Bloodtide

of reopening these wars, to wipe out the halfmen under a united London, to break out of the prison. But long before, Abel had taunted fate by opening a gate into the halfman lands so he could go out and hunt them.

Signy was intrigued. Robbing fat bankers and smugglers might be fun. It was even dangerous, in its way. But the halfmen were deadly. More than human, less than human, more than beasts, less than beasts, it was said they had been designed with no fear of death, no love of life. It was said that all they cared about, thought about, dreamed about, was death to humankind. Such stories may or may not have been true. But the fact was, to hunt the halfmen was to be hunted yourself.

Here on the edge of things, there were hunts once or twice a year. Of all the things in all the world Signy wanted to do, going on a halfman hunt was number one.

'Please let me come…' begged Signy.

Conor smiled indulgently at her. 'Far too dangerous,' he said. 'What would your father say?'

'He'd have let me go,' said Signy eagerly. 'Ask him…'

'When you were just a girl,' insisted Conor. 'You're a little more important than that now.'

Signy seethed. Everything was too dangerous for her these days! In the past few months so many promises had been put on hold. There had been so many boring days and nights kept 'safe' in her tower. Sometimes… well, she loved him and he loved her, and when they were together nothing else mattered. But he seemed to expect life to stop for her the second they were apart. Then, one afternoon in the early summer, when she was exercising up in her tower on a trampoline, she heard Conor call her from the trap door.

'Signy! Surprise! Come on down!'

There in the woods under her tower, the hunt was waiting for her to join them.

The Wall: a ring of brick and stone right around London, it towered over the broken suburbs and fields. Every fifty metres was a machine gun nest, so high above the ground that even the halfmen couldn't jump up. Jags of glass, iron and steel stuck out of the mortar. Rolls of razor wire coiled around the top. And on each side, a minefield, fifty metres wide.

Blood had been spilt with each and every brick. Men had worked under armed guard day and night, under attack after attack after attack. But the Wall had been finished, and it spelt the end of the halfmen wars. The gangmen told themselves they had won. They had driven the halfmen out of London, more or less. There were odd tribes and individuals remaining on the inside that had to be hunted down one by one, but the wars were effectively finished.

But what kind of a victory was this? The cost was huge. The gangmen had to give up all contact with the world outside. It was this Wall – their Wall – that made Londoners into prisoners, not Ragnor. Their only means of communication was through the halfmen themselves, who traded goods to and fro. The gangmen had built their own prison. No one got in, and no one got out, unless you were King Conor and had control of the gate.

Signy sat in the Land-Rover next to Conor, dressed up to her chin in an expensive, out-of-town anorak – halfman smuggled. Her nose was pressed up against the window. Conor's hand was tucked snugly away inside the coat. She squeezed him against her stomach and stared greedily outside.

The convoy of Land-Rovers made its way across the narrow pathway through the minefield towards Abel's Gate, a tall, narrow steel door, taken from a military base in Finchley. This was a weak spot in the Wall; Conor made up for it with extra hardware. Eight machine guns pointed down from the four high watchtowers, missile launchers were mounted on the brickwork. To go within sight of it was certain death.

Now the Wall got closer, bigger, taller. It was enormous. The gates loomed, opened wide. They passed through into the halfman lands.

Here, in the no-one's land in the shadow of the Wall, there was nothing for a kilometre – no trees, no buildings, no walls, no bushes, no life. The land was charred earth pitted with craters from the last months of the war when the enemy had attacked over and over to try and stop the building. The convoy moved smartly over the bare ground towards another world.

Derelict suburbs, choked with weeds and broken up by trees. Buddleia and elder grew out of the crumbling brickwork and window ledges. Bushes pushed aside the kerbstones at the roadside and lifted the pavements. Nature was doing its best to reclaim the land.

The houses in this part had been so heavily mortared and bombed, very little was left standing. Even the good soil in the old gardens was covered in rubble. Odd shaped sections of walls, crookedly collapsed roofs, chunks of concrete, of tarmac and tangles of steel poked up like mad sculptures, covered in ivy and bindweed and sprouting little shrubs. A kind of paradise of weeds was growing up between the stones. On this blowy summer's day the dog roses that scrambled out of the pavements and tumbled over the rubble were just coming into flower. They loved the poor, stony soil; there were dozens of them, a hundred shades of pink tangled on the stones. The brambles that pushed aside the pavings stones were showing white flowers. The flowering shrubs that had long ago prettified the gardens were flinging out leaves and flowers of all colours.

The roads were scattered with the rusted carcasses of cars, all the furnishings long rotted away or stolen for bedding. Further out, things were said to be better, but most people believed that this state of neglect and decay was a result of the halfmen's savagery and lack of civilisation, rather than a sensible decision not to build or live so close to a war zone.

As they bumped along, the four armed guards standing in the back of the vehicles stared in four directions and kept their arms forever ready, watching, watching. This close to the Wall there were few halfmen, but the ones that were here were monsters – real monsters. The more human ones lived further out, but some of them might have caught wind of the hunt and set up an ambush. Already it was dangerous. In any of those rubble caves, in all of those cars; so many places for them to hide…

Before long they pulled up by a tower made of metal struts; it was an old electricity pylon. A platform had been erected high in its metal branches. Conor got out of the Land-Rover and opened the door for Signy to get out.

19

Signy

I got out of the car and I stood next to him looking up at the tower and I thought, if this is what I think it is, I'm about ready to throw up.

He said, 'You'll be safe enough up there.'

I said, 'Safe?'

'You'll be able to see most of it from up there.'

I said, 'You what?'

'We chase them in the cars,' he explained. He was looking all shifty. He knew exactly what he was up to.

'Right, in cars,' I said. 'So what's the point of being up there?'

Conor was giving these sneaky little glances over at the other vehicles. You got the feeling I was making a fool of him, somehow. Then he rolled his eyes at heaven and said, 'Don't be ridiculous…'

Ridiculous. You know? I'd been stuck in that tower, I'd been wheeled out a couple of times a week to have a look at the human beings. I'd been cooped up like a tame rabbit, and now here I was on the biggest adventure of my life and I was being told to watch.

I just said, 'You've got the wrong idea, Conor,' and I climbed straight back in the car. He stood there staring for a second, then he pulled the door open.

'We don't have time for this,' he hissed.

'Conor, stop it now.'

'It's out of the question.' He was trying to be patient. 'What if something happened?'

'What if it did?'

'What if you got killed?'

'What if you got killed?'

'That's different. Your father'd never believe it. They'd think we'd set it up. There's too much at stake.'

'And of course it would be just fine if anything happened to you. That would please the old guard, wouldn't it?'

He began to bulge slightly. I tried being reasonable. 'Listen. I'm used to going out on my own. I'm used to going