‘They’re too strong,’ he said. ‘She was barely troubled by me.’
‘Just keeping track of you is drawing on her energy,’ Harriet said. ‘And don’t worry. Remember the plan.’
Madame Latitude had already explained Malcolm’s tactic to them. Malcolm would defeat a guard early on and so would be able to retire from the competition. The other four members of his team, without Malcolm to help them, would struggle to beat a guard by themselves. That meant the chances of people going through from Harriet and Stefan’s team going through were much higher.
‘But, won’t it look strange, like we planned it?’ Stefan whispered.
‘No, it’s exactly what you would expect of Malcolm,’ Harriet replied. ‘To think only of himself and leave the others stranded. And everybody knows I owe you my place in the final.’
‘Only one problem then,’ Stefan said.
‘What’s that?’
Stefan nodded to the combat zone, where the two guards were toying with their opponents. Their speed, agility and anticipation were more than just magic. What they had was training.
Harriet’s face set grimly and her eyes narrowed. She was next up. ‘I’m not saying it’ll be easy,’ she said. ‘Look up there, though. Seems we’re generating quite a bit of interest.’
Stefan followed Harriet’s gaze to the Academy wall, where the strangest collection of birds had landed, each watching the events below with keen interest. Seagulls beside finches, sparrows alongside tui, nocturnal ruru perched in broad daylight, even a pukeko silently witnessing every blow. The animal kingdom, which had long ago decided not to interfere in human matters, had come to watch their shared fate unfold.
Malcolm and Harriet reached the front of the line at the same time, and immediately the mood of the game changed. The waiting guards were moving, crouching, heads to the side, listening, sensing, ready. Perhaps they’d been informed that these were the two champions, perhaps it was the confidence with which Harriet and Malcolm stepped forward that worried them.
Stefan struggled to watch the two battles at once: they were both so compelling. This was a form of combat he could never have imagined. It was unrestrained and brutal and at the same time balletic. The fighters leapt, flew, turned, dropped, swept, struck, parried and kicked, and they did it all with speed and grace. Despite their great skill, for a long time none of the combatants landed a telling blow. Every time a stick looked like connecting a hand would be there to sweep it away.
It was Malcolm who scored the first strike, upending his opponent with a footsweep and somehow anticipating which way he would roll away. He flicked his nettle stick to the guard’s neck and there was a yelp of pain. Malcolm danced back, taunting, and then as soon as the guard had regained his feet, Malcolm raised his fist surrender. While the guard fought on, Malcolm would recover and come back stronger. If not next time, then the time after, or the time after that, the guard’s fatigue would break him and Malcolm would strike the final blow. It was a clever strategy, and one that would raise less suspicion, for Stefan suspected that, had he wanted to, Malcolm could have won there and then.
Harriet pushed harder, risking a few blows herself in order to tire the guard. At one point their sticks clashed with such force that they fell from their hands and the two, rather than reach for their weapons, grappled with one another, wrestling to the ground where it seemed certain one would choke the life out of the other before either yielded. But again, strategy trumped adrenaline and just as Harriet appeared to be gaining the upper hand she raised her fist and surrendered, winning herself precious recovery time while the others got their chance to battle a weakened guard.
Each time a blow landed there was a flurry of wings up on the wall, as the ever-increasing number of birds reacted to the contest. Stefan even spied two large rats slinking out the back door of the kitchens to watch. He definitely felt the guard weakening on each new round. Her reactions were slower, her deflections less controlled, her attacks less committed, as if she understood now that her defeat was inevitable and the most honourable path for her was to fight on as long as possible.
At the same time Stefan found himself feeling more relaxed during the combat, and the more this happened, the more room there was for his magic to speak to him. But this new confidence led to his first mistake. He felt the guard weakening for a moment and he lurched forward, too eager to land the final blow. The guard stepped deftly aside and, using Stefan’s own momentum, flung him to the ground. She had her knee on his back before he could stir. Stefan wanted to surrender but he couldn’t get his hand free to signal. The guard flicked the end of her nettle stick against Stefan’s neck and held it there until Stefan was sure he would pass out from the pain.
He closed his eyes and summoned the only image he knew could strengthen him, the memory of Jackie, cowering in her cage: lonely and abandoned. The more sharply the picture came into focus, the stronger the magic in Stefan grew. He did not try to throw the guard off him, or roll out from under her. Instead he simply thought himself into the air, rising like a magic carpet with the guard helpless to do anything but let herself be carried up with him. Stefan shot his hand out, fist clenched in surrender, and the guard relented.
Stefan staggered to the back of the line, his eyes blurred with pain. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Harriet, before she could admonish him. ‘My mistake.’
‘Just breathe deep and recover,’ Harriet answered. ‘Next time you meet her she’ll be broken.’
At that moment there was a loud cheer from the other group. Malcolm had dropped his opponent with a foot trip, kicked the nettle stick out of the guard’s hands, caught it, broke it over his knee and then, with a final flourish, threw his own stick high into the air and subdued the distracted guard with a simple neck and wrist restraint. Malcolm leaned forward and whispered something into the guard’s ear and the message was enough to convince him the time had come to raise his fist and walk away.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, our first Royal Guard!’ the Major called.
On the wall a solitary blue heron flapped its way elegantly into the air, completing a lazy arc and heading back to the swamplands. It had seen enough.
From there the rest of the plan fell into place. With Malcolm out of the mix the next guard had little trouble keeping the four remaining contestants in the other team at bay. Meanwhile, Harriet and Stefan moved closer to the front of the line. All Stefan had to do was let Harriet take the guard close to the limit of her endurance one more time and then, when she stepped aside, he would step in and strike the final blow.
And so it went. Harriet stalked her prey with patient focus, confident she was too quick for her fading opponent. And yet, every time it seemed the guard was about to give up, Harriet would pull back, letting her recover just enough to receive further punishment. Stefan couldn’t understand why the guard would go along with such a ploy. Why not just yield and be done? Pride, was the only answer he could think of.
When Harriet finally decided her opponent was sufficiently depleted, she casually flicked her own fist into the air and withdrew, leaving Stefan to finish the task.
This time Stefan was more cautious, striking then pulling back each time, never getting close enough to discover whether the guard was foxing. With each blow of the nettle stick he could feel her resistance diminishing, but still he didn’t close in. The pain would subside quickly enough and the guard would recover. The same could not be said for Jackie.
The ending then came as something of an anticlimax. The guard, having slowly clawed her way back up to standing, stood swaying before her opponent and then, without warning, collapsed again to the ground, beaten not by Stefan, but by exhaustion. Stefan didn’t mind. He had won.
‘We have our second Royal Guard,’ announced the Major.
Stefan fell to his knees. He had kept his word to Alice. He was through.
‘Nicely done.’ Malcolm stood beside him smiling, and offered him his hand.
For a moment Stefan panicked. Won�
�t it be obvious? Aren’t we meant to be enemies?
Malcolm deftly reassured him. ‘We’re on the same side now, brother. We are Royal Guards together, loyal to the end.’
Malcolm held out his arms and Stefan let himself be embraced. If he had to risk his life at the mine in two nights’ time, he was glad this particular guard would not be standing in his way.
‘Now let’s see who is to join us?’ Malcolm grinned. ‘I have my money on your fiery friend.’
Harriet was now up against a completely fresh guard, but she was able to match him blow for blow. Although it took three full rotations before she stood victorious over the guard, the result always felt inevitable.
Malcolm once again played the role of welcomer, hugging her tightly and congratulating her on having made the team. Then Harriet and Stefan fell into each other’s arms, clutching one another like family members reunited after a time of war. Stefan felt the strength of her arms around him, and the knocking of her heart against his own. For a short, happy moment, he felt safe.
‘We did it,’ Harriet whispered fiercely into his ear. Tears streamed down her face and her shoulders rose and fell with sobs of relief. ‘We’re going to do this Stefan. We’re going to do it.’
ARLO AND ALICE lay in the undergrowth on the top of the ridge. The mining tent was no more than a few hundred metres away, glowing in the hilltop darkness. The full moon had already risen fat and orange over the eastern hills. It was now or never. Arlo could tell Alice was as nervous as he was. There’d been no communication with Stefan or Harriet since they’d joined the Royal Guard. They just had to trust them to stick to the details of the plan Madame Latitude and Alice had put together.
‘One more time,’ Alice whispered. She had been doing this for the last twelve hours, demanding that Arlo go over the details with her. He knew why she was doing it. Talking it through calmed his nerves and kept him focused. He breathed in and let the details assemble themselves like a jigsaw inside his head. Quietly and carefully he explained how they would wait until the new shift of guards, which included Harriet and Stefan, had taken up position in the tent. They would hear the wagon trundle away, taking with it the guards who were being replaced. Then Alice would make her way to her hiding place in the rubbish chute and it would be time for the action to begin. Arlo’s job was to race to the front entrance, screaming out for attention. He was dressed in the Royal Guard uniform that Madame Latitude had sent them. Its buttons were hanging loose and one epaulette had been ripped free, as if the wearer had been engaged in a mighty struggle. For good measure Alice had blackened Arlo’s eye with her fist.
Arlo was to appear before the sentries looking wild-eyed and terrified. And they, of course, would mistake him for Stefan. Arlo would tell the sentries that he had been captured by a dark creature with red eyes, who had tied him to a tree and then imitated his form. Their hope was that the guards would believe Haven had taken Stefan’s shape in order to get closer to the prisoner. Harriet would play her part, leading their reaction, and at the same time Stefan would take Jackie and attempt to fly her to the opening at the top of the tent. What followed was, in Arlo’s opinion, the most brilliant part. Harriet would lead the resistance and manage to grab hold of Jackie, but Stefan would escape without her. Not only would the guard’s focus then shift to capturing Haven, but Harriet, by managing to foil Haven’s attempt to take Jackie, would be beyond suspicion. Harriet would lead the search party out into the night, leaving only a small group back with Jackie. Arlo and Alice would do the rest. It was what Alice had called the best form of magic of all—misdirection.
Malcolm had his own part to play. As soon as word of Haven got out, the guards back at the barracks would be mobilised. It was Malcolm’s job to lead those guards on a false trail, taking them as far as possible from the route that Arlo, Alice and Jackie would follow back to the entrance of the tunnel.
There were a thousand things that could go wrong, they both understood that. But it was possible, and tonight that would have to be enough.
Stefan sat next to Harriet in the back of the cart on their way to the mine. He remembered the first time they met. How Malcolm had been there too, playing the role of the bully. That’s how it had been for Stefan this whole month. He’d spent his time in this world pretending to be somebody he wasn’t. And now he had his most difficult and dangerous role of all. He looked briefly at Harriet, although he knew he shouldn’t. Haven’s people are everywhere. But he needed the reassurance of her calm steady gaze as she looked straight ahead, her head bouncing gently with the motion of the cart.
The tent was as he remembered it, bursting with the heat of the two great furnaces into which the dust of the ground-up tunnel stones was being shovelled, while the canvas rippled and flapped in a rising wind. The shift handover was smooth and efficient. Stefan followed Harriet into the tent and towards the suspended cage.
The leader of the old guard stepped forward and offered Harriet, who was in charge of the new shift, a crisp salute and went straight into an explanation of the ratchet-and-pulley system used to raise and lower the cage.
Stefan watched the old guard walk back to the cart and climb aboard. Meanwhile the rest of the guards, sixteen in all, took up their allotted places: some to patrol the outside perimeter, two to stand sentry at the entrance, others to stoke the furnace or bring up the rocks from the tunnel for purifying.
Harriet signalled for Stefan to bring the cage down. Stefan was careful not to look at the prisoner, adopting the neutral, indifferent expression of a person with a job to do. But beneath his red jacket his heart pounded, filling his ears with the sound of surging blood. If everything was going to plan then at this very moment Alice was creeping towards the rubbish chute while Arlo was readying for his rush to the sentries. A moment of dark doubt clouded Stefan’s thoughts but he pushed it aside. He had to maintain his focus, keep his mind clear. His body tensed, preparing for the chaos ahead.
Stefan’s hands were shaking. He released the brake on the pulley and began winding the cage to the ground. It creaked and squealed as it moved, as if calling out its warning, but nobody paid it any attention.
Up close Jackie was even thinner than she appeared from afar, her hair lank, her eyes dead, as if she had long ago resigned herself to her fate. Harriet unlocked the cage and checked the prisoner’s manacles before helping her to her feet.
And then it happened, exactly on cue. A desperate shout came from the entrance.
‘Stop! Stop him! He’s an imposter. It’s Haven!’
Harriet turned and rushed to the doorway of the massive tent, exactly as the leader of the guard would have been expected to do.
It had begun.
‘It’s not Will!’ The rehearsed lines tumbled from Arlo’s mouth in a panic. ‘That’s something else. Look. This is me. Will! I was taken this afternoon, kidnapped by a great creature with red eyes. It tied me up in the forest and then…then it took my shape. It made itself look like me.’
Arlo could see that the guards at the door were struggling to make sense of his story. They stared at him with their brows furrowed and their mouths open.
Harriet arrived just in time. ‘Will, how are you…?’ She turned from Arlo to Stefan, then back to Arlo again. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Look! See for yourself!’ Arlo pointed back into the tent and they all turned to see Stefan take the prisoner in his arms and rise into the air.
‘The top of the tent!’ Harriet screamed. ‘He’s trying to take her out through the gap at the top of the tent.’
Before anybody else had time to react, or even think, Harriet was moving. She launched herself into the air and flew towards the air vents at the tent’s peak. All around there was shouting as news of Haven passed from one guard to the next. Arlo rushed forward, ready for his next move. Up above him the performance went exactly to script. Harriet grabbed Jackie’s ankle just as Stefan reached the top of the tent. She took hold of Stefan’s jacket but he kicked her away and Jackie slip
ped from Harriet’s grasp. She turned, attempting to catch Jackie, and Stefan took his opportunity, shooting through the air vents at the top of the tent and disappearing into the dark night.
Jackie tumbled through the air but Arlo was already flying, and he caught her in his arms. By the time he had her on the ground Harriet was already barking instructions.
‘You, Will, and you and you,’ she pointed at Arlo and two of the most shell-shocked guards. ‘Stay here and secure the prisoner. Everybody else, with me. Haven is close and we will not be forgiven if we let him slip through our fingers. This is not a drill. Our lives depend upon it.’
That, Arlo now understood, was the true beauty of their plan. Later there would be time for people to reflect on what had happened, and how easily they had been duped, but in the moment all was a blur and the guards could do nothing but follow orders in pursuit of their greatest enemy.
The Tunnel of Dreams Page 16