King's Army

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Dedication

  Copyright

  1 THE WHITE CLIFFS OF DOVER

  2RESISTANCE

  3LONG LIVE THE KING

  4ATHELNEY

  5THE PLAGUE GODDESS

  6THE PRINCESS IN THE TOWER

  7ZEMI

  8QUEEN’S GAMBIT

  9THE WATFORD ARCHIVES

  10ROAD TRIP

  11THE SEARCH FOR WYVERN

  12GUNPOWDER, TREASON AND PLOT

  13HUNG, DRAWN AND QUARTERED

  14HOMECOMING

  15THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

  16RETURN OF THE DEFENDER

  17CRYSTAL PALACE

  18THE TYBURN TREE

  19CAPTURE THE FLAG

  20FIRESTORM

  21PRISONERS

  22FAMILY TIES

  23CELIA’S CHOICE

  24THE WILD HUNT

  25KING’S ARMY

  26MARCH ON LONDON

  27BATTLE OF THE THAMES

  28TURNING THE TIDE

  29RAISING HEL

  30THE ORDER OF ST GEORGE

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Their lives were in her hands. Nine men, thirteen women and eight children. There were no babies, because babies cry and crying gets you caught and getting caught, well, the less said about that the better. Thirty pale faces squinted into her torch beam, all looking to the anxious teenage girl standing before them for some sign that everything was going to be OK, that they hadn’t made a terrible mistake leaving their homes and coming here tonight. They wore their warmest clothes and carried no bags, as instructed, though she’d had to confiscate a couple of rucksacks at the entrance. Hayley didn’t blame them for trying; she knew how hard it was to leave behind everything you’ve ever known. When the world around you suddenly changes, you cling to what’s familiar, no matter how small.

  They stared at her, waiting. She should say something.

  “It’s not far now. When we make the beach, I’ll go ahead. Wait till I give the all-clear. Watch your step. No talking, please.”

  Hayley trudged on through the steel-lined tunnel, not so fast that she risked losing one of the group shuffling through the darkness behind her, but not too slow either – the longer they were on the move, the greater the chance of discovery. As they descended deeper into the earth beneath the cliffs, her torch picked out graffiti from World War Two scratched into the walls. A stick man running from a flying artillery shell, scrawled names, dates, a slogan that read “Russia bleeds while Britain Blancos”, whatever that meant. The first time Hayley had ventured down here she’d found an old needle and thread still connected to a piece of khaki material stuffed behind a rusty, iron bunk bed. She’d thought about the young soldier who’d left it behind, perhaps called above ground to serve his shift on the gun battery, or to keep watch for an invasion that never came. What would he have felt if he’d known the war he was fighting would be won only a few months later? She was happy for him. He had been on the winning side. She hoped he’d had a good life.

  But for the sorry rabble who had returned to these damp tunnels seventy years later, the invasion had been only too real. This time it was undead Vikings, along with people’s own friends and neighbours turned berserk by dark magic, who were the enemy. And the war was already lost. All that was left now was survival.

  That’s why tonight was so important – Hayley might have felt scared, but she felt excited too. This was the start of their fightback.

  At the end of the long march, she signalled for complete silence and released the heavy iron bolts of the outer door the way she’d been shown. A gale of icy air hit her face as she edged the door open. She stepped on to the beach. A thick carpet of snow reached all the way to the sea, matching the famous white cliffs of Dover that towered above her. A heavy band of unnatural, green-grey freezing fog sat just offshore, as it had around the length of Britain’s coastline every day since Professor Lock had seized power; every day since Alfie had been – no, she couldn’t go there, not right now. There was work to do.

  Hayley flicked her torch on and off. Further down the beach a dim light flashed in reply. She hurried back to the tunnel entrance and waved the families out, counting heads till she reached thirty, then secured the door behind her. To the naked eye it was undetectable, just a natural part of the rocks at the foot of the cliffs. She led the shivering group crunching and sliding down the beach. There was no way to keep this part quiet, so it was better to be fast.

  A small black fishing boat waited for them by the jetty. The captain reached out a dry, salt-cracked hand to each nervous passenger as they stepped onboard. His beard was whiter than usual with a night’s worth of frost. Hayley wondered if any of them would have been surprised to learn he was in fact a beefeater – Chief Yeoman Warder Seabrook. A few months ago he might have been giving them a guided tour of the Tower of London, telling tales of bygone years and cracking well-tested jokes. Tonight he was their ferryman, charged with transporting them the twenty-one miles across the cold waters of the English Channel to France.

  Seabrook nodded at Hayley as she embarked, then turned to the wheel and started the engine. There was nothing left to discuss. They had been planning this for weeks. Opening up the tunnels of the Fan Bay Deep Shelter, finding a boat, picking a route, testing it on the water to make sure the fog bank could be sailed through. Then they’d had to choose their first passengers. This was the most dangerous part, as any one of them could have informed the authorities about it. But no one did. All were happy to accept the chance of a new life somewhere different. They clung to each other now, packed together like seals on an ice floe as the little boat left Britain behind and was swallowed by the cold embrace of the fog. A small girl coughed into her sleeve and was hushed by her mother. The air tasted bitter in Hayley’s mouth, like the stink bomb a boy had once set off in school. Ha, school! That felt like a lifetime ago now.

  After a few minutes the boat reached the end of the fog and they emerged on to a calm, millpond sea beneath a star-filled sky. The icy breeze was gone, and far ahead Hayley could just make out the twinkling lights of the French port of Calais. For the first time she allowed herself to feel hope. If this worked, then they would drop their passengers and return straight away to do another run the following night. They already had more families ready to make the crossing. In France the new arrivals would be refugees with nothing, at the mercy of other people’s kindness. But better that than prisoners in their own country. Hayley felt the engine stop. Alarmed, she looked to Chief Yeoman Seabrook.

  “What’s wrong? Is it broken?” she whispered.

  They were towing a small dinghy behind their boat in case of an emergency, but it would take several trips with it to get everyone back to shore.

  “Engine’s fine,” said Seabrook, scanning the water ahead. “I thought I saw something.”

  Hayley squeezed past the passengers to the bow of the boat and gazed across the idle surface of the sea. Nothing stirred; there was barely a ripple. She turned back to Seabrook and shrugged. He stroked his thawing beard, nodded and restarted the engine. The boat bobbed forward and they were underway again. But before Hayley could retake her place, she heard a gasp from the woman next to her who gripped her arm and pointed.

  “What’s that?”

  A hundred feet dead ahead of them a monster was rising from the water. Eyes the size of dinner plates filled a snake-like head at the end of a long neck. Higher and higher it rose, its long tongue hanging stiffly from open jaws. Then Hayley saw that it wasn’t a living creature, but the carved wooden prow of a ship. A Viking longship. The towering figure of Guthrum the Viking Lord stood at the bow, his death
-blackened face leering at them across the waves. Twelve more undead Viking draugar sat at the oars. Seabrook gunned the engine and the boat veered away, the passengers shrieking and holding fast to their terrified children. But another longship burst from the depths, blocking their route. Then another and another, until there were more than Hayley could count: an armada of death arrayed against them. She’d heard rumours that Lock had used his knowledge of Norse magic to raise the Swanage wrecks – the legendary Danish fleet lost in a storm off the south coast of England in the time of King Alfred the Great, which was said to number well over a hundred ships – and now she knew it was true. There was no way past them. She reached into the hold and pulled out her bow and arrows, to the protests of the passengers around her.

  “We should surrender,” cried one man.

  “Maybe they’ll let us go home,” pleaded an elderly woman.

  Seabrook killed the engine, took the bow from Hayley, set it down and placed her hands on the wheel.

  “I’ll draw them away. You get them back to the tunnels. Don’t stop for anything. Good luck.”

  And with that, he picked up his sword and leapt into the dinghy they were towing.

  “No, Seabrook, wait!” cried Hayley.

  But he cast off from the boat and motored straight towards the Viking fleet without looking back.

  Hayley pushed the throttle forward as far as it would go. The engine roared and she steered back towards the fogbank. If she could reach it first, then they might have a chance. Smoke rose from the whining engine as they thumped across the waves. Behind her she could hear Seabrook’s battle cry as he neared Guthrum’s longship. Just before they reached the fog, Hayley chanced a look over her shoulder. The Viking fleet was following them, converging as one like an arrow rushing towards its victim.

  Speeding on blindly, Hayley expected to see Vikings board them at any moment, but a minute later they cleared the fog and for a few moments it looked as if they had shaken off their pursuers.

  But like a pack of hunting dogs breaking from the woods, the Viking fleet flew from the mist, gaining on them fast. Ignoring the jetty, Hayley pointed the boat straight at the beach, in line – she hoped – with the secret entrance to the tunnels.

  “Get down! Hold tight!” she yelled and threw herself on to the deck.

  The boat beached itself at full speed, lurching to the side and coming to a rest in the shallows at a harsh angle. Hayley looked to the shocked passengers, but apart from a few bumps and scrapes, everyone was in one piece. She swung a small boy on to her shoulders and dropped over the side, landing waist deep in the water.

  “Follow me – don’t look back!”

  They tumbled from the boat one after another, gasping at the icy water that met them, pulling each other on, pushing shaking limbs forward till they hit the stones of the beach. The excited yells of the axe-wielding Vikings rose up close behind, as the draugar leapt from their own ships and waded after them. Hayley wanted to stop and help the stragglers from the water, but she knew it was more important to reach the cliffs first. She had to find the door. By the time she reached the rock face, the muscles in her legs were burning from running uphill through the snow. She lifted the trembling boy from her shoulders and told him to keep hold of her jacket. Her torch was gone and she had to run her hands over the chalky cliff face till she found what she was searching for – a crown-shaped stone hidden beneath the seaweed slime and barnacles. She turned it hard and felt the mechanism click. Wrenching the door open, she pushed the boy through and waved the others after him, counting them in. Five, ten, fifteen. The animal growls of the chasing draugars were growing louder. Twenty, twenty-five, twenty-nine. One short. Had she miscounted? Had someone drowned in the sea, or stumbled and been caught? She strained her eyes against the dark, but all she could see were the hulking frames of the undead thundering up the beach towards her. CLANG. An axe embedded itself in the rock by her ear. She had to close the door, she had to save the others, but how could she leave someone out here with them?

  “Here!” she cried. “The door’s here!”

  A small figure flew from the darkness and brushed past her legs as a young girl ran into the tunnels. Thirty! Hayley dived inside and heaved the door closed. She secured the bolts and fell to her knees, lungs on fire. The tunnel shook as axes smashed against the cliff face outside and dead fingers clawed the rock. But they could not find the entrance. Hayley and the others were safe, for now. And yet she felt nothing but despair. The great fightback was over before it had even begun.

  “You will not defeat me. Try your worst, evil fiend. I shall prevail!”

  The Lord Chamberlain’s face was stern and resolute. Keeping his eyes fixed on his enemy he reached out a single craggy finger … and pressed the “Start” button. The microwave stared back at him, unmoved. Frowning, LC stabbed the button again. Nothing. He opened the door. The bowl of cold baked beans was still inside. He closed the door, wiped his brow and pressed all the other buttons one after another, to no avail.

  “Infernal contraption!”

  He thrust his hands back into the pockets of his cardigan and tried to calm down. There was no use in getting angry with the blasted device, he would only end up breaking it just like he had the bread-toasting machine.

  “Don’t fret, dear,” called Hayley’s gran from the living room. “I expect Hayley will be back from the shops in a jiffy.”

  LC had long since given up explaining to the elderly lady that her granddaughter had not gone shopping, but was in fact engaged in a top-secret Resistance mission. Not that he minded looking after Gran, even when she mistook him for her deceased husband, which could be rather awkward. It was his duty – nothing like the responsibilities his high office used to entail of course, but his duty nonetheless.

  Truthfully, LC was also glad of the company. Even though she could not hold the thread of a conversation for long, Hayley’s gran would laugh heartily over the smallest thing, enough to lift LC momentarily from the gloom that had settled over him like a heavy coat. Not a day went past without him dwelling on the loss of his young king. Had he pushed Alfie too far when he urged him to confront his brother? After all, they were both still teenagers, and it was unfair to place the burden of a nation’s fate on such young shoulders. He should have looked after both Richard and Alfie better after their father’s death. Little did he know back then that one of the twins was already lost to the seductive promises of Professor Lock, just as the other soon would be to the cold waters of the North Sea. For LC it was a devastating low point in a very long life that had seen more than its fair share of tragedy.

  Being trapped in the cramped quarters of Hayley’s old flat was its own kind of torture, and the only one who was more fed up than LC with their current accommodation was Herne. The grey dog lay in the corner all day, sighing and every so often whining. He had given up pestering LC for walks and had not touched the contents of his food bowl for days. LC opened the cupboard and glanced for the third time that morning at the sorry contents – three more tins of beans, a bag of lentils and a “Pot Noodle”, whatever that was. If Hayley did not return soon, he would have to go on a supply run himself. He shuddered at the thought. He had never been cut out for everyday life outside the walls of the palace or Keep, let alone a perilous excursion on to a Watford housing estate under Viking occupation.

  It had been this way ever since Lock seized control of the country with his masterstroke – using the Raven Banner to magically reawaken the Viking blood that had lain dormant in the veins of one in thirty of the population for generations. He never could have done it with just Guthrum and his small band of undead “draugar” Vikings – even though they had caused rather a lot of damage by themselves. But with a couple of million freshly created berserkers at his command, it had not taken Lock long to overrun the entire country from within. Being distant descendants of the Norse people, rather than true Vikings like the draugar, the berserkers tended to be uglier, stupider and slightly shorter than
their undead cousins. But they still struck fear into the hearts of the remaining, unaffected population.

  Attacked from inside their own ranks, the police and army had fallen into disarray. Within days most people were virtual prisoners inside their homes as squads of berserkers, each led by one of Guthrum’s draugar commanders, had taken control of every city, town and village. Where pockets of rebellion persisted, the mere shadow of the Black Dragon soaring through the winter storm clouds overhead soon brought people into line.

  And then the snow came: arctic blizzards, the likes of which hadn’t been seen for decades, drawn south by the pull of the Raven Banner’s Norse magic, further trapping the terrified population in a tomb of ice. Those foolish enough to venture out to find food or search for missing loved ones were soon driven back by the bitter cold. Some said many had frozen to death before they’d even made it a mile.

  At the end of that first day, Lock appeared on television, announcing to a shell-shocked nation that King Alfred the Second was dead and his brother, Richard, was now king. What’s more, the new King Richard the Fourth had appointed him Lord Protector to “advise and guide him in these dark times”. Brazenly, Lock claimed that the Defender and government had failed to protect the country from the Viking invasion, therefore the Crown had made a pragmatic peace with them “for everyone’s protection”. That was the last broadcast the people of Great Britain would see for some weeks. Straight after Lock had finished speaking, all television and radio stations ceased to transmit. Phones and the internet were cut off. Airports and docks were emptied as all foreign travel was banned. Lock’s berserkers took control of the “burghs” – the early-warning system that monitors the magical ley lines for any supernatural intruder entering the kingdom. Within hours the wall of sea fog had surrounded the country and Lock’s newly raised phantom Viking fleet was patrolling the waters, scaring away any vessel that came within five miles of the coastline. Britain was an island of prisoners.

  At first the outside world had tried to send help, with various countries attempting to liberate their own citizens who were caught up in the chaos and to aid their ally against the bizarre supernatural assault it had suffered. But after the first US submarine was sunk by the longships and a squadron of French jets was blasted out of the skies by the Black Dragon, all Britain’s friends had backed off. Three months on, the Vikings had shown no sign of advancing beyond Britain’s icy borders, and although there were pockets of similar unrest in Scandinavia, the outside world had now settled into an uneasy state of “watch and wait”.