Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Novels from Top Fantasy and Science Fiction Authors

by Gwynn White

  “No.” Oswald hadn’t even bothered to get in touch to gloat.

  “Nor have I been allowed any contact with my father. But his loyal varlets have smuggled messages to us. His orders are specific. He will have revenge for my brother Philip’s death, regardless of what cost the traitor may exact from himself.” Kim spoke in a monotone, disguising whatever he himself felt about the death of his brother, which had made him the heir of House Lancashire. “The fact is, Father has a particular grudge against the traitor. He used to belong to us, you see.”

  “Yes, he was born on one of your farms, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s right. A shoeless boy with no last name. Our people noticed his intelligence and tested him for savantry. He isn’t quite up to savant level, but he was still considered worth schooling. We’d have found him a job as a computer; plenty of demand for those. But he spurned our generosity. Ran away, got an asset-stripper to remove his brand, and found a sympathetic Crown Army recruiter.”

  Kim trod on a delicate seashell, crushing it.

  “Under the law he still belongs to us. And my father would have him back. At his pleasure.”

  Kim’s manner was enigmatic. A few years older than Guy, he had never been much of a tourney knight, rather one who preferred to sit on the sidelines and bet. Guy wished he could read him better.

  But he did feel sure of one thing: Kim would do whatever his father—currently imprisoned in London—told him to.

  “What are Lord Lancashire’s wishes?”

  “He has instructed me to place our regiment, the Harvesters, under your command. He has great faith in your abilities.”

  Guy did not. But he blustered, “I’ll wipe House Wessex from the face of the earth if that is what it takes to get my brother back.”

  “Two regiments. It isn’t much, to wipe a Great House from the face of the earth.”

  Was Kim laughing at him? “It’s enough, as long as the Crown Army remains in its barracks.”

  The Crown Army—numerically equal to all the provincial regiments put together, if militarily inferior—had not come out for Oswald Day. It had not done anything. With the Ministry of Defense in disarray, the troops remained in their barracks around the country. The regional commanders would be watching and waiting for some indication of which way to jump. If and when they did jump, it would be over: that side would have won.

  “We’ll have to move fast,” Guy muttered.

  “My father concurs with that sentiment. Two of our infantry battalions, with three companies of armored cavalry, will advance south from Lancashire. You would attack through Wales. Between us we would trap Day in the capital. Surprise, of course, would be the key to victory.”

  “How do you move two regiments in secret?” Guy pondered aloud.

  “Regarding that, my father had some tactical suggestions…”

  34

  Val

  Earlier That Day. Lough Inagh, County Galway

  The radio crackled, foul weather sweeping over Lough Inagh. Val adjusted the aerial. He and Connelly were huddling over the little battery-powered set in the hayloft of Marigh Healy’s byre, the only place on the farm you could get a signal.

  Having heard the news, he wished he hadn’t.

  The king was dead. The new regent was urging everyone to keep calm and carry on. The peers of the realm were competing to deliver statements as bland as water.

  “I know one thing,” Val said. “They’re covering something up.”

  “You think?” Connelly drank from a mug of cold tea and belched. “Well, I know one thing, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re fucked.” Connelly cackled. He ripped the cellophane off a new pack of Gold Cut. “Fag?”

  “Where’d you get those? I thought you were out.”

  “I went into Oughterard this morning, before any of the nutters were awake. I had to make a phone call. D’you want to know what it was about?”

  Val wanted to get drunk and pretend that none of this was happening. “Later. I’d better go talk to them.” He swung his legs over the side of the loft to the ladder. At the bottom, he tripped and swore.

  “Step on a goat?”

  “A gas canister.”

  “Are they suicidal, making explosives in here?”

  “They used to do it in the old church.”

  “Why move the operation down here?”

  “The church blew up.”

  Val picked his way through the clutter. Two huge, malevolent orange eyes watched from the gloom behind a pair of barrels standing on concrete blocks. The barrels would’ve been filled with nitrate fertilizer and water and heated, a laborious process resulting in quantities of the low explosive known as ‘giant.’ But the smell of ammonia was faint. It had been a while since anyone manufactured giant here. Alyx’s gang hadn’t really done anything in years. They just died and came back to life, again and again and again. He believed it now.

  Rain was pouring down, the farmyard one big puddle. In the farmhouse there was a fire going, but Marigh Healy’s gigantic, bad-tempered black dog lay on the hearth, hogging the warmth. Ragherty sat nearby, working on some bit of DIY. Val left Connelly searching for food and went upstairs.

  The rest of them were all up here. The upper room was more like an attic than an upper storey, with tiny windows flush to the floor. The steeply pitched ceiling forced them to bend their heads as if in prayer. They looked like nervous family members in a hospital ward. In Marigh Healy’s bed lay a small boy of eight or nine, his blond braid trailing across the pillow.

  “Hsh!” Alyx whispered. “He’s not awake yet.”

  “That’s probably a good thing,” Val said.

  “Do you think he’s all right? Not sick or anything?”

  Val gazed down at the boy. “I think he’s had the fright of his life, followed by a three-hundred-mile flight in the cold. And if he wakes up to see all of your ugly faces gurning at him, he’ll probably die of terror.”

  Stifled chuckles, but no one moved.

  “Ah well,” Val said tiredly. “If he is sick, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “How d’you mean?” Marigh snapped. “I’ve William’s right hand here, have I not? He’s a great saint!”

  Val shook his head. “The child’s got bruises and scrapes on him. Old ones. A highborn child doesn’t bear any sign of injury longer than it takes to whisk him into the chapel. He’s an incurable.”

  “Ah, fuck,” Conn said.

  That just about summed it up, but Val could not help adding, “So you’d better be careful with him, had you not?”

  “I’ll treat him like my own son,” smirked Black Donnchla Morgan, who had kidnapped the boy. “It’s our fortune that’s lying here, after all.”

  “Yes, you’d sell your own son for cash if you had one, I’ve no doubt.”

  Donnchla scowled and his fists twitched, but he made no move towards Val. Val was the better magician, and both of them knew it. “We don’t need BASI’s millions now,” Donnchla spat.

  “You’ll never be able to ransom him,” Val said flatly.

  “He’s a puny wee thing for a lordling,” Conn said.

  “Away. He’s sweet,” Alyx said. “Look at his lovely long blond hair. He looks like he could be my little brother. You find some clothes for him for when he wakes up. He’s only got his pyjamas.”

  She had taken for herself the sheepskin smock the boy had been wearing, which was of a quality better than you ever saw in the shops, handstitched and soft as kid.

  “If he doesn’t wake up soon, call me,” Val said to Marigh, who sat on a box by the bed, stroking the end of the little boy’s braid.

  They trooped down to the kitchen.

  Ragherty held up the object he’d been working on. A toy sword, one of those flimsy things with LEDs in the hilt. “I’ve mended it for him. It was only the wiring in the battery compartment.”

  “Have we any batteries?” Alyx said.

  “In the radio,” R
agherty said. “I’m not sure they’ll fit, though. This battery compartment’s a funny size.”

  Donnchla stared daggers at Val, daring him to say something. Val was in a shite enough mood at this point that he did. “That’s not the Worldcracker.”

  “It is,” Morgan said, the flat assertion disconcerting somehow.

  “It’s a toy.” Val turned to Alyx. “I know the man that put Donnchla up to this, and he’s not to be trusted. Colin Argent. I’ve had enough drinks off him in Belfast. He’s a journo, one of your intellectual sympathizers. He doesn’t know shite.”

  “Get the batteries out of the radio, Jed,” Alyx said to Ragherty, her lower lip jutting.

  Val had breakfast: white bread blackened over the fire and smeared with margarine. They would run out of food today unless someone went into Oughterard. Of course Connelly hadn’t thought to pick up any groceries on his phone run. Not even a newspaper …

  Val was staring out at the rain, thinking that Connelly probably had bought some booze, because the BASI agent was as keen on the drink as Val himself, but he’d be hiding it; wonder where … when Connelly himself fastened his fingers into Val’s arm. “Come outside.”

  “It’s pissing down.”

  “It’s stopping. Come on.”

  Outside, it was still raining, but a patch of blue sky had appeared over Ben Corr.

  Connelly was in a pet, eyes rolling, red-rimmed. “I’m getting out of here today. Are you with me?”

  “You bought some booze in the town. I can smell it on you. Did your mother never teach you to share?”

  “You can come or not, as you like. That phone call I made this morning, it was to BASI. They’re coming to pick us up. We’ve to be in Belfast on the thirtieth. There’s a canal, d’you know the place? Near the old power station?”

  “Alyx hasn’t made her decision yet. We can’t go anywhere.”

  “Fuck her. We’ll take the kid. He’s the Lord Protector of Ireland, the Countess of Dublin’s son and heir.” Connelly’s small eyes burned with hope. Val realized that Connelly saw his salvation in the little boy. He hoped that turning him over to BASI would compensate for the failure of their mission. He might be right at that. A noble hostage (they wouldn’t use that word, of course) would give BASI leverage over the unstable political situation in Great Britain. It would do nothing to endear Val to Stephane Flambeault, of course.

  “We can’t leave the poor wee bastard here with this gang of nutters,” Connelly said.

  “And how will we get away from here without being caught?”

  “They’ve only that old van. Our car’s faster. I filled her up this morning.”

  “They’ve got that.” Val nodded at the byre, meaning the thing inside, Black Donnchla’s pet.

  “It’ll be for the best,” Connelly said, as if Val had already agreed to his plan. “It’s unnatural. It’s not right.” He was talking about Alyx’s secret. “I’ll tell you what’s needed: a bomb dropped on top of this place. That’d do it. I’d like to see her get up with a smile on her face when she’s been bloody well vaporized.”

  Morally speaking, Connelly was right, Val reflected. Practically speaking? Would a bomb do the trick where bullets had not? He had no idea.

  Donnchla’s wyvern waddled out of the byre. Val could not imagine where the black magician had found it. Wyverns were fey. They were supposed to have been extinct for half a millennium. This one was the length of a small dragon but much more heavyset, with two sets of folded wings making it look even more rotund. A ruff of loose skin hung around its neck like a bulldog’s jowls. Its hide was dark green, mottled. Its orange eyes glowed with an unpleasant intelligence. Val and Connelly held themselves very still.

  The wyvern yawned at them, giving a distinct impression of laughing at their timorousness. It spread its strange doubled wings and leapt into the air. Aloft, it suddenly became graceful, a silhouette out of a medieval tapestry. It skimmed the roof of the farmhouse and flapped over the crest of the hill, staying low.

  Alyx came out of the farmhouse with Randolph Sauvage trailing behind her, rubbing his eyes. He wore a man’s pullover and a pair of jeans that must have belonged to Ferdy, the smallest of the lads, but still had to be rolled up at the ankles. “It’s mine,” he whinged, his aristocratic accent clear as glass even in those two syllables.

  “But it’s really mine, you see,” Alyx said. “I’m the true heir to the throne of Great Britain. That means it’s mine to wield.” She held the toy sword. It still looked like plastic. “Is it working? I can’t see if the wee lights are on.”

  “That battery’s not the right size,” Ragherty said, coming out behind them. “It wants a non-standard make. Maybe foreign.”

  Marigh came out. She singsonged, “The Worldcracker doesn’t need a battery to work, if it’s the true king wielding it. Or true queen, of course.”

  “Try it out,” Black Donnchla urged Alyx, his voice thick with anticipation.

  “Do you want to be my pell? No, then Gerry, come here. Stand still.”

  Alyx hit Gerry with the toy sword. It bounced off his chest. He grinned dopily.

  “It doesn’t work!”

  She hit Gerry again. This time, trying to please, he staggered back dramatically, slipped in the mud, and fell on his arse.

  “You’re wrong,” Alyx said, turning on Donnchla. “It’s not the Worldcracker, is it?”

  “It is,” Donnchla said stubbornly. “But maybe it takes a different battery.”

  She stabbed him in the solar plexus. “Is that what you think?” Donnchla stepped back with a grunt. Alyx pressed him against the farmhouse wall, beating him about the head and shoulders until he raised his arms to defend himself. Val smirked at the sight. “You heard what she said! It doesn’t matter about the battery! It doesn’t work!”

  Val theatrically gazed up at the sky. The weather was clearing up, the clouds lifting and breaking apart.

  “Cut anything, will it? Go through armies like a scythe through ripe wheat, will it?” The aluminum blade harmlessly whacked Donnchla’s upraised arms. “Sharp—as a—fucking—butter knife!”

  The others were laughing, Ragherty wiping tears from his eyes. Alyx’s face turned dull red.

  A man ran along the path that ran around the foot of the hill. Val shaded his eyes. It was Liam, who’d been on sentry go down at the church.

  “What is it, Liam?” he shouted.

  Liam pounded into the yard and gasped, “Someone’s coming.”

  Alyx flung the sword down in the mud. Randolph Sauvage darted forward, picked it up, and cradled it.

  35

  Ran

  Ten Minutes Later

  Ran lay under a gorse bush beside his kidnapper, who was called Donnchla. The sun had come out. Clouds like white airships glided overhead, seemingly close enough to touch. The east of Ireland was all tucks and folds; you could never see very far for the high hedges and copses. Here it was so open that the very air seemed to flow more easily into Ran’s lungs.

  So he was a hostage. He had read about this happening to highborn boys and girls. Usually, in books, the heroes were kidnapped by noble villains, not by terrorists. But this, he thought, was more fun than getting locked up in someone’s musty old castle. Anyway, he would be ransomed soon. He might as well enjoy it until then.

  He had the Worldcracker back, securely jammed through the twine belt that held up his borrowed jeans. And Donnchla was being nice now. He had said, You come with me, lad, you’re old enough to start learning what you need to know.

  Through the roots of the gorse bush they could see down the hill to the lakeshore road. The visitors had parked their car just below the village. They were talking to Alyx and some of the other men from the cottage.

  Donnchla muttered to himself, tying bits of discolored string around the branches of the gorse. He broke off to say, “That’s Big Ted O’Leary. The tall one with the head like a newel post.”

  “Who’s Big Ted O’Leary?”

  “
Only the head of counter-intelligence. One of the fellows that runs Army Command. And look at that, look who he’s brought. The wee fat one, that’s the Shackler. That’s a man you don’t want to meet on a dark night.”

  Donnchla had tattoos on his wrists. MUM, one said, in a heart, and Our Lady of Belfast, said the other.

  “Army Command interrogated all of us after Slieve Gullion. ‘How did you get away? There was half of the ROCK after youse, how did you slip through their fingers?’ Sure it was a foggy old night, sir.” Donnchla snorted. “But that didn’t satisfy them. Last week they summoned Alyx to meet them again in Belfast. Alone. If she had gone to that meeting she’d not have come back.”

  “Is that why you’re hiding?”

  Donnchla chuckled. “You’re not as dim as you look, my wee lordling. Unfortunately, we’re not the only ones who know about this place. Marigh’s been a supporter for decades. She was the only friend William had left in the end.”

  “But why are they upset with Alyx?”

  Donnchla crawled to the next clump of bushes. Ran followed him. When they got there, Donnchla said, “The movement’s split. On the one hand you’ve got the politicals. They broke with Diarmait MacConn, joined the Irish Knights Conference, took knighthoods from Niall Sauvage, sold their country out for gelt basically, are you following me? Then on the other hand you’ve got Alyx. The politicals use her to frighten the king’s boys, but they hate her, because she’ll never sell out to anyone. Because she is the true queen of Great Britain and Ireland.”

  But she couldn’t wield the Worldcracker. Ran was wise enough not to say it out loud.

  Down on the road, the visitors tightened into a circle around Alyx and her friends. Ran could hear angry raised voices.

  “Are—are they going to hurt Alyx?”

  “Not if I have anything to do with it,” Donnchla said. “Look over there and you’ll see what a real magician can do, not an IMF stooge like yer man Sullivan.”