Good News of Salvation. Oh, could there be a better setting for my allegory of Sin slain by the Lion of God?
– Except, says Peter, hands on hips, I’m jolly well alive, aren’t I? Put that in your pipe and smoke it – I’m alive!
But as the golden dawn breaks, Blackstone only laughs, triumphant.
– Yes! And may the bells ring out the Lamb’s resurrection!
• 3
And they do, scamps. Louder than all the bells of London, ringing out a Nazi’s Christmas Day, they chime mad jubilation, and:
– Fuck! cries Flashjack. Look!
Atop the Stour the scruffs stands, the tick of a white rabbit’s pocketwatch having marked Time Up and turned em to grim resolve, a quick flight on Erin’s chariot in the ochenin, wolves left below to beseige them doors. At the peak of Blackstone’s bastion’s mighty pediment now, Foxtrot and Squirlet lashes ropes round waists for descent to that balcony Squirlet clocked, a sneaky entry point for their exfil mission. But:
– Look! says Flashjack.
They scarce hears him over the pandemonium of pealing, but the grabbings and pointings gets their peepers on target, to the south – oh, and the north now – to see, streaming in along the coast, a pincering attack of animal hordes. Bollocks! It’s yer dreaming groanhuffs, scamps, so it is, all of em by the looks of it, and all gone mad, bleeding rabid. Proud lions, raging bulls, and bears with sore heads so befuddling, they’s blind furious. All yer groanhuffs’ snooty indignation’s been unleashed and set upon em by them bells ringing out the glory of a Nazi’s twisted righteousness.
Below, the leader of that wolf pack howls a command – more’n wild enough to cut through the cacophany – and the great pack splits, two charges driving off to meet the onslaught on each front. No time for faffing now, it’s over the edge for scamp and scrag, Janie and Flashjack lowering em. But it’s not just a ground assault, scamps. No, to north and south the skies are thick too with a mad menagerie of birds, great eagles and hawks and whatnot – gryphons too, by fuck! And on that pediment peak or dangling down the precipice, them scruffs is exposed.
Into battle then flies that sky chariot of Erin O’Morrigan, with that ginormous rook – surely the greatest Rake as ever dreamt – and all them carrion birds as looks malevolent but ain’t half as nasty as the swans diving in at em, fucking velociraptors in an emperor’s ermine, vicious as a rapist god. As the sort of god who’d wear an eagle’s form to scrobble a kid – like them going for Foxy and Squirlet now. Lily’s rifle fires – CRACK! – and fires CRACK! – but ropes is slashed. They’s falling, falling...
And snatched to safety by a rook’s claws latching on their backs!
• 4
And with a swoopy spiral up, a glimpse! Picture it: Beast Blackstone on that balcony, lion head and eagle wings; Peter beside, aghast at the battle; Peter beside, a glint of shiv in hand.
He jinks sharp to stomp on Blackstone’s tootsies, spins to drive the shiv two-handed into Blackstone’s thigh, yanks back, flips grip and drops, shiv spiking foot now. Hands under a heel jerked up, heave-ho, and that fucker’s over the edge. Now, quick! He can’t hardly think for that godawful clamouring gospel of salvation, white souls called to conquer nations, but Foxtrot’s schooled him: focus!
Round the innards of that bell tower, he bounds, railing to rope to railing, not a thought for the drop to where’s them minions works the bells. He slashes, slices, channeling all the savvy them scruffs could give, to find the weak spots that should – yes! And with a snaplashing CRACKARACK-CRACKETY! ropes flying all ways, bells go swinging like demolition balls to shatterings, splinterings. He barely makes it to the balcony as the whole thing falls. And barely dodges Blackstone hurtling back in with a beat of wings, a roar.
And, oh. As Blackstone wheels... where can he go?
Just as that reverend bastard’s tasting retribution though, what’s this? A shadow of black wings upon our boy backed to the balcony’s edge, a glance above. And Peter springs to balance, thumbs nose and springs again, arms reaching. Why, he’s leapt to snatch two whatsits tumbling to him: wishsnuff and chanter, courtesy of one scamp, one scrag and one ginormous fucking raven. And Peter’s dropped from sight, and Blackstone’s bellowing, launching after him, but whooooosh! now, Peter rockets back, with chanter to his lips, to sneeze a roundhouse punch of wind what knocks that Nazi back into his hole – KERSPLAT!
It ain’t the most melodious fluting ever, that’s for sure, cause the shrillest tuneless walloper of a whistleblast were Peter’s aim, and having popped that wishsnuff tin while’s plummeting, got the peppery lot of it whoomf in his face, well, one almighty fucking sneeze give him his goal and then some. Why, from the spout of water down in that loch twixt Stour and sea, some whale as makes Moby Dick look minnowy is either black affronted or besmitten. But there’s a beauty in just punching Nazis in the face, innit.
/> – Lamb, sniffs Peter. Kids have horns too, you know.
• 5
So, scamps, the War on Nazi Christmas as Peter turns to see: on the ground below, them wolves and animal hordes smashing into each other, wave after wave; in the sky above, them rooks and avian adversaries a whirling of pinions and talons, the Morrigan in her chariot carving a path of slaughter, Foxtrot and Squirlet dropped with her now to mind her back with sword and shurikens; and between, on the cliff’s edge, Lily as sniper, barrel propped on the rucksack, Janie and Flashjack fighting gryphons and hippogriffs, two streetfighting scruffs against yer noblest beasts of heraldry and myth.
To the west now, though, from down the gentler slope of that landslip ridge, from the distant treeline, beneath the clamour of battle, that scofflaw and scallywag hears a hum, a buzz, a whiny drone, getting louder, louder, louder, until, by fuck, a billow of black bursts from the pines, a roiling stormfront cloud of...
– Fucking midges? says Flashjack. Oh, fuck off.
But it is, scamps. Not just from Blackstone’s bullies neither, no, but from every dreaming twerp in the world, every dick, prick, hick and outright Hitlerfuckinjugend; oh, it’s every bigoty spite groanhuffs can cram into a brat’s bonce.
– Right, says Flashjack. Fuck this shit.
And he’s off, leaping and sliding down the icy rock they’s perched on, to land on one knee, right fist forward, glowing red hot, white hot, blasting a wave of heat to vapourise every patch and skimmering of snow in its path, to shrivel the heather and grass all the way down that slope, down, down, until that parched gorse meets the oncoming storm of insect hate, until that billowing mass is flowing over it.
Closer... Closer... Now!
And Flashjack slaps his palm down on that carpet of kindling and it lights like petrol.
He’s only bought em time though, scamps – a fire like that burns out quick as it’s lit – so it’s back to the others pronto. And if there’s gryphon’s noggins flying at each swish of Janie’s swords, hippogriffs stiffed with Lily’s every shot, they’s caught in the path of a storm thickening to solid even as it rushes in. But wait:
– Janie, the Stamp! cries Lily with a leap and scramble to Flashjack’s shoulder. Come on!
Cause it’s Peter swooping down toward em, reaching hands for them, clasping, soaring up, away. Hooray!
– Other hand! says Peter to Flashjack. Hot, hot, hot!
• 6
– Brace yourselves, bairns! Erin’s shouting elsewheres and meantimes. We’re going down!
And Squirlet and Foxtrot clings to a side each of that sleek black beast of a sky-chariot, clutched in the claws of one giant rook doing its fuckmost to brake the descent, but still streaking down like a B-52 with its last engine kaput. Even with one final defiant fury of effort from that rook, the landing’s a bone-rattling bounce and jounce then bone-shattering smash as sends em all headlong and tumbling, the world a whirling blur until they rolls to their broken ragdoll flops.
First gasped awake, eyes on the skies now, leg braced for a quick shove on the knee to force a crooked shinbone straight, Squirlet’s doing her best to hurry along her mending, what with Foxtrot and Erin down and defenceless, when – thank fuck! – she clocks the others soaring in, not a fuckload more controlled in their landing, but at less speed, so’s it’s only a stumbly run for Janie and a dive roll for Flashjack when Peter can’t hold em no more. In a tick they’s at her side, getting orders barked at em.
– Foxy’s arm, she says. Over there.
– You can fly, you can swim, she says to Peter and Lily. Think!
They just blinks at her – bloomin newbs. By the jerkety cracks of Foxy’s and Erin’s forms, they’ll be sprung back soonish, and Squirlet’s mostways functional now, but it’s only one ginormous raven and one lollopy direwolf fallen back to help Flashjack and Janie defend the Stamp, t’others busy on two ground fronts and an aerial riot. Backs to the shore, they ain’t scarpering nowheres. And pouring over the Stour’s edge now like some volcano’s black spew of ashcloud, comes spite made flesh.
Oh, but from elsewheres: salvation!
RATATATATA! It’s two satyrs, Goggles and Tubbs, on motorbike and sidecar, with Polish centaurs galloping afters and a misfit hellion mob behind, all armed to the teeth and blasting berserker-mode, with machine-guns, rifles and pistols from the Home Guard armoury, all the firepower to be scavenged from dreams of cowboys and cops-and-robbers – why, there’s even slingshots, catapults, longbows, crossbows. Them satyrs only broke that Blackstone’s spell, innit – albeit inadvertently, argy-bargying so panicky over the Nazi boat they found docked in the harbour, one Upsadaisy Fagspuffer overhears and sings out:
– Blimey crikey! The game’s a bogey!
• 7
RATATATATA! PTCHOW! PTCHOOM! Them scruffs hears the racket of attack, but with the thick of battle, they don’t see nuffink, can’t tell what’s happening, till suddenly it’s the Red Sea parting, animals leaping everyways, and smashing through the stramash comes that bike and the oddball battalion. But even as the southern front’s taken, Blackstone’s beasts crushed between wolves and hellions, to the north their allies is being overrun, the line collapsing, until it’s hordes racing toward each other again, to crash in the middle.
And from the Stour above, the black cascade still crashes down, pouring onto the slopes now.
Down it comes, scamps, oh, the torrent of spites, surging down over the battle, swallering all in its path, friend and foe alike, poor wolves and hellions and centaurs driven mad by a thousand bites, but their adversaries no less prey to the feeding frenzy. And for every hellion whipping a gas mask to their face, there’s another choking on the swarm. It’s fucking hoaching with em midges, scamps, hoaching. Why, against this even Flashjack’s hellfire heatblast won’t be more’n flamethrower versus tsunami.
And worse, there’s shapes forming in it, scamps. Writhings and slother, flurryings and snicketings.
– Squirrrrrrlet, says Peter.
– We need out of here now, says Squirlet.
A flick of her wrist thunks a shuriken into a kangaroo’s jugular, blood spurting. Flashjack’s pistols downs a tiger, Janie’s swords a bear. And rapier and spear flashes too now, Foxy and Erin back in action. But yer indescribable horror of a gazillion pests fused as an Addanc’s flesh plows inexorably toward em over the battle.
– Ooh, wait! says Peter.
– I’ve an idea! says Lily.
They looks at each other in startlement.
– What were you thinking? says one.
– What were you thinking? says t’other.
– Just do it! snaps Squirlet. Both of you!
As Peter goes rocketing into the air, Lily springs too, bounding weavy through the fray for Erin O’Morrigan, eyes on that belt where Keen’s horns hangs. But it’s not the right horn she’s going for, scamps, the one what heals all wounds. Oh, no, cause being a scamp, she’d asked that Rake bold as buttons, What the fuckety? (to all intensive porpoises leastways, as they says) with respect to one horn, and been told of both. So it’s Keen’s left horn she leaps to nab and scarper with, headed for the shore, for the waves crashing wild upon the rocks.
As Lily goes sploosh into the surf, Peter seems out to make a splash too – in yer opening night song and dance spectacular down at the London Palladium sorta way, cause for some reason unfathomable to his newfound crib-mates, this scrag’s took it in his head to give a rousing solo hornpipe rendition of Glenn Miller’s In the Mood. Which is laudably capricious, maybe’s even apt to Flashjack’s acrobatic combat style, but don’t seem of much practical assistance in defeating a bloody great midge monster.
Unlike, say, the mighty hornblast as turns all heads to the kelpie cavalry charge.
• 8
Out of the waves they comes, like they was born of em, white beasts with kelp bestraggling manes and tails, great galloping warhorses binding the brawn of Clydesdales with the sleek grace of Arabians, a wave-born cavalry what vaults overhead
to crash into the enemy as a wave, rearing up and whirling, turning black with midges stuck to flesh, and galloping back to the water, the next wave vaulting over their heads for their assault.
And out to sea, one great white nightmare rears, an otter astraddle flicking seaweed reins and whooping a warcry what’s sorta... Comanche meets ceilidh.
Thundering in on her steed comes Lily now, even swinging down on one seaweed stirrup – I shit you not, scamps – to bounce back up with rifle and cowboy hat snatched in her paws. And there’s a steed for each of her compadres galloping tight behind her, slowing no more’n enough for them to grab reins and leap to mounted.
Oh, but even as they does, they sees: that Addanc, it’s adapting, writhings splitting off between the kelpies, slothers skittering to reform out among the battling packs. Flurrying skitterings fuses into figures almost human... in a demonic droid skeleton sorta way.
So it’s time to offsky, scamps. Retreat, regroup, rethink how’s the fuck to nobble this Addanc, cause they ain’t getting past it to Blackstone, and they cannot fucking lose the Stamp. On top of, y’know, accidentally dooming the one place innumerable scruffs ever felt safe.
Over the water they gallops then, veering south after Erin’s lead – for the Sound of Raaarrrsay, she calls back, Loch Inert, the mouth of the Auld’n’Loopy. It’ll mean a wee stretch overland, but with rivers and lochs along the valley, they’ll can cut through to Loch Slappy. Grotternish’s lost, but while Dun Straich still... still...
– Whateffer is that laddie up to? Erin exclaims.