by Gwynn White
The dragons landed on the road ahead of the motorcycle, running a few steps on their long, bony hind legs while they flared their wings to break speed. Guy swung his leg across Blooming Monday’s neck and slid down the beast’s side. “Well? I suppose you were sent ahead to look for us. What is it?”
“Sir, an important message from Inspector Flaycannon.”
Flaycannon was the Sauvage chief of intelligence, commissioned in the liveried police. Guy had worked hard to reconcile the regiment to the inclusion of his section. Intelligence would be the single factor most crucial to their success.
“Let’s have it.”
The motorcycle scout handed Guy a piece of paper folded and sealed with the impression of Flaycannon’s signet ring in green wax. Guy wrenched his goggles down around his neck.
ATTN Col. Sauvage -- URGENT.
As he read on, the others gathered around him. He crumpled the paper, cleared his throat. “This isn’t going to be as easy as we thought.”
40
Val
The Previous Day. November 27th, 1979
The door out of the Otherworld was a thin place in the mist. The sky lifted and turned into clouds that snagged in the hedges like wet laundry. Lichened stones lay on their sides, forming a rough circle around the travellers. Val knew where he was. “We used to play up here when we were kids.”
“Stone circles are always doors,” Alyx said. She was still grumpy. “Closed doors, now. Your kind went throughout the realm hundreds of years ago, finding every last one and shutting it.”
“How do you get through them, then?”
“I don’t know, I just do it. Now get out of my way so I can shut this one behind us, or there’ll be gremlins overrunning the town.”
She knelt on the wet grass and slapped at the air. Bedraggled sheep cropped the field around them.
They trudged down towards Belfast, a dirty brown carpet of roofs unrolling to the crazy pavement of the shipyards. Away to the north of the city spread Dargan Marsh. The towers of the old power station clumped on the winter-colored wasteland. They’re coming to pick us up. We’ve to be in Belfast on the TK, Connelly had said. There’s a canal, d’you know the place? Near the old power station? He could see it from here.
But Connelly was dead. Randolph Sauvage was cured of his incurability. The Black Mother was on the loose with the Worldcracker. And Val was fucked.
He imagined beer foaming from the draft spigot. Whiskey in a heavy faceted glass, ice clinking like a nobleman’s hairpins. Wine spilling from a decanter on Flambeault’s patio table.
“Why are we going this way?”
“We’re going to Dargan Marsh,” Alyx said.
“Are you joking? That’s where …”
“Where Connelly’s friends are going to meet us next week. He told me the scheme before he died.”
“Ah, Alyx.”
“But they might come early, might they not? So I’m thinking we’d better be there early, too.”
She held Randolph Sauvage very tightly by one wrist.
41
Leonie
That Night. Belfast
Leonie parked in an alley across the street from the back of the Parsimony supermarket in Belfast. Her feet and hands were frozen solid. She tucked her fingers under her thighs to restore the feeling to them.
Forensic tape girdled the supermarket, strung across the loading bays like ribbon on a present. A single policeman sheltered from the rain beneath the corbels of the four-storey brick building.
Leonie slouched lower in her seat. Come on, come on …
A bulky figure paced around the side of the supermarket. Built like a power plant, smock bloused out over a gun belt, bare-headed in the rain.
Leonie jumped out of the car, strolled to the end of the alley, and showed herself briefly. For a second she worried he might not recognize her with her hood up. But he did. The soft thump of his army boots followed her back down the alley.
“Get in, Dave.”
He threw himself into the little car. Creak and sag.
She prodded his chest, felt the hard curve of armor. “Thought you’d finally put some muscle on,” she said.
“They’ve told us to wear our flak jackets under our smocks. Makes the boyos think twice if you look built.”
Dave’s voice was flat. He smelled like he hadn’t taken his uniform off for a week. He had grown a pair of greasy-looking sideburns. He pulled his black Ravens beret out of his smock and smoothed it on his knee, then fished for a cigarette. She closed her hand over the packet. “Don’t be daft.”
She was hyper-aware of the windows overlooking the alley and the traffic flicking across its mouth. She’d rung his base on Killagore Road earlier, pretending to be an officer. He’d specified this RV, right in the city centre. Now she wanted to know why. “Why’s the supermarket taped off?”
“Bombed, wasn’t it? Two days ago. Eleven dead, dozens injured. Forensics is in there now, still looking for relics.”
“Are your lads guarding the site?”
A humorless smile flickered across his lips, a new expression since he’d left home. “Night patrol. We’re investigating a shooting. Second night in a row. The lads loaded up the HOG last night; now we’re back for more. Watches, radios, ciggies, leather jackets …”
“Bloody hell, Dave. What about the police?”
“They’re helping themselves, aren’t they, same as us.”
“You’re having a lovely time then, aren’t you,” she said. “I should’ve known you’d find your level, even in the army. Stands to reason, I suppose. I know the sort you get in the Crown Army. Go on, then! Stand up for your new mates! Tell me they had troubled childhoods, the poor misunderstood wretches, and then you can tell me what your excuse is.”
“They’re not my mates.” He turned his face aside.
“Aren’t they?”
“They call me the tit. That means—”
“I know what it means.” Keenie greenie, the new boy.
“I’d like to unload a fucking mag in them.” His fist scrunched the beret he had smoothed out so carefully on his thigh. “I’d like to knock their teeth down their throats.”
“So’d I.”
“They’re not all bad. It’s just one or two of them … One’s a senior private, been up and down the ranks like a yo-yo. He’s a fucking giant, weighs fifteen stone.” Dave laughed harshly. He reached for his cigarettes again, and this time she said nothing and let him light one. “He broke my arm last week; I had to go for a cure. And you get fined if it’s not on active duty. Seventeen quid for a major fracture. That might not sound much but it is when you’re only making twenty a week and buying your own kit out of that. And the corporal … that cunt just stands there … and pretends not to see anything.”
She wanted to put her arms around him. She didn’t know what to say. “It’s this place.”
He nodded, grateful for the explanation. “I hate it. And the locals hate us, so it’s mutual.” In the orange glow of his cigarette, the sideburns made his face look thinner, older. “But it’s so one-sided. The IRA won’t come out to fight, they just plant their bombs and scarper. And the loyalists come out on their barricades and vaunt, but we’re not allowed to touch them.” She heard a faint squeaking noise. He was grinding his teeth. “Saints, I’d do anything to get at them. I don’t know why they won’t let us get stuck in.”
“Well, that’s what I’m here for.”
He looked at her blearily. “I thought you were on the job.”
“Yes and no. It’s to do with the political situation.”
Dave snorted. “Did you see m’lord Day on the box, promising a crackdown? What’ll come of that? I can tell you right now, fuck-all. Nothing ever changes up here. Nothing has changed for a thousand years. Nothing ever will. Our grandchildren will probably still be fighting the bastards. If you can call it fighting.”
“Well, you might be able to help me give them a bloody nose. I’m … in a bit of a sp
ot. There’s people trying to work against me, and the long and short of it is I need a weapon.” She had the Myxilite in the footwell and the Z4 in the back seat, and it didn’t say much for Dave’s training that he had not spotted them, but that was probably for the best. “Can I borrow your knife?”
Dave’s hand closed protectively over his belt.
“Come on, Dave. Please.”
“Are you …” He licked his lips. “Are you going to assassinate someone?” She could see fear and confusion on his face and she didn’t blame him: what she was saying didn’t make a crumb of sense. Should she tell him the truth? She didn’t dare, in case it all went wrong.
Oh, I hate this. It’s rotten.
“Need to know,” she said, lightly. “Come on, you can say you lost it.” She’d hoped to borrow some money from him, too, but after hearing his story about the fine, she couldn’t bring herself to ask.
He drew his service knife from its sheath and slapped it into her hand. Six inches of blue steel with a serrated tip, honed to a razor edge as per regulations, the hilt wrapped in cloth tape so it wouldn’t slip in your hand. “I’ll get in trouble.”
“No you won’t, you’ve always been good at making up excuses.” As soon as she’d said it, she wished she hadn’t.
He grunted and wrenched the door open.
“Dave! Dave, have you heard from Mum recently?”
“No. Should I have?” He swung his legs out.
“Don’t do what your mates are doing, Dave. Promise me. You were brought up better than that, right.”
That humorless smile again. “Maybe just a choccy bar or two, then. I’m hungry.” For an instant the smile reached his eyes, and she saw a flash of the old Dave there, or maybe the man he could be, if the army didn’t break his spirit altogether. She smiled back joyfully, extended a hand to him—and he was gone, slamming the car door loudly enough to make her wince.
She gave him time to get out of sight, then started the engine. Mission accomplished. She wrapped the knife in yesterday’s newspaper and stuffed it down her sock. It was two thirty in the morning. Belfast lay quiet, dark, sodden with rain like an overfilled whiskey glass. The windshield wipers squeaked as she drove back to Crumlin Road.
42
Val
At The Same Time. Belfast
I’m going out,” Val said to his grandmother.
“You never do anything when you’re here but go out.” Mary Sullivan’s eyes crumpled at the corners with exasperation. Her arms folded tightly across her chest.
“I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“Sure, sure you will. Go on, then.”
“We’ll be fine here,” Ragherty said, filling the door of the living-room. “We’ll be just grand. Isn’t that right, Ran?”
The little boy nodded, his mouth full of toast.
Val had managed to persuade Alyx to leave Ran at his grandmother’s place, rather than take him down to Dargan Marsh tonight. They would be camping out in the cold and wet. It was no place for a lordling. But Alyx, still distrusting Val, had insisted on sending Ragherty with him. Jed Ragherty, most loyal of the loyal. The big man met Val’s eyes, smiled with a hint of embarrassment. There’d be no getting around him. Both of them knew it.
“All right,” Val said. “I’ll bring you some chocolate, lad.”
Another nod from the boy, this one frostily polite. Val suppressed an urge to tug his forelock.
“See you later, then.” He went out into the rain.
Three or four hours later, he stumbled into the phone booth outside a pub on the Shankill Road. Graffiti swam in front of his eyes. The holes in the dial danced, eluding his fingers. He used up nearly all his change on his first phone call. Breathing hoarsely, he looked back and forth between the amber-lit windows of the pub and the thirty pence still remaining in his hand. Windows. Money. The color of whiskey. The color of hope.
He shrugged one shoulder, ran a hand over his dyed hair, dropped the money in the slot and dialed.
“Hullo?”
“Ah, ’tis yourself, Colin. You’ll remember me. I’ve cadged enough drinks off you in the Imperial Hotel…”
43
Guy
The Next Day. November 29th, 1979. Snowdon Forest, Wales
Guy lay on his stomach behind an outcropping high on the flank of Mynydd Craig Goch. The sun was behind him, flooding the Elan valley with morning light. Guy raised his binoculars to his eyes.
Half a mile away and almost as far down, soldiers swarmed in the square of Elan Village. Several Minizer Battle Service Vehicles hulked like monsters, their flattened bodies slung between wheels sheathed in spiky black armor. Midnight-blue Llywelyn banneroles dangled from the guns that pointed at the top end of the square.
The force—about two companies, Guy estimated, totaling something around a hundred and fifty men—was clearly preparing to deploy up the hill to this end of the Mynydd Craig Goch tunnel.
Rhys Llywelyn had betrayed them.
Guy had expected that. House Llywelyn always had been a tool of the Wessex regime.
Guy had not expected to find troops lying in wait here, after he’d specifically told Rhys that they would be going through Gloucester. Any sane commander would have let him get through the Snowdon Forest first, so he would not easily be able to retreat to the sea. Lord Lancashire had predicted that Rhys Llewelyn would lie in wait for Guy on the Gloucester road, at which time Guy would be well on his way to Brighton. And maybe that’s what Rhys would have done if he had any experience at this sort of thing. But he did not. And here he was.
The furze stabbed Guy’s legs in the gaps between the pads of his flight suit. Somewhere higher up the mountain a lark was singing. Melancholy touched him. Elan was a pretty little village, built on the bank of the River Elan, ruddy slate roofs nestled among the trees. Guy had come here with Piers and Ran three years ago for the ground-breaking ceremony when work on the tunnel was started. Piers and old Lord Llywelyn had given speeches, and a brass band had marched around the village square, leading a parade of construction workers who twirled their spades and threw them up and caught them again. Afterwards there had been high tea and children’s athletics. Guy had been bored out of his mind, and had sloped off to smoke a bomber.
All his life he had been waiting for the playacting to be done, waiting for his noble friends to show their true colors and call him bastard to his face. He was almost grateful to Rhys Llywelyn for inviting him, at last, to hit back.
“If they move out now, they’ll reach the tunnel before we can get through,” he said to the signaler behind him. “Stay here and observe their movements.”
They were no longer bothering with radio silence, since the enemy obviously knew they were coming. However, they had a shortage of secure comms equipment. The rucksack-sized set propped against the outcropping was one of only four in the whole battalion. The signals officer tapped his headphones back against his skull. “Battalion says Lieutenant-Colonel O'Scolaidhe and Captain Cork are in position, sir.”
“Thanks, Sparks. Tell them I’m on my way.”
Guy scrambled up the slope to his waiting dragon.
They skimmed low over the mountainside, one mighty wing-flap at a time. Although the shoulder of Mynydd Craig Goch now hid the village, Guy would have scouts out if he were in Rhys’s position. He rode hands-free, rifle at the ready. Blooming Monday’s shadow blurred over a rocky spur and then a gulch choked with forest. Guy guided the dragon upslope, keeping below the skyline of the gulch. At the top, they lifted over a beetling head of granite. This was not the summit of the mountain but close to it.
Tibs Cork and Alan O'Scolaidhe waited on the rock. Each of their dragons carried an extra burden: four rust-spotted cylinders cradled against their sides in canvas slings.
Blooming Monday crouched obligingly as they manhandled his own complement of bombs onto his back.
“My grandfather flew a couple of dragon missions during the war,” Alan said. “They were out of aircraft
, sending up anything with wings. Gramps had two beasts killed under him. The second time he was captured, but managed to escape.”
“The Russians didn’t take prisoners,” Tibs said. “Ow, you bastard!” A bomb had rolled on his foot.
“No, but they took relics,” Alan said. “They packed them alive into railway cars. Miracles on the hoof; process as time allows.”
Guy wrenched the last sling into position across Blooming Monday’s withers, making sure it wouldn’t get trapped in the harness. The Llywelyns were not a Russian horde. They were his friends. What was he doing? He snapped his goggles down and hauled himself into the saddle. “Let’s go. Stay low.” He looked at his watch: five past noon.
One by one, the heavily laden dragons bumped into the air. Flapping hard, they flew up the valley, over farms and orchards. The River Elan snaked along the bottom of the valley. People waved. Alan waved back. Guy wished he had some way to warn them to run.
Back in the tunnel, the last charges would have been fired. The Overwhelm would be working like mad to clear the fallen rocks. And when they got through …
… Rhys’s men will be waiting to shoot them like rabbits in a hole. If we don’t succeed.
At the head of the valley, the mountain crooked around like the hanging sleeve of an old-fashioned tunic, fringed with shabby pines. In the ‘elbow,’ the river gushed over a rampire, brown water glistening like butter combed by a fork. This was the Craig Goch Dam, tamed by the hydroelectric plant that provided the whole valley—in fact, much of Wales—with power.
From a distance, the installation looked negligible in size. But as they approached, glimpses of vehicles and men on the concrete skirt below the dam illustrated the true scale of the plant. Behind the dam, the forest cupped a vast reservoir as still as glass.
