them.
‘We drove them back,’ Caitlin said, her eyes gleaming. ‘But they’ll return, and soon.’
‘We’ll never be able to fight them off,’ Thackeray said. ‘We surprised them this time. They never expected us to have a secret weapon that was such a killing machine.’
‘Even you won’t be able to kill all of them,’ Harvey said to Caitlin, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Lugh marched up and addressed Sophie. ‘His words are true.’
‘I didn’t hear your speech. What did you tell everyone?’ Sophie said.
A deep sadness lay just below the surface of Lugh’s composed expression. ‘The enemy is too numerous. We cannot defeat them.’
‘What are you saying?’ she asked. ‘That you’re going to surrender?’
Defiance flared in Lugh’s eyes. ‘In all our long history, the Golden Ones have never admitted defeat. We are trapped here, unable to strike back effectively. We must escape, regroup, find another haven where we can plot our next attack.’
‘How are you going to get out of here? The only exit is through the gate, straight into the enemy’s hands.’
‘I have charged my brothers and sisters with finding a solution.’
‘But what if they can’t come up with anything?’
‘Then we stand, and fight, and greet Existence with the sun in our faces and pride in our hearts.’
The small group fell silent as Lugh marched away. The air of impending doom in the room was palpable.
Sophie said quietly, ‘Whatever it takes, we’re getting out of here.’
The road west from Oxford was hard going. Mallory reasoned that the main thoroughfares would be easier to travel, but heavy snow had still built up, so deep in places that even the horse found it difficult to pick a path through. Some days he barely covered two miles. He took the A40, skirting Witney, and then when he reached Northleach turned south down the arrow-straight route of the old Fosse Way towards Cirencester. One advantage of such a route was plenty of abandoned buildings where he could seek shelter if the blizzards became too intense, and many occupied ones where he could try to beg a few moments’ warmth by a fire or a bed for the night.
But many people were suspicious of him. With the collapse of the rule of law across most of the country, there were too many rogues at large. Others refused him any food, fearing that the bizarre summer-winter would devastate the already fragile food supply; most crops would already have died, and what they had stored needed to be conserved. After the tenth shotgun pushed into his face, he decided to shun human contact altogether.
With each passing mile, Mallory had grown stronger, the pain of his wounds becoming a distant memory. But the bitter cold assailed him, and at times he wondered if he would be able to continue. Every morning he woke with a deep ache gnawing at his bones that not even the campfire outside the tent could dispel. And then there was the long day in the saddle, riding into the harsh wind, the frost building up on his chest and on the beard he had decided to grow to protect the skin from being flayed from his face. In his thermal sleeping bag at night, he dreamed of warmth, but thought he would never feel it again.
Increasingly, the harshness of the outside world drove him deep inside his own head, where memories, dreams and emotions stewed and mingled so that sometimes he found himself unable to tell what was real and what was fantasy.
But always he returned to the single image of a gunshot in the dark that was imprinted on his deep subconscious. The revelation that had come as he lay drugged and in pain had been too raw to contemplate immediately, but now it had taken on a terrible gravity that dragged him back to it constantly. Perhaps it had been a suicide attempt from which he had recovered? But if that was the case, why did he have no memory of any hospitalisation — or had that, too, been locked away from his conscious mind? No, he was sure it represented his death, but the questions that came with that recognition threatened to drive him mad.
If only Sophie had been there, she would have helped him to find a solution; she would have soothed him.
But then, as he concentrated on the blast… the fire… then darkness, a rush of other memories broke through, like ice shattering on a pond. Another life, setting up a club, music, criminal figures propelling him to a choice no one should have to make; and then some unspeakable act which he still couldn’t face that drove him to suicide. It shocked him out of his drifting state so sharply that he almost fell from the horse and had to pull back on the reins to bring it under control.
The rush of memory brought deep depression along with the shock. Since Sophie’s death, the world had already become senseless. But now that his own inner world was equally un-tethered, he felt as if he was going mad.
Gasping for breath, he didn’t see the figure that appeared suddenly in front of him until his mount shied away.
‘There’s a monster!’ It was a man of about eighty wrapped in several heavy jumpers and wearing a pair of ancient paint-spattered trousers. An old-fashioned hearing aid was visible in one ear and a pair of silver-rimmed glasses held together with a plaster was jammed on the bridge of his nose. Anxiety made him throw his arms up and down as if he was exercising.
Mallory brought the horse under control and barked, ‘What the hell are you doing, you idiot?’
‘There’s a monster!’
‘I heard you the first time. What are you talking about and what’s it got to do with me?’
The old man managed to calm himself enough to get his words out. ‘Over that way.’ He flapped his arm towards the east. ‘It’s got my granddaughter. And you… you’ve got a sword. You can fight it. Are you a knight? From Salisbury? We’ve had a few of ’em round here. They help out, when they’re not Bible-bashing…’ His words disappeared in another bout of panic.
Mallory couldn’t afford to break his journey, but the old man was so desperate that he was on the verge of tears. ‘How far?’ he asked with irritation.
‘Two miles-’
‘Two miles! That’s about a day’s travelling in this weather!’
‘No, no, the road isn’t bad. The trees overhang, so it’s kept the snow off,’ he protested. ‘Please… my granddaughter…’
He wrung his hands and, for the first time, Mallory could see that he was on the point of collapse; he must have walked the distance searching for help. Could Mallory ignore his plea, possibly sacrifice a woman to one of the nightmares that had stalked the land since the Fall? ‘Come on,’ he said wearily, holding out a hand to help the man on to the back of his horse. ‘Jesus, you’re lucky I’m such a soft touch.’
As they made their way along the lane, Mallory was relieved to find that the old man had not been lying. The snow lay thinly, marred only by the old man’s footprints.
‘What’s your name?’ Mallory asked.
‘Stanley Hahn.’
Mallory could feel the old man shaking from the cold as he clung on. ‘You’d better tell me what happened.’
‘My son and daughter-in-law died in the Fall,’ Stanley said in a fragile voice. ‘My granddaughter, Jenny, got us set up in Barnsley House just over the way. But last night there were strange lights in the gardens and then a fire… a big, big fire. We thought a plane had crashed. Jenny said she was going to investigate. I told her not to, but she never listens to me any more.’ He sobbed silently for a moment; when he managed to calm himself, he continued, ‘When she didn’t come back after half an hour, I went to see where she’d gone. There was a terrible snowstorm blowing. I could barely walk into it. And then… and then…’
‘You found her.’
‘The monster had her! It was all wrapped around her and they were both on fire. But Jenny wasn’t burning. I don’t understand it. I don’t-’
‘All right, calm down. She’s still with it?’
‘I ran back to the house to find a shotgun, but I was afraid of hitting Jenny. I went back this morning and she was still there… still standing with it… I didn’t know what to do. You’ll help me, won’t you? You’ll help?’
Mallory sighed, but it was answer enough for the old man, who proceeded to sob quietly with relief.
After a journey of fifteen minutes or so, the road brought them up to what looked like an enormous mansion, three hundred years old at least, built of Cotswold stone with large windows and tall chimneys, and set in formal
