King's Army Page 4

  He joined her at the window. Outside, the sun was disappearing behind the hills and the light was fading fast. “All I’m saying is, we need at least to be planning our return.” Brian’s voice had softened. “Qilin will have completed his border recce soon, and we’ll know more—”

  With a snap of air that popped Brian and Tamara’s ears, Qilin, AKA Tony, appeared right on cue, knocking over a chair.

  “Waffles. I need waffles,” Tony moaned.

  “Ugh, I still can’t get used to you doing that!” Brian sighed as his heart rate returned to normal. But he was smiling, glad that Tony had made it back in one piece.

  The red-robed superhero flicked a tiny golden lever on his belt buckle and his robes were instantly sucked into it like dust into a vacuum cleaner. He removed his leering mask and spun it on his palm, shrinking it to the size of a button, which he stuck on to the buckle like a magnet. Finally he flipped his green hover disc deftly into the air with one foot, where it too shrank until it was minuscule and flew to join the other ornate components of his belt buckle. The whole process took less than two seconds, revealing a weary-looking Tony, who collapsed on to an oversized sofa by the wood-burning stove, flicked his black fringe out of his eyes and adopted a pleading look.

  “And please say you have maple syrup? And bacon. And ice cream either on the waffles or on the side of the plate but not touching the bacon,” Tony finished.

  “I’m on it,” Tamara said, sliding a cast iron skillet on to the stove.

  Brian pulled up a chair. “What did you see?”

  For the past three weeks, Tony had been painstakingly blink-shifting the four thousand miles from the ranch in Wyoming to the shores of the UK and back, surveying the locked-down country’s defences and searching for a way in. Although Tony could teleport from one spot to another with ease ever since he was a child, his power was limited. He could only “blink-shift” to somewhere he could see, which meant he had to make the journey in a series of hundreds of jumps. The more jumps he made the more tired he became, which increased the chances of making a mistake and jumping into a dangerous situation he couldn’t escape. Crossing the ocean was the most risky part. At first there would be enough ships and buoys and oil rigs to make good progress, but after a while he might have to wait hours or even days for the next ship, which meant hiding from crew members who would understandably be rather freaked out by the sight of the bright red superhero hovering around their vessel. All the time he had to remember to conserve energy for the return journey. It was like running ten marathons in a day.

  “It’s not good news, folks, I’m sorry to say. I must have jumped to every boat in the Atlantic and the Irish and North Seas and I still couldn’t get close to land. That winter storm is a permanent fixture. Snow, hail like beach balls, lightning, and fog without a single gap. There’s no way ashore that I could see. This one Irish fishing boat I hitched a lift on got too close and was sunk by one of Lock’s longships. I just managed to shift them all back to the mainland in time. Boy, were they happy I turned out to be on board! They insisted on taking me to the pub and then they made up a song about me. Want to hear it?”

  Brian and Tamara’s disappointed expressions told Tony that maybe now wasn’t the time for the “Ballad of the Red Spirit Sailor”.

  “Maybe later, then. Ooh, can I have some green tea? No wait, orange juice. Cola. All of the above,” Tony continued. Blink-shifting long distances always made him ravenous too.

  Brian sank into a seat at the table. “So we’re not getting home that way,” he said, rubbing his temples. “There must be a better way in than just sailing through that fog and hoping for the best…”

  “Where’s Alfa-bet?” Tony asked from the depths of the sofa.

  “His usual spot,” Tamara said, frying some bacon.

  “I’ll cheer him up,” Tony said, getting up, suddenly full of beans. He peered out of the window at Alfie’s silhouette on the paddock fence, flicked his belt lever and whipped his mask and robes back on. “That’s one mission I never fail!”

  “Wait, Tony!” Tamara pleaded.

  But with a whump of air, Tony teleported out of the kitchen … and only a few moments later reappeared back inside and removed his outfit, looking glum.

  “Er, he said some very bad words to me. Mission not accomplished.”

  Tamara handed Tony his waffles. “I’ll go talk to him.”

  In the paddock, Alfie was trying to calm a horse as it paced restlessly, snorting, its ears pinned back.

  “Easy, girl…” Alfie said, reaching for the horse’s nose, but she flicked her head away and kicked out her legs.

  “They don’t like it when Tony blink-shifts,” Tamara said as she approached the horse, keeping her body low. “Something to do with the change in air pressure, maybe. I’ve got this…”

  Alfie stepped aside. His mum had always had a strange connection with animals, and sure enough, moments later she’d calmed the creature down enough to lead it back into the stables, Alfie trailing behind.

  Inside, it smelled of wet straw. Tamara passed Alfie a shovel and together they mucked out the last stall.

  “I really could have used you when I was learning how to ride Wyvern,” Alfie said.

  Tamara looked up sharply. They’d been arguing a lot recently. Full-on, sparks-flying, hundred-decibel rows. About how Tamara knew Alfie was going to be the Defender and have his world turned upside down but never told him. About how she’d abandoned them all to come to this ranch in the middle of nowhere. About how Tamara wasn’t there for him when he needed her the most and how it wasn’t good enough to just say she “had her reasons”. But for the past couple of days Alfie had felt his anger slipping. It was like losing your grip on a ledge; you couldn’t hold on to it for ever.

  “I didn’t mean it like that. Do I get the lame joke thing from you or Dad?”

  Tamara laughed, relieved. “Your dad. Definitely.”

  “Let me guess, you’ve been talking to Brian and he thinks I’m a wuss hiding out here.”

  “He would never say that.” Tamara shrugged. “Besides, you’re not the first English king to go into hiding. A thousand years ago, when the Vikings drove Alfred the Great into exile, he lay low on an island in a swamp called Athelney. At least you’ve got hot showers and satellite TV.”

  Alfred the Great. There he was again, casting his shadow like an overbearing relative, making Alfie feel childish and small by comparison. Tamara watched her son as his face clouded over. She put her hands on his shoulders and drew him close.

  “You’re right. I should have been there for you. But I had other things I needed to take care of.”

  Alfie shook off her hands, anger pricking his cheeks again. “Do you have any idea what I had to deal with after you went away? The horrible things the newspapers said, everyone gossiping and laughing at me, the bullying…”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Tamara put her hand to her mouth. For a moment, Alfie thought she was going to cry.

  “Mum?”

  “There’s nothing I can say that will make up for what you went through, Alfie. But perhaps there is a way I can help you understand. I’ve protected you from the truth for too long. It’s time you knew the real reason your dad and I split up.”

  “I knew I’d never fit into the Royal Family, even before I married your father,” said Tamara.

  They were in sitting in the wood-panelled den, where comfortable leather sofas faced a roaring fire and a neat stack of logs. Alfie could sense Brian and Tony’s nerves as they watched him listening to his mother. Clearly they knew what was coming, and it was big.

  “Apart from being an outsider, there was just so much to learn,” she continued. “Dress codes, diplomatic etiquette, the right way to address everyone. Your dad did his best to teach me, but I was stubborn too, and if I’m honest I liked the looks on those stuffy Brits’ faces when I broke their rules. No offence.”

  “None taken, ma’am,” said Brian.

&n
bsp; “But no matter how hard it got – and boy, did it get ugly when the press turned on me – what kept us strong was our number one rule. No secrets. So when he became king it took me about five minutes to bust him. At first I thought it was just the pressure of the new job, then I thought maybe he was ill. But in the end I knew there was something he felt he couldn’t tell me.”

  “The Succession,” said Alfie. “He’d just found out he was the Defender, but he wasn’t allowed to tell you.”

  “Yeah. Well, that lasted about a week. Then your father finally gave in and showed me everything. The Keep, the regalia, Wyvern, bless her. The works. The Lord Chamberlain practically blew a fuse when he found out.”

  “Been there, done that.” Alfie laughed, remembering the night he’d introduced Hayley to LC. He thought the old man was going to have a heart attack.

  “Anyway, LC got over it, kind of. Put up with a civilian hanging around the Keep, and an American at that, asking all these dumb questions. But after a while, I started trying to organize the Archives. I mean, you’ve seen them, right? Total bombsite. I figured the least I could do was alphabetize them.”

  Alfie smiled again, thinking of Hayley installing Wi-Fi and LC believing it was some ancient magic spell.

  “But your dad backed me up and I got to work. What I didn’t expect was to get so into the history. I kept getting sidetracked, finding out about a battle here, a monster there. I mean, dragons causing the Great Fire of London! Who knew? But then I went back further, to around the year 1350 and I started reading about something else, a disease called the Black Death.”

  “Blaaaaack Deaaaaath!” Tony said in a low voice, like he was doing a voiceover for a movie trailer.

  “It killed between seventy-five and two hundred million people,” said Tamara.

  “I am a very bad person,” Tony squeaked, reddening.

  “Anyway, as I was learning,” Tamara continued, “just like every other part of British history, there was an untold story behind the Black Death. And it was a whopper.”

  She leaned down to the fire and pulled a log from the pile. With a clunk and rattle of chains, the fire snuffed itself out and the whole wall slid across to reveal a secret room beyond.

  Alfie gawped. The concealed study was crammed full of scrolls, ancient books and parchments – just like the Keep. “If you’re trying to make me feel more at home, it’s working,” he said.

  Alfie could tell by their lack of surprise that Brian and Tony had already been in here, which bugged him.

  His mum gestured for Alfie to sit down at a desk. It was covered with old books sporting elaborately carved leather covers.

  “You see, it wasn’t rats and fleas that spread the plague, it was this Norse Goddess.” Tamara opened one of the books to an ancient woodcut depicting a woman; half her face was radiantly delicate and beautiful, but the other side was a nightmarish glistening white skull. “Her name is Hel.”

  The hairs on the back of Alfie’s neck stood up.

  “As in Hell?” he asked, pointing to the floor.

  “Sort of, but with only one ‘l’. It’s probably where we get the word from though. Hel was always bad, even by the brutal standards of the old gods. Every evil thing that happened in those ancient times was down to her. So, aeons ago, the other gods banished her from earth. Centuries later, after they too became tired of living in the mortal realm, the last of the gods left and mankind became the top dog.”

  “Including a few blue bloodlines the gods had created by mingling with humans while they were here, if you catch my drift,” added Tony with a cheeky wink.

  Tamara frowned at him and carried on. “For hundreds of years nothing was heard from Hel. But she had been busy plotting her way back. Finally, around the time Edward the Third came to the throne, she succeeded. Hel’s return unleashed a plague designed to wipe all but her tiny number of devout followers from existence. Millions died before the Defender was finally able to send her back into the pit she’d crawled out of. They called it the Hundred Years War.”

  Alfie rubbed his forehead. He was getting a headache. “This is all terrific as far as scary bedtime stories go, but what’s it got to do with you and dad breaking up?”

  “I’m getting to that, geez,” sighed Tamara. She rooted around in the same book to find another ancient etching that depicted the Defender, astride Wyvern, holding Hel by the throat and pushing her down into a black pool ringed with metal. The page was so faded it was hard to tell. “The Defender trapped Hel in an enchanted mirror, where she was supposed to remain for eternity.”

  Alfie noticed other knights in the picture looking on – all in different types of strange, exotic armour and carrying various odd-shaped weapons.

  “Who are those guys?” he asked, pointing at them.

  “Edward the Third couldn’t defeat Hel alone; he was backed up by an alliance of blue-blood superheroes from all over the world. He named them the Order of St George.”

  “AKA, the Knights of the Garter,” Brian added. “So called, according to legend, because the king returned a garter which had fallen from the leg of a dancing countess at a royal ball.”

  Tony smirked, but was silenced by a glare from Brian.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of them,” said Alfie. “I’ve seen their banners hanging at Windsor Castle. But I assumed they were ancient history. You’d think I’d have learned by now.”

  Tamara smiled. “I thought Hel was ancient history too, when I read about all this in the Archives,” she said. “But then I came across an account of how her return in the Middle Ages was preceded by all these weird things: freak climate change, wars, civil unrest – and I started to worry that she might be on her way back again. I mean just look at what’s happening in the world right now. It was all too similar. Your dad thought I was on to something, so we started talking about getting the Knights of St George back together, just in case. Then we told LC—”

  “And, let me guess, he freaked out?” Alfie said.

  Tamara nodded. “He didn’t want to know. Banned me from the Keep. All this talk about the ice caps melting and droughts being connected to an ancient Norse goddess. He thought I was paranoid.”

  “Climate-change deniers. I can’t stand ’em either,” Tony chipped in.

  “Even so, your father and I didn’t stop,” Tamara went on. “But this time we kept it secret from LC. I started to travel the world with only my trusty bodyguard here for protection.” Tamara patted Brian on the hand. “And wow, did the press nail me for that.”

  Alfie dimly recalled the headlines. “QUEEN T’S NEVER-ENDING HOLIDAY!” What he remembered better was his mum never being around much.

  “What I was really doing was trying to recruit new members to the Order. I approached the existing royal houses of Europe first, but they’re even more secretive than we are, and it was hard to get to them without attracting attention. After I struck out there, I decided to try to find the old royal bloodlines which were no longer on their thrones – Germany, Eastern Europe, Russia. But it was dangerous work and I was all alone. Your father believed in my theory that Hel was stirring, but he had his own duties to attend to and couldn’t guarantee my safety. So we faked a divorce. I moved out here to the ranch to take some heat out of the situation and carried on my research. Borrowed a fair few things from the Archives, as you can see.” Tamara said, nodding at the shelves groaning with books and scrolls.

  Alfie’s head was spinning. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “Wait a second. You left Dad – us! – and moved out here all based on some crazy theory?”

  “I know it sounds bad, honey. But we were so sure we were on to something and nobody else was doing anything about it. And look, it paid off big time. I got a lead in China about a former royal dynasty that led me all the way back to London, where I found this little marvel.” Tamara pointed at Tony, who waved at Alfie, like it was the first time they’d met. “We pulled a few strings to get Tony into Harrow, and Brian became your
Close Protection Officer so they could both watch over you. What we didn’t realize was how close the threat was, and how advanced his plans were.”

  “You mean Professor Lock?” asked Alfie. “You think Lock has got something to do with Hel?”

  Tamara nodded. “What he’s up to exactly, we just don’t know yet. But if we’re right, if this is what he’s been planning the whole time – to bring back Hel – then the world is in big, big trouble.” Tamara pointed at the woodcut of the Defender wrestling with Hel, forcing her down into a mirror. “Lock must have figured out that, as it was blue-blood magic that imprisoned Hel, only blue-blood magic would bring her back.”

  “OK, say you’re right,” said Alfie, trying to understand. “Why didn’t Lock just grab me and feed me, or however it works, to this plague goddess? Why kill Dad; why replace me with Richard?”

  “We’re not sure,” said Brian. “But we think that for the ritual to work, maybe the blue blood has to be given willingly. He must have realized he could use Richard’s jealousy of you to his advantage. Now he’s given Richard what he always wanted, he’ll be easier to manipulate.”

  Tamara sat heavily, suddenly overwhelmed. “I should never have gone away. I thought I was doing the best thing by leaving, but all I did was hand you over to that monster to do his work…”

  Brian nodded at Tony and they both withdrew from the room, leaving Alfie and Tamara alone. Alfie didn’t speak for a long time. It was all so much to take in. He thought his parents had split up because they didn’t love each other any more. He thought his mum had left because she was selfish and didn’t love him and his brother and sister enough to stay. But while the world sneered at them and judged them, his parents had been fighting a secret battle to save them all. Alfie thought he had a pretty good idea how that must have felt. Finally, he sat next to his mother and took her hand. “I still wish you’d told me sooner, but … none of this was your fault, Mum. I see that now. I forgive you.”