Age of Legends

by James Lovegrove

  The Paladin didn’t have time to squeeze off a shot. Ajia’s knife tore through his sleeve, gashing the underside of his forearm, severing tendons. The rifle began to tumble from his grasp. She swung back and buried the blade in his inner thigh. When she pulled it out, an arc of blood jetted from the cut, looking to her accelerated perceptions like a worm squeezing its way out of the soil.

  She was back at Smith’s caravan to meet him as he came out, with shoes on his feet now and his hammer in his hand. He blinked as he saw the three Paladins rolling around, clutching knife wounds and groaning.

  “No time to gawp,” she said, panting for breath. “We’ve got to move.”

  “Yes,” Smith said. “Where?”

  “Doesn’t matter where. Anywhere but here.”

  “What about Mr LeRoy?”

  “What about him?”

  “We can’t just leave him.”

  “Smith, the site is overrun with Paladins,” Ajia said, exasperated. “It’s a fucking slaughterhouse. I think the rule ‘every man for himself’ applies.”

  “I disagree. You came for me, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but that’s different.”

  “No, it isn’t. Mr LeRoy is my friend. He is the heart and soul of Summer Land. Without him, this place wouldn’t exist and everyone here would have nowhere to go to.”

  “And Summer Land is getting the shit kicked out of it,” Ajia insisted. “Look around you. Listen.”

  From everywhere there came a chaotic cacophony of gunfire and screams. Figures flitted to and fro through the rain-curtained dark. It was hard to tell if they were friend or foe, but Ajia reckoned they were more likely to be the latter. It was only a matter of time before more Paladins ventured this way.

  “There isn’t a Summer Land any more,” she went on. “The Paladins are on the warpath. Can’t you tell? They’re not going to stop until absolutely every one of us is dead.”

  “No,” said Smith, adamant. “Mr LeRoy.”

  “Fucksake,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Okay. We make our way out past his caravan. But if they’ve already got to him, we don’t hang around. We motor on by. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Furtive, keeping low, Ajia and Smith pursued a circuitous route through the campsite. At one point they stumbled across a group of Paladins who had lined several pixies up against the side of a lorry. The little childlike creatures were sobbing and snivelling, powerless to resist. Ajia immediately poised herself to intervene, but too late. Gunshots rippled. The pixies collapsed like scythed wheat.

  Ajia bit back a cry of anguish and started forward. Smith seized her arm, pinning her to the spot.

  “No,” he murmured. “We missed our opportunity. We can’t do anything for them now.”

  “But they… they executed them. Like a firing squad.”

  “And you confront those Paladins now and you could wind up getting shot too, and for what? Revenge? Do you want that?”

  “Yes!”

  “No, you don’t. Neither do I. Come on.”

  Smith strode off. Ajia trudged after him.

  A minute later they arrived at Mr LeRoy’s big box of a caravan. Paladins were milling about at the entrance. As Ajia and Smith looked on from behind Mr LeRoy’s dilapidated Land Rover Defender, more Paladins filed out from inside the caravan. One of them shrugged to the others who’d been waiting. The gesture clearly implied that the caravan was empty.

  “Seems Mr LeRoy and Perry had enough warning and got out in time,” Smith observed. “Good for them.”

  A soft rap on the inside of the Land Rover’s nearest window attracted their attention.

  It was Mr LeRoy. He beckoned frantically to them with a hand, mouthing the words, “Get in.”

  Casting a glance towards the Paladins, Smith eased open the backseat door and slid into the car. Ajia was close behind.

  “Stay down,” Mr LeRoy whispered from the front passenger seat as Ajia pulled the door to. Perry was in the driving seat next to him. Both of them were hunkering in the footwells, keeping as low as possible.

  The four crouched in silence, breathing hard. Mr LeRoy lifted his head just high enough to peer out over the bonnet, bobbing back down immediately.

  “Still there?” Smith enquired.

  “Yes. More of them than before.”

  “Damn it. We’re trapped.”

  “As long as they don’t head in this direction, we should be fine,” said Perry. “They might not think to look inside a car. They’ll assume we’re all in the caravans.”

  “It was Perry’s idea,” said Mr LeRoy. “Soon as the ruckus started, he dragged me out to the Land Rover. Very clever of him.”

  “But if they do head in this direction, they’re bound to spot us,” said Smith. “We’ll be sitting ducks.”

  “You didn’t have to get in,” Perry said tartly.

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Smith muttered in a gruff tone.

  “Why?” said Mr LeRoy, after a moment’s silence. “That’s the question I keep asking myself. Why this attack? Why now, when we’ve managed to stay under the radar for so long?”

  “It was never going to last,” Perry replied. “I think we all knew that. Sooner or later, the powers-that-be were going to cotton on to what Summer Land really was. It was inevitable.”

  “They came the other day,” Ajia confessed. “I saw them. Four soldiers in plain clothes. They looked like soldiers, at any rate. They were wandering around the fair, going on the rides and stuff. I didn’t think anything of it. Well, I didn’t think enough of it. I thought I was maybe being paranoid. But I wasn’t, was I? They were scoping us out. They were a scouting party. This is my fault. I should have said something. If I had, we’d have been prepared. They wouldn’t have taken us by surprise. We’d have stood a chance.”

  “My dear girl, you mustn’t blame yourself,” Mr LeRoy said. “I won’t hear of it. You can’t be the only one to have seen them. Others of the funfair folk must have too, and they didn’t twig to who those four were, any more than you did.”

  “Still, I should have at least mentioned it.”

  “You weren’t to know better. What’s happened has happened, and we must deal with things as they are.”

  A worse thought occurred to Ajia. “What if the bastards are here because of me? What if the police ID’ed me and put them onto us, because I’m a fugitive or whatever?”

  “Really, that’s enough,” Mr LeRoy snapped as vehemently as he could without raising his voice. “If this were all about you, Ajia, it wouldn’t have been Paladins deployed against us, it would have been just policemen. Paladins are for special circumstances, and I think we funfair folk rate as special. The fact that they’re killing us systematically also points to this being supra-judicial. It’s got nothing to do with the law and everything to do with genocide. Prime Minister Drake is behind this. He must be. He’s found out about us somehow and he’s having us exterminated. Like so many others, we don’t fit in with his vision of a new Britain.”

  “Jenny,” said Smith. “Jenny Greenteeth. She could have told the Paladins about Summer Land.”

  “She or any other of the monsters,” said Perry. “That’s what I meant when I said it was inevitable. I warned you this might happen, Bron, didn’t I? A number of times.”

  “Yes, my boy.” Mr LeRoy patted his cheek. “And I refused to listen, because I’m a stubborn old fool. And also because what else could I do but carry on as before? I couldn’t just abandon Summer Land. It would have been like abandoning hope.”

  He dared to sneak another look up over the dashboard.

  “Oh dear God,” he gasped, shrinking back down.

  “What is it?” said Smith.

  “Two of them. They’re heading this way. Everyone, stay absolutely still. Keep your hands and faces out of sight. Try as much as you can to look like just a bundle of clothes. We may get lucky.”

  Ajia buried her face against her knees, making herself as small as possible. S
he knew it would be futile if the Paladins should happen to glance into the Land Rover. A human being was very easy to distinguish from a bundle of clothes. Her pulse was pounding in her ears, so loud she could hardly hear anything else.

  Please pass on by. Please pass on by.

  There was a sharp, metallic tap on the windscreen. A voice said, “You lot in the car. Out.”

  Ajia raised her head to see one of the Paladins aiming his assault rifle at them, its muzzle inches from the windscreen. The other Paladin was making a summoning gesture to his colleagues over by the caravan.

  She was still clutching the bloodstained paring knife, but suddenly it seemed a pathetic weapon. A piece of kitchenware against an assault rifle levelled at point blank range. Absurd.

  She looked through the gap between the two front seats to Mr LeRoy. His expression was resigned and weary.

  “Best do as they say,” he said, starting to rise. “Maybe they’ll spare us.”

  He didn’t believe it any more than Ajia did.

  “Let me deal with this,” said Perry, reaching for the door handle. “No one’s immune to my charm if I really pour it on.”

  “Perry, no,” said Mr LeRoy. “You’re not glamouring punters here. This lot won’t succumb nearly as easily.”

  “I can try anyway. If nothing else I can buy the rest of you some time.”

  “Perry, my love…” Mr LeRoy implored. His face was a rictus of anguish.

  “Don’t argue. Just get ready to start the car.” Perry climbed out. “My, my,” he said to the Paladins, drawing himself up to his full height and tossing back his hair. “What have we here? Two fine, strapping fellows. Have we met before? I feel like I know you.”

  The Paladins had their guns pointed at him but all at once they didn’t appear too concerned about using them.

  “Yes,” Perry continued, “you should probably lower those weapons.” His voice was like honey and silk. Ajia thought she could have listened to him talk all day. “There’s no need for all this aggression.”

  The assault rifles drooped. One of the Paladins half-smiled.

  “It’s working,” said Smith. “Mr LeRoy, start the car, like Perry said. Once we get rolling, he can dive in.”

  Mr LeRoy fumbled the car keys from his pocket and slid across to the driving seat. Ajia, sitting up, saw more Paladins approaching. She knew what would happen once the engine fired up. A hail of bullets, surely. Yet there was a chance, just a chance, that they could get out of here unscathed. The Land Rover had thick metal panels which might absorb some of the gunfire.

  The windows were another matter, but…

  “Smith,” she said. “I need you to make something.”

  Smith drew his hammer. “What?”

  “Armour plating. To shield the windows. Can you do that?”

  Smith gave a slow nod. “I believe I can.”

  Perry, meanwhile, was continuing to bewitch the two Paladins beside the car. However, the other Paladins were close now, and one of them expressed surprise that the two did not have full situational control.

  “What the bloody hell is this?” he barked. “Why are your weapons down? Why are you just standing around chatting with this bloke? And there’s still three others in the car. They should be out here.”

  Ajia was 99% certain the man who had just spoken was Dominic Wynne. She recognised the voice.

  Confirmation came when one of the englamoured Paladins said, “But he’s a nice guy, Major Wynne.”

  “It’d be a shame to shoot him,” said the other.

  Major Wynne, without even hesitating, put a bullet in Perry’s chest and another in his head.

  “No!” Mr LeRoy shrieked.

  “I told you they were tricky,” Wynne said. “I told you to take care. Weren’t you fuckwits listening?”

  The two Paladins shook their heads in a baffled manner, as though they couldn’t understand what had come over them.

  “Now,” Wynne said, turning towards the Land Rover. “The rest of you in there. You know what’s coming. Let’s make this as straightforward as we can, shall we? Get out. Save yourselves, and us, a hassle.”

  “Cunt!” Mr LeRoy roared. Ajia was from the East End, where that particular expletive was used by certain people pretty much as punctuation. It was oddly more startling to hear it from the lips of someone usually so erudite and refined. Tears were streaming down Mr LeRoy’s cheeks. He slotted the key into the ignition and twisted it hard. The Land Rover coughed into life.

  Smith took this as his cue to act. He whacked his hammer hard against the inside of the driver’s side door. Instantly a latticework of bars criss-crossed the window, springing like tentacles out of the surrounding bodywork. He repeated the process with the window directly next to him.

  Mr LeRoy threw the car into first and slammed his foot down on the accelerator. The Land Rover skidded into the life, lurching forwards.

  Rifle reports rattled outside. Bullets thudded into the vehicle.

  Mr LeRoy drove straight at a Paladin who was in the way, a blurry silhouette through the rain-streaked windscreen. The Paladin leapt to one side, narrowly avoiding being hit.

  Smith reached across Ajia and armoured the windows on that side. The Paladins raked the Land Rover with gunfire from the rear. Mr LeRoy slewed the car between two caravans, heading for the gate which afforded access to the fairground site from the B-road beyond.

  Paladins converged from elsewhere to intercept the escapees, firing as they went. Rifle rounds starred the windscreen. Smith leaned forward from the backseat and repaired the glass with hammer taps, adding a row of thick metal strips to reinforce it against further salvoes.

  The gate itself was shut, but it was just a five-bar wooden thing, elderly and none too robust. The Land Rover rammed into it square-on. The chain which secured it snapped and the gate was flung wide open. Mr LeRoy threw the Land Rover into a sharp right-hand turn. The tyres skidded across wet tarmac, the rear of the car drifting leftwards. Mr LeRoy corrected, and the Land Rover hared off along the road. He shifted up through the gears, gaining speed.

  “Is everyone all right?” Mr LeRoy sai without looking round. “Nobody hurt?”

  “Uh-uh,” said Ajia.

  “Me too,” said Smith. “You?”

  “Fine,” said Mr LeRoy. “Not a scratch. But…” He thumped the steering wheel with his fist. The tears were still flowing fast. “Perry, you wretched idiot. You didn’t have to do that. Not like that.”

  “He saved us,” Smith said, laying a consoling hand on Mr LeRoy’s shoulder. “He saved you.”

  “He could be a right vicious little bitch sometimes, Smith, but I loved him.”

  “I know. And he knew, and I think, in his way, he loved you back. He must have, to sacrifice himself for you like he did.”

  “Yes. Yes, he must have,” Mr LeRoy said with a grimace.

  The Land Rover struck the verge shudderingly and veered across the road. Mr LeRoy fought to regain control.

  “Would you like me to drive?” Smith offered.

  “No.” Mr LeRoy ran a thumb across each eye. “No, I can manage. Windscreen wipers would help. Headlights too.”

  In all the commotion of their getaway, he hadn’t turned either on. He did so now. As the wipers flopped to and fro, dual cones of illumination from the headlights picked out high hedgerow-topped banks on either side of the road and the silvery shimmer of the rain. Shortly, the Land Rover approached a T-junction, with a fingerpost indicating the nearby town. Mr LeRoy turned left, away from the town, heading deeper into the countryside.

  “So,” said Ajia, “where are we going?”

  “Where is there to go?” said a forlorn Mr LeRoy. “Summer Land is no more. There’s nowhere safe. The Paladins will probably have noted down our numberplate, so we can’t expect to keep driving indefinitely. Even if they haven’t, the car’s riddled with bullet holes, and that and Smith’s customisations will make it stand out. We’ll have to ditch it somewhere, and then what?”
r />   There was a pause, then Smith said, “How far are we from Nottingham?”

  “I don’t know, a couple of hundred miles maybe. Why?”

  “I know someone up there, someone who might help.”

  “Ah. Ah yes,” said Mr LeRoy. “I know who you mean. Him. But didn’t the two of you…?”

  “Have a falling-out? Yes.”

  “So won’t he be…?”

  “Not best pleased to see me? Yes. But,” Smith added, “when your back’s against the wall, there’s no better person to have by your side.”

  Chapter 13

  THE NEXT MORNING, Derek Drake received two calls in quick succession on his personal phone while he was being chauffeured from home to Downing Street.

  The first was from Dominic Wynne, informing him that decisive action had been taken against Summer Land.

  “How decisive?” Drake asked.

  “Very, sir.”

  “Do I want to know more?”

  “Not if plausible deniability means anything to you.”

  “So no potential blowback?”

  “One or two loose ends remain to be tied up,” said Wynne, “but we’re on the case. We’re throwing every available resource at it.”

  “Good man, Dominic. Thank you.”

  “Send my regards to Mrs Drake.”

  “I shall.”

  The second phone call was an unscheduled communication from none other than the Russian premier.

  “Dobroye utro,” said Drake, doing his best to hide his surprise.

  “And good morning to you, Derek.” President Vasilyev, unlike any of his predecessors, spoke very creditable English. He had studied international politics at Oxford.