‘What are you talking about? Some kind of artificial insemination?’
Mo smiled and took Alan’s hand with her free left hand. ‘I think we have all discovered that Tír is very different to Earth. There are forces here that would not make sense back home. Like the power that brought us here. Or the Fáil. What about the oraculum in your brow? Does any of that make sense from a common sense Earth perspective?’
‘We’re human, Mo. Our perceptions are human.’
Mo spoke to Alan quietly, still holding his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Alan, but I no longer take any comfort from common sense.’
The Beginnings of a Plan
The brat of a girl was squealing like a stuck pig as Kawkaw twisted her ear with his surviving thumb and forefinger. She had been describing how she and her brother had pretended to play as they watched the tall, strange female, Mo, and the Mage Lord, and the Kyra, and the dwarf mage, and the monkey-man all talking seriously together.
‘Talking? About what?’
‘Don’t rightly know as what. They shushed us.’
‘Don’t play the fool with me. I know the mute can read lips.’
‘Tried to ’e did. Honest. But the cat woman shushed us right after the aides woman treated me eye. So we was too far away even for Hsst to lip ’em.’
‘Think they’re your new friends, do you? Treated your scabrous eye! Does that make you think you can get one over old Kawkaw?’
With a flick of his right arm, the razor-sharp knife was in his hand and brushing the salve-smeared swollen eye of the brat.
‘I ain’t lyin’. Honest.’
‘Ach!’ Keeping the blade pressed against her face, Kawkaw thought about her words. ‘Devilry – that’s what they are up to! Scheming and devilry!’
The tip of the blade bit into the purplish ooze of the girl’s flesh; a wash of pus, stained with blood, began to run, like a tear drop, down her swollen cheek.
‘She told us we wuz to go back.’
‘Suffering hogspiss!’ He could hardly think straight. He wiped the scutter off the blade on the girl’s rags. But something in what she had just said burst the balloon of his rage.
‘Who told you?’
‘Mo did. She says as we’re to go back to see ’er, the aides woman what treated me eye. For ’er to see it’s gettin’ better.’
‘What – just the old aides witch?’
‘Mo too. But Hsst is afeared of ’er ’cause she’s got that Shee warrior with ’er all the time, even when she sleeps in ’er tent.’
‘The brat, Mo? She wants to see you again?’
‘Yeah.’
Kawkaw scratched his stubbled neck with his hook. Could it be that the fates had offered succour at last, just when it had looked nigh on impossible to extract even a morsel of benefit from this situation? Was this his opportunity to avenge the Preceptress’ taunts? Did they not say the fates work in ways that are not immediately apparent?
‘You’re sure? The brat, Mo?’
‘Yeah.’
His eyes bore down onto the squirming face, the knife slipped back in his pocket, but her now swollen ear was once more clasped in the pincers of his finger and thumb.
She squealed anew, but she was nodding.
‘You wouldn’t lie to old Snakoil Kawkaw?’
She shook her head.
The brat wouldn’t dare to lie to him. It had to be true. Snakoil Kawkaw couldn’t believe his luck. Something important was going on. Why else would the Shee witch drive them away? Was she becoming suspicious of the brats? Was their spying becoming too obvious?
He gave her ear a final twist before he released it. The brat made snuffling noises through her nose, which was running with snot.
There was something for him here: the beginnings of a plan.
‘See to it that you do go back! And you make sure that the mute keeps his eyes open and you keep your filthy little ears wagging for anything – the smallest squeak – that might be useful to me.’
Breaching the M1
Other than Sharkey and Tajh, who had alternated sentry duty during the night, the crew had been forced to sleep within the cramped interior of the Mamma Pig, which was concealed from the threat of drones in a dense pocket of evergreens four or five miles from the Tibshelf Services. At first light, snow still wheeled about them, finding its way through the dripping needles overhead, to lay a thin scattering on the dank floor of the forest. The conflict in the blazing town, and then the flight from the tsunami, had made everyone jumpy – they didn’t like to think how much had been destroyed, how many lives lost; instead they focused on moving forwards.
Their current problem was the M1, which bisected the country like a perilous river to allow passage from East Anglia to the Midlands, with Derbyshire its final objective. They had considered every junction from 23 to 26. Junction 24a had looked the least hazardous, but now a careful approach, with the last few miles involving a probe on foot by Cal and Mark, revealed that Seebox had anticipated them: the slip-road roundabout was blocked by massive concrete blocks, reinforced by steel girders driven deep into the road surface. They also saw that the M1 itself was patrolled by tanks and heavily gunned APCs. They had to assume that all of the motorway junctions were similarly blocked. That left them with only one option: they had to breach the M1 where there was no junction. So they began a new search for a more rural stretch, where they might get trees, or buildings that would offer cover during the crossing.
After several hours of exploration, they opted for a services area between junctions 27 and 28, where a minor road ran under the carriageway. It was quite a bit further north than they had originally planned, but it had the advantage of an approach through winding country roads flanked by woods. They could also pay a call on the services and top up on provisions, the most important of which was a supply of fresh water.
After getting lost several times, with detours that they estimated added another thirty miles to their journey in the now overheated Pig, they emerged out of a wood-lined narrow road to discover a sign pointing north to Hardwick Hall.
‘Hey – howszzzat!’
A jubilant Cogwheel high-fived Tajh. The sign, and distance, meant that they were on track. All they had to do was head ten miles south aiming for the B6014 and they would hit the southbound half of the services. Cal decided they would scout out the motorway before they attempted to cut under it.
‘Guns!’ Cal barked, because they were obliged to emerge from cover.
When they got there, the location was perfect for their purposes; they had reasonable tree cover on the approach and would only emerge fully into the open as they neared the services car park. Cogwheel rolled the Mamma Pig over a small wooden fence, then sliced through a coppice of saplings before crashing into an abandoned camper van. He swore before reversing, and then edged the Pig cleanly under a wide gabled arch strutted by two steel pillars that opened onto the entrance foyer of the services. The arch was just about wide and long enough to accommodate the Pig and the tinted glass of the pitched roof was likely to mask their presence from the air.
‘Well done!’ Nan patted Cogwheel’s shoulder, to his crowing satisfaction.
Mark left Tajh to keep an eye on Padraig then joined Cal and Bull in slipping out of the left hand porthole to emerge under the shade of the arch. All three of them took a good look around at the pale orange walls, the rows of redwood trestle tables and chairs and the column of cerulean rubbish bins on the puce-coloured surface.
Cal lowered his Minimi. ‘It’s quiet.’
Mark, joined by Nan, scanned the area with his oraculum as well as his eyes. ‘Clear as far as we can see.’
Cal spoke to Bull. ‘We’ll take a good look around to make sure. We’ll meet up with you inside.’
Bull nodded.
Mark, Cal and Nan headed in through the high glazed doors of the atrium, expecting
to find the building empty. They presumed it would have been without electric power for three or four days at the very least, and probably devoid of staff and any fresh provisions, but as they headed into the wide paved foyer, they were surprised to discover that a rag-tag collection of thieves and dossers had beaten them to it: robbing the kitchens, dispensing machines, restaurants and bar. Many were still in occupation, nestling in corners and drunkenly asleep. The dossers had already enjoyed the best of the spoils. Any food that had remained in the services had gone rank, though there were some remaining crates of water and beer. Over the next hour or so they stocked up on water. Cogwheel took a turn to monitor Padraig, allowing Tajh to grab an hour or so of sleep. The break offered the remaining crew the opportunity of washing their faces, hair and upper bodies with bottle soap and water from the smashed dispensing machines upended into the sinks of the otherwise disgusting toilet areas. They knocked back some warm beers while watching the M1 through the broken panes of the main restaurant window, timing the patrols of Seebox’s tanks and APCs as they clanked by on both the northbound and southbound carriageways.
Cal totted it up: ‘Roughly fifteen minutes, either way.’
Mark nodded. ‘Which, since it’s the same either way, means the actual window is half that.’
‘Not precisely half. My guess is they start out at the same time between two points at, say, roughly fifty to sixty miles a stretch. But we’re not at the exact middle of this particular stretch. So that adds in a cockeyed variation. Sometimes it’s closer to five minutes alternating with a longer gap of approximately nine or ten minutes.’
Sharkey asked: ‘Can we figure which gap?’
‘Yeah. It’s simple enough. We wait for the short one. Then we have nine to ten minutes before the next.’
‘Everybody happy?’
Nobody disagreed.
Cal added: ‘We need to decide where we cross the motorway. I’ve been studying the map. That road we crossed coming here is the B6014. It goes under the M1, heading into a small market town. What’s the odds the town is too small to have attracted a road block?’
Mark thought about it. ‘You’re probably right.’
Sharkey pursed his lips: ‘De good Lord provideth for de penitent sinners!’
Everybody laughed.
Restocked with wetted fresh towels to dampen Padraig’s burning body and what was left of the water and beer, Cogwheel backed them out of the entrance arch and headed towards the B6014. They took the mile or two north, then headed left onto the B road, timing their run to avoid motorway patrols and aiming for the unguarded underpass. All was going well until a tractor, hauling a trailer full of split logs, veered across their path and blocked their passage. While Cogwheel was still swearing at the fact he had been forced to make an emergency halt, a beefy man jumped down off his seat and came abreast of the cab, waving a twelve-bore in Cogwheel’s face.
Bull was out of the belly of the truck in a flash and pressing his heavy Minimi in the man’s side. ‘What the fuck you think you’re doing?’
‘We’ve been told to keep an eye out for scumbags like you.’
‘We – meaning who?’
‘Off duty T.A.’
The man pointed to a tattoo on his forearm. It was a Territorial Army logo.
By now Cal was out of the belly of the Pig and had joined the argument. He showed the farmer his own SAS tattoo. ‘I suppose you know what that means?’
‘Could mean anything. Anybody can get a tattoo done.’
‘Like you, for instance.’
‘Field Marshall Seebox has called on all associated services to help out in the emergency. We’ve been warned about terrorists the like of you.’
‘We’re the Resistance, mate. Seebox is the enemy.’
‘You’re talking bollocks.’
‘Shift your tractor or we’ll shift it for you.’
‘No way, Sunshine!’
Without warning the man emptied both barrels of the gun he was holding into the front nearside tyre of the Mamma Pig.
Cogwheel shrieked with fury. ‘Shit, bastard, sheeeiiiitttt!’
The idiot was attempting to reload. Bull clouted him with the butt of the Minimi, knocking him unconscious on the road. Between them, Cal and Bull hauled the man onto the verge, then Cal headed forward to move the tractor while Bull inspected the damage.
‘We’re going to have to change the wheel.’
Cogwheel shouted out of the side cab window. ‘Bastard will have called someone. We have to get under the cover of the underpass!’
Bull said: ‘Driving on the flat tyre would risk damaging the wheel rim – maybe even the axle. Just keep her idling a few minutes while Cal and me get the job done.’
‘We can’t wait. We have to risk it,’ Cogwheel said.
‘Just a couple of minutes. I’m going to jack her up. I have to go under to get the spare. Keep off the throttle.’
Tajh took organisational charge. ‘Mark – you and Nan – I need you to get out there and help Bull while keeping an eye out for trouble.’
‘What about Padraig?’
‘Sharkey will keep an eye on him. The condition of the services suggests the Razzers haven’t got this far north as yet. The town up there looks intact. But Cogwheel is right. That idiot with the tractor will have drawn attention to us. Me and Cogwheel’ll keep an eye on the sky.’
Mark ran the thirty yards east along the road, while Nan ran through to the other side of the underpass to keep a look out. Cal and Bull set about jacking the Pig to free the wheel and then Bull went underneath to unbolt the spare. It took more like five minutes than the two Bull had promised. Another two minutes as Bull hoisted the spare wheel into place and bolted it tight. He was just lowering the jack when, through his oraculum, Mark sensed the approaching danger.
He shouted: ‘Leave it, Bull!’
Bull growled: ‘Done it! Just stowing the jack.’
‘Bull – we’ve got trouble. Forget the jack,’ Mark shouted.
Even as he shouted his warning, he heard Nan’s cry: ‘Incoming!’
Cal had thrown himself into the Pig. ‘Bull! In here, now!’ he shouted.
Mark ran back, his eyes straining to make out Nan emerging from the underpass.
Bull roared: ‘No time to get aboard. I’m going to try to hang on under here. Go on Cogwheel, you fucking midget! Get her under the pass.’
Cogwheel revved, but he was still in neutral. He was clearly divided as to what to do with Bull still under the vehicle. Cal roared at him to put his foot to the floor. Mark saw the two missile trails falling towards them, coming from directions about ninety degrees apart. The Mamma Pig took off, screaming towards the underpass.
They directed the Third Power from their oracula at the incoming missiles with every fibre of their being. They managed to divert the missiles thirty or forty feet to either side of the Pig’s position, but the explosions still rocked the vehicle, lifting the nearside wheels and half its bulk off the road, before it slewed with a screech of brakes into the relative safety of the underpass. Mark ran to get to Bull, whose face had been scorched and his shirt burned off his chest by the blasts. But he was still alive.
Mark shouted to Cogwheel to reverse a bit, then asked the others to give him a hand getting the injured Bull back on board.
Bull was a hell of a weight to lift. When they got him inside, Padraig had to be shifted to one side to make room for their second casualty. The confusion of struggle and make do lasted another five to ten minutes while they skulked under the pass trying to help Bull.
‘What now?’ Cogwheel muttered over his shoulder, blo
od running down the slopes either side of his nose from a fragment of windscreen embedded in his brow.
Tajh inspected the burns over Bull’s face and chest. ‘We need to find a hospital.’
‘Never mind me,’ Bull wheezed. ‘Get us outta here.’
Cogwheel started the Pig up again, then spoke. ‘Town’s too small for a hospital.’
They emerged from the tunnel under the motorway to enter an organic shambles of streets. There was a squeaking sound from the rear nearside wheel, which caused Cogwheel to groan aloud.
‘Shit – axle damage!’
Cal muttered, ‘Keep on driving. Everybody – keep a sharp eye out. There’s something screwy about this place.’
Mark said: ‘How do you mean?’
‘Look there.’
Mark peered out through the opened driver’s side porthole, where he saw a controlled fire, in the garden adjacent to the end of a terraced row.
‘Who’s tending the fire?’
‘Nobody,’ Cal answered.
‘What’s it mean?’
‘You tell me.’
Mark continued to look out at the passing houses and small retail outlets, which were, for the most part, two-storey and built out of stone. There were no lights visible through the windows, which was not altogether surprising given the power blackouts and the fact it was daylight.
‘Shit!’ Cogwheel muttered.
‘What is it?’
‘Look there – next to that power box.’
Adjacent to a green-painted metal structure, Mark saw a truck trailing cables: a generator.
Cal hissed between his teeth. ‘They have electricity, but there’s no lights. Every door is locked and bolted.’
Cogwheel muttered: ‘So, what’s going on?’
‘Don’t ask me.’ Sharkey was moistening bandages and attempting to wind them around the bulk of Bull’s chest. ‘But we should keep an eye out for a clinic of some sort. A doctor or maybe a nurse.’
Tajh peered ahead from one side of the street to the other. ‘There,’ she exclaimed. In the middle of a block of four or five small retail outlets she pointed out what looked like a chemist’s. Cogwheel had to do a U-turn, passing a pet food outlet, a post office and small café before creaking to a halt outside the plate glass window.
The Return of the Arinn Page 8
