Ironhand

by Charlie Fletcher

  Edie kept her face blank.

  He jerked the glass out of the Blind Woman’s grasp and caught it in his hand. She screamed. Despite herself, Edie started toward her.

  The dogs erupted into action and barked and snarled her back into her chair.

  The Walker snapped his fingers. The dogs went silent and just stood there, looking at Edie.

  “Stay calm. Stay still. I do not want to hurt you. I do not want to harm you. I do not, in fact, even want your warning stone. I do not want a thing from you except for your help in one small matter. I want you to use your gift for me.”

  “How?” said Edie.

  “I want you to test some stones for me. Just touch them and tell me what lies within. Do that and you may go free, unharmed and safe.”

  “What kind of stones,” Edie said carefully, not believing a word he was saying about letting her go free.

  “Ah.” He grinned. “There’s the catch. That’s why you may keep your heart stone with you as you work. You will need all your strength.”

  “What kind of stones?” she repeated, her voice snagging in her suddenly very dry throat.

  He smiled wider.

  “Dark stones. Very dark stones indeed . . .”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Substitute

  George ran behind a giant statue of Achilles, heading south. He was aware of the naked giant with a sword in one hand and a round shield held to the sky in the other, as if warding off an attack from above. George looked up in case something was howling in from the night sky, but his luck seemed to be holding. He ran across the level crossing on South Carriage Drive, ran through the left hand of the triple arch alongside Apsley House, and finally took a breath as he had to wait for the lights to change and allow him across the final road width and onto the central island of Hyde Park Corner.

  He could afford to allow himself this luxury because right in front of him he could see the huge stone cannon pointing to the sky, and two of the four bronze soldiers that stand, or in one case lie, on each side of the base. He couldn’t see the Gunner’s side, but he could see the soldier lying on a stretcher and the one facing into the center of the grassy space, with two huge shell holsters hanging pendulously on the side of each leg.

  The light changed. And he ran. He felt the gravel spitting under his feet as he powered toward the huge memorial plinth. Then he was up on the surrounding dais, around to the Gunner’s side, sure he was going to see Edie.

  But no one was there.

  Where the Gunner usually stood was only a slab of bronze plinth and a blank wall of smooth-cut, weather-stained slabs, broken by the words RUSSIA—PALESTINE— CENTRAL ASIA.

  George stopped dead and bent over as if the disappointment had hit him physically. He braced himself with his hands on his knees. The truth was, now that he had arrived and his run was over, he was finally letting his exhaustion catch up with him. He was disappointed too, no doubt, but he told himself it didn’t matter. He’d find Edie later. Right now he had to stand on the Gunner’s plinth. By the last clock he had passed on Park Lane, he had a good five minutes to spare.

  He looked down and saw a bronze helmet on the chest of the figure at his feet. The sculptor had made a body lying on its back, a covering thrown over his face. His booted legs stuck out from the covering, and a coat was thrown over him so casually that you could see a portion of the side of the soldier’s face and a hint of hair, but not enough to get a good look. The boots were missing some of the hobnails, and showing signs of hard wear. George noticed that the laces in one boot had snapped at the bottom of the lacing and had been quickly tied together in a rough-and-ready knot. Somehow this personal detail made the anonymity of the unknown soldier more poignant.

  Having gotten enough oxygen back into his lungs, George looked at the soldier with the shell canisters on his legs.

  “Excuse me,” he said, not knowing how to begin a conversation with a statue that might not know George could see him.

  “Excuse me,” he repeated. “I can see you. I know about spits and taints and everything. I’m a friend of the Gunner.”

  The soldier didn’t move an inch. George decided not to waste time. After all, he knew what he had to do.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’m going to go on the other side and stand to for the Gunner. On his plinth. The Euston Mob told me all about it.”

  There was still no reaction, so he shrugged and hurried around to the Gunner’s empty place. As he walked toward it he realized he was passing relief scenes of trench warfare carved into the white limestone of the memorial—men in shaggy sheepskin jerkins and tin hats wrestling weapons and shells and wounded bodies against a background of shattered trees and broken trenches. He saw a gunner struggling with a terrified team of horses, and then he was up on the Gunner’s stand, and felt the cold wall at his back.

  On the other side of the street, a homeless man was pushing his belongings past in a tattered red-tartan shopping cart. His eyes weren’t on the pavement in front of him. They were staring blankly across the traffic. They were black eyes with no hint of white.

  The traffic was too loud for George to have heard him speak even if he had noticed him, which he didn’t.

  “One boy maker. Hyde Park Corner. On the war memorial.”

  George, oblivious to the eyes of the Tallyman, wasn’t sure what do, but since it was nearly midnight, he leaned back and spread his arms in the way he remembered first having seen the Gunner do. Something moved at his feet as he trod on it. He bent down and picked it up. It was a horsewhip. The Gunner had obviously left it here when he’d taken George under his wing and begun the first stage of the gauntlet George now suspected he had been running forever.

  He put down the hammer, picked up the whip, and felt the solid heft of the thing in his hand. He noticed that once he took hold of it, the rigid bronze lash, casually wrapped around the haft, became flexible. It was as if the sculpted item were becoming real in his hand. He kept his feet on the plinth and shook out the lash. Somehow, having something of the Gunner’s in his hand made him feel more secure. He was going to be able to do this. How hard could it be? All he had to do was stand here until midnight was over, and then he’d have bought the Gunner another day.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The voice was tired and cultivated and mildly irritated, and it came from the left. George looked that way and saw a statue of an officer from the other end of the monument standing there, looking at him as though his very presence were some kind of unforgivable insult. He wore a tin helmet and a pair of binoculars in a case high on his chest. He held his hands together with a heavy greatcoat loosely folded over them.

  “Er . . . I’m standing here . . .” he hesitantly replied.

  There was a slight snapping noise as the Officer sucked his teeth in irritation. He had a small mustache neatly trimmed above his top lip, and it twitched as he looked at George.

  “You’re a boy,” he observed.

  “I’m George.”

  “Yes,” sighed the Officer, opening the lid on a wristwatch and then snapping it shut again. “Yes, I’m afraid you are. You’re the one got the Gunner gallivanting off his station in the first place. You know where I found him last night? Half melted by the Temple Bar dragon, facedown in a pond over there in Green Park. Had half a mind to leave him there, but you know.” He sucked and snapped his lips again.

  “That’s why I’m here!” said George. “Exactly. He’s down. He got taken by the Walker. He’s not going to be here by turn o’day. So I’m going to take his place. Then we’ll have another day to rescue him!”

  “Poppycock!” the Officer exploded.

  “It’s not poppycock,” George said levelly. “I’m going to do it.”

  The Officer tipped the front of his tin helmet down and scratched the back of his neck in amazement.

  “You’re going to stand to, in his place?”

  “Yes,” said George.

  As he said it, h
e felt something shift on his arm. It was a ripping burning sensation, as if his skin were splitting, and he doubled up, cradling the painful arm with his good one. The whip clattered to his feet.

  The Officer lost his veneer of coldness as he dropped his coat and darted over to George.

  “What’s wrong, boy?”

  “My arm,” George gasped.

  The Officer checked his watch, sucked his teeth in worry, and knelt by him. “Quickly, boy, show me.”

  George held out his arm. The Officer took it with surprising gentleness and turned it over. Another tutting noise escaped his lips as he saw the scar of the maker’s mark and the three lines spiraling down from it to where they disappeared into his cuff.

  “Right. Jacket off, look sharp.”

  He helped George get his arm out of the two jackets he was wearing, then pulled his shirt open and revealed the arm from shoulder to wrist.

  “Not much of you under these layers,” he said quietly, turning George’s arm outward in order to look at it better. A loud tut greeted the sight. “Still, you’re a plucky one, no doubt about that. You carry the mark of the Hard Way.”

  George looked in horror at his arm. One of the flaws, the marble one, had suddenly lanced its way beyond his elbow and braided itself around his bicep so that the sharp questing point of the fissure was now dangerously close to his armpit. The other two flaws were still twining below his elbow.

  “That happened, the long one, just now?” asked the Officer.

  George nodded, biting his lip, not trusting himself to speak steadily.

  The Officer tapped the in-grooved vein. The sound of bronze tapping marble made George queasy. It was as if someone were reaching inside him and tapping his bones. The Officer pulled George’s shirt back up, hiding the arm. When he spoke he was all business, the veneer of mild irritation gone.

  “Right. Cover up, jacket on, fast as you like. You’re right, no question, you definitely have to stand now.”

  George shrugged into the coats and fumbled with the buttons, happy not to be able to see his arm and the twining stone and metal veins that disfigured it.

  “What?” he asked.

  “What what?” replied the Officer, eyes scanning the street in front of them.

  “What changed your mind?” said George urgently.

  The Officer looked into his eyes. Then he bent and picked up the whip and put it in George’s hand. “Because if you don’t, that crack is going to continue up your arm and into your body, and when it gets to your heart . . . I’m very sorry to say you’ll be dead.”

  The Officer smiled encouragingly. “Nil desperandum. It’s not all gloomy. You take the Gunner’s place, like you said you would, stand to until stand down, and you should be right as rain.”

  George saw what he was saying and suddenly discovered that his mouth had gone dry. “You mean this is one of the contests, one of the duels? But how does just standing here at midnight . . .”

  Then he felt a sudden wash of relief.

  “No, that’s brilliant. I mean, that’s great. Just stand here? That’s easy, right?”

  “Not as such. There’s a little more to it that that, old son.”

  He clapped George encouragingly on the shoulder and pushed him gently into place on the Gunner’s plinth. George didn’t like the smile on the Officer’s face. It was the smile parents show you as you are pushed inside the dentist’s room to have something painful done to your teeth, only worse.

  “What more?” George asked. “Please, what exactly happens when you stand to?”

  The Officer gestured to the tortured relief carvings ringing the monument.

  “All that, I’m afraid. Carnage, slaughter, screaming fear, bloody waste of good men and horses. We stand to and relive it every night. It’s who we are, and it reminds us why we’re here. It’s the maker’s purpose.”

  He cleared his throat as if there were a great deal more he would like to have said about the maker and his purpose, but good manners prevented him from doing so.

  George found himself grasping at straws. “But it can’t be that bad. I mean, you know you’re going to survive, right? I mean, you do it every night, so . . .”

  “Doesn’t quite work like that, young ’un.” The Officer shook his head. “Not like that at all. We don’t relive it as statues. We relive it as the men we were made to represent. And while we’re reliving it, it’s real. We don’t know that it happens every night. None of us do. Not even him, poor devil . . .” He nodded at the dead soldier with his covered face at the end of the monument.

  “Who is he?” said George.

  “Depends who’s asking,” he said, checking his watch. “He’s whoever people want him to be. He’s the Unknown Soldier. That’s why his face is covered, so the bereaved can come and imagine he is their lost loved one. Good idea, if you ask me. Jagger, the man who made us, knew a thing or two about loss. Mind you, he was a soldier, too. Now you’re about to be one, if you’re really going to do this . . . ?”

  The way he made it a question offered George a way out.

  “I’m doing it.”

  He was doing it for a lot of reasons, but in the end they all boiled down to a simple one: he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t.

  The Officer nodded. “Good man. Be strong. Stiffen the sinews and all that good stuff.”

  He gave George one final firm clap on the shoulder. “Do it for yourself. Do it for the Gunner. Do it for whoever you like, but just do it. Don’t step off the blasted plinth. You’ll be tempted. And if you still believe in anything, pray to it.”

  “Pray?” said George shakily, clenching the horsewhip. “Why?”

  The Officer checked his watch and moved back toward his own plinth, scooping up his coat as he went. He smoothed it over his arm and looked at George before disappearing around the right angle in the stone.

  “Because for the next hour, old son, you’re going to be eye-deep in hell.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Happy Ending

  “There are no happy endings,” said the Walker. “But then I expect you already know that.”

  Edie watched him place a scarf-wrapped bundle on the desk in the middle of the room and turn to smile humorlessly at her. All her muscles were tensed, ready to run or fight, but the fact that the door was locked and the dogs were waiting outside severely limited the likelihood of success, whichever of the two options she chose.

  “Is that right?” she said, suppressing the tremor in her voice.

  “It’s a, in fact the, fact of life. . . .” he replied. “Now, please don’t do anything sudden or stupid.”

  He thunked the point of his dagger into the desktop and walked over to her. She stared at the jeweled handle and the long blade as it reflected the candle flame. She remembered how he had been carrying it when she had glinted the scene on the frozen Thames, when she had seen him chasing the girl he had finally drowned in an ice hole. The girl with her face. That had certainly not been a happy ending.

  “That’s good, then,” she spat. “That means no happy ending for you either.”

  She could feel his breath on her face as he leaned in and laughed quietly, strapping her right hand to the chair arm.

  “Oh, there’s an exception to every rule, and in my case, being cursed to walk forever has the one advantage of also meaning I have no foreseeable end. So I’m sorry, but I can’t oblige you by fulfilling your kind wish.”

  He took her left wrist and jerked her hand out of her pocket. She let go of the heart stone just in time, as he quickly tied her arm to the chair with the efficiency of someone who’d done it many times.

  All Edie had left was her feet.

  “At this point,” he murmured, “some of you decide that kicking me would be a heroic final gesture.”

  He reached back without looking and pulled the dagger out of the desktop. The blade flashed, and he stabbed it into the arm of the chair.

  “It’s never particularly heroic, and I
can always let the dogs back in. They’re not nearly as understanding as I am.”

  Edie relaxed her foot. Everything he said was a kind of threat. Even the gloating was a threat. The smile. It was all designed to make her scared. And suddenly she thought she knew why.

  It was designed to stop her thinking. Fear can do that, make you freeze like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car; it can dazzle you and take out your first line of defense, which is using your brain. So instead of coming up with a reply, she shut up and thought.

  And as she thought, she took an inventory of the room in the candlelight: the shelves, the stones on them, the desk, the leaded, unopenable windows, the piles of paper on the floor around the desk. And as she did so, she forcibly shoved the fear to the back of her mind, in the same place she had earlier put the feeling that she was going mad when she had found that George had just astonishingly vanished. She could always unpack the fear and madness later. Right now she had to keep all her energy focused on there actually being a “later” in the first place.

  Only one thing mattered now: she was going to do everything she could to not die in this dusty room.

  The Walker was busying himself at his desk with the bundle he’d brought from the British Museum.

  “You want me to touch some of these stones,” she said, pointing with her chin toward the shelves.

  “You’re a bright spark,” he said sarcastically, turning the wheeled chair so that it faced the desk.

  “I’m a glint,” she replied. “It’s what we do, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed it is.” He smiled. He walked around to the opposite side of the desk and made room amid the papers to unwrap his bundle. Edie watched as he carefully laid out its contents. As he took the thick wax disks out, they looked so like cheeses, Edie thought for an unsettling instant that he was unpacking a picnic. Then she saw the arcane magical symbols that were scratched all over them, and realized they were something else entirely.

  “You’ll forgive my good humor,” he said, without looking up, “but these are old friends, and I have waited a long time to retrieve them. It is thanks to you and the boy that I have reason to be so happily reacquainted with them.”