Dogfighters: Under the Hill

by Alex Beecroft

  Ben looked away, gathering his wits and his temper. From atop the hill where they stood, he could see past the ring of Chitrasen’s bodyguards and out into the clear light of a fine day in the Peaks. Where the field met the roads another rank of Chitrasen’s army had been drawn up, and between the two ranks of Gandharva warriors, Liadain’s people had formed themselves into lines, one facing in, one out. There seemed for the moment to be a standoff. Liadain’s surviving commanders were in a huddle in the centre of the Nine Ladies, presumably discussing who was to lead them now she was gone.

  A distant sound of traffic rumbled from the A5, and on the side of the hill closest to the stile, Chris was speaking urgently to a group of Gandharva guards. As Ben watched, they searched him for weapons, relieved him of a crowbar and began to lead him up towards the pavilion.

  Ben wanted all this business sorted before Chris arrived. He stood on tiptoe and whispered angrily into Oonagh’s ear, “I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, but he is going to go ballistic when he finds out it isn’t true.”

  “I am trying to achieve what I have always been trying to achieve,” she said, smiling down at him. Her hair swung forwards and touched his face, and each little strand felt like an electric shock. “Peace between your people—both your peoples—and mine. Energy for my ships, and thus a way out for my subjects from the madness and desolation in which they find themselves.”

  His gaze flicked to Chris again, and she watched it with a smile. “And what makes you think it isn’t true?”

  “I never touched you!” Ben didn’t like this game. There was a kind of horror in it he wasn’t willing to put a name to, but it chimed with all the paranoia and body horror of The X-files in his head. He ran through his recent memories looking for drugged invasion, anaesthesia, something scrubbed and medical and sharp.

  Oonagh turned him by the elbow so that they were facing away from the king. She bent her head, shadowed by the pavilion, and when she did so the shadows ran over her face like falling rain. Ben found himself, just for an instant, looking back at indigo eyes rather than amethyst, a wider, heavier brow and jaw, skin of snow rather than obsidian. His stomach lurched and he bit his lip, fighting the reaction down, feeling shock tremble through all his cells. “Arran? You…?”

  The second face was swept effortlessly away, but he couldn’t look at her now without seeing the resemblance, the very faint resemblance of expression and composition—the line of the mouth, and the little scar he had touched on Arran’s face that she hid beneath one of the triskeles on her cheek. She had, even, something of Arran’s kindness beneath the satisfaction in her eyes. And every bit of the same joy in her own cleverness.

  “Did I not tell you that I went about among my people in disguise? And you imagined what? That I would merely change clothes? It did not occur to you to wonder why, in order to speak to you myself, I had to tell you I had sent him away? Nor why, being a noble in my service, he was not here in my army now?”

  The nausea forced itself into Ben’s throat again as he remembered that strange drugged night he had spent with Arran. It had been uncomfortable enough when he thought it had meant nothing. Now…now he knew she had done it deliberately as part of a plan, political leverage…his child…

  “I don’t…” he said. “I can’t—”

  “Well, this is good news!” Chitrasen had evidently been thinking hard too. There was doubt behind his eyes, but he rose to his feet with an expansive smile. “So my son has responded to correction and repented of his selfish ways? He has brought me a queen as a bride, and a grandson already on the way. Karshni, come here and receive your father’s forgiveness.”

  Oh, and now Ben really wanted to throw up. He didn’t know whether any of this man’s joy was genuine, but he could take a shrewd guess that half of this “forgiveness” was massive politics. Behold how wise your king is, who has lovingly chastised his son in order to save him from sin, and now shows his warm heart by taking the penitent child back. You’d pay a million dollars for a publicity stunt like that in our world.

  Yet, and yet, something in him, Karshni’s fading voice perhaps, fiercely wanted to believe he had only been sent away for a little while. Not disowned at all, just briefly punished and now embraced. Maybe Ben was being unfair, and Chitrasen felt it too—desperately wanted his son back and was seizing a chance to do it without losing face.

  Ben put his face in his hands. Oonagh’s clever plans, and the armies standing silently around him, sizing one another up, they were closing in on him like an iron maiden, the spikes tightening and driving inwards. Trapped.

  He could say I don’t want your forgiveness, old man. I am content as a human, and I’m still a fucking deviant. If you don’t like it you can suck on it. He could say that, and then the brief entente cordial between Oonagh and Chitrasen would be over. Chitrasen would wipe out the pathetic remnants of Oonagh’s forces without breaking a sweat, take his daughter and go home, leaving Liadain’s people at large. An army of vampires, turned on the North and spreading. If he wanted to retain his pride, that was the price.

  And there was a child. The thought put out delicate leaves, pushed them through the hard crust of his heart and unfurled a very tiny bud of wonder. His child. How proud that would have made his real mother. She had wished only for his happiness when she found out what he was, but she had still not been able to resist stopping every pram she passed so she could coo at the infant within. She had not been able to conceal, sometimes, how much she’d wished for a grandchild of her own. Ben did not believe heaven did not admit those without descendants, but he did hope that wherever she was now, this news had made her happy.

  Chitrasen still stood in the centre of the pavilion, surrounded by advisers and generals, with his hands outstretched and the smile beginning to slip from his lips. I’ll do it for my Dad, Ben thought fiercely, my untouchable, awesome Dad, because I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye.

  He walked slowly forwards, hesitated and was engulfed in a bear hug that almost cracked his ribs. A moment’s stiffness, and a very faint memory washed over him of those same hands covering his own, the fingers guiding his fingers over his first flute, in a place full of tawny light and music. Just for an instant he let himself relax, brought his hands up and hugged back, looking up into a face that reminded him startlingly of his own.

  “I don’t really remember you,” he said, and wondered too late if it had been cruel.

  Chitrasen smiled, though the edge of careful calculation never dulled behind his eyes. Perhaps it was a kingly thing—constant mindfulness. Oonagh had the same look at times. “That will sort itself out in time. And time is something of which we have unlimited resources. Now, I understand you are having problems with a rebellion?”

  Ben looked out at Liadain’s nobles. Their purposeful huddle had broken apart, leaving a willow-green girl alone in the centre of the stones. She raised a hand around which there twisted a circle of white light, lowered it and pushed it onto her throat, where it rested, becoming a torc of silver. A great roar of approval went up from Liadain’s army, and as the green girl gave a shrill battle cry, they turned and threw themselves at the ranks of Gandharva soldiers with recharged fury.

  “As you can see.” Ben said. “Is there some way of stopping them getting loose on this world? They don’t belong here.”

  “Easily done.” The king put out a hand, and from the knot of his advisers a warrior in cloth of gold came carrying a great curved bow. A Brahmin in an austere white linen dhoti followed him, bearing an ornately carved wooden box. When he opened it, there was a single arrow inside. Chitrasen took it and set it to his bow, drew back and aimed unhurriedly for the centre of the battle.

  He loosed the arrow, and Ben watched it fly burning magnesium bright against a sky that held—about a mile away—a single stationary helicopter. The arrow landed harmlessly on the ground. Chitrasen smiled, dusted off his hands and gave the bow back to his attendant.

  “What?” Ben began,
choking it off as Oonagh returned to his side, squeezed the arm she had already bruised.

  “Look.”

  It was still just a scrum to Ben’s eyes, but then he noticed something strange. Liadain’s men were slowly faltering, drawing apart. They looked at one another, aghast, and then with a roar of confusion and betrayal they began to fight each other.

  The effect of the arrow slowly worked its way through Liadain’s army, setting them against each other. There was little to do but simply watch as the force imploded. Eventually there was nothing but the vampires left. Watching them destroy each other was too gory for Ben’s stomach.

  Turning away from the sight, Ben caught sight of Chris again. He had worked his way through slow negotiation to the top of the hill. At Ben’s waved hand, the final two ranks of bodyguards parted to allow him through.

  Chris reached the dais, propped himself, insouciantly—Ben thought rather magnificently—on Kanath’s shoulder. He glanced from Ben up to Flynn on the dragon’s back, and his open face was a picture of weariness and bafflement and hurt when neither of them moved towards him. Ben smiled at least, but Flynn bit his lower lip and looked away.

  Behind Chris, the field was rapidly clearing of enemies, even the corpses whisping away into vapour or crumbling into the soil. The drone of the helicopter had grown closer. Ben could see it now, a large, military-looking thing with two rotors, rockets mounted on its sides and the muzzles of rocket launchers in its snub nose. Trust the cavalry to come too late, he thought, as it began to lower itself down next to Chris’s beaten-up Mosquito.

  Chitrasen was watching it too. “I must not be here,” he said. “This is no longer an age of wonders, and the intercourse of our two worlds is strictly discouraged by the gods.”

  He nodded quietly to his attendants, allowing them to rush off, shouting to their own subordinates. The Gandharva troops began to lift from the ground like autumn leaves, as copper red and gold as leaf fall. The wind took them and blew, and the lines of warriors skirled away exactly as leaves in a storm wind. Flickers of bright metal in the sky, and the clouds parted and swirled. Then they were gone, leaving Chitrasen and five of his followers alone with Oonagh, her warlord Bram, Kanath, Sumala and the three human men.

  “Today my son is restored to me, thanks to you,” Chitrasen said, taking Oonagh’s hand. She allowed it graciously, but neither of their smiles reached their eyes. “And since we speak now in private, tell me of Arran. Is the boy still…involved with that man?”

  “I don’t believe he will willingly ever associate with Arran again,” said Oonagh with a touch of sadness. “Those days ended with his banishment.”

  She tilted her head to the side and looked at Ben sidelong, her gaze sliding to Chris. “He has changed since he became human. As have I. You will find me a faithful friend, and my people will remember that we are indebted to you.”

  With a great clank, the helicopter lowered its side to let a man in RAF blue walk out onto the torn-up grass.

  “Perhaps we should continue this discussion elsewhere,” said Chitrasen. “When you have dealt with your enemies at home and set your house in order, come and visit me. Bring my grandson. We will talk about this plan of yours to find new worlds. There are many ambitious youngsters in my own realm who would be glad of estates of their own. Until then.”

  He clapped his hands together and was gone as though he’d snuffed himself out like a candle flame. It was so sudden even Kanath started, spitting a little yellow acid out of his flared nostrils and twitching the end of his forked tail.

  “I too should not be here,” said Oonagh. “Bram, take what remains of the army back through. I will come last and close the portal behind us.”

  It was a bedraggled party of injured elves and one half-crippled dragon that limped back through the gap beneath the hill, squirming into the darkness under the soil.

  “Will you return with me?” said Oonagh to Ben at last, wiping a smear of blood from between her fingers.

  “I don’t have to?”

  She gazed at Chris again, with that look of half-amusement, half-wariness. “No. Your freedom has been bought and paid for. Never let it be said that I know ‘how this works’ less than some flitting mortal. Come if you want. Stay if you want. But if you stay, your son will never know his father.”

  “You…are the coldest bitch I have ever—”

  “I am a queen. I have no wants, no desires, but for the welfare of my people. If you were not so much a younger son, you would understand this.”

  There was an echo from another life, and Ben had had too much pride in that life, retained too much pride in this, to allow anyone to talk to him like that. “No,” he said, “I’m not coming with you. Haven’t you understood that everything I’ve done since you wandered back into my life was to get rid of you? All right, I’ll play nice in front of my father for the sake of the world, but don’t think there’s anything more in it than that. So yes, I do understand, and if you need me to play escort when you visit the old man, then I’ll come. I know what responsibility is too. But don’t get the idea there’s anything personal in it, because I want you the fuck out of my life.”

  Oonagh laughed. “We are not as dissimilar as you would like to think.”

  Then she patted Kanath’s nose and looked up into Flynn’s grey and world-weary face. “But you will come with me, Navigator. You justified the trust I had in you and saved my life. I will lavish you with honours, when we get home.”

  “Flynn’s not going back there.” Alone out of the host, Sumala had stayed, though she wore a pair of golden wings now and carried another pair in one hand. “He’s coming with me.”

  “He bloody well is not!” Chris reached up the dragon’s side, tried to close his hand around Flynn’s ankle, and drew it back empty when Flynn moved hastily out of the way.

  Chris looked at the palm of his hand for what seemed a long time, then put it down and rubbed it carefully against his trouser leg. When he looked up again there was something painfully fragile about his face, open almost to the bone. “Flynn…and Ben…are staying. The hell. With me. That’s the whole point. That’s the whole fucking point. You’re staying the hell with me.”

  For Flynn, the urge to reach down and wrap his hand around Chris’s was like the urge to breathe—it only got stronger the more it was denied. Flynn had thought the hag’s nails had been the worst pain he’d ever experienced in his life, but this was worse. This was the end of the world for him, and he could feel it tearing apart. All the fabric of his life was unravelling, leaving him to hold the frayed edges together with half of him missing, destroyed.

  But he wasn’t going to go and leave the skipper in doubt—leave him to come back and try another rescue. The man had his life to live. He had a future. Hell, he’d even lived over a decade without Geoff already, so this wouldn’t come as too much of a shock for him. Probably even be a relief.

  Looking down at Chris’s terrified face gave the lie to that thought, made it bloody obvious it would be nothing of the sort. So he didn’t look. He took a deep breath and coughed to clear the obstruction from his throat. “I’m not coming back.”

  “What?”

  It had been a weak and thin little whisper, he supposed, but even so the man shouldn’t make him say it again. The flare of miserable anger helped him to raise his head, look the skipper in the eye and repeat it. “I’m not coming back, Skip.”

  Oh, and there was the flinch he’d been afraid of, hazel eyes gone dark with anguish. Chris looked away, concealing the expression, rubbed a hand over his face. “Why?”

  He could have told the truth. He intended to, at first. But that would have led to further rescue attempts, maybe even to Chris offering to do the unthinkable and come with him.

  Oh God, please yes!

  And he was not going to be selfish about this. He gave himself a mental kick, thinking of that scene he’d been shown in the restaurant—Chris and Ben laughing together, looking at ease and happy. He was already a
third wheel in Chris’s life, no sense in making things worse for all of them.

  “I found someone else.” He gestured towards Sumala, hoped she would hold her tongue and not deny it. This was not the time for another one of her regular I-can’t-be-involved-with-a-disgusting-human outbursts. Perhaps there was a little of her soul still left in him at that, because although she raised her head and gave him a piercing gaze, she said nothing.

  “But…” Chris had raised both hands to cover his mouth. The words came out muffled and unsure. “You called me. You wanted to come home—”

  “Skipper…”

  “It was going to be like the old days.” Chris gave him an imploring look, far too young and vulnerable for that mature face. “You called me to help you come home.”

  God, he felt like a fucking heel. The effort to keep his lips from trembling, to keep his eyes dry, meant his face felt like a board, stiff and stern and fierce, and he didn’t want this to be his final farewell—to take out Chris’s heart and stamp it into the ground—but it was for his own good. Wasn’t it?

  “I called you because of the invasion,” he said, carefully coaxing his voice out, willing it to show nothing of what he felt. The result was harsh, angry. “Not because of us. Skipper, we both knew that was a temporary thing while the war was on.” He beckoned, and Sumala passed him up the winged harness. He examined the buckles rather than look down.

  “It was a bit of fun because things were…tense.” He’d started filling the silence because he couldn’t bear to listen to it, and the worst thing was he still wanted to lean down and touch the skipper one last time. Just to say goodbye. Touch the ends of his hair. Even a handshake. And he daren’t. Because Chris was like the soil, he was part of this world now. If he touched the man, if he allowed himself to be touched, he’d gain one hundred and seventy years in an instant, crumble in the man’s hand, and he was not willing to do that either to Chris or to himself.