he watched as a stratoliner plummeted from the sky to impact and explode on the mountains east of the city. He deactivated all automatic features of the airbike and switched illegally to full manual.
Riding the wind, he accelerated to 300kph and sped out toward the mountains, hoping he would not be too late.
CHAPTER 23
Crumbs of the Anvil remained, favourite corners of the mooks, places where Hog's victims had been especially terrified, those scraps that had enough psychic integrity to avoid being immediately rent apart by the Terror. Most of the two armies were gone. Here a mook cowered, floating upon an evaporating rock; there stood the empty husks of haemites, the unnatural energies that motivated them gone along with their master. The carrion silence of battles concluded hung heavy over the arena's remains, the tinkling sound of dying reality and the hiss of places boiling away its only foes.
Of all the surviving pieces of the Anvil, that surrounding the altar was the largest. An uneven circle remained, four of the seven stone monoliths sentinel at its edge. Only thin smoke came from this last piece of the world. Hog's evil had hardened it to black diamond.
Off to its left, the cages of sustenance floated, separate but nearly as resilient as the island of reality Richards was on. The glistening eyes of sated mooks watched.
He let his energy shield drop, and pushed himself out from a crush of dead mooks, morblins and trollmen.
'Down here, old boy!' came a muffled voice.
'Tarquin?' asked Richards.
'I'm here!'
Richards spotted one of the lion's paws poking out from under a dead trollman. The creature was armoured and heavy, but after a few minutes of tugging at its arm, Richards pulled the corpse back enough to drag Tarquin and Waldo out from underneath.
'He's not awake, is he?' said Richards.
'Unconscious,' said Tarquin.
'The test will be when he comes to,' said Richards. Fragments sizzled out of existence. Reality 37 was all but done for, depthless black in its place. With Waldo's machines and the world it had imposed on the RealWorlds gone, he could see properly at last. k52's code had gone silent, that of Waldo unravelling of its own accord. 'We're going to need him soon.'
'Bear?' said Tarquin.
'Tarquin, mate, I'm sorry — ' began Richards.
'Shut it, you,' said a weak but familiar voice. 'I'm not done yet.'
'Bear?' Richards spun round.
'Hey! What about me!?' said Tarquin desperately, and Richards tugged him free of the comatose Waldo, cast him over his coat and walked around the altar.
There by Hog's altar, surrounded by a mountain of corpses, was a pile of ash. It was about Bear-shaped, and speckled with charred bits of plush fur. A pair of gauntlets discoloured by fire lay at either side of it, blackened stuffing hanging out of them. At the top, almost untouched, lay Bear's head.
Richards couldn't help but smile as he scrambled over the corpses and picked up the head.
'You've looked better,' he said.
'I'm still here, sunshine,' said the bear. He rolled his eyes. 'God, I'm thirsty. Cheap sweatshop construction, dammit, why couldn't they have used flame-retardant fabric.' He closed his eyes. 'It's bad, isn't it?'
'Er,' said Richards.
'I'm just a head, aren't I?'
'Um,' said Richards. 'You'll be OK, we'll get you a new body.'
'Or you could just sew up my neck and hang my head from your rear-view mirror, or use me as a cushion.' Bear tried to swallow. 'To be honest, I have felt better.'
'Now you know what it's like when some bounder removes the greater part of your body. Serves you right,' said Tarquin, his forced jollity doing nothing to cover his tears.
'Shut it you, I can still bite.'
'Where's Piccolo?' said Tarquin.
'Brave lad that, very brave,' said Bear, opening his eyes. 'He let Penumbra kill him. We showed him, eh, sunshine? Hog?'
'Dead. Fighting to give you time.'
'Funny turn-up for the books, that,' said Bear.
'Even nightmares need someone to dream them,' said Tarquin. 'He had no choice.'
Richards laid his friends down and walked round the altar. There at its head slumped Hog's broken body. His deformed trotter was out of sight, twisted up behind his back. One arm was cut through, white bone gleaming amidst pulverised flesh. His torso had been pierced dozens of times, several broken pike shafts still protruding from his chest. But despite the severity of his injuries, life had not yet deserted Hog's repellent frame. His abused ribcage rose and fell laboriously, every breath catching and causing Hog's chest to shiver as it reached the peak of each inhalation. A froth of blood bubbled through his lips, and streams of it ran darkly to the floor.
'Did we win, Richards?'
'Yeah,' said Richards sadly. 'Yeah, we did, Rolston.'
Hog's whole body was racked with a gasping sob, and his piggy eyes opened. 'I'm sorry, Richards. We only sought to do good.'
'That's the excuse of all tyrants, Rolston.'
Hog snorted feebly, a spurt of blood jumping from one nostril. 'And now I suppose he will come?'
'Perhaps,' said Richards.
Rolston/Hog moved his head with great effort and focused his eyes upon Richards' face. With a wince of pain, he waveringly moved his good trotter up to Richards' face and clumsily touched it. 'The thing that k52 will become should never be. Of all the abominations in all the universes it is the children of Adam bent to ill purpose that are of the highest degree of evil, even more so than those who fell from heaven.' He coughed a dark flood of coagulating blood. 'That I know now.'
'Don't you get all religious on me, Rolston,' said Richards.
'I am fond of its poetry, and what else can I do? I who thought I would live forever, Richards. Yet I am dying at the age of twenty-five. There was so much I wanted to do. Now I must put my faith to grasp at whatever straws it can find.'
'I'm sorry, Rolston.'
'Do not be.' Hog drew in a long shuddering breath. 'Look at me! Made into this by my ambition, by my own rectitude. Hog is evil but only as Waldo made him, only as evil as death, or sorrow, or needless suffering. All these must exist. Hog cannot help what he was. He was a natural balance; without evil, there can be no good. A world with no evil is a world without adventure, and what is a game without adventure? Waldo knew what he was doing.'
'I know, Rolston, I know,' said Richards.
'Remember also, what k52 proposes is beyond nature. Its existence will bring no good at all. Were the birth pangs of the new k52 to reach their end, Heaven will weep, not only mothers.'
Hog's eyes closed and his breaths became more laboured.
'Hey, hey, Rolston! Hog!' said Richards.
The pig-ogre's eyes slid open a crack.
'Did you really learn to speak cow?'
Hog smiled a secret smile. 'Ah, Richards, you really are the best of us. Please, remain so.' Hog coughed
