King's Army

by Mark Huckerby

  “There is – a picture of St Edward’s Crown indicates an entrance. Not very subtle, I’m afraid. But there is something to be said for hiding in plain sight. If only I knew where to start looking…”

  Hayley closed the book, frustrated. But the cover caught her eye. It was a photo of a red phone box standing on the pavement in the shadow of Big Ben.

  “A crown? Like this?”

  LC peered at the picture. Sure enough, above the door to the phone box was the symbol of a crown.

  The old man sprang to his feet, clutching the book.

  “The phone boxes! That’s it! Bravo, Miss Hicks.”

  The librarian shushed them from her desk. Hayley stifled a laugh.

  “Explains why they still bother having phone boxes, I suppose,” she smirked.

  All of a sudden, a growl erupted from beneath the table. Herne stalked out, eyes to the ceiling, hackles raised.

  “What is it, Herne?” said Hayley.

  An answer came in the form of a scream from one of the tables near the windows. They rushed over to find a mother comforting her young daughter and others staring outside, pointing fearfully at the sky. Hayley squeezed through to the window and looked up to see a dark-winged shadow sweep over the rooftops. Moments later, it passed by again, this time issuing a jet of flames that illuminated the frightened faces at the window. The Black Dragon was flying over the city.

  “Might I suggest you all come away from the windows?” said LC.

  The rattled inhabitants of the library didn’t argue. They’d seen enough.

  “Do you think they know who the Dragon really is?” whispered Hayley.

  “No,” replied LC. “They believe that young King Richard is doing his best to maintain peace with the Viking occupiers. I doubt they’ve made any connection with the beast. And yet, it is odd that he is still…” LC trailed off, gazing into space.

  “What?” replied Hayley. She knew that look – there was something LC couldn’t explain and it was bothering him.

  “Nothing.” LC shook his head, back to business.

  “So what now?” asked Hayley. “We know how to get in, but it won’t be much of a Gunpowder Plot without any gunpowder.”

  LC smiled. “Now that is something I do believe I can provide.”

  “Really? You know where to get explosives?” asked Hayley, surprised.

  The librarian bustled up to them. She spoke nervously, checking over her shoulder.

  “I’m not prying; I don’t want to know what you’re up to, but we have families here and if there’s a raid…”

  Hayley looked around. Eyes were peeking out at them from behind countless dark shelves, people pointing at her and whispering to each other. She had been recognized. It was easy to forget that she wasn’t just some random teenager any more. She was Britain’s “most wanted” – famous and hunted – and it wasn’t a nice feeling. Is this what life was like for Alfie? she wondered. Everyone knowing who he was the whole time…

  “You have been most helpful,” said LC, taking her hand and bowing to kiss it.

  The flustered librarian tucked a loose curl of her hair behind her ear.

  “If there’s anything else I can do? I would like to help.”

  “As a matter of fact, there is,” said LC. “You don’t happen to know anyone with access to transportation?”

  The librarian led them outside and around the corner into a narrow, icy side street. A row of black cabs were parked up in a line. Canvas shelters had been rigged up next to them and the drivers warmed themselves by a firepit.

  “Ged?” called the librarian, waving at a portly driver, much to the amusement of his friends, who nudged him and pushed him over towards them.

  “All right, love? People will talk,” said Ged, giving her a peck on the cheek.

  “I wish you’d come inside where it’s warm, dear.”

  “What, and let some berserker foul up my cab? No chance. What’ll I do for a living when all this blows over if that happens? Besides, you know I ain’t much of a reader.”

  “In that case, I have a fare for you,” she said, scowling. “Unless you’d rather hang around with your friends all night.”

  The cabbie looked LC and Hayley up and down.

  “Where to, folks?”

  “It’s a somewhat delicate matter,” replied LC. “I have a consignment of barrels I need to move. They’re in Woolwich.”

  The cabbie sucked in air through his teeth and stroked his chin.

  “South of the river, during an undead Viking occupation? That’s gonna cost you, guv.”

  The librarian clipped her husband round the ear, which sent his friends into fresh gales of laughter.

  “All right, no charge,” the cabbie muttered, shamefaced. “But if you’re who I reckon you are, then I dare say this might take a spot of planning,” he said, and grinned.

  “How do we know we can trust you?” asked Hayley.

  The man looked offended.

  “I’ll have you know I am a fully licensed driver of hackney carriages. And if you can’t trust a London cabbie, who can you trust, eh?”

  “Emergency, emergency!” Tony yelled, pawing in the darkness for the window button. He calculated he had about three seconds before everyone inside the speeding four-by-four would choke to death on the poisonous gas.

  “Hurry!” Alfie yelled from the middle seat, holding his nose. “I’m dying here!”

  Gasping for breath, Tony finally opened his window and took a deep lungful of cold night air.

  “Oh, grow up, it’s not that bad.” Freya said, rolling her eyes. “It’s my inner troll, what can I do?”

  “Maybe cut down on your meat intake, sweetie?” Tamara suggested from the front passenger seat, waving her hand in front of her nose as Freya glared at her.

  They’d been cooped up in Tamara’s old jeep for nearly two days now, their destination a little fishing town called Alsea, nine hundred miles away on the Oregon coast. That was where they’d find the submarine that would carry them on the four-day voyage back to the UK for who-knows-what. Battles. Fire. Blood. Alfie tried to block the scary thoughts from his head, but it was like trying to forget about an upcoming appointment at the dentist, only a million times more important and worrying. First they’d all have to get into the UK undetected, then they’d have to somehow recover Alfie’s missing regalia so that he could be the Defender again. And even if they managed all that, there was Guthrum and his undead army to defeat, Lock to confront, Ellie to rescue and the not-so-small matter of Richard. Could he save his brother? He didn’t know, but he had to try. And this was before he had even factored in some old Norse goddess called Hel who wanted to wipe the world clean and start again.

  “How do you eat an elephant?” Tony had asked when Alfie had confided in him earlier about the daunting size of the challenge that faced them.

  Alfie shrugged, baffled about what elephants had to do with it.

  “One bite at a time,” Tony said, smiling. “One bite at a time…”

  Alfie knew what Tony meant – they just had to go step by step; it was easier to deal with that way. And weirdly, when he did manage to stave off the thoughts of the future, he was kind of enjoying this road trip. It was less like a preparation for an invasion and more like the weirdest family holiday ever.

  “Are we nearly there yet?” Tony whined, tapping his foot on the seat in front of him.

  “Ugh, you’re such a child!” snapped Freya.

  “I am not,” said Tony. “Hey, let’s play I-Spy!”

  Freya sucked in her cheeks like she’d just bitten into a lemon. “How long did you say this trip was, Brian?” she asked urgently.

  “Another couple of hours,” Brian said, glancing in the rear-view mirror as he drove. “Let’s cut the chitchat and stay alert, please, folks.”

  The bodyguard had been in a tense mood ever since they’d set off from the ranch. He’d taken them down lesser-used roads, twisting and turning through the hills at breakneck spee
d and he hadn’t slowed down even when Alfie complained he was feeling carsick. They’d crossed through Idaho and sped into Oregon and all the while, Brian kept checking his mirror like a nervous meerkat scanning for predators.

  Half an hour later, Brian pulled the jeep off a quiet stretch of road next to a meadow, fringed with dark pine trees, and turned to the back seat.

  “OK, people. Potty stop. You’ve got exactly three minutes before we hit the road again. Don’t wander off.”

  When the three minutes were up and they were returning to the jeep, Freya lingered, eyeing the distant woods hungrily. “I need to eat. Just a couple of rabbits will do.”

  Brian shook his head. “Sorry, no time to go troll again tonight. Back in the jeep.”

  The Norwegian queen glared at Brian with icy blue eyes; she wasn’t used to being bossed around.

  “You forgot three words, driver: ‘please’ and ‘Your Majesty’,” she said, haughtily.

  “When we’re safely in the sub they’ll be time for all that. But for now, get your royal derrière back in the truck right now or I’ll leave you behind chasing furry little woodland animals… Your Majesty.” Brian held her glare.

  Alfie and Tony stared at each other, wide-eyed, wondering if it was all going to kick off, but the young queen broke first and huffed her way back into the jeep. For the next hour you could have cut the tension with a knife, but eventually Tamara had produced some roast beef sandwiches from a cooler and soon Freya had started breaking wind again. At least she seemed a little happier.

  “Is this, like, one of your secret powers?” Alfie groaned, covering his nose again.

  “Engage TROLL WIND!” said Tony, putting on a video game voice.

  Their laugh was interrupted when Brian suddenly killed the headlights and pulled the steering wheel hard to the right.

  “HOLD ON!” he yelled.

  Everyone screamed as the jeep careered off the road and bounced through a field. Alfie felt like he was inside a bottle of ketchup that was being shaken up and down. Finally the jeep fishtailed around and stopped behind a small stand of trees.

  “I think I bit my tongue,” Tony stammered.

  “Who taught you to drive?” Freya said to Brian, annoyed.

  “Shut it and stay still,” Brian barked. He drew his pistol and spun round to watch the road. “We’re being followed.”

  They sat in tense, unbearable silence, the only sound the wind rushing through the pines outside and the ticking of the jeep’s engine as it cooled down. After a few moments, a cone of headlights swept past and Alfie caught a glimpse of a yellow car as it sped by. All was silent again.

  “Right, everybody out. We’re doing the rest of this trip on foot,” said Brian.

  A chorus of objections exploded from the back seat.

  “What? How far is that?” asked Freya.

  “Just because of a car?” said Tony.

  Tamara raised her hands, hushing them, and turned to Brian. “What’s got you spooked?” she asked.

  “Taxi,” Brian replied.

  “Don’t think you’ll get one out here,” Alfie said, trying to make a joke and immediately wished he hadn’t when Brian gave him a death stare.

  “Did none of you see that?” the bodyguard snapped. “That was a taxi that passed us back there on the road.”

  “And your point is…?” Freya asked.

  “I might not have any superpowers like you, Your Majesty, but I was trained in counter-surveillance. You look for anything unusual in your surroundings and question it. For instance, what’s a yellow city taxi doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  Tony put his hand up. “Oh, I have a theory! What if somebody missed their connection at the airport and hired a taxi to take them home out here in Oregon. That makes sense … doesn’t it?”

  They left the jeep where it was, shared out the bags and started to trudge across the fields.

  Freya sniffed the wind, taking in big draughts of air and rolling it around her mouth like she was tasting a fine wine back at her palace in Norway. It was impressive and disgusting at the same time. Finally she stopped and nodded. “Brian’s right,” she pronounced. “There’s something out here. And it’s not of this world.”

  “Stay close. Stay alert,” Brian said, and everyone fell into watchful silence as they hiked into the dark woods.

  “I have two questions. One: do you get bears out here?” Tony whispered after a while, glancing behind him at eerie shapes of the tangled trees. “And two: why do I have to go last?”

  “Because you’re expendable,” Freya hissed back.

  “Oh, ha, ha, smelly Norway Queen. You’re so funny—”

  “Aieeeeeearghh!”

  The unearthly scream echoed through the trees. Brian pulled his pistol as everyone instinctively formed into a circle, ready to fight. The beam from Brian’s torch played around the trees and stumps, making everything look like a snarling, monstrous face looming out of the dark. Alfie forced himself to control his breathing and wished he had Wyvern to call upon. He could do with being on top of a fierce ghost horse with an attitude problem right now.

  “What was that?” he said after a while.

  The scream came again, half-animal, half-human, closer this time. Tamara burst out laughing. Everyone looked at her in alarm – was she so terrified that she was losing her mind?

  “It’s just a loon,” she said.

  “There’s a crazy person out here with us?” Tony asked, still worried.

  “It’s a bird. A red-throated loon. You get them on the lakes round here.”

  A couple of hours later they emerged from the woods, scratched from the trees and weary from the trek. They were looking down on a lonely, all-night gas station that glowed bright and polished like a star nestled against the dark, tree-lined road. Beyond the gas station, the lights of a town twinkled and, further out still, the flat Pacific Ocean stretched to the horizon.

  “That’s the port of Alsea,” Brian said. He punched a code into his phone. “The sub will surface in T-minus ten minutes on the dock. Get ready to move fast. I’m going to bag some supplies, we’ve got a long voyage ahead of us. Any special requests?”

  “Meat,” Freya said.

  “This is going to be such a fun trip,” Alfie said, scrunching his nose.

  “Wait here for me. Anything kicks off, head straight to the sub,” Brian said and marched off down to the gas station.

  From their vantage point, they could see it was deserted, except for a sleepy-looking teenager with his nose in a comic, manning the cash register. Brian moved efficiently up and down the aisles, throwing stuff into a basket.

  “Think he’s gonna struggle with getting our five-a-day in there,” Tamara said. “Little health tip for you: never eat in the same place you fill up your car.”

  Alfie was just about to say he could use a bit of junk food when the sound of a car engine echoed down the road.

  “Everybody down!” Tamara ordered and they ducked behind the trees.

  “Taxi!” Tony squealed, peeking out.

  Sure enough, a yellow taxi lurched on to the gas station forecourt, ground its gears and came to a jerky stop. Before any of them could react, the pot-bellied, bald driver got out, glanced around and headed inside. Brian was at the till paying for the food and the cab driver was standing behind him.

  “I don’t like the look of this. We should be down there,” Alfie said, getting up, but Tamara stopped him.

  “It’s OK, Brian’s got this. Look.”

  In the mini mart, Brian had finished paying and was headed for the exit with two large bags of food. He barely even glanced at the cab driver. Once outside, he looked around like he couldn’t remember where he’d left everyone.

  “See,” Tony said. “Told you there was nothing to worry about.”

  Tony stood up and Brian smiled, waving them down. Alfie shrugged at his mum and together they walked on to the forecourt. Only Freya stayed crouched behind a tree, sniffing the air.
r />   “I hope you guys like microwave noodles,” Tony said as he rummaged in Brian’s shopping.

  Alfie could hear tapping coming from somewhere nearby. He followed the sound to the back of the cab parked on the forecourt. Tap-tap, tap-tap. Curious, he inched open the rear door and the Scout Orb rolled out, landing at his feet. Puzzled, he picked it up.

  “Hey, that’s weird,” said Alfie. “This looks just like…”

  “So I guess he was nobody to worry about after all?” Tamara said to Brian, pointing at the cab driver who was standing in the mini mart, looking like he’d just woken up from a deep sleep and couldn’t decide if he was still dreaming.

  “No, a mere vessel, my good lady,” Brian said in a high clipped voice that wasn’t his own. “I bring a message.”

  Tamara stared in dumb shock at Brian as he unholstered his pistol and pointed it straight at her son. Alfie froze, all the spit in his mouth drying in an instant as his stomach lurched.

  “Professor Lock sends his finest regards,” said Colonel Blood as he closed Brian’s finger on the trigger.

  But instead of the bullet hitting Alfie, it was the giant green bulk of Holgatroll that collided with him, pushing him clear.

  Tamara rushed to check Alfie for bullet holes, while Holgatroll and “Brian” squared off with each other on the forecourt.

  “Oh, a troll!” Colonel Blood trilled, as he waved the gun around in Brian’s hand. “I’ve always wanted to see inside one of those!”

  The fine red mist that was Colonel Blood shot out of Brian’s ears, wrapped itself around the roaring great troll’s head and spiralled up one of her nostrils.

  Now free of Colonel Blood, Brian came to and shouted across to Alfie and Tamara: “GET TO THE DOCK!”

  Alfie just had time to pick up the Scout Orb, which he’d dropped when Holgatroll rammed into him, before Tamara dragged him to his feet and together they sprinted down the road in the direction of the town. But with a high-pitched giggle, the possessed Holgatroll kicked the empty taxi towards them like it was a football. Alfie squeezed his eyes shut and prepared to become a very flat, ex-King of England. But whomp! the air shivered around him as Qilin materialized in a red flash and blink-shifted Alfie and his mother out of harm’s way. The tumbling car smashed into a tree with a terrific crunch of metal. In the gas-station window, the confused cab driver and cashier gawped at each other.