“So far as we know, it already has. We haven’t heard from the rest of the world since I’ve been alive.”
Fol shook his head in irritation. Suddenly, the sardonic humour was gone. “I’m not talking about this puny world. All that sea and land and sky you see in front of your eyes is nothing—nothing—compared to what I’m talking about. I’m talking about everywhere, James. All where, all times, all worlds. Something’s knocked it all wobbly, and it’s all going to come crashing down if we don’t do something to stop it.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Look who’s talking. Who’d believe you if you told them about what you’ve seen already?”
“Alex would believe me.”
Fol sat back in his chair. “I need you, James. You’re special.”
James grunted. “I’ve had people tell me that since I could walk. What’s so special about a bookworm who keeps pigeons for friends?”
“Don’t play dumb. You’re different, and I know you know it. Something that’s been asleep inside you has woken up, something that you can’t explain and can’t control. You know things you shouldn’t.” It must have showed on James’s face because Fol looked pleased. “It’s destiny.”
“Alex told me all about destiny. And I’ve spent my whole life trying to live up to it.”
“I’m not talking about whatever you idiots have been doing, your little mission. I’m talking about real destiny, a real mission. I’m talking about saving the bloody universe, kid.”
James drew a long sigh.
Just another man with an agenda, looking for a pawn. I’m sick of being somebody else’s tool.
“I can’t. I have responsibilities.” He was thinking of Lucian, Agatha, Lincoln and the Creeks back home, all scrabbling to deal with those slimy Malverston wannabes because of him. And Beth, always Beth, drowning in their perverted stares. “I have people who need me.” He would kill every one of them as soon as he got back if they had so much as smelled her hair. He could feel their hot blood on his hands already. “I have business that needs doing.”
Fol was looked at him in a way that made James feel as though he was being read, front to back, every bit of him probed and catalogued. “You’re exactly what I need,” he said quietly. His eyes weren’t glittering anymore. They were as dark and matte as the obsidian rock above their heads. “You’ve already made the first step. Sacrificing the girl … I didn’t think you had it in you. But you did it. Taking the next step will be easier.”
James was on his feet before he had fully computed Fol’s words. Then he was gripping the pallid figure by the collar, at the same time furious and terrified—terrified because he sensed Fol could eviscerate him with a single twitch, but not caring. “What did you say?” he said, his voice shaking.
For the first time, Fol looked unsettled. “The girl. Your little Beth Tarbuck. You gave her up, James, and I have to say I doubted you had it in you—”
“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” James roared, flinging the stool back so hard that it exploded into splinters against the far wall.
Fol’s face fell. “He didn’t tell you,” he muttered. Then he shook his head. “Son of a bitch is cold.”
“Didn’t tell me what?”
Fol’s smile slid slowly from his face. “Destiny catches up with everyone in the end, James. And hers just caught up with her.” He grunted. “The fat mayor’s coming for her head. And it looks like your fearless leader’s been keeping it to himself.”
James dropped Fol’s collar and bounded across the cavern in a few enormous strides. His legs were no longer possessed by the itch, but something altogether more powerful: a primal, basic power deep inside every person that could only be awakened by a certain kind of fear—the fear of losing somebody they couldn’t live without.
“James!” Fol was on his feet. He looked alarmed, the dark marks under his eyes suddenly grey instead of black. “You can’t. I need you. We all need you. The End … it really is just the first hiccough. If you don’t come with me now, we might lose our only chance to put things right. They’re all still out there, James. All those people, all those lives. We can save them, and everyone else.”
James shivered even through all his terror and fury. “They’re still alive?” he uttered, frozen mid-stride. “All of them?”
Fol’s eyes glimmered. James could see he wasn’t a predator at all, not really. He was only a messenger of a much higher power. “Help me,” he said.
For a moment James mouthed, his mind a hive of deafening buzzing. But then Beth’s face emerged from the sludge, and he shook his head. “I can’t,” he gasped, and then he was running back along the tunnel, his breath coming in mindless seething gasps, his fingers clasped into fists.
“James!” Fol cried.
James didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. His hands were bunched into claws, and he was going to use them to tear the heart right out of Alexander Cain’s chest.
CHAPTER 27
The temperature dropped fast as they ascended. At first Norman thought it was the sight of the snowy peak thousands of feet above, but he soon realised it was the icy bite of the coastal winds. The mountain chain that formed the backbone of the county shielded most of it from the elements, creating the permanent blanket of fog that rolled down their slopes off the Atlantic. But Dreymont’s Peak stood in the path of a valley that cut right through to the ocean side.
The mountainside was steep and harsh, carpeted with shining boulders that looked like scorched glass, thrusting up from the deep heather and boggy moorland and puncturing the clouds.
It had taken Norman this long to notice because of the storm of Echoes and muddy thoughts prying into his mind from all directions. Macabre sensations plagued him along with myriad Echoes, each of them stronger and more vivid than the last. Men, women and children from bygone eras passed in their droves, reliving countless snippets of lost happenings. He couldn’t ignore them like before; they were everywhere.
He had thought for a while that he had finally snapped, that he might in fact be lying on the roadside kicking in delirium and foaming at the mouth. But that just didn’t seem right. The sights and sounds were real and visceral, so much so that he couldn’t bring himself to doubt he was in the here and now. And there was also the pain: it was gone.
He hadn’t felt a single twinge since they had crossed into Radden County. Instead he was left with the cold—but he didn’t dare imagine it was the same cold the others felt from the mountainside gale. The surreal bone chill was now so strong it burned his insides.
He couldn’t help but be reminded of the raging cold the elders described when they spoke about the End. All the survivors had felt it.
Am I feeling what they felt all that time ago? Is this place really different, somehow?
Whatever was going on, it wasn’t normal, and the others were blind to it. He was just as alone here as he had been back in Canary Wharf.
I hate this place. I’ve been here five minutes and I hate it, he thought bitterly. Even being free of pain wasn’t worth the crawling feeling in his gut, like he’d eaten a vat of earthworms.
Let’s just get this done and get out of here.
“Wind like this could freeze piss before it hit the ground,” John DeGray shouted above the high whistle, holding his coat tight about him and leaning low on his mount.
Richard was consulting the map Lincoln and Latif had drawn for them, and pointed ahead, farther up the steep slopes.
Norman nodded and waved them on, hiding his face behind the collar of his coat to screen his face from the wind. He hoped their destination wasn’t too far up because the gradient looked as though it only increased closer to the peak, and the horses were already having trouble. He didn’t like the sound of approaching potentially hostile land on foot, especially if the enemy held the high ground. In terms of military tactics, what they were doing was already outrageous enough. They were ragged and worn, each of them travel weary and weak and hungry, uncertain of the terrain. I
f they were attacked, they wouldn’t have a clue where to run. And if the route downhill was cut off with an ambush, then that would be that.
No amount of reconnaissance would make up for their ignorance of this place, even if they had time for that. Their enemy knew this place, and they didn’t. It was go in blind or turn back for home. And they had come too far to stop now.
Robert was still beside him, somehow sitting up straight and alert despite the chill and the fact that they had been riding over twenty straight hours. It had been days since they had stopped properly, a restless and tense night shacked up in a barn on the outskirts of Leeds. Remnant gangs had prowled the night, thrown into turmoil after being decimated by the passing army, looking for blood and self-destruction. They had come close to opening fire several times, and few of them had slept at all.
Robert looked as indefatigable as ever, scanning the moorland below them with his hawk eyes, his jaw working.
Norman waited until the others had passed before leaning over in the saddle. “You see something?”
“No.” His working jaw clicked. “That’s the problem.”
Norman frowned. “Why?”
“They called for help. They’d have made it easy to find them.”
“They said they were pinned down on the mountain. That’s why they’re up here in the first place instead of back by the radio tower.”
“If they were pinned down, we’d see the people pinning them down.”
He turned and continued after the others, leaving Norman to look again with a touch more dread. He followed after, suppressing a shiver.
Just get it done. Get it done and go home.
*
“Wait!”
Lucian threw himself against the side of the cliff and cursed under his breath. His arms trembled, clinging to the dewy crumbling rock, and the bones of his fingers gave way little by little. It was early morning, and they had finally managed to slink away from the camp.
A gust of wind buffeted him and the others as they each pressed themselves flat against the flat rock and, under the cover of moonlight, looked down in search of the voice beneath them.
“What?” he hissed.
A strangled cry, then a grunt. A shadow writhed somewhere below in the darkness, amongst the glint of campfires spread across the moor. Lucian squinted, gritting his teeth as the racket of tumbling pebbles rang out in the night. He picked out one of the men clinging on to a ledge by the fingertips of one hand, the rest of him hanging out into space.
“I’m slipping!” the man hissed.
Lucian spat a mouthful of curses and swung his head up to Max, ten feet above him. Max’s eyes twinkled in the penumbra, inky pits that confirmed Lucian’s own thoughts.
They couldn’t stop. By now they had surely been missed back at the camp, and the cover of darkness wouldn’t last. They had to be on the ridge by morning, when they were betting on the guards being changed.
He locked eyes with each of the others in turn and nodded firmly, so that they would all see it. A blackness slithered in him, something that was a part of him but which he had tempered all the long years he had been part of the mission and lived under Alexander’s rule. He had played house, organised celebrations and sat on committees, and he had been what his friends and family had needed him to be. But that wasn’t what he was, not really.
Inside there was a wildness that not even Alexander and all his books and talk of destiny could temper. Deep down he was all grit and blood and the smell of the earth. And here, right now, hanging hundreds of feet above Radden Moor with a barbaric horde below him and his insane brother high above, he felt something give way—the last mental barrier that had bottled up the real him all this time.
“Climb,” he said.
The others began scrabbling upward once again, and he was left looking down at the lone man flailing in mid-air. For a moment, he picked out a pair of shocked white eyes below him, capped underneath by the blackness of a gaping mouth. But then he had turned and he too was climbing.
Together they hauled themselves higher, armed with scant knives and the one unreliable pistol, a thread of burly, bloodied muscle clinging to the rock face. Only another hundred feet and they would reach the lip of the cliff and they would be a mere dozen yards from the lone tent atop it.
And then? Lucian thought. Just what is it you plan to do when you get up there? You really think you can put a gun to James’s chest and pull the trigger?
He grunted at his own thoughts and kept on climbing, blinking soil from his eyes and ignoring the deep ache in the bones of his fingers and toes. They had to get there first. The night was wearing on, cooling toward a wet glistening morning, and it would be all too easy for the rest of them to slip too.
And don’t go getting ahead of yourself. James’s dog won’t be far away. That tent is going to be guarded.
Despite the slab of granite-hard determination resting on his chest, he felt a quiver of anxiety. Somehow he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that all this was too easy.
They all froze as a single cry rang out from below, accompanied by a shower of falling scree. They remained still in the night air until an almost inaudible thump rose up from far below, then they began climbing once more. None of them spoke.
All the while, the fires of the camp burned on the moorland floor, and the slaves continued forging weapons. Now that they were higher, they could see the campfires in detail. They carpeted the land for as far as the eye could see. Lucian’s heart skipped a beat every time he laid eyes on the vast tracts of conflagrations, like bobbing fireflies. He had no idea that there were so many people out there.
There must have been at least ten thousand people, and they were all fixing to march south. Time was running out.
*
The riders from New Canterbury crested a rise and came to a plateau cut into the mountainside, still some thousand feet from the summit. Norman half expected fanfare. The other half expected a hail of gunfire.
But there was nothing over that ridge but more black sparkling rock, petrified tree stumps, and rivulets of melt water from the higher snowdrifts.
Robert had corralled them into a rigid tactical formation with the marksmen at the front and the fastest riders at the rear. Rifles had been raised, shoulders tensed, foreheads greased with sweat.
Norman had been ready to find the emissaries of their saviours, or death. But to find nothing threw him completely. It felt as though somebody had planted a fist squarely in the seat of his stomach.
“Tell me we haven’t been had,” Richard whined.
“The distress call was broadcast. Somebody sent it,” John said, though hurriedly. He plucked at his sleeve while his bushy eyebrows twitched in spasm. “Are we sure these are the coordinates?”
“Yes, I’m bloody sure!”
“Calm down,” Norman said. “They could still be here.”
“Like arsing hell they could. Those campfires down there can only be one thing. The army is here, Norman. We’ve walked right into the hornets’ nest.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Stop playing, Norman. I haven’t seen a friendly light since we left Leeds—and that place was the terminus of the train to fucking nowhere.” Richard spat at the ground under him and snarled. Norman had never seen him like this. He’d put Richard down as a petal of a man.
It seemed he wasn’t quite like his master. While John looked terrified of all that moved, every windswept leaf, and every shadow thrown down by the passing clouds, Richard looked fit to tear the world a new one.
“We didn’t ride out here into the middle of nowhere just so that we could turn around and go back home empty handed.” Richard was breathing deep, almost hyperventilating. “We didn’t leave everyone back home wide open when those bastards could be coming to kill—”
He caught himself, his lip trembling, and looked away.
The others shifted uncomfortably as Norman urged his mount and cantered forward, milling to and fro as he sc
anned the mountain. But Richard was right. There was only the black rocks and mossy scree. No sign of an encampment, nor any sign that anybody had come this way. Not even a message scrawled in the dust.
It was as though nobody had been up here for centuries.
For all we know, that could be the truth of it. No, it can’t be. It can’t!
He bit his tongue to keep the very same lamentations as Richard’s from spilling out, but he could do nothing to stem the fitful, raging thoughts from shooting through his mind.
We have to find them—find them or die. I can’t go back to those faces, all those staring faces, and tell them we found nothing.
Suddenly, he realised he had been relying on this so much that he had no idea what to do. He had assumed that they would either succeed or die. He hadn’t anticipated that they might have to lope all the way home and stand beside their brothers and sisters and await the coming droves after all.
The thought of that was enough to drive bile into his throat.
I can’t go back to Allie with nothing.
He couldn’t watch the hope fade from her eyes.
“I hate this place,” he muttered.
The others were muttering audibly now, their formation breaking. Cries of frustration and disgust were carried on the wind—the deep, gurgling murmur of unrest from a crowd about to abandon good sense.
John was attempting to talk Richard down, pulling the map toward him and consulting their notes. But his apprentice was inconsolable, and in a sudden surge of rage, Richard tore the map to shreds, throwing it to the wind before John could utter a wail of dismay.
The muttering quietened and turned to sighs that were so much worse than anger, for they were sighs of resignation.
Norman’s heart leaped.
No. I can’t let them go. I have to keep them with me. If they go now, I’ll never get them back.
And that would be so much worse than returning home empty handed—returning unscathed but with half their number scattered and the other half ready to give up.
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