Lost in sorrow, Alan was slow to notice the sudden darkening as a great cloud filled the sky. At the same time he became aware of the swooping figure of Iyezzz and heard the Prince’s excited call. What was Iyezzz doing up there in the gloom at this belated hour, when he must be feeling every bit as exhausted as Alan himself?
In that same moment Qwenqwo tensed, the Fir Bolg battleaxe drawn from its sheath across his back, his eyes ablaze.
‘What is it?’
Alan gripped the Spear of Lug with both hands, following the dwarf mage’s upturned eyes to gaze heavenwards. All of sudden Shee were materialising from all around him, hundreds – thousands. They were forming a gigantic circle around the Mage Lord and the dwarf mage, all eyes turned heavenwards to where the cloud was descending in an enormous arc.
‘It’s Kate!’ Mo’s voice was shrieking in his ear.
‘Kate?’
‘The powers preserve us!’ Qwenqwo chortled drunkenly. ‘It’s the dragon come back, filling up the entire sky.’
No, Alan thought: the shadow is not the dragon. It’s merely its tail. The curve is the tail coming down to meet the ground.
‘Alan!’
The cry arrived into his ears a split second after the cry in his mind.
It was Kate – Kate calling to him.
His exhaustion from the two days and the intervening night of unremitting battle was lifted from his shoulders. His heart, his spirits, were already soaring.
Kate was descending out of the night sky on the cusp of the arc – the tip of the gargantuan tail. The dragon must be as enormous as an island.
Alan thrust the Spear of Lug into the hands of his tottering friend, who was beside himself. Then Kate was in his arms. Her tear-filled eyes were confronting his own. Their oracula had burst into blazing light, rubicund upon emerald, emerald upon rubicund.
‘I’m so sorry I abandoned you. I let you down.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I did. Oh, Alan, can you ever forgive me?’
‘I don’t care what you did. All I care is that you’re back.’
He didn’t know what she was talking about. He didn’t give a damn about forgiving her. He was lifting her high into the air, then spinning her round and round in dizzy circles, laughing like a clown. This was his beloved Kate. She was once again in his embrace, his lips kissing hers, her lips returning his kiss. He never wanted the kissing to stop. He never wanted to stop hugging her, whirling her round and round and round . . .
Binoculars . . . and a Bike
Gully Doughty hesitated on the frozen ground outside the basement window before switching off the penlight for a spell. The night sky was hidden by clouds, likely promising enough snow to bury this shithole for the rest of winter. He paused to take a good look around, making sure there wasn’t nobody about. He flicked the penlight on again, giving him enough light to get close to the tiny square window that looked into the basement. He tested it out, pressing his fingers against the frame. Dead easy to make it rattle.
‘Rest ’ere.’
The old bat, Pinky Ponky, had said that to him when the crew had dragged him in through the big front door.
‘Rest ’ere.’ He whispered it again, for the benefit of his rage.
Bollix!
Bollix – it was a sexy word that he’d got to like. Heard it from the soldier geezer built like a tank with a shaved head who was carrying the body of the old man out to the Mamma Pig. Gully couldn’t believe it when Mark told him they was leaving without him. He had struggled to get away from the Derby skirt. He’d demanded to know why they was leaving him behind.
The soldier had grunted: ‘Because it’s all a load o’ bollix, kid.’
It made no sense at all to Gully. He wanted to go with Mark in the Mamma Pig, but the tall skirt with the red hair and the glasses had held onto him like glue, and she was as strong as two men.
‘Lady Breakespeare will look after you, Gully.’
Not in this bleeding universe she won’t. Not old Pinky Ponky, who wanted him to read books. Books!
He couldn’t believe they’d had left him behind with these loonies in this creaky old barn, with them poor families who’d been driven out of London.
Like noffink bad was going to happen to some fallin’ down farm because it belongs to Lady Pinky Ponky!
He felt sorry for the families, he really did, but they was caught up in the same bollix. He extracted the penlight from pocket left 2 – O for observation. He shone the light on the window catch and saw it was crap. The window felt loose because the old brass catch was snapped.
‘Bollix is right!’
He extracted the short flat screwdriver from pocket right 1 – P for protection – and he slid it under the frame. The casement popped open an inch or so. Enough for him to get his fingers into the crack and widen it so that he could slip his body through into the basement.
Stop. Look. Listen . . .
Noffink to worry about ’ere, mate. Not a bleedin’ squeak.
He switched on the penlight again and did a recce. It was exactly like he had imagined. There was a whole bunch of rooms with no windows, and every one of them was full of junk. But junk could be useful. Place like this a regular Aladdin’s cave – and he had all the time in the world to explore. There was old chairs what looked like aluminium piled up on top of each other, furniture gone green with rot, some things what looked like old mannikins, with no heads on the top; boxes stuffed full of junk! Strewth! There was pots and kitchen stuff, and bathroom stuff, and stuff the likes he knew nothing about. A bunch of old bikes all crusted with dust. One of them – probably years old – had bent handlebars and a fancy bunch of gears. A racing bike with them down-sloping cross-bars. Taking a rag from right pocket 2, he wiped some of the crap off it and saw it was bright red underneath, with a word in the middle of it. He couldn’t make out the word. Then he wiped the crap from the second bar and made it out easy. RALEIGH. He figured he was looking at a lady’s Raleigh racer.
Lucked out or wot!
The rag was already caked in crap, so he spat on it and wiped more crap off the back mudguard. It was silvery chrome underneath. Wot a find! All lovely and gleaming red and chrome! Penny would have gone head over heels for this bike. He peered at the cobweb-encrusted gears.
They was coated in rust, but they wasn’t half bad. If only he could lay his hands on some oil!
He brushed off the saddle. Even the pannier bag attached to the back of the saddle was red. It was real leather too. He searched for a dynamo but couldn’t find one. He blew away clouds of dust to take a closer look at the saddlebag and managed to smudge out the glasses dangling from his nose. Sighing with frustration, he took them off and spat onto the lenses, then wiped off the crud with his shirt tail. Then, blinking owlishly, he shoved them back on his nose, fastening the curly bits around his ears. Inside the saddlebag he found a set of mini binoculars.
Perfick or wot!
He read off the make using the binoculars, letter by letter. M-I-N-O-X and D-e-l-u-x-e. Minox deluxe. Oh, neat! Minox Deluxe 10x25.
Maybe take a peek at them birds from up there off the roof?
He had a think about it, then stuffed the binoculars into pocket right 1 – P for protection.
He was all ready to move on, thinking maybe he should quit while he was ahead. But then it occurred to him that he ought to take a second look at the red bike. It looked sort of special. Like in its day it could have been top o’ the range. He squeezed the tyres and wasn’t surprised to find them flat, but there was pump slung under the bar. Of course there was. Top of the range – what do you bleeding expect?
Maybe he’d come back here again, after he finished the recce. He might even have a go
at pumping up them tyres.
But the thing he felt bad about, the thing what he was thinking about right now, wasn’t the idea of nicking the stuff – nobody even give a damn it was there – he felt bad about the fact they was nice people, even if they was stupid. The truth was he even felt a bit sorry for Pinky Ponky.
Oh, Jesus, wot does she fink is going to ’appen here now the rebels is gone? She fink it’s going to be hunky-dory just being nice and hanging around the crappy old place? Don’t she know wots goin’ on in London, just twenty miles away? Don’t she fink them shitheads are gonna come right ’ere on her doorstep? Do she fink them Skulls is going to swarm in here an’ say please and thank you very much?
‘Stop it, Gully! You’s getting yourself into a state,’ he said aloud.
He counted to twenty.
Stop, look, listen . . .
Just minutes later, Gully found himself up on the top of the roof, trying to cool off in the parky night air. The roof set him thinking about his pigeons. He was pfeffing his breaths, like Penny hated him to do, tapping on his pockets and kinda humming to himself, because he knew what was likely coming and he couldn’t bear to think about what would likely happen to these bleedin’ stupid but nice people.
But was no good worrying about everyone and everything. No good getting yourself upset, Gully! Now he was up here, he might as well figure what was what. He knew it was a very old place; a Tudor farm was what people called it. Kind of an ancient old place it was really, with all them leaded window panes. And the roof wasn’t just a flat or pitched, it ran up and down all over the place. He rubbed his hand over a gully what ran right around the edge, where the rain water was collecting into channels, then heading out onto spitters for the fall pipes. It was a piece of work, and no mistake. It was what his nan would have called exceeding fancy. And now the snow was melting, it was running along them channels at a fair old lick. Funny that – how the snow was melting so fast when every night had been freezing cold for weeks, but he didn’t have time to figure that out. He felt a whole load better now, getting to know the way it all worked. Gully sorely missed his pigeons. He fiddled with the binoculars, kind of itching for daylight so he could test them out. Right now there was nothing to see other than the cloudy sky and the gloom of the old farm with its barns full of desperate folks, the glimpse of stars he had seen earlier already snuffed out. Penny, gel, I tried to warn ’em, but they won’t listen.
And he had. He’d told old Pinky Ponky, who owned the rambling old junk heap what would happen, but she’d just looked at him like he was the idiot.
Jesus, Penny – Penny gel! Why’d you leave me here on my own? You’re in real trouble an’ nobody gives a shit but me.
He could see her there – Penny – in his mind’s eye, standing on that wooden platform where the lunatics was killing one another with swords. He could see the desperation in her eyes. He could hear her anguished shout:
‘Run, Gully! Run from the City Below!’
But wot about you, gel? We just upped an’ left you behind.
When he’d tried to warn them, that white-haired old reverend had told him to stop swearing, when all he was trying to do was shout some sense into the madness around him.
‘Child. You sound like Isaiah crying in the wilderness. What terrible visions do you see?’
He’d just shaken his head and scarpered.
Penny might have explained things better, but then, Penny never really explained nothing except in pictures. Gully couldn’t, not in a million years, have explained what Penny meant by her ‘City Below’, and he hadn’t believed a word of it when she’d spoken about it, but now he knew that Penny had been right all along: there really was a City Below. And he knew, deep in himself, that it was as important as it was terrible – maybe even worse than terrible – but he didn’t have the words to explain what he felt.
With tear-blurred eyes, Gully put the binoculars to his face and looked into the night sky again. There still wasn’t much to see, but then what had he expected?
Oh, Penny – Penny, gel! I can’t hang about ’ere. I can’t just sit and wait for it to happen with these people wot understand noffink about wot the Skulls, and Paramilitaries will do to ’em.
He heard her voice in his head: ‘What is it, Gully?’
‘There’s fings going on, fings wot shouldn’t be going on nowhere, no how. Really bad fings. Dangerous.’
Nobody other than Penny would listen to him. Nobody else would care or understand. And Penny wasn’t here to listen.
Gully began his ritual count to twenty. His fingers flew over his pockets, incanting the codes . . .
Then he heard a whine up there in the sky. It sure as heck wasn’t no bird. He’d have recognised a bird. It was a whine like a motor might make. Out of the corner of his eye Gully saw a quick flash of light where he had heard the whine. It was as if an eye up there had blinked open and then closed again.
He opened up the binoculars and peered up at the place where he had seen the light. He moved around in a circle, looking.
Noffink.
A minute, two minutes, five . . .
His fingers were slipping on the focus because of the cold.
Give it up, Gully.
Nah – not yet.
Then he heard the whine again – and he saw the light. He didn’t need no binoculars to be sure he saw it: there was something up there in the sky, something with a motor holding it up in the air and it had a penlight on it. That light was flashing on and off, like a blinking eye. Well, he was sure of one thing: it wasn’t spying on him. The bad guys didn’t waste their time spying on people who was nobody.
A Respite of Sorts
In the murky light of pre-dawn, Cal’s face looked lumpy and drawn, dark stubble attesting to the fact that he hadn’t shaved for several days. He was sitting on the second step under the passenger door of the cab of the Mamma Pig, a few feet away from an equally exhausted Mark, who was sitting in the dirt, his back resting against the huge front tyre. They should have reached Resistance HQ by now. They had headed north in a somewhat elliptical fashion, attempting to keep roughly parallel to the M1 motorway. They had got as far as fifty miles south of the junction with the A38, but at that point they had been warned to take evasive action by an urgent message on the com: it appeared that they – the crew – were being hunted by killer drones.
Cal growled: ‘That bastard, Seebox!’
Mark nodded, tiredly. From the sounds of it, Seebox had it in for their crew personally. Which boded ill for the future. It has to be Grimstone acting behind Seebox, Mark thought.
They had been forced to travel throughout the night, passing through pitch black towns that had removed their road signs, eventually making camp in the shade of some hawthorns somewhere close to the coastal town of Foulness.
Cigarette smoke curled out of the open window above their heads. They could hear Cogwheel instructing Tajh on how to connect some portable IT appliance to the aerial dish up on the roof. Everybody was getting jittery with the notion of being hunted by drones. Nan was the only one who had settled down to sleep, wrapped up in a duvet in the belly of the Pig. The only consolation, as far as Mark was concerned, was the fact that Padraig’s temperature was coming down with the intravenous fluids and the antibiotics.
‘Shit!’
Mark glanced over at Cal, who was staring at the ground between his boots.
‘What’s up?’
‘The whole thing – towns without signs. This is England, for fuck’s sake! What’s happening gives me the creeps.’
‘It’ll only get worse.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know the Tyrant of the Wastelands.’
‘This imaginary enemy who has declared war on Earth?’
‘You didn’t think Padraig existed,’ Mark pointed out.
‘Oka
y, so we got him out of there. And now we have come under more than the usual amount of attention.’
Mark gritted his teeth. ‘Has it occurred to you there could be more than one explanation for the attention? That it isn’t just Padraig? That maybe they’re out there looking for me and Nan?’
Cal blew air out through his pursed lips. ‘As a matter of fact that very thought has occurred to me.’
‘You know, I’m getting tired of your grumbling.’
‘Appears to me that ever since you two joined the crew we’ve become the focus of far too much attention.’
This argument was a continuation of one that had been going on ever since their arrival among the crew. It was close to dawn, icy cold and foggy. In the tense silence, as Mark tried to think through his exhaustion, he could hear the washing of the surf against the nearby beach. He yawned and scratched at his unshaven chin. He shifted his bum, trying to find a more comfortable position. It didn’t help. His back itched. In fact he was itching all over. He hoped to hell he didn’t have lice.
‘What more reassurance do you want from me? I can’t explain everything, but I know there is some kind of logical explanation to what’s going on here. An explanation for it all, on Tír and on Earth, no matter how confusing things might appear.’
Cal had fallen silent but Mark could read his expression: he didn’t share Mark’s faith in logic.
And now Mark was unsure if he was even convinced by his own logic.
The Return of the Arinn Page 5