was the ultimate euphemism for what they actually did. Hundreds of thousands had been slaughtered and remade in the image of the Lament-Brood, all of them now marching to the beat of war. And Birmingham was next.
He barged into the lab without knocking. The model town lay gathering dust to one side while Kirkham examined a purple gem illuminated by a powerful spotlight.
‘What have you got for me?’ the General barked so sharply that Kirkham almost swept the jewel on to the floor.
‘I’m working on-’
‘Nothing. That’s the answer, isn’t it?’ The General had told himself he wouldn’t lose his temper, but the blood was thundering in his head. ‘Months spent tinkering away down here, the hope of the nation invested in you… and you’ve got nothing to show for it!’
The General turned to the model of the town and thrust it off the table. It shattered noisily in a heap on the floor.
‘I need results!’ the General raged. ‘I need you to get one of those… one of those… bloody magic wands working! Anything!’
Kirkham blinked at him from behind his glasses. ‘There’s nothing that’s reliable, General,’ he said calmly. ‘Certainly nothing that would deal with the magnitude of this problem. I thought the nuclear deterrent was-’
‘We’ve tried nukes, blast it!’ The General sucked in a deep breath, searching for his dignity. ‘We dropped one over Tamworth. Never exploded. The pilot said it looked as if it disappeared into some kind of black hole. We’ve sent in troops on skirmishes, quick in, quick out, aiming for minimal casualties. They couldn’t get out quickly enough. More fuel/air explosives. Anthrax from Porton Down. Nerve agents.’ As the rage rushed out of him, he sagged, looking ten years older in an instant. ‘We have to face the fact that conventional weapons are not going to work. From now on, we’re down to wishing.’
‘I’m sorry I don’t have more helpful news, General. The things I’m dealing with are beyond scientific understanding, certainly at current knowledge levels.’
‘We lost our only hope when Hunter went mad and smuggled that Brother of Dragons out,’ the General said. ‘If I find him, I’ll shoot him myself. I should have done it a long time ago.’
‘Even if we had access to the Brother of Dragons, I don’t think we would have had time to make any breakthrough in finding a way across the dimensional barriers.’ Kirkham began to pick up pieces of the broken model and replace them on the table. ‘But the enemy is not the Tuatha De Danann. This enemy may not even have come from the Otherworld.’
‘So, what? We’re now easy pickings for any Higher Power anywhere across the universe?’
‘Multiverse,’ Kirkham corrected, pedantically.
‘You really are our last hope, Kirkham.’ The General walked towards the door, not knowing where he was going next or what he was going to do. ‘Desperate times require desperate measures, and these are the most desperate of times. Do whatever you can. Don’t worry about protocol. Don’t worry about chain of command. Just pull something out of the bag.’
After the General had left, Kirkham waited until the sound of his footsteps had faded away and then picked up the phone. ‘It’s Dennis Kirkham,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m with you.’
True to the Caretaker’s word, the bad weather held off long enough for Hunter to make good progress. With his horse and himself fed at the next farm, he followed the Wayfinder’s blue flame north-east from Banbury, along the A361 to Daventry where he helped starving residents fight against a local landowner who had taken ninety per cent of the food that had been stored. Hunter killed four heavily armed thugs and then threw the greedy landowner to the mob, departing amidst cheers and the formation of a new legend; he wasn’t surprised to realise that he liked the adoration.
From Daventry, he cut cross-country to Market Harborough where he stocked up on supplies and then continued across the Leicestershire countryside. It was hard going in the frozen landscape; away from the shelter of trees, the hungry wind flayed his skin and cut through even the thickest clothes. It was even worse when he passed Stamford and moved into the Lincolnshire flatlands, where there was little cover and the land resembled the Antarctic wastes. He found the A15, an old Roman road, which was marginally easier to travel than the country lanes, and headed north.
Despite the hardship, he never entertained the slightest notion that he might fail; it was all down to will, the desire to win, the hunger for survival, and he had demonstrated throughout his life that he was more than blessed with those qualities.
Finally, on a blue-skied, sunny morning when the snow glared so brightly it hurt his eyes, he arrived in Lincoln.
The city was dwarfed by the imposing Cathedral Church of St Mary, perched atop a two-hundred-foot-high limestone plateau overlooking the River Witham, its Gothic architecture given a magical appearance by the snow.
Hunter ventured past the city limits with a degree of apprehension. Since the Fall, much of the country had been gripped by lawlessness; murder was commonplace in populated areas, and Hunter guessed things would be even worse in the grip of an ice age that threatened most of the population with starvation.
Yet he was surprised to find a well-fed, generally content population. Fruit trees sprouted from the pavements, heavy with apples despite the weather. The buildings in some areas had been demolished and given over to fields where potato plants, carrot tops and broccoli forced their way through the snow. Their survival made no sense.
As he neared the cathedral, he reined in his horse to talk to a trader manning a creaking stall laden with a variety of fruits and vegetables, some of it exotic and not seen in Britain since all contact with the outside world had ceased at the Fall.
When asked about the abundance of produce, the trader responded, ‘Every visitor to Lincoln has the same question. All I can say is that we’re especially blessed.’ He grinned. ‘We’ve got our very own Green Angel.’
Hunter couldn’t decide whether the trader had been unbalanced by too long on a diet of swedes or if he was honestly hinting at some kind of divine intervention. It was impossible to tell in a time when madness and miracles abounded in equal measure. He urged his horse forward, following the flame.
Not far on, Hunter encountered a large group of people gathered in a square, many of them wearing the black T-shirts with the red ‘V’ that signified followers of Ryan Veitch. Hunter had seen the mounting intelligence gathered on the group as their numbers increased, but he’d always dismissed it as just one of the many cults that had sprung up amongst people desperate for a god, any god, to drag them out of their suffering. Yet now that he had discovered his own link to the Pendragon Spirit, the matter took on a new resonance. What would it take to drive a Brother of Dragons to betray the very principle of life?
On a platform of pallets at the centre of the crowd, a speaker preached with fire and brimstone that kept the like-minds of the crowd rapt. He had a shaven head and the unflinching eyes of someone for whom brutality was a way of life. ‘The day is drawing closer when He shall be returned to us!’ he roared in a cod-religious tone. ‘We can all see the signs — the world is ending. Only He can save us! And only we can bring him back! The mass ritual will be held shortly when we’ll pray for Him to walk once more upon the Earth! In this day and age, prayer has power! The gods listen! If we concentrate… if we believe… we can change anything! The dead can live again!’
Hunter shrugged; maybe the preacher was right — it was difficult to be sure about anything any more.
The lantern led Hunter to the cobbled street rising steeply up to the cathedral. On either side was a profusion of medieval houses that had once been antique shops and had now returned to their original use. They were all ablaze with colour: red, pink and yellow roses swarmed around doors, clematis was still in flower, tulips and daffodils and pinks and geraniums sprouted from boxes on the pavement. Yet all around it was bitterly cold.
The steep cobbled street was treacherous with snow and ice, so Hunter dismounted and led his horse. By the time the street reached the shadow of the cathedral, dark, heavy clouds had swept across the blue sky and snow was starting to fall again.
The lantern pointed towards the main door of the cathedral, which was locked. Hunter tethered his mount and wandered the vast perimeter of the building searching for a way in, but all the entrances were barred. An unusual atmosphere emanated from the stone, not reverence or transcendence like he had felt at many other cathedrals, but a brooding sadness that began to affect him deeply. The building was strange in other ways, too:
