I walked up the ornate central staircase and paused on the landing, staring with a sense of disquiet at a glass case that contained a local murderer named Armstrong. He’d been freeze-dried over half a century before, placed on a chair for all to see, dressed in the clothes in which he’d been hanged. It was fortunate he’d been found guilty in the Summer. In the Winter he’d have been Frigicuted and his remains taken by animals – there would have been nothing left to exhibit except a few teeth perhaps, and kidney stones if he’d had any.
There was a barely audible thud, not much more than if someone jumps heavily onto the floor above. My training at the Academy kicked in without me really having to think. When you hear a thump you don’t pause, not even for a second. Non-lethal are always close-quarters weapons, and close-quarter fighting can develop at a frightening pace.
Villains
‘ . . . The Winter Nomads, known to all as “womads”, were precisely as their name suggests. Displaced during the Great Ottoman Diasporas of the 14th and 15th centuries, they scratched a living in the far north and are notoriously intolerant of outsiders. Utterly law-abiding, it is rumoured that they do not hibernate at all, and suffer no ill-effects in spite of it . . . ’
– Handbook of Winterology, 4th edition, Hodder & Stoughton
I ran downstairs to the central atrium, where Foulnap was at readiness on the Airwitzer and Fodder was staring intently at the softly ticking barograph. The instrument was so delicate it could record the ambient pressure change of a swiftly opened door, a passing truck or even a sneeze at close quarters, and would record it all on a paper strip several yards long. Looking over Fodder’s shoulder I could see the trace depicted the telltale signature of a weapon being deployed close by. I picked up the red phone and pressed the button marked Consulate. During incidents like this, teamwork was everything.
‘Spike or bump?’ asked Foulnap.
‘Sharp rise, curved shoulder and slow out-gradient,’ Fodder returned, peering at the trace. ‘Looks like a Masterblaster,* and within two hundred yards.’
‘Treacle, Consulate,’ said Jim, answering the telephone.
‘Worthing, at the museum,’ I said. ‘We’ve picked up a bump on the trace, range two hundred yards, Fodder thinks it’s a Masterblaster.’
‘We’re not picking anything up from here,’ said Treacle. ‘What do you need?’
I looked at Fodder, who said we’d engage on our own, but to alert the Chief just in case. I repeated the message, hung up, and jotted down the time on the incident log.
We heard the shattering of glass from somewhere in the bowels of the building as the trace recorded another bump.
Fodder took command in an effortless ‘we’re all going to survive this’ sort of way, and began to issue orders in a slow, methodical manner.
Panic is for fools.
‘Wonky, you’re with me,’ he said, handing me a Schtumperschreck, the most formidable weapon in our arsenal that was still just possible to lift. ‘Pockets, stay in the lobby and defend the pantry with your life. Let’s go.’
My heart was thumping, but oddly not quite as heavily as when I went in to retrieve Mrs Tiffen. I figured Fodder had seen plenty of action, and losing a Deputy on their first day wouldn’t reflect well on his judgement. We opened the first shock-gate, and once that was secure behind us and we’d donned boots and coats, Fodder spun the locking wheel, opened the outer door and stepped into the Winter. It was still snowing and just light enough to see, but the visibility was barely twenty feet. Fodder didn’t pause for a moment and started to march as quickly as he could through the swirling snow, keeping tight to the exterior wall of the museum. I followed as close as I could and as fast as I could, but the Schtumper was heavy, and I wasn’t as strong or as fit nor possessed of such a long stride, and quite soon Fodder was lost to view. All I could hear was the panting of my own breath, and all I could see were swirling flakes and the wall of the museum to my right. I didn’t stop, though, and after about another half a minute of running almost semi-blind, I ran into the back of a static Fodder and bashed my lip against the butt of his Thumper so hard it brought tears to my eyes.
‘Careful,’ hissed Fodder. We were now at the back of the museum, outside an oak-banded rear entrance door, which had been thumped recently – the ice was clear like glass where the accreted snow had melted and then instantly refrozen.
‘Not a hope of getting in here,’ said Fodder. ‘They were trying to draw us out.’
‘And?’
‘They succeeded.’
He kicked a couple of backpacks that had been left in the snow.
‘Two of them, I’d say.’
Fodder examined their tracks in the snow and walked off with me close behind. I found it mildly disconcerting that he was moving away from any visual reference point, but as he said, you have to know the town like the swirls on your wintercoat. We moved along for perhaps five minutes, following the tracks that were almost obscured by the fresh falling snow, and within a hundred yards or so we came across the entrance to the Talgarth Jollity Funfair, which was not much more than a brick-built ticket office and turnstile. Fodder opened the door to the office and beckoned me inside. The room had only a counter, various posters advertising other local attractions – gliding, local flour mill, pony-trekking – and a desk with several chairs. The floor was dusty and strewn with fliers, blown from their shelves. Fodder stopped and crouched, as did I.
‘Got a compass?’
I nodded.
‘They’ll return this way when they think we’ve gone,’ he whispered. ‘Stay here, and in precisely six minutes, go outside and fire the Schtumper to the east. That will give away your position, so you are then to retreat thirty paces towards the museum, and if anything comes out of the snowstorm that isn’t me, let them get within knockout range and pop them. If they’re armed, then full choke to kill.’
‘It’ll end the truce,’ I said.
‘If it’s Lucky Ned,’ said Fodder, ‘then him being here is breaking the truce. Six minutes, yes?’
‘Six minutes.’
He then stepped out of the door, hopped over the turnstile, looked around, and walked silently away into the gloom. I moved backwards to sit against the wall of the ticket office next to the door so I had a view of the outside, then stared at the radium glow of my watch hands as they crept round. I expected to hear the muffled whump of a Thumper or the harsher whap of a Bambi, but there was nothing. Not a single sound reached my ears as I lay crouched, the cold from the floor gradually creeping into my leg.
I thought of Mrs Tiffen, who had been redeployed, then Josh and how he wasn’t happy with it. Then Lucy Knapp and her pride at working at HiberTech, and Aurora and what it might actually have been like – physically and psychologically – if I had bundled with her. I thought of Toccata and her aggressive manner, then about Laura’s desire to see Wintervolk proven, the somewhat-unhinged Jonesy with her fictional nostalgia and Fodder with his much-needed nightmares, and then Birgitta. Finally, I thought about how I should have heeded everyone’s advice and let Mrs Tiffen go. Logan would be alive right now and I’d be back in Cardiff, safely watching the Winter from indoors, and not crouched in an empty room during a blizzard, armed to the teeth and with orders to kill someone.
At the appointed time I stood up, stepped outside and checked which way was east. I lifted the weapon, leaned forward to counteract the kick, and pulled the trigger.
I knew that firing a vortex cannon into a snowstorm would be an impressive feat, and I wasn’t disappointed. The localised temperature increase that accompanied the sudden pressure change melted the snowflakes instantaneously, and there was suddenly clarity in the air – a momentary cone of perfect vision, rolling away from me in a languid manner. I could see the wooden lattice of the roller coaster and a brightly coloured hoarding advertising thrills and spills, then the helter-skelter beyond, and an ice-cream ki
osk. The view did not last long. The melted snow turned back to ice as soon as the pressure equalised and the world reverted to nothing more than a swirling white mass.
I pushed the second thermalite into the battery chamber, then counted thirty paces back towards the museum, the track we’d made on the way out now only visible as smoothed-off dents in the undulating white carpet. I stood there, safety off, thumb on the choke button, wondering who or what would come through the snowstorm toward me. A good five minutes must have passed and I heard a thud, then another, but I wasn’t expert enough to tell from which weapon they had originated.
All of a sudden I was aware of the squeak and crunch of something moving in an untroubled fashion through the snow, less than thirty feet away to the left of me. They made no attempt to move silently and seemed to be lumbering rather than walking, and at a reasonable pace. I was put in mind of a large herbivore, which wasn’t possible – Megafauna would never be awake, and even if they were, they would not be out in this. Only Villains, womads, Consuls and idiots ventured out in a snowstorm in the Winter.
I swallowed down my fear and as the sound drew closer I decided to tempt providence and hail whoever it was. But as soon as I opened my mouth to speak the footfalls abruptly stopped and I heard a shuffle in the snow as the figure turned to face me. I couldn’t see them, but I somehow knew that whoever it was could see me. Or sense me, at any rate. I was also acutely aware that this wasn’t Fodder. I had put my hand in my bag to pull out the camera that Laura had given me when a voice made me jump.
‘I wonder if you wouldn’t mind awfully dropping that weapon?’
I had been so fixated on the presence to my left that I had not been paying attention, and a figure had crept up on me out of the snow storm and was now holding a Bambi to my head. He was dressed in the mismatched blend of clothes that was the adopted uniform of the Winter Villain: much-mended ski salopettes with a mammoth-wool tweed jacket under a down-filled puffa, criss-crossed with belts of thermalites. He had large boots, again mismatched, a sturdy tea cosy for a hat which was embroidered ‘A gift from Whitby’ and was missing his nose – frostbite, I figured. There was also a scar the thickness of a little finger that ran from his forehead to his chin by way of his left eye – which held a cracked monocle.
‘Well, take me to Mansion House ball and dance me the Dashing White Sergeant,’ he said in the cut-glass tones of the English upper classes, ‘I seem to have bagged myself a Novice.’
I’d never met a Villain before, so didn’t quite know what to say – and he was right, I was still a Novice, despite what anyone said.
‘You speak English?’ he asked, because I’d paused. ‘The tongue of a civilised race?’
‘We don’t speak it much out this way,’ I replied, thinking carefully as I hadn’t used my English for a while and was a little rusty. ‘I thought we were at peace, you and we?’
‘That Fodder of yours tore up the accord when he cracked m’boy on the nut,’ he said. ‘We are merely lost travellers, old stick, trying to make our way back to the warm embrace of home and hearth.’
All Villains were English, and descendants of the upper classes who had been pushed to the edges of the Albion Peninsula after the devastating Class Wars of the nineteenth century. They had preserved their culture down the years, defiant against their victors. Large houses, crab-apple marmalade and trout-kippers for breakfast, hunting, shooting, fishing, balls, society gatherings. But most importantly, they liked servants and aggressively maintained their banned titles. Almost every Villain in Mid-Wales was a duke or a lord or a baroness or some such.*
‘Is your way home through the museum?’ I asked.
He smiled.
‘I’m not going to argue the toss, old stick,’ he said, ‘you should be grateful I’m going to spare your life. A few positions have opened up in the household and someone of your youth would be perfect to learn the complexities of domestic service. Did you know there are six different types of fork, each for a specific purpose?* How’s your washing and ironing, by the way? We can start you off in the scullery.’
‘Terrible – and my cleaning and cooking are not very good either.’
He grinned.
‘Excellent – your training starts as soon as we get back. Ten years should make a fine servant of you; perhaps as a pastry chef. A lifetime in the service of others is a lifetime well served.’
It wasn’t quite how I would have interpreted the saying. He took the Schtumper from me, then my Bambi. My eyes flicked from the Villain to the empty snowstorm behind, hoping for Fodder, and the Villain guessed my thoughts perfectly.
‘Your large friend will have a shocker of a headache come the morning,’ he said. ‘The larger they are, the harder they fall.’
He pushed his Bambi hard into my head and stepped closer. The scar on his face looked like an untidy weld, and the folds in his skin were ingrained with dirt. The gap where his nose had been was only semi-healed; I could see the pink of his sinuses inside – they moved when he breathed like the gills of a stranded fish.
‘Well, mustn’t dawdle,’ he said. ‘The devil makes work for idle hands. After you – I insist.’
I took a pace forward but there was a low moan, like the sound of wind when it howls around the guttering. We both stared towards where I’d heard the shuffling steps, and I heard the chortle of a bemused child. The hair rose on the back of my neck, and I could see that the Villain had heard it too.
‘Friend of yours, Novice?’
‘Not of mine,’ I said, this time in my mother tongue, ‘and not of yours, either.’
‘Well, damn and blast,’ whispered the Villain as he realised what it was, ‘I need a Gronk like I need a forty-thousand-acre estate and death duties.’
If you live on the edge of the Winter, you know what’s real and what isn’t. He dropped the Schtumperschreck and drew his other Bambi so he was holding one in each hand. He didn’t panic at all, just gritted his teeth and moved forward.
‘Now listen here,’ he said, his voice fading as he walked into the snowstorm, ‘I’ll show you how an Englishman faces de—’
* * *
* * *
When I woke up I was on my back in the snow with everything quiet, snowflakes melting on my eyelashes and running into my eyes. I climbed to my feet but couldn’t see the Villain anywhere, so followed a trail that was less a set of footprints and more a furrow where someone had been dragged. I found one discharged Bambi after about thirty feet, then another, then the Villain’s clothes. The salopettes, tea-cosy hat, and the puffa, tweed jacket, complete with stained dress-shirt, two T-shirts and a vest, all inside one another. I looked around to see where he might have gone from there, but there was nothing – I was surrounded by virgin snow with the words of ‘So Long, Farewell’ running around inside my head.
Truce busted
‘Scavengers are the bottom feeders of the Winter, taking what they can, when they can, to survive. Differentiated from Villains by their general adherence to a limited code of Winter conduct and from womads by their permanent residence, usually converted oil tankers or cement lorries. They are reputed to be citizens who had to turn cannibalistic during the Winter, and now shun society due to shame.’
– Handbook of Winterology, 4th edition, Hodder & Stoughton
Jonesy and Toccata arrived twenty minutes later, having homed in on the pulser I had set the moment I found Fodder, just near the helter-skelter. He was covered by a thin layer of fresh snow and had a large purple bruise on the side of his face. In front of him was another Villain, also unconscious. Fodder came round first. He had a splitting headache, but was otherwise unhurt.
‘Do you know him?’ asked Toccata when they rolled the first Villain over to get a look at him. He had a cold-gnarled leathery complexion, but no-one recognised him.
‘No,’ said Jonesy while going through his pockets, ‘but this was probably the
reason they were trying to break in.’
She handed Toccata a small book she’d found entitled Gibbons’ Pocket Philatelist. A bus ticket was marking the page devoted to the stamps printed during Lloyd-George’s premiership.
‘They were after a stamp,’ said Toccata with a sigh. She slapped the Villain around the face. He groaned, blinked and sat up. One eye was milky and blind, the other bloodshot. He wasn’t much older than me.
‘You’d break our truce for a stamp?’ she asked in English.
The young Villain looked at her, then the rest of us.
‘It’s the 2d Lloyd-George Mauve,’ he said, ‘with the Anglesey cancellation. The only one in the world. But in answer to your question: yes, I should jolly well say so. Well worth it. Clearly, you have a woefully poor grasp of the value and excitement of stamp collecting. Where’s Father?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘If you don’t answer truthfully,’ snorted the Villain, ‘you might find me irked, and you wouldn’t like me when I’m irked. Devilry may ensue. Now, again: where’s Father?’
‘Same answer as last time,’ said Toccata. ‘Heading home is my guess.’
‘If you’ve harmed a hair on his head, Janus, there’ll be retribution of the blood-spilling variety – and with no apologies for absence.’
‘I’ve a better idea,’ said Jonesy, ‘why don’t you just piss off home, you odious little maggot?’
The Villain got up, looked at us all in turn, told us he had ‘never been so insulted in his life’ and walked off into the gathering dusk.
Early Riser Page 26
