The Hounds of Avalon tda-3

by Mark Chadbourn

  He awoke with a sense of movement and a deafening whup-whup-whup sound all around. Cold wind blasted against him.

  Mallory began to lever himself upright, the pain in his side now electric; he could barely breathe and was too dazed to think straight. A gun pointed into his face.

  ‘Don’t move,’ one of the soldiers said gruffly, but his white face gave away his fear at what he had just witnessed.

  They were on a helicopter, rising slowly. The large side door was open, revealing a square of cloudy pre-dawn sky. Hunter crouched, framed against it, peering down at the receding hillside.

  ‘There’s a group of them. What the hell are they?’ he asked, concerned.

  Three other soldiers sat further down the helicopter. The acne man was one of them, but he kept his head turned away from Mallory.

  ‘Where’s Sophie?’ Mallory said weakly, his memory still disjointed. But when he locked eyes with Hunter, the reality hit him with force.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Hunter said, with surprising compassion.

  ‘She’s dead?’

  Hunter glared at the acne man, who refused to meet his gaze. ‘He shot her. If the bullet didn’t kill her straight away, she’ll have lost too much blood by now for us to save her. We couldn’t find her and didn’t have time to search with those bastards on the loose.’ He looked out into the night, avoiding Mallory’s devastated gaze. ‘I am sorry,’ he added quietly. ‘No one was supposed to get hurt.’

  Mallory laid his head down on the floor of the helicopter and closed his eyes.

  ‘Bloody hell, what’s this?’ Hunter reached a hand out of the doorway where the gusts buffeted it. White flakes streamed past. ‘Snow? In the middle of summer?’

  Chapter Three

  Season of Ice

  ‘ We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very long time to come.’ Lord Shawcross

  The Compound lay in the lower levels of Brasenose and Lincoln Colleges, which had been linked by new tunnels hacked out within days of the Government’s arrival in the city. In addition to housing Kirkham’s research facility, enemies of the state were incarcerated there: trouble-makers, traitors, anyone attempting to block the slow progress of a society getting up off its knees. Yet this low-level prison was only a small part of the Compound; larger by far was the high-security section, access to which had always been beyond Hal’s clearance. He’d heard rumours about who was imprisoned there, but since the Fall rumours were all anyone had and none of them could be trusted. It was a sign that events were coming to a head that he had been issued with a pass inside.

  Yet Hal was too preoccupied to get excited about the General’s decision to ramp up his responsibilities. The call had come fifteen minutes earlier in the thin dawn light at the end of a long day and sleepless night of tearing himself apart over his confrontation with the Caretaker. At first he had considered reporting the manifestation — what the Caretaker had told him was surely of importance — but the more he vacillated, the more he pulled away from that route. Hal comforted himself with the thought that once he had decided what it all meant he would make a full disclosure at the Cabinet office. Yet he knew, quite powerfully, that the Caretaker’s message was meant for him alone, if he could ever decipher its meaning. And so he had sat quietly in his room, turning it over and over in his head. For a loyal public servant like Hal, his inaction felt like a grand betrayal and the guilt ate away at him constantly.

  The guard at the main door checked Hal’s pass and directed him along a maze of corridors to a section sealed off with a steel gate. The guards here were hard-faced, clearly capable of shooting him in the blink of an eye and losing no sleep over it.

  In the high-security section, the doors were thicker and lacked the small shuttered window usually provided for the warders to check on the inmates. Disturbing sounds emanated from the unseen inhabitants. From one cell came a howling like a wild animal’s cry, accompanied by frenzied clawing at the walls. And in another, something wet and sticky lashed back and forth.

  Hal found Reid and Manning deep in conversation. Manning had a touch of glamour that belied her Home Office position, but Reid was always the perfect spy, ready to fade into the background at any moment. Beyond them, workmen were adding even greater electronic security to one of the cells. Manning and Reid stopped talking when they saw Hal.

  ‘The General sent this urgently.’ Hal handed over a sealed envelope to Reid. ‘Your eyes only.’

  Reid opened it and gave a brief, triumphant smile. ‘We’re on our way.’

  Manning was distracted by the work taking place in and around the nearby cell. Hal thought he sensed a touch of uneasiness about her.

  ‘Who’s in there?’ The words came out before Hal could stop them and he waited to be reprimanded for breaking the department’s rule of no questions, any time.

  But Manning was oblivious to protocol. She continued to stare at the cell as she gave her distracted answer: ‘Prisoner Zero.’ Hal was not enough of a neophyte to probe further.

  ‘Tell the General we’ll both be around for the interrogation,’ Reid said to Hal. ‘We’ll do it in four-one-four — there’s a two-way mirror.’

  ‘Got it.’

  As Hal turned to retrace his steps, a disturbance broke out just ahead. A guard staggered backwards out of an open cell door, his SA80 spraying bullets all around. He was wearing an ABC isolation suit, a red arterial spray gushing from a ragged tear down the front of it.

  Suddenly the corridor was filled with the most terrible sounds: jungle shrieks, haunted moans, insectile chittering and a low, chilling susurration. The prisoners had smelled the blood.

  Hal was rooted by the sight for a second too long. Just as he was about to run back up the corridor, a small black shape bounded from the cell on to the chest of the still-twitching guard. At first, Hal thought it was a spider the size of a small dog, then some kind of lizard. Finally, he realised he was looking at an imp that would not have been out of place in a medieval wood-carving. It was the glossy black of crude oil and covered in gleaming scales. Its body had human proportions, but its head was oversized, like a baby’s. A pointed tail lashed back and forth.

  ‘Take that,’ the devil said with a swipe of razor-sharp talons, ‘for presumption. And that for stupidity. And this simply because it is my nature.’ The talons became a blur of rending and tearing.

  And then the imp stopped, sniffed the air and turned its head in an oddly mechanical way towards Hal. Hal’s blood ran cold as the devil’s red eyes fell on him.

  ‘Aha!’ the imp said with jubilation. It sounded like a throaty old man. ‘Fresh meat.’

  It leaped from the seeping corpse so fast that Hal couldn’t keep it in his vision. Bouncing off the walls and ceiling, it hit Hal full force in the stomach. He fell to the floor, winded, as the imp did a little mocking dance around him. Before Hal could lever himself up, the devil jumped to squat on his chest with surprising weight.

  ‘Now, now,’ it said, with a malicious grin, ‘no running before we exchange pleasantries.’ It hooked one talon in the corner of Hal’s mouth and pulled his lips into a grimace. The finger tasted gritty and vinegary. ‘A thin covering on fragile bone,’ the imp continued. ‘What a strange and ineffective design.’ But then it paused, puzzled, and sniffed the air over Hal’s face. ‘What is this?’ The imp grew oddly uneasy. ‘The stink of righteousness? The rank odour of life?’ It pressed its face close to Hal’s so that its burning red eyes filled Hal’s entire vision, its spoiled-meat breath nearly making him retch. ‘The Pendragon Spirit?’

  Hal was too terrified to read anything in the imp’s manner at that moment, but later, on reflection, he would believe that he had seen a hint of fear.

  A second later, the creature was wrenched off his chest. Four guards in ABC suits lifted the imp into the air before clamping around its neck a metal collar with an attached chain. The imp let out a high-pitched, agonised scream, thrashing wildly as if the very touch of the collar burned
it.

  As the guards dragged the imp back to its cell, the cacophony from the other cells grew even louder, the cumulative noise now tinged with fury and hatred. Hal pressed his hands over his ears and staggered to his feet to catch his breath. The imp’s cell door clanged shut, followed by several resounding thuds as the creature threw itself at the door.

  The other occupants continued to rage until a strange sound reverberated from the far end of the corridor where Manning and Reid were being protected by other guards. It had the organic tone of a voice, but sounded to Hal something like a tolling bell. Immediately, whatever creatures lay behind the closed doors fell silent, and the quiet that followed was infinitely more disturbing.

  Breathless and frightened, Hal stumbled out of Brasenose and into the High Street where two men were grunting and sweating as they attempted to fix the wheel of a cart. He was instantly hit by a wind sharp with the bite of winter. A flurry of snow stung his face. Puzzled, he looked up to see grey clouds now obscuring a sky that had been blue when he had entered the building. Snow in June? Even the final few things they had been counting on were fading away. Fastening his jacket, he turned into the icy gale and hurried towards Queen’s College.

  Just after 6 a.m., he found Samantha buried behind a mound of paperwork in her tiny office in the Ministry of Intelligence. No one kept regular hours any more. Her repeated complaints about deadlines and a possible sacking fell on deaf ears and eventually Hal convinced her to take an early breakfast.

  Shivering, they made their way to one of the pubs that opened before dawn for the market workers. At that time they’d be able to find a quiet corner away from the usual gossiping cliques from the Government offices.

  ‘I can’t believe this weather.’ Samantha sipped a herbal infusion, which everyone now drank instead of tea. ‘Everything’s gone mad.’

  ‘Everything went mad a long time ago,’ Hal replied.

  Samantha caught his flat delivery and asked him what was wrong. Hal enjoyed the concern in her eyes. Cautiously, he related his meeting with the Caretaker and the mysterious transformation of Oxford.

  ‘I will report it,’ he said. ‘Soon.’

  Samantha wasn’t listening. ‘“Something is coming”?’ she repeated hesitantly.

  ‘That’s what he said. But what I don’t get is, why did he tell me? It was as if he thought I could do something about it.’

  ‘Maybe you can.’

  ‘I’m a glorified librarian, Samantha. I’m barely any use in the job I do do. I’m not like Hunter-’

  ‘Stop going on about Hunter,’ Samantha said sharply.

  ‘The Caretaker was talking about the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons as if I had some way of contacting them. They need to be brought together, he said. But one of them has already fallen.’

  ‘Brothers and Sisters of what?’

  ‘You know — the Five who fought at the Fall.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘They’ve been in all the recent intelligence reports. You should know that — it’s your department.’

  ‘You don’t think they actually let me read the files, do you? I have to look the other way while I stick them in a drawer.’

  ‘You’ve not heard Reid say anything?’ Hal drank his herbal brew, but wished he’d ordered a beer; he felt the urge to get completely drunk.

  ‘No, but then I’ve not been listening.’ She paused, stared at him curiously. ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘You could lose your job-’

  ‘Do you want me to?’ she repeated.

  Hal took a deep breath, then jumped straight in. ‘Only if you can find anything out without putting yourself at risk. I can’t believe I’m asking you to do this. Hunter doesn’t reckon I’ve broken a rule in my life-’

  Samantha smacked his thigh so hard it stung, then laughed at his startled expression.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, abashed.

  ‘Don’t make me do it again.’ She finished her drink. ‘I’d better get back. I’ll do what I can. Just don’t expect miracles.’

  ‘I never expect those,’ he said morosely. Then another thought struck him. ‘There was something else. You know all those cells in the high-security wing under Brasenose?’

  ‘Where they keep the prisoners?’

  ‘So they say.’

  ‘No prisoners?’

  ‘No human ones. I think they’ve captured a whole load of the things that came with the Fall. And they didn’t sound very happy.’

  Samantha blanched. ‘God, if they got out…’

  ‘One of them did while I was there. Nearly killed me. But that’s not the point. It spoke to me. It said it could smell the Pendragon Spirit on me — does that mean anything to you?’

  Samantha shook her head blankly.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on any more,’ he said. ‘The only thing I can think of is King Arthur’s surname in the legends.’

  ‘King Arthur,’ she mused, before adding hesitantly, ‘Yesterday, Mister Reid asked me to pull some files. They all began with the codename Grail…’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Arthur Pendragon.’ Hal turned the words over thoughtfully. Then: ‘King Arthur… the Grail. It’s got to be a coincidence.’

  ‘In this day and age, you can’t rule anything out, Hal,’ Samantha said.

  Halfway back from Somerset, Hunter had to order one of the men to render Mallory unconscious. The knight was as strong and potentially lethal as the General had intimated during the briefing. Once he’d fought his way past the pain from his broken ribs and realised that his girlfriend had been killed, he took out two men in as many seconds, one with a chop to the larynx, another with a punch that sent his victim the length of the helicopter. The blows were delivered with a cool equanimity, but Hunter could see the familiar ice in Mallory’s eyes. Every raw emotion the knight felt had been bound up and battened down to fuel his single-minded response. It was a look Hunter had seen in many a soldier in difficult circumstances. There would be no dealing with Mallory now; the knight would be like a bear-trap — get too close and you’d lose a limb, maybe an eye, possibly your life. And he’d never be satiated. He wouldn’t deal, wouldn’t help; they might as well just lock him up until it was all over.

  ‘Not so smart now, is he?’ the acne-scarred Grieg said. Hunter could see that he was considering giving Mallory’s prone form a kick.

  ‘You won’t be so smart when I give my report to the General.’ Hunter stared out of the window, past the blizzard of white towards the glittering lights of Oxford in the sea of darkness below.

  ‘I had no choice-’

  ‘There’s always a choice. One of the targets is dead. The other is next to useless now. You’ve ruined the mission.’

  ‘What use is he, anyway?’

  Hunter turned to him. ‘If you had a brain, Grieg, you’d be halfway to being dangerous. As it is, you’re just a psycho who shouldn’t be let near loaded weapons. You were tooled up and ready to kill something the moment you came out of the briefing.’

  ‘He just wanted to hit back at something, Chief.’ Porter, the one Mallory had knocked down the helicopter, sat nursing an aching jaw. ‘You can understand that, after all the losses we took during the Fall.’

  Hunter nodded to Mallory. ‘He might be the only chance we’ve got to hit back. At the Fall, we lost every battle we engaged in — we didn’t even have the weapons to make it a competition. That means we have to be especially clever now, use whatever resources really work. Fight back with the new rules, not the ones we impose on ourselves. The attitude of this idiot here-’ Hunter jerked a thumb at Grieg ‘-is just going to mark us up for extinction. The new dinosaurs, lumbering around till we’re just fossils.’

  Hunter turned back to the window. At times like this he was ready to quit. He’d never felt as if he really fitted in, couldn’t remember how he had ended up in the job in the first place. All his performance reviews noted his attitude problem, inability to follow orders and blatant disregard for authority.
Yet somehow he kept rising through the ranks. Before the Fall it had been bad enough, with every request for a transfer refused. Now he couldn’t get out if he wanted to.

  The helicopter came down in the Deer Park. Hunter climbed out beneath the thundering blades, with his men carrying Mallory on a stretcher behind. A cluster of people were silhouetted against the bright lights of Magdalen.

  He motioned for the men to take Mallory straight down to a holding cell where the medics could check him over and then sauntered as nonchalantly as he could manage in the direction of the crowd. The snow was already starting to settle on the grass.

  Running to meet him was Reid and two of the shifty, faceless men who populated his department. He stopped the stretcher and briefly searched Mallory before hurrying up to Hunter.

  ‘Weapon?’ he barked.

  ‘What’s this? A word-association game? If so, I’ll say “penis”. A big one.’

  ‘Did he have a weapon?’ There was a flush of excitement in Reid’s cheeks that made him oblivious to Hunter’s attempt to rile him. Hunter didn’t like the look of it.

  ‘A sword. In the chopper. There we go again with the word association. That Freud bloke really had it sorted, didn’t he?’

  ‘I’m taking it down to my department for tests, if you want to mark that in your report.’

  ‘There’s a stone in there, too. Makes pretty pictures in the air.’

  Reid had dived into the chopper before Hunter had time to say anything else.

  The General came up next, accompanied by a small coterie of serious-faced advisors. ‘What does he want?’ he asked suspiciously, peering after Reid.

  ‘Typical spook-looting.’

  The General nodded. ‘Leave the chopper here. You’ve got forty-five minutes for debriefing and to grab a bite and then we’re off again.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘We’ll see.’ The General marched away into the snowstorm with his coterie hurrying behind him like a gaggle of geese. Hunter watched them go, strangely unnerved; and his instincts never let him down.