The Sword of Feimhin (45 page)

She realised that her terror of drowning was not shared by the swell of life within her arms – a presence, however naïve, that appeared to be growing stronger by the moment. Kate squirmed within the powerful grip of the carapaced arm, loosening her arms sufficiently so she could turn the baby around to face her. The eyes in that beautiful elongated oval of face were crinkling open.

‘Oh, baby Momu – I'm here!'

The response of the new Momu was not in words but in pure musical tones of delight. Kate watched as those beautiful mother-of-pearl disks irised slowly wider, then slowly closed.

It was the Cill greeting: a way of saying so many more things in a single gesture than could be expressed in words alone.

The Mamma Pig trundled out of the Tudor farm at noon, its metalwork decorated with the abstract blue and grey of paramilitary camouflage and emblazoned with the Tyrant's triple infinity on either flank. The heavy wheels cut deeply into the mud as Cogwheel directed it between tall sandstone gateposts and into a maze of winding lanes. The cab was so high they could peer over the hawthorn hedges and into fields dusted with snow, which still fell and blustered around them thick and hard, like a swarm of gnats. Luckily, visibility was still okay up to about a hundred yards ahead. Sharkey had had to be left behind, nursing the wound to his neck, so Mark and Nan had taken charge of the Minimi machine guns within the body of the Pig, though Mark intended to rely more on the Fir Bolg battleaxe when it came to close quarter fighting. Cal and Bull operated as scouts, riding BMW R1200s up front and behind. They were disguised as Skulls and armed with the MP5s, which were
stored for action in leather holsters slung from the front of their saddles.

‘You're all lunatics.' Tajh had said at the meeting last night, but she had still shaved Cal's head before decorating the bare skin with a mock triple infinity tattoo. Her face had been drawn, and she had been so nervous her fingers were shaking.

‘Good job you're not shaving me throat,' Cal had said.

She snorted then, pulling his head roughly to where she wanted it. ‘It's not a plan. It's a bloody suicide mission.'

Mark could understand the strength of Tajh's feelings. The plan was so full of holes it didn't bear close scrutiny. They just didn't know what they were heading into. They had little or no intelligence other than the fact that Grimstone was holding a major celebration that afternoon at an arena near central London – and the likelihood was that Padraig would figure in it. They were all charged up from drinking coffee and Mark had a migraine-like headache from the combination of all that caffeine and too little sleep. However they worked on it, the mission was subject to contingency. Tajh was absolutely right; it carried enormous risk. So much risk that Mark hadn't felt like talking about it with Nan when they had been alone. He had just hung about in a pensive silence keeping an eye on the worsening weather. To start with there had been sleet and then, an hour or two before the dawn, snow.

Made no difference, sleet or snow. And there was nothing like standing out in the cold morning air to clear your head.

He had helped Cal and Bull set up the heavy Minimi at the rear of the Pig, together with half a dozen spare belts of ammunition. From time to time Cal's eyes met his with the suggestion of a mocking smile. Mark stood on the step and had a glance at his face in the Pig's side mirror. His short-cropped hair was standing to attention. Damn – he had more hair on his chin. It was the face of a stranger. Even his eyes looked different: the gaze of a man who had already seen too much to ever accept things at face value again.

The triangle in his brow was quiescent, a brooding absence of light. It had moulded itself so closely to his skin that its black gloss could have been a birthmark if it hadn't been for the sparks of strange life within it; the moving and metamorphosing arabesques that pulsated with his heartbeat.

Back to London, then. Back to those streets where he had witnessed the strange green glow and the swarming, hungry spectres.

‘The timing has to be perfect,' was Cal's brooding comment to Mark as they prepared to set out. He passed the red-highlighted route map through the cab window to the disgruntled Tajh.

The Mamma Pig had to slip into central London – if slip was an appropriate word for a vehicle as big and heavy as a tank – to arrive at the arena at about 2.30 p.m.
Perfect timing, my arse!
Mark had thought. By the time the convoy of Pig and two bikes nosed into the outer reaches of the
south-eastern suburbs, they would have just half an hour to spare.

But, by the time they got there, they could see that any chance of a quiet entry had gone up up in smoke. Whole blocks were burning in a new, monster Razz. The mayhem continued through the ravaged streets as they rumbled closer to the inner city, with Razzers setting up roadblocks to loot vehicles. Cogwheel had to veer and swerve and use the giant guillotine blades on the front of the Mamma Pig to smash through blazing barriers and mob-organised obstructions, until they were within half a mile or so of their initial target: the looming bottleneck of London Bridge.

Up ahead, apartment blocks on either side of Great Dover Street were ablaze and a maniacal gathering was taking place at the junction with Borough High Street. Cogwheel idled next to a public house, painted green and cream, under a street sign with forks going left to Southwark and right to London Bridge. The snow was not letting up. If anything it was thickening and beginning to settle even in the warmer city streets. Smoke issued from the gaping door of the pub and flames were licking out through the broken windows. Trees blazed on the broad pavement in front of a red-brick church with a big sign running along its side, LUNCHTIME RECITAL. A magnificent white steeple, complete with a clock face, soared out of the smoke and flames just before a crush of vehicles that obstructed passage through the junction up ahead.

Over the radio Cal asked if they wanted him and Bull to clear a way. Tajh shouted into the radio com, ‘Don't even think about it!'

Cogwheel whistled. ‘It's unbelievable – the numbers of Razzers. You don't want to be stopped on a bike in the middle of those bastards.'

The traffic lights up ahead were still functioning, though nobody was taking any notice. The jam of vehicles – mainly armoured cabs and trucks – wasn't held up by the lights, but by a blazing barricade, and the drivers were suffering the Razzers' attentions. As they watched, one of the cabs burst into flames.

Cal's voice on the intercom: ‘Molotov cocktails!'

Cogwheel called out over his shoulder, ‘Okay, folks. That right hand lane is beckoning. Hold on tight.'

Mark peered ahead over both Tajh and Cogwheel's shoulders. No vehicles were coming through from the other direction. Revving the heavy engines in low gear, Cogwheel crashed the Mamma Pig through the central road barriers and bumped and rocked their way out onto the opposite lane, accelerating along the wrong side of the road towards the barricade. The two bikes fell into single file behind the Pig, hanging onto its tail. The world around them became a maelstrom of broken metal, screaming lunatics and petrol-stoked inferno.

Then, somehow or other, the Pig was through and the broad outline of London Bridge filled the oncoming view.

‘We're being followed,' Nan shouted from the back.

Mark joined her in looking out of the rear porthole and saw a black van thirty yards behind them, rapidly catching up. ‘Shit! We've got to deal with them here. We can't afford to draw attention to ourselves nearer to the arena.'

They were about a third of the way across the bridge when Mark flung open the rear flaps on the Pig and used the heavy Minimi on the swivel stand, firing it at the van. A stream of fire ripped the cab of the van apart, rupturing the tyres and causing it to veer to the right. The van flipped over onto its side and its momentum caused it to slide, in a shower of sparks, over the broad pavement. It ripped through the parapet of the bridge and down into the river. Through the gaping hole, Mark caught a glimpse of the distant tracery of Tower Bridge.

They crossed the bridge to continue along the dual carriageway of King William Street, where they encountered a paramilitary roadblock with large blocks of concrete and an armoured vehicle obstructing the left hand turn at the top. They were forced into bearing right onto a curving track through towering ruins. Cogwheel thundered left and then right in low gear through defunct traffic lights.

‘Bloody hell!' Tajh exclaimed. ‘I don't believe it!'

Mark came forward to look over her shoulder. A whole district, at least half a mile square, had been levelled to the ground.

Tajh said, ‘You think there's a pattern?'

Mark grimaced. ‘Who knows?'

‘Shit!' Cogwheel was staring out into the cleared space,
which was thickening with Razzers. ‘There must be thousands of them.'

‘Tens of thousands, more like.'

‘What are they doing?'

Tajh stared. She threw open the forward flap and then they heard them. ‘They're chanting.' The noise was thunderous, deafening.

Mark heard Nan's whisper, mind-to-mind.

It felt powerful, overwhelmingly so. The Sword was calling, seducing the Razzamatazzers. Just like it had drawn in the feeding spectres that Henriette had shown him.

‘Heading left,' Mark heard Cogwheel's cry.

It felt like dusk as they entered a smoke-obscured side street. There were no scurrying hordes of Razzers and no armoured cabs or trucks. They made another turn to find themselves in a curving street. There was a street sign bent into a right angle that read MONUMENT in one direction and LONDON BRIDGE in the other, but there was no telling where it had originally pointed. They passed a gang of Skulls running from the arcaded entrance to a shopping mall underneath a seven- or eight-storey hotel. Scaffolding screened the entire front of the building. There was a series of explosions, followed by shattering glass, then the lick of flames in the windows high above them.

The Pig paused, shaking them with its throbbing, as Cogwheel considered a temporary road sign that warned against any right turn entrance onto the upper reaches of King William Street. He ignored it, forcing his way out into traffic again.

They were back on track, but the Pig was forced to screech to a halt close to the burned-out Bank Tube station. Mark's phone sounded. He put his hand on Cogwheel's shoulder, and called out:

‘Stop.'

A bespectacled ragamuffin figure emerged from the ruin, running headlong through the half inch of snow. A tall, matronly figure leaning on an ebony walking stick watched him run from the doorway into the ruin.

‘Hey – shit!'

Tajh threw open the cab door on the passenger side. Mark called out past her. ‘C'mon, Gully. Jump in!'

They hauled him in by the seat of his jeans, manhandling him past the cab and over the seats into the back.

‘No sign of Penny?'

‘Nah! She's gone!'

Nan took charge of Gully. ‘You look half starved. Do you want something to drink – some coffee or water?'

Gully shook his head. His eyes were puffy as if he'd been crying. ‘I … I got the picture. Wot Penny calls the City Below. Here on the mobile.'

‘Well done, Gully.' Mark accepted the phone as Nan put her arm around Gully's sodden shoulders.

The Pig was moving on up into Princes Street, following the jam of other vehicles heading towards two towering cranes. Cogwheel down-geared, edging through a narrow gap of another roadblock.

‘Tajh – can you get the image off the phone and onto a monitor?'

‘I'll see what I can do.'

Cogwheel had somehow got them to Gresham Street, passing the battered signs for the Mayor and City of London Court – somewhat redundant since there was nothing here but ruins.

‘You see it now – a definite pattern?' Cogwheel accepted a lit cigarette from Tajh, who was squinting at a tablet screen.

‘What is it, Cogwheel?'

‘One block demolished after another. And those big cranes up ahead.'

‘What about them?'

‘Somebody's levelling the place, but it ain't random. They're making a single big clearing – round about where the Razzers are gathering.'

‘But what could be the point?'

‘You're the brains. You tell me.'

*

They were held up in a queue of vehicles several-hundred yards long, leading towards the arena. The pavements on either side of the road were thronged with paramilitaries and Skulls making their way towards a series of turnstiles.
The celebration was clearly limited to Grimstone's bother boys. Mark and Cal watched a minibus approach two large steel-and-wire gates to a car park. The gates were manned by armed paramilitaries. There was a delay as the minibus driver showed tickets and identification to the guard. An armoured car to one side had a cannon trained onto the entrance. The level of security indicated a frame of mind close to paranoia. Mark had no idea if the armour on the pig could take cannon fire, but given the level of security he'd already seen, he assumed the paramilitaries would also have RPGs. He caught Tajh's furious glance back at him. She didn't need to say what she was thinking, they could only hope that their forged documents would pass muster. He continued to watch as, satisfied, one of the guards clapped the bonnet of the minibus with the flat of his hand and the gates opened to allow it through, then they closed again and the guards began checking the next vehicle in line. Mark figured they had at least half an hour to go, given the queue between them and the gate.

He moved back into the body of the Pig, studying the tablet screen that had just been passed back to him by Tajh.

‘Hey, Gully, come show me what you mean.'

Gully came forward with Nan, her comforting arm still cradling him. He looked as if he might burst into tears at any moment.

‘We've put the picture you took onto this screen. I can see it's some kind of mural with pictures and a very complicated map.'

‘I ain't altogether sure I can follow every bit of it – but I followed Penny's trail down to the ghost Tube station.'

‘Do you think she might have been heading for this arena?'

Gully shook his head. ‘Nah! I followed 'er footprints down there, underground.' He pointed to part of the map close to the extraordinary superimposed vignette of St Paul's Cathedral. ‘She went through the crack in the waterfall cave. In there, where the place was crawlin' with Grimlings.'