within the London Wall. Churches, cathedrals, the ancient office headquarters of multi-national corporations, all were taken down piece by piece and boxed by numbers. The Great Hall at Winchester was burned to the ground. Stonehenge was removed and re-erected on Hackney Marsh. When a pincer movement closed in around Oxford, the allied troops found Christ Church dismantled on a railway siding, each stone carefully numbered. But no one ever found the plans to put it back together again.
Other treasures were successfully whisked away -statuary, jewellery, old cars, trains, aeroplanes – relics of the age of science stolen from museums and stately homes. Paintings, pieces of electronic equipment, books, records, documents – anything of value or importance. Many of these thefts were displayed around London in a belated attempt by Conor to placate his desperate population at home. But there was rarely enough time to rebuild properly. Londoners looked with bewilderment on half-built churches, odd battlements from ancient castles, or sheets of glass and steel or polymers from fancy office blocks. For a short while it may even have helped Conor's popularity. Londoners were infamous for their sense of superiority, and it was a soft touch to play up to it. But soon they were to be desperate not for status, but for food.
The war in London was entering its final phase.
Now that he could see the end in sight, Conor began to use every means at his disposal to turn the tide. Chemical, gas, radioactive and bacteriological weapons, hoarded from long ago, were released. Overnight the winds filled with poisons that could reduce lungs to blisters, viruses that could turn your liver inside out. The plagues went on for months, carrying off thousands of lives on both sides. But there lay the trouble; such terrors could not be contained. They attacked everyone, and Conor could afford the losses less than Siggy. Terrible though these weapons were they could do nothing to change the outcome, only delay it Antidotes were found; Conor's supplies dwindled and could not be replaced. After an apocalyptic year of destruction, the, winds blew clean and the war continued back on its relentless path.
Within a year of Dag's death, the fighting had returned home to where it had started over a hundred years before, when the government forces abandoned the cities: no-one's land. The old monsters – the Pig, the spider woman, the birds – had long ago been dealt with. This time, no-one's land would find its owner. Human and halfmen fought side by side, and London responded as it had done the last time the halfmen threatened, by retreating behind the Wall. The troops fled into their stronghold, the gate was bricked up, the fortifications strengthened. Inside, the population waited in terror to see what the monsters would do next. And outside, on the churned-up earth of no-one's land, halfman and human made their camp under the banner of the Volsons.
Conor now had all his troops concentrated into one small area. Signy's information was helpful, but no longer decisive now that he was no longer on the attack. He had enough ammunition to keep him going for years, if need be. Siggy was conscious that Conor might still have deadly poisons and bacteriological weapons in his arsenal and feared that he might use them even to the extent of destroying the population of the city: Signy hinted as much, and Conor had proved careless of the lives of his own people before now. What use would all this war be to Siggy then, if there were no people left for him to liberate and to rule?
So here, for a while, Siggy halted, and determined to bring Conor to his knees at the very end by siege.
For two long, still years the war was frozen. Nothing came in or out of the once great city. London was big, the population had shrunk over the decades and the people had for a long time been experts at pushing the land to produce food. Even so, as the weeks passed into months and the months gathered towards the end of the first year, starvation began to bite. The pigeons that used to flock around the derelict buildings disappeared from the sky. Cats and dogs, then mice and rats disappeared from the streets. Another few months and the ribby torsos of starving men, women and children began to appear, walking like zombies from place to place in the vain hope that they might stumble by chance on something to eat.
The population starved, but what of the troops? It was to be expected that they would get the best of what supplies there were, but as the second year drew on it was strange how well-fed and healthy the soldiers still were. Rumours began to spread. There were reports of ever-increasing sacrifices to the AlFather. These days, it was said, the bodies did not hang for long, and all that was buried in the end were the bones.
Conor had found the final and most literal way of devouring his own people. Starvation would not bite close to his heart until every last soul in London had been used up to feed his armies. It was clear that the siege was not going to work. As the second year of starvation drew to a close, the order to attack was expected daily.
31
Signy
Conor is asleep, snuffling in the half darkness in front of me. He seems to be trembling, or is it me? For the thousandth time he's at my mercy, but now at last, he's in danger. It's just a question of when.
Tonight, darling? Conor – wake up! Wake up, my dear, and tell me you love me. Perhaps you're about to die.
I take a step across the thick carpet, warm on the concrete floor which is heated from beneath. Conor stirs and speaks, but I can't make out his dreamtalk. Shall I kill him tonight? But let's see what it has in its pocketsies first.
I'm back in the water tower. This is where Conor wants us to spend our final hours. He's had it taken down and rebuilt down here months ago, in the rock under the Estate. A sentimental gesture. It's where we made love when I first came here. It's where our child was born. Conor is so romantic.
One week ago the first shells began punching holes in the Wall. Siggy grew tired of waiting when he realised there will be no such thing as starvation for us or for our soldiers. What does he expect? If he can have animals as his comrades, we can have human meat on our table. War is war, comrade brother. But he grew tired of our tricks and now we're overrun. Their troops are everywhere. I saw it. They have television! Ragnor has lifted the blockers over London, the satellites are back in action. Siggy and the halfmen broadcast their success all over the world. We watched with all the other admiring hordes, how the great general Siggy Volson drove in honour through the streets of London. Liberator! Conqueror! Man of Peace!
Of course the television never mentioned me. I am the little wife of the big tyrant Pity me or hate me, but do not admire the little wife. Yet right up to a few months ago I could have made this whole war swing the other way!
Too late now. Conor's side – or is it my side? – will never rule again. The Volsons are back in charge. But don't forget this, don't forget this ever – I am a Volson too.
I take another few steps. No danger of the floorboards creaking here, where everything is five metres thick rock on all sides. No wind sighing in the eaves, no frost on the glass, although it's winter above. Our windows here look out into the blind stone, but we have a view even so. Conor had men take pictures from the water tower windows before it got taken down. He had the pictures blown up and pasted on the appropriate windows, so that from each window we can see what we would have seen. That's the kind of thing he occupies himself with these days. He leaves it up to me to co-ordinate the defeat.
I think what Conor cannot bear is not defeat: it was the crowds that finally broke him. That's when the trembling began, the old man shaking of his limbs and his little noddy head on his little sticky neck – when he saw our people on the television cheering and yelling, throwing handfuls of coloured paper and rice and flowers at the great Volson returning, as if Siggy was some sort of bride. Rice! After starving them almost to death, he gives them rice to throw away. I didn't say a word, but I looked out of the sides of my eyes at the tears trickling down Conor's face and yes, yes, it almost broke my heart to see him like that. The way his people turned on him! As soon as they saw that the fight was lost, the whole of London turned against him like one man. He'd led them for so long, taken them out of the city, conquered the halfmen, taken town after town, city after city – even made camp in sight of Ragnor. It was for their glory as well as his. I remember how there were postcards and posters made for each city we conquered. People collected them. It was their victory too! It wasn't just the priests and the commanders and the rich, either. The raggediest little beggars, the whores and the pimps, even the thieves who had to hang for Odin, they were all as proud as if they were the ones who had led the army of London so far.
And now a rabble of beasts come through the city gates and they cheer them. What pride they have now!
Well, what did my dear expect? He failed. Conor has been driven back into his own dirt Believe me, if he had taken Ragnor, if he'd ruled the world, they wouldn't have deserted him, they'd have loved him for it. Like my father,
