The White Wolf's Son (31 page)
Again I’d been politely cut off before I could ask all my questions. I wanted to know what the Black Sword was, if it was
something more than just a sword. A kind of magic blade, was it? Like Excalibur?
Our road now wound along the shores of yet another lake. In the far distance at the very end of the flat stretch of water,
surrounded by hills steep and high enough to be small mountains, was what looked like a good-sized town.
“Oona told me he was looking for some sort of sword …”
“He already had the Black Sword. I imagine he left it behind in Ingleton for a reason. Perhaps its magic is so powerful it
can be detected anywhere, or perhaps he doesn’t trust it …”
“Trust it?”
“I’ll not add that to your burden,” he said firmly. Then to me: “That’s right.”
“So why do Klosterheim and von Minct want me? Oona doesn’t really know. Have
you
worked that out yet?”
“I can’t be sure. I think they believe you to be some sort of key, perhaps to the Sword itself, possibly to the
Grail, given your name and background. The best thing is not to get caught by them and never find out. The less you know about
any of that, the better off you’ll be.”
“Now you’ve made me even more curious,” I said.
“Well, you’ll have to live with that for a while. We tell you what we think you need to know in order to survive. These are
secrets usually much better kept to a few of us.”
“All right. Then what about my mum and dad?” I asked. “That’s mostly what’s on my mind. How are they mixed up in this? And
Gertie and Alfy? And my grandma and grandpa?”
“You know your grandmother is Oona, the Dream-thief’s daughter. She’s the only one actually mixed up in anything with us,
and she’s trying to make sure all of us are kept safe. But since the enemy has focused on
you,
you are her chief concern. You should never have been involved, and honestly I have yet to work out why you are.”
“Have they mistaken me for someone else?”
“That’s my guess. Not, of course, that I’m in any position to tell them so or be believed by them. I don’t know how the misunderstanding
began …”
“You mean everything’s been an accident—wandering into the caves and everything?”
“I don’t mean that. Not at all. There’s the boy, after all …” Again a sense of something shutting down.
“So who are they really after? You sound like it’s someone in a witness protection program!”
He laughed heartily at this. A moment later Ujamaka, who was driving the first carriage, lifted his lance and pointed with
it. There in the distance, from the far shore
of the glassy lake, a shape could be seen descending between twin peaks. A big ornithopter.
My saddle became suddenly uncomfortable. The flying machines scared and fascinated me at the same time. I wanted to get down
and walk but decided to ride back to Lord Renyard’s carriage and travel with him rather than go with a silent Oona. The Kakatanawa
made room for me as we watched the big flying machine descend. I was terrified and hugely curious. All kinds of conflicting
emotions roiled inside me. The thing was
huge
and very noisy!
The sun was getting low in the sky, its light diffused by thin, white clouds, as the powerful machine turned against its disk
and skimmed the water, steam shooting from its curving exhausts. The prow was in the glaring shape of a hawk; its rotors turned
slowly as the jointed wings beat with relentless rhythm. It had no roundels and was by all appearances an Empire ship. We
did not raise our own flag but came to a halt as we watched the thing circling us. There was no way we could find cover against
its guns now. We hoped they wouldn’t waste fuel or ammunition on people they couldn’t identify.
“Damn!” cursed Oona, looking out and up. “And München not fifty miles from here!” She looked back at the woods. She knew we
couldn’t make it. Even if we got there, the ornithopter could burn us out of the forest.
“We’d better keep going,” she ordered. “The town’s our best cover. But don’t go too fast or they’ll
know
we’re enemies.” At that, the dark bulk of the clanking flying machine flew over again, steam and cinders spewing from those
exhausts. Oona smiled and waved at it as it passed so low we could see the mask and goggles of its pilot glaring down at us,
the heavy heart of its engine
pumping. The ground vibrated as it went over. I held my ears.
Then it was gone, back the way we had come. We picked up speed and entered into the relative safety of a ruined house. That
terrible stink of ash and death was everywhere. Nothing was alive. No paper or cloth had survived, so there was no record
of what had happened. Just another passing victim of Granbretan’s efforts to bring order to a world it found disorderly and
therefore threatening.
“They know we’re here,” said Oona. “So there’s no point in trying to hide at this stage. Lord Renyard, get out of sight as
soon as you can. The rest of you look as if you’re setting up camp. If they see we think they’re no threat, they might assume
we’re at least neutral!”
The massive, clattering, hissing thing was overhead again, blotting out the sky. Oona waved a second time. This time she was
answered by a burst of flame from a turret. The flame splashed against a nearby wall. The air was filled with the smell of
burning kerosene.
“Flame cannon,” said Lord Renyard, who automatically lifted me behind him with his powerful paws.
“We’re sitting ducks,” said Lieutenant Fromental. From the depths of a voluminous overcoat he produced a pistol. We had no
long-range weapons with which to retaliate.
“It’s almost as if they were tracking us and picked the best place to ambush us,” said Prince Lobkowitz, checking a revolver
of his own. “Klosterheim was in Mirenburg! He was able to get word to this aviator!”
“But he won’t want to risk killing me, will he?” I pointed out. “Not if they want me alive.”
It was a good argument, they all agreed. The
Kakatanawa prepared their spears and bows. Their expressions told me that if there was any way of destroying a steel ornithopter
with those weapons, they would find it!
At Oona’s instructions the Kakatanawa formed a tight circle around me, their war boards used like a Greek shield-wall. Then
we watched as the ship took another turn about and again came in low—even lower this time than the last—its huge clawed feet
dragging the water and setting up a wake which lapped at the town’s remaining pier. I felt horribly sick. The craft made a
third turn and seemed to be preparing to land on the water. I thought it was bound to sink, but maybe it was wide enough and
boat-shaped enough to float. Water hissed all around it, and steam shrieked as it spewed from the vents. Then, almost on cue,
two more Dark Empire ships came thundering over the horizon, and Oona gave the order to seek any cover we could!
We darted desperately through the ruins. From ahead came a sudden blinding flash. The two aircraft were dropping bombs on
us!
Some of the horses were better trained than others and held steady, but most of them bolted, threatening to drag the carriages
to destruction. Oona yelled for her men to cut the traces, letting the horses run from the explosions. It probably saved their
lives.
More bombs. All around us blazed the same white, blinding light. None of us could see anymore. There was an acrid stink, and
my throat began to burn and my eyes water. I blundered on through the confusion. There was shouting and clanking of arms and
armor, jingling horse gear, the guttural voices of the Kakatanawa and the Dark Empire pilots yelling through the flares.
In the confusion I lost contact with the others. Now I was really scared and started calling for Oona. I could hear her somewhere
nearby. I knew that if I stayed where I was, I might be better off, but it was very hard to do in all that chaos. When I grew
dizzy and found it hard to keep my balance I began to realize that they weren’t just using flares. There was something else
in those bombs: poison gas.
I tripped. I fell. I tried to get up. I became dizzier. I lost all sense of whether I was rising or falling. From my knees
I looked up. Was the brilliant mist clearing? I heard sounds, saw shadows moving. I tried to rise, but I was even weaker.
I saw huge, black eyes, a snarling muzzle.
And then I passed out.
ART
T
HREE
Near six foot tall was Lord Rennard,
All dressed in silk and lace,
Walk’d he prowde into the farmer’s yarde
Filled with cunning courtesy and grace.
—“T
HE
B
ALLAD OF
L
ORD
F
OXXE
"
Coll. Henty,
Ballads of Love and War,
1892
From corners four rode our bold heroes
No self or selfish meaning to their muse
To meet again in Mirrensburg
Strong justice there to choose.
—H
ENSHE
,
T
HE
G
REAT
B
ATTLE OF
M
IRRENSBURG
,
1605
Wheldrake’s tr., 1900
Across the Silver Bridge that spanned thirty miles of sea came the hordes of the Dark Empire, pigs and wolves, vultures and
dogs, mantises and frogs, with armour of strange design and weapons of obscene purpose. And imprisoned in his Globe of Thorns,
curled like a foetus in the fluid that preserved his immortality, drifted the great King Huon, all his present helplessness
symbolised by his situation. Hatred alone sustained him as he schemed the punishment he would bring upon those who refused
the gift of his logic, of his sublime justice. But why could he not contrive to manipulate them as he manipulated the rest
of the world? Did some counterforce aid them, perhaps control them in ways he could not? This latter thought the mighty King
Emperor refused to tolerate.
—T
HE
H
IGH
H
ISTORY OF THE
R
UNESTAFF
Tr. Glogaeur
I
FELT TERRIBLE
when I woke up and realized that I was aboard one of the Dark Empire aircraft. The whole thing shuddered and
shouted as the metal wings beat at the air and the rotors labored to help keep us aloft. Inside, the ship was much noisier
than outside, and the stink of whatever chemicals fired the boilers was very powerful. I found I was not tied up but just
very stiff from lying in the cramped space behind one of the pilots’ seats. Two pilots and, I supposed, a gunner and a navigator
shared the cockpit. When the unmasked “navigator” turned to look at me, I wasn’t surprised to see Klosterheim.
He sported the air of a man who had seen all his schemes and plans reach fruition. How much had our recent actions actually
been manipulated by him and Gaynor? And not only
our
actions, of course, for there were many players in this game. More, probably, than we knew. Klosterheim and Gaynor had tricked
Monsieur Zodiac into pursuing them. Rid of him, at least for the moment, they let us escape from the safety of Mirenburg,
then pounced. Surely Prince Yaroslaf hadn’t been in league with them! Yet at that moment everything stank of treachery to
me.
Where were my friends? Had they been killed? There wasn’t room for anyone else in the plane’s cabin. Lieutenant Fromental
wouldn’t have been able to get in at all.
I felt sick.
I felt awful. Not just physically, from the fumes and cramp, but mentally as well. I wanted to vomit, but if I was going to
throw up, it would be, if I could manage it, all over one of my captors. I didn’t say anything, in case I sounded too feeble,
but I glared into Klosterheim’s eyes and was rewarded with a sense of endless vacuum, as if the entire multiversal void were
encompassed within that gaunt, unhappy creature. Strangely, I felt a kind of sympathy
for him. What must it be like to live with that emptiness?
By now I’d picked up a bit of his history from my friends. If he wasn’t immortal, he had lived for a very long time and survived
more than one experience of death, unless, as Prince Lobkowitz had told me, he had an avatar in a number of multiversal realms,
who knowingly carried on the agenda of his dead selves. Was
that
what immortality might be? Not one body living forever, but one personality living through hundreds or millions of versions
of the same body? Herr Klosterheim had seen scheme after scheme fail. He had been defeated more than once by those who Prince
Lobkowitz had referred to as being on “our side.” Indeed, defeat of one sort or another was almost all he had experienced.
Why didn’t he give up?
I think he read something of this in my eyes, for he turned away, muttering and snarling to himself. The ornithopter banked
sharply, and for a moment I thought I wasn’t going to be able to keep from throwing up. Then I sank into unconsciousness again.
When I next woke we were on the ground. I was alone. The engines had stopped. I heard distant voices and looked up to see
a crow mask peering down at me. I stared back. I tried to hear what was going on outside the cockpit. Klosterheim was talking
to someone in the guttural tones of Granbretan, a strange mixture of French and English. I wondered if, at some point, the
French had conquered England again and left this language as their heritage. Or was I hearing Norman English from a world
where William the Conqueror’s speech had come to dominate Anglo-Saxon rather than compromise with it?
Then Klosterheim and the others came clambering back in. I think we had stopped to refuel.
“What did you do with my friends?” I asked him. I was hoarse. My eyes still burned. I don’t think he even understood my words.
He settled himself in his seat as the canopy closed and the pilot began to get the machine’s steam up. The rotors whirred,
and the wings began beating as we lumbered up into the air.
