The Return of the Arinn

by Frank P. Ryan

  The Skull switched attention from Mark to Cal. It gave Mark a few more seconds to focus on the mind of the man in the limo; he sensed the withdrawal shivers. Mark took control of the man’s shaky right hand and doodled with a fat index finger in the heavy condensation on the passenger door:

  KILLERBLADE

  The Skull fired his Uzi over Cal’s head. ‘I won’t ask again, arsehole. Show us the rations.’

  Several of the other Skulls had closed in on the convoy. The nearside passenger window of the Pig slid open and Bull leaned his massive left forearm out of the window, letting himself be seen, though he kept the belted Minimi out of sight.

  Cal said: ‘I told you – these goods ain’t for you.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  Mark watched the man climb out of the limo.

  Cal said: ‘I don’t want to name names. If I do, you’ll wish I hadn’t. We got orders to bring this shit here. No fault of ours you got your wires crossed.’

  The Skull glanced back in the direction of the limo, sweating heavily despite the cold. A huge man stood just next to the passenger door having just climbed out. He swayed as if dizzy. Mark looked out through the big man’s eyes and saw what those eyes saw: the scrawled word on the glass. Mark watched as the man turned round to take in all three vehicles at the roadblock: the two BMWs with their bikers wearing Paramilitary uniforms, and the heavily armoured Pig in Paramilitary camouflage colours.

  Cal was lifting his arms in resignation: ‘On your own stupid heads . . .!’

  The big man shouted, ‘No!’ He began to push the guards aside to deal with the situation himself. Mark noticed the absence of a uniform; instead he wore a creased grey open-necked shirt over creased grey suit pants: a Grimstone high-ranker. One of the Church’s secret police. He came close to examine the bikes, his puffy eyes slitted with suspicion. Mark re-entered his mind and enhanced the paranoia.

  The ogre looked at Cal and said: ‘What the fuck’s going on?’

  The Skull spoke: ‘Claim to be bringing in a special delivery.’

  The big man turned, grabbed the Skull’s coat, slapped his face hard. ‘Not you! I’m talking to them.’ The big man had kept a hold of the Skull as he’d turned to look at Mark through narrowed eyes.

  The Skull squeaked: ‘They could be lying.’

  The big man gripped the Skull’s scalp, then brought the Skull’s face down and rammed it into his knee. ‘You call me Sir.’

  ‘Sir – I’m sorry, Sir. They’re lying, Sir.’

  ‘Give me your gun.’

  ‘What . . .?’

  ‘What, Sir!’ The ogre rammed the Skull’s face into his knee again. Blood was dripping off the Skull’s face like a tap. ‘Your gun!’

  The Skull pressed the Uzi into the big man’s one free hand. Then the ogre rammed his knee into that face again and again and again before tossing the bleeding Skull aside. Then he aimed the Uzi at Cal’s head.

  ‘If there was a delivery I would know about it.’

  ‘So you should, Sir.’

  ‘Shoot them.’

  The other Skulls looked uncertain. ‘Sir, I think they’re claiming it’s for the Field Marshall himself, Sir – some special occasion.’

  ‘Bollocks!’

  Mark said: ‘Sir! May I speak with you in private?’

  ‘Shut your fucking mouth.’

  Mark nodded to Cal. He said: ‘This here is Jarman – Jarman from Manchester.’

  The big man hissed: ‘I told you to shut your mouth.’

  ‘Well, somebody was expecting us,’ Cal said with a sneer. ‘Special D. Maybe you just weren’t invited to the party.’

  Mark sensed the man’s paranoia soar. The ogre rapped the Uzi barrel against Cal’s brow.

  ‘Sir,’ Mark whispered, ‘there’s a codeword.’

  ‘I told you both to shut it.’

  Mark put the picture of the fogged up door and the spelled out word, KILLERBLADE, back into the ogre’s mind. He inserted the thought: What if I’m so fucked up with this hangover, I forgot something?

  Mark watched the ogre’s head turn back towards the Limo. The word was still visible, though now inside-out. It was melting away as the condensation dribbled down the window.

  Paranoia screamed through his mind.

  ‘Kill them!’

  One of the other Skulls hurled himself at Mark. He grabbed him by his hair and tried to smash the Uzi into his face. But Bull had climbed out of the Pig and now he ran between them. Bull picked up the Skull like a rag doll and impaled him on the spiked rail of the roadblock. The impact triggered the barrier to lift and the impaled guard was hoisted up into the air with it.

  The confrontation was now down to two Minimis facing half a dozen Uzis.

  Cal had a mobile in his hand. He shouted: ‘I’ve had enough of you morons. I’m going to fuckingwell call up the Field Marshall himself.’

  Mark sensed the wave of panic in the ogre. ‘Okay – we’ll talk. You two, and me – nobody else. Inside the Portakabin. Now!’

  The standoff continued for several more seconds before Cal nodded to Bull. Cal took the package of war spoils from the blazing town out of the pannier of his bike and nodded towards the Portakabin.

  The big man kicked the door shut behind them as all three of them squeezed into a confined space that was largely taken up by a cluttered desk. Mark and Cal were pressed back against the wall inside, while the big man sat on the corner of the desk.

  ‘This so-called codeword?’

  ‘Killerblade.’

  The ogre blinked twice, then growled: ‘Okay, let’s see it.’

  Cal tossed the package onto the desk.

  ‘So you’re dealing. Who’s buying?’

  ‘Figure it out for yourself.’

  The ogre poked a fingernail through the polythene wrapping on the package. He shoved the tip of his little finger through the hole, then withdrew it and sniffed at the white powder before rubbing on his gums.

  ‘Must be four ounces of pure.’

  Mark was inside his mind and knew what the ogre was thinking: kill them both and keep the gear. But Mark reminded that mind of the codeword the ogre’s own finger had written in the condensation on the car window.

  ‘Nobody’s gatherin’ no brownie points here. I’ll ask again, who’s trading?’

  ‘We told you the truth: there’s a coming celebration, a big one. Word at our end is it’s the man himself.’

  Mark saw the fear enter the ogre’s grey eyes. He no longer needed the oraculum, the man’s fright had grown of its own accord.

  Cal spoke calmly. ‘As it stands there’s no harm done. But if the man gets to know you stopped us, you’re dead. We’re all fucking dead.’

  The ogre took a snort of the cocaine. ‘Four ounces, straight off the block. I could take it and fry you.’

  ‘You going to shoot all those witnesses outside?’

  ‘Now you listen to me, dickheads. Maybe you’re a bit slow to see an opportunity: there’s a packet to be made here. We can lay our hands on some serious money; more than you could possibly imagine.’

  Mark shrugged. He looked at Cal, who said, ‘I reckon we’re dead already.’

  ‘What the fuck you talking about?’

  Cal spoke resignedly. ‘We’re already running late; people have been expecting us for half the night.’

  ‘If I were you,’ Mark added, ‘I wouldn’t want the brass to know that I had anything to do with this.’

  ‘What you ranting about?’

  Mark fell silent, but he entered the mind of the ogre and he placed a false memory there. He showed the ogre Grimstone’s own hand closing on the ogre’s grey suit lapel and Grimstone’s own lips whispering the all important codeword: KILLERBLADE.

  A look of panic now crossed the ogre’s face. He hurried out of the
Portakabin and back to the limo, then flopped down into the back row passenger seat. The word was still there, however much of it had dribbled down the window. He swatted it away with his hand, made sure it was utterly erased by wiping it with his sleeve.

  He staggered more than ever when he climbing back out of the limo. He aimed a furious kick at the unconscious guard, bleeding into the snow. ‘Let them go,’ he growled.

  The four surviving guards were staring back at him: ‘Sir?’

  ‘Let them go!’ He hurried back into the Portakabin and scrabbled through the contents of the drawers. He wiped an oversize hand over his sweating brow, dripping big drops of oily sweat onto the forms he was signing. ‘Gentlemen – please don’t let this disturb the equanimity of the Field Marshall.’

  Mark had to suppress his smile as the ogre pressed the security clearance papers into his hands.

  ‘Go on! Get the fuck out of here before I change my mind. I promise you that I’ll deal with these incompetent bastards myself.’

  *

  Those papers had proved invaluable as they’d made their way through the dense ring of defences around London, passing by squadrons of tanks, missile launchers and attack choppers, encountering devastation and ruin everywhere.

  Mark’s train of thought broke off as Tajh passed him a plate of fried bacon and egg with a side bowl of baked beans. They were well embedded by now in a new hideout in what had been a backstreet garage. They were only about a mile away from the Black Rose.

  Mark nodded his thanks to Tajh, glancing over to where Sharkey, in his element, was cooking the food with one hand. Tajh sat next to Mark, leaning against the oil-blackened brick wall: ‘Looks like we’re here for a bit. I wouldn’t want to risk heading back out.’

  ‘Me neither!’

  Mark dipped a piece of toast into the yolk of his egg and looked at Nan, who was chatting to the returned Padraig and Brett.

  The rickety garage was one of very few surviving buildings in the hinterland this close to the Rose.

  Tajh couldn’t help shivering. ‘We certainly rode our luck.’

  ‘Mmm!’ Mark acknowledged, as Nan came over to sit on Mark’s other side.

  ‘What’s Brett really up to?’ she asked.

  ‘You really asking me?’ whispered Mark.

  Everybody in the building tensed as the thunder of attack choppers passed low over their heads. There was a common sigh of relief as the noise receded. Mark smiled at Tajh.

  ‘I’m ashamed to say I’ve never been to Scotland.’

  ‘You’ve missed a treat.’

  He laughed. ‘Tell me more about you.’

  ‘Born in Edinburgh. Then got fatally attracted to London’s bright lights.’

  Mark glanced at Tajh’s hair, now clotted with dust and sweat. He tried to imagine her younger, her grey eyes dazzled by the bright lights. ‘Is that where you met Cal?’

  ‘Fated,’ she said, lighting a cigarette. ‘We shared a taste in music. Or maybe it was music and the sexual healing that went with it?’ She laughed openly, blowing out smoke. ‘I was nineteen, Cal was twenty-six. At least, that was what he was in years – claimed he was twice as old in experience. My first impression – I thought he was half crazy. But craziness can be attractive when you’re of a certain age. Seven years difference between us – seven was my lucky number.’

  ‘How did you come to meet?’

  ‘At an underground club, where Sharkey was DJing. You’ve no idea how brilliant he was at it. He and Cal already knew one another. Bull was around too, somewhere in the background – those were the days.’

  Tajh looked at him, and took a drag. Then Cal interrupted their conversation. Mark hadn’t noticed him getting closer. He joined them, with his own plate of food. He said: ‘You haven’t finished your story, Tajh. Tell him what he really wants to hear.’

  ‘Hey, give it up!’

  ‘Tell him how we used to spend our nights after the gigs, in your flat or my boat on the river. Tell him how good the shagging was.’

  ‘Be patient with him,’ Tajh said. It reminded Mark of the tension he had felt when they’d first met, in the barn where Cal had been welding the blade of the Mamma Pig. Now, just as back then, Mark had seen her focus on the oraculum in his brow.

  Cal flopped down on the other side of Tajh, who draped her left arm around his neck. ‘Oh, Mark, would you like me to tell you about the shagging? I’m beginning to think that Cal won’t be happy until I do.’

  Mark laughed. ‘I think you should treasure that memory all to yourselves.’

  Attack on the South Gate

  ‘If the Mage Lord pleases!’ The aides’ group leader said.

  The request did not please him – and it was the second time the aides had used sarcasm to convey discontent in just a few days. Alan lifted both his arms, bent at the elbows, so they could manoeuvre the heavy breastplate, with its fastening straps, into position.

  ‘The Shee,’ he grumbled, ‘do not wear armour.’

  ‘The Shee,’ she retorted, ‘can afford to die on the battlefield. Through their daughter-sisters, they are resurrected. But you will not be resurrected. And think you not that you will prove a prime target for the gunners yonder as you get within range of the fortified gate?’

  The aides was right. Alan grimaced as he felt the additional weight pull on his shoulders. ‘I’m sorry to be so disagreeable.’

  ‘We would prefer that you be safe rather than sorry, Mage Lord,’ she pressed on with ordering the group who were dressing him in battlefield armour, while two more held his onkkh at the ready.

  Qwenqwo had no more sympathy for his friend than they did. The dwarf mage was already fully decked out in the bronze and doubtless heavier battlefield armour of the Fir Bolg, and he was already mounted on his onkkh. Right now he was ignoring his grumbling friend to look seawards to where the thunder of a new cannonade was erupting from the assembled fleet. It echoed in the space between the waiting Shee army and the city walls.

  ‘Can somebody please hold the spear for me while I climb aboard the vile beast?’

  Kate accepted the heavy spear from Alan and, as soon as he was mounted on his onkkh, passed the telescope up. Even his attempt to look through it was made clumsy by the gauntlets and the restless movements of the beast beneath him. Eventually he managed to see past the dense clouds of drifting smoke to make out the dozen towering battleships Ebrit called his Leviathans. The Leviathans were the most menacing warships Alan had ever seen. Though the hulls were built of oak, they were armoured with overlapping scales of iron, like the hide of a reptile, to help deflect the enemies’ cannonballs. This in turn allowed the Leviathans to get in close enough to do serious damage with their broadsides. They had three gunnery decks; deck two would wait for deck one to fire before firing themselves, then deck three would fire in suit after the roll back from deck two. The guns themselves were big enough to throw a sixty pound ball a distance of two miles. Even at a distance of what must have been three miles from him, Alan was deafened by the cannon fire; the thunder of the discharge echoing from the rocky headland. The cracking disintegration of the granite walls as the hundreds of heavy balls tore into it produced a storm of debris, which billowed into the sky and deluged the slopes and choppy ocean with ruin.

  Qwenqwo dug his heels in to control his restless mount. ‘Do you recall, you thought these walls impregnable?’

  Alan could not fail to be impressed. The city walls were said to be fifty feet deep, but no wall could withstand such carnage, round after round – and there had been something close to forty broadsides since first light. He scanned over the triple-masted Shee warships, equipped with batteries of oars that enabled them to manoeuvre even in the absence of wind. The Shee army probably numbered a quarter of a million now, not counting aides. And there were about eighty-thousand soldiers and grenadiers from Prince Ebrit’s army, most of them lightly
armoured with chainmail over a thick pleated coat of sheep’s wool, their heads and hearts protected with helmets and breast plates.

  Alan spoke his thoughts aloud: ‘Still no direct reaction from the Tyrant?’

  ‘None.’

  Alan knew that the Kyra was as puzzled about this as he was. Up to now there had been no counterattack from the city other than the returning fusillade of the cannons that lined the walls. Prince Ebrit was winning the artillery battle. It was just too easy considering their wily enemy.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘Magtokk might have an idea as to how the Tyrant will react to this threat?’

  The orang-utan manifested, as Alan had expected him to. He looked at Alan, his expression deeply thoughtful. ‘Up to now, the Tyrant had shown himself to be calculating and resourceful. I see no reason to anticipate anything other than the same resolve. He will bide his time. All too soon, I fear, we will face new deadly games.’

  Alan turned back to Qwenqwo.

  The fact that they were both weighed down with armour, and back once more on the bone-jarring onkkhs, had no effect on the dwarf mage’s determination. He passed a pipe, brimful of tobacco, down to Magtokk, before tamping down one for himself. ‘I think,’ he opined, ‘that Magtokk has the truth of it. The real games will emerge soon enough.’

  Magtokk joined Qwenqwo in lighting his pipe, the two of them adding the scent of tobacco smoke to the stink of cordite from the cannonades. The mage looked downslope to the beaches, where the Shee army, assisted by vast numbers of aides, were assembling siege machinery. The ground beyond cannon reach was a carnival of tents and braziers. Blacksmiths were working in pairs; heavily muscled men and women hammering iron for the stirrups of Ebrit’s cavalry, or the bolts for the heavy crossbows favoured by their archers. Others boiled a stinking glue made out of the bladders of fishes for the fletchers. Traders, who would normally conceal the techniques of their trade so much so they were called the ‘mysteries’, were doing their best to maintain their secrets under the watchful eyes of the aides, who were no doubt looking to pick up new tricks.