Tales of Crow- The Complete series Box Set

by Chris Ward

  Lena gave a slow nod, but Patricia watched him a while longer. He scratched at an ear, crossed and then uncrossed his legs, fidgeted in his seat.

  He knew something, a secret he was keeping to himself.

  I’ll cut it out of you if I have to, you bastard. We have unfinished business yet.

  Kurou put the top hat back on to his head and stood up. ‘If you don’t mind, dear princess sisters, it might be wise of me to go back up to our little treasure trove and begin making plans. I’ll need my assistant here, of course.’

  Patricia stood up. ‘I’ll come too. I’m not letting you out of my sight.’

  Kurou turned on her. ‘On the contrary, my dear. I’m afraid this bird likes to fly in select company. Assuming you still wish to receive my assistance?’

  Lena put a hand on Patricia’s arm. ‘Let them go,’ she said. ‘We have no choice.’ Turning to Kurou, she said, ‘I have council business in the town to attend to. We will meet you up at the base tomorrow morning to begin preparations.’

  ‘That sounds like a delightful arrangement,’ Kurou said. ‘Myself and my good assistant will endeavour to stay out of Mr. Mortin’s way until a suitable human blockade is made available.’

  Patricia stared at him. ‘How did you know my father was up at the base?’

  Kurou grinned. ‘The same way that I know that without my help in nine days you’ll all be dead. By using my eye and ears, and my intuition. It’s never too late to begin your tuition, sweet princess.’

  As retorts rattled in Patricia’s brain like old bolts, Lena hissed at her to keep quiet. Kurou gave a final bow and then headed out into the night, Victor at his heels.

  As soon as the door was closed, Patricia turned on Lena. ‘Are you crazy? He’s a mass murderer. And you’ve enlisted him to help us? Are you out of your fucking mind?’

  Lena sighed. ‘On the contrary,’ she said, doing a poor mockery of the professor’s mannerisms, ‘a mass murderer is the very thing we need right now.’

  As they hurried through the snow towards the jeep that would take them back up to the base, Victor turned to Kurou.

  ‘Who is he?’ he said. ‘Who’s the Grey Man? I heard you say that name, and I know you didn’t mean to.’

  ‘Should an assistant question his master so?’

  ‘Just tell me. Do you know or not?’

  Kurou’s face was a shadow in the gloom. ‘I don’t like to speak with confidence on things I don’t truly understand,’ he said. ‘I trust you’ve gathered that, sire?’

  ‘I got that impression, yes.’

  ‘This Grey Man—as he appears to call himself—who is commanding these War Horses, is something of an enigma. When you first encountered me, did you not feel something of the same, sire?’

  ‘I still think you’re an enigma.’

  Kurou smiled. ‘Your honesty is fascinating. While it is perceived as true, I am but a simple artist with the whole world as my canvas. I get the impression that this Grey Man might be something of the same.’ He paused, touching his huge overhanging nose with one white glove. ‘And it is my estimation that there might not be room for the both of us. That, particularly, is my cause for concern.’

  36

  Kurou raises an army

  Even at times like these, when half of everyone you knew was dead, the comfort of a sofa and the companionable chatter of the television remained a welcome constant. Dimitri had seen the drama a dozen times before, but in those oft repeated scenes he was able to forget the nightmares going on outside. He had been unable to get a ticket for the last train—thankfully so, after what had transpired—but had decided to stay out of all the rioting that had sparked off around City Hall. He had heard the gunshots and the roars of the crowd from the safety of his own living room, having fitted extra deadbolts over his window shutters and on his front and back doors.

  Still, avoidance didn’t mean there wasn’t a threat. Dimitri just saw no reason to partake in anything that was proportionately likely to get him killed.

  The picture on the screen flickered, and Dimitri instinctively glanced up at the ceiling, as if something was messing with his signal. It had happened before the last drone strikes, shutting down as if severed, and also before what he later found out was the hit on the departed train. He stood up, gathered up his bottle of vodka and the biscuits he was eating, and turned to head for the basement, where he had a bed set up all ready. His only gun was down there too, propped up against the wall at the bottom of the concrete steps.

  On the screen, the picture flickered again, but didn’t cut out. The drama disappeared, replaced by a dark room with a silhouette of a thin man standing in the centre.

  ‘Greetings, dear citizens,’ came a reedy, sinister voice. Dimitri paused in the doorway to watch. He had an overwhelming urge to leave the room, but there was something in the way the man’s white-gloved hands were moving that he found strangely compelling.

  ‘My name is General Crow. You may not recognise me, but that’s because I’ve been hard at work repairing all the damage your town council has done. The situation has, unfortunately, degenerated into one where I am forced to ask for your help. As you may or may not be aware, an invasion force is quickly approaching the city. Without a little resistance, we will all die. We do, however, have some hope. A military weapons cache lies just to the north of the town, and it might prove strong enough to repel the invaders. However, with no one to operate the machinery it stays lifeless and dead, and useless. Therefore, I ask for your help, dear people. I ask for you to volunteer to help us repel this terrible enemy. I ask that you gather in City Hall Plaza at midday tomorrow. There you will receive further instruction. Good night.’

  The TV appeared to be rocking up and down, then Dimitri realised it was because he was nodding. It made perfect sense. He had to help. Would he need his gun though? He supposed not. He would definitely need a coat, however.

  Of course he had to help. He was a patriot, wasn’t he? And his town was in dire need. It would be an honour to die in the line of duty.

  Still nodding, he stared at the clock, willing the seconds to tick around to midday. There was a long way to go, but what were a few more hours?

  Wow, he thought, as his eyes glazed over, the clock face becoming a blur of black and whites, there had been something special about that man’s hands.

  They had nothing at all among them except the old television and the broken wooden chair it stood upon. The six men, all former mining workers, had lost everything in the pit closures, and their lives had spiralled downwards into whatever numbing pastime they could find. Now, all high, hollow-stomached and empty hearted, they watched with something like wonder as the television screen flickered and morphed into the image of a tall spindly man wearing a black suit, a top hat, and white gloves.

  They listened as he promised them everything. As one they nodded, and as one they began to cheer.

  The sheer number of people assembled outside City Hall came as a surprise to Lena. For the previous two days she had spent her time knocking on individual doors, doing miniature pep rallies in front of disillusioned townsfolk who either loathed her or had no idea who she was or why they should care. Kurou had insisted on doing the intercepted television broadcast, but she had told him he was wasting his time, that if she couldn’t persuade them in person they couldn’t be persuaded at all.

  Yet here they were, some four hundred of them, a few enthusiastic, gung-ho volunteers at the front whooping and cheering with every stirring word of her rallying call, but most standing motionless in orderly rows, barely even blinking. She had hated this place on sight, she recalled now, on that dreary, supposedly spring day so many years ago now that the best days of her life should have still been ahead of her. Instead, the mood of this grim, outlandish place with its glum-faced residents had vacuumed the youth out of her, and here they now stood, come to mock her resilience one last time.

  ‘…and we have no choice but to stand up against this invader, or perish in ou
r homes like cowards.’ She suppressed a sigh, hoping her speech, shamelessly plagiarized from dozens of old war movies, might have some effect. Now, for the coup de grace. ‘So … are you with me? Do we stand together and fight, or do we die alone in our homes?’

  For a second there was only the lonely cheering of the handful of volunteers at the front. Lena braced herself for a slow handclap, or even a roar of laughter. Then, so suddenly it made her flinch, four hundred right fists thrust up into the air, accompanied by a roar of approval.

  ‘Fight!’

  I would hate to have gone to school in this shithole, she thought.

  ‘Together we can win this!’ she screamed into the microphone, unsure whether she believed it or not, but feeling the need to say something. She was de facto mayor, after all.

  The Grey Man didn’t need to look at the report printing itself out on the fax machine on his newly commandeered desk. He had felt the people die. In his mind he had heard their screaming as the building burned and collapsed. He had been sleeping at the time, and sometimes it was difficult to differentiate such disasters from simple nightmares. This time, their pain had been almost tangible, breaking him from sleep with a jolt.

  That the drones had been taken over wasn’t the worst thing of all, it was that it had happened without his knowing. Someone had cracked their systems and turned them back on their programmers. As a result, he had ordered all remaining drones to be grounded. It had happened once, and then it had happened again. Until he understood the threat, he had no answer, and he risked losing control of his entire fleet.

  Someone was out there, standing up to him, breaking through the communications mist that his teams of hackers had created, revealing the truth and then finding a way to fight back.

  He had been so, so, thorough this time.

  Who are you?

  The prints were still coming, falling from the table to the floor and scattering at his feet. Soon, the fax would run out of paper. Lines and lines of figures and statistics and garbled computer-based reports detailing the damage, so much unnecessary detail—

  He nudged one sheet aside with his foot, then reached down to pick it up. It was an image, a black silhouette of a bird that took up the whole page. There was some detail at the bottom that mentioned how it appeared on screens when attempts were made to regain control of the drones.

  The Grey Man frowned. He remembered an assignment he had given to Halo some five years before in Barcelona. A madman had turned La Sagrada Familia into a lake of fire and Halo had been lucky to escape with his life. The madman had disappeared. The madman’s name had been….

  Kurou.

  I remember you. Is that you out there? You’re taunting me, aren’t you?

  Five years ago, the trail had gone cold. A man named Park had died because he wouldn’t accept failure, but even though he had moved on to other things, the Grey Man had never forgotten the genius that had brought ruin to the greatest of European cities, and civil war to Spain.

  The Grey Man pulled a few more sheets from the floor, more interested now in the data he couldn’t extract from his mind’s own wanderings.

  The two pairs of hijacked drones had been flying nearly a thousand miles apart, but between them was an endless expanse of almost nothing, pinpricked by a few mining settlements and two larger towns. One was in the process of being razed by his War Horses, but the other….

  He closed his eyes and concentrated, sending out his mind’s feelers in that direction. As always, the greater the distance and the more people to be encountered the weaker his strength became—the crowded nature of cities were so overwhelming as to leave his powers almost ineffectual, but out here in Siberia he had much greater strength—but there was a large gathering of minds, like an army marching in file.

  Could these people be planning a resistance? And could they be harbouring the one who had destroyed two of his command centres?

  The Grey Man closed his eyes.

  If you’re out there, I’ll find you.

  37

  The tale of a horse and its rider

  A knocking was coming from two doors at once, and Kurou wished he’d chosen an office with only one entrance, or better still, none at all. Who would lose patience first became a moot point as simultaneously one door sprang open to reveal Lena Patrova, while the other rattled in its bearings, the sound just audible over the shouting of Robert Mortin.

  ‘I’ll deal with him,’ Lena said. ‘Once you give me an update.’

  Kurou pulled a map up on the largest of his computer screens. ‘Here in the centre,’ he said, ‘that little blue dot is our delightful Brevik. Five miles north we have the mining operations, creating a useful barrier for where we sit right now in this base, three miles due northwest of town. Protecting us to the west are these pine-forested hills, but you know all this already, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s easy to see why they chose this place to hide all this junk,’ Lena said. ‘It must have come as a surprise that the town grew so big.’

  ‘A lot of greedy fingers can squeeze into a pot of gold,’ Kurou said. ‘Or in this case, a dry bowl full of cheap aggregate.’

  ‘So our best line of defence is this forest. Particularly if we can hold the ridgeline.’

  ‘As long as possible would be good,’ Kurou said. ‘We have six hundred War Horses, but we can only spare three hundred men. They’re coming at us with a force of roughly two thousand.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘And they’re much newer models. Faster, more agile, better weaponry.’

  ‘Do we have any chance at all?’

  Kurou grinned. ‘Not so much. A thrill, isn’t it? The art of war? A battle of wits and skill, like one gigantic game of chess.’

  Lena glared at him. ‘I can see why people tend to dislike you.’

  ‘I do not crave friendship. Respect, however, is rather more valuable.’

  Lena pointed at the map. ‘If we don’t have the numbers to fight them in open battle, we need to trap them.’

  ‘A woman after mine own heart,’ Kurou said. ‘A spider to my crow.’

  ‘You charm me,’ she said with a flat smile.

  ‘Our weak points are to the south and east,’ Kurou continued. ‘The railway valley is a particularly smooth line of attack. Our only chance is to sacrifice the town. The Lenin District to the south is crowded with narrow streets and tight alleyways. If we can draw them inside, make them believe we have a larger force, that we’re fighting a tactical retreat towards City Hall, maybe, just maybe … we have a chance.’

  Kurou clicked on the map and it zoomed in, showing a wider view of the town. He pointed at a street winding up towards St Peter’s Place.

  ‘The route of the old highway,’ he said. ‘They will have no aerial support. I will make sure of that. Therefore, we put our strongest forces in the hills to the west and around the mining operation to the north. We make them go around, draw them into the town from the south, make them advance along the route of the old highway. Most of the buildings there are abandoned. We load them with explosives and weaponry. When they come—’, he snapped his hands together, the white gloves making a whump sound like something bursting into flame, ‘—we pop them like bugs on a hot plate.’

  ‘Will it work?’

  Kurou shook his head. ‘It might. It might not. The longer we can stall them, the better. If I can find a way to jam their communications systems, then perhaps we can shut them down.’

  ‘Why can’t you?’

  ‘Give me time, give me time,’ Kurou said, flapping his hands in the air. ‘Their systems are not as they should be. The way they’re being controlled, it’s not….’

  ‘Not what?’

  ‘Natural.’

  Thuds came from the other door again. Something heavy struck the handle from the far side and the metal hinges screeched.

  ‘He’s back again,’ Lena said. She went to the door and pulled it open.

  Robert stood there, crutch poised for another strike.
‘No thanks to you but we got her out,’ he said.

  Kurou stood up. ‘That pretty girl? Are you sure?’

  ‘I got a team of engineers together and we busted her out. You bastard, two men are dead now.’

  ‘And I’m to blame exactly why?’

  Robert lifted his crutch. ‘I’ll cut off your ugly head, you freak,’ he snarled, taking a couple of shaking steps forward using his other crutch for support.

  Lena got in his way and lifted a hand. Robert shook his crutch one more time, then put it back under his arm.

  ‘You really should have left her in there,’ Kurou said. ‘I told you I was working on it, and when a crow makes a promise … did she survive?’

  ‘She’s resting.’

  ‘Oh, how lovely. Tell me when—or if—she wakes up.’

  ‘What do you mean, “if”?’

  Kurou picked up his top hat from the desk beside the computer terminal and put it on his head. ‘I think I should accompany you to the princess’s bedchamber.’ He smirked. ‘Or would you rather I went alone?’

  A guard stood outside the private room on the corridor outside the medical lab. As they approached he muttered something about Victor trying to visit but being shooed away, then he was holding the door open for them to go inside.

  Robert glared at Kurou like a hawk at a lame mouse from the other side of the bed where Isabella lay, tucked in beneath a musty quilt duvet with faded floral patterns. Among the train survivors had been a couple of doctors, and they had hooked Isabella up to a heart monitor which beeped gently in the background. An oxygen mask was fitted over her face, and her slow breathing came in long, ragged draws.

  Kurou raised an eyebrow at the sight of her. So pale she might as well have been dead, some of her hair had even fallen out. Her cheeks were sunken as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks, and a nasty red welt stained the left side of her neck.