Burning Ashes

by James Bennett

  Tower Bridge now rose snapped and crumbling behind the brute, and several barges and boats had run aground, hurled by the displaced tide. Lightermen and tourists milled on the shore, bedraggled, shell-shocked, but alive. Ben didn’t want to think about the people in the city, how they’d fared under the march of leather soles with who knew how many tons behind them. With a familiar twist in his guts, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to save everyone. As ever, this was a game of damage limitation.

  And you’re losing ground. You’ve been losing ground ever since the breach in the Lore …

  Somehow, he had to draw the giant away from London, lure him further downriver into the marshes, into the deepest mud, let the estuary tides close over his head …

  Wishful thinking. The only kind you know.

  Still, he had to try. The giant shrugged off Canary Wharf in splinters and crashed onwards past Millwall, the river flooding Surrey Docks Farm and Sir John McDougall Gardens. Mud and trash went washing into the Isle of Dogs, wrecked boats, stunned seagulls, fishing nets, dislodged crates and shopping trolleys swirling down the streets towards the inner docks.

  With eyes as keen as a hawk’s, Ben watched as people below wrenched open their front doors, Sunday papers in hand, to see what all the fuss was about. Men in boxers and women in nighties looked up at the sky. Teenagers dropped their mobile phones. Children squealed and pointed. On the corner, a bearded gent clutched his turban and hurried inside to lock his shop door, as if that was any defence against the huge and impossible creature barging its way into the day.

  Ben, who knew the city like the back of his claw, watched as the panic multiplied throughout the Docklands, hordes hurrying down Westferry Road, some of them clutching badly packed suitcases. Others, youths, went shouting and swearing by on bicycles, on skateboards, or stumbling on discount store high heels. Over eight long centuries, Ben had seen London grow and spread out from a huddle of houses around the Palace of Westminster—and seen no end of the city’s troubles from the Black Death to blitzkrieg bombs—but he had never seen anything like this before, the populace screaming, running scared from a monster.

  The usual empathy, reluctant, foolhardy as it was, tugged at him. Down there, the human medley of ages and cultures for which the capital was famous had become united in terror. And, in the shadow of the giant striding down the river ahead, Ben couldn’t deny that he was part of the threat, a red-scaled, leather-winged freak that should not be, that belonged in fairy tales and big-budget movies, not in the skies above modern-day London.

  A buzzing in his ears, mechanical and way too close, reminded Ben that his concerns for secrecy were pointless. The helicopter was an example of the dangerous state of play. Flanks emblazoned with the logo of a popular and utterly bullshit national tabloid, the chopper swooped in alongside Ben like a mosquito, the whirling rotors and humming engine as annoying as any sting. He spared the craft a weary glance. In the cockpit, a slack-jawed pilot took in the behemoth ahead, Cormoran’s wading bulk currently making a sewer of Deptford. In the cabin, a journalist was alternately taking snapshots of the giant and the dragon coasting beside them, although the wind and his trembling hands made the chance of decent photographs unlikely.

  Say cheese. Ben gave the pilot a glimpse of his fangs, warning him to keep his distance as he climbed for greater altitude, racing after the giant. The press, in typical fashion, ignored him, the increased whine of the chopper’s engine informing him that it meant to stay glued to his tail.

  Fine. It’s your funeral.

  Despite his cynicism, Ben knew that this wasn’t good. The press he could handle. He didn’t give a shit about his five minutes of fame—it was much too late for that—but an airborne craft would soon bring others. Perhaps Royal Air Force jets armed to the teeth with machine guns and missiles, if experience was anything to go by. And maybe Tornadoes could even stop the giant. Maybe not. Maybe Cormoran would bat them out of the sky, King Kong style. All the same, Ben was sure that the pilots wouldn’t draw a distinction between the giant and himself. A monster was a monster, after all. A threat was a threat. Besides, where the hell were they? The military response was tardy, to say the least. Every step the giant took meant more trampled and drowned people, more casualties, more structural damage. He had to act fast or forget this latest, ill-advised attempt at heroism.

  He zipped upward, venting flame, trying to catch Cormoran’s attention. Comparatively bird-sized as he was, he might as well have pecked at a statue’s head. What the hell did the giant want? Eight hundred years underground hadn’t left him rested and in a good mood, that was for sure. And no wonder. Judging by the shambling mountain before him, his shaggy head and shuddering groans, Ben reckoned that Cormoran was more dazed and confused than anything; the needling harp song—a melody that Ben recalled with a cramp in his balls and an ache in his skull—must’ve been a rude awakening. And that didn’t even begin to account for the giant’s arrival in modern times.

  Giants weren’t exactly known for their brains. Nevertheless, on the whole, they’d been smart enough to steer clear of King John’s new cities and towns, preferring the open reaches of the countryside, the Cornish moors, the Cumbrian hills and the Scottish Highlands. Back then, London would’ve been a smoking huddle of huts on the horizon, two or three spires pointing at the sky, most of them long since crumbled or sunken into the shadow of tower blocks, their weathervanes outstripped by satellite dishes and radio masts.

  The modern city must strike the giant as a vision of hell, surely. A festering, stinking bed of industry, a sea of clamour and smoke. Cormoran was angry and confused, clearly. A lumbering oaf at the best of times, he must’ve climbed from his bed with what amounted to a raging hangover. Had he realised that someone had stolen eight hundred years from him? That people had fooled him, forced him into slumber? Did the sickening song still ring in his skull? It was only a matter of time until his club started swinging this way and that, crashing down on an unsuspecting Greenwich, his shadow falling over the historic district as he trudged further downriver. Water, black and foul with the ceaseless river traffic, gurgled and slopped up the tributaries of creek and canal, a steadily rising wall of destruction that went crashing over houses, roads and railway tracks, prompting a fresh chorus of screams.

  Ben made his move. Wings folded, he navigated the giant’s head, shooting over crusty ringlets of hair and emerging above his sloping brow, his coarse skin glistening with scars and runnels of sweat. From the giant’s temples, faded tattoos curled down to his jawline, which Ben recognised as markings from the Old Lands, back when such tribal symbols mattered. Giants were as old as the hills and just as hardy. Had Cormoran fought at Camlann, the ancient, legendary battle that had seen the fall of King Arthur? His brands appeared to suggest so, but whether he’d sided with the Pendragon or the Usurper, Ben couldn’t say.

  Unhappy with the sight, an echo of a war that wasn’t lost on him, Ben set his gaze on Cormoran’s eyebrows several feet below him, a briar sprinkled with the frost of age. Snapping out his tail, he dived directly downwards, all four claws naked and splayed. Roaring a challenge, he raked his way down the giant’s face, leaving a scattering wake of blood.

  Big mistake.

  Cormoran bellowed, but with the thunder of outrage rather than pain. As Ben pushed himself off the giant’s nose, Cormoran turned his cliff of a head, looking around for the source of the attack. Air, hot and rank, came blasting from the giant’s lungs, slamming into Ben like a battering ram, flinging him wheeling out into space, his wings flailing. The ground spun below, a kaleidoscope of buildings and streets. Then a hand, a wall of meat, came up to grab him.

  With a grimace, Ben slipped through the giant’s fingers, the ridge of his spine scoring a vast and scabrous palm, missing a crushing end by inches. Fighting for calm, he let gravity drag him towards the earth, the wind ironing out his wings and tail, untangling him from his nosedive.

  The sky shook as Cormoran lunged. The river crashed over the sou
th bank and smashed down on Greenwich Pier, chasing screaming tourists before it, some snatched up by the squall. Up on the quay, a helter-skelter ride became a sudden island, the waters gushing around its stripy conical tower. Falling fast, Ben watched as the Cutty Sark, the famous clipper moored near the National Maritime Museum, budged and shifted in the barrelling tide. Her masts swayed, her rigging creaking in the gusting wind. The deluge cracked the framework securing her hull to the wharf, her cage of tessellated glass twisting and shifting, the vessel breaking free. The ship—named after, of all things, a dancing witch—hadn’t been at sea since the Opium Wars and she seemed oddly buoyant as the waves took her, bearing her aloft—and then ending her brief and final voyage in black smithereens against the walls of the Royal Naval College.

  Ben looked away. Rolling in the air, tail lashing, he again steered himself for the heights. He slipped around the knoll of Cormoran’s knee, shooting over the jungle of the giant’s loincloth, his belly fat and pale enough to rival the Millennium Dome in the distance. Drawing level with the planes taking off from London City Airport, Ben could see the eastern limits of the capital, a living toy town about to get crushed. So many lives trampled underfoot. One way or another, he had to grab Cormoran’s attention, speak sense into him if possible, get him to head back to the hills.

  Or find a way to kill him.

  Such notions shattered as flames flowered around him, an explosion smacking him about the head, shuddering through his bones. Jags of metal came whistling past as he made his ascent, the debris bouncing off his horns and rump, startling, but unable to burn him. Peering through the smoke, he made out the helicopter—now missing its tail boom and rotor—wheeling across the sky, the pilot punching at the controls.

  Well, you got your scoop. Hope it was worth it.

  The chopper spun, rudderless, towards the earth. For a moment, Ben looked on, thrown off his battle charge. Then, with a grunt that carried a weight of reluctance, he turned and dived after the craft, his snout wrinkling at the stench of kerosene, his claws stretching out. In the cabin, the journalist watched him approach with bulging eyes. Even as the man vented a wail, he wrapped one of his arms in a seatbelt, clutching onto his camera for dear life. Impending crash or no, he didn’t want to lose his snaps.

  In a snarl of metal and a belch of smoke, dragon and chopper thumped into Island Gardens, a park on the north bank. Debris clattered down, scorching the surrounding grass. Trees shook, wild with leaves. Hedges burst into flame. A quick scan of the area told Ben that the park was thankfully empty, the people scattering at the sight of the giant booming his way down the river. Small mercies. With no time to waste, he unfurled himself from the crumpled craft, a seven-ton length of crimson flesh having shielded pilot and passenger from certain death. Exhaling in a smoky plume, he watched the men clamber from the wreckage and crawl as quickly as possible away from him without so much as a backward glance, let alone a thank you.

  Humans.

  With a sigh, Ben turned away from the crash site. His tail swept up a storm of leaves and his wings rattled the swings in the nearby playground. Nostrils trailing smoke, he pointed his snout back at the sky, back up at the towering menace. The sun shone overhead, beaming through the scudding clouds, but he felt a chill creep into his bones nonetheless. He was standing in the shadow of a two-hundred-foot-tall mountain of muscle, framed by the steel-blue sky.

  The screams, though distant, were louder now, an odd stillness falling over the day. Gradually, the Thames was returning to calm, her waters slopping at the embankment. The faint roar of collapsing buildings and the wail of sirens filtered to Ben’s ears, faraway and dreamlike. A tingle went through him, goosebumps prickling from his snout to the tip of his tail.

  Cormoran, Bane of the Summer Country, was looking down at him.

  Whether distracted by the crashed chopper or dragon fire, the giant had stopped dead in his tracks, his rampage interrupted. He was peering down at Island Gardens—what must’ve looked like a little ring of scorched grass to him, with a small red bird cringing in the middle. The giant’s face was in shadow, but Ben felt eyeballs bigger than boulders taking him in all the same. Swallowing a lump in his throat, he found a sudden reason to regret his attention-seeking.

  If there’d ever been a good time for diplomacy, this was it. There were certain codes among Remnants, certain ways of doing things. Calls to parley. Invitations to battle. Sure, bloodshed and terror had a funny way of following the formalities, but before all that, there was a kind of etiquette. Honour among fiends. Could he rely on that here? He could try.

  Ben roared a challenge, calling for the giant to desist. This was the dragon city, after all, and Ben had made it his business to protect it. Sworn to protect it as he had sworn to protect all humans by upholding the Lore. The Lore might be over, but old habits died hard. Besides, it was home. Scratch Mordiford, far away in the Welsh Marches; London was the only home he knew, the one he’d chosen. In a growl of wyrm tongue that he hoped Cormoran could understand (and hiding the tremble in his voice), he demanded a moment to parley.

  What do you say, big guy?

  Cormoran bent, stretching out the rolls of flab that passed for his neck as he leant down for a closer look. His head blocked out the sun, granting Ben the unwelcome sight of his beard, flecked as it was with broken branches, struggling birds and the remains of sheep and cows—no doubt snaffled from some field or other on his way here. His face split in a grin that seemed as wide and as crooked as the river he presently stood in. Gobbets of drool splashed down on the park, each one forming a wide, viscous pool. Cormoran’s breath, an opened sack of a hundred farts, gusted all around Ben, ruffling his wings and flattening his tail as the giant spoke.

  “Benjurigan. Backstabber. Snake.”

  “It’s been a while,” Ben spoke through his fangs, hoping the giant would take them for a disarming smile, “but I see you remember me.”

  “Cormoran never forgets a face.” The giant tapped his chest with a pillar of a finger, the echoes shaking the ground under Ben’s claws. “And I remember both of yours.”

  “Wait a minute. I—”

  It was no good. With that, their parley was over. Ben’s smile shrivelled up as a mighty arm came swinging down, aiming to squash him like a bug. Thrusting his haunches, he bounded out of the way, clods of earth and jags of machinery exploding all around him as several tons of ham-hock fist went slamming into the ground.

  The smart thing, of course, was to make himself a smaller target. First to shrink were his wings, the leathery membranes folding up like umbrellas, his metacarpals merging with the rack of his flanks and spine, both dwindling in size. His arrowhead tail rippled towards his retracting snout and somewhere in the middle, his transformation met in the shape of a man. A flash of will, a gentle push, and impossibly, magically, the dragon coiled up inside new hominid dimensions.

  Ben landed on the turf, a flame-haired, broad-shouldered man stumbling across the shuddering ground. Recovering himself, he headed west, sprinting across the park. Through the giant’s legs, he could see the twin domes of the Old Royal Naval College across the river, the classical façade, the pillared porticoes, trimmed lawns and statues stretching beside the Thames.

  Between ornate golden weathervanes, the Grand Square had become an escape route for tourists, the last of the crowds haemorrhaging through the gates onto Romney Road. Ben surveyed the area with gleaming eyes, the crush of faces striking him as all too familiar, a blur of dread and desperation. Of spent disbelief. He had seen these expressions a lot lately, from London to Cairo to Hong Kong, a mosaic that he’d put together to work out their revelatory sum: the old order had shaken and fallen. The Lore, like the damned harp, like the Eight Hand Mirror, had shattered into pieces. The events of the last two years amounted to a disaster. All of them, Remnant and human alike, were standing on the edge of a new era, a new age—and things didn’t look too pretty.

  Legs pumping across the grass, Ben tried to ignore the loomi
ng presence at his back, the imagined pendulum of fists about to come crashing down on him, or maybe a boot, grinding him face-first into the dirt, leaving a crimson puddle. He took in his surroundings in short, breathless flashes, searching for an escape route, some kind of solution.

  Think, damn it. Think.

  Half a mile to the south, the Royal Observatory stood on a hill overlooking the broad sweep of parkland where the Greenwich Palace had once stood, the birthplace of Tudor queens and the favourite haunt of kings. Ben reflected as he ran, remembering simpler, happier times, when he hadn’t had to deal with battle dragons and angry giants, the detritus of his unravelling world. Not that he hadn’t faced his fair share of trouble back then. History was like that, he supposed. The glow of nostalgia. The rose-tinted past. And if he didn’t get the hell out of here, he was about to become a part of it.

  He did a double take as he spied the chimneys further up the south bank, the old building an eyesore of yellow brickwork rising over the rows of riverside houses. At once, his mind blazed with desperate inspiration, his eyes narrowing on the four angular smokestacks. It was a long shot, but it would have to do.

  Panting hard, he skidded in that direction, darting towards the squat round building with the glazed dome that stood at the edge of the park, mere yards from the Thames. With a voluble slurp, Cormoran raised one boot from the river, trailing muck and fish and trash, and stamped down on the offending bank, trying to crush the little snake who’d dared to dicker with him. With the impact of his boot, the ground became a trampoline of thrown-up trees and earth. Ben didn’t hang around, waiting for a premature burial. Knocked off his feet, he let the tremors carry him into the domed building he’d been heading for, making a graceless entrance into the Greenwich foot tunnel. Bricks and glass showered down around him as he tumbled forward, his skull, spine and backside bouncing off the steps of a broad spiral staircase, down into the murk.