“Gorrn?”
His familiar did not need to be asked. The truth was that he had become rather fond of Whiskers. As Ned’s sidekicks and companions, they had a certain bond. And now Whiskers was not only a robotic ticker in mouse form, and a dog, but also a geriatric minutian scientist, and the latter transformation had not taken place with anyone’s permission.
Gorrn rose up as a mountain of undulating menace and grabbed at the Tinker’s wrists.
“Unhand me, you gelatinous blob!”
“Pup, there’s no need for that!” protested Benissimo, till Ned quietened Gorrn with a raised hand.
“How dare you treat my grand-nephew like that!” said Great-uncle Faisal.
Ned leant in very close, till his nose was almost touching the mouse.
“If I were you, Faisal, I’d button it. Whiskers, are you still in there?”
The little mouse’s eyes blinked and his demeanour changed back to that of a tail-wagging dog-mouse. He nodded to Ned, then sat on his haunches.
“Are you all right, boy?”
The dog-mouse that Ned loved and knew shrugged.
“We’ll get him out of there, Whiskers, when this is all over, I promise.”
Whiskers wagged his tail contentedly and Ned turned on the Tinker.
“Tinks, how long till you and Faisal crack the code?”
“I don’t know. Could take weeks, maybe months.”
The walls of his lab seemed to close in around them as Benissimo roared back.
“We don’t have months! Tinks, get your staff, and get all of them on this. I want that code cracking, and I want to know what that stone is and how it works.” He marched to the door, his moustache in full twitch, adding as a final thought, “I would suggest installing a coffee machine before you start – no one in your team sleeps till I see some results.”
Outside, the larger laboratory was empty, though no doubt it would soon be full. Every available hand in the facility was working round the clock to help house and tend to the Viceroy and his evacuees.
The Tinker had not had the answers he’d hoped for and Ned had never felt darker in his life.
“Well, that didn’t go as I’d hoped,” he sighed.
“He’s right though, pup,” said Benissimo.
“How can you say that?” replied Ned angrily. “I love that little ball of bolts. I mean, I’m not really sure I know what he is any more, but he’s mine, and—”
“No, no, not about Whiskers,” said the Ringmaster. “Faisal – what he said about your powers.”
Ned sighed again. “In Dublin, when the Fey charged, I tried my Engine and it just fizzled. Nearly everyone I care about was on the brink of being torn to shreds and all I could do was just stand there and watch! Even if we do figure out what I’m supposed to do with the stone … what if I can’t actually do it?”
Benissimo put a firm hand on Ned’s shoulder and leant in towards him.
“Well, I would have thought that was obvious. Everyone who stands beside you, and everyone that stands behind them, dies.”
“I think, Bene, that it might be time for some training.”
Mr Bear’s Insurance
r Fox had been dreading the video call since their return from Dublin. The role of the BBB was quite simple really. Their job was to protect the human race at all costs. That’s why, despite himself and the man’s annoying habit of flying by the seat of his pants, Mr Fox liked Benissimo. He didn’t like to admit it, and certainly not to the Ringmaster, but they were very much alike. Benissimo wanted to save the Hidden and Mr Fox wanted to save everyone else.
Mr Bear’s face appeared on the screen, filling it in its entirety.
“Mr Fox.”
“Mr Bear.”
“Spider’s reports do not bode well. Owl and I are anxious.”
It was Mr Spider’s job to report on Mr Fox’s work with the Hidden, and to give up-to-date information on their mission. Since the Viceroy’s arrival, his reports had been incessant.
Mr Bear spooned a great handful of peanuts into his mouth.
“Your ally, this Viceroy with his owls, has been defeated.”
“Partly, yes, sir. But we are doing everything we can to repair what’s left of their fleet.”
“He was to be the hammer, and the ground forces the anvil. If this leader of theirs is so weakened by one attack, what hope does the mission really have?”
“To be fair, sir, it was a surprise attack.”
Mr Bear glowered, and poured another handful of nuts into his mouth. “Fair?! Is war fair?”
Mr Fox knew where the conversation was going and tried his best to suppress a hum. There was no use feeling bad, he supposed. He was still an agent of the BBB, no matter how much he’d warmed to the Hidden.
“No, sir, it is not.”
“And the boy – what about the boy?”
“He’s a brave lad, sir. He’s started training and his father insists that all is in hand.”
“I don’t have time for training, Fox – I need results. And as for this Tinker – apparently the man has lost his mind, inhabiting a small wind-up mouse with the spirit of his great-uncle in the hope he can crack a code for him? And no one knows how this fairy-rock works, is that right?”
“That’s right, sir.”
Mr Bear leant away and spoke to someone off-screen.
“A large number of Chinooks will be on hand throughout the battle. If the boy cannot do what we need him to do, you will leave the blast area with as many agents as you can. I will use the launch codes on your word, or on Mr Spider’s should you fall.”
A cold feeling crept across Mr Fox’s skin. If Benissimo’s plan failed, Mr Bear was going to drop a nuclear warhead on to the Siberian taiga. The man didn’t care how many of the Hidden were killed, no matter how hard they fought or on what side.
“Sir, I …”
But the picture on his screen had already turned black.
Dad
alm down, Ned!”
“Calm down? How can I calm down?!” yelled Ned.
Just a couple of feet away, a nightmonger stood completely frozen in a block of hastily made ice. The ice had been made by Armstrong Senior. The junior of the two had, and not for the first time, come unstuck at the last minute while trying to use his Engine. The nightmonger’s claws had unfortunately found Terry Armstrong’s arm before he was able to entrap the Darkling in ice, but luckily it was only a small wound and he was bleeding only very slightly on to his shirt.
Ned and his dad were standing in an empty hangar that would normally house a pair of Chinook helicopters. For the last twelve hours, it had only housed the Armstrongs and whatever beast his dad could come up with to test his son’s skills.
Ned looked at the encased nightmonger. The Darkling’s eyes were turning this way and that, its face a picture of surprise and menace. It was almost amusing, the way his bitter bloodshot eyes darted back and forth. But only almost.
“It’s looking at us again, Dad. You sure the ice will hold?”
Ned could only watch enviously while his dad blinked, then raised his hand to let the Engine at his finger fire. Around the ice block the air shimmered and turned till a newly formed layer of frost almost doubled its thickness.
“That’ll keep him till George arrives with our lunch.”
Terry Armstrong was many things to many people. On the josser side of the Veil he was a kind, unassuming salesman with a soft spot for charity shop jumpers. Behind the Veil, his actions as a young Engineer had been a thing of legend. To Ned, he was all of those things but first and foremost he was his dad. The scissor-like claw of a nightmonger was famously sharp and irritating to the skin, but you’d never know it from the patient expression on his father’s face.
“Are you OK, Dad?”
“Never better.”
“Liar.”
His dad’s face creased into a smile. It was the same smile he had given him when Ned set the toaster on fire aged seven. The same smile he’d given
him every time he’d opened a school report and his grades were a never-ending C. It was the same smile Ned knew he’d get for the rest of his days, if there were to be any, so long as Ned managed to regain his powers.
“How do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make me feel better.”
“It’s kind of my job. I won’t lie, yesterday’s band of gor-balins gave me a bit of a beating. But your ring almost fired then – it’s only a matter of time now.”
Ned remembered the hopeless puddle he’d made on the floor.
“I’m not going to beat the Darkening King with puddles.”
“No, you’re not, but it’s a start. That wyvern had you going, and I’m sure your wall would have stopped him if—”
“If it had been more than three inches high?”
At the thought of it, Ned began rocking back and forth on his aluminium stool, his eyes two sinkholes of tiredness and worry.
“Son, I know you think the world of her, we all do, but do you still think Lucy’s right?”
Lucy was sure that Ned’s powers would return if people he cared about were in danger. After all, his ring had sparked to save Lucy in the taiga, and again to save George in Amsterdam. Yet here and now, to save his dad – who he loved as much as anyone or anything in the world – nothing seemed to be working.
“I wish I knew, Dad. It worked to save Lucy and George, but I don’t understand why it’s not working now. I teleported into a giant blooming weapon of mass destruction just to get you and Mum out – well, to stop Barbarossa too, but mostly to save you and Mum. But every time you unleash a Darkling and it tries to rip your head off, my Engine just fizzles. Dad, we can’t win a war with fizzling, or puddles, or three-inch walls, and I can’t work the Heart Stone if I can’t use my powers!”
Terry Armstrong gave him that smile again, and again it melted Ned’s heart. “Then we’d better get cracking. Perhaps we need to up the ante a bit …”
He motioned to a bunch of grey-suits at the edge of the hangar. These men had been carefully selected amongst the BBB for their size. They wore specially altered riot gear, thick protective armour, reinforced helmets and each carried long, high-powered Tasers. It was said that their weapons could stop a charging bull elephant. Just as well then, because Terry Armstrong was about to make things noticeably more dangerous.
“Open up the big one.”
One of the agents scratched his helmet and looked to the others.
“The big one? You sure, sir?”
Ned’s dad looked to his son, then back to the agent.
“Not really,” he said, “but after you’ve opened it, I suggest you find yourselves somewhere safe to hide and stay there.”
A bead of sweat was beginning to form on his father’s temple.
“Dad, what’s the big one?”
“Benissimo wouldn’t tell me,” said his dad, “but I do know it’s big.”
“DAD?!”
Terry Armstrong smiled at his son and helped him off his chair.
“Let’s hope Lucy’s right, eh?”
Dinner for Two
s it turned out, Benissimo’s mystery cage housed a twelve-foot fire-breathing cyclops from somewhere in southern Greece. Despite only having one eye, the creature had honed in on Ned and his dad immediately, charging at them with a furious roar, and had nearly incinerated the pair of them. His dad, as ever, had borne the worst of it, succeeding at the very last minute in holding its charge.
Needless to say, Ned’s Amplification-Engine had not fired.
A deflated Ned now sat in his room with Lucy. Scraggs was working round the clock to feed the Viceroy’s wounded and everyone else had to make do with the BBB’s standard-issue dinners. Ned stared at the carrots and peas in front of him. They’d had the life microwaved out of them and he had no idea what kind of meat the lump next to them was, or even if it was meat. Thanks to the Tinker, his mouse and sidekick now lived in the lab, but at least he still had Gorrn. Good old dependable Gorrn, the shadow in Ned’s shadow, always there no matter what.
“You all right, Gorrn?”
A greying ooze rose up to the side of his table, till the two glowing slits for eyes blinked up at him like stars.
“Unt,” said Gorrn and his head shook like a bowl of reluctant jelly.
“He’s been like that all afternoon.”
Lucy smiled. “Oh, Ned, he’s just a bit tense. We all are.”
“He’s tense?”
Gorrn oozed back to a puddle on the floor.
“Dad nearly died, Lucy. We both did. Maybe that’s what we deserve for letting the Darkening King rise in the first place. None of us would be in this mess if it weren’t for our rings.”
“Ned, don’t be ridiculous. You were tricked, and anyway, I helped you get there, remember? No one knew what Barbarossa was planning, not even me, and I’m a Farseer as well as a Medic.”
“It doesn’t matter – I still provided the spark that freed him.”
“Yes, you did, and then you and your dad hurt the beast. No one else could have done that, not me, or Kitty before me, not even the great Benissimo.”
Ned brightened, if only a little.
“Your powers can cause harm, Ned. So can mine,” continued Lucy. “But the Engine was passed down to you to help people, to save innocent …”
Her voice trailed off mid-sentence, and a light sparked in her eyes.
“Lucy, what is it?”
“You’ve got a big heart, Ned Armstrong,” she said, getting up suddenly. “And sometimes big hearts have a way of hanging on to stuff that they shouldn’t, but I’m going to find a way to fix you – just you wait and see.”
And with that, Lucy walked at a pace for the door to his room.
“Hang on a minute, where are you going?”
“I’m searching.”
“For what?”
“For a way!”
A confused Ned looked back down to his plate of microwaved something, then to the floor and the shadowy puddle that was Gorrn.
“I’m not sure I always understand that girl. Oh well, it’s just you and me then, eh, Gorrn.”
“Arr.”
***
Several miles away, and under the cover of a pitch-black night, a Demon and three clowns scaled the cliffs of Dover. Beneath them the chalk-white rock was peppered with sinewy black arms and legs. Gor-balins when climbing in great numbers look very much like an army of ants. The handful of Barbarossa’s ticker flies that had made it into the BBB’s base had discovered a single but brilliant flaw in its defence system. There was little point in using a hammer to break down a door, especially when one had found a key.
Sar-adin looked to the clowns as they made it to the edge of the cliff. Their mission had been made very clear – Barbarossa would not let them fail again, and had sent his finest to ensure their success. The Demon despised nearly everything about them, but for one simple thing: they would do absolutely anything he told them to.
“Mo?”
The largest of the two remaining monstrosities simpered towards him. Dressed all in black for their mission, he looked even more ridiculous than usual.
“Sar-ee-dins? Mo is ears for you, he is.”
“Once we gain access to the compound you are not to leave my side. It must be done in front of me. Fail and you will …”
The clown’s face shuddered. “No speaksie of toasty cloons, no needs to get hot and fiery. We’s good cloons this time, Sar-ee-dins. You’ll sees it all, all the smushin’ and crushin’ of da jossy-boy und his girl.”
Things That Go “Bump” in the Night
hen Ned woke up, it was to his door being almost ripped from the wall in a tear of metal and fibreglass by a furred hulk of terrifying strength, eyes focused and nostrils flared for the doing of harm.
“George?”
“Quickly, old bean, they’re everywhere.”
A second later and Ned was hurtling down the corridor in a T-shirt and pants, his
ferocious protector leading the way like a crazed bulldozer, Gorrn hugging the ceiling behind them. All around Ned could hear more shouting and guns being fired and as they passed by yet another corridor, Ned could see that it was filling with smoke.
“What’s going on, George?!” spat Ned through gasps of air.
“Assassins, hundreds of them. They gained access through an old mineshaft and they’re attacking anything with a pulse fitting your or Lucy’s description.”
As they turned a corner, a gor-balin came tearing towards them, a curved blade in its hands and a face brimming with malice. The creature’s yellow eyes widened at the sight of George, but it continued its charge nonetheless, flecks of spit at its mouth, and muscles bunched for stabbing. George grabbed its arm with a painful snap before throwing it to the wall. There was a loud crunch and the gor-balin lay motionless where it fell.
“Come on, old bean, we’ve minutes before lockdown. After that every corridor will be closed.”
But Ned was still staring at the gor-balin. This was St Albertsburg all over again – nowhere was safe from Barbarossa, not even the Nest! He meant to finish them all before the real battle had even begun, and if George was right, Ned and Lucy were his next target.
George grabbed a dumbstruck Ned by the waist and carried him at a gallop.
“Where are you taking me?!”
“To Lucy and Mr Fox. There’s a safe room just a bit further on – I’ll come for you when the fighting’s done.”
“What about Mum and Dad – where are they?!”
“In the thick of it, with Benissimo.”
“But we have to get them, George!”
“I’ll head straight to them once I know you’re safe.”
Ned’s head filled with images of his mum and dad, surrounded by gor-balin assassins on every side.
“What about the lockdown?! Gorrn, go to them – hurry!”
“Unt!” grunted his familiar from above.
“PLEASE, GORRN!”
There was a reluctant “Arr”, and Gorrn turned the other way, towards the battle. He might not have been the most conversational of familiars, but when it came to fighting and biting there was no one better suited to the task, and Ned prayed that he would reach his parents in time.
Untitled Novel 3 Page 16