At least I supposed it came from the unexpurgated version. There was much more to it than the odd phrase or two. It was more like a rant. The words poured out of him in a babbling stream, and their effect was immediate and violent.
A mighty electric charge ran through me, wiping my mind and sending me back in time. As a three-year-old, left unattended for a minute while Mum answered the phone, I’d found a screwdriver inside a drawer which should have been locked and poked it inside the nearest electrical socket, just out of curiosity. I’d blanked out then too, coming round seconds later on my backside halfway across the kitchen where the electric current had thrown me. The stunned surprise I’d felt as a toddler came flooding back to me now as the powerful wave punched me clear and across the hard ground.
The first thing I saw was Becky reeling on the grass close by, shaking the cobwebs from her head, and then Mr October reaching once more inside his coat of wonders.
With one last verbal assault on the Shifters – if there were swear words in ancientspeak he must have used them all – he took the black dice from his pocket and tossed it high at the sky.
This time it didn’t come back.
The dice rose and rose against the foggy moon, twirling and turning, untouched by gravity, and it kept rising until it blew apart, lighting up the sky and bathing the path with dazzling blue light. The earth juddered from the aftershock and the Shifters lost their hold on Lu, dropping her like a hot potato and fleeing inside the hedge walls they’d come from. Lu landed hard with a winded ‘Oof!’ There was a slap and squelch of juices that coated her from head to waist, a colourless, watery goo.
‘Ugghh, that is disgusting,’ she said, sitting up and wiping her face with the back of a hand and wiping her hand on the grass. ‘I’ll need a shower when this is all over. Otherwise, don’t ask – I’m OK.’
You had to admire her focus. Another few seconds and they would have digested her, but to Lu this was a distraction, an inconvenience. I wondered what she’d seen, how the shadow forms looked from the inside, and I hoped there’d be a time when she’d tell me about it, but that time wasn’t now.
We were quickly on our feet and moving again, heading to where the latest volley of shots was coming from. Something was burning that way too. I could see the leaping flames in the middle distance. Suddenly and without a word between us we were running.
The ground rumbled underfoot. Whatever waited at the maze’s heart drew closer with every step, and now I knew the earth tremors didn’t come from the explosion, the underground heating or anything else.
The night train bound for Abhorra was here.
25
PANDEMONIUM EXPRESS
he path ended suddenly, blocked by a towering bramble wall, no optical illusion this time. But the Vigilants had blown a huge yawning hole through the thorny barrier and the scorched opening fizzed and spat orange sparks. A keen smell of smoke came from whatever was burning beyond it, and the shots were only occasional now, the last exchanges of a dying battle.
Following Mr October through the smouldering entrance, we came to the central square, a walled-off expanse of pock-marked earth around which the remains of enemy defenders were scattered
Their torn torsos lay on the silvery grass like heaps of refuse, and the air hung heavy with stinging petroleum fumes. Vigilants were dousing the remains with flamethrowers, and small fires lit up the square from all corners. In the middle distance was a larger fire, a blazing moat surrounding a small black island.
The last few survivors were crawling towards the hedgerows for cover but not many made it that far. One wyvern-like being with slow-beating wings and long snapping jaws sent a feeble trail of smoke from its snout as a cluster of rifle shots toppled it. A many-armed, squid-like demon jetted a stream of darkness from its bulging ink sac but hadn’t time to flee inside the shadow it made before another round of shots stopped it short.
Mr October called to one of the Vigilants, requesting a progress report.
‘Been securing the area since mid-afternoon, sir,’ the guard said, reloading his rifle. ‘Nearly done with this lot but more took off below, so good luck down there. You’ll need lots of luck where you’re going,’ he added, indicating the moat of fire.
Now I noticed a shape on the island, a small domed building half obscured by the flames. That must be the gateway entrance, but I couldn’t see a way to reach it past the fire.
Typically, though, Mr October could.
‘Well . . . in for a penny,’ he said, and without explanation he set off to the moat, quickening his step along the way and spreading his arms for balance before scrambling down its steep near side and vanishing into the furnace.
I stared after him, dumbstruck, following the movements of his outline as it passed between the flames and the flames warped and reshaped themselves around him.
‘Now us,’ Becky said.
I looked at her. ‘Are you serious?’
‘It’s OK, Ben. Don’t you see? It’s like the other illusions, like the map and the hedgerows. It looks like fire but it’s not. It’s another trick.’
She had to be right. Mr October had just this second reappeared, his wide-hatted silhouette standing tall on the island. We were looking at the maze’s last illusion, the only thing between us and the journey below. Giving each other the nod, the three of us broke into a run and tumbled down into it.
The flames billowed around us, dazzling orange and yellow and white, but they gave out no sound or heat because – unlike the fires back on the square – they weren’t there. Moving through the blinding haze I soon lost track of the others, but I had a feeling they were somewhere ahead of me all the way. The hardest part to navigate was the nearly vertical slope on the far side. Straining for purchase up the hard ground, I twice reached the top before sliding back, but then Lu was above me, hauling me up.
The dome resembled a squat mausoleum with pillars either side of a blistered black door. Mr October gave the door a push and it opened with a haunted house creak. It was pitch black inside, and a rumble reached us from deep underground – the soul train at its platform.
How long did we have? How far from here to the train? Lu found her flashlight and swept it through the dark, over a filthy wet floor and across a graffiti-covered wall. A sequence of runic symbols carved into the wall caused Mr October to cluck his tongue and shake his head but the message meant nothing to us.
‘What’s it say, then?’ Becky asked.
‘It loses a lot in translation, but in any case I won’t pollute your ears with such talk. Ah, here we are. . .’
The light settled on a grimy lift door and the control panel on the wall beside it. Lu hit the call button and the lift juddered far below in the shaft, beginning its climb.
It was a long climb, too, because something like two minutes passed before the doors rattled open. There wasn’t much room inside, and the lift cage wobbled under our weight. I wouldn’t have trusted it to carry more.
The descent began. The cage dropped at speed, making my ears pop, and with the sudden rise in pressure Becky sighed and held the bridge of her nose. We seemed to be in freefall, plunging through space with nothing to hold us. Then the lift stopped with a bone-crunching shudder and settled, taking its time before opening its doors.
Exiting into a grimy low-ceilinged walkway, we were met by a wall of sound from somewhere away to the left: engine noise, booted footfalls, voices shouting orders in the same reverse-sounding language we’d often heard on the rounds.
Mr October listened carefully, then said, ‘My grasp of their Abhorrentongue is patchy, but without question they’re preparing to board.’ Other voices, banshee cries and rattles, joined the call and response. ‘They’re bringing the prisoners – the mere mortals, they call them – from holding. There’s no time to intervene, so we’ll have to take our chances on the train.’
An almighty siren rose and fell, and a voice crackled from a tannoy, repeating the same short phrase over and over in Abhorr
entongue.
‘Just a warning to mind the gap,’ Mr October interpreted, ushering us towards our first sight of the platform.
The train stood along it, its corrugated steel sides covered with graffiti slogans written in runes. The doors were open, and from the little I could see from the walkway the insides looked like bare drab cattle cars, but this train hadn’t been built for comfort. Above the engine noise the siren wailed on.
‘Move to the end but stay out of sight,’ Mr October said. ‘If we’re spotted this will end before it begins. Wait till I give the word.’
We crept to where the walkway met the platform and huddled against the wall, not making a sound. With a rushing heart, I chanced a peek around the corner.
The platform was as busy as a marketplace, patrolled by guards in uniforms and helmets of bony armadillo armour. Their deathly grey faces were blessed, or cursed, with many spider-like eyes which glanced all ways at once. In their hands were scaly hooked and clawed weapons, which writhed like Professor Rictus’s terrible tools. Their jackboots smacked the concrete as they moved along, checking compartments. There were scores of them, at least as many demons in other forms, Shifters and Deathheads and feral dog-like beings which the guards held on leashes, and now another wave of guards turned onto the platform from a tunnel at the train’s midway point.
Their arrival sent a charge through the air. All those present stopped and turned to look, and some bowed their heads respectfully.
‘What’s happening?’ I said. ‘What are they seeing?’
Mr October’s eyes never left the crowd. ‘It’s the distraction we’ve been waiting for. Everyone to the train while they’re occupied.’
The open carriage faced us, perhaps ten paces away. Mr October waved us on. The girls ran ahead and slipped neatly inside, but I’d only half crossed the platform when I saw what was causing the disturbance further down.
When the guards stood back to make way for the new arrivals, I had a clear view of her through the crowd. It was only a glimpse, and the great relief I felt at first was quickly replaced by horror. What had they done to make her look like that?
Swathed in a tatty grey blanket, eyes downcast and head hung low, Mum looked broken – a hollow woman with her soul ripped out. She glanced neither left nor right as they steered her along and she didn’t react when the tannoy squealed with feedback. She was in a trance, unaware of where she was or what was unfolding. While she and three other captives were being ferried to the train another face appeared in the crush, and the sight of that face turned my stomach.
It was Luther Vileheart as I’d first seen him in the personnel office, an almost human figure whose hateful eyes with their vertically slitted pupils were anything but human. A poisonous aura surrounded him like a storm cloud, and the guards jumped to attention at the snap of his voice. He gestured up and down the train, barking instructions, but that was all I saw before Mr October dragged me to the doors.
‘She’s there. . .’ I said. ‘She’s alive.’
‘I know, but you can’t help her if you’re seen, can you?’
But maybe I’d been seen already. As Mr October bundled me inside, the guard nearest our end of the train turned and looked our way.
If he’d spotted us, he’d alert the others, it would all end here. We huddled in the train, Becky gnawing her knuckles, Lu watching the door space ready to fly at whatever came through it, me still reeling from what I’d just seen of Mum. I looked down the empty, wooden-boarded compartment as the doors slid shut. A tremor ran through the train, and we were moving.
But the guard had entered the carriage in front. His spider-eyes were peering straight at us through the door, and he wasn’t alone. The door opened and a second guard followed him through.
Their sixteen sharp eyes held us. The weapons morphed restlessly in their hands. Lu spun round to face them, and I moved in front of Becky to shield her from what was about to happen. At the same time, Mr October set off up the carriage, meeting the guards halfway and raising a hand as if preparing to launch another fireball.
The guards tensed, their eyes blinking nervously. Those weapons, whatever they were, looked a match for anything he might throw at them. But Mr October had only reached to tweak the brim of his hat, and the two guards clicked their heels and saluted.
‘Status, please,’ Mr October said.
The one on the left answered first, his watchful spider face flickering, switching rapidly between several sets of features.
‘The four are being held at the centre of the train,’ he said. ‘They’re heavily guarded and there are other hostiles in the carriages either side of theirs.’
‘And what of our teams?’ Mr October said. ‘How many made it aboard?’
The second guard answered, his features scrambling too.
‘Only a handful besides us,’ he said. ‘Others are waiting at Mercy Road, where the last two prisoners are due for collection. If we haven’t recaptured these four by then, they’ll storm the train there – subject to your order, sir.’
It wasn’t until then that I knew I’d met these two before. I hadn’t recognised them with their spider masks, but these blurry ever-changing faces were still fresh in my memory.
Becky tugged at my sleeve. ‘What’s this about, Ben, and who . . . I mean what are those things?’
‘The Shuffleheads,’ I said. ‘Undercover specialists, masters of disguise. Nobody knows their real names.’
Lu sighed and relaxed. They’d fooled her too, though she knew them well enough from the field and the hours she’d spent with them in the truth cellar interrogating Rictus.
‘So far, so good,’ Mr October said. ‘Now take us to the prisoners. We’ll go as prisoners with you as our captors.’
‘Yes, sir,’ they said together.
‘Pardon?’ I said. ‘Are we giving ourselves up?’
‘On the contrary,’ Mr October said. ‘Rather than fight our way through, we’ll join them in peace, but we should do so before the next stop.’
The Shuffleheads nodded, their faces reverting to those of spider-eyed guards. The way those eyes blinked at different times and stared in different directions unsettled me, so I tried not to look too closely.
‘After you,’ they said. ‘Stay in single file.’
We worked our way along the bucking carriage and on through the next, steadying ourselves against the train’s motion with the stirrups that dangled from the ceiling. Black tunnel walls rushed past the windows. The lights stuttered on and off. Behind us, the Shuffleheads’ boots clomped the wooden floor.
‘Mercy Road in two minutes,’ one said.
‘Enemy in the next car,’ said the other. ‘Put your hands on your heads to show you’ve surrendered.’
We did as he said. The occupants of the carriage, seeing us coming, opened the door before we reached it. Twenty or more demons waited inside. Some were armoured guards, suspicious and alert, levelling their weapons. Others were horned and reptilian. Still others, the dog-like beings, had salivating mouths all over their muscly bodies, as many mouths as the guards had eyes.
A weird clicking and rattling came from the guards’ throats. It could have been a cautionary sound, an alert, or joyful noise at the sight of new mere mortal prisoners. Their inexpressive faces made it hard to tell which.
One of the Shuffleheads spoke in a calm, authoritative voice, addressing them in their own language. The guards listened carefully and two replied with what sounded like questions. The Shuffleheads answered curtly, wasting no words.
The guards fell back to let us through but couldn’t resist prodding us with their weapons and suckered hands as we passed. We were curiosities, they hadn’t seen many like us, and they treated us with the same reverence they’d shown towards Mum and the others on the platform. Although they seemed in awe of us, I was worried the demon dogs might bite.
A guard at the end averted all its eyes and obligingly opened the door. In the next two carriages the Shuffleheads again took
charge, demanding the armed guards make way, and again we were allowed to continue.
‘The prisoners are here,’ one Shufflehead whispered as we neared the fifth compartment. The train jerked and the lights went out, turning everything black for an instant, then flickered on again as we trooped inside. Every face in the carriage turned towards us except one.
She sat on the floor with the others, the blanket around her drooping shoulders. Her hair was drab and unwashed and she was shivering and staring vacantly ahead. It would have been better to see fear or confusion – or anything – in her eyes, but there was nothing there at all.
If she heard my voice would she recognise it? If she saw my face would she know me? Tears prickled my eyes as I started towards her. Becky held me back, touching a finger to her lips.
Wait, her look said. Just wait.
The other prisoners had the same docile, beaten-down appearance as Mum. One, a woman in her forties, chattered to herself between gasps and sobs. The other two were children no older than Mitch and Molly Willow. Blue-eyed and red-haired, they held each other and trembled.
If they were defeated and afraid, Mum was an empty shell. She never looked up, never knew I was there, and she didn’t react when Luther Vileheart’s voice cut across the bustling carriage.
‘What have we here?’
Wiping my eyes, I turned towards the voice. At the same time I felt the restraining pressure of Mr October’s hand on my shoulder.
‘A prize catch, unless my eyes deceive me,’ Luther Vileheart said. ‘Imagine the welcome in our homeland tonight when they see the ten living souls we’ve brought for the price of six.’ His piercing eyes found mine. ‘Such prizes too, but did you really have to capitulate so easily, Ben Harvester? Frankly, I expected more of a challenge. Have you lost your nerve, or have you simply lost your will to live, like your mother?’
‘Don’t listen,’ Lu cautioned me. ‘He’s baiting.’
‘I’ll tear him to pieces,’ I said through my teeth.
The Great and Dangerous Page 23