‘Only a fool would be other than troubled. We are fighting the most dangerous enemy this world has ever known. You think the worst is over in our march to this spot, but here real fortitude will be called for.’
The Kyra and Bétaald excused themselves. Meanwhile, Alan waited for the thunder of another broadside to pass.
‘What sort of peril are you thinking about, Qwenqwo?’
‘The mind of the Tyrant is surely impervious to the likes of me. I am a fighter, not a thinker, and our enemy is known to be clever and perfidious beyond human ken.’
Alan looked out over the scene again. The huge bay was already becoming crowded and busy. The Kyra and Bétaald were heading towards what was evolving into the Shee encampment. Here, the commanders had already begun the process of distributing troops; some to assist the disembarkation of still more reinforcements, others unloading the siege machinery at the beaches below; still others were deployed to construct a defensive perimeter around the encampment itself: working with the aides to dig out a deep defensive ditch, and using the dirt and rock to deepen it on the inside lip. Shee were already patrolling the barrier. Elsewhere, fires were springing up to cook the food necessary to feed the multitude of Ebrit’s army and navy. The Shee and Olhyiu did not cook their meat. They were more than capable of devouring what they needed fresh and bloody from the hunt or the fishermen’s nets.
There was a lot Alan needed to think about. From his memories of the Battle of Ossierel, he knew that the aides would play a more important role than might be assumed. They had so many different qualities when it came to warfare that they amounted to an additional layer of knowledge and expertise. Some were very closely involved with the Shee warriors; helping them through their rapid metamorphoses, dressing them for battle, supporting them, perhaps in ways he knew little about; others were experts in tactics, or forging weapons. It occurred to Alan that the aides were as secretive as the Shee, and that secrecy interested him. Assuming that, unlike the Shee, they did not breed from mother-sister to daughter-sister, they must have men-folk back home, but he had never heard them talk of it. How, Alan now wondered, did the two very different races live together back in their Guhttan homeland?
His relationship with the young Kyra would be very important in the days to come. They felt a lot closer than when she had first arrived to take her mother-sister’s place. Since he had restored her mother-sister’s memory, they had truly grown to trust one another. How important might those recovered memories of the mother-sister prove in the coming war?
Alan took another deep breath.
Even while he had been musing, a series of tents were being erected at the heart of the Shee encampment. Alan assumed that he, Kate and Mo would be included with the Shee. Kate must have retired to this encampment to wash herself clean. Would Mo see things that way? Was she somewhere out there beyond the Shee encampment, very likely with Turkeya, with the camp followers that would include the Olhyiu?
Somehow, he knew he must find the time to talk to Mo. They must all get together: he, Kate, Mo and Turkeya, to spend an hour or two chatting. Maybe then he might even get the chance to understand her.
Goya’s Nightmares
Mark leaned the RPG on the near side of the Mamma Pig and fired on a butcher’s shop that was already ablaze. They had no idea if there were Paramilitaries inside, but the shop’s window looked out onto a bottleneck where the two-lane entrance road was constricted to a single lane – the perfect place for a trap – and they couldn’t afford to take the chance. The front wall of the shop blew out and the roof collapsed in on it. They might have heard screaming from inside, but it was difficult to be sure against the roar of falling debris and flames and they didn’t wait to find out. While Bull slammed the porthole shut, Cogwheel rammed the Pig through the shell of a burned-out lorry, the side of which had a triple infinity spray-painted on it in glaring orange. They emerged through blazing rubble into what had been the high street.
The central part of the town showed the typical rural English pattern of new build sprawl around the rambling, original streets.
Tajh said: ‘Slow down a mite, Cogwheel. And hush, everyone.’
Cogwheel slowed and they hushed.
‘Open up the flaps on the screen a little more.’
Cogwheel opened the flaps.
‘Now listen.’
They could hear people screaming.
‘Can anybody tell where it’s coming from?’
‘Seems to be coming from close up ahead – maybe to the left.’
‘I believe,’ Nan said, ‘it’s coming from more than one direction.’
‘Mark?’
Mark stared ahead. It was close to two in the afternoon with a winter sun barely above the horizon. The forward view beyond thirty yards was lost in the misty air tinted by snow, but he could see black smoke pouring out of blazing terrace cottages.
‘Let’s try opening the flaps a bit more.’
They all looked forward again through the snow that was melting onto the windscreen. All they could make out was ruin and smoke.
‘Where is everybody?’
‘The Paramilitaries must be forcing people to gather together somewhere convenient.’
‘Like where?’
‘Some building. A school maybe – or a church.’
Cogwheel cursed between clenched teeth. ‘Where to now?’
Tajh said: ‘We look for the green.’
‘What green?’
‘These villages always have a green. It’ll be right at the heart of the old part of the town. Just keep on driving until we come to it.’
Cogwheel revved again, the guillotine blades at the front of the Pig ramming aside the burning wreck of a Post Office delivery van. Mark sat beside Padraig, both leaning back against the offside porthole.
‘How are you, Padraig?’
‘I’ve felt better.’
‘Even so, it’s great to be able to talk to you again. There’s so much we need to discuss.’
‘Alan? Kate . . .?’
‘They’re alive. At least, they were the last time I saw them. We’ll talk soon. We have a lot of catching up to do. And Nan and me, we need your advice.’
Everybody aboard the Pig slewed to the right as Cogwheel made a sharp left turn into a narrow lane. Another terrace of cottages was on their left and a white plastered nursery school to their right. The nursery had its own walled car park on the corner facing a crossroads.
Mark felt Padraig’s hand on his shoulder. He felt the squeeze offering mute reassurance.
Cal was on his feet and bent over in the low space behind the cab. He was pointing to something over Cogwheel’s left shoulder.
‘That’s where they were shooting people – the green.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘I can see bodies.’
‘Bloody hell!’
‘Back up, Cogwheel. See if you can get us under the cover of the car park.’
Cogwheel reversed twenty yards at speed, then pulled up inside the vee of two tall car park walls. The top of the cab just reached over the walls and allowed them to see into the triangular green across the junction.
A hail of shots rattled the front nearside of the Pig. Cogwheel said: ‘I can see where the firing is coming from – the upstairs window in that gable on the other side of the green.’
‘Okay,’ Cal barked. ‘We split into three: Cogwheel – you, Sharkey and Brett, stay back and guard the Pig. Team 1 – that’s me, Bull, and Tajh – we’ll deal with the shooter. Team 2 – that’s the rest of you, other than Padraig – stay put until we’ve done that and then check out the green.’
‘Roger that.’
But as soon as Team 1 had exited, Mark felt a tug on his right sleeve. He turned to see Brett grinning back at him. ‘You can count me in Team 2. I ain’t for hanging around while you guys
have all the fun.’ He hefted a pump action shotgun into view. ‘Best shooter in the world at close quarters!’
They waited until they heard the thud of the RPG and looked out to see smoke issuing from the upstairs gable window. ‘Okay,’ Mark tapped Brett’s shoulder. ‘Let’s you, me and Nan go check out the green.’
Wordlessly, all three of them slid out of the offside porthole, then made a dash around the edges of the wall and across the junction. They took up a new position behind a big standing stone that poked out of the grass on the northwest corner of the triangle. Looking out from behind this stone, Mark could see scattered bodies lying in the snowy grass. He could see the bodies of several dozen men and women, but no children. It looked as if the adults had been herded here before being executed. Mark and Nan also detected the presence of living people in the houses nearby. Terrified families – people hiding.
He spoke to Nan, mind-to-mind:
They heard the chatter of a Minimi in the distance. Cal and Bull had encountered the shooter. Brett was staring at the carnage with a bemused expression.
Mark spoke to him: ‘So, what’s our military strategist thinking?’
‘I know Cal has a theory about evil being a kind of seed that just needs the right soil to grow. Looking at this slaughter, I think maybe he has a point.’
‘I’m not sure if it’s that simple.’
‘What’s your point?’
Mark aimed a kick at a couple of magpies that were making patterns in the snow and cawing at him. ‘You notice, there are no kids.’
Brett nodded. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘I think it may be more organised than you think. And maybe the missing kids might be the whole point of it.’
‘Yeah? Where do you reckon we’ll find ’em?’
‘Thinking back to the Scalpie in London, maybe a church.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m also beginning to think that that’s where we’re going to find the presence that Nan and I sensed through our oracula.’
‘You got yourself an idea of what’s going on?’
‘I think it could be a similar presence to what we sensed back in that burning Bedfordshire town on our way out of London. Nan and I think it could be a Scalpie. Perhaps converting the children to adoration of the Tyrant of the Wastelands.’
‘Goddam!’
‘My guess is that the Earth is destined to become another wasteland – like Nan would tell you about, from the history of Tír.’
‘That what you reckon, Nan?’
Nan nodded. ‘There is always a purpose behind the Tyrant’s malice. He plays games with wars, terror, cruelty, but there is always some ulterior purpose behind it.’
‘We back to magic here?’
Mark shrugged. ‘Nan knows the Tyrant a lot better than I do, and I witnessed strange and terrible things back on Tír.’
Nan spoke thoughtfully: ‘I think the Fáil is at the heart of everything. The Fáil and now the Black Rose. I think it is all part of the Tyrant’s strategy.’
‘Then help me, you and the crew. Y’all got to help me find out what that strategy really is. That’s the only way we’re going to win this war.’
Mark lifted his arm and waved back towards the Pig. There was the sound of the heavy engine starting up, then Cogwheel backed out onto the narrow road and came up behind them over the small junction. Brett climbed in through the offside porthole, leaving Mark and Nan to straddle the steps on either side of the cab. Cogwheel reversed off the green before swinging through a bone-jarring arc, heading away from the massacre and towards the visible steeple of a small church, surrounded by a walled off graveyard. There was a lych-gate in the low stone wall surrounding the graveyard, capped by a wooden arch that was much too narrow for the Pig.
‘Cogwheel!’
‘Okay – gotcha!’
Cogwheel rammed the ten ton vehicle through the gate, disintegrating the wooden structure and tumbling the stone wall, then barged through the graveyard, tumbling gravestones everywhere as they barrelled towards the stone church that lay at the heart of it all. There was no hiding their approach. Any enemy in a two-hundred-yard radius would have heard them, but nobody on board the Pig cared anymore. They all sensed it now, even those without an oraculum: evil radiated from the tiny church.
‘Hold it, Cogwheel!’
‘What?’
‘Drop me and Nan off here.’
‘Are you mad? You’ve got to wait for the others before you even think of going in there.’
‘We don’t have time!’ Mark dropped down onto the paved surface outside the arched entrance. Nan followed him. ‘Call up Cal and Bull and tell them what we’re doing. Then close off the entrance with the bulk of the Pig. Be very careful. Whatever we sense knows we’re coming, but it won’t know about our oracula. Tell Cal and Bull we need their help.’
Brett hopped down out of the belly of the Pig. ‘Hold on, fellas. I’m coming with you.’ He pumped the first round into the barrel of his shotgun. ‘Okay, let’s roll.’
As soon as they entered, the door slammed shut behind them. They hadn’t expected the chapel interior to be so dark. Blackout blinds obscured the windows of both the nave and chancel, but the dark wouldn’t matter to a Scalpie. He would see through the goblin eyes of the protective swarm of Grimlings, which had perfect night vision. But Mark could see no glowing eyes, moving and swirling in the attack patterns they had experienced before. The complete dark and the utter silence were unnerving. Had they guessed wrong that the children would be here? If they were here, he and Nan should easily be able to detect their minds, though they had refrained from using their oracula outside in case they alerted the enemy to their use of magic. They scanned the interior of the chapel, greenish-black lightning flaring from their oracula. All of the furniture had been removed, but the children were present, perhaps as many as forty. They were lying prostrate on the tiled floor, their legs and arms akimbo. Their minds were frozen with terror, as well they might be given that they were surrounded by spectres.
Mark whispered, ‘Nan – you seeing?’
‘Yes.’
Brett was staring at what must have looked like an empty chapel to him. ‘What is it – what can you guys see?’
‘Phantoms . . . apparitions . . . wraiths,’ Mark muttered. ‘They’re the same horrible things I saw creeping up out of the ground when I was walking through the streets of London with Henriette.’
‘Can you do something to let me take a gander at them?’
Mark sent the visions in his and Nan’s minds to Brett’s. ‘Lord almighty! It’s Goya’s nightmares.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘The Spanish artist – he painted nightmares.’
Mark said, ‘I can see green lines, like snail slime, running over the architectural lines of the walls and buildings, just as I saw in London. It’s as if another world were leaching into our structures.’
‘What’s it mean?’
‘I don’t have a clue, but now I’m thinking about those murals Penny drew on the ceiling of the squat she shared with Gully. The City Below invading the City Above.’
Limned in the eerie phosphorescent light of Mark and Nan’s oracula, the chapel was congested by transparent beings with the same shining eyes Mark recalled from his walk with Henriette; the same insane look; the same smoke-like hair. The spectres were creeping up out of the floor and in through the green snail-tracks in the walls, and once inside, they were darting everywhere. It was as if they were guided not by the solid walls, but the etched lines of the underworld. Mark recalled Henriette’s actual words: ‘Like de boll weevil lookin’ for a home.’ He spoke them aloud.
Brett muttered: ‘A boll weevil’s a parasite.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ He stared again, at the wheeling storm of wraiths. ‘
Henriette said they were . . . hunting. She told me they had many appetites. I think what she was implying is that they were infesting the Razzers – the people who were setting fire to everything.’
‘You think the same thing’s going on right here? These wraiths are looking to take over the minds of the kids?’
‘I think it could be.’
But where was the Scalpie with its protective swarm of Grimlings? Mark could sense it still within the chapel. A malicious presence was in here with them, so why had they not seen it? For a moment he was overcome by a creeping sense of fright.
Nan whispered: ‘Oh, Mark – I sense it too.’
‘But where . . .?’
Both of them span round to look at the door through which they had entered the chapel. There was a slow movement, as if part of the floor were rising and detaching.
Nan and Mark focused both their oracula onto the area. In the green-black light, a rising cloud – a seething monstrosity – metamorphosed as they beheld it. The figure was shrouded from head to feet in a cloak of black, and its face was contained within a cowl of the same colour. It had been on its knees, with the cowl fallen, which explained why they hadn’t seen it. Its voice was little above a whisper, yet clearly enunciated, a soft, plummy voice:
‘You must not interrupt the ceremony. The veneration is not yet complete.’
Brett joined Mark and Nan in staring as the cowl was withdrawn. The face emerging from its shadow was a gentle one, with kindly avuncular eyes. As more of the figure was revealed, they saw the white religious dog collar around the base of a curiously long and gangly throat.
Brett took a step towards the figure. ‘I beg your pardon, Reverend! We were under the impression that the children were in danger.’
‘The little ones are quite safe with me.’ He tsskked. ‘Those scoundrels, with their tanks and guns, why, not even they would intrude upon the house of the Lord.’
Mark grabbed hold of Brett’s right shoulder. ‘Brett, step back.’
‘What the blazes?’
‘He – it – is not human.’
‘No,’ Nan agreed.
The Return of the Arinn Page 22