The Four Legendary Kingdoms

by Matthew Reilly

  A half-man/half-ibis, Jack thought. A birdman. And also the common depiction of the ancient Egyptian god of wisdom, Thoth.

  And he knew all about Thoth.

  The Word of Thoth was the ancient language that only Oracles of Siwa like Lily could read. It was the language that had been at the centre of his adventures over the past twenty years: from the Golden Capstone that had sat atop the Great Pyramid at Giza to the locations of the Six Sacred Stones and the prophecy of the Five Greatest Warriors.

  Perhaps most important of all was the fact that the ancient Egyptians had claimed that Thoth himself was a mysterious visitor who had brought them advanced knowledge and wisdom.

  This is all coming full circle, Jack thought.

  He gazed down at the many coffins, sitting in their rectangular alcoves.

  There must have been hundreds of them.

  But what was inside them?

  Jack didn’t have time to dwell on that. He had to catch Brigham before he won the challenge and condemned Jack to death. If he survived these Games, Jack figured he could always come back later.

  Jack looked across the wide chasm and saw Brigham’s LSV whipping away along the return bend, well ahead of all the other vehicles. The British major was about to reach an archway that marked the end of the return bend: the exit.

  ‘E!’ he called. ‘Where does that tunnel go?’

  ‘To minotaur city,’ E-147 replied. ‘Minotaur city is last segment of course.’

  ‘Sky Monster!’ Jack yelled. ‘If that British asshole wins this challenge, we’re all dead. We have to slow him down. Pull over.’

  Sky Monster stopped the car at the beginning of the return bend.

  Jack levelled his sniper rifle, balancing its barrel on one of the struts of the Light Strike Vehicle.

  Through the crosshairs of its telescopic sight, he saw Brigham’s fleeing LSV, speeding away.

  In a few seconds, Brigham would reach the archway and disappear into it.

  Jack squinted as he looked through the crosshairs and gently squeezed the trigger.

  Blam!

  A spark kicked off the ground behind Brigham’s speeding LSV. He’d missed.

  Jack chambered another round. Took aim again. And just as Brigham’s car whipped into the archway at the far end of the bend, he fired.

  Brigham’s LSV zoomed into the archway . . . just as its left rear tyre was punctured by the sniper round . . . and suddenly the Light Strike Vehicle fishtailed wildly, bouncing off the arch before it skidded through it and came to a screeching 180-degree halt.

  Jack hit Sky Monster on the back. ‘That’ll hold him up for a little while. Go! Go! Go!’

  Sky Monster gunned the LSV around the long sweeping return bend. The stone-walled roadway was still tight and the drop on the left-hand side was close.

  There was now only one Typhoon immediately ahead of them plus the car of Renzin Depon. Scarecrow, Edwards, the Hydra and the other two Typhoons were further ahead, about to rush through the archway.

  ‘Get in behind that truck,’ Jack said.

  Sky Monster did so, bringing their speeding car right up close to the rear bumper of the Typhoon.

  The three minotaurs in the Typhoon’s hold were so preoccupied with the chase going on ahead of them that none of them saw Jack creep out onto the bonnet of his Light Strike Vehicle and leap forward onto the tailgate of their Typhoon.

  From there, he shimmied along its left side, hanging high above the fathomless chasm below.

  Lifting himself up, he surprised two minotaurs in the rear hold and hurled them from it into the abyss.

  A third shocked minotaur was holding an RPG launcher. Before he could react, Jack grabbed his launcher by the barrel and used it to hurl that minotaur out of the hold, too. He then climbed fully into the hold and crept forward into the driver’s cab of the Typhoon, and fired the RPG out through the windshield.

  After shattering the windshield, the RPG shoomed low over Renzin’s LSV and hit the Typhoon ahead of it, blasting its rear half to pieces.

  The Typhoon swerved left and nose-dived off the edge, sailing into nothingness.

  Jack was left in the cab of his Typhoon with its very shocked minotaur driver. One kick and he was out the door and falling to his death and suddenly Jack was at the helm of a Typhoon assault truck.

  He stopped the truck, allowing Sky Monster and E to climb aboard.

  ‘Now, this is more like it,’ Sky Monster said, sliding behind the wheel and hitting the gas.

  The big truck shot off after the rest of the fleeing vehicles.

  Up ahead, Scarecrow was in the middle of his own drama.

  Jack’s long-range shot at Brigham’s Light Strike Vehicle had done more than just slow down Brigham.

  It set off a chain reaction that affected almost every vehicle in the convoy.

  When Brigham’s rear tyre was hit, his car had skidded through the archway and swung to a lurching backwards-facing halt.

  The car immediately behind Brigham’s—that of the Delta man, Edwards—swerved to avoid the suddenly stationary car. But it clipped Brigham’s wheels and went bouncing off to the right, rolling onto its side before sliding to a halt on its roof.

  Scarecrow’s car came next.

  He also swung right as he burst through the archway, narrowly avoiding both Brigham’s and Edwards’s cars, as he sped out into a larger space.

  He looked back to see Brigham dive out of his car with the Golden Sphere gripped in one hand, leaving his two partners in the stationary car—a split second before the Hydra’s Spartan four-wheel drive came rampaging right over the stationary LSV, crushing both the car and the men still in it!

  A second later, a Typhoon truck crunched right into the remains of Brigham’s LSV and the two vehicles became one and they skidded sideways as a single unit past the shocked figure of Gregory Brigham before crashing into a wall.

  As the other vehicles overshot the crash site, Scarecrow took in this new space around him.

  A ramshackle city in a high-ceilinged cave spread out before him. It looked like a colossal slum, a vast tangle of ungainly shacks and sheds, all of different shapes and sizes, all made of rusted metal or corrugated sheet iron.

  The minotaur city, Scarecrow realised.

  It reminded him of the townships of Johannesburg or the refugee slums of Kenya. A metropolis for those deemed by their superiors as unworthy of the niceties of life, a slum city for the wretched workers of Hell.

  Thousands of minotaurs sat on rooftops and balconies—or any elevated vantage point—eagerly waiting to see the racers emerge from the Great Bend.

  They were not wearing their helmets, Scarecrow saw, so their hairy Neanderthal features were visible. He’d forgotten that they were actually people—of a sort—with faces, friends and even moments of joy. This race, it seemed, was clearly a highlight of their otherwise hard lives.

  The road on which Scarecrow and the others had been travelling continued over the city as a freeway-like concrete bridge that bent and curved between the taller structures of the underground metropolis.

  At the far end of the elevated roadway stood a giant thick-walled castle with a massive medieval gate in its centre. Beyond that gate, Scarecrow could see the base of Hades’s mountain-palace.

  More cars came bursting out of the archway: the LSV of the Tibetan, Renzin Depon, and . . . one final black Typhoon truck.

  Brigham still stood out on the roadway, looking this way and that, trying to figure out his next move while not getting killed.

  The Typhoon swept past him, rushing by perilously close to him, and Scarecrow’s eyes widened in surprise as he saw a figure lean out from the passenger side of the Typhoon and deftly snatch the Golden Sphere from Brigham’s hands.

  It was West!

  ‘Told you he was a determined son of a bitch,’
Mother said.

  But then, to Scarecrow’s even greater surprise, Jack’s Typhoon suddenly pulled up right beside his car.

  ‘Scarecrow!’ Jack called. ‘Catch.’

  He threw the Golden Sphere to Scarecrow, who caught it like a football. He looked up at Jack in shock.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Scarecrow asked.

  ‘We don’t have much time, so I’m gonna make this quick. Hades is gonna have all the hostages executed after this challenge. But there’s an exit from this place through the minotaur city: a supply tunnel of some kind to a western dock. The way I see it, this is our only chance to get our friends and hostages out of here. If you want your people to survive this thing, send ’em over to my truck now. As for you, I need you to go and win this challenge and these Games while I break out our other hostages.’

  ‘They’ll kill you,’ Scarecrow objected. ‘As soon as they see you running, they’ll blow the charge in your neck.’

  ‘I’m hoping I’ve got that eventuality covered, at least for the time being,’ Jack said. ‘Right now, I just want to free our hostages.’

  Scarecrow turned to Mother and Astro. He bit his lip in thought.

  ‘Go,’ he said to them. ‘Go with him.’

  Mother began to object. ‘Now, wait a sec—’

  ‘No,’ Scarecrow said. ‘He’s right. If I have to go it alone from here, I’m not going to watch you guys get executed. I’d rather you had a fighting chance to live. Go and help him.’

  With a scowl Mother jumped out of the LSV and with Astro beside her, boarded Jack’s Typhoon truck.

  ‘You better be right, Huntsman,’ she said to Jack. ‘Okay. Where to?’

  Jack’s gaze became fixed and his jaw clenched. ‘Back to Hades’s mountain. We shepherd your man home and then we bust our people out.’

  Two cars shot along the elevated roadway that ran above the rambling minotaur city: Scarecrow’s Light Strike Vehicle and Jack’s stolen Typhoon truck.

  Racing a short distance behind them were the chase cars and the LSV of the very confused Renzin Depon. With their cars smashed and overturned, both Brigham and Edwards were out of this race.

  The road was raised about thirty feet off the ground, so that it was roughly level with the rooftops of the shacks of the city. The Neanderthal population assembled on those rooftops cheered as the vehicles shot past them.

  Among them was the Minotaur King, watching the proceedings with thoughtful eyes.

  From the passenger seat of his Typhoon, Jack peered forward.

  In the very heart of the city, the elevated road arrived at a fork: one road bent to the left, heading back toward the main crater and Hades’s mountain-palace; the other branched to the right, heading westward.

  As they shot through the junction, taking the road that led back to the palace, Jack stared down the westward one. It disappeared into a modern-looking tunnel cut into the wall of the cavern.

  ‘E, does that road lead to the west dock?’

  ‘Yes,’ E-147 said. ‘To supply dock.’

  Jack turned to Mother in the rear compartment of the truck’s cab: ‘After we get the hostages, that’s where we’re going.’

  They turned left at the fork, onto the homeward stretch of the roadway, and Jack beheld a magnificent sight: this final piece of road stretched away from him in a dead-straight line that ended at Hades’s mighty mountain-palace.

  Of course, he knew that the road had been built this way so that Hades and his royal guests could watch the final mile of road from the mountain-palace, but he let that thought slide.

  The road lanced ahead of him, cutting through the minotaur city before entering the main crater through the castle gate and arriving at the enormous staircase that climbed the lower reaches of the mountain to a royal balcony where Hades and the royals waited.

  ‘Faster, Monster!’ Jack yelled.

  The two cars sped down that final stretch of roadway, streaking away from their pursuers.

  They whipped through the gate and roared out into the open space of the main crater, arriving at a broad vehicle turnaround at the base of the colossal staircase leading up the mountain.

  ‘Go!’ Jack yelled to Scarecrow as the two cars skidded to simultaneous halts at the bottom of the staircase.

  With a nod, Scarecrow took off up the stairs, gripping the Golden Sphere in the crook of his arm.

  Watching from the royal balcony at the top of the enormous staircase, Hades frowned.

  He saw Scarecrow bounding up the Great Staircase with the sphere. That was to be expected.

  But the fifth warrior, West, was not clambering up the stairs. He was dallying in the cab of his truck, which was odd.

  ‘Monsieur Vacheron,’ Hades said. ‘What is the fifth warrior doing?’

  Vacheron looked down at Jack and he also frowned.

  From his position in his hostage carriage, Alby watched Jack, too.

  ‘What are you doing, Jack?’ he whispered softly.

  At the base of the massive staircase, Jack was waiting for Scarecrow to get to a certain spot up the staircase.

  ‘Come on, Scarecrow, hurry up . . .’ he said to no-one.

  For the staircase stretched up and over the railway track on which the hostage carriages stood and he couldn’t do what he had to do until Scarecrow got past them.

  Vehicles began to appear all around him: the car of the last remaining champion, then the dented and damaged chase trucks of the Hydra and the minotaurs.

  Then Scarecrow, pounding up the great staircase, ran over the top of the hostage carriages and Jack made his move.

  He leapt out of the cab of his Typhoon with the rocket-propelled grenade launcher already on his shoulder and aimed up at the mountain-palace . . .

  . . . and he fired.

  Up on the royal balcony, Hades’s eyes went wide.

  Beside him, Vacheron’s mouth opened in horror.

  He snatched for his deadly remote control, only to find his pocket empty.

  ‘What the—?’ he gasped.

  The RPG shot out of Jack’s launcher and streaked upward, its smoke trail stretching out behind it.

  It wasn’t aimed at the royal balcony as Hades and Vacheron feared, but rather at the railway tracks immediately underneath the first hostage carriage.

  The RPG hit its target and exploded.

  Rocks and debris showered out from the side of the mountain . . .

  . . . and the tracks beneath the first hostage carriage were suddenly no longer there. Now there was just a void.

  And the little train began to roll forward into it.

  As his hostage carriage began to roll slowly forward, Alby saw the future and it was not good.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he said.

  He scooped up the two dogs with one arm and gripped the bars of the slowly moving carriage with the other.

  They were about to go for a very bumpy ride.

  As the hostage train rolled forward into the newly created hole in front of it, it only had one way to go: down.

  The first carriage tipped into the hole and dropped off the tracks . . . taking the rest of the hostage train with it!

  The entire four-car train rolled off the tracks and began to bounce down the rocky slope of the mountain at a diagonal angle.

  It crashed through crags and bounced off boulders, making a terrible noise as it thundered down the slope: a mix of groaning iron and smashing rock.

  Inside the train, Alby and the dogs were thrown around like rag dolls.

  The heavy iron-barred train careered down the slope at this oblique angle for a full hundred metres before it slammed into the side of the staircase that Scarecrow had run up.

  The train took a chunk out of the massive staircase as it bounced off it. The deflection set it on a more vertical path down the lower reaches of the mou
ntain, so that it was now rushing straight down the slope.

  It roared down the last section of the mountain, blasting through some rocky outcrops—turning them instantly to dust—before it shot out onto the turnaround at the base of the stairs. It ground into the flat concrete of the turnaround, hitting it so hard that it gouged a trench in the concrete before, with a squeal of rending metal, it came to a lurching halt in a billowing cloud of dust.

  The whole scene looked like something from a disaster movie: the crashed train, half-turned on its side, enveloped in the immense dust cloud.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Mother gasped. She turned to Jack. ‘I think you and me are gonna get along fine.’

  ‘Get your guy,’ Jack said, already racing toward Alby’s carriage. ‘I’ll get mine.’

  ‘What about the hostages of the other champions?’ Mother said.

  Jack grimaced. ‘We can’t save everyone. Besides, those hostages knew what they were getting into when they came here. Ours didn’t. Hurry now, we gotta get out of here!’

  Alby was curled awkwardly on his back inside the side-turned carriage, still gripping the two dogs protectively. All three of them were covered in rock dust. Roxy whimpered, licking Alby’s face.

  The iron-barred door of their cage had been thrown open by the crash of the train. Beyond it, Alby could see nothing.

  The dust cloud had created a grey fog-like effect around the whole crashed train.

  Suddenly a figure burst out of the fog, stood over him and lifted him to his feet.

  It was Jack.

  ‘Come on, kid. Time to get out of Dodge.’

  Others were reacting in different ways:

  From the royal balcony, all that could be seen at the base of the staircase was an enormous billowing dust cloud. It had enveloped the entire lower half of the stairs plus all the vehicles down there.

  No-one could see a thing.

  Lily watched from a corner of the balcony. While everyone was looking at the devastating scene, she surreptitiously stripped the battery from Vacheron’s remote and tossed the remote off the balcony.