The Wraiths of War (45 page)

Beside me Clover released my hand and gently rubbed my older self’s back as he bent over double, hands on knees. He took a number of long, deep breaths, then slowly straightened up.

‘So that feeling you’re about to puke never goes away?’ I said.

He gave me a thin smile. ‘Hasn’t done so far.’

To be honest, I also felt queasy, but it wasn’t because of the journey. As I orientated myself, so my senses began to kick in, one after another, as if they’d taken a little time to catch up with the sudden shift from one location to another. What was making
me
feel sick was a stench, like rotting fish and raw sewage, which was wafting over us in waves. Accompanying the smell was a wet, surging slap, regular as breathing. As I put a hand up to cover my nose and mouth, I realised not only that it was foggy, but also that it was snowing – I might have thought it was a light rain if I hadn’t seen it settling on the shoulders and hair of my companions. The fog, the snow, the stench, the slapping of water… all these elements combined to spark a memory.

‘Are we back at Blyth’s Wharf?’

My older self nodded. ‘We are. This is the night we went to the Thousand Sorrows. The night the Dark Man captured us and told us to get the heart for him.’

‘Is this before that happened or after?’ I asked.

‘Let’s get closer, shall we? See what’s going on.’

I felt nervous, but I was guessing my older self had brought me here because he remembered
his
older self bringing him here when he was me. Which surely meant that everything would be okay? That whatever happened, we’d survive?

My older self led us along the edge of the harbour, the meaty slap of water to our left, the vague, dark blocks of buildings to our right. We sought cover where we could – behind packing crates, coils of rope, covered carriages on which goods were stacked, awaiting delivery or collection.

After a couple of minutes my older self halted and put a warning hand out behind him, encouraging Clover and me to stop too.

‘What is it?’ Clover hissed.

‘Listen.’

I listened, but it took a few moments to adjust my hearing so that I could hear anything other than the movement of the Thames and the whispering of the snow. Eventually I managed to pick out a combination of gentle sounds – a nervous snort, the creak of wood, the tight clop of two hard surfaces scraping against one another.

‘Sounds like a horse,’ murmured Clover, working it out the same moment I did.

‘Is it attached to a cart?’ I asked.

‘Let’s get a bit nearer,’ my older self said.

We sidled closer, trying to lift our feet fully clear of the snow, so they wouldn’t make a
shhh
sound as they dragged through it. Little by little the area in front of us emerged through the murk, the objects in the foreground suddenly acquiring a solidity that seemed to make them loom, even lurch, towards us. I jumped when a huddle of headless, pot-bellied men turned out to be a dozen or so barrels clustered together. Clover, in front of me, turned to pluck at my sleeve to get me to duck down, which I did. Next moment, from much closer than I’d expected, came another equine snort and an uneasy whinny. I peered between the curved sides of two of the barrels and saw the dark shape of a horse attached not to a cart, as I’d expected, but to some sort of carriage, possibly a brougham.

I looked beyond Clover to my older self, intending to follow his lead, but just then he turned towards us, pressed a finger to his lips and flattened himself against the back of the barrel, trying to make himself as small as possible. Clover and I exchanged a glance, then followed suit.

Almost as soon as we’d done so, there came a huge leathery flapping sound from above us. My first thought was that it was a tarpaulin or something similar that had broken loose from a stack of goods and been plucked upwards by the wind. But when I tilted my head to look up (as best I could in my neck brace), squinting my eyes against the falling snow, I saw the dark, blurry shape of what appeared to be a vast bird descending towards us. I tucked my head in again, clutching the barrel so tightly that my fingers made dents in the wet wood.

The bird thing landed with a thump somewhere beyond the barrels, but close to the carriage. The horse whinnied in panic, but was quietened by what I imagined was the driver, perched on his seat behind it. Couldn’t he see the bird thing? Hadn’t he heard it? I half-expected the creature’s landing to be followed by the crunch of wood, the screams of man and horse as it went on the attack. But instead all I heard was the sound of the carriage door being opened, and then the creak of wood or springs as someone or something clambered into it. Next moment, with a muffled clattering of wheels and the clop of horse’s hooves on stony ground dusted with snow, the carriage was on the move. We listened until it had faded into the distance, though even then I might have remained where I was if I hadn’t seen my older self rise up from his hiding place.

‘One of the Dark Man’s little gang?’ Clover said.

My older self nodded. ‘The shape-shifter, I’m guessing.’ He looked at me. ‘Escorting us home after our little tête-à-tête with the boss.’

I remembered how, after my meeting with the Dark Man in his most ancient state, his withered body reliant on a huge, metal spider-like conveyance to carry him around, I’d been drugged and had woken up back at home, my body having been dumped on the doorstep of my house in Ranskill Gardens. The carriage we’d just seen had presumably been my transport on that particular occasion. Which meant that, for a few moments, there had been not two but three of us – three of
me
– within feet of each other.

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ my older self said, and a glint of mischief came into his eye. ‘You know what we ought to do one day?’

‘What?’

‘We ought to have a party with just us as the guests. Not just me and you, but loads of us, from different time zones. Imagine what that would be like.’

‘The ultimate ego trip,’ said Clover.

‘Just the thought of it gives me a headache,’ I said.

My older self grinned and took his heart out of his pocket. Holding it up, he said, ‘Arm yourself. We’re going in.’

He led us around the barrels and into the fog beyond, bearing left, the river at our backs. In front of us loomed the dark blocks of buildings – storage warehouses, equipment sheds, the damp, mildewed premises of various shipping or export companies. Within thirty seconds we were standing next to a docking bay, from which a ramp rose to the open front of a huge warehouse. The sight made me think of the head of some vast creature, its mouth yawning open, its tongue unrolled. Of the interior of the warehouse itself, we could see only blackness.

‘Ready to step into the belly of the beast?’ my older self asked.

I frowned at him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re enjoying this?’

‘I’ve been here before. And as you can see, I came out of it okay.’

Now Clover looked at him disapprovingly too. ‘That doesn’t mean you always will, Dad. Don’t be complacent.’

My older self looked suitably chastised. ‘Sorry. I just remember how nervous I was the first time I did this.’ He gestured towards me. ‘I was only trying to keep everyone’s spirits up.’

‘Let’s just get on with it,’ I said.

We ascended the stone ramp, which was wet and slippery so we had to take it slowly. There was no sound from inside the warehouse, and I wondered briefly whether the Dark Man and his army of horrors had already cleared out. But if my older self had been here ten years ago, he had presumably found evidence to the contrary, otherwise why would he bother coming back? Surely it wasn’t to preserve the timeline, because if I – and all the other mes caught in this loop – remembered this as being a dead end, then surely the timeline would never have been created in the first place?

We reached the top of the ramp and paused on the threshold of the warehouse, looking in. The square opening was comfortably wide enough to accommodate the three of us standing shoulder to shoulder, and tall enough to give us head clearance of at least thirty feet, but even now the foggy darkness ahead of us seemed impenetrable. Was it a natural darkness or something else? I shuddered as a chill swept through me, and I was glad of the overcoat that Clover had suggested I wear. My older self and I were like matching bookends, he with his heart held aloft in his right hand, me brandishing mine in my unbroken left. Clover stood between us, like a princess flanked by royal bodyguards.

Suddenly my older self shouted, ‘Come out, Dark Man. We want to talk to you.’

Contained within the walls of the building, his voice boomed and echoed.

Was there a response? A stealthy shifting and rustling, as of many things that were currently motionless, readying themselves for action?

‘We’re coming in,’ he shouted, and then he began walking forward, heading into the darkness. I felt apprehensive, and – because of my battered, broken, aching body – particularly vulnerable, but I followed his lead, anxious not to lose him. Clover walked close beside me, her fingers reaching for and then loosely intertwining with the fingers of my right hand, which were sticking out of my cast.

The shifting and rustling sounds were unmistakeable now. In moments they escalated into a plethora of other sounds as Tallarian’s clockwork army and whoever or whatever else the Dark Man had rallied to his cause creaked and clicked and scuttled and slithered into life to defend their lord and master.

Clover gasped as
things
(it was inaccurate to refer to them as people, or even creatures) suddenly rolled and darted and scurried from the darkness around us. I caught glimpses of metal and flesh combined in hideous ways. I saw what appeared to be a flying crab trailing jellyfish-like fronds; something that looked like a jumble of human limbs sprouting from a metal box; a monstrosity that had goggling, fish-like eyes, a furry (possibly canine) body and long metal pincers.

They came at us, whether to kill or maim or simply drive us away I wasn’t sure. Clover screamed and clung to me, and for a moment I braced myself, certain we were about to be overwhelmed.

Then the heart kicked in –
both
the hearts kicked in – and they created what I can only describe as a protective barrier around us. As when I had duelled with the Dark Man – me with the old and crumbling heart, he with the younger, more vibrant heart that he had stolen from me – I felt the heart sucking up the energy inside me and then spitting it out in a crackling blast of light and power. At the same time, in a display of perfect synchronisation, my older self’s heart did exactly the same thing at exactly the same moment, the two eruptions of energy curving over and around the three of us until eventually meeting above our heads, where they formed a sort of arc or halo.

It wasn’t this in itself that repelled the Dark Man’s forces, though. His creatures kept coming at us, but now, whenever one or another of them got too close, thrashing, black, whip-like tendrils would shoot out from the arc of energy, like lightning bolts from a storm cloud, and drive them back. Several of them collapsed, or scuttled away, screeching in agony. One, a flying mechanical thing with a cat’s face stretched over a metal frame and a row of spines along its undulating back, crashed and burst into flames, the organic parts of it bubbling and melting like cheese on a griddle.

‘Come and speak to us, Dark Man,’ my older self shouted into the foggy, smoke-filled blackness. ‘Come to us or we’ll come in there and drag you out, kicking and screaming.’

We waited as the Dark Man’s creatures, having been given a taste of our resistance, now shrank back, cowed, into the darkness. We could still hear them, though, clicking and whirring and mewling, as though preparing to take advantage of any opening, any opportunity, that might arise. And we could smell them too – or at least those whose putrid flesh had been burned by heart energy. The smell was so abominable that all three of us couldn’t help but put our free hands over our mouths and noses. Clover in particular looked as though she was having to draw on every ounce of willpower not to throw up.

The final echoes of my older self’s challenge were on the point of fading when there came a shrill, metallic screech from the blackness in front of us. The screech culminated in the clank of something metal and heavy thumping down on the floor, which was then followed by another screech and another metallic thump, and then another, and another.

I knew what it was, of course. I had heard these sounds before. In fact, my younger self, whose unconscious form was now doubtless slumped in a carriage rattling through the fog-bound streets of London, had heard them minutes earlier.

It was the Dark Man’s ‘spider chair’, the huge, clockwork conveyance on which his raddled body travelled from place to place. I had seen it on a couple of occasions, the last time in my own house on the night Hawkins died. Despite this, I couldn’t help but feel a shiver pass through me as the first of its thin, jointed front legs emerged from the shadows, a gleam of brownish light from the murky sky outside slithering along the blade-like surface. The appearance of one leg was quickly followed by another, and seconds later, the mechanical conveyance, still mostly shrouded in shadow, was standing in front of us, poised as if about to spring. The Dark Man sat hunched and motionless on the dais in the centre of the conveyance, his emaciated form shrouded in an opaque, net-like substance.

There was silence for a moment, each side assessing the other. Then my older self said, ‘Do you know who we are?’

The netting rustled as the Dark Man turned his head slightly. ‘Of course,’ he rasped.

‘And do you know why we’re here?’

The thin, brittle voice was just as flat, just as weary. ‘As my executioners?’

My older self and I exchanged a glance. I wondered what he was about to say.

‘Would you care if we were? Would you defend yourself?’

The Dark Man didn’t respond immediately. I wasn’t sure whether he was considering the question, or summoning up the energy to reply. Eventually he said, ‘The heart would defend me.’

My older self snorted. ‘That old thing? It wouldn’t have the strength to defend you against a rat.’ Then he shook his head. ‘But we’re not here to kill you. We’re here to redress the balance. You know who we are. Now we want to know about you.’