The Hounds of Avalon (Gollancz S.F.) (48 page)

The chilling hardness of her expression made Hunter reconsider his approach. ‘All right, I don’t know her. But you must accept that her decision could mean the end for all of us.’

‘And maybe it’s all over because you lot fucked up. We’ve done our bit. We fought and sacrificed. Your Five were supposed to pick up where we left off. Now you’ve come crying back to us—’

‘OK, back off. I wasn’t trying to pick a fight—’

Laura wasn’t about to let him off the hook. ‘Ruth loved Church more than anything. She’d earned her right to be with him. But this life isn’t fair, is it? We went through all we went through at the Fall and there’s still no happy ending for her. They deserved to be together, just so that the rest of us could see what true love is really all about.’

Hunter grabbed her shoulders and gently pushed her back. He was a little disturbed at the way hawthorn shoots had started to burst out of the ground all around him as her anger increased.

‘I’m not saying she hasn’t had a raw deal—’

‘Worse than that!’

‘Whatever. But sometimes you have to rise above your own suffering. Duty, responsibility, call it what you will. Everybody’s relying on us.’

‘You’re perfect for this job, aren’t you?’ she sneered, rolling away.

They lay separated by a gulf for ten minutes, until Hunter tenderly reached out to stroke her bare back. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Forget it.’

‘We’re going to do our best. No blame. That’s the job, too, isn’t it?’

‘Suppose.’

Hunter kissed her shoulder. ‘So if you’re all plant, how do you still get pleasure from this? Wouldn’t you be happier photosynthesising or something?’

‘I get pleasure from my clitoris, and yes, like all my other organs, I have one. I can, if I like, eat and drink, but I’ve given up on the periods.’

‘Don’t you miss being human?’

‘Overrated. And I told you – I’ll never be on the rag again. You tell me one woman who wouldn’t rather be a nature spirit than have to go through that every month.’

Hunter watched her as she dressed. Her personality wasn’t the easiest thing to like, but he admired her, and there weren’t many people about whom he could say that.

He rolled over and propped up his head so that he could get a last look at her body. ‘So was this plant thing written in the stars when you became a Sister of Dragons?’

‘You ask a lot of questions. Can’t you just go to sleep after sex like a normal bloke?’

‘Stop avoiding.’

She sighed. ‘Being a Brother or Sister of Dragons is about freeing the potential inside you. Didn’t you get the manual? You run around, leading your day-to-day life, and then somewhere a switch gets thrown and you’re activated. Over time, as you do your duty, you learn, you’re changed by hardship and all the nightmarish things you face, and gradually all those hidden qualities you never dared believe you had are teased out into the open.’

‘So you always had a bit of vegetation deep down inside.’

‘With some work, you could almost be funny. I was an environmental campaigner, a member of a radical green group. Tree-huggers, the right-wing wankers called us. So it was there. And maybe Cernunnos saw that when he turned me into this. It was my potential, to be a champion of the green, living world.’

‘And Ruth became the Uber-Witch.’

‘Right. From pain in the arse to the most powerful woman on the planet. Shavi became a magician or a seer or whatever he used to call himself. He could contact spirits, see the other side, like that.’
She snapped her fingers. ‘Veitch. Poor, pathetic, useless Veitch. He went from a jumped-up petty crook to some kind of Conan the Barbarian warrior. And Church …’ Despite herself, her voice took on a hint of deep respect. ‘He became the kind of leader you’d always want in a fight. And like the kings in the old stories, he sacrificed himself so that everyone could live again. End of fairy story.’

Hunter lay back, musing. ‘Wonder what I’ll become.’

Laura eyed him dismissively. ‘Probably some kind of insect hybrid, if there’s any justice.’

‘You’re just playing distant because you’re secretly broken-hearted that we can never be together.’ He sat up, scrubbed his hair and cracked his knuckles. ‘Right. I’ve eaten as many vegetables and fruits as I can probably cope with. I’ve had sex. I think I’m ready for the rest of the journey.’

They hadn’t seen a single soul on their travels south from Lincoln. Much of their route took them across the flat eastern lowlands, now a desolate frozen wasteland. Flurries of snow blew across it in little tornados and the wind cut through their thick clothes. There was no sign of any birds or wildlife. During the day, the sun blazed so brightly off the drifting snow that they had to keep their heads bowed to avoid blindness. At night it felt as if they’d been stranded on the surface of the moon.

They never spoke about what dangers lay ahead or whether they had any hope of survival. They lived for the moment, seeking what little pleasures they could, knowing full well they might be their last.

Ten miles from Oxford, just as Mallory was leading a strange group of gods through the deserted streets of the city, Hunter and Laura finally allowed their darkest thoughts to catch up with them. They looked out over a force that left them breathless with its size. The Lament-Brood numbered millions. Several miles deep, the enemy force now encircled Oxford completely, the purple mist streaming out from them in the darkness. The waves of despair that washed off them made Hunter sick to the pit of his stomach.

‘Looks like we shouldn’t have made that last pit-stop, big boy,’ Laura said. ‘Now who’s the fuck-up?’

‘Bloody hell. I never expected them to reach here so quickly.
Before I set off they were taking their time, wiping every population centre clean. They must have put on a spurt.’

‘As if they knew that the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons were gathering. So they got straight to the source of the only opposition.’

‘But how would they know about us?’

Laura pushed her hood away from her face; her shock of blonde hair glowed spectrally in the dark. ‘Things like that, they can
smell
us. See us on some kind of level we don’t understand. The Pendragon Spirit is like a beacon in the night to them.’

Hunter surveyed the extent of the Lament-Brood, his mind racing.

‘Looking on the bright side, at least it means we’re a threat,’ Laura added.

‘Why don’t you divert your brain away from your mouth and come up with a way to get through them and into Oxford?’ Hunter said humourlessly.

‘Ask and you shall receive, little one.’

Hunter looked at her suspiciously, unsure whether her sarcastic sense of humour was at play again. She grinned, revelling in her position of strength, but gave nothing away. ‘Just give me a while to prepare.’

‘Take all the time you want. I’m going to scout around, see what other options we’ve got.’ Hunter spurred his horse back down the road and rode for half an hour, hoping there would be some gap in the enemy lines, knowing in his heart that it was not to be. It was impossible for a human army to defeat this demonic force; any rational observer would have said that the situation was hopeless. But Hunter didn’t feel that way at all. Since he had learned of his destiny as a Brother of Dragons, he had come to believe in the Pendragon Spirit and all that it represented with a faith he had not previously thought existed inside him. His life had made him cynical about human values. He had killed and seen killing, relentlessly. He had witnessed murders committed on a whim, or because someone was in a bad mood, or because of political ideology. If that was the norm, then human existence was pointless and the quicker the infestation was eradicated, the better, so that nature could get on with its benign job.

Yet the Pendragon Spirit had shown him that there was some essential structure underpinning all life, an intelligent plan, though
he was loath to consider it in such a way because of all the baggage that concept carried with it. But he knew from his training that it was impossible to make judgments based on the small details – a death here, a defeat there. Only by viewing the vast, strategic plan could any decision be made about the value of what was happening. And for most soldiers on the ground, that grand plan was never visible; they simply had to trust.

He hoped Existence wouldn’t let him down. That somehow a handful of flawed men and women burning with an inner fire could take a stand against the hordes of hell and win. That the source of their victory would be presented to them. That he – that all of them – were up to the job, with no weak links anywhere.

The alternative was unthinkable.

When he returned to Laura, she was sitting cross-legged in the snow, her head bowed. What little he could see of her skin was as white as the icy blanket that lay all around. At first he thought she was sick – or worse, had been killed by the enemy. But when she heard the crunch of his boots, she raised her head and forced a smile. Her face was filled with a debilitating exhaustion, as if her life had been sapped from her.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked, dropping to his knees to put an arm around her shoulders.

‘It’s not easy being the saviour of the moment. One thing you learn in this business, there’s always a price to pay. For everything.’

Hunter could feel heat radiating off her, and when he pulled her closer a tingling sensation ran from her body into his, as though she was generating electricity. It was then that he noted the new green shoots breaking through the snow all around.

‘You’d better stand back,’ she said. ‘I’m ready now.’

‘What are you planning?’

‘Wait and see.’ As she bowed her head again, Hunter moved away from her to calm the horses, which had grown jumpy. He stroked their noses and whispered in their ears while he watched Laura. A tremble ran through her, then she bucked as though in the throes of a convulsion. A second later she pitched forward, slamming the palms of both hands down hard through the snow to the ground beneath. There was a discharge of blue light that slowly faded to green.

The horses’ whinnying grew more insistent. A rumble like
thunder rolled across the land. The ground beneath Hunter’s feet began to shake, gently at first, but then with more and more force. He held on to the horses’ reins tightly, and watched waves roll out from Laura’s epicentre.

The tremors built until the ground was rent open in a line running from Laura towards the Lament-Brood. From the churning soil sprouted shoots, rapidly growing into saplings, then soaring up into trees, rushing to meet the sky, leaves erupting from the branches. Thirty years of nature’s growth condensed into a few seconds.

Laura bucked and writhed in a frenzy that could have been pain or ecstasy. Sparks, blue becoming green, fizzed around her fingers where they dug into the earth. Hunter was rooted in shock. He had been astounded by her abilities ever since they had met in Lincoln, but he had never guessed she was so powerful.

As the frozen soil tore apart, the noise was deafening, and the land rippled like water in all directions at the upheaval. The flourishing trees formed a densely walled avenue ten feet wide, the branches meeting high overhead to form a natural arch; the leaf cover was so thick that no sky could be seen through it.

The row of trees rushed out across the countryside through the ranks of the Lament-Brood. Though the detail was lost in the dark, Hunter imagined the trees tearing through the massive force, throwing those twisted, once-living bodies to either side as the avenue ploughed on towards Oxford. The sheer scale of what Laura had accomplished took his breath away, and left him a little uneasy at what she could have done to him if he’d pushed her temper a step too far.

After ten minutes, the sparks stopped arcing from her fingertips and she pitched forward into the snow. Hunter ran forward and lifted her up in his arms. Her eyelids fluttered; she was completely drained. ‘Match that, soldier-boy,’ she said hoarsely.

Hunter knew what had to be done. As Laura slipped into unconsciousness, he sat her on her horse and did his best to lash her to the saddle so that she wouldn’t slip off. Setting her mount off ahead of his, he urged the horses into the dark avenue and then forced them to gallop as fast as they could manage. He didn’t know whether the trees would soon start to wither and die or disappear as magically as they had grown. The last thing they needed was
suddenly to find themselves stranded in the middle of the Lament-Brood army.

But Existence hadn’t let him down yet. Oxford beckoned and the last stand was only hours away.

The Damask brothel on St Michael’s Street was packed to the brim. In the ground-floor office space, in the sprawling first-floor lounge and the many bedrooms on the two floors above, the Tuatha Dé Danann moved like golden ghosts, aloof, introspective, silent as the night, while the girls gaped in awe or ran giggling to discuss the new arrivals in the confines of their changing rooms or the torture dungeon.

Mrs Damask wrung her hands, repeatedly dashing to the velvet-curtained windows to peek out into the deserted street. ‘I would never have agreed to this if Jeffrey had told me what he was planning,’ she wittered in her Scottish accent.

Mallory smirked. ‘So Hunter has a first name.’ He was sitting back in a plush armchair, boots up on an antique table, a crystal goblet of brandy in his hand. Washed, fed and dressed in clean clothes, he felt renewed.