Burning Ashes

by James Bennett

  The hour had come to strike. If he couldn’t capture the humans, enough to send a chorus of screaming souls into the sky, then he would bring the hecatomb to them, decimate resistance where it stood. Thanks to the viewing platform of the Shard, he’d gained a perfect bead on the enemy, watching the smoking encampments on Hampstead Heath, the regiments of tanks, the jeeps and artillery, the camouflaged soldiers milling around them. To the east, he’d seen the black shapes of gunboats and the strange, submerged ships, now and then bobbing to the surface of the Thames, tall glass eyes glinting in the sun. And he had seen the swift metal birds, both winged and with rotors, zipping and chugging over the city, their quiver of rockets primed. The human armies gathered, recovering after the shock of attack, consolidating, waiting. But they would not wait for long. With fire, with rage, the troops would force their way through the thorn wall and meet with their king in battle. Arthur couldn’t risk their triumph. This time, his reign must endure.

  Come sunset, all will kneel to the throne.

  He’d meant this sortie for closer surveillance, to check the boundaries of the thorn wall for infiltration, the planting of bombs and such, while his troops mobilised on the ground. Commanding half of the horde to spread out to key points around the inner circumference of the briar, the king had mounted his steed and taken flight into the west, where he deemed the greater threat lay. Let them look up and see him in the distance, the Pendragon reborn! Let them shiver in their boots, clench their sphincters and turn to each other with ashen faces. Let them witness his gauntlet thrown and know that soon all would join him in death.

  Yet he’d misjudged them. A memory tugged at him, a maggot twisting in the muck of his brain, nudging an emotion from his previous life. A life long lost by a lake between snow-capped mountains, far from here in Wales. Once, he’d been a warrior. A man himself, yes, elevated by a wizard, a sword and fate to the throne of Logres. Despite the code of the Round Table, despite wooing damsels and prancing after cups, he had always remained a fighter at heart, clad in armour, his justice often coming at the point of a sword. But in Sleep, in death, it seemed he’d forgotten an important matter. Human intuition. The prescience of fear. The scent of approaching destruction.

  The sight of the jets in the distance, the helicopters droning behind them, served to remind him. Sunlight peeped through the thorn-shadowed ruins of Canary Wharf and the masts of the Millennium Dome, speaking of blood to come.

  The humans came to make war.

  The squadron roared towards him, vapour trailing in its wake. Six steel birds, he counted, spear-like missiles under their wings. The jets shot over the misty expanse of Regent’s Park and the empty streets around it.

  And so it begins …

  Arthur signalled to his troops. No sooner had he raised his hand than the jets opened fire. Bullets zipped through the air, shattering the morning calm with tracers of ammunition, bright streaks riddling over the top of the thorn wall. Sharply, he banked, dodging the fusillade, the sky ripped apart inches to his right. And more than the sky. With a squawk, he watched one of the wyverns burst into pieces, become a scattering cloud of blood, the unhorsed goblins shrieking and tumbling into the briar below. The jets shot past, the wyverns flapping up a storm in their wake. The goblins clung on, crouching low in the saddle. The planes were fast. Too fast, Arthur reckoned, for a focused attack on a slower and smaller target, and he barked at his troops to spread out. Yanking at the reins, he rose again on an updraught, veering to watch the jets boom past him. The squadron wheeled over the city, preparing for another pass.

  Let them come …

  That left the helicopters, bringing up the rear-guard. Again, he counted six, an opening salvo to spark the battle. Six slender, wasp-like machines with rotors spinning, gun barrels whirring with grease-smoke and fire. The sky shuddered as the king rose, his steed swift enough to evade the bullets thudding all around him, hitting nothing but air. The troops followed his lead, the wyverns thrusting for the heights. In response, the human pilots leaned back in their seats, punching at controls and steering to join them, reclaim the aerial advantage.

  But it was too late. As the king’s arm fell, the goblins above him gave a unified cry. The next moment, they released the rope-bound bundles that ran alongside the wyvern saddles, each long and lumpy sack coiled upon a green-scaled flank. With a rattle and a clank, a torrent of chains, studded with bones, nails and hooks, came raining from above. Most of the chains snaked earthward, missing the enemy by yards, lost to the thorns and the streets below. Some, however, struck home, smashing into two of the helicopters, quickly reeled in by the rotor blades, smoke coughing into the dawn.

  Spinning, growling, one of the vehicles juddered earthward like a sycamore seed. Its tail met the other stricken craft and tangled in mid-air, metal splintering high above the city. In a billowing plume of smoke, the helicopters tumbled behind the briar, a scream of engines and a loud crash reverberating between the office blocks of Euston Square. As the echoes faded, the shrieks of the wyverns eddied back in, blooded, gleeful and wild.

  Then the squadron went grumbling past, the remaining helicopters heading east, random gunfire opening a path before them, the wyverns scattering. Another of the beasts gave a screech, a shell thudding into its neck, a spray of blood and frantic wings whirling through the smoke. Arthur watched the craft lose altitude over Angel, sinking into the cover of the thorn wall. A glance into the distance told him that the jets were coming back, however, roaring between the cracked dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral and the brickwork heights of the Barbican. Taking cover struck the king as wise. With fist held high, the other gripping the reins, he steered his mount to follow the helicopters, sweeping down into the shadow of the briar, his troops falling in behind him.

  The choppers were fast, angular shapes zipping along the inner wall of thorns. Hot in pursuit, the king and the goblins swooped after them. The distance between the two squadrons was growing by the second. There was no way that the wyverns, for all their strength, could outpace the flying machines. Smoke from the choppers’ engines wafted in Arthur’s face, a flag promising defeat. But the dead king was not dissuaded. Looking down, he glimpsed activity below, tanks grumbling along New Road for Hoxton, the soldiers busying on the bridge over the canal. They were setting up a barricade that bristled with gun placements, he saw, the ordnance levelled on the hedge. The king knew that the soldiers had nothing left to lose. Desperation had made them bold. And he pictured similar scenes taking place at other points around the barrier. The concrete arteries that fed London would be rumbling with troops, vehicles and artillery, surely. With rocket launchers, with bombs, the human army prepared to enter the city, to breach the thorn wall with fire.

  Let them come. Let them come …

  Now the aim of the attack became clear. Drawing level with the ground troops beyond the wall, the choppers released a volley of munitions at the briar. The bombs burst apart as they struck the barrier, a series of smaller explosions showering the perimeter, gobbets of flame deep in the knotted depths. In no time at all, streaks of fire painted the towering face of the thorn wall, devouring the dry and tangled branches. Tunnels of embers and pluming ash riddled their way towards the ground. In this way, the humans sought to weaken the wall. It might take hours to blaze a trail through a quarter-mile of thicket, but still they came. The king couldn’t help but admire them, the warrior in him unable to deny the bravery of this assault, even as he focused on a suitable reprisal.

  At some unspoken signal, the barrier ahead broke apart. And with more than smoke and flame. In a grey-skinned tide, a flock of gargoyles poured forth from the wall, taking flight from perches in the briar, where, silent, sinewy and cold, they had waited for battle. Each creature weighed several tons and had no logical capacity for flight; it was the magic in their veins that bore them aloft. The Horn of Twrch Trwyth had peeled the gargoyles from the gables of mansion, monument and church, dragging their wakened horror to London. The magic, however sour, bo
und the Remnants to the king, and his horde moved as one, shackled to his will. The goblins cheered at the sight of the gargoyles. Fifty or more of the beasts filled the sky. Horns, claws and teeth. A palisade of snarling, spellbound granite.

  Arthur grinned—as he always grinned—watching the obstacle dawn on the helicopters. Locked into a bombing run, there was only time for the pilot at the rear to react, breaking formation to veer away, awkward and chugging over the streets below. The remaining craft crashed headlong into the flock of gargoyles, metal meeting stone with a sound to shatter the sky. Snapped rotors, splintering claws and fire rained down on the city. The king looked on, satisfied, as one of the choppers, whining and bleeding smoke, smashed into a high-rise at the edge of Shoreditch Park, glass and steel glittering in the sun. With a boom, the aerial wreckage hit the earth, gouging up greasy black furrows, splashing the surrounding green with fire. Another helicopter twirled directly onwards into the thorn wall, detonating in flowers of flame, adding to the spreading inferno.

  As one, the king led the wyverns up and away from the blaze, an arrow of fangs, swords and scales climbing through the smoke. In the distance, the Shard glimmered, a sword held high in challenge.

  Arthur drew no breath from the clearer air, his lungs long withered to rags. He felt neither fury nor fear as he levelled his gaze on the returning jets, winged death spearing towards him. In a burst of gunfire, two of the wyverns squawked and exploded, blood painting the sky at his back. Goblins screamed, torn green guts joining the miasma.

  But as the planes came on, the surviving gargoyles were rising, rising from the thorn wall. Yellow eyes, chipped claws and cracked wings raced for the space between the king and the jets. Let granite meet the glass-fronted cockpits and steel wings. Let gravel choke the engines. The gargoyles, enthralled by the horn, gave no thought to their personal safety as, shrouded by smoke, they rose to collide with the squadron.

  Arthur maintained his position, straddled upon the air, bullets whipping around him. Breastplate proud, crown gleaming in the sun, he sat as a decoy, watching the planes approach. In a minute or so, all would be shattering stone and death.

  Your machines are no match for magic …

  But this conceit, it seemed, was premature. The first inkling that things were amiss came from a subtle twist in the atmosphere. The king sensed it. An ill wind up his spine. Then another cry went up from the goblins. This time in fear. A wyvern shrieked in unmistakable dismay. With a hiss, Arthur turned in his saddle, just in time to see a feathery tide descending on the beasts behind him, a squall of wings and muscled flanks. Beaks open, sharp and black, the intruders vented a ferocious battle cry. Attention fixed on the choppers and jets, Arthur had neglected to notice the flock of griffins sneaking through the clouds above, now falling like holy fire upon his airborne troops.

  No! In mute alarm, the king could do nothing but watch as, with outstretched claws, griffins plucked several of his soldiers from their mounts and flung them out into the air, a scatter of helmets and swords over Hoxton. Then, in a snarl of limbs, green thrashing against gold, the griffins and the wyverns were spiralling downwards, blood and feathers flying around them like windswept leaves.

  The jets came on, shooting over the wall and into the arena of London. The noise of their approach snapped the king’s attention back to them, seconds away now, and then to the gargoyles, ascending below. Again, he took no pleasure in the sight, his black heart quailing. The sky down there was full of white, a confusion of rags and streaming hair that took him a second to place.

  No! No! A host of women were swooping up from the shadow of the thorn wall, where no doubt they’d hovered, unseen and silent, waiting for their chance. Helpless, Arthur watched as the flight of witches, each woman riding a broom, shot into the ranks of gargoyles, intercepting the assault. There must have been thirty or more of them, each one bare-limbed and pale, a vanguard to challenge the stony flock.

  Free. The king would’ve frowned if he could. Free of the Sleep. Yet not by my hand …

  The coven, the sisters of forest, river and standing stone—the guardians of nature back in the Old Lands—wasted no time getting to work. White fire fizzled below, released from raised and open palms, the muttered spells crackling through the air with righteous fury, lightning without a storm. Wherever the light touched, striking into granite flank and maw, dust showered in place of blood. Cracks appeared in the gargoyles’ bodies, in their haunches, torso and wings. The spells spoke to the magic of the beasts, the king realised. Unbinding. Undoing. Asserting the natural weight of stone. Arthur watched the gargoyles thrash their wings, fighting sudden gravity, an anchor dragging them down. As the flock broke apart, their retaliation checked, the witches raised their voices in song, a shrill chant of power and reproach sending the beasts into frenzy. Hair and hands weaving, the women darted among the creatures, chasing them down with fire and song. A dispersing gyre, a torrent of stones, scattered over the city.

  It’s the horn. The stolen horn. In cold alarm, the king grasped his peril. An army summoned to defy me.

  The jets zipped through the sky, heading directly for him. His eyes flared, seeing one of the planes release a rocket from under its wings, firing into the fray. The humans, he knew, would make no distinction between wyvern and griffin, gargoyle and witch. Or a skull-faced king, his legend, his right to the throne unknown. Like it or not, it was time to retreat. From this particular skirmish at least. He had seen this kind of combat before, far from here, in the shadow of walls not thorny, but white. The besieged ramparts of Camelot. The griffins would make short work of the wyverns. And the gargoyles, granite or no, couldn’t withstand a barrage of spells. All of them were in danger now, the human war machines a clear and present threat. To the north, the thorn wall was aflame, coils of smoke staining the sky. Soon, the tanks and the soldiers would come, fighting through the blaze to bring their vengeance home.

  Yet the hour is late. The king grinned, gripping the reins. Too late now. I have drawn your gaze while we come, riding through the dark …

  With this thought—one not his own—the king in the mountain, Once and Future and now deceased, dug in his spurs. At once, his steed dived for the city below, narrowly evading a fresh burst of bullets. As the jets roared overhead, buffeting his wyvern’s wings, Arthur abandoned the attack and circled down to the sprawling streets, keen to join the horde on the ground.

  The battle for London had begun.

  EIGHTEEN

  Five goblins and an ogre were heaving away in St. James’s Park when Ben Garston landed—softly, for a seven-ton dragon—on the sward behind them. To his left, the twisted remains of the bridge, the lake wreathed in mist at this hour. Overhead, somewhere to the east, the sky resounded with gunfire and shrieks, the echoes of aerial battle. At dawn, he’d sent the griffins and the witches ahead, an opening strike to make his presence known.

  I’m coming for you, worm brain.

  The briar shadowed the park, a cold cloak that didn’t quite reach the embers in his blood at the sight of the creatures. Why the goblins and the ogre should be here, and not with the rest of the horde behind the thorn wall, he could only guess. Had Arthur sent them to recover the sword? Although, in his present state, the king couldn’t touch it … Perhaps with Ben’s acquisition of the horn, presently clutched in one claw, the grip of its magic was loosening, releasing the Remnants to their natural self-interest. In this case, their lust for lunewrought and jewels. He could empathise with that, even if it was a slender hope.

  The creatures had found a chain somewhere, presumably recovered from the ruins of the Fitzwarren encampment. They had looped it around the hilt of the sword, sticking out of the path a few yards ahead of him. In a combined effort, the ogre at the head, the goblins grunted and heaved at the chain, veins sticking out of their faces and necks. Their boots slipped on the wet ground, the chain stretched taut. The ogre’s teeth protruded over his upper lip, his velvet cloak dragging through puddles, the feather on his cap
dangling, dancing with his laboured breaths. So intent were the creatures on the tug-of-war, none of them noticed Ben’s shadow falling over them, his wings folding into crossed arms as he changed, dwindling into human form.

  The sword, of course, didn’t budge. The blade, carved with glyphs and shiny as a mirror, didn’t even quiver. The chain strained, however, fit to break. Ben could’ve told the goblins that they were wasting their time. Destiny had bestowed the sword to one hand alone, a scruffy squire, according to legend, who’d pulled the blasted thing from a stone. And then ascended to the throne, uniting the tribes of Logres in the golden age that some liked to call the Old Lands.

  Much like the Fay, Ben knew that one couldn’t rely on legend. Hardly. Legend was a capricious beast, tricky, slippery at best. Recently, he’d seen for himself that destiny alone hadn’t bound the blade. In fact, the sword appeared to retain the right of choosing its bearer itself. Ben was living proof of that. He was many things, but none of them came close to king.

  From a distance, the diamonds on Caliburn’s crossguard regarded Ben with cool irritation.

  “Punctual as ever,” it said. “Thank heavens there isn’t a war on.”

  Ben grunted in greeting. The ogre and the goblins hadn’t batted an eye when the sword spoke—no doubt it’d been cheerfully berating them all morning—but they certainly did when Ben replied.