Age of Legends

by James Lovegrove

  On one occasion, Ajia timed herself running circuits of the fairground site. She did this at dawn, when there was nobody around. She completed the first circuit, which she estimated as being four hundred yards, in twelve seconds flat. By the fifth attempt, she had shaved the time down to ten and a half seconds.

  On another occasion, she roped Maya in to time her. Summer Land had pitched camp beside a school which had its own athletics track, and on a bright moonlit night, an hour after the fair closed, Ajia and Maya sneaked past the goblins on guard duty and hopped the fence. Maya stood at the finish line with a stopwatch. Ajia ran the 100-metre straight track several times, covering the distance in an average of 2.9 seconds.

  “Blimey, Ajia, that’s incredible,” Maya gushed. “You’re just a blur. You’re like a flipping rocket! The rest of us must look like snails to you.”

  “Snails in treacle,” Ajia said. “But not all the time. Only when I’m in ‘Puck mode’.”

  “You should go on telly. Or be an athlete. You’d be famous.”

  “Probably not wise. I told you about those cops, didn’t I? The ones who killed me?”

  “Oh yes.” Maya, bless her, seldom thought through the consequences of anything. She was tirelessly enthusiastic and a hard worker, but she seemed to live in a perpetual now. It was a common failing among brownies, Ajia had noticed, this gnat-like attention span. “But couldn’t you, like, wear a disguise maybe? And you wouldn’t have to show off your full speed. You could just be, you know, a bit fast.”

  All Ajia could think of to do was hug her. “You’re as daft as a brush but I love you, Maya,” she said, and Maya giggled.

  What amazed Ajia was how natural it felt, being the eidolon of Puck. The gift of extraordinary speed took very little getting used to. It was as though she had been practising half her life in readiness to receive it. She had always been fairly proficient in sports events at school, if not quite a medal winner, but once she got her first bike, a present from her parents on her ninth birthday, there’d been almost literally no stopping her. She’d been at home on the saddle, a perfect symbiosis of human and machine, capable of speeds impossible on foot. She had continually pushed herself to go faster, further, longer. She’d had a fair few spills along the way, but the odd bruise, the odd bit of road rash, was a fair price to pay for the sublime sensation of shooting along London’s streets like a human bullet.

  And now, without a bike, she was virtually as fast as an actual bullet. Not that she hadn’t earned it. She had had to die, after all, brutally, in order to be reborn as Puck. But there were worse trade-offs. She could, instead, be just plain dead. Whereas this was death plus. Death deluxe. Death with benefits.

  THE FOUR-STRONG TEAM of Paladins who had reconnoitred Summer Land reported back to Major Wynne with their findings.

  “Funfair itself’s a shithole,” said Lieutenant Noble, who had headed up the recon. “Seems to have had a lick of paint recently, but that can’t disguise the fact that half the rides are deathtraps. If Mr Drake hadn’t repealed EU health-and-safety regulations, the place’d be out of business tomorrow. As for the people running it, they seem normal enough all right. You mightn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary, just to look at them. But you know, after all this time dealing with so many of these weird fuckers, you get an instinct, don’t you? A prickle at the back of the neck. They’re not right.”

  “I was at the shooting gallery,” said a Paladin called Stirling. She was slight of stature but hard as nails. Wynne had slept with her once. Grossly unprofessional behaviour, without doubt a sackable offence, and they’d both known it and they’d both agreed never to talk about it again, ever. But it had been well worthwhile, at least as far as Wynne was concerned, even if the scratches and bite marks she’d inflicted on him had taken weeks to fade.

  “I wasn’t doing badly either,” Stirling continued. “The airgun was rigged, of course, but once I’d adjusted for the sights being off and the slight bend in the barrel, I was scoring bullseyes every time. And then… I wasn’t.” She gave a perplexed shrug. “I couldn’t hit the target, no matter how I tried. It was like my eye and my trigger finger just weren’t coordinated any more. And you know me. You know my rifle range stats.”

  Wynne did. Stirling was the Paladins’ top marksman.

  “The guy manning the gallery, ugly-looking little runt, just kept giving me the evils,” she said.

  “Put you off?”

  Stirling snorted. “It’d take a lot more than that. But the way he was staring, it was like he was willing me to fail––and then I started failing. Had my heart set on nabbing a prize. A massive stuffed panda. I’m pissed off I didn’t win it.”

  “And the people in charge of the actual rides,” said Noble, “they were all alike. You’ve seen the footage.”

  Wynne had. Microcameras concealed within the spectacles worn by the other two Paladins on the team had recorded the entire op. Pretty much without exception, the fairground rides had been run by tall, slender men and women with long hair, pointed chins and bright, fascinating eyes. Even just watching the video, Wynne had found their come-ons beguiling. They sweet-talked and flattered the punters and made the idea of parting with a couple of quid to get hurled around mindlessly for a minute or so the most enticing prospect there ever was.

  It was a judgement call. Wynne had no firm intel that the funfair was, as Jenny Greenteeth asserted, home to faeries, elves and the like. The river hag might just be settling a score, getting revenge for some insult perpetrated on her. Perhaps she had once worked at Summer Land and been thrown out, and had nursed a grudge ever since.

  Then again, he had done some background research on Summer Land’s current owner, one Auberon LeRoy. It seemed LeRoy had once been a successful academic until, following a near-fatal heart attack, he’d had some kind of breakdown, jacked in his university career and gone into the funfair business instead.

  This was a pattern familiar to Wynne. Rigorous interrogation of the various creatures imprisoned in the basement level at Stronghold––the ones which could speak, that was––revealed a common thread. Each had undergone a near-death experience which had left them altered, mentally and in most cases physically, so as to resemble something from folklore. The whys and wherefores of these transformations were unknown to Wynne, but then he didn’t really want to know, or need to. That sort of thing was above his pay grade. Prime Minister Drake clearly had some idea but wasn’t divulging. All that mattered, where Wynne was concerned, was that Auberon LeRoy fit the bill. He had almost died and the experience had left him changed. And if the person in charge of Summer Land matched the profile, why not the people who worked for him, too?

  The balance of probabilities was that Summer Land was a travelling refuge for a whole tribe of misfit beings who did not belong in Drake’s Britain. There they had been, right under everyone’s noses, moving from place to place, hiding in plain sight. As bad as any illegal immigrants. Worse, in many ways. Folkloric creatures with eerie supernatural abilities who could pass for human.

  To Wynne, this was repugnant. Summer Land’s very existence was a provocation, and he resolved to deal with the situation in the most extreme manner possible. Drake had given him carte blanche. He had a battalion of Paladins under his command. Time to mobilise.

  Chapter 12

  THE PALADINS LAUNCHED their attack during the small hours of a Monday morning.

  Summer Land was ensconced that week in a horseshoe-shaped valley on the outskirts of a provincial town in southern Dorset. Steep forested slopes enclosed it on three sides. For Major Wynne’s purposes, this could not have been more ideal. The terrain advantage was all his.

  The weather proved to be on his side, too. The night sky was overcast, no moonlight, and just after midnight a heavy rain started falling.

  The fairground people were in bed, all of them except a handful of gnarled, husky little men who were performing sentry duty. A hundred Paladins began infiltrating the surrounding woodland,
padding stealthily between the ashes and elders. What little noise they made, the rain masked. A couple of dozen of them held back in reserve positions on the ridge of the hills. The rest halted just inside the treeline.

  Stirling and three other sharpshooters arranged themselves at predetermined vantage points, equidistantly around the fairground. Each had an AW50 Accuracy International long-range sniper rifle fitted with bipod, suppressor and thermal imaging night scope. Each had a clear, unimpeded view of the site.

  When he had confirmation that everyone was in place, Wynne gave the go command. The instruction was transmitted to earpieces in the Paladins’ helmets on a dedicated shortwave band.

  Stirling picked off the first of the sentries. Three hundred yards. No wind adjustment necessary. Her gunshot was little louder than a cat’s sneeze. Through her night scope, she saw her target’s head jerk back and his body crumple.

  In rapid succession, the other sentries were downed.

  “All right, ladies and gentlemen,” said Wynne. “You know the drill. Keep it clean and keep it quick. The longer we can hold off the unsuppressed gunfire, the better. And remember, these bastards are likely to have ‘abilities’, so I want everyone on their game. Don’t take any chances. If you don’t like the way something looks, don’t hesitate, eliminate.”

  Paladins moved out from the trees, combat knives and silenced pistols at the ready, stalking towards the cluster of caravans where the fairground people slept.

  AJIA WAS AWOKEN by a shout, just audible above the drumming of the rain on the caravan roof. It was a guttural cry of surprise and indignation, and it was abruptly cut short.

  She slid out of her bunk, levered up the window blind and peeked out.

  In the doorway of the next caravan, two figures were engaged in violent struggle. One was darkly dressed and positioned behind the other, with a hand clamped over the other’s mouth. Through the downpour Ajia glimpsed a metallic flicker passing across a throat. Immediately, the other figure went limp. The dark-dressed figure lowered the sagging body to the ground.

  Ajia shrank back from the window, letting the blind drop back into place. Her heart was racing.

  When she next peeked out, the dark-dressed figure had been joined by another person, similarly clad. Paladins. She identified them by their helmets––that distinctive crest on top like a fish’s dorsal fin. The two were conferring. One pointed towards Ajia’s caravan. The gesture obviously meant go deal with anyone in there.

  Ajia scrambled over to the bunks. She shook Maya awake, placing a finger on her lips to shush her.

  “Get the others up,” she whispered.

  “What is it?” Maya whispered back, eyes wide in the darkness.

  “I think we’re under attack.”

  As Maya woke the other two brownies, Ajia crept over to the door. Pressing her ear against it, she detected a faint footfall on the upturned plastic crate they used as a front step. The bolt on the door had been slid shut but was neither large nor sturdy. A good, solid kick to the door would snap the bolt free from its mountings.

  She could only assume their neighbour––one of the boggarts, Dennis––had heard the Paladin outside his caravan and come out to investigate. That had been his fatal mistake. She wasn’t going to get caught out the same way.

  The three brownies were gathered in an anxious huddle.

  “We’re going out through the bathroom window,” Ajia said to them. The bathroom lay on the opposite side of the caravan from the door. “Whatever you do, don’t make a sound.”

  The brownies nodded.

  The Paladin gently tested the door. Ajia made an urgent ushering motion towards the bathroom, a tiny cubicle where there was just about enough floorspace for one person to stand. Maya went first. Ajia watched her ease the window open, while at the same time keeping a wary eye on the door. As soon as Maya slithered out, Ajia silently exhorted the next brownie, Alice, to follow.

  The door began to bow inward. The Paladin was applying pressure with a shoulder. Even if the bolt didn’t give under the strain, the hinges might.

  Genevieve, the third brownie, was crawling out through the bathroom window. The door creaked, then relaxed back into its frame.

  Ajia didn’t believe for a moment that the Paladin had given up.

  She heard a panicked gasp outside the bathroom window. There was a series of swift, snippy hisses which could only have been silenced gunshots.

  Oh shit. The Paladins had had the caravan surrounded. They had been staking out all the possible exits. Ajia had just sent the three brownies out to their deaths.

  Next instant, a booted foot rammed the door open. The owner of the booted foot charged in, brandishing a combat knife. Rainwater dripped from his uniform onto the floor.

  Ajia darted towards the kitchenette. All at once, the intruding Paladin was a crippled octogenarian, his every movement arthritically slow. In the time it took Ajia to open a drawer and select a paring knife, he had turned his head only a few degrees. He was just bringing his knife round as she ran back and jabbed her much smaller but no less sharp knife deep into his leg. He hadn’t even collapsed to his knees before Ajia had skirted past him out of the door and was rounding the corner of the caravan.

  Two handgun-toting Paladins crouched over three bodies sprawled in the grass. They were checking their victims’ necks for a pulse––not that they would find one, given the bullet holes in the brownies’ foreheads.

  Ajia still had the paring knife. Maya, diligent domesticated creature that she was, had always made sure the cutting edge was kept keen.

  She buried the blade up to the hilt in the back of the nearer of the Paladins. She stabbed the other Paladin in the gut, just to the side of the padded panel that covered most of his front torso. Neither had reflexes anywhere near quick enough to stop her.

  Then she was off across the campsite at full pelt, making for the caravan Smith was staying in.

  SEVEN MINUTES ELAPSED before an uproar arose.

  The Paladins fanned out between the various kinds of mobile home, moving smoothly, ultra-efficiently from one to the next and effecting ingress. The doors gave way quite easily, on the whole. Some were little more than pieces of plywood with a skin of aluminium and would break in half if shoved hard enough. The windows were a doddle to open, too. Slip a knife blade through the rubber trim, slide the catch aside, job done.

  Nearly a quarter the funfair folk were dispatched inside their caravans, many of them while they still slumbered.

  Then a couple of goblins proved trickier to kill than hoped. They fought back against the uniformed interlopers who had broken into their sleeping quarters. A brutal hand-to-hand brawl rocked the caravan on its suspension. Bodies thumped around. There were yells and cries of pain.

  This alerted everyone in the vicinity, and an anxious hubbub spread like wildfire across the campsite. All of a sudden funfair folk were emerging into the open air in their nightclothes, squinting through the rain, trying to fathom what the hell was going on.

  The time for subtlety was past. The Paladins, at a command from Major Wynne, transitioned from stealth to full-frontal offensive. Knives were sheathed. Stubby L85A3 assault rifles were unshipped. Suppressors were removed from pistols, to permit greater accuracy. Gunshots crackled. Muzzle flashes lit up the dark. A storm had come to the campsite, a relentless, destructive force bringing death and terror.

  AJIA HAMMERED ON the door of Smith’s caravan.

  “Smith! Smith!”

  Smith shambled out in a string vest and a pair of longjohns. “Goodfellow. Do you know what time it is?”

  “How can you be sleeping through this?”

  “I can sleep through anything. What’s going on?” He frowned down at the knife in Ajia’s hand. “That blood…” he began.

  “It’s not mine. Grab your hammer. They’re killing people. We’ve got to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Killing? Who?”

  “Paladins. There are Paladins fucking everywhere. Now,
just shut up and do as I say.”

  As Smith ducked back indoors, Ajia turned to see if the coast was clear.

  It wasn’t. A trio of Paladins were zeroing in on the caravan in a V-formation. Their rifles were at their shoulders, barrels trained on her.

  Without a second’s hesitation she started running straight at them. Two of them fired. The shots were deep, soft booms, like explosions underwater. She saw flame slowly bulge at the barrel ends. The bullets sailed towards her at an almost leisurely pace. She perceived the rounds’ whirling flight, the paths they sliced through the rain, which itself seemed in no hurry, each individual droplet falling to earth with the same casual grace as thistledown. Dodging the bullets was like dodging a couple of tennis balls lobbed underarm.

  Then she was sliding across the sodden turf on her side, the knife in her outstretched hand. She slashed at the leg of the Paladin on her right, behind the knee. Switching the knife to her other hand, she did something similar to the Paladin on her left. She skidded to a halt just past them, rolling over with her momentum until she was crouching on all fours.

  The rain returned to normal speed as she paused for the briefest of moments to assess. The two Paladins she had wounded were sagging to the ground, while the third was pivoting on his heel, looking to his comrades. His jaw was slack with astonishment. Ajia could only imagine how it had seemed to him: the girl in front of them had somehow disappeared, and next thing he knew, he was the only Paladin still standing. The other two were, for some inexplicable reason, down.

  Then, like a sprinter bounding away from the starting block, she set off again. She hurtled towards the uninjured Paladin through the fluttering rain, knife to the fore. At this point she was past caring whether she was simply putting the Paladins out of action or killing them. Back at her caravan she had used the knife indiscriminately. She didn’t think any of the damage she had inflicted so far, either there or here, was fatal, but she wasn’t much fussed even if it was. She only had to recall the bodies of the three brownies lying lifeless on the ground, murdered without mercy, without scruple. Maya among them. Sweet, guileless Maya, who hadn’t a bad word for anyone.