Bloodtide

by Melvin Burgess

  We entered Conor’s land at Swiss Cottage and the crowds just got worse. They were hanging out of windows, bulging out of doors. Even so, we weren’t taking any risks. The old Caterpillar truck is more or less a tank, we were as safe in there as anywhere. We battened down the hatches, pulled on our fireproof shirts and bulletproof vests and settled down to watch the carnival on the video link with outside.

  It was a summery day – hot and smelly in the Caterpillar. We four – Had, Ben, Val and me – we were all cooped up sweating away and breathing each other’s breath. There was just this slitty little window for the driver. We could hardly see out, but what we could see made us jealous of the people outside. All those cheering crowds, yelling and hooting and calling for us. They’d had generations of tyranny and now we were coming. We were peace. They wanted to see us, and here we were hiding away like rabbits from the fox.

  Then, ‘Bugger this,’ said Val. We’d planned on keeping our heads down. It only took one assassin, after all. But seeing it all on TV was perverse. Hel’s teeth, it was us they were shouting for! So we opened up the trap door on top – and the noise that came in! When they saw our heads – Conor’s people looking straight at us in the flesh – it was deafening!

  I’ve never seen anything like it, except at Signy’s send-off. Everyone just went mad. They were cheering and waving and jumping up and down – millions of them, all jammed onto the streets as if they’d been packed in by machine. People were throwing flowers and bits of coloured paper they’d dyed and screwed up into little balls. There was a scruffy little man selling fried potatoes grinning up at us from the roadside. He reached up and offered me a potato, and I took it. I handed it to Val – he was the man, after all – and he bit it in half and everyone cheered louder than ever. King Val eating their potato! What an honour!

  You could see it in their faces. Everything was gonna be all right now. It had to be! It was a celebration. It was glorious! Even Hadrian was grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘Conor can’t go against this crowd. His own people!’ he said.

  And I thought, yeah! Val! My father played for big stakes, the biggest. Not control of this bit or that bit of London. He wanted it all and he wanted it for everyone. The only problem was, he wanted to do it all himself. It was a job of centuries. If he’d lived forever, if Odin wasn’t the God of the Dead, he might have done it.

  There was a thud some way off, then another almost immediately. There was that shudder the air gives when a big shell lands nearby and then it began roaring. Hadrian pulled down the lid to the armoured car with a bang. Val jumped up and clutched the video screen. ‘But what about the crowd?’ he said in a surprised voice. Yeah, what about them? There it was on the little black and white picture. They were being blown to pieces.

  From a military point of view it was the perfect ambush. The street was narrow, our vehicles were all strung out in a thin line with the crowds shoved right up against us, a living trap. Perfect. But was there ever a more perfect treachery than using your own people as cover?

  For a moment we just stood there staring at the little screen. The crowd – Conor’s crowd – was swaying and rushing and splashing like water. When a shell landed they went up in bits. Benny lost it a bit and started trying to open the hatch. ‘I want to see,’ he explained when Had pulled him back down. I knew what he meant – watching all that horror on the screen when it was happening just outside. You wanted to find out if it was really true.

  Outside, a shell landed nearby. The car shuddered. They were getting our range.

  ‘Move it!’ roared Val. Then came this awful few seconds with the driver banging the car backwards and forwards and blasting the horn. He couldn’t bring himself to drive over the living people. Had and Val roared at him together. There was another violent jerk as he gave it gas and brake at the same time. The driver screamed, ‘Go!’ to himself, and we shot off, tearing over the crowd, crushing people like cabbages under us.

  It was a massacre. Our soldiers on foot and the crowds lining the roads went first. You could see them literally sizzling under the gunfire. Then the vehicles went up in flames – BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The crowd fled back from the road, trampling the wounded and the weak down. The dead piled up like barricades of sandbags around them. The others got about ten paces before they were wedged tight against the buildings. They were being massacred twice, once by Conor and once by our vehicles twisting and revving on top of them. They pressed back against the walls to get away from us, and a curtain of space opened up around our vehicles. The streets were spotted with a red pulp.

  Val and Had started screaming orders down the radio phone. Benny was praying to Jesus and Odin. I peered out of the little slitty window. Our vehicles were trying to regroup but the streets were too narrow. All we could really do was run. The foot troops were already gone. If they weren’t dead they were burying themselves in the crowd, but the guns were still going after them. It must have cost fifty civilians for every one of us. All around, the line of vehicles was popping into oily fire one after another. Then we got hit. It wasn’t direct, but the whole car was flung sideways. We were shaken about in it like little bloody peas. When it settled, the driver crawled back to the radio phone wiping the blood off his face.

  He rattled the connection. ‘It’s dead,’ he said.

  ‘So’re we,’ said Had.

  We all looked sideways at Father. He was staring at the video screen; that was dead too. He banged at it with his hand.

  ‘It’s all gone,’ he said wonderingly. He couldn’t understand. I think Val must’ve decided he was immortal or something. I saw Hadrian shrug slightly, not meaning he didn’t care. But it was too late now.

  Then another shell landed near us and we floated up and landed with a huge crash and rolled over. I don’t know what it was made of, that armoured car. It was donkey’s years old, built way back, but it was almost indestructible. It just bounced around a bit and ended up upside down. But inside – well, we weren’t made like that. I was skinned; I had the skin off one side of my face where I’d skidded against the control panel, I was black with bruises down my back and my front, but I never noticed it till much later. I wasn’t the worst. Had was groaning in a heap. Benny was screaming. Val was covered in blood from head to foot, he looked like a demon. The driver was trying to crawl back to the driving seat but I think his leg was broken, or twisted or something. He screamed and fell back to the floor.

  ‘It’s up to Aaron now,’ said Val; that was our general.

  Then a kind of miracle happened. Yet another shell hit the car, yet again we rolled over and banged around in there like lumps of meat in a mincer. But this time the car landed on its tracks. I dragged myself into the driving sea, and would you believe it, the engine roared into life. Three hits, and still working!

  ‘Odin loves us!’ screamed Val. The engine revved, and we were off. That car! It must’ve weighed all of five tonnes, but it skittered up the streets like a little cat. Had was out of it, that last hit had really hurt him. Val and Benny were holding him and the driver, and they were all screaming at me, ‘GO! GO! GO!’ People were running in front of us, diving out of the way. I clenched my teeth and powered through them, over them. Smoke and fire everywhere. Other vehicles fleeing. I couldn’t even see the enemy.

  We were crashing through crushed stalls and deserted bandstands, bouncing over heaps of people. We rushed up the street, turned a corner, turned another. We were disappearing into the houses. We were making it, we were doing it, we were getting out! We could have done it! But then…

  Then I saw him: the man in the broad-brimmed hat. The dead man, Odin. He was standing on the heaped-up dead, watching us drive. I thought, shit! What are you doing here? Come to watch the prisoners tear up the escape plans? But what spooked me was this: the hail of bullets wasn’t bouncing off him; it was blowing through him, ruffling his clothes, stirring his hair. God or robot or cyborg, I thought, this is spectator sport for the likes of you.

  Val said
, ‘Stop the car.’

  I just decided that hadn’t happened. ‘Stop the car!’ yelled Val. He was leaning over my shoulder, staring out of the window. I just ignored him, but he grabbed at the wheel. Had I known – but what could I do? He was my father. I lifted my hands and took my foot off the gas. Val pushed me out of my place and steered us around until we were close to Odin.

  ‘Oh, God, oh, God,’ moaned Ben. Through the carnage, Odin was walking across to meet us.

  ‘It’s my time,’ said Val.

  I thought, your time? Is all this death just so Odin can pick you up? There’s a saying, see – to go to Odin. To die. My father believed that all this was nothing more than Odin arranging the manner of his death.

  We watched him get close, then he disappeared from the screen as he climbed up onto the car. You could hear him crawling on the roof. Then – BANG BANG BANG – he was pounding on the hatch. Val stood there staring upwards.

  ‘It’s some trick of Conor’s,’ I insisted, but even I didn’t believe it. I could feel the knife by my side like a living thing; that was enough to let me know this was nothing to do with Conor. And something else – everything had gone so quiet. You could still hear the shells, but it all sounded distant, like chestnuts popping in a fire, even though we were only a couple of streets away.

  Val lifted his arm up to open the hatch. Ben screeched, ‘No!’

  Even Had, in a mess on the floor, had cottoned on to what was happening. ‘Don’t go, don’t go!’ he groaned.

  Outside a spatter of bullets crackled against the metal of the armoured car.

  ‘We can still get away if…’ I began. But I was interrupted by more pounding – BANG BANG BANG!

  ‘We can never get away from him,’ said Val.

  I pulled at Val’s arm. Ben was tugging desperately at his clothes. Val said, ‘Let go.’ And we did, at once. That was how used we were to obeying him.

  From above came a fury of banging, as if the god was having a tantrum outside. Val stared up at the hatch. ‘I can’t avoid the time of my death, but I can face it in my own manner,’ he said. But I’ve never seen his face look so strange.

  Val leaned up and pushed open the trap door. The sounds came rushing in upon us again – people screaming, guns roaring. It was deafening, we all flinched back. There was no sign of Odin. Val turned to face us one last time and tried to yell above the racket. I missed the first bit.

  ‘… prisoners squabbling in the exercise yard.’

  He put his arms up, ready to pull himself up.

  ‘One of you get away. Even one,’ were his last words to us. He was looking at me, then he glanced down to the knife I wore at my side. I knew what he meant. Odin had chosen me. I thought, yeah, great, and he’s chosen you too.

  Then he hoisted himself up and out. I didn’t see the meeting between Odin and my father. We crowded round the narrow window, but there was no sign of either of the dead men. A shell landed near to us and blasted the trap door shut. I thought I caught a glimpse of someone tall walking away through the smoke and turning the street corner; then the smoke and broken walls hid whatever it was. Another shell landed near us.

  We’d lost our lead, there was no chance of escaping now. Their cars were coming in on us. The only thing was to surrender.

  The radio was broken, so we had to open the hatch and wave a shirt out of the window, but they still hit us with one more shell before they clocked that we were waiting. Then the guns stopped speaking and a voice on a megaphone ordered us out. Ben and me got out on our own with our hands up. Had couldn’t walk. Outside, the only people lay flat on the ground, and there were many of them. I could see Val; he lay face down. Then we saw the soldiers coming through the smoke. I expected them to execute us at once, but they had some gloating to do first.

  As my brother Hadrian once said, if you ain’t clever and you ain’t honest, all you got left is ruthless. Conor had that in plenty.

  That’s the end of this story about Val’s times. As we came down I thought, what about Signy?

  28

  In the morning Conor had already gone. Signy got up and did her exercises in her private gym. She had a shower, dressed and went to go down to the compound but the trap door was shut tight.

  Her heart was going at once, as if it knew what she didn’t. Well, maybe the door was jammed. She banged and shouted. Then she cursed and stamped on it a few times, before going to the internal phone to call someone to come and deal with it. But the phone, of course, was dead.

  Signy understood. A little voice inside her seemed to say, I told you so. She had after all been an accomplice in her own deception, but she was not yet ready to admit it. Her cat, Cherry, brushed against her ankles and batted with her paws at the edges of her dressing gown. Signy scooped her up and held her tightly, swaying from side to side.

  ‘You knew, you knew, didn’t you, darling?’ she said absently. Cherry had always hidden whenever Conor was visiting.

  Signy put the cat down and ran to look outside. There, in the long grass that grew at the edges of the clearing, half obscured by the trees and bushes, she could make out the form of a soldier on guard. She banged on the window, but the man stayed where he was. Signy was about to look again, but then she caught sight of another… then another… then another, arranged in a loose circle around her home.

  Quietly, as if afraid they might see her, Signy moved away from the window and made her way up the tower. Right at the top was another trap door leading out to the roof. Signy pushed it open and climbed through it. She stood up on tiptoes as high as she could and looked south over the city.

  You could see everything that was to be seen from here: the endless buildings falling into disrepair, the high, shattered towers of her father’s lands that had once housed the financial institutions of the world before the gang wars and the half-man wars. But although she could see so far, the trees and buildings prevented her from seeing what was happening on the streets.

  Signy allowed herself to think the impossible. Betrayal? But the deception would be massive! The plans she and Conor had made! The love-making. Could he even fake love? Or had he simply used his love? And what about the people? Had the crowds and the cheering been part of a plot? Had the whole of North London been in on it?

  No, no, it wasn’t possible. If an ambush had been planned surely there would have been cars coming and going, weapons moved about. It would be a battle to end all battles! And she had seen nothing, heard nothing. It just wasn’t possible.

  Reassured by this thought, she began to climb the high wire fence which surrounded the roof, in order to attract the attention of the soldiers. She couldn’t get to the top, as the fence curved inwards, coiled with razor wire. She had asked Conor to have this taken down many times, and he had promised, but somehow nothing had happened. She got up two metres and, clinging to the wire, called to the guards standing half hidden in the woods. They turned at once to look up. One of them raised his gun and pointed it at her. Signy froze. She hung there, waiting, until the man fired – a warning shot above her head, but not terribly far above her head. Signy dropped down to the ground and walked around the roof.

  ‘There’s been a revolt,’ she realised. Of course… that was it. The rival families Conor had told her about so often – the O’Haras, the Sandersons, the old guard. This was their work; she was their prisoner, not Conor’s! And suddenly Signy was overcome with worry and fear for her Conor, who must even now be fighting for his life. Who might even now lie dead!

  There was a noise behind her, coming from the trap door. Signy gasped and caught her breath in fear, but it was only Cherry. The little cat ran to her and she bent to pick her up. Stroking her head, Signy sat down on the roof, and waited. There was nothing else she could do. In an evil way it was a comfort to think that it was not just her who had been betrayed, but Conor as well. Her only hope was that the revolt could be contained. Perhaps her father would help Conor crush it!

  Yes. A revolt. That was the answer. Othe
rwise the deception would be unbearable.

  29

  signy

  The fighting started at mid-day.

  It was only a mile or so away. There was fire and bangs and clouds of black smoke and the stink of petrol and hot metal and… and burned flesh. But I couldn’t see whose.

  I kept thinking, how stupid! Why did the rebels wait until my father and his army was here? Now my people will join with Conor and they’ll have two to fight instead of one. How stupid! I kept looking and listening, as if it was possible to tell from the sound who was firing the shells and who was being hit.

  It didn’t last long, that was one thing. Less than an hour. I climbed up and called out to the guards. What was going on? Who was winning? Who was fighting? All they did was fire over my head, closer this time. I got back down. I wasn’t ready to die. Not yet.

  I waited and waited. No one came. Why wasn’t someone coming? The fighting had stopped hours ago. Surely the rebels hadn’t won, not fighting against both Conor and my father? Val wouldn’t come unarmed! I waited a long, long time, but no one came.

  In the evening the guard changed and I called to these new ones, but they said nothing. The day dulled, then got dark. And… I knew what had happened. It felt like I’d almost done it myself. I knew, I just didn’t let myself tell myself. I couldn’t because it was something I’d had a hand in myself.

  I didn’t do anything yet. I wanted proof.

  It was very late, very dark in the night. I heard cheers and the sound of the big engines. Then I saw the lights, the spots and floodlights, the burning torches flashing in and out of the trees. A procession was winding its way towards the compound. I was jumping up and peering and trying to use my binoculars, but it was all too far away. It took them ages to get to the gates of the compound where I could get a half decent view of them as they came in.