Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule, Book 2)

by Mark Chadbourn

  “I certainly am not!” Sir Richard’s eyes darted round like a hunted animal. Before he could move Veitch had loosed the bolt into the floor and had clubbed him on the side of the head with the crossbow. Sir Richard slumped to the floor unconscious.

  Veitch coolly reclaimed the bolt and slipped it back into the harness with the crossbow. Then he bent down and effortlessly slung Sir Richard over his shoulder. He turned to Shavi and Laura as he marched towards the door. “I’ll see you at the pub later.”

  “Where are you going, Ryan?” Shavi asked darkly.

  “I said, I’ll see you later.” He tried to mask what was in his face with a tight smile, but Laura and Shavi both saw, and wished they hadn’t.

  The journey through the temple, across the autumnal fields, and out into the wide world, resembled a funeral procession. Ruth’s face was like jagged shards of glass, her eyes constantly fixed on an inner landscape. She leaned on Church, for emotional rather than physical support, but his tread was heavy. Tom followed behind, unusually disoriented, with Max looking poleaxed at the rear.

  In Richmond it was midmorning, the air heavy with an unpleasant heat. Insects buzzed in from the surrounding dales, and traffic fumes choked the market place. They had no idea if it was the next day or several weeks hence; although it remained unspoken, they all knew the date was now mightily significant.

  In the back seat of the car, Ruth could no longer contain herself. She undid her jeans and pulled them down over her belly; there was an unmistakable swelling there.

  “It doesn’t make any sense!” Church protested to Tom. “There’s nothing actually, physically inside her! Is there?”

  Tom looked away, shaking his head; it could have meant anything. Ruth broke down in sobs of shock.

  After they had subsided, she slumped on the back seat in desperate silence. Tom caught Church’s eye and the two of them slipped out, leaving Max to keep an eye on her.

  “There must be something we can do,” Church said when they were far enough away from the car not to be overheard.

  “Perhaps. But there is a more immediate problem. The Fomorii will never leave us alone until they have Balor back. Inside her is their entire reason for existence, the Heart of Shadows. They must have regrouped after the devastation in Edinburgh. Once they locate us their pursuit will be relentless.” He paused. “They can’t take the risk that you’ll kill her to prevent Balor being born.”

  “Kill her?” The thought hadn’t even entered Church’s head.

  Tom nodded gravely. “At the moment it’s the only option.”

  Church cursed Tom furiously for his cold-heartedness, but his reaction was so extreme because he knew, if he could bear to examine his thoughts rationally, that the Rhymer was right. The rebirth of Balor meant the End of Everything. To prevent that, Ruth’s life was a small price to pay. Rationally, objectively, from a distance. But from his close perspective she was so dear to him her life was more important than everything. How could he kill her? And he knew, with a terrible, hollow ache, that ultimately the decision would come down to him; one of the burdens of leadership. And whatever his choice, he also knew it would destroy him forever.

  The atmosphere on the way back was thick with unspoken thoughts. Church could see Max was seething with questions, but he didn’t feel like answering anything; it was too big to consider even in the privacy of his head. Ruth had dried her eyes and was coping with the shock remarkably well; somehow, that made Church feel even worse.

  “That’s why my familiar has disappeared,” she muttered, almost to herself. “It won’t come anywhere near me while that thing’s inside me.”

  They drove with all the windows down, but even that couldn’t disperse the oppressive heat in the car. They were sleeked in sweat, sticking uncomfortably to the seats, flushed and irritable. There wasn’t even a breath of wind across the lush landscape; the trees remained upright, the crops and hedgerow flowers unmoving.

  Max drove speedily along the empty roads, leaning forward to peer through the windscreen that was streaked yellow and orange with the remains of a hundred bugs. But as he rounded a corner, he cursed loudly and slammed on the brakes, the Fiesta fishtailing to a sudden halt. A stream of cars filtered past the turning they needed for the route home: ahead were the unmissable signs of another police roadblock.

  “They did see us on the way here.” Church grabbed Max’s shoulder. “You need to back up and get out of here. Find a different route.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth when a spurt of blue activity broke out at the road junction; someone had already spotted them. Officers wearing body armour and helmets were tumbling out of the back of a van parked on the edge of the road; Church thought he glimpsed guns.

  Max slammed the car into reverse and stepped on the accelerator. With a screech of tires, they shot backwards, but they’d only travelled a few yards when he hit the brakes. Church and Ruth crashed into the seats in front. Roaring out of a field behind them where it had been hidden was another police van, lights flashing.

  “What now?” Max shouted. Before Church could answer he engaged gears, threw the car to the right and shot through an open gate into another field. The going was easy on the sun-baked ground, but they were still thrown about wildly as the car propelled itself over ridges and furrows.

  Church gripped on to the ridge of the back seat so he could watch through the back window. The police were drawing closer. “I hope you watched The Cannonball Run,” Church said.

  Max grunted something unintelligible. All four wheels left the ground as the car crested a rise. They came down with a bone-jarring crunch and careered sideways on the dusty soil for a short way. “It always looked easier in the movies,” Max said.

  The police were only yards away when Max swore fitfully and suddenly drove directly at the barbed wire fence ahead. They ploughed through it with a rending and scratching and slid down a steep bank, bouncing over a small ditch on to the road with a shower of sparks.

  The police vehicle followed suit, but when it hit the ditch its higher centre of gravity flipped it over. It smashed upside down and slid along the tarmac. Max gave a brief cheer as he watched the scene in the rearview mirror.

  “Don’t celebrate too soon,” Tom said gruffly. They followed his gaze to the bottleneck of traffic at the police checkpoint.

  A shadow had risen up ten feet off the ground beyond the vehicles. Its outline shifted ominously in a manner Church had seen too many times before. Max started to retch loudly.

  “Don’t look at it!” Church snapped. “Whatever you do. Keep your eyes on the road. Drive!”

  Max couldn’t resist one last look and vomited on to the floor between his feet. It deflected his attention from driving. The engine idled while he wiped his mouth, shook his dazed head.

  The shadow moved, began to take on a sharper form. It was enormous, powerful, dense, seeming to suck in all light from the vicinity. It accelerated towards them, oblivious to the vehicles lined up in its path. A Renault flipped up end over end with a sound like a bomb going off, then a Peugeot and a Mondeo. A Jag folded up like paper in an explosion of glass and a rending of metal.

  Church was transfixed; it was like a shark ploughing through water, leaving carnage in its wake. Cars flew like sea spray as it surged onwards. “Drive, Max.” Church’s voice was almost lost beneath the orchestral crashing of metal on tarmac.

  It was relentless; as it built up speed it began to change, parts of the dense shadow detaching themselves and folding out, unfurling then reclamping themselves around the figure. It was like the horny carapace of an insect slowly building before their eyes, impenetrable plates, then something that looked like a helmet, but with horns or claws, and all of it in shimmering black. And still it moved.

  Finally Church recognised his vision of the monstrous Fomorii warrior in the distorting cavern beneath Arthur’s Seat; the same creature Veitch had seen at the ritual under the castle.

  A People Carrier went over as if it
weighed no more than paper. How powerful is it? Church thought. “Come on, Max!” he yelled again.

  The urgency in his voice finally shocked Max into activity. The car shot forward, throwing them all around once more.

  “Don’t look in the mirror,” Church cautioned; he knew Max, who was not inured to the terrible sight of the Fomorii, would black out instantly. “Give it all you’ve got.”

  The car began to race just as the Fomorii smashed through the last of the cars and started on the open road between them. Church could feel the thunderous vibrations from its pounding feet through the frame of the car.

  “Is it gaining?” Ruth asked. She was clinging on to a corner of the seat to stop herself being thrown around.

  “It’s making the car jump around!” Max shouted over the racing engine. “I’m having trouble controlling it!”

  Agonisingly slowly, the car began to move faster. It didn’t appear to be fast enough, but Max kept his foot to the floor, bouncing up and down in his seat as if trying to add to the momentum. And then, although they hardly dared believe it, the bone-jarring vibrations began to subside a little. Church glanced back once more at the nightmarish image of the beast and saw it had started to fall back; but it was still driving on, and he knew that even if they escaped this time, it would always be somewhere at their backs until it had completed its frightful mission.

  “We’re doing it,” he said. “Just pray we don’t have another technology failure. And be thankful we’ve got an open road ahead of us.”

  Eventually the twists and turns of the road took them out of sight of the pursuing creature, although they could still hear it for several minutes after. Gradually, Church’s heart stopped racing and he rested his face on the back of the seat.

  “That’s it,” he said. “That’s what they’ve sent after us.”

  “One of the things,” Tom corrected. “Every resource will be marshalled-“

  “Oh, God!” There was a note of hysteria in Ruth’s voice.

  Church took her hand gently. “Once we get back to the village we need to get moving again,” he said. “We can’t stay in one place too long.”

  “Why? We’ve only got to kill time until Lughnasadh. Then it will all be over,” Ruth replied bitterly.

  He didn’t know how to answer that.

  “We thought you lot were never coming back,” Witch said when the car pulled up in the dusty High Street. He tried to hide his concern behind an irritated facade.

  “How long have we been gone?” Church helped Ruth out, wondering how he was going to break the news to the others, in particular to Veitch.

  “Three days.” Veitch couldn’t contain himself any longer. He stepped up so he could look Ruth in the eye and said tenderly, “How are you?”

  She forced a smile. “Pregnant.” Veitch looked shocked, then worried, and that made her laugh. They retired to The Green Man where Church, Tom and Max had a steadying drink and Ruth attempted to put a brave face on the end of her life.

  Witch’s face never flickered when they told him what they had learned, but Church knew he would never forget the look buried deep in the Londoner’s eyes; it was the mark of someone who had discovered there wasn’t a God. Veitch took a drink, put his arm round Ruth, cracked a joke and said they’d find a solution-they always did; all the right noises. But that deep look never went away. Church wondered how Veitch would cope the closer it got to Lughnasadh; and what his response would be if that terrible decision had to be taken.

  The mood remained sombre while they caught up over drinks. Shavi’s account of what had taken place in the village left the returnees horrified. Max looked dazed, then queasy. “I’ve known Sir Richard since I’ve been here. All those others too. I can’t say I ever really got on with them, but I thought we were all coming from the same place. And I’m supposed to be a trained observer and a good judge of character.” Despite the shock, his spirits soon raised as they always seemed to, and it wasn’t long before he was feverishly scribbling everything down in his notebook.

  Their attention turned to Witch’s success in uncovering the deception. His ears coloured when Church congratulated him effusively; he looked genuinely touched by the praise.

  “And I always thought he’d been clouted with the stupid stick,” Laura said. “Looks like I’ll have to find some other insults. Good job there’s a long list.” She was getting braver once more; and Veitch, for his part, seemed to take her words in good humour.

  “But you haven’t told us what happened to Sir Richard,” Church said. “You couldn’t really take him to the cops, could you?”

  Shavi and Laura watched Veitch intently. “I convinced the bastard to leave town,” Veitch replied coldly.

  Finally it was time to go. Max offered them his car, an act of generosity that brought a warm hug from Ruth and a back-slap from Veitch, but Church knew the police would be watching for it. After a heated discussion they decided to make their way on foot across the deserted countryside far away from the roads, cities and towns, despite the dangers that might lie away from the centres of population; it would give them a better chance of evading the Fomorii while they decided what to do next.

  It was midafternoon and still unbearably hot when they left the cool confines of the pub. There was still plenty of the day left to put them deep into the heart of the wild upland country. They shook Max’s hand, waved to Geordie, who grunted gruffly, and then they wound their way wearily towards the horizon.

  Max stood with Geordie in the middle of the street until they had disappeared from view. “Bloody rum bunch,” Geordie muttered.

  “No, mate, heroes,” Max said. “They might not know it, but they are. They just need writing up. Some of the rough edges taken off them so people can see the wood for the trees.”

  Geordie grunted dismissively. “Not my kind of heroes.”

  “You’re not seeing it right, Geordie. We’re at war now. Under siege. In times like this the people need someone to look up to, someone who’ll give them courage to keep fighting.” He smiled tightly. “I reckon that lot fit the bill-if their story is told in the right way. And I’m just the man to tell it.”

  As they passed the outskirts of the village, Laura glanced up at the scarecrow which had unnerved her so much on her way in. She was surprised to see it looked different, although she at first wondered if it was a trick of the glaring sun. Squinting, she tried to pick out what had changed; gradually details emerged. It was no longer just a scarecrow. Something had been tied to it. She squinted again. Another scarecrow appeared to be hanging at the front of the original in the same crucified position, only the bottom two thirds of it was missing. And the head of the second one didn’t look very good either.

  But something was still jarring. Curious, she took a few steps forward so the sun was away from it. And then, in a moment of pure horror, she realised what it was. It wore a white shirt splattered with something dark near the collar. Instead of straw, something gleamed in the sun; bone that had been picked clean by the creatures in the fields.

  Unable to mask her queasy thoughts, she snapped round at Veitch, suddenly aware of the dark, hidden depths of his character. She knew from his body language he realised she was watching him, but he never turned to meet her gaze. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, his expression cold and aloof.

  chapter fourteen

  wretched times

  he clear blue sky was so near they felt like they were in heaven, the air so clean and fresh it burned their throats, which were more used to the particles and fumes of city living. There, high up on the dinosaur-backed ridge of the Pennines, they felt like they had been sucked into the thunderous heart of nature, or into the past where no chimney belched, no meaningless machine disturbed the stillness. Amidst outcropping rock turned bronze by the unflinching sun they picked their way through swaying seas of fern, down sheep-clipped grassy slopes, across bleak upland moors where the wind cut like talons.

  Tom navigated by the sun and the stars, lead
ing them on into the remotest parts of the land where the sodium glare had never touched. At night the vast spray of stars looked like a milky river leading them back to the source. They made their camps in hidden corners, dips below the eyeline, behind boulders and in low-hanging caves; all except Ruth took turns keeping watch over the dying campfires.

  At times they saw things moving away in the dark or heard sounds that had little to do with any animals they knew; one night Shavi had a conversation with someone unseen whose voice switched between the mewling tones of an infant and the phlegmy crackle of an old man. When the sun began to rise, Shavi heard the mysterious stranger scurry away on many legs, an insectile chittering bouncing among the rocks.

  Their decision to steer clear of any centre of population meant finding food was a constant problem, though they were thankful that Tom had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the roots, plants and herbs which grew in secret places where no one would have thought to look. He taught Veitch his many skills at catching rabbits and the occasional game bird, and how to snatch fish from the sparkling streams and rivers they crossed. When cooked on the campfire, the fare was mouth-watering; even so, they soon yearned for a richer and more varied diet.

  “This feels like Lord of the Flies,” Shavi remarked one calm morning as he watched Veitch carve a spear with his knife; he refused to use his crossbow for hunting.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t end the same way,” Church replied; he attempted to take the edge off his words with a smile.

  “Say, why don’t you focus on the black side?” Ruth chipped in with cheerful sarcasm. After the initial shock she had put them all to shame with her bright mood, refusing to be bowed by what had been inflicted on her. Church kept waiting for her to crack as the black despair he was sure lurked within came rushing to the surface, but it never did, and as time passed he came to think it wasn’t there at all.