'Does it annoy you when Tarquin gets all portentous like that?' said Bear. 'It annoys me.'
'Sergeant Bear, your problems with gravity are of little concern as of the moment. The question worrying me is whether or not these cars still pass,' said Piccolo.
'Well, whether they pass or not, this is the only way for us to see Hog,' said Richards. 'Let's get on with it.' And he set off towards the pylon.
'If that's what you want, sunshine.' Bear followed Richards.
'I cheer your boldness, but fear your chances of survival are slim,' said Tarquin.
'Oh, shut up,' said Bear. 'I still have my needle.'
'I'm coming, aren't I?' grumbled the lion.
'Like you have much choice, captain coat.'
Piccolo ceased looking pensively up the pylon's heights, and turned abruptly to his assembled crew. 'Men,' he said. 'Men, it has been a pleasure to fight with you, but now I feel I must bid you farewell. I cannot ask you to aid me now, I, a man who follows friends, and then only for the adventure. I would not demand you blindly stray into the perilous fields of my selfish endeavour. Stay here with the ships, as close as you can to the edge of the world. If I do not return within six days, flee. Try by whatever means you can to outlast the Terror, if it can be outlasted at all.'
There was a clamour from the pirates. Many of them demanded to be taken along. In the end Piccolo relented, and seven were selected, men as foolhardy as Piccolo and maybe even more crazed. But at the one man who clamoured the loudest of all, Piccolo shook his head sadly.
'No, Bosun Mbotu, you are to stay here.'
'Captain!' cried the pirate, for he loved his captain as much as one murderous cutthroat can love another, which is to say quite a lot, until gold got in the way. 'I insist! I will face the Hog with you.'
Piccolo grinned and walked up to the man. 'Alas no! I would not put so good a servant as you in the way of harm,' he declaimed. Then, much more quietly into the man's ear: 'Besides, when I do come back, and before six days are out you should be sure, I want to be completely certain both my ships await me.' He cast meaningful glances at some of the men, and Mbotu acknowledged that with a curt nod. 'And if I do not return,' shouted the captain, 'then you shall be captain of this scurvy band, aye?'
'Aye!' the pirates replied with a shout that was nine parts hearty and only one part treacherous.
'Right then, fire up the boilers on the Flan, and prepare the grapples.' He turned to the pylon, at whose base Richards and Bear stood grim-faced. 'Gentlemen!' called the pirate dandy through cupped hands.
'What?' said Richards.
'Do you not think it a little foolish to climb so high when you have at your disposal the world's mightiest air machine?'
'Oh, yeah!' said Bear. 'I hadn't thought of that.'
'That's because you're a rather stupid kind of bear,' said Tarquin.
After much wobbling and inching slowly across what was, to Richards' mind, a very thin rope, they stood upon one of the pylon's iron girders. It was as wide as a main road, and red as old blood.
For a long hour they sat on the pylon's bones, chilled by a wind that playfully punched them towards the edge. It lowed sadly as it was parsed by the giant cable, tinkling as it hit the end of Reality 37's tortured terrain. Richards watched the blackness. Bursts of colour flashed as the air obliterated itself upon the wall of the void.
As Richards stared at this tiny firework display, there was a violent lurch and a loud rumble, and all the world was shaking. The pylon shook, its ancient metal groaning. Rivets pinged from the ironwork amid a snow of rust. With an almighty rush, the earth about the pylon collapsed in on itself, sucked away to nothing. The noise of its shattering was deafening. Richards and the others clung on for dear life.
It stopped.
The pylon stood upon an island of bedrock and old concrete, its bare metal roots exposed. To the west, over the remaining land, the two airships hovered uncertainly. They backed away, but remained in sight of the free- floating pylon.
'Nuts,' said Bear. 'I suppose we have no choice but to wait now.'
They sat there for a while. Not as much as a whole day, thought Richards, because he did not become hungry, but it was certainly late afternoon when the first black car trundled unsteadily past. It was hard to tell; time had no meaning in the void.
The car was the colour of charcoal. The first indication they had of its approach was the squeaking of unoiled wheels. It ground slowly past, a large 'four' daubed crudely on the side.
Bear stood up to leap. Richards shook his head. 'Not that one.'
In appearance the car was like a railway boxcar, but many times larger. It hung from an arm five times the height of Bear, and was bigger in volume than a stack of shipping containers. They watched in silence as it went past, listened to it bang as the wheels upon the arm bumped over the cable support, then watched it go away. The whole spectacle took less than ten minutes.
'And there we have it,' said Tarquin. 'I told you the black cars never stop running. Not even for the end of the world.'
They didn't have to wait very long before another appeared, a black dot on the horizon.
'Number?' asked Richards.
'An eight,' said Piccolo, and handed his telescope over to Richards. Richards nodded.
'That's the one.'
'Men, make ready!' yelled Piccolo. 'Prepare the grapples!'
'Aye, cap'n!' replied the pirates. The seven men swarmed along the beams either side of the pylon line. They made fast the ends of the ropes to the superstructure and, with practised ease, tossed the grapples onto the car as it neared the pylon. Six of the hooks wrapped themselves round the central arm or hooked in cracks, only the seventh bouncing from the wood with a meaty thud.
'Now!' said Piccolo. 'Quickly! We must get aboard!' All at once, everyone ran for the ropes. Bear swung along arm over arm, followed by Richards and the pirates. 'Faster! Faster!' shouted Piccolo. The cables tightened as the car rumbled past, pulling them up into the air. One by one they scrambled aboard. Bear first, then some of the pirates, then Piccolo. Richards soon after, helped up by two of Piccolo's crew. The car drew away, its progress little slowed by the lines. The ropes creaked. They hummed with tension, before splitting apart with a series of cracks.
'A fine job, lads! A fine job!' said Piccolo, panting.
Richards began to push himself up off the floor, then stopped. Through a gap in the rough timber he could see movement and the glint of an eye. Something looked back up at him. He could dimly make out porcine shapes. 'The car's not empty,' he said, and was greeted by a chorus of grunts and squeals.
'Did you expect it to be?' asked Bear.
Richards shrugged. 'All I got were numbers and a map.'
As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they saw that the pigs' silhouettes were a little off. All were wearing clothes.
'Arrrr!' said one of the pirates. 'At least we be having something to eat, and I's can get me a new pair o' boots while's I is about it. Arrrrrr!'
Richards explained where the pigs came from. And about Circus. The pirate went pale.
'This is it,' said Richards. 'Lord Hog, here we come.'
CHAPTER 19
Lord Hog's lair was an inverted mountain. Its splayed roots faced heavenwards, peak pointing down in the direction of the other place. Its stone was the colour of a corpse killed by asphyxiation. If geological processes had forced such a mountain into being, they are best left undescribed.
Although it was called the Anvil, it was more akin in shape to a clawed hand. Within the palm lay the temple
