A Whisper of Southern Lights

by Tim Lebbon

  Or just after.

  Three

  GABRIEL HID ON THE BANKS of the river overlooking Singapore Island and the bombed causeway connecting it to the mainland. He wore no uniform, which meant that he could be shot as a spy by either side. He carried no weapons; he had learned long before that it would take more than a blade or bullet to kill Temple. His eyepatch was black and studded with three small diamonds—a gift from a lady in Verona back in 1922—and his scar-pocked face resembled the landscape he hid within. He could smell burning and death, hear the sounds of battle from the island, and he knew that his man was over there right now. Jack Sykes, the land had whispered to him in Italy, and he had known instantly that this was the name of Temple’s next intended victim. It was also a man who posed some sort of danger to Temple. And that was why Gabriel had to find him.

  Of course, there was the possibility that he was going mad.

  Three aircraft passed overhead and crossed the strait, disappearing into the cloud of thick, oily smoke hanging above the northern part of the city. Gabriel saw the zeros on their wings and knew that they would be unleashing more death within seconds.

  His empty eye socket ached, and several miles back, a single, bloody tear had slipped from beneath the eyepatch.

  Temple is near, he thought. Maybe this side of the water, but more likely over there. Looking for Sykes among the soldiers still fighting, or perhaps waiting until they’re all taken prisoner. Looking for him to kill him.

  This time, there was no assassination. No money had changed hands; no contract had been set. Temple was doing this for himself, and that, more than anything, meant that Gabriel was closer to defeating him than ever before.

  But he had to be careful. The demon might not know for sure that he was there, but he’d be on his guard, as always. Gabriel would be expected.

  Blazing oil was slicking across the river and heading around the northern coast of Singapore. There were vague shapes here and there in the flames, and occasionally a smaller blast came from one of these shapes. Small-arms fire sounded all around. Mortar rounds fell, artillery thumped, shells whistled, Zeros streaked overhead and the confusion was aggravated by thick smoke rolling across the landscape.

  He heard the screams of the dying and the similar cries of those dealing death.

  Gabriel could move between the lines. After centuries seeking and fighting Temple, he had learned the art of invisibility. Not true invisibility—that was something he had never seen, though he had witnessed many strange things—but rather the talent of not being noticed. He could walk through a packed room in a manner that ensured he would not be remembered. If he used public transport, he sat in the middle of the carriage or bus, not at the front or back. He wore old, nondescript clothes, changing his fashions according to time and place. He was never too clean and manicured nor too scruffy. And most of all, he only let the wisdom gathered through centuries of wandering show through when it was most needed. For a man with one eye and the scarred skin of an old shark, this was a talent indeed.

  Now the lines were drawing closer together with every explosion and death cry. This battle was heading toward its inevitable conclusion, and while this meant that confusion would reign, it also meant that people would be more on their guard than ever. The fighting men on both sides were tired, exhausted and battle worn. He would have to take care.

  He found a small dinghy washed onto the shore, scarred with bullet holes. It seeped only a little water and still carried its oars, so Gabriel decided to take it across to Singapore. He had considered changing into a dead man’s uniform and giving himself up as a prisoner, but that was not the way. For now, he still needed his freedom.

  As he shoved the boat back into the water, an incredible weariness pressed down upon him. He groaned and sank beneath its weight, kneeling in the boat’s shallow puddles and raising his face to the clouds of battle.

  I’m so old, he thought. Please, let me be. But he was still unsure to whom he prayed. God was always there for Gabriel, but He was not someone to reason with. Gabriel had not spoken to Him for a long time.

  He knelt there for a while, feeling the gravity of his years haul him down. He would be under the ground one day, buried and dead and forgotten, and sometimes, he yearned for that death. But his pursuit of Temple overrode all thoughts of rest. It was not merely vengeance, though the memory of his murdered wife and children always filled Gabriel with brutal rage. It was the task he had been given. The man in the woods had chosen Gabriel for some mystical purpose, and Temple was at the end of every one of Gabriel’s thoughts.

  Sometimes, he thought they were visions.

  He shoved the boat away from shore with one of the oars, sat down and started rowing. The noise around him was devastating, yet for a while, he was contained in his own bubble of calm. The rhythm of the oars, the movement of the boat, the shushing sound of water flowing against the wood, all merged into a soporific spell that lulled Gabriel into peace. He stretched and pulled, and his eyes drooped as the boat made its way toward Singapore.

  He said so little but told me so much, he thought, remembering the man with the snake in his eye. Appeared to me while my family was being killed, disappeared when I returned from finding their bodies. “Feed your hate,” he told me. And I’ve done that. For centuries, I’ve done that, and every time I meet Temple, it’s a feast. I’ve tasted that demon’s blood, and he tastes of human. I’ve seen his body rent by wounds, but like the carvings in those trees, his wounds seem able to control themselves.

  He rowed, guns spat, bombs fell.

  And now something else talks to me. The world is tearing itself apart, and the land tells me a name, and a place, and a reason I have to find this man.

  Gabriel had always felt used. In every dark corner he saw the man with the snake in his eye, some perverted grinning monk, a twisted holy man grimacing with mirth while Gabriel suffered not only his own extended life but the memory of the lives of his family cut so short.

  His little girl’s eyes had been pecked out by a crow.

  “Leave me alone,” Gabriel said. Something splashed in the water nearby and exploded, sending a mass of water and steam rising high above the dinghy. Gabriel bent forward and covered his head, but the water fell away from him, raising several large waves that almost spilled him into the water.

  He continued rowing. It would take some time. And while he took this moment out of the battle, so it roared around him.

  By the time Gabriel reached Singapore, the sounds of fighting were receding. And the pain from the wounds given by Temple down the years was increasing. His eye had bled again, and his chest and ribs were aching as though fires were blazing in his bones.

  Gabriel was used to the pain. He shut it out because he knew it would go away. It could not hurt him. It was a memory, not something new, and there were only certain memories that could really hurt.

  He tied the boat to a small jetty and climbed out. The area seemed very quiet, and that put him on edge. From the east and south he heard small-arms fire and artillery, but around here, the battle seemed to have fallen silent. Or perhaps it had simply moved on.

  He approached the first of the buildings and peered through a shattered window. A dozen eyes stared back at him, terrified and pleading. “Don’t worry,” he said, but they were Chinese and did not know his words. He smiled, but that did not work either.

  So, he walked on and did not look inside any more buildings. He passed by hundreds of abandoned bicycles and a few bodies, mostly British military. A dog was chewing at one of them, and Gabriel kicked it away. The hound growled and crouched, hackles rising, but Gabriel’s stare sent it scampering away.

  He looked down at the dead soldier. His hands were tied behind his back, and he’d been stabbed repeatedly in the chest and throat. The next body bore the same signs of savagery, but around the corner he found what he was looking for. The corner of a building had been blasted out by an explosion, and among several dead soldiers lay their weapons.r />
  Gabriel did not like guns. He’d used them many times, but they always led to bad things. He’d shot Temple more than once. It never worked, but there was more than Temple to be cautious about here. There was Hell on Earth, and Gabriel knew that even he could easily disappear into the conflagration of war.

  What, then, of Temple? Would the man with the snake in his eye simply find another victim to put on that demon’s trail? It was a quandary he had mused over many times before, but one that had no satisfactory answer. The more time passed, the more he believed that this was not simply a feud between two immortal men. It was important. Their fight was a part of history, and its outcome could well change the world.

  He picked up a Lee-Enfield rifle, rooted around in a dead man’s belt for some spare rounds and carried on.

  With every step Gabriel took, the noise of battle seemed to be decreasing. Zeros still winged overhead, but they were no longer bombing and strafing. Artillery sounded in the distance and shells fell a mile or two away, but so irregularly now that Gabriel could distinguish each launch and explosion. He heard the crack of a rifle and then shouting and stamping feet as someone ran. Several voices called out in Japanese, and a machine gun coughed. The running feet stopped.

  Gabriel slipped into an open door, glanced around the ransacked hardware shop and sat in the corner. Capitulation. He had known it would come, but not so soon. He’d hoped that he would be able to find Jack Sykes while he was still a fighting man.

  He blinked and blood dripped once again from beneath his eye-patch. “Damn you, Temple,” he said, and he could imagine the demon’s grin, his face flexed and stretched into the image of a victor.

  “So, how do I find one man in thousands?” he whispered. The shadows in the shop did not respond, and for that, he was grateful. He smoothed the wood of the rifle and made sure it was loaded. He was still dressed like a spy.

  He stayed there for a while, listening to the sounds of war becoming more and more intermittent. People shouted, buildings burned and collapsed, and once he heard a dozen people calling excitedly in Chinese before a hail of gunfire silenced them.

  And after the victory, the slaughter. He’d been in many wars and was coming to know the pattern. The victors rarely sat back and enjoyed the end of their campaign, because there was still hatred to vent, and revenge, and the freedom of action that the insanity of war inspired. The thousands dead from the fighting would be joined by thousands more from the surrender, and it would be years or decades before these stories were told.

  Gabriel felt distaste at the degradations of humanity, and also at himself for no longer caring. He supposed that, in a way, he was way past human. “You just carry on,” he said. “Fight your fight, kill your prisoners. But don’t kill mine. Because Jack Sykes knows something I need to hear.”

  Gabriel stood, shouldered the rifle and walked out into the street. There was one thing he had to find, and then he would be closer to Jack Sykes. He walked for several minutes, searching in bombed trucks and shattered buildings, avoiding a Japanese patrol by standing still in a shadowed doorway. And he eventually found what he wanted on a man lying dead on top of a stone wall. He seemed to have no visible injuries other than a heavy bruise to the temple. Gabriel rolled him behind the wall and undressed. Dead man’s clothes.

  Four

  IN THE END, it was all over even before we reached Singapore. Word came through that we’d surrendered, and an hour later, a cocky little Jap bastard marched down the road, flanked by half a dozen soldiers on both sides. He was carrying a sword. He started shouting, and Sergeant Snelling walked forward warily to meet him. There was an exchange of words, Sarge nodded, and he turned his back on the Jap before saying his final word. I liked that.

  “We’re to march to Singapore,” he said. “Leave all our weapons here. The causeway is fixed and we’re to cross it, and on the other side, there’ll be transport.”

  “Transport where, Sarge?” I asked.

  “To wherever they want to take us.”

  “Fuck this!” someone said. The voice was accompanied by the metallic exclamation of a Bren being cocked.

  “Don’t be so stupid!” Snelling hissed. “You bring down three of them and we’ll be slaughtered. You ever think this was going to be an even fight, laddie?”

  “You want to give in?” the voice asked.

  “Don’t talk down to me, you little shit, or once we’re in whatever place they’re sending us, I’ll come down on you like God with a hangover.”

  I heard no response, but the offending soldier had obviously seen sense.

  Sergeant Snelling walked along the road, telling everyone else the same thing.

  We’re giving in, I thought. Davey died for nothing.

  Or maybe not. Maybe the paper buried with Mad Meloy was worth something more than this.

  I shook my head. Weird. Battle shock. I smiled as I dropped my gun and put my hands up, and it would be the last time I smiled for a long, long time.

  They made us line up our seriously injured by the roadside. There were fifteen of them, with wounds ranging from bullets in the leg to major head traumas. Some were conscious, some were not.

  We thought they were being prepared for transport to a hospital.

  Then a hundred Japs emerged from the jungle and walked along the road toward us. They bundled us into three large groups and started us walking, and we all looked back when the first cry came.

  They bayoneted all fifteen of them, one after the other. By the time they reached the last one—a guy from Wales whose name I’d forgotten—he was crying for his mother.

  As I walked, I began to wonder what that piece of paper buried with Mad Meloy might say. Davey reckoned it could change the world. Said he’d seen someone in the jungle with a snake in his eye, and then the jungle had spoken to him and told him truths. Maybe if I really put my mind to it, I could remember where Meloy was buried.

  We marched. There were two hundred of us to begin with, generally fit and able-bodied, but the closer we drew to Singapore, the larger our group became. We passed by more injured who had been massacred by the roadside, many of them lying on stretchers and wearing bandages bloodied by their fresh wounds. I could feel anger simmering all along this long road to defeat, but now was not the time.

  I glanced around now and then, sizing up the force guarding us. There were too many, and they all carried their rifles and submachine guns at the ready. They had also proved very quickly that they were not afraid of using their bayonets.

  Sergeant Snelling came alongside me and we walked silently for a while. When we were on the approach to the waterway separating Singapore from the mainland, the Japanese seemed content to allow us a bit of chatter.

  “I never thought it would be this bad,” I said.

  “Surrendering?” Snelling asked.

  I shook my head, nodded at the guards. “Them.”

  “It won’t be like this everywhere,” he said. “It’s anger. We’ve killed lots of them, and they’re getting their revenge.”

  “You really think that?” I asked. “They were slaughtering our injured. Where’s the revenge in that?”

  Snelling looked at me for a long time, his eyes boring into mine as though he could find the answer in me. It made me uncomfortable. I wanted to look away but did not, and when he finally answered, I realised he had been searching deep for some scrap of hope that could explain what was happening to us, and what would happen to us in the future. “Jack,” he said, “I just don’t know.”

  We walked into the city.

  Singapore was devastated. Bodies of all nationalities lay everywhere, soldiers and civilians alike, bloated and stinking and buzzing with flies. Hundreds of bicycles lay scattered across the road, and here and there, the owners were tangled with them, metal and flesh fused by heat. Many of the city’s surviving inhabitants lined the streets and jeered. I didn’t understand.

  The closer we came to Changi Prison, the more frequently the guards picked a few pri
soners and took them to one side. At first I thought they were singling out people to kill, but when I was jabbed in the shoulder and pulled out of line, I learned the truth. They snatched my watch, made me pull off my wedding ring and took my last pack of cigarettes. Then they shoved me back into the endless flow of prisoners with the point of a bayonet.

  I tried to find Sergeant Snelling or my other mates, but it was hopeless.

  As we rounded a corner, I saw something that made me pause. Thirty steps ahead marched a tall, broad-shouldered Brit. His hair was sparse and blond, his face burnt by the sun. He was wearing a Japanese uniform at least three sizes too small. He was looking around, stepping this way and that, chatting to a soldier, then moving on to another. He was almost dancing.

  Looking for someone, I thought. I wonder why he hasn’t been shot? Perhaps I know who he’s after.

  He shifted left, pausing next to a man I instantly recognised as Sergeant Major Snelling. He asked his questions, Snelling shook his head, and the man moved on.

  As Changi Jail appeared in the distance, the man changed. It happened in the blink of an eye, and I blinked again to confuse myself more. He was no longer a tall, balding Brit but a shorter, squat Japanese soldier. His uniform now fit him perfectly.

  He left the column of prisoners and strode confidently away between a gaggle of Japanese guards.

  “What the fuck—”

  “What was that?”

  “Did you see—”

  The commotion spread like ripples in a pond and then calmed just as quickly as guards stepped in, threatening us with their bayonets. But the uncertainty was still there, and the nervousness.

  I could not speak.

  He’d changed.

  As we saw the concrete tower of Changi Prison and a mast bearing the Japanese flag, I managed to sidle up beside Snelling.

  “Sergeant Major,” I said.

  He looked at me, frowning.