by Paul Kane
“No!” he screamed. “You can’t do this!”
A larger shadow emerged, carrying two bodies – one in each hand. But he could manage them well enough, the size that he was. Robert’s jaw dropped again when he saw Tanek, the Frenchman’s second, assumed dead but very much alive here. (Though hadn’t De Falaise been standing there only moments before? Living or deceased, it didn’t mean a thing in this place.)
The two last bodies were thrown over towards Robert, Tanek grunting – more with satisfaction than effort. Robert recognised who they were as they landed: Jack, defeated and deflated... and Mark. Finally Mark. Beaten to a pulp and with more than his finger missing.
Robert sank to his knees, tears flowing freely. He knew it wasn’t a good idea to show weakness in front of his enemies, but couldn’t help it. When he reached up to wipe the salt water away, he found his face altered. There were antlers on the side of his head. He had a snout too. As he looked up again, Tanek was approaching with that crossbow of his raised, a bolt in the chamber pointing at him. The shot was fired and, though it entered Robert’s temple, he could somehow still hear and see everything around him: the flames, the assembled war machine. Tanek crouching, letting go of the crossbow and taking out a knife with a serrated edge.
Robert’s vision went black for a second then red, like a filter had been placed over a camera lens. Tanek finished his cutting, sawing, stood again with something in his free hand. Robert’s... the stag’s head.
He handed the gory thing to the man in leather, who took off his peaked cap and replaced it with the antlers.
In spite of the fire’s warmth, Robert felt cold. It spread quickly throughout his body. If this was a vision of the future, as he’d wanted, then he was sorry he’d asked for it. Better to be ignorant than live with the knowledge that they would all soon die.
“Vengeance,” said a voice close to his ear, a figure he couldn’t see whispering to him. It sounded... familiar. De Falaise, but not him; the voice softer.
Then he felt hands on him, moving him.
Moving his corpse.
IT WAS A revelation when he found he could move – grabbing the hands shaking him. “N-not dead,” Robert mumbled. “Not dead!”
“Sshh. Keep it down,” another voice whispered, a different voice. “We’re not alone.”
Robert shook his head, clearing it. It had been a while since he’d slept so heavily, had a dream as intense. He’d forgotten how disorientating it could be. Mark was the person by his side – not the dead, mutilated Mark, but the living Mark who he could still do something to save if he got his act together. Mark, who had been trying to wake him for some time.
“People, circling the camp,” he told Robert. “I caught a glimpse when I got up to pee. I managed to crawl across to your lean-to without them seeing, I think.”
“How many?” asked Robert in hushed tones.
Mark shrugged. “A couple, maybe.”
“That’s the next lesson, then. Counting.” Mark scowled, then Robert tapped him on his arm. “Come on, let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
Grabbing his bow, arrows and sword, Robert emerged from the back of the lean-to with Mark beside him, using it to shield them both. Robert slipped the quiver and bow around his torso. It wasn’t quite light, but the sun was close to the horizon, giving everything a strange sepia look. There was an early morning mist covering the ground, thin enough to see through close up, but out in the distance it could hide anything. Robert trusted the boy’s instincts; after years of living on his wits, the lad had developed a sense about these things. He’d been the first to warn Bill about the attack on the market, and told Robert when Jack first entered Sherwood. Now he was telling him there was a potential threat in the woods, and Robert took that very seriously.
This was real hunting.
Mark nudged him and gestured towards a nearby tree on his right. He saw an elbow sticking out from behind the trunk. Robert nodded, then pointed across at another tree. Mark evidently couldn’t see it, but there was bark missing from one side where someone had scraped by it. Robert turned when he heard a noise behind him. Mark may well have dismissed it as a woodland animal, but he knew better. Although it had been a while since he’d lived here, Robert still felt the rhythms of this place – could tell when there was something out of sync. He was surrounded, as in his dream. Robert just hoped the tanks and jeeps weren’t about to shoot up from out of the ground.
He made a fanning-out gesture to Mark, who nodded. He hated having to split them up – especially when he could still picture the boy’s dead face – but he knew Mark needed to do this as much as he did. Robert pulled up his hood and began to stalk his prey, vanishing into the undergrowth.
Keeping low to the ground, he backtracked round to where he’d heard the noise. Robert closed his eyes and breathed deeply, attempting to sense where the intruder was. Where the disturbance in his forest was rooted. It didn’t prove difficult, not when the attacker suddenly showed himself and charged at Robert. He opened his eyes in time to see a flash of machete blade, a painted face leering down at him. A Servitor!
Robert took hold of the rushing figure, at the same time dodging the man’s weapon, then used his own momentum against him, flinging him into a nearby birch. “Damned Halloween freak,” he snarled. The tree leaned slightly and the robed man fell over it, landing on the other side. Robert was round it in seconds, bringing up a swift knee and clipping the cultist under the chin.
He was suddenly aware of two more attackers on either side of him. They appeared from behind trees and lunged at Robert, machete blades cutting through the morning air. He dodged one, then turned swiftly and ducked another. But as he came up again, he brought his clenched fist with him, practically lifting the Servitor off his feet with the punch. The next swing, Robert met with his own sword: metal striking metal. Gritting his teeth, he pushed the robed man backwards into a tree, winding him. Robert turned his back on the man, turned his sword around and thrust it backwards so that it slid into his attacker’s side and out again very quickly, incapacitating him.
By this time the first attacker had recovered and was getting to his feet. Robert had time to quickly glance over and see how Mark was doing, now their cover was well and truly blown. He saw the boy facing at least three of the freaks himself, and he’d already been relieved of his sword.
Holding the sword by the flat of the blade, Robert brought the hilt down heavily on the approaching cultist’s head. It struck him dead centre and he fell to his knees. Then Robert swung the sword like a baseball bat and hit the man in the face, sending his head rocking back and a few of his teeth flying.
Unslinging his bow as he went, Robert pulled out an arrow and aimed across to where Mark was fighting, kicking the first Servitor who’d attacked to keep him down. Just as he was about to shoot, though, a half dozen more of the men rose up from the mist or stepped out from behind trees.
“Crap,” said Robert under his breath. Mark was on his own, at least for now. He turned the bow on the nearest of the approaching cult members.
WHAT HAD BEEN his first mistake?
Mark was asking himself this even as he realised it was probably the worst time to be doing so. It was only what Jack would ask him later, if there was a later, but this clearly wasn’t the time for analysis. He’d blundered in, hadn’t he? Gone for the guy with his elbow sticking out, thinking he was an easy target. But then he’d realised, when the figure stepped out and confronted him, that the Servitor had been expecting the strike all along. What the hell was the matter with him? Mark had been so quiet and nimble as a boy, slipping in and out of cities and towns for supplies, scavenging them and stuffing them into his knapsack. But creeping up on people? Not so great at that.
The noise had brought another one out of the trees, and now Mark understood what Robert had been pointing at. Another hiding behind an oak, the bark worn off. He should have taken one out at a distance with a rock, then –
Swish!
Mark was suddenly stumbling backwards. This wasn’t a training sword anymore, but the real thing, held by someone who really did want to do him some harm. He reached for his own blade, but had only got it part of the way free before he felt it being lifted out by a third cultist who had appeared seemingly from nowhere. The sword was snatched away and thrown into the snowy grassland beyond the trees.
Swish!
Again Mark only just had time to dodge the blow, as it whistled past his right ear. Stepping back did, however, have the added benefit of knocking the man behind him off-balance, so that Mark could topple him fully over.
Now there were only two to deal with. And where was Robert? Having fun with his own playmates; Mark saw more and more – rising out of the ground itself, it seemed.
“You think you’re always going to have a weapon to hand? Uh-uh. Nope. But your opponent might.”
That’s what Jack had said, and he’d been right. Mark didn’t have his sword, and they each had one. Well, really big knives that you could probably call swords, but that was splitting hairs. Think, Mark, think... how had Azhar done it again?
Mark recalled the way that man had ducked and slid sideways to take the weapon from him. He had just seconds to react, to copy the move he’d witnessed. Now it wasn’t a game, Mark found his body co-operating, his movements less clumsy. Mark grabbed his opponent’s wrist and yanked, but the weapon wouldn’t tug free. The cultist pulled back and readied himself for another thrust. Thinking fast, Mark let his backpack – only hanging over one shoulder – slide down his arm; then, as the blade came into range, he wrapped the thing in the material, yanking down until the machete fell out of the man’s hands. As Mark bent forward to retrieve it, the first attacker fell over him and he instinctively followed through: standing and flipping him, letting his attacker’s momentum do all the work.
Snatching up the machete, Mark met the second attacker’s swing; the clash made his teeth rattle. The third joined in and suddenly Mark had to block his blows as well. That was one of the major differences between real combat and practising on your own: trees and fences didn’t fight back. These people did, and by all accounts they didn’t stop till one of you had stopped for good.
Mark batted away the attacks, using sheer desperation rather than finesse to carry him through. It was keeping him alive... so far. What he didn’t know was how he was going to keep this going indefinitely, especially as the remaining cultist was rising from the floor. Rising, and searching around for Mark’s sword.
What would Robert do in this situation? he wondered. What was he doing right now, in fact?
That wasn’t the right thing to ask, to get him out of this – so he asked himself quickly instead: What would Dale do?
What would Dale do if Sophie was watching?
And what would you do, Mark? What would you do to show her you can cut it?
Cut... cut... Mark grinned. He’d had an idea. Letting the pair he was dealing with get a little closer, though not too close, he pretended to trip.
“Mark!” He heard the anguished cry from across camp, Robert thinking he was injured. Mark didn’t have time to answer him. Instead, he lashed out at the men’s legs, catching calf muscles and shins beneath the material of the robes. One spun around and Mark took the opportunity of hamstringing him, drawing the blade across where he judged the back of the heel to be.
It had the desired effect. Both men dropped, screaming.
Mark clambered to his feet, the smile spreading across his face.
“Mark!” came the cry again, and he couldn’t understand why Robert was still calling. He’d taken down the two –
He remembered too late about the third, the one who’d been reaching for his sword. Mark pivoted, but at pretty much the same time the arrow flew past and into the fellow about to embed the sword in his head. The projectile’s tip found the tattoo on the cultist’s forehead, as if it were a bull’s eye target, and he fell backwards.
When Mark looked across he saw the base camp littered with robed figures, arrows sticking out of various parts of their bodies. Robert was running over and waving something to Mark.
“...let them commit suicide...” the Hooded Man was saying. Mark didn’t understand. Then he looked down at one of the men he’d crippled, saw him take his own machete with both hands, then ram it into his stomach. Mark felt his lip curling. The other one was doing similarly, except he was letting gravity do the work for him, lifting himself up as high as he could on his knees and just letting himself drop onto the blade.
Mark joined Robert, checking around to make sure no more were laying in wait. When he reached him, Mark saw he was crouching down next to one of the last cultists alive; the first proper rays of sunlight streaking through the trees onto the scene.
“And... and... he was cast... down,” hissed the white-faced man, an arrow sticking out of his side, “on... onto the Earth... and his angels... were cast.... cast down also...” Then he took hold of his head and snapped it sideways, breaking his own neck.
Robert removed his hood and looked at Mark. “Are you alright, son?” Mark never tired of hearing Robert call him that. He nodded. “I didn’t know there would be quite so many, or I never would’ve suggested... But, you did well today. I’m proud of you. Jack would be, too.”
“How did they find us here?” Mark asked when he’d finally got his breath back.
Robert stared down at the corpse. “I think we’ve made an enemy of these guys. They’re keeping tabs on us now, just like we’ve been doing with them. They’re worried I’m going to stop their master from making his grand appearance.”
“Master?”
“The Devil.”
“Oh... What was he talking about just then, before...”
“Tate’ll be able to tell us more about that. They seem to think they’re fallen angels or something. Explains why they’re not scared of dying. They probably believe they come right back again, fighting fit.”
“That’s scary.”
“Fanatics usually are. But that’s not what scares me the most.” He looked at Mark’s puzzled expression. “I think there could be something else coming. Something much more frightening.”
Mark didn’t ask him how he knew that, because he’d heard some of the mutterings before he’d woken Robert from his sleep.
Besides, Robert hadn’t been the only one who’d had dreams last night.
ONE MORE SET of eyes had been watching the camp from close by that morning, had been watching most of the night.
They’d seen the Servitors make their way through the forest, taking their positions outside where Robert and the boy were spending the night. Had seen the boy get up to go to the toilet, spot something and then rush back to Robert’s tent to warn him.
Had watched the fight with interest. More than interest: excitement. A tingling that had spread through the body until the last cultist had been defeated. It had almost been as good as being in the middle of it all, back in York.
From behind the oak, Adele let out the breath she’d been holding. And smiled. She’d enjoyed this little episode, but she knew there were tastier treats to come. And she’d be right there in the middle of those, definitely. There with the man she was after.
Right there with the Hooded Man.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HE’D BEEN HEARING the rumblings of discontent for some time.
Dale had debated about saying something to someone, but was faced with a dilemma. He was ‘one of the guys,’ a member of the Sherwood Rangers who fought on the streets with his friends. Buddies that he’d made since coming to the castle last year. But he was also very close to Jack and Robert. If it wasn’t for them, he might still be wandering around the country, looking for a place to fit in. A former lead singer and guitarist in a band, whose life had fallen to bits after the virus struck, and who’d drifted from town to town, city to city, with a guitar in one hand and his other hand folded into a fist.
He often thought back to those days befor
e everyone got sick: to the gigs he’d played with the other guys – Abbott on bass, Lockley on drums and Paige on keyboards. Only she hadn’t just been one of the guys, had she?
Paige and he had formed One Simple Truth together while they were studying music in college. They’d been good mates throughout the course, and it just seemed like a sensible progression, especially as they’d just started going out. Paige had a real natural beauty, and she’d come along at a time when he’d just started to notice the opposite sex. She could be a bit serious sometimes, though, which is why, initially, he left a lot of the songwriting to her. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it – Dale could make up stuff on the spot if he had to – but she came up with the most soulful tunes.
When they advertised on the bulletin board for more band members, they’d had all kinds of responses – some genuine, some time-wasters. But they’d really gelled with the long-haired Lockley and bearded Abbott, especially in the jamming session the first time they all got together. Jesus, how he missed them!
The first few live shows at local pubs had been the pits; Dale had almost called it a day at one point. Paige persuaded him to go on, and to his surprise they started to develop a fan base – particularly amongst the college and uni crowd.
Then came bigger and better gigs, and soon the money they were getting made attending classes seem moot. They were making it anyway, practising what their tutors only preached. It wasn’t long before a talent scout with an eye for the next big thing spotted them. They were signed to a small indie label, but that automatically meant bigger gigs, and supporting turns for artists much higher up the ladder. Local stations played a couple of their releases and they even found themselves being aired on BBC Radio.
By this time One Simple Truth – and specifically Dale – had attracted another following entirely. Girls would hang out at the stage doors after gigs just to try and get an autograph. Or a kiss. Paige said nothing because she knew, at the end of the day, he was still hers. But during the course of their journey, Dale discovered his own simple truth: he found it impossible to be tied down to just the one girl. He loved the adoration his – granted – limited fame brought him. And, girl by girl, tour by tour, he gave in to temptation.
