CONTENTS
COVER
DEDICATION
1 RAISING THE DEAD
2 THE TOR
3 A ROYAL AUDIENCE
4 KEEPER OF THE KING’S ARROWS
5 RAIDERS
6 HIDEOUT
7 BACK TO SCHOOL
8 EYES DOWN
9 OLD YORK
10 DEVIL DOGS
11 STOWAWAY
12 DRAGON RISING
13 PARTY TIME
14 KEEP SECRETS
15 GOLD RUSH
16 THE RAVEN BANNER
17 THE NORWEGIAN QUEEN
18 HOLGATROLL
19 THE WHISPERING GALLERY
20 SPLIT LOYALTIES
21 MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT
22 DOWNING STREET RAID
23 RED ROBE REVEALED
24 THE ENEMY WITHIN
25 RAGNAROK
26 BERSERKER BRITAIN
27 UNDER SIEGE
28 BROTHERS IN ARMS
29 THE KINGDOM FALLS
30 EXILE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
COPYRIGHT
Richard would never forget the day he began to hate his brother.
They were eight years old, playing hide-and-seek in the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Alfie had never been very good at hiding; the flowers would set off his hay fever, and all Richard had to do to find him was follow the sound of muffled sneezing. That afternoon their game was interrupted when their father came marching across the neatly trimmed lawn. Richard remembered being surprised. They hadn’t seen much of their dad in the months since he had become king. Dressed in military attire, King Henry had clearly come straight from some formal event. His face was red and flushed in the sun.
“There you are! We’ve been looking everywhere. The King of Saudi Arabia has asked to meet you. Come on, quickly.”
The boys started to follow their father back to the palace, but he put his hand out to stop Richard.
“Not you. Just Alfie.”
Alfie looked at his brother and shrugged, embarrassed. Richard stood there on the lawn and watched as the king took his brother’s hand and led him away. It felt like he had been punched in the stomach and he couldn’t catch his breath. At that moment Richard realized something. No matter what he did, no matter how hard he worked, or what great things he achieved in life, he would always come second in his father’s eyes. Alfie was the heir, and he was the spare. A nobody.
Richard decided to bury his hurt feelings as deep down as he could. He didn’t want people to feel sorry for him. What was the point of that? There was nothing anyone could do about it. So he pretended he was happy to be Alfie’s younger twin, to enjoy the relative freedom it gave him. He excelled in his studies and at every sport he tried. In the eyes of his family and his friends he was the easy-going, carefree one, the winner. Even when their parents divorced and he cried himself to sleep every night for a month, all anyone talked about was how it was affecting Alfie and their little sister, Ellie. No one paid much attention to Richard; he was the mature one, he was strong. Richard would cope.
By the time the brothers were teenagers and attending Harrow School, Richard was becoming aware of how the outside world viewed his family. The days when the royal family was popular, when his much-loved grandmother Queen Grace was still on the throne, were long gone. His father was seen as cold and distant, a bad husband and an out-of-touch monarch. Then there was Alfie and his mishaps: watching the Trooping of the Colour with his flies open, accidentally sneezing in the face of the President of the United States, being photographed in a bin down a dingy alleyway. It was as if Alfie were on a one-man mission to bring down the House of Arundel. Out of loyalty, Richard kept his mouth shut, but it was clear his family had become a laughing stock and there was nothing he could do about it. Or so he thought. That was before he met Professor Lock.
“Window up, please, Your Highness.”
Lock’s commanding voice shook Richard out of his memories. They were in a car, speeding out of London. They’d set off two hours earlier just as it was getting dark, but nightfall had brought little relief from the temperature. A summer heatwave had fallen over Britain like a heavy rug, and it was no time to be cooped up inside an old sports car with broken air-conditioning. Not to mention the one-hundred-and-fifty cheeseburgers piled up in a sack on the back seat. They had visited six different drive-through takeaways to avoid arousing suspicion, but Richard still had no idea who the questionable feast could be for. Between the heat and the meaty stench, the atmosphere was beyond stifling. And then there was the company.
“I can’t breathe in here,” Richard said.
“If you are spotted we will have more to worry about than a bad smell,” hissed Lock. “Window up, if you don’t mind.”
Professor Lock may have sounded like he was being polite, but there was no mistaking his tone of voice. It was an order, not a request. Richard sighed; he couldn’t really argue. It would be hard to explain what Prince Richard, brother of the king and first in line to the throne, was doing driving into the depths of Suffolk at night in a car driven by Professor Cameron Lock, a man officially listed as “missing, presumed dead” after the events of the coronation. Unofficially, the only thing waiting for Lock, should he ever be caught, was a cold cell deep down in the dungeons of the Tower of London.
“Where are we going, anyway?” asked Richard as he wound the window up. “What could possibly be worth slogging all the way out here?”
“You’ll see. Not far now,” replied Lock, turning left at a battered road sign that read: HADLEIGH, 3 MILES.
Richard slumped back into the sticky leather of the seat, frustrated. This wasn’t the way it should be. By now he should be the one on the throne. And he should be the one with the powers that came with it – the Defender of the Realm. Not sneaking around in the dark like a rat. He could feel the anger burning deep inside him again, bubbling up like poison, preparing to unleash that other side of him that lurked in his bones like a disease – the Black Dragon.
The car pulled off the road on to a gravel track and crunched to a halt in front of a weathered sign that read: ST MARY’S.
“Is this it?” asked Richard, peering up at the silhouette of an old church framed against the dark sky.
“Yes. Don’t forget the burgers,” replied Lock, clambering out of the car.
Richard hauled the heavy sack round the church and deep into the overgrown graveyard, where the professor was waiting for him, leaning casually against an old tomb. In a neighbouring field, sheep bleated, unhappy at having their sleep disturbed by the arrival of these outsiders. Lock reached into his jacket and pulled out a curious pair of chunky glasses. He put them on and adjusted the thick, protruding lenses, which clicked as he turned them, and scanned the graveyard.
“Aha, there!”
He pointed and hurried past crumbling headstones towards a large mound in the far corner.
“What is it?” asked Richard, dragging the sack of burgers with him through a tangle of brambles.
“Take a look,” said Lock, handing him the odd glasses.
Richard put them on and saw through the fuzzy lenses that the thick carpet of moss covering the mound in front of them was glowing bright green. He’d never seen anything like it.
“It is called fairy fire,” Lock went on. “Invisible to the naked eye. Very rare. And rather useful. Now, if you don’t mind, we’re going to need our scaly friend…”
“What? You never said anything about me transforming tonight!” Richard protested.
When Lock had told him they were going out for cheeseburgers, he’d expected a quiet chat, not a mission for the Black Dragon. There was nothing easy about changing from a human boy into a huge
monster; the pain was excruciating, like every bone in his body was breaking at the same time. But worse than that, every time he turned into the Black Dragon it felt like another piece of Richard, the human side of him, was being chipped away. When he was the Dragon, his mind was so clouded by rage that it was hard to think straight, like trying to recite your times tables just after you’ve stubbed your toe.
“I can wait all night,” Lock said, hoisting himself up on to an ivy-covered gravestone.
Richard sighed, resigned. He had learned that there was no use in arguing with the professor. He closed his eyes and focused, relaxing his body and allowing the monster to rise inside him. Richard gasped as, with a sudden crack, his legs and arms bulged and reshaped. He fell on to all fours and dug his hands into the soil as black scales erupted across his skin in a sickening ripple. As his clothes fell away in tatters, his tail emerged, flicking back and forth. He let out a high-pitched howl as his jaws elongated and sharp teeth burst through his gums. Finally, a single, leathery wing stretched out behind him. The stump where the other had been severed by the Defender in Westminster Abbey was sealed with a thick scar. His transformation into the Black Dragon was complete. In the field the sheep fell silent, as if sensing the presence of some primal predator.
“Well? What do you want from me?” growled the Black Dragon, scraping the earth impatiently with his heavy claws.
Lock smiled and scooped up a handful of fairy fire from the mound, walking behind the monster. “This will sting a little…”
Lock reached up and rubbed the glowing substance on to the Black Dragon’s scabby wing stump. The beast roared with pain and a jet of fire erupted from his jaws, incinerating a nearby tree. The professor backed off and watched as the Dragon fell to his knees, doubled over in agony. Then, with a sickening snap, a new wing burst from the stump on his back. Breathing easier, the Black Dragon got back to his feet and flapped his new-grown wing, impressed.
“Is this why we came here?” he grumbled.
“No. This is just a bonus. Fairy fire only grows on very particular kinds of burial sites – X marks the spot, as they say,” replied Lock. “Now, dig. Please.”
Blowing smoke from his nostrils, the Black Dragon turned to the mound, fell on to all fours and speared his long claws into the earth. As he dug, black clouds gathered above them with unnatural speed, blotting out the stars. Lightning crackled across the sky and rain hammered the gravestones. Lock, his hair plastered to his head, didn’t seem to notice; he only had eyes for the deep hole that was growing in front of him.
THUD.
The Dragon stopped – he had reached something solid. Gripping with his claws he hauled out something massive from the sodden ground. Huge clods of soil fell away to reveal a long, rotted wooden ship. Its pitted, majestic prow topped with a serpent’s head curled high into the air, the sleek lines of its hull fanning out like the contours of a whale’s throat. A simple timber mast stood in the centre and half a dozen oar-holes dotted each side.
“We came here for a boat?” laughed the Dragon.
“Inside,” sneered Lock.
The Dragon flew up and perched on the side of the longship. Lashed to the deck were ten coffins, caked in mud. They were large, the wood ornately carved, each held in place with several thick leather straps, as if in preparation for a voyage across stormy seas.
“Stand them up,” barked Lock.
The Black Dragon hopped down, sliced the straps with his claws, and tossed the coffins out of the boat one by one, until they all stood upright in the graveyard like chess pieces on a board. His work apparently finished, the Dragon transformed back into Richard. Shivering in the rain, he hurried back to the car and pulled on his spare clothes. By the time he rejoined Lock, the storm was raging even harder, thunder rolling out across the countryside like an artillery barrage. Richard considered the rows of coffins standing before them. “If this is what we came for then we should have brought a van or something.”
Lock smiled. “No need.”
The professor pulled out a small book from his pocket. Its cover was rough and thick like cowhide, but it glowed with a faint golden hue. Shielding it from the rain, he opened it with great care to a stiff, yellowing page covered with strange runes and symbols. He read from the book in a language Richard didn’t recognize.
“Inn mesti hermenn!” Lock cried. “Vaknit ór úendiliga svepnit yðr! Rekjazk!”*
And with that, Lock put the old book away, rapped his knuckles three times on the largest, most intricately decorated coffin and stepped back. Lightning struck the church spire, sending tiles clattering to the ground like giant hailstones. The air was thick with static electricity. Something had changed. Richard was startled to hear a long, rattling groan from inside the coffin. Suddenly the lid exploded, splintering to pieces, and out stepped the biggest man he had ever seen. An immense warrior clad in worm-ridden furs and cracked leather armour, with long red hair and a straggly beard falling from a face that was the bruised colour of a bloated corpse. But a corpse that was very much alive. The brute roared louder than the storm above and swung an axe into the ground, shaking the earth. As one, the other coffins burst open and more undead warriors emerged, shaking the soil from their bodies and grunting and howling like wild animals. There was no mistaking what these were: Vikings.
Lock stepped forward, raised his arms and shouted, “GUTHRUM!”
Was that the leader’s name? wondered Richard. It certainly seemed to get his attention, as the giant Viking turned their way, glowering down through the pouring rain with dead eyes milky with age.
“Hverr þorir at vakna mik?!”* the warrior bellowed at them.
Richard flinched as he was hit by the wretched smell that hung over these things, like a bin bag of old meat and fish that had been left to fester in the sun.
“Jarl Guthrum inn mesti! Fylgit mik enda skal ék færa þér góða gripi ór gull. En í fyrstu, búum til veizlu!”* Lock replied calmly.
Guthrum stared at them for what felt like an eternity before laughing deep and long, exposing a mouth full of rotten teeth and blasting them with breath as fragrant as a blocked drain. But he seemed to like what the professor had said.
“I didn’t know you spoke dead Viking,” whispered Richard.
“It’s called Old Norse,” replied Lock. “This is Guthrum, the famous Viking lord.”
“What’s he doing in Suffolk?”
“He was buried here by the man who defeated him, Alfred the Great. Oh yes, best not mention you’re a relative. Might not go down too well.”
Guthrum’s men stamped their feet and waved their arms. They seemed to be getting impatient for something.
“What did you tell him?” asked Richard.
“I said if he followed me, I could get him great riches. Vikings will do almost anything for gold. Oh, and I said we’d feed them. From what I’ve read, they tend to wake up quite peckish.”
Richard grabbed the sack of burgers and emptied it at the undead Vikings’ feet. They fell on it like a pack of wolves, pushing and snarling at each other to reach the feast. But none argued with Guthrum, Richard noticed, when he took the lion’s share for himself. In seconds there was nothing left. Guthrum barked something at Lock, angry.
“It would seem they’re still hungry,” said Lock, a note of concern creeping into his voice.
Richard was just wondering how fast he could turn into the Black Dragon and fly them out of there, when a high-pitched whine came from the field next to the graveyard. One of Guthrum’s undead warriors had picked up a sheep and was in the process of chewing its head off. Following his lead, the rest of the Vikings bulldozed through the graveyard wall and fell on the poor flock, finally satisfying their hunger.
“That was a stroke of luck,” said Lock, relieved.
Richard winced and looked away as Guthrum plucked a sheep off its feet with one hand and snapped its neck before tucking in.
“Why do we need these … monsters?” he asked.
&nbs
p; “You want your brother’s throne? This is what we need to get it,” replied the professor as lightning forked across the sky. “There’s a storm coming unlike anything this country has ever seen.”
* * *
* “Great warriors! Wake from your endless sleep! Arise!”
* “Who dares to wake me?!”
* “Great Lord Guthrum! Follow me and I will bring you rich plunder in gold. But first, a feast!”
We’re falling too fast!
Clinging to Wyvern’s back, plummeting from a star-filled sky, Alfie and Hayley were both thinking the same thing. It’s not like they hadn’t planned it this way. Reaching the cover of the small tower on the isolated hilltop without being spotted would not be easy, they knew that. Approach too slowly, and someone was bound to see them. Dive too fast, and the Defender’s ghostly horse wouldn’t be able to hit the brakes in time. Alfie wasn’t so worried about himself; his magical armour would save him if they crashed. But Hayley, gripping on to his waist from behind, had no such protection.
Wind knifed into Hayley’s eyes as she lifted her head to check their target. She wished she hadn’t. Stone walls rushed up to meet them, and they seemed to be headed straight on to the top of the tower itself! This was going to hurt. But then, a split second from impact, just as they dropped through the roofless tower and into the shadow of its narrow walls, Wyvern lifted her nose and extended her legs, pinning her passengers flat against her back as she glided into the softest of landings. She shook her wispy mane and whinnied proudly, as if to say, “Don’t know what you were so worried about.”
Hayley laughed with relief, and patted the horse on her flank. “Never doubted you for a second, girl,” she whispered.
Wyvern snorted and reared up, sending Hayley tumbling on to the ground.
Alfie stifled a smirk and thought Spurs, making Wyvern spiral back into his boots. He reached out his hand to Hayley. “We’re lucky she lets you ride her at all. You should feel kind of honoured,” said Alfie, voice muffled beneath his helmet.
“Honoured? Yeah, right,” said Hayley, ignoring Alfie’s hand and brushing the dirt from her jeans as she stood up. “Remind me to get the bus next time.”
Dark Age Page 1