The Beauty of Destruction (48 page)

Later, Britha had recovered her spear. She had asked Teardrop if Calgacus’s blonde charioteer, whose name neither of them knew, could be put in the cauldron. Tangwen had heard of such things, magical cauldrons that could bring the dead back to life. Grainne had refused. She had claimed that they would need all their magics for the war. To Tangwen’s ears the refusal had sounded partly motivated by spite, but it seemed that her Father’s people were coming to this land, and her Father had always feared his own kind. He had said that they had been turned mad and evil.

Tangwen hadn’t wanted to get on the ‘chariot’. Magics were one thing, but the vehicle was a crime against sense, and all that was natural. Made of smooth dark wood on the top, and lighter wood underneath, it was roughly shaped like a long-necked, short-bodied amphora, of the sort they traded for when the ships came from the lands to the east of the sea. It was sleek, however, reminding her of an arrow as well. The back opened for them, but she knew that people weren’t meant to fly like that. Britha wasn’t happy about it either, but it was the
ban draoi
who eventually talked Tangwen into climbing on board. She had almost soiled herself when it dropped away from the earth and into the sky.

The Otherworld was a strange inside-out place so vast it was difficult to understand. The sun was in the middle of the Otherworld, closer, larger, and warmer on her skin than Belenus, the sun god who shone in the sky high above Ynys Prydain. The land sloped up and away from her on all sides. She saw seas high above her, and she could not work out why the water was not running down the side of the huge curving land. It looked empty. If it hadn’t been so strange it would have been beautiful. She saw distant mountains. She had never seen mountains before. They must have been huge but they looked tiny. White lands, presumably covered in snow.

Tangwen could see through part of the chariot’s cart, though it covered them completely. They were rising up, the vehicle turning in the air. It shot forwards, but she didn’t feel a lurch. She knew that the charioteer controlled the vehicle from a small area at the other end of the neck. She was sitting on a comfortable seat, in fact one of the most comfortable that she had ever sat on. They were soaring through clouds now. Her eyes widened as they passed floating rocks, and spherical trees. Strange creatures, some like birds, others not, flapped or glided through the air, many of them much larger than any creature in the air had a right to be. Entire lands shot by beneath them.

‘I know it’s difficult, but you must understand that you are completely safe up here,’ Teardrop said. He had referred to the comfortable compartment in the rear of the chariot as the cupola. On some level she knew this was wondrous, thrilling even, but she couldn’t quite shake the fear. Britha looked uncomfortable, but not as frightened as Tangwen was.

Now more than ever she found herself missing the reassurance of her Father’s mindsong. With everyone looking to her, with all of the killing that had been necessary, the guardianship of the cursed chalice, she had never felt more lost. She had hoped to go home and see if her Father still lived. That did not seem likely. They were travelling so fast now.

‘I was saddened to hear that Fachtna is dead,’ Teardrop said. ‘I understand what he did, though I do not condone it. I had hoped that you had found a place away from here to live your lives in peace.’

‘There is no peace in a land with Crom Dhubh in it,’ Britha said.

‘He is the cause of much suffering, I think. Did he send the changed one?’ he asked.

‘We tried to stop him,’ Britha said.

‘We tried to kill him,’ Tangwen managed.

‘Tried?’ Teardrop asked. The two women looked at each other.

‘I don’t know,’ Britha finally said.

‘The cavern collapsed. If he cannot be killed then he must have been trapped,’ Tangwen said, but even to her own ears it sounded like something that she wanted to believe, rather than something that she knew to be.

‘Tell me how Fachtna died,’ Teardrop asked.

‘I told you …’ Britha snapped, but Tangwen could tell the anger was to cover something she did not wish to talk of.

‘It would take very powerful magics indeed to kill my friend. How did you do it?’

‘If you want vengeance—’ Britha started. Tangwen could see her trying to hold something back.

Teardrop help up his hand. ‘My wife might, but I just want to know.’

Much of the land passing by so quickly below them looked empty. It was vast, but devoid of people, at least as far as she could tell.

‘When we returned to Ynys Prydain I did try to kill him for what he had done. The
dryw
exist for a reason. Without them the tribes would murder each other. There must be laws, judgement, sense in the face of the warriors’ greed and lust for blood. They look to glory. We enforce honour. Without us then all are as the Corpse People,’ Britha told him. He nodded, though Tangwen did not think that he completely agreed with her words. ‘I ran him through with his own sword. I … I have had cause to regret this.’

‘Was the sword singing at the time?’ he asked. She shook her head. It was obvious that she was wrestling with her emotions.

‘No,’ Britha said eventually, squirming slightly in her low seat.

‘Then you did not kill him.’ Tangwen could hear the hope in his voice.

‘He is dead. He was diseased by the Muileartach. I think he had become the goddess’s champion.’ Teardrop considered her words and then finally simply nodded. His face was impassive. The sadness was all in his dark eyes. ‘I killed him for the control rod.’

Teardrop regarded her carefully. ‘How?’ he finally said.

‘The spear.’

‘You could not wield the Spear of Lug. Who helped you?’ It was clear that he had already worked out the answer. Britha looked down, unable to look him in the eyes.

‘I wanted my daughter back,’ she said quietly. Tangwen knew that Teardrop was clever enough to work out that the death of Fachtna was the reason the rod had come to be in Crom Dhubh’s possession. Why his people were now about to go to war with her Father’s people. They were circling down over vast riverlands. In the distance was a sprawling structure, easily the size of the largest longhall she had ever seen, made of handsomely carved wood, standing on an island among the rivers. The island was in the centre of a network of causeways. Once again the reminder of home was unwelcome.

As they circled closer to the structure Tangwen could see a man – even from this distance he did not look Croatan, though he was dressed like Teardrop had first been when she had met him – and a woman, who obviously was Croatan, and four children waiting for them.

‘I apologise in advance if my wife tries to kill you,’ he said.

‘Can a god survive a hill falling on him?’ Guidgen asked, and looked to Germelqart, but the Carthaginian said nothing. The ravine in the southern hills was larger now. He knew that their friends were buried underneath all that rock, along with the Pecht, the Iceni scouts, and some of his own people. Britha was lost, but she was too strange and distant to ever have been a friend; too untrustworthy as well, though he had come to value her. She was just a little too selfish to be a
dryw
, in his opinion. She made decisions with her heart.

Their plan had worked. At least he hoped that it had. He had prayed to Cuda, the mother, and Arawn, king of the underworld, that they should keep Crom Dhubh, that the Dark Man was at least trapped, if not dead, though hopefully the latter. He admonished himself as he found himself thinking that if Crom Dhubh wasn’t gone permanently, then he hoped the Dark Man wouldn’t return while Guidgen yet lived. Let him be a curse on future generations. It was an uncharitable thought. Besides, the old
gwyll
dryw
had a sneaking feeling that he was immortal now.

They had served Bladud ill, and many of the other warriors who had drunk from the chalice, too, though he would not mourn the death of the Corpse People. They had walked a very narrow path, but Gofannon had honoured their agreement. People had to fear such magics. There had to be a price to such power, or it would destroy the land. It was just a shame that they could not have burned the Lochlannach who had drunk from the chalice as well. This would have spared them all the trouble, but Crom Dhubh had made a different pact with the god in the chalice, and Gofannon honoured all his agreements. Those who still had their weapons from the fight with the spawn of Andraste had, for the most part, been eager to give them to Guidgen for safekeeping after they had seen those who had drunk from the chalice burn and the way the newer weapons had crumbled to red dust.

From his vantage point high on the slopes of one of the southern hills Guidgen could see the survivors splitting up. Each of the tribes would be making their own way back towards their lands. The idea of a united Ynys Prydain had died with Bladud.
Which is good
, Guidgen thought, as it was a strange and unnatural idea.

As the surviving guardians of the Red Chalice, Guidgen and Germelqart had been looked on with fear and distrust, but only Anharad yet had the power to move against them, and Guidgen was still a
dryw
. The Trinovantes noblewoman had seen her future snatched away from her again, this time by their actions, not by those of Otherworldly raiders. He could count the shame and the guilt he felt over his actions, and yet he knew that the five of them, Germelqart, Tangwen, Calgacus, Britha and himself, had done the right thing.

Garim was now the king of the Brigante. He would make a weak king. Such things happened. When he died maybe the next king would be stronger.

Germelqart was going to return with him to the
gwyllion
’s land. Hide in what the spawn of Andraste had left of it. He suspected that Moren would hunt for the power they had. With the
gwyllion
’s abilities as warriors, their knowledge of the land, the Red Chalice, and the original chalice-re-forged weapons, they would be fine. Where possible they would hide rather than fight. They would keep guardianship of the Otherworldly power. They would use it against threats like Crom Dhubh, and the other gods that wished the Pretani ill. They would form a new circle.

It was Tangwen that he would miss the most.

35

Now

Grace had spoken to Eileen and the other survivors, and then she had gone looking around the Laurel Canyon neighbourhood for alternative transport, much to du Bois’s annoyance. He could hear the engines being revved in the castle now. La Calavera’s vehicles sounded all muscle, clouds of exhaust rising up from the courtyard in the mock castle.

The
ECV
was sitting on the steep sloping driveway. La Calavera’s people were too occupied to send patrols up into the residential streets overlooking Laurel Canyon Boulevard now. It was a beautiful day.

The Cougar, the six-wheeled armoured truck, was the first to leave the mock castle and roll onto the boulevard. Motorcycle outriders shot out from the castle, and overtook the military vehicle. Next up was a Cadillac Escalade pickup truck with thick, ugly metal plates wielded to its bodywork, a heavy machine gun in the truck bed. Then an armoured Mustang, and then a succession of muscle cars,
SUV
s, pickups, and dune buggies, all armoured, all being used as platforms for weapons. They had turned the civilian vehicles into technicals, improvised fighting vehicles. The motorcycles buzzed around the main convoy.

‘If she’s not back, then we go without her,’ du Bois said from the passenger seat.

‘Or we call it off. There’s too many of them,’ Alexia said, shaking her head. Du Bois suppressed his feeling of irritation. He glanced behind him but all he could see was Beth’s legs, as she was manning the turret. The minigun had just less than one box of ammunition left, fewer than a thousand rounds. He wished that the
ECV
had been armed with a more practical weapon. The convoy was now snaking its way down the winding road.

‘Okay, we roll,’ du Bois said, not acknowledging his sister’s suggestion. Alexia hesitated but then started the engine, its deep bass rumble lost under the noise of all the engines in Laurel Canyon this morning. The
ECV
rolled down the steep drive and out onto the side street. Du Bois didn’t look back at the house. He tried not to think about Eileen and the other survivors.
No
, he thought,
not survivors, just not victims yet
. He hoped the food and other supplies he had scavenged would do them some good, though he was starting to wish that he’d had more sleep. His augmented physiology could keep going for much longer than a normal human, but it had its limits.

The side street had houses on one side, the other side looked down onto another residential street, and then below that, Laurel Canyon Boulevard. They were running parallel with the boulevard. Du Bois had his SA58 OSW carbine in hand. A 40mm HEAP grenade was loaded into the grenade launcher. The M240 machine gun on the swing mount could not comfortably achieve the angle to fire down onto the convoy. Still, he hoped that nobody in the vehicles below would look up. He heard the sound of a bike and glanced in the rear-view mirror. Grace was behind them on a stolen Harley Davidson Night Rod. He could see where she had taped pistol magazines and grenades to the bike for easy access.

Someone in the convoy looked up, and he heard the staccato rattle of small arms fire, and the deeper, slower sound of heavier machine guns. Tracer rounds flew across the road in front of them. He heard the change in the pitch of the engines below. They didn’t return fire. Beth didn’t have the angle in the turret either. Du Bois shrank back into his seat as rounds bounced off the
ECV
’s armour. They were firing at his side of the vehicle, and he didn’t have a door. Alexia accelerated, and moved as far to the right on the narrow road as she could. Grace accelerated, moving behind the
ECV
on the left-hand side, using the armoured vehicle to protect herself from the gunfire.

Alexia wrestled the heavy vehicle around the twists and turns of the residential street. Ahead of them they could see the junction with Laurel Canyon Boulevard. They started taking much heavier fire now as each of La Calavera’s vehicles passed the junction. Grace braked hard and moved the bike in behind the
ECV
. Du Bois heard the tearing sound of the minigun firing. Tracers shot out overhead. Some of them glanced off the vehicles, but the armour-piercing rounds ate through jury-rigged armour. Cars filled with red mist and spun out of control. Du Bois leaned out of the
ECV
, bullets whipping past him, and fired the
HEAP
grenade from his carbine’s underslung launcher. The grenade caught a custom low rider in the side, penetrated the metal plates wielded to it, and detonated. The car careened across the road and into the canyon wall.

Alexia depressed the accelerator. The
ECV
lurched forwards. Du Bois rapidly reloaded the M320 grenade launcher with his last
HEAP
round, and then braced. The
ECV
hit an
SUV
in the side. The technical buckled from the force of the heavier vehicle’s impact; it was lifted off its wheels and tumbled onto its roof as Alexia slewed the armoured patrol vehicle hard left onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Grace shot by them on the inside. They were close to the tail-end of the convoy, only three more vehicles and some motorcyclists behind them. More ripping noises. Beth was firing short, controlled bursts from the minigun. It didn’t matter. Its ferocious rate of fire would quickly chew through ammunition. The vehicles behind them careened off the road. Some of the drivers and crew would have been hit, others just frightened off by the volume of incoming fire. It didn’t matter how insane you were, it was difficult to be on the wrong end of a minigun.

As they shot past the turn-off for Hollywood Boulevard, du Bois grabbed the M240, nestled the butt against his shoulder and started firing. He kept his field of fire to the right. Grace kept to the left of the
ECV
. She had one hand on the handlebars, the other was firing one of her Beretta M92Fs, converted to full automatic, with remarkable accuracy. Motorcycle outriders spilled off their bikes and tumbled across the asphalt. Du Bois barely felt the bump as the
ECV
ran across them. The rear vehicle in the convoy now was a muscle car. Gunmen leaned out of the vehicle, firing at Grace. Du Bois fired the M240, tracers tracked the shots into the vehicle. Holes started appearing in its ad hoc armour; he saw a limb spin out of the passenger window. The vehicle shot across the road and slammed into the canyon wall. Grace, no longer holding a pistol, slewed hard right across the road. Du Bois cursed and stopped firing. The gunners in the pickup truck technical that had been in front of the muscle car started firing at the Night Rod and the
ECV
. Sparks filled du Bois’s vision. He didn’t have a clear shot. A bullet grazed his skull as he leant out. He caught a glimpse of something flying from Grace’s hand. A moment later the truck bed of the pickup exploded, gunmen’s bodies flying through the air. Grace was right next to the truck’s cab, one of her Berettas practically stuck through a firing slit in the armour. The pickup truck started to wobble. The pistol disappeared inside her leather jacket and she braked hard. The
ECV
shot past her and crashed through the pickup. Grace swerved in behind them. The Cougar and a number of other vehicles swerved right across Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and took Selma Avenue. The rest remained on Laurel.

‘Follow them!’ du Bois shouted, pointing at the vehicles that had gone down Selma. ‘Beth, conserve ammunition. They’re trying to get behind us.’

They sped down curving Selma Avenue. Du Bois risked a few bursts with the MG. They received a lot of inaccurate fire in return. Alexia brutally dropped a gear, and floored the accelerator du Bois almost cried out. The
ECV
lurched forwards and hit the left-hand rear side of the armoured van in front of them at the corner of Sunset Boulevard. The van spun out. Du Bois pulled himself back into the cab as the van bounced off the
ECV
again and came close to tearing the door gun off. Alexia braked hard as she tried to wrestle with the armoured patrol vehicle as it shot across Sunset,
smashing through a
car coming the other way. Du Bois caught a glimpse
of some kind of fire ceremony at the Chateau Marmont,
naked, painted guests turning to look at the chas
e.

‘Fuck’s sake!’ du Bois shouted. Angry because his sister’s driving had frightened him.

‘I used to like the Marmont,’ Alexia said, moving through the gears rapidly, keeping her foot depressed between shifts. The bit of Sunset that they were on was broad and straight, so she could build up speed. ‘Less traffic than there used to be.’

‘Really?’ du Bois shouted. There were other vehicles on the road, but driven by the insane or not, they were doing everything they possibly could to stay out of the way of the heavily armed chase. Alexia was using the whole broad road, weaving in and out of the sparse traffic. Beth was firing the Mod 0
LMG
now, conserving the ammunition in the minigun, tracers arcing overhead. Grace nearly lost control of the bike as she braked one-handed, still firing one of her full automatic Berettas. The
ECV
shot by her. She swapped the pistol over to the other hand, accelerating, ejecting the spent high capacity magazine from the Beretta, and replacing it with another one that was taped to the handlebars.

They were speeding past Sunset Plaza now, the street lined with billboards for a world that no longer existed. Part of the Hollywood Hills were burning up on their right. They exchanged fire with the convoy as the road curved onto the Sunset Strip. Everything seemed to be for sale on either side of the Strip: drugs, sex, slaves, alcohol, hair care products for anachronistic street tribes, all of it being documented by film crews. The rock bars and clubs were orgies spilling out onto the street. They were taking fire from pedestrians. Du Bois grunted as his leather coat stopped more than one round.

Some of the vehicles they were chasing were faster, but the slower vehicles in the convoy limited their speed. Alexia was more than able to keep up with them, though they were taking so much fire she had to look through a veil of sparks to see the road. The bullet-resistant glass of the windscreen was being chipped away in parts. Behind them the muscle cars,
SUV
s and pickup truck technicals that had split off when part of the convoy had turned off onto Selma were catching up.

Sunset curved round to the left again as the road entered Beverly Hills. Ahead of them they could see a wall of wrecked cars stretched across Sunset. There was a withering hail of fire from the defenders behind the blockade as they lit up the convoy. Some of the convoy vehicles careened off the road, colliding into each other. Du Bois watched as the armoured Cougar rammed through the blockade at speed, sending the wrecked, vehicular building blocks, and the Beverly Hills defenders, flying. Another of the convoy’s vehicles slammed into the blockade and went spinning through the air into someone’s landscaped, manicured lawn. A bike hit one of the wrecks and the rider flew over the burned out car. They were receiving fire from the vehicles behind them. The ripping sound of the minigun answered. Alexia nudged a wreck with the front of the
ECV
and sent it sliding into another, and then they were through the barricade.

Both their armoured patrol vehicle and La Calavera’s convoy were taking a lot of incoming small arms fire from smartly dressed private security people, whose uniform had something of the SS about it, and from people wearing the merchandise of an exclusive local gun club. Ahead of them the M2 .50 calibre heavy machine gun in the CROWS remotely operated turret atop the Cougar was returning fire, making large craters in manicured lawns. If a round hit someone they exploded. The hydrostatic shock popped limbs and heads off.

Du Bois cried out as round after round hit him. Armoured clothing and hardening skin stopped most of them. It didn’t mean they didn’t hurt. His head snapped round as a bullet tore open his face. There were sparks inside the
ECV
’s cab. He heard Alexia cry out and the vehicle wobbled, but she held it. The convoy’s outriding bikes were just being mown down. A badly injured dismounted rider staggered out in front of the
ECV
. There was a thump and he disappeared under the patrol vehicle, leaving a red stain on the bonnet.

For a moment everything seemed to slow down for du Bois. It was clear what kind of micro society they had been trying to build behind their barricades. Slaves dropped down onto lawns to avoid the gunfire, their mounted overseers sliding off panicked horses and seeking cover, humans on leads being used as human shields, bodies hanging from trees. Yet all the lawns were immaculate, the cars gleamed. Du Bois’s finger curved around the trigger of the door gun and squeezed.

Beth dropped down into the main cab of the
ECV
, and grunted as a ricocheting round caught her. She was putting a fresh belt of rounds into the Model 0. ‘The minigun’s empty!’ Another round hit her, and she slumped, but then struggled back up and climbed into the turret. He had no idea where Grace was. Beverly Hills was a bad place to be exposed on a bike. Ahead of them an
SUV
technical exploded. They bumped through the wreckage, fire and debris raining down on them. The
ECV
suddenly jumped as something exploded against it. Flame rolled over du Bois’s side of the vehicle, and the overpressure tried to suck him out of the cab. Behind him Beth ducked back down into the cab as the explosion rolled over the top of the vehicle as well. The
ECV
was surrounded by fire. Alexia drove through it. The convoy was turning right onto North Hillcrest Road. As Alexia slewed the armoured patrol vehicle round the corner, du Bois leaned out of the vehicle and looked back. There was a still-smoking crater in the armour towards the rear of the vehicle. He guessed it was from a 40mm high explosive grenade fired from a launcher. Had it been a
HEAP
he suspected the chase would have been over.