Fourth Horseman (20 page)

Dad’s getting better, but he’s a shadow of his former self. His mind is recovering, though he never talks about the horsemen. He views Alex and me with a wary eye, as though he is afraid that we will confirm that the nightmare really happened. We stay quiet, and pretend he’s just the same to us as he always was; our dad, our hero and role model. We all know it isn’t true. His confidence has been so badly shaken that it will be some time before he thinks about getting any kind of work, so Mum has given up her job with the England team and has opened a private practice in Worcester. It’s paying the mortgage, which is just as well. There was, of course, no bank draft. I wonder whether there would have been, even if the pick-up had been successful. So no outside office for Dad. No dojo for Alex. Oddly enough, we can live quite happily without them.

Manir hasn’t come home, but Attiya did get a letter from him, smuggled into India by a friend and posted from there. He was well when he wrote it, and keeping out of trouble. He missed them all terribly and promised he’d see them before long. I was touched when I heard that he had remembered to send his love to us.

Alex and Javed are still best mates, but for some reason I’ve lost the desire to hang around with them so much. I can’t see now why I ever wanted to. But sometimes, in rare, quiet moments, that strange bond is still there. The thing that we were destined to do is done. But we did our growing up together, and that isn’t something that people ever forget. Especially when it’s done all at once like that, on a single January morning.

I suppose I’ve changed as well. I’ve no job and no friends to speak of, but when you’ve looked into the eye of the apocalypse it’s very hard to keep on feeling sorry for yourself. I’m well on the way to getting a life. I’ve been put back into centre forward on the hockey team. I’ve started aikido, and I love it. And, although it’s still midwinter, I’ve put my name back on the cricket club list. I’m practising with Mum when the weather’s good, and I’m practising on my own with a soft ball against the wall when it’s not. All of a sudden I have no problem watching that ball, right on to the bat. I just can’t wait for the season to start.

The situation in Shasakstan still hasn’t been resolved. The Americans won’t admit it, but everyone knows they are changing their policies. Strategic talks are being held. Attiya says they’ll cut a deal. She says the tide has turned and things will begin to change, but not everyone is so optimistic. Some say the extremists are rallying in Shasakstan and elsewhere, and it will only be a matter of time before they raise a significant army and begin to spread their influence outwards from there. Perhaps they will. Perhaps they’ll even become the next world empire, the next white horseman. Their business interests might displace the American and European ones. But whatever happens, they will meet with resistance. That’s the nature of things. The white horseman has been striding through the world for thousands of years, with the red one and the black one at his side.

I think about them all the time, those horsemen, and I wonder who will, eventually, ride the pale horse? I know for certain that Dad wasn’t the only person working in that dreadful field of endeavour. It’s no secret that there are people out there trying to make viruses that will kill people of one race and not another. I often wonder whether they know what they’re doing, or whether they are like Dad was, under the grip of some power that they don’t understand. I hope they fail or, better still, come to their senses. Because as long as that awful pale horse remains riderless, the apocalypse will stay where it belongs.

Somewhere in the future.

Have you read about JJ’s encounter with Irish music, myth and magic in Kate Thompson’s award-winning novel,
The New Policeman
? JJ’s story continues in her fantastic new book,
The Last of the High Kings
. Turn over to read the opening pages …

On top of the mountain stood a hill of stones. It measured one hundred paces around the base and twenty paces from the bottom to the top. Of all the people of the seven tribes there was no one who could remember when it had been built, but of all the people of the seven tribes there was no one who could not remember why.

On top of the hill of stones stood a boy. He was barely twelve years old but he considered himself a man, already a proven warrior and hunter. If the talks going on in his father’s fort went well he would soon be married. If they went badly he would, even sooner, be dead.

The young man who stood beside him on the hill of stones was a cousin. He was short; barely taller than the boy, and some people said it was his small size that had made him so angry. He was the right man to go hunting with and the wrong man to have an argument with. He had killed stags and bears and men in close combat, and when he saw blood he always wanted to see more of it. But even he had not wanted to see this blood; the blood of his young cousin. It was with great reluctance that he had allowed himself to be persuaded to take on this watch.

Throughout the whole of the night the two of them had waited on the beacon, taking it in turns to rest, but never to sleep. A constant hard wind had been blowing against them but it hadn’t been that which kept them awake. They were watching for a messenger to tell them that the boy would live or a sign to tell them he would die.

Time after time, throughout that longest of nights, the boy wondered what had compelled him to speak. His father, as everyone had known he would, had asked for a hero, and the words were barely out of his mouth before the boy had called out with his own name. He hadn’t thought about it. Something in him that was quicker and deeper than thought had spoken. The meeting had exploded into uproar. A dozen men and women demanded to be chosen instead of the boy and the voice that shouted loudest and longest was that of the man who stood beside him now. But it was no use. Battling against his own powerful feelings, the boy’s father had quelled the storm. It was he who would be leading the forthcoming negotiations. It was right that his own flesh and blood should pay the price if they failed.

The fort on the edge of the plain could not be seen from the beacon, which was why two signalmen had been stationed at the edge of the mountain top. Both the fort and the mountain’s edge had brush pyres waiting to be lit if the talks broke down. The one at the fort would signal to the watchers on the mountain and theirs, in turn, would signal to the boy. All through the night he had stared in its direction, sometimes imagining he saw the red glow of fire or smelled the smoke from burning kindling. Now, as the day dawned, he could see the two men, more cousins, their backs turned towards him as they kept their careful watch upon the fort. In the daylight the fires would not be lit. There were other signals instead. Arms stretched up and held still for success and reprieve. Arms to the sides and then up, waving, for failure and death.

The boy wondered why it was all taking so long. Could they still be talking down there? Perhaps the meeting had finished hours ago and no one had thought of coming up to tell them. He sighed and stamped his sandalled feet in an effort to warm them.

‘Hungry?’ said his cousin.

‘No.’

There was bread and cold meat in a hide bag but neither of them had touched it all night. The boy rewrapped his cloak around him and fastened it with the gold pin that his mother had given him shortly before her death.

‘You keep this,’ he said. ‘If—’

But the young man shook his head. ‘If you die I will not be long coming after you. There are those who say I’m an angry man, but if I am made to spill your blood there isn’t a beast in the forest nor a man among the seven tribes that will not know what my anger looks like.’

The boy shook his head. ‘Don’t take it out on them,’ he said. ‘They aren’t to blame for this.’

But he saw, already, the glint of derangement in those dark brown eyes, and he realized that an early death had always been written on his cousin’s brow. And at that same moment he saw that the same thing was written on his own. His death was waving at him from the horizon. He saw the signallers turn back and look towards the plain, then wave again, more urgently.

‘Do it,’ he told his cousin.

‘Then say it.’ The boy looked and saw tears streaming down his cousin’s wind-burned face. He turned away from him and saw the signalmen running hard, in opposite directions, away from their unlit pyre.

Something was coming. Already. How could it all have happened so fast? The boy found that his knees were shaking so hard that they would scarcely support his weight.

‘I swear,’ he began, but his voice was constricted by fear and it squeaked like a child’s. The words would be worthless if he did not mean them.

The mountain was shaking. Huge, heavy feet were thundering up the hillside from the plain.

‘Say it,’ said his cousin.

Two enormous, monstrous heads appeared over the rim of the mountain top, then a third, then a fourth. The creatures had reached the top and were advancing on the beacon with massive strides, and they were far, far more terrible than he had ever imagined.

There was no more time. The boy took a deep breath and, as he did so, all doubt left him.

‘I swear that I will guard this place,’ he said, and his voice was clear and strong. ‘I will stay here and guard it whether I am alive or dead.’

The beasts were almost upon them. Behind him, the boy heard the whistling swish of a sword being swung through the air with ferocious strength.

And for a short while afterwards, everything was very, very still.

J
J LIDDY STOOD IN
the hall and yelled at the top of his voice.

‘Where’s Jenny?’

The old house, which had been full of noise and activity, fell silent and still. JJ groaned, then shouted again.

‘Has anybody seen Jenny?’

His wife, Aisling, came out of the sitting room. ‘I thought you were watching her,’ she said.

‘Well, I was, a minute ago,’ said JJ. ‘Then I couldn’t because she wasn’t there.’

Aisling gave a martyred sigh. Their eldest, Hazel, appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘She’s not up here,’ she said. JJ went out into the yard. ‘Jenny!’ he yelled, trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. If she knew that he was angry she would never come. ‘Jenny!’

She probably wouldn’t come anyway. She rarely did.

JJ went back into the house and began searching for his walking boots. He found them underneath a pile of cased instruments which were waiting beside the door to be packed into the car, and as he was putting them on Donal came down the stairs with a half-filled backpack.

‘Does that mean we aren’t going, then?’ he said. Donal was nine, and was by far the easiest of all Aisling and JJ’s children. He seldom had much to say, and he never made a fuss about anything.

‘Well, we can hardly go without her, can we?’ said JJ, tugging at a bootlace.

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Hazel, who was still at the top of the stairs, leaning on the banisters. ‘I don’t see why we have to let her ruin everything all the time.’

‘Bold Jenny,’ said Aidan, arriving on the scene with a hammer. He was going through an aggressive phase and Aisling and JJ spent a lot of their time trying to disarm him.

‘She wouldn’t care anyway,’ Hazel went on. ‘She doesn’t want to hang around with the rest of us; that’s why she’s always swanning off on her own. She probably wouldn’t even notice if we weren’t here when she got back. She’d probably be delighted.’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ said Aisling gloomily. ‘We can always go in the morning.’

‘It does matter,’ said Hazel irritably. ‘If we go in the morning we’ll miss the party, and that’s the whole point.’

‘I’ll find her,’ said JJ, lacing his second boot.

‘Yeah, right you will,’ said Hazel, stomping back to her bedroom.

JJ went out and shut the door behind him.

‘Bold Daddy!’ said Aidan, raising the hammer with both hands and aiming it at one of the glass panels in the door. Aisling snatched it out of his hand the instant before it hit the target and held it up high, out of his reach. He lunged at her and screamed, but she sidestepped and escaped into the kitchen. Silently, Donal retreated, leaving Aidan to finish his tantrum alone on the hallway floor.

As JJ crossed the field called Molly’s Place he felt his annoyance subsiding. More than that, he found he could almost sympathize with Jenny. Although it was midwinter the weather was mild. A gentle breeze blew a soft, misty drizzle in from the sea, and the grey hills which rose ahead of him were inviting. Why would anyone want to squeeze into a crowded car and be stuck there for three hours when they could stride off into the fresh, earth-scented wilds beyond the farm?

He spotted something in the grass and changed his course. One of Jenny’s shoes. It meant he was on the right track, at least. He looked up and caught a glimpse of something white on the mountainside far ahead. That big old goat again. It had been hanging around a lot lately, and it made JJ uneasy. He suspected that it might not be quite what it appeared to be. He suspected, as well, that Jenny was already a long, long way ahead. She hadn’t got that much of a head start, he was fairly sure, but she was capable of moving incredibly quickly once she had, as she always did, jettisoned her shoes.

JJ looked at his watch. It was two o’clock, which meant that there were still about three hours of daylight left in which to find her. They wouldn’t make it for dinner, but provided they were on the road by six they would still arrive in plenty of time for the party. His sister Marian had married an accordion player from Cork and their new year parties were famous in traditional music circles. They were one of the highlights of JJ’s year, and the annual trip to Cork was just about the only time the whole family went away together. Everyone loved it and looked forward to it. Everyone, that was, except Jenny.

JJ found the other shoe just inside the boundary wall of the farm. That was good luck. More often than not only one would turn up, and Jenny’s room was littered with shoes that had lost their partners.

‘Jenny!’