Bullets rattled in response, thudding into serpentine flesh. The knights rolled and dived across tarmac, trying to dodge the aerial assault. Nevertheless, a blade split an undefended skull. A cudgel knocked teeth from jaw. As the wyverns shot back into the sky, the mangled remains of motorbikes and caravans dribbling from their claws, one of the beasts spat out gobbets of blood before crashing headlong into the park, gouging a furrow in the turf. Riddled with bullets, the creature croaked, shuddered and lay still. The next moment, a troop of goblins came pouring from its back, straightening their helmets and swinging their weapons into the fray. Some of the knights turned, their guns raised, firing wildly into the chaos.
Another shell burst beside Ben, smacking him around the ears and flinging him towards Horse Guards, the thorn wall rising from the Parade, dividing the broad white square. Grunting, he regained control of his wings, narrowly preventing himself from crashing into the briar, impaling himself on the thorns. With a snort of smoke, he flexed his muscles, ready for another sally. Wings spread, tail weaving, he flashed to the top of the barricade, just in time to meet the wyverns that were circling around again, his lungs ballooning, his jaws flowering with heat. This time, he lunged at the convoy side on, his claws splayed (one claw gripping Caliburn, a chill prize), following up his barrage of fire. He gave a roar as wings flurried around him, a section of the convoy breaking apart, hurled in all directions. Screeches rang in his ears, the wyverns snapping at him, their fangs splintering on crimson scales.
Any satisfaction that Ben might’ve felt evaporated as he watched the king swerve away from him, plummeting to sweep along Birdcage Walk, his mount plucking artillery and knights from the road. Slippery bastard. He made to follow, shaking off the scattered flock, when he felt an added weight on the back of his neck and heard du Sang cry out, some French profanity lost to the wind. Someone, a goblin most likely, had leapt from one of the passing wyverns and onto his back. In a second, the Vicomte found himself unhorsed, a bundle of rags and bone flung from the saddle, his limbs flailing. With a curse of his own, Ben turned from the sight of du Sang tumbling toward the rooftops below, but his concern wasn’t for the vampire. Pain shuddered down his spine as steel sliced under his scales, hacking at the flesh of his withers.
Acting on instinct alone, Ben rolled in mid-air, a necklace of blood showering around him. He barked in delight as the one who sought to straddle him lost his footing and spun out into the air. Smart move, numbskull. And numbskull was right. Grizzled he was, this pale, dead thing in his blood-red armour, his eyes squirming with maggots, empty of conscious intent. Even as he fell, the corpse knight swung out his double-headed axe, an echo of skill from long ago and long since swallowed by the grave. In response, Ben shot out a claw and grabbed his assailant. Snarling, he squeezed, reducing the knight to splinters of bone, scraps of metal and fading blue light. Dead things, he reckoned, should stick to the tomb, where they belonged.
With flakes of dry flesh drifting around him, Ben turned his attention back to the battle. Completing another pass, the wyverns had left little standing of the Fitzwarren encampment. A couple of tents remained intact, albeit leaning to one side, but most lay flat on the grass, torn to shreds by passing claws. Across the sward, the knights were fighting it out with the goblins, their rifles raised to parry blows from axe and sword. Other men used the trees to hide behind, darting around the trunks now and then to shoot into the rabble. Along the road, the gun placements had fallen silent, abandoned and unmanned. Bullets sparked off helmets and clipped shields, and goblins fell left and right, but even a glance told him that the knights couldn’t hope to win this battle. On the back of every jacket, he caught flashes of the Fitzwarren coat of arms, as wearily familiar to him as his view of the grudge: the hawk of perseverance on a field of gules. Well, perseverance was the last thing he could fault the knights for, but black leather was no match against wyvern teeth and a hundred swords. Soon, the ammo would run out while the dead king wheeled above.
As the convoy swooped away, rising from the park in a wicked murmuration over the streets beyond, Ben traced the battle up to the lakeshore. There, by the bridge, he saw the spark of steel meeting steel and he let out a gruff breath of recognition. Lord knows how long she must’ve searched the valley, travelling from Whittington to scour the slopes of Snowdon. Rather that, he guessed, than face the fury of the patriarchs. She held the old claymore with both hands, swinging the charred blade at the goblins as further troops swarmed across the bridge. He wanted to put her success down to the length of the sword rather than skill, but he had to admit that she wasn’t entirely untrained. What Black Knight was? That didn’t account for her presence here, all the same.
Fool of a girl …
A decapitated head, the size and colour of a watermelon, sailed through the air as if to confirm his assessment. And when she took a hand off the hilt, letting the blade thud into the ground while she fumbled for the pistol in her belt, he grunted in respect as she shot an approaching goblin in the face.
Cade. Annis Cade. That was her name.
At least she’d dispensed with the spiked helmet. Considering his mood, the sight of the Lambton Armour wouldn’t help him any. She’d found a new jacket from somewhere, he saw, the heraldic hawk painted on the back, but it hung a little loose on her. In daylight, her hair looked vaguely medieval, her shorn black bob swinging in time with her sword. Squire chic. The Fitzwarren family, he knew, was never going to win any fashion awards.
Cursing, he dived towards the bridge, his draconic proportions dwindling as he plunged through the trees, the branches thrashing around him. He landed in a swirl of leaves, his feet leaving claw marks in the turf moments before they shrank to pink and five-toed size. A second of concentration and his scales ceased slipping into human skin, a layer retained to cover his nakedness, the meditation easier now, the conjured shape of his suit held at the back of his mind. At his ankles, wrists and neck, his scales blended smoothly into his flesh, his face the usual illusion of scars, sneer and green eyes. On his head, his hair stuck up like an out-of-hand fire, the ends crackling with absorbed heat.
With Caliburn thrumming in his grip, he lumbered up to the girl by the bridge.
“Thought I told you to keep out of my face,” he said, shaking the sword at her. “What do you hope to achieve with this crap?”
“I’m in your face?” she shot back without looking at him, slashing at the oncoming horde. “I don’t remember asking for your help.”
A goblin ran up wheeling an axe. Ben dodged the blow and punched the creature in the head, his would-be assailant slumping to the ground.
“It’s your funeral,” he told her. “It just so happens to be the funeral of every man out here as well. There’s no way you can win this.”
Annis glanced at him, her light brown face pulled into a sneer, but she couldn’t hide the fear in her eyes.
“Then we’ll die with honour.” The claymore swung down, chopping off a green-skinned arm and the short sword on the end of it. Blood sprayed, the colour of the grass they stood upon. “The banner rallied to my call. London is under attack.” She nodded at the sky, at the wyverns overhead. “Some of us won’t sit back and watch.”
“Thirty-odd men ‘rallied to your call,’” he said. And why? he wondered. What’s so special about you? Sure, you’re related to a chosen knight, but …“Drop the Prince Valiant act. This looks pretty desperate to me. And I’m guessing your patriarchs didn’t approve of it either.” He remembered her on the mountainside, whining about some past injustice, a drowned boy and a forbidden knighthood. Ben wasn’t a big fan of tradition—he’d been on the sticky end of it one too many times—but he knew how this stuff worked. No daughter of House Fitzwarren had ever got to play slayer. Not till now, anyway. “You’re a rebel, Annis Cade. Trying to win brownie points, am I right? Well, your honour is about to get you killed.”
“Get with the times, dino breath. This isn’t twelve fif—”
Dino …? Pat
ience running out, Ben stepped up to the bridge. He twirled the sword, a hum of energy through the air, and struck out at the goblins charging across the span. He hissed through his teeth as the sword slashed back and forth.
“I … don’t … have … time for this shit.”
With a sweep of the blade, the scene shuddered around him, vibrating with power. The jewel-studded weapon felt light in his grip, lighter than any sword had a right to be, and as lunewrought bit into Remnant flesh, his skull once more spun with images, echoes of an earlier time.
He saw the sword protruding from an anvil in a broad paved square, a man in armour heaving at the hilt, his brow slick with sweat. Then the image rippled, and a boy replaced the man, a gangling, sandy-haired squire in threadbare tunic and hose. With a cry, the boy pulled the blade free and Ben knew that he was looking at Arthur, a young Arthur before he’d stepped up to his destiny, ascending to the throne as the Once and Future King. Runes, blue as sapphires, shot out from the anvil in a great arc as the king drew Caliburn for the first time, the radiance blinding to look at, a mile-wide beam of light shooting across the rooftops of Dark Age London …
A Fay circle of protection, triggered by the sword …
Ben blinked, the light and the knowledge shivering through him. Time quivered, a web releasing him, thrusting him rudely back into the present.
The goblins had stopped charging across the bridge and lay in a heap at his feet.
Dead. All dead.
Bewildered, he let Caliburn fall, the tip of the sword sinking to the ground with a deep thrum of satisfaction. When his vision cleared, he could see the park again, obscured by light only for a moment, a few seconds out of time. The glyphs, however, continued to glow, riddling out from the ground at his feet. Astonished, he traced the symbols into the trees, the huge, illegible markings dancing over the lake—under the lake—and off into the city. Did the glyphs seem brighter than before? Yeah. Just like in Barcelona. Their sour glow was ripening to silver, sparkling with returning health, he saw … It was strange to pick the glyphs out in daylight. Even as he stared, the circle shone to a near blinding degree, sparked, ignited by the magic of the sword. Of that he had no doubt.
Then, in a flash, it was gone. The circle had vanished.
What does this mean? What the hell are you trying to tell me?
Before he could ask Caliburn, Annis let out her breath with an awed profanity. When Ben snapped his head around to look at her, he found the girl staggering backwards, her sword scraping along the ground. At first, he thought she’d noticed the glyphs too. From the way that her gaze stayed fixed on the bridge, however, he realised that she couldn’t see the Fay circle of protection. Presumably, the lunewrought manacle she’d carried wouldn’t have had an effect on her, human as she was. No. The vision was his alone.
Frowning, he looked at the bridge. Or what was left of it.
A mangled lump of concrete and metal hung over the lake, a good ten feet of the span shattered and fallen into the water. Goblins swarmed along the twisted railings, spitting and snarling on the broken edge, unable to reach them. A single sweep of the blade had reduced the bankside section of the bridge to rubble.
Impressive.
“Perks,” the sword said, as if in answer to Ben’s thoughts.
Grinding his teeth, Ben jabbed a finger at the would-be slayer. It was time to put an end to this nonsense, send the girl home.
“Look, sweetheart—”
Annis flinched, but too late, he realised that it wasn’t due to him. The trees thrashed around him, the wind rising, howling in his ears. He spun on his heel in time to see one of the wyverns dropping from the sky, the embattled knights diving to the left and right as the beast came sweeping across the park. On the wyvern’s back, the corpse king sat and grinned, his eyes shining like the blue blazes.
The next moment, a slab of scaled flesh smacked into Ben, a claw snatching him up off the ground, bearing him aloft. One by one, he felt his ribs crack, the sword flying from his grasp with the impact. Caliburn spun through the air and clanged across the path below, wheeling once, twice, and then thudding point-first into concrete, the jewelled hilt quivering.
Ben caught the sword’s comment as he soared skyward, faint, but no less bitter.
“Typical,” it said.
Biting down on the pain in his chest, Ben tried to focus, exert a practised flash of will.
You’re punching above your weight, newt face.
Spurred by innate magic and rage, his scales blossomed around his expanding girth, his face stretching into a yards-long snout of yellow fangs. His tail burst from his spine in a chain of muscle and horns, the arrowhead tip lashing back and forth. His humanoid limbs swelled into forelegs and haunches, each one ending in unsheathed claws. Like a bloodstain on the sky, his unfolding wings dwarfed the wyvern that clutched him, the creature left scrabbling at his breast, alarm warbling from its throat.
Ben grinned. Closing a claw around the wyvern’s tail, he drew in his wings and relaxed, allowing gravity to do its work. A few seconds later, seven tons of draconic flesh smashed down into St. James’s Park lake, dragging the wyvern and the dead king with it.
The surface seethed, billows of steam hissing off the water.
A minute passed. Then Ben emerged from the bubbling muck. Red-scaled, horned and spitting out weeds, he clambered up onto the bank, ignoring Annis’s slack-jawed stare and limping towards the sword sticking out of the ground. If Caliburn could do that to a bridge, imagine what it could do to old bones and rotten—
“Look out!”
Arthur, still mounted, burst from the lake behind Ben. Mud dripped from his naked skull, weeds straggling in his beard. His crown, dragon-shaped and much like a torque, gleamed with beads of water. The relic around his neck, the Horn of Twrch Trwyth, sparkled and shone, an impossibly dangling carrot. I’ve got to get my claws on it somehow … The wyvern shrieked, scattering Ben’s thoughts. Thrusting itself forward, the beast lashed out its tail, tearing up a wall of leaves and dirt.
Ben’s breath flew from his lungs, his forelegs lifting off the ground, the wyvern’s tail smacking into him. A knot of limbs, he flew across the narrow stretch of water and crashed down into Duck Island Cottage, tiles, feathers and bird shit flying. Shaking himself, he rose from the rubble, the roofbeams sliding off his head. He vented a curse, a growl of wyrm tongue, but it had barely hissed between his fangs when spread wings and a bone-white grin eclipsed the sun. The wyvern was smaller, granted, but the beast had caught him off guard. Once again, claws outstretched and screeching downward, the wyvern plucked his stunned form from the ruins and flung him into the air.
As he tumbled, his shoulder caught the edge of the Guards Memorial, chipping the Rudyard Kipling inscription. Chunks of granite bearing words like God and Glory went scattering across Horse Guards Road. When Ben climbed to his feet, groaning and crawling towards the Parade, all he could see was a cloud of dust and broken stone. All he could taste was blood. It dribbled from his snout, speckling the gravel under him.
Directly ahead, the barricade loomed, a monstrous wall of thorns. He’d find no shelter in its jagged hollows. The briar had swallowed the turrets of the Admiralty and the Cavalry Museum, soaring hundreds of feet into the sky. To his right, Lord Mountbatten clutched his binoculars atop his plinth and observed Ben’s position with bronze-eyed solemnity.
Limping, Ben turned to watch Arthur land, the wyvern alighting on the edge of the Parade, its wings throwing up dust. The beast cackled deep in its throat, its gaze reptilian and dumb, but its hunger was nothing compared to that of the king, who fixed his prey with a look of cold and unfathomable triumph.
There was nowhere to go. Beyond Arthur, out on the park, the cries were fading, the odd machine gun stuttering, but gradually falling still, the skirmish obviously quelled. Ben swallowed, his heart sinking. What the hell had the Black Knights hoped to do here? Would the goblins round up the few surviving men or kill them where they stood? He spared a t
hought for Annis Cade and her ill-advised heroism. Would she find ending up as fast food for the horde an honourable death? he wondered. He had no way of knowing these things. As the wyverns circled overhead, cutting off his escape route, all he knew was the old familiar taste of his failure.
He spat a star of blood on the ground. The king had him cornered. He was out of breath, his lungs aching, seconds away from summoning heat. If he was to meet his maker here, then at least he’d do so in true form. Perhaps he’d give Arthur something to think about as the looming thicket went up in flames. His ribs screamed, encompassing the girth of his heart. Rearing up on hindlegs, he spread his wings, a scarlet cloak thrown over the briar. His jaws parted, embers coiling in his throat.
High in his saddle, Arthur opened his fist. In his palm lay a sprig, some kind of cutting from a tree. Looking down on the wyvern, Ben strained to make out the object in the king’s hand. It was hawthorn, he thought, stripped of blossoms. A hard, sharp twig, black as the thorns strangling the city.
Puzzled, he tipped his head. The king was chanting something, soft and sweet, the incantation lost to the distance and the fire rumbling in his breast.
Mumbo jumbo. I’ll be damned if I give you time to—
A vice around his throat choked off his ire. With a bark of shock, the flames went thundering back down his throat, smoke puffing from his nostrils. As the heat dispersed, absorbed by his serpentine lungs, a fresh web of pain riddled his body.
Fuck. Struggling, he felt further bonds snaking around him, the coils tightening around his hindlegs, his belly, his snout.
What the fuck? Thrashing against his bonds, he wrenched his gaze downward to see a questing branch, as slender as birch, spear through the membrane of one wing, the emerging thorns slick with blood. Then he grunted and flinched, a prong shooting over his brow, narrowly missing his eye. Yet more thorns writhed over his claws and looped around his tail, binding him in a sharp embrace.
No. Brambles crushed his other wing, lacerating the skin between his pinions, the strips dripping with blood. The pain mounted, the spellbound briar quickening. Thorns pierced him, the sensation like a thousand blades sliding under his scales. Knives of living wood punctured his spine, stabbing muscle, scraping off bone. Blood pooled on the ground under him, spreading in a steaming tide across the Parade as, slowly but surely, his struggles grew weaker, the thorns tighter. The sky became faint, a gyre of wyverns, cawing in distant requiem. Numbness burned his chest, his back. A prison of thorns closed in a ball around him, fanged and black.
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