Arthur Quinn and Hell's Keeper

by Alan Early

  ‘What was that?’ said Ash. She’d been lying half on top of him and now rolled to the side and sat up straight.

  ‘Some kind of earthquake, I think.’

  ‘No. I meant what was that tree?’

  Arthur looked at her through his widened eye. ‘You saw it too?’

  ‘When I touched you I saw it. This gnarled old tree splitting in two. What was it?’

  ‘It’s called Yggdrasill, the tree of life. As it rots, so does our world. So do all worlds. If it falls then that’s the end of all existence. For good. That’s what’s at stake, Ash. That’s why we have to do something. It doesn’t matter whether we survive or not. If we don’t stop Loki, then nothing will survive. The end of all creation.’

  She looked at him with a glimmer of that determination he had seen on her face many times before and said, ‘Then we don’t have a choice. Let’s do it.’

  ‘Let’s do what?’

  ‘Attack.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘I have an announcement to make,’ Ash said in a loud voice that rang through the gaol.

  After making her decision, Ash hadn’t wasted any time. The gangway section that had fallen had left a four-foot-wide gap between the two of them and the stairs; it was just short enough to take a running jump across. When they had both gotten safely over, they rushed downstairs to see the damage for themselves. The kitchen cell was a mess: there was sugar all over the floor and unopened tins of food still rolling around from the after-shocks. Tight knots of people had gathered in groups, examining each other’s injuries. They were relieved to find that no one had sustained much more than a few bruises and some nasty grazes. The painting Arthur had watched the girl hang earlier had fallen from its hook. Upon collision with the concrete floor, the frame had snapped in two and the canvas itself had torn slightly. As Ash was tending to the wounded and handing out first-aid kits, he went to re-hang it, but when he picked it up the whole thing fell apart in his hands. He let the remaining pieces of frame clatter to the ground. He didn’t understand it, but seeing the ruined painting like that made him even angrier about what Loki was doing to the world.

  When everyone had been accounted for and attended to, Ash called them all together in the middle of the floor. She then walked back up a few steps of the staircase and turned to face them, clapping her hands to get everyone’s attention. When the low murmur of chatter finally stopped, she met Arthur’s eyes for a moment, then turned her attention to the crowd and started to speak.

  ‘What happened here, right now, is a sign,’ she said, her voice booming. ‘It’s a sign that we can’t afford to hide any more. We have to come out of the shadows and fight back.’

  ‘Fight who?’ called a boy’s voice from behind Arthur.

  ‘Loki. Who else?’

  A clamour of agitated voices rose straight away, all talking over each other, all shouting their own opinions. Ash tried to calm them down again, but her voice wouldn’t carry over the chattering mob. Arthur watched as she hastily pulled off a boot and clanged the heel against the iron rail of the staircase. The sound rang sharply off the walls, and it was enough to force the crowd to focus back on her. Silence fell once more, but Ash held on to the boot, just in case of more interruptions.

  ‘Listen! You have to listen to me!’ she exclaimed. ‘Our families are out there, held prisoner by Loki–’

  ‘Yours maybe,’ a girl’s voice cut in loudly enough for everyone to hear. ‘We don’t know about our families. They could be safe somewhere else, or they could be …’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Yes,’ Ash said, looking in the direction of the voice. ‘I know Loki has my family. I don’t deny that I want to save them. But I want to save all the others too. I want to save everyone in the camps.’ She sighed. ‘I want to save us.’

  ‘But we’re safe here, we’re happy here,’ called up another voice.

  ‘I know. And I was happy here until a few minutes ago so, believe me, I understand how you feel. Which is why I won’t force anyone to fight. But I understand now why we need to fight. Things are not going to stay like this. Things are going to get worse and quickly. If we don’t do something now, Loki will destroy everything.’

  ‘This has something to do with him, doesn’t it?’ said Donal, turning and pointing to Arthur. Dozens of heads swivelled to look at him, and he stared back defiantly. ‘Are you saying you believe that crazy story he told you yesterday?’

  ‘You’re right, Donal. It does have to do with him. I’m still not sure that I believe his story, but I do believe one thing: that Loki has to be stopped and that we have to try. No matter what happens, we have to try.’ She stopped and looked at the crowd before her. ‘Whoever wants to join me, whoever wants to take up arms against Loki, whoever wants to stop him and save the world, whoever wants to fight, meet me here in an hour, before it gets dark. But anyone who doesn’t, all I ask is that you stay in your cells until the meeting is over and don’t get in our way.’

  Murmurs of protest rose from the crowd.

  ‘I hope to see some of you in an hour,’ Ash finished, before descending the steps to rejoin Arthur. As she walked over to him the crowd dispersed into different corners. Dozens of whispered discussions were in progress – many of them heated.

  ‘Will it work, do you think?’ he muttered to her.

  ‘I hope so,’ she answered, keeping her eyes fixed on the assembled crowd. ‘I really hope so, because if we are going up against Loki we’ll need all the help we can get.’

  That hour felt like the longest of Arthur’s life. He and Ash busied themselves by tidying up the kitchen cell. Every few minutes they would look out into the main room and see that more people had left the space, retiring to their cells. When the kitchen was as tidy as it could be, they went back out and sat on the central stairway. The main area was now empty and still, save for the quiet mumbling from the cells all around. Arthur was sitting behind Ash and stared at her hunched-over back. If no one came, it would be up to the two of them. The two of them against Loki, his children and an army. He didn’t like their chances. They had had the dead army’s help against the World Serpent and then the help of Fenrir, Ellie and Ex against Loki for round two. More importantly, Loki hadn’t had a stranglehold on the world either time, nor did he have their parents as hostages.

  ‘The hour’s nearly up,’ Ash said, looking at the water-resistant sports watch on her wrist. ‘I just have to get some stuff from my cell. Will you give me a hand?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said and followed her up to the first floor. Her cell was almost identical to his, with the plain white basin on the left and the lumpy mattress on the right. A cardboard box sat against one wall, which Ash knelt down by. She picked out a large felt play-mat and handed it to Arthur; he remembered that he had had something similar when he was younger for driving toy cars around on. Then she grabbed a plastic carrier bag and put it on top of the mat. He peeped inside to see that it was full of toy animals, building bricks, crayons and markers. Finally, from the bottom of the box, she took out a black laptop case.

  Ash nodded at Arthur. ‘Let’s see if we’re on our own then.’ They left the cell and looked over the edge of the gangway. A small gathering of people waited below.

  Arthur recognised most of them as they walked down the steps. All the people who’d rescued him from the Wolfsguard were there: Donal, Orla, Egg-head, Fat Boy and Spotty Teen. The boy who’d been terrified of spiders was there, too. There were also a couple of others he didn’t know. They peered up apprehensively at Ash.

  ‘Glad to see some people showed up,’ she said, putting the laptop case on one of the long benches.

  Ash took the laptop out and it was unlike any computer Arthur had ever seen. It had the usual keypad and slim monitor but it was all connected to a chunky contraption consisting of gears, wires and one thick handle. She pulled out the handle and started winding it. After a few seconds, the laptop blinked into life and the handle cranked itself around.

  ‘A wi
nd-up computer!’ he said with awe. ‘That’s just amazing, Ash.’

  Ash blushed. ‘Well, I’ve always been good with–’

  ‘Electronics. I know.’ Arthur grinned at her.

  She stared at the screen as the laptop booted up. Arthur watched her fingers glide effortlessly over the keys as she typed in the password. It was so familiar seeing Ash like this. His heart soared in a way he had never felt before.

  As the computer started humming, she nodded to Donal. He took the play-mat and bag of toys from Arthur, then unfurled the mat over the bench.

  ‘Do we have any weapons?’ asked Arthur hopefully as the computer booted.

  ‘Just this,’ said Orla, reaching into a backpack at her feet. She pulled out something that looked like a slimmer and lighter version of a shotgun. The handle and barrel were black while the rest of the body was green. A sight sat on top.

  ‘Tranquilliser gun,’ Orla explained, noting Arthur’s expression. ‘We found it in a big house a couple of weeks ago. I’m pretty sure it belonged to a vet.’

  ‘Do you know how to use it?’

  ‘It’s straightforward enough,’ said Donal. ‘Put the darts in, aim, pull the trigger.’

  ‘How many darts do we have?’

  Orla kicked the bag.

  ‘Half a dozen,’ she said. ‘We had more, but we wasted some of them on the Wolfsguard, only to quickly discover that the needles couldn’t pierce their armour.’

  As she put it back in the bag, Ash turned to Arthur.

  ‘There are a few things you should know,’ she said. ‘When we all banded together months ago, for a while we actually considered attacking Loki then. But we couldn’t get a proper plan sorted and, to be honest, we got too comfortable in our safe little community. However, we did learn some things that might be useful now.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘As I told you, we were able to hack into the Wolfsguard database.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s how you found out who Loki was holding prisoner.’

  ‘Right. But we also found out where Loki’s base is and a little bit about the layout.’

  ‘Great! Where is he? How fast can we get there?’

  ‘You saw it yourself when you first got here. Remember you pointed out the gap in the green clouds?’

  Arthur thought back to his arrival and recalled standing on top of the roof and seeing the strange absence of clouds in the distance. The blue sky had seemed like a beacon of hope.

  ‘Yup, I remember.’

  ‘That gap is always there. It’s the one place in Ireland – probably the one place in the world – where it doesn’t rain. It’s still dry there; there’s no flood at all.’

  ‘But where is it?’

  ‘It’s the Phoenix Park,’ said Donal, who had finished laying the play-mat out on the bench. The green felt took up most of the tabletop. On the underside of the felt, Arthur knew, was a printed street-view for playing with toy cars. But the back of the mat was facing up. It was bare except for a jagged shape drawn in permanent marker. It looked like a very rudimentary pear – rounded at one end, pointed at the other – and was spread across the majority of the mat.

  ‘And this,’ said Orla, as Donal tapped a finger on the shape, ‘is our map of the park.’

  ‘There are a few problems,’ said Ash, walking around the makeshift map. ‘First, it’s one of the biggest city parks in Europe.’

  ‘It’s twice the size of New York’s Central Park,’ added Donal somewhat proudly. ‘And larger than all of London’s city-centre parks put together!’

  Ash pulled a matchbox out of the plastic bag and showed it to Arthur.

  ‘This represents the building we’re in now.’ She put it down next to the map; it was dwarfed in comparison to the pear shape. ‘It’s to scale so it’ll give you an idea of how huge the park actually is.’

  ‘OK,’ Arthur said, ‘I get it. Big park. What else?’

  Ash traced her finger along the permanent-marker outline. ‘There’s an eleven-kilometre wall running around the full length of the park. It’s high enough to keep the water out. And a pair of Wolfsguard are posted every hundred yards just inside the wall, some in human form, some in wolf. Because of their sharpened wolf senses, it would be impossible for even one person to sneak past them.’

  ‘Great!’ said Arthur sarcastically. ‘So where’s Loki in all of this?’

  She took a painted wooden brick out of the bag and put it on the north-eastern section of the map.

  ‘He’s right here,’ she told him. ‘In Áras an Uachtaráin.’

  ‘The president’s house?’ Arthur had seen the home of the Irish president – known as Áras an Uachtaráin – several times in books and on the TV news. It was a beautiful, white, eighteenth-century building, with four tall Ionic columns in front of the entranceway. As well as being where the president lived, it was also a house of great historical significance. Governments had met there, ministers received their Seals of Office there and the president welcomed foreign dignitaries there. He shuddered at the thought of Loki making the place his home.

  She nodded grimly.

  ‘So, what, Loki thinks of himself as the president now?’

  ‘Not quite. More like an emperor. According to the Wolfsguard notes, he calls the Áras his palace. Also, that’s where he’s holding his personal prisoners.’

  ‘My dad, your family, our friends,’ Arthur murmured. He looked at the map more closely, taking in the size of it. The Áras was close to the north-eastern border so he pointed there. ‘Why don’t we cross through that way? It looks close enough that we could just sneak up to the Áras.’

  ‘Two problems,’ said Donal. He tapped the northern wall. ‘Blackhorse Avenue runs along most of the north side of the park. And, as in the park itself, the rain doesn’t fall there.’

  ‘Sounds perfect to me.’

  ‘But Blackhouse Avenue is now unofficially known as Wolvesville.’

  ‘The wolves live in the houses there,’ Orla told him. ‘They just took them. It’s their base; probably because it’s so close to their leader. It’s not only impossible to get through Wolvesville, but it’s also insane to try.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ muttered Arthur. ‘OK. What else? You said there were two problems.’

  ‘There are,’ said Orla. She took a toy lion out of the bag and plonked it down on the map, somewhere between the Áras and the eastern wall. ‘This here is the zoo.’

  ‘So? We just go around it.’ Arthur had visited the zoo on a few occasions. It was like a park within the park, walled off with high security fences.

  ‘When Loki took over the park months ago, the animals got out,’ explained Ash, taking out more toy zebras and monkeys from the bag. ‘We think one of the guards let them out because in their wolf forms they like to hunt. Anyway, it seems that Loki wasn’t too pleased by this because he made them catch the animals again. It turns out the World Serpent has quite an appetite for exotic animals and Loki wanted his precious child to always have a fresh supply.

  ‘But the animals were too wild at this stage and the Wolfsguard were either too lazy or too stupid to herd them back into the zoo. So they just built a fence across a large chunk of the park, sealing off the eastern end.’ She put the extra animals down, covering the spot she’d just mentioned.

  Arthur saw the problem now. If they did somehow manage to break into the park at all via the eastern boundary, they’d have to avoid getting killed by a stray tiger or lion. So the north- and east-facing walls were out. But if they went across the western or southern walls, they’d have a lot of ground to cover before they reached the Áras and would have a much higher risk of getting caught by the Wolfsguard. He studied the few options on the map. It would be impossible to pass all those hundreds of acres without some sort of–

  ‘Distraction,’ he muttered.

  The others looked at him quizzically.

  ‘If we have to go in from one of these directions,’ he said, gesturing to where he meant, ‘we’ll nee
d a distraction to give us enough time to reach the Áras.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Ash, ‘but what?’

  Arthur looked at the small group around him and then back at the map. For a few minutes there was silence as they all puzzled over what to do.

  ‘That’s it,’ he shouted suddenly.

  ‘What?’ Ash half leapt out of her skin at the abrupt exclamation.

  ‘I have an idea.’ He bent over the map and started telling them his plan.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll need two teams …’

  Later, Arthur lay on his mattress, going over the plan in his head.

  After they had talked through the plan in detail – twice – they came to the agreement that it was their best option.

  ‘It’s not just our best option,’ said Ash, ‘it’s our only option.’

  ‘So when will we do this?’ Egg-head spoke up for the first time.

  ‘How does tomorrow morning sound?’

  They all nodded. They secretly knew that the longer they waited, the more likely they would make excuses to themselves to drop out.

  ‘Who’s in the smaller group?’ asked Orla, running a hand through her dreads.

  ‘That’s me and Ash,’ said Arthur before anyone else could answer either way. He looked at Ash. ‘If you want to?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She nodded slowly. ‘Arthur and I are the small group. The rest of you are in the main group.’ Then, as an afterthought, she added, ‘If any of you want to back out, now’s the time. No one will think any less of you.’ They all stared resolutely back at her, none of them speaking.

  ‘All right then,’ she said eventually. ‘We should get some sleep now. Meet back here at dawn.’

  It was gloomy in the gaol now; the sun was setting outside and only faint green light was seeping its way in through the skylight. As they all felt their way back to their cells, Arthur and Ash walked upstairs together. They stood on the first-floor gangway, looking at each other in the dull light.

  ‘Do you think it’ll work?’ Ash asked.