The Sacrifice (24 page)

‘Kiss yourself,’ said Sam.

‘I’ll fettle thee!’

Matt watched them for a few seconds then
made a sign and what happened next shocked Sam. One of the acolytes grabbed hold of The
Kid and pulled his sleeveless leather jacket off, then two more of them pulled down the
top of his flowery dress. This time The Kid struggled, but it was no use, he was
overpowered. The acolytes took him over so that he was standing facing the cage. Matt
then tied his skinny wrists to the bars with two thick leather bootlaces. They cut into
The Kid’s skin and his hands started to go red.

‘What are you doing, you
perverts!’ The Kid yelled. ‘Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty
apes!’

Sam turned to Tish for support, for some sort
of explanation; he was too upset to speak. Tish looked embarrassed and slightly ashamed.
She shrugged and turned away.

An acolyte passed Matt a horsewhip. Sam
couldn’t believe he was going to use it on The Kid. But then Matt stepped forward
and touched the tip of it to The Kid’s back.

‘Tell us your name.’

‘No,’ said The Kid quietly.

‘You will tell us or I will beat it
out of you.’

‘It’s none of your bloody
business.’

‘You can’t hide behind your lies
any longer. We
will
discover the truth.’

‘You can shove the truth up your hairy
arse, you church monkey.’

One of the acolytes had gone up into the
pulpit and now started to ring a handbell,
clang-clang-clang
. One by one the
children in the cathedral, all except the ones playing the music, drifted over and
formed a semicircle round the cage. A sea of green.

‘Only in pain will the truth be
revealed,’ said Matt. ‘We must force the demon from the flesh.’

‘If you hurt him I swear I will kill
you,’ Sam sobbed.

‘Whoever spares the rod hates his
son,’ said Matt. ‘But he who loves him is diligent to discipline
him.’

‘I swear I will!’

‘Tell us your name!’ Matt cried
out, his voice echoing in the vast emptiness of the cathedral.

‘No!’

‘You’ll tell us eventually. Tell
us now and spare yourself the pain.’

‘Oh bondage, up yours.’

‘Your name!’ Matt brought the
whip down and it cracked
into The Kid’s back, a deeper thud
sounding under the harsh slap. The Kid leapt and writhed, straining at the cords that
only cut deeper into his wrists. An ugly red stripe appeared diagonally across his
skin.

‘Tell us your name.’

‘No.’

The Kid yelped as Matt brought the whip
swishing down again. He sagged against the bars, sweat pouring down his back. He was
muttering and mumbling. The second lash made a squashed X on his skin and welts were
beginning to rise up. Sam couldn’t move; one of the boys was holding him still. He
looked round at the green-clothed congregation. Some looked upset, hands clamped over
their mouths, staring wide-eyed; others looked at the floor; a few of them were
sniggering and pointing.

Matt had a wild look. He was enjoying this.
Sam thought this was about nothing more than showing off his power. That and getting his
kicks. This was the worst bullying Sam had ever seen. And it was so unfair. The Kid
hadn’t done anything. He was a nice guy. To see him beaten like this was more than
Sam could bear. He tried to pull away from his guard, to kick his shins. But it was
useless. The boy was strong and knew what he was doing. Sam obviously wasn’t the
first person he’d held like this.

Thwack
. The whip lashed down for a
third time and The Kid jumped like a kicked cat.

‘Tell us your name. I won’t stop
until you tell us your real name!’

Tell him your name
, Sam pleaded
silently,
please
.

‘It’s Angus,’ The Kid
wailed as if he could hear Sam’s thoughts. ‘My name’s Angus Day. Now
just leave me alone, will you?’

Matt suddenly stopped. His arm went limp. All
the kids stood shocked and silent. Sam didn’t know what had happened, why The
Kid’s real name was so important.

‘You’re lying,’ said
Matt.

‘I’m not,’ said The Kid.
‘Why would I lie? What difference does it make if that’s my name? Angus Day?
It’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?’

Sam heard a girl standing nearby whisper to
her friend, ‘We’ve made a mistake.’

Matt scratched his bald shaven head quickly,
like a monkey.

A church monkey
, thought Sam.

Matt nodded to Archie and the two of them
moved away to talk quietly and excitedly with each other. Tish went forward and asked
The Kid something. He shook his head. She gently stroked his back, trying to comfort
him.

The boy finally let go of Sam, who called
him a bastard and a few other things. The boy looked away, not wanting to catch
Sam’s eye.

Presently Matt returned with Archie, both
looking worried.

‘Untie him,’ Matt said.
‘It’s possible we’ve been deceived. Things might not be as
straightforward as they appeared. The Goat is a trickster. He can’t be
trusted.’

Sam grinned. They’d bought some time.
The Kid’s real name obviously meant something to these children, but he had no
idea what.

Matt approached him, stared into Sam’s
face, searching for something.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘We need to
put them both into the cage.’

‘This is your last chance to back
out. I don’t want to force any of you to do anything you don’t want and
nobody’s gonna say anything or think badly of you.’ Ed looked along the row
of familiar faces: impossible to read. They all looked pretty grim, but that could mean
anything.

None of them said anything.

‘OK, this is my idea,’ Ed went
on. ‘To be honest with you, Jordan Hordern didn’t want me to do this at all.
He’d rather I stayed here and didn’t risk losing anyone else. And it
is
a risk. I can’t lie about that. We don’t know what to expect
when we get into the no-go zone. It’s going to be bad, though. We know that much.
You all came with me the other day to rescue Tish, which is why I asked you. You know
what to expect.’

‘Yeah,’ said Kyle.
‘Sickos.’

‘Exactly,’ Ed went on. ‘We
took down a few of them, but there’s gonna be more. So, as I say, anyone have any
doubts, you can step down now and that’ll be the end of it.’

Still nobody said anything. Nobody
moved.

Ed smiled, his scar pulling his face out of
shape.

They were standing by the big black gates of
Middle Tower. Beyond those gates was the outside world.

There were five of them in all. They were the
first people he’d asked and none of them had refused. They respected him and
wanted to help. As well as crazy Kyle, who rarely left Ed’s side, Ed had chosen
Hayden as she was the fastest runner in the Tower and had a cool head. Then Macca and
Will. The two of them had fought well the other morning and hadn’t panicked. Will
was smart; he’d help Ed make any tough decisions. Macca enjoyed a fight, had very
good eyesight and was pretty handy with a crossbow. And lastly there was Adele, dressed
from head to toe in pink and silver, a ladybird pin in her hair, but you still
wouldn’t want to mess with her.

‘OK.’ Ed checked his mortuary
sword, hanging from a scabbard at his belt, and tightened the straps. He was wearing his
lightest armour and, as well as his sword, he carried a mace in his backpack, the heavy
iron head sticking out of the top.

‘All we know is that Sam was heading
for Buckingham Palace,’ he said. ‘About three or four miles west. The most
direct, and the safest, way would be to keep close to the Thames and follow it along.
That way we have the river at our shoulder the whole time. No risk of getting lost and
no risk of attack from that side. If I was Sam that’s the route I’d’ve
gone.’

‘Why don’t we do what DogNut did
and take a boat?’ Macca asked. ‘We could skip the whole zone
then.’

‘No.’ Ed shook his head and took
a map out of his pack. ‘We need to be on Sam’s trail. He might still be in
the zone somewhere. We have to follow the way we think he went. Look for signs,
anything.’

He opened the map out on top of a collection
box that had once taken visitor donations for the upkeep of the
castle
and pointed out the route to his gang, following it with his finger.

‘We cut along Lower Thames Street into
Upper Thames Street then we go along Victoria Embankment until we reach Charing Cross
station. That’s where we’ll move away from the river. Up through Trafalgar
Square and along the Mall to the palace. It’s almost a straight line. If we keep
our speed up it should take us an hour and a half, two hours max. It all depends on what
we find along the way. Streets could be blocked, there could be too many sickos, God
knows what, so we have to be prepared to change our route if we have to, and just hope
that if we come up against anything bad we can ram our way through. From what we know
this first bit’s gonna be the most dangerous. Hopefully once we’ve cleared
the zone the streets will be safer.’

‘Why do we assume that?’ asked
Will. ‘We don’t know anything about what’s out there.’

‘Tish came from some camp near
Trafalgar Square,’ Ed explained. ‘And from what Sam told me, some kid turned
up where his people were hiding out. He was from the palace and he persuaded all
Sam’s mates to go into the centre of town because he said it was safer there. The
bit between here and Charing Cross is the bit we don’t know about. The sickos in
there don’t follow the rules. They don’t always sleep in the day.
They’re smarter and pretty unpredictable. So we go fast, but not so fast that we
might miss any signs of Sam and the others.’

‘What sort of signs?’ asked
Hayden, who was doing some warm-up stretches as if she was about to run a race.

‘I don’t know, Hayden,’ Ed
shrugged, trying not to sound too clueless. ‘Signs of a fight, blood, dead sickos.
I
can’t say right now. We just have to get a feel for the
streets as we go.’

‘So we head for the palace?’
said Hayden. ‘And what do we do if he’s not there when we turn
up?’

‘We work our way back, I guess,’
Ed replied. ‘At least we’ll have a better idea of what’s in the
zone.’

‘So why don’t we just search the
zone properly first?’ asked Will.

‘It’s too big, too dangerous
and, if Sam
did
make it through, we’d be wasting our time, putting
ourselves in danger for no reason. We can’t try and guess what might have happened
to him along the way; all we can do is try and guess the route he took.’

‘Why don’t we just –?’
Macca started to say, but Kyle interrupted.

‘Why don’t we just get
going?’ he said. ‘We’re wasting time here. Let’s get out there
and crack some sicko skulls.’

He swung his heavy battleaxe and leered at
the others with a wicked grin. They backed away from him, some complaining, some
laughing, some swearing at him.

A bunch of kids – that’s all they were
– getting ready for a school trip.

Ed watched them, hoping that he wasn’t
leading them into disaster. They were good kids. Tough. Fit. All fighters. They had a
pretty good chance. If only Jordan had let him take more, though. They were hardly an
army, barely even a raiding party, but Ed had promised to stick by Jordan’s
rules.

He thought about Small Sam, setting off out
there with just The Kid and Tish for protection. He was struck again by how brave the
two boys were, how lucky to have survived on the streets by themselves. He just hoped
their
luck was holding out. Hoped they’d be found safe and
unharmed at the palace, reunited with Sam’s sister. Feet up, roasting their toes
at the queen’s fireplace.

Ed had to accept, though, that this was a
fool’s errand, crazy, doomed. The chances of finding Sam if he
was
stuck
somewhere were tiny and the chances of him making it through alive were even tinier.

Ed had to try, though.

Because he’d also made a promise to
Sam, hadn’t he?

His scar was throbbing, burning with a cold
fire, like it always did when he was tense. Best not to think any more. Best to just get
out there and take it moment by moment. He remembered what he’d said to Jordan
last night, that the first thing to go out the window in a battle was your plan.

He stuffed the map into the back pocket of
his jeans.

‘Open up,’ he called to the
gatekeeper who unlocked the gates and wished them luck as they trooped out of the
castle.

It was a dull, overcast day, looked like it
might rain later. Ed rubbed his scar as they regrouped on the wide terrace.

‘Thanks, guys,’ he said.
‘I appreciate this.’

‘Will you stop yapping and get a shift
on?’ said Kyle. ‘Brain-biter grows hungry.’ A couple of the other kids
laughed a touch nervously as Kyle kissed the blade of his axe. ‘Any sicko wants to
mess with us will end up a dead sicko – the best kind.’ He rested his axe on his
shoulder. He wasn’t bluffing. He was enjoying this.

‘Let’s go then.’ Ed walked
off and after a moment’s hesitation the others gave a cheer and followed.

They went down to Lower Thames Street, the
road
that ran closest to the water. Like so much of London, it was a
jumbled mix of old and new. It didn’t run directly along the embankment; large
buildings lay between it and the riverside, mostly converted warehouses, factories and
offices that had once served the busy river trade, with narrow lanes running between
them. It would only be when they reached Victoria Embankment that the road would
actually pass directly along the river’s edge.

They moved at a fast jog, sticking close
together, with Ed and Kyle slightly out in front. Now that they were on the go Ed felt
the familiar cold calm settling over him. There was nothing more to think about. He had
made his move. What would be would be.

He could sense Kyle’s mood. Very
different to his. Kyle was hyped up, jittery, looking for a fight. He was the most
likely to disobey Ed’s commands and Ed needed to keep him under control.