King's Army

by Mark Huckerby

  “I look like the last King Richard,” Richard muttered.

  He meant Richard the Third, the villainous, hunchbacked king who had lived five hundred years before.

  “He was a fine monarch,” Lock stated, proud.

  “Didn’t he kill his nephews and bury them in the Tower of London?” Richard asked.

  Years ago, when he and Alfie were very young, they’d been given a private tour around the Tower by the beefeaters who delighted in scaring them with the story: how Richard the Third had murdered his nephews so he could become king, and how the ghosts of the two princes supposedly haunted the Bloody Tower.

  “Not personally. He hired a goblin assassin, as I recall. Anyway, he did what was right for his kingdom, and that is not always a pleasant task,” Lock said, stern. “You won’t look this way for long. After you’re crowned king everything will be better. You’ll see.”

  Lock threw open the inner doors to the abbey. There was no fanfare and no choir. Richard stepped into the hallowed place to an uneasy silence. And as he proceeded down the vast central aisle of Westminster Abbey, he saw that Lock had lied again. The great church was barely half full of press-ganged citizens and bored-looking berserkers, several chewing their hymn books. The smell of incense hung heavy in the air, but it wasn’t enough to conceal the stench of rotting flesh that rose off the undead Viking draugar who lined the nave and grudgingly bowed their heads to him as he passed.

  But Richard didn’t care. He had to focus on what Lock had said – being crowned would make him better. He would no longer be the Black Dragon. Finally he would be the Defender. This needed to be done. He kept his eyes fixed dead ahead.

  Blooooo!

  The blast from Guthrum’s war-horn shook the abbey walls. Richard looked up as dust fell from the vaulted ceiling where not so long ago he had crouched as the Black Dragon, watching Alfie process up the very same aisle to take the throne, his throne. It felt like a lifetime ago.

  “He did what was right for his kingdom. He did what was right for his kingdom,” Richard whispered over and over to himself like a mantra, his heart pounding as he reached the simple wooden coronation chair. He hoped no one could see how nervous he was. For weeks now they’d been trying to make the regalia he’d taken from Alfie work for him instead. But no matter what spells and incantations Lock recited over the Crown Jewels, they didn’t react to Richard’s touch: the Great Sword of State refused to glow with a deep blue fire, the Ring of Command sat cold and inert on his finger, the Colobium Sidonis, the Shroud Tunic, which was supposed to transform into the Defender’s magical armour, hung limp over his shoulders. Night after night they’d tried until finally Lock had emerged from the Keep’s archives clutching some dusty scrolls and announced triumphantly he’d finally figured it out. They needed to crown him king: it was the act of the coronation that completed the Succession process and would fully release the power that flowed through Richard’s veins.

  Blooo!

  With another blast from Guthrum’s horn Richard sat, gripping on to the armrests with white knuckles. Nearby, the guests of honour bowed their heads. The new so-called “Prime Minister”, the revolting Lord Mortimer, was there along with his devious son Sebastian, who winked at Richard like they were somehow best friends. Behind them towered Guthrum, the smell of fish and rank meat hanging over him like a cloud. Richard could see that the undead Viking warlord had been dressed up to mark the coronation, squeezed into an oversized grey suit and tie and looking like a giant wrestler at a wedding. Someone had even tied his greasy hair into a ponytail. But he’d dropped some kind of food all down the front of his suit and was drooling.

  Richard closed his eyes and tried to block everything out. He just wanted to be crowned king, become the Defender and finally rid himself of the dragon sickness that lurked inside him. Lock stepped forward and faced the sparse congregation.

  “Sirs, I here present unto you Richard Arundel, your undoubted King. Wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same?”

  “We are!” the timid crowd replied, apart from Guthrum, who bit into a giant turkey leg he’d brought along, swallowed it whole and let rip with a giant burp.

  Lock turned to Richard. “Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and her Commonwealth of nations according to their laws and customs? To punish the wicked and to protect and cherish the just?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Now get on with it,” Richard hissed.

  Four undead Vikings shambled forward carrying a golden canopy, which they held over the young king. Now hidden from sight, Richard let out a contented sigh. This was it, soon he could forget everything he’d done – the lies, the betrayals, the murder – soon he would be king. Lock poured the strange-smelling sacred oil from the golden flask on to an ornate spoon. Leaning close, he flicked it over Richard’s head.

  Cold washed over Richard like an arctic wind, numbing his fingers and burning his cheeks. The abbey seemed to disappear around him and he was left hanging in a black void. Then, out of the dark, shimmering apparitions began to float towards him: a parade of former kings and queens. But as Richard watched wide-eyed, the spirits twisted and warped, and their faces snarled. These were not the kindly, good Defenders of the past that Alfie had seen, but the very worst monarchs that had sat on the throne and ruled over the kingdom. The mad jabbering face of the hopeless King John loomed, cackling from the darkness; the blood-drenched figure of the terrifying Mary, Queen of Scots lurched past with a shriek. Richard waved his hands, trying to bat them away, but the ghouls kept coming, and not just past monarchs now, but the sneering traitor Oliver Cromwell, and the cruel-eyed usurper Roger Mortimer dancing and capering around him like they were welcoming him into the fold. Finally, the ghost of a thin, hunchbacked king with a pinched face rushed at Richard like a bottled spider, thin arms ready to embrace him. It was him, Richard the Third, and the smile on his face was blank and full of madness—

  Richard screamed. All at once, he was back in the abbey and looking up into the shocked face of Lock.

  “The oil burns! Get it off!”

  Lock wiped the oil from Richard’s skin then jammed St Edmund’s crown on to Richard’s head. He waved the Viking canopy holders away and turned to the congregation.

  “Well, come on, then!” he shouted.

  “God save the King!” the crowd shouted, as Lock hurried a shaking Richard away and out of sight. The coronation was over.

  Later, back in the privacy of the Keep, Richard was in a rage. Lock watched impassive as priceless relics were thrown against walls, the beefeaters’ former desks smashed and tapestries torn from the walls.

  “Why won’t it work, Lock? WHY WON’T IT WORK?!” Richard screamed in frustration.

  After they’d returned from the coronation and Richard had recovered from his terrifying visions, Lock had placed the Shroud Tunic over Richard, but the armour still didn’t appear.

  “The Succession is an ancient and mysterious process,” Lock said. “You cannot expect it to work overnight. There must be something I’ve yet to discern—”

  Richard slammed Lock up against a wall. His eyes flickered red and his voice raged like fire.

  “Then you’d better find out what it is, fast. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this thing inside me under control.”

  Richard released his grip and slumped back as Lock brushed himself down and straightened his suit.

  “Allow me to tell you a story,” said Lock.

  Lock strode across the hall towards his chambers. Richard sighed and followed. What choice did he have?

  Lock had occupied LC’s old room and filled it with ransacked scrolls, books and parchments from the Archives. “When I was a history student, not all that much older than you, I was always strapped for cash. I tried working as a waiter at a pizza place, but I kept getting the orders wrong, so they sacked me.”

  Richard sniffed wit
h derision and wondered where this was going. Lock was in full-on lecture mode, as if he was back at Harrow, giving Richard a tutorial in his office.

  “I needed to make money – fast. And one day, as we excavated a Roman villa near Bath, it struck me.”

  Lock rummaged on his desk, found something small and tossed it to Richard. It was a coin, dull with age, the makings on it barely visible.

  “Artefacts. Treasure. Saxon jewels. Medieval glass. People pay good money for old coins…”

  Richard’s eyes narrowed. “You stole them.”

  Lock’s smile was sly. “As a lover of history, I comforted myself that I was following in the footsteps of a wonderfully ignoble tradition: tomb robbing. I became very well known in certain circles and my student debt went like that.” Lock snapped his fingers.

  “Anyway, there was a dealer I knew in London called Samuel Weal. He lived in Bloomsbury as it happens, right under the nose of the British Museum – ha! I’d brought him some very fine Roman mosaics I’d liberated, but he hadn’t any cash, so we agreed to make a trade. He offered me many things – Egyptian statues, Phoenician burial pots. But I chose this.”

  Like a stage magician, Lock removed a velvet cloth from his seeing mirror with a flourish. Except this was no trick. Months earlier, Lock had shown Richard his own coronation in the mirror’s dark surface long before it had ever happened. And later he’d witnessed Lock speaking to the mirror when he thought he was alone. It might not look much, with its chipped and dull silver frame, but Richard could sense the power contained within. It was like looking at a nuclear bomb.

  “Old Weal said I’d gone mad. He didn’t think much of the mirror. It had been found in the wreck of a galleon off St David’s Head and passed around various dealers over the years. But I knew I had to have it when she started talking to me.”

  “Who?”

  Lock lit a black candle and beckoned Richard closer.

  “She who lives in the mirror. I kept it by my bed at night. Her voice was soft at first. She told me the true history of kings like you, urged me to find out more. Talk to her, you’ll see.”

  Richard was about to reply when a strange droning sound sang out from the mirror. It was like a million bees buzzing, their wings whirring. Lock’s study seemed to grow dark as the mirror glowed and Richard’s own reflection faded to be replaced with stars, like he was looking through a window into a galaxy. It reminded him of summer holidays at Balmoral in the Scottish Highlands when he was very young. Sometimes he and Alfie were allowed to go camping in the gardens. They’d run around, pretending to be explorers. But the best part was when they would lie under the stars, he’d never seen so many—

  “Speak.”

  Richard was snapped out of his memory by the voice from the mirror. The stars had disappeared and now the mirror’s glass seemed to ripple like water over fathomless depths. It didn’t feel like he was looking through a mirror, it was more like he was staring through a window at a dark, limitless ocean. But instead of the sound of waves, there was the buzzing drone of flies.

  A face formed in the water (was it water? It was so hard to tell) in front of him: a woman’s, one half in deep black shadow. The side he could see was beautiful and beguiling, her skin snow-clear and eyes as green as emeralds.

  “Who are you?” the woman demanded. Her voice was at once sweet and very, very old.

  “I’m … Richard. King Richard.”

  The woman laughed, long and mocking. “You are no king. Not while your brother still lives.”

  Confused, Richard glanced to Lock – the professor’s gaze was dark and heavy.

  Richard turned back to the mirror, fists clenched. “My brother is dead. I killed him!”

  “Don’t lie to me, child,” she replied.

  Richard cast his eyes to the floor.

  “It’s as I feared.” Lock had joined Richard as he too stared into the mirror. “The regalia will not work in Richard’s hands while Alfie lives.”

  “NO!”

  Richard slammed his fist on the desk causing ripples to spread across the surface of the mirror. The half of the woman’s face he could see was still smiling; it was maddening. Richard could feel his throat tightening and the dragon wings stirring under his skin, itching to get out. Who was this woman in the mirror? How did she know his brother was alive? Why didn’t she show herself properly? How dare she tell him—

  “Good! Be angry. Let the fire grow inside you.” The woman’s eye stared at Richard with fearsome intensity. “Maybe this time you can actually finish the job, little lizard.”

  Richard screamed and in an instant transformed into the Dragon. His wings unfurled and knocked over the desk in an avalanche of scrolls and parchment. The beast lurched out of the study, crashed through the Keep into the Arena, and with one flap of its massive wings, took off into the night’s sky above London.

  In the study, Lock approached the mirror nervously.

  “Mistress, I’m sorry—”

  “You promised me a king.” Her voice was icy.

  “I thought Alfie was dead,” stuttered Lock. “He must have escaped somehow. He must have had help.”

  Hel’s face rose closer to the surface of the mirror, revealing its other side. It wasn’t in shadow after all; it was carpeted with thousands of crawling black flies, the sound of their wings droning hypnotically. As one, the flies parted to reveal what was underneath. The other half of her face was a leering, pure white skull.

  “Find him,” she hissed.

  The magic hour.

  That was what Alfie’s dad used to call the time of the day when the sun set the earth aglow with its softest, dying rays. King Henry had loved taking photographs of them all in the walled gardens of Buckingham Palace with a bulky camera that used old-fashioned film. Richard would always throw up bunny ears behind Alfie’s head and Ellie would pose up a storm, even when she was tiny. Magic hour always provided the best light for family portraits, he would say.

  Back when we were a family. Alfie tried to block the sad thought from his mind by taking in the spectacular view. To the north of his mother’s remote Wyoming ranch, the snow-covered peaks of the Grand Teton Mountains glowed golden, casting long shadows over the steep, pine-covered foothills that ranged below. Everything in America seemed bigger to Alfie, from the cars to the trees, to the landscape. You just didn’t get views like this in the English countryside. Suddenly Alfie felt very far from home. He pushed away the feeling of shame that had been nagging at him for weeks. The shame of a runaway.

  Alfie shivered and zipped up his coat. His mum had said it would snow soon and once that happened they’d be stuck here until it thawed in spring.

  Good. Being left alone was just how Alfie wanted it.

  In the paddock a pair of glossy, nut-brown horses whinnied and chased each other playfully. Alfie spent a lot of time out here perched on the rough wooden fences watching them. His mum kept telling him he should take one of the mares out and ride the local trails; there wasn’t another house for miles around. But Alfie didn’t want to, so he claimed his injuries were still tender. Truth was, his body wasn’t hurt; it was his soul that was bruised. Riding would just make Alfie think of Wyvern, his own magical horse who was lost at sea during his battle with the Black Dragon. And that would make him think about Richard, and thinking of his brother would lead to LC and Hayley and Ellie and, before too long, the thought of everyone back home in Britain he’d either let down or lost would pile on and crush him. Nope, Alfie preferred to just stay right where he was with a clear head, out of the world’s way.

  With a gronk, Gwenn flew in and settled next to Alfie. The Tower of London’s tamest raven had hardly left his side since they arrived at the ranch after their long journey across the ocean. The other ravens kept their distance, but Alfie would sometimes hear them in the morning, circling and calling before splitting up for the day, each taking to a different corner of the ranch as if they were sentries on guard duty. Gwenn, however, liked to stick close to
her exiled king. With a deep, affectionate croak, the raven nibbled at Alfie’s hand, prompting him to stroke her beak.

  “Take it easy,” Alfie said, as she stared at him with her coal-black eyes. “Wish I had a pea brain like yours. That way I wouldn’t have to think about anything— Ow!”

  Gwenn pecked his hand, indignant. Yeoman Eshelby, the Ravenmaster, had always said the birds understood more than you realized and were as smart as chimps. “Trust me, if ravens ever develop thumbs, the world’s in big trouble,” he used to joke.

  Alfie wondered where the Ravenmaster was now. Hiding? Rounded up by the Vikings? Did he even survive the battle at the Tower?

  “How’s our little Hamlet doing out there?” Brian asked. “Talking to any skulls yet?”

  “No. Just his bird,” Tamara replied, gazing out of the kitchen window across the yard to where her son sat brooding. Behind her stood a long pine table strewn with bullets, springs and gun parts. Brian was cleaning his service pistol for the hundredth time. Tamara knew that as soon as the gun was back together and night fell, Alfie’s bodyguard would be outside, restlessly patrolling the perimeter of the ranch.

  “I still say we’re sitting ducks out here,” Brian said, without taking his eyes off his work. “And when that snow comes… We should have started heading back to the UK weeks ago.”

  “Alfie needs more time to recover.”

  “He’s had enough R&R if you ask me, ma’am.”

  “Has your brother turned into a monster and tried to kill you recently? You’ve got zero idea how he feels,” Tamara said. “And enough with the whole ‘ma’am’ garbage, please, Brian.” She walked back over to the sink to deposit her coffee mug, then returned to her vigil.

  Brian snapped the last piece of the gun together and slid it into his shoulder holster. He sneaked a glance at the former queen in her flannel shirt, jeans, sturdy boots, and her hair piled up messily. He could see the close resemblance to Alfie in her fine features. To Brian, she was still Queen, hence calling her “ma’am”. She was smart, proud and determined, with only the dark circles under her eyes hinting at the secrets she kept and the toll they’d taken.