The Hounds of Avalon (Gollancz S.F.) (56 page)

A group of around forty people cowered in one corner of the room. Thackeray and Harvey were doing their best to calm them, and were looked upon with a touch of awe, as if they were emissaries between the heroic, almost god-like defenders and the ordinary people.

Hunter observed them and felt a touch of humility at the task that had been presented to him. For the first time in his life he was in a fight that felt completely just, where death was not simply a matter of political expediency. ‘There’s a second storey housing the library,’ he said. ‘Let’s get up there. And bring Ceridwen.’

As they crossed the floor, Thackeray grabbed Caitlin. ‘You’re not going out there, surely?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘I’ve got a big responsibility invested in me, Thackeray. I can’t turn away from it.’

A huge weight of emotion lay behind his quiet sigh. ‘I followed you from this world to T’ir n’a n’Og, put my life on the line … bloody hell, put Harvey’s life on the line, which he’ll never let me forget. You’re a very special person, Caitlin. I’ve never met …’ His words faltered. ‘Look, I’m a soft old romantic and I don’t want you holding that against me. I just wanted to say that I love you. I’ve never loved anybody the way I love you.’ He let out another sigh. ‘There. No going back now.’

Caitlin leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips. ‘I know.’ She smiled, turned to leave, then paused. When she looked back, her eyes were bright and free of the Morrigan’s coldness. ‘I love you, too, Thackeray. And given time … when my husband’s death isn’t so raw … I’m sure that love would grow. I know it would.’

‘That’s a relief,’ he said with faux-lightness. ‘Then you’d better make sure we get the time together that we need.’

His eyes never left her as she joined the others and then disappeared in search of the stairs. Even then, he concentrated on the ghost-image she had left in his mind, until Harvey urged him to return to help the frightened group of survivors.

From the first-floor window, Mallory and Hunter looked out on a street where purple mist almost obscured the packed bodies of the Lament-Brood pressing against the Divinity School. The sheer weight of their bodies would soon break down the doors. Further along, the King of Insects rose up above the seething mass. Whatever power lay within it disrupted Mallory and Hunter’s thoughts with mind-images of a world swarming with nothing but cockroaches.

‘We’re mad, aren’t we?’ Mallory said quietly.

‘Not mad,’ Hunter replied. ‘We simply don’t have a choice. This is what we do.’ Hunter glanced at Mallory, reading his secret thoughts easily. ‘She’ll be all right.’

‘I’m glad you’re so confident.’

‘She’s as tough as us and probably significantly smarter. She’ll be hiding out somewhere.’

Mallory nodded, but didn’t meet Hunter’s eye. Caitlin led Ceridwen up to the window; the goddess was broken, barely able to cope with the devastation that had been inflicted on her people.

‘We need your help,’ Hunter said bluntly. ‘There aren’t many of your kind left out there, but we need the ones that are. Specifically, we need the Wild Hunt. Can you contact them?’

Dazed, Ceridwen nodded slowly. Hunter explained to her exactly what he required, then sent her off to perform whatever ritual she needed to carry out to reach the Hunt.

Before she left, she paused and turned back. ‘Watch the dogs carefully,’ she said.

‘The Hunt’s dogs? Those weird red and white things?’ Mallory said.

‘Your kind used to call them the Hounds of Annwn, but they are also known as the Hounds of Avalon. Though they appear as hunting dogs to you, that is not what they are. Like many things from the Far Lands, your limited perception gives them a form you can understand.’

Mallory opened his mouth to ask a question about the dogs’ true
nature, but Hunter interrupted him. ‘Why should we watch them carefully?’ he asked simply.

‘They know when everything is coming to an end. When all of this –’ she made a broad gesture ‘– is falling apart. When the time comes, they will band together and their multiplicity of howls will become one – a sound of sadness that will rip into your hearts. It is the cry of dying.’

Ceridwen left and the others returned to the window. ‘I don’t like it that we’re weakened,’ Mallory said. ‘The Five who fought at the Fall clearly have some of the Pendragon Spirit left in them, but it’s not enough. We need the Five who are supposed to be here, standing shoulder to shoulder.’

‘There’s still time,’ Caitlin replied. ‘We need to be united to defeat the Void and we still have no idea where it is.’

‘I wonder who the fifth is,’ Mallory mused. ‘When I was on the road, I met a woman who was in tune with the original Fabulous Beast. She told me that Existence, or whatever you want to call it, had been a bit cannier this time in bringing the latest Five together.’

‘How so?’ Hunter asked, intrigued.

‘Three of us are different this time.’ Mallory peered into the distance through the falling snow, waiting for the Wild Hunt to appear. ‘It was an attempt to mask us from the Void, so that we would have a chance to get together before it wiped us out. Me,’ he looked at Hunter, ‘I’m dead. Died in another world, then was resurrected here. I can’t begin to get my head around that. It’s too big. But the Void still picked up on me pretty quickly. Then there’s one called the Broken Woman …’ He glanced at Caitlin; she nodded.

‘I went over the edge for a while.’ She smiled tightly. ‘Some might say I never came back.’ She tapped her head. ‘Different personalities in here. But the Void sniffed me out quickly as well.’

‘The other one was described to me as the Shadow Mage,’ Mallory continued. ‘I don’t know what that means, but if he or she is still below our radar, maybe that bodes well.’

‘Who could it be?’ Caitlin said. ‘They must have been drawn here. Thackeray? Harvey?’ She shook her head, knowing it was neither of them.

They had no more time to ponder the conundrum, for the Wild Hunt suddenly burst into view, tearing their way through the
Lament-Brood like a hurricane of knives. In a matter of seconds, they had cut their way past the King of Insects and reached the Divinity School.

‘No more talking,’ Hunter said. ‘Time to do the business.’

The chaos the Wild Hunt had caused in the ranks of the Lament-Brood prompted the King of Insects into violent activity. The towering creature lurched forward, surrounded by a cloud of wasps and flies that surged out in all directions.

Hunter was the first to drop from the window into the mêlée, followed swiftly by Mallory and Caitlin. The instant they hit the ground, they struck out for the King of Insects, ruthlessly chopping down any Lament-Brood that fell in their way. Mallory’s sword was a blaze of Blue Fire, lighting the way for the others. Caitlin hacked savagely with her twin axes, while Hunter darted and thrust with power and grace.

In the thick of the transformed warriors, the air of despair was palpable, but Hunter, Mallory and Caitlin kept the sour emotions at bay by sheer force of will.

Within minutes, it became apparent that they would not succeed. Even with the Wild Hunt carving a path for them towards the King of Insects, the Lament-Brood were so numerous that Hunter realized that the three of them would not be able to get back to a position of safety even if they did kill it. They would fall and die there, in the middle of the walking-dead army.

It was not something they had time to consider; their world was confined to inches around their bodies and their lives were counted in seconds as they survived one attack and prepared for the next.

By the time they reached the King of Insects, the creature was in a frenzy. Its massive droning arms thundered, crushing the heads and spines of its own troops as it drove towards the Brothers and Sister of Dragons.

Caitlin was just emerging from the dismembered bodies of two of the Lament-Brood when one of the King’s fists smashed against the side of her head, flinging her yards away. In his peripheral vision, Hunter was convinced that she had been killed by the force of the blow. But a second later she was on her feet, shaking the echoes from her head as she launched herself at the King of Insects in a berserker rage; the Morrigan had come to the fore, raining axe-blows, hacking viciously into the King of Insects’ form.

Hunter lost sight of her as he fought his way around a knot of Lament-Brood. When he surfaced, it was into the path of one of the King of Insects’ gigantic hands. It closed rapidly around his head, hauling him off his feet and high into the air. The memories of the torment he had suffered in Scotland came flooding back. Dry insect bodies squirmed against his face and flies forced their way up his nostrils and into his mouth, the pressure of them increasing inexorably, their buzzing so loud that he thought his head would explode.

And just when he thought his skull would shatter, he was falling. He came down in front of Mallory, whose fiery sword had hacked through the King of Insects’ wrist.

Hunter choked and spat out a mouthful of dead flies. ‘Thanks,’ he croaked, but Mallory was already throwing himself into another furious attack.

The three of them fought for long minutes, circling the King of Insects rapidly. They attacked whenever its defences dropped, while at the same time fighting the Lament-Brood, which not even the Wild Hunt could keep at bay.

With exhaustion creeping up on him, Hunter knew that the end was near. Steeling himself for a final burst of effort, he caught sight of a white flash, like sheet lightning, that appeared to emanate from a street away.

He fought on, wondering if it was some optical illusion caused by the patterns left on his retina by Mallory’s flaming sword, or a sign of even more bizarre weather on the way.

Another flash burst brightly at the end of the street, this time unmistakably lightning. Caitlin launched herself on to the King of Insects’ back, ignoring the stings and bites as she clung on with one hand, chopping relentlessly with her remaining axe. Hunter saw her pause mid-strike, drawn by whatever was taking place further down the street.

Another bolt of lightning seared down from the heavens mere yards away. Hunter was blinded by the flash for a split second, and when his eyes cleared there was a heap of charred Lament-Brood corpses all around. It was a miracle it had missed him.

Then events happened in rapid succession. As he fought, Hunter became aware of Lament-Brood bodies churned up into the air as
if struck by a powerful machine. They crashed against walls, rained down into the mass all around, taking more down with them.

Something was coming, tearing through the army like a whirlwind. The King of Insects’ bludgeoning attack kept Hunter fully occupied – swarms of insects engulfed him repeatedly before returning to the central form, and those powerful fists swung down like sledgehammers – but his mind raced with one question: friend or foe? Friend or foe? He was exhausted. They couldn’t fight on three fronts.

Caitlin’s frenzied axe-attacks on the King of Insects started to have results. In several sections, though small, its basic form appeared to be ruptured; insects sprayed out into the freezing air like steam escaping from a pipe.

Mallory’s sword blazed as it took off part of the King of Insects’ ribcage, and in that sapphire illumination, Hunter saw Mallory’s puzzled expression as he glanced once again at what was approaching.

The rain of dismembered Lament-Brood grew more intense and Hunter had to dive out of the way of several falling bodies. His final leap somehow brought him into a position that gave him a good view down the street, and in that instant, he froze, oblivious to the peril all around him, at first not quite believing what he was seeing.

Walking slowly along the street was a single figure: a woman, her face as pale as the snow and terrible in the power and fury it contained. Her dark hair flew all around her head as if caught in a great wind, but her body was untouched by the buffeting. Lightning crashed all around her, and the hurricane-force gales whisked up any member of the Lament-Brood in the vicinity to dash them violently this way and that. She was glorious and untouchable. It was Ruth Gallagher.

Hunter recalled the last time he had seen her in her private ice cavern in Lincoln, devastated, frozen, and wondered what had driven her to cross the barren wastes. Her power stunned him; it was greater than anything he had ever thought could possibly exist in a human.

The King of Insects leaned forward and blasted Hunter with a stream of bees that roared from its mouth like bullets. He dived out of the way, but the few that hit him brought up red welts on his neck.

As he danced backwards and forwards, looking for a way past the King of Insects’ defences, he heard his name called in an insistent, frightened voice. He turned to see Samantha sprinting towards him from the cover of one of the buildings.

‘Go back!’ he yelled, but she wasn’t about to be deterred. He abandoned his attack on the King of Insects and ran towards her. Another of the Lament-Brood broke past the Wild Hunt into Samantha’s path. Hunter reached it just in time, taking off its head with one blow, then hacking through its chest for good measure.

But as he turned back to Samantha to protect her, he just caught a fleeting glimpse of another of the Lament-Brood coming up behind her. He started to call a warning, but it was too late. A spear-head burst out of her chest and her face took on a startled, not-quite-comprehending expression.

Fury and desperate grief fighting for control, Hunter charged forward and dispatched the attacker with brutal ease. He hacked off the spear shaft and Samantha slumped on to her back in the churned-up grey snow. She coughed, and a bubble of blood trickled down her chin.