Mark Chadbourn - The Hounds of Avalon

‘Everyone does. From the life they’re living to the life they should be living.’

‘So, what — you’re saying I should learn how to use a gun so we can go out like Butch and Sundance?’

‘I get to be Sundance. He was the good-looking one.’

‘Stop it, Hunter.’

‘We’re going to do something, Hal, and you don’t have a choice. I just haven’t decided what yet.’

Hal tossed Hunter the bottle, then set off down the path towards the High Street without a backward glance.

‘They said Nero was mad, too!’ Hunter roared after him before laughing as if he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world.

Hal made his way along the High Street in the face of the gusting wind. Night was falling, earlier than he had anticipated. It would have been much more sensible to go back to his warm room, so perhaps he was as crazy as Hunter after all. The snow drifted against the shops and restaurants, still closed from the days before the Fall but close to coming back into use. Hal could see the occasional swept floor and fresh lick of paint, and sense an almost painfully building anticipation. Human nature was intrinsically optimistic; no one would imagine an even greater Fall coming so hard on the heels of the last one.

Hal picked his route randomly, letting his subconscious drag him this way and that, lost to his thoughts. His mind turned naturally to Samantha, as if she was the only thing in the world that truly mattered; he guessed in his world she probably was. Basically, he was pathetic, he decided; when it came to any kind of emotional life he was paralysed, stuttering like some monastic fool whenever he met a woman. Except this wasn’t just any woman. Samantha made him feel special whenever he saw her. But why couldn’t he express it to her? It was his parents’ fault, obviously, or his teachers’; some trauma during his formative years. Or perhaps he really was pathetic.

The city looked magical under the coating of snow. The dreaming spires gleamed white against the night sky, the domes and ancient rooflines like frosted cakes. Hal stood at the crossroads where the High Street met St Aldate’s and turned slowly in the deserted street. Surveying the city, he realised how much he loved it. It represented so much more than the agglomeration of bricks and mortar that shaped its fabric; its history made it a living thing; its dedication to centuries of learning made it something greater; and he couldn’t help but think that in some way they were spoiling it, though he couldn’t quite grasp how, or why.

As he shuffled around in the snow, raising little fountains of white every time he turned, movement caught his eye. Something was heading along Blue Boar Street. It was near to the ground — measured, tiny sparks of light floating in the gloom.

Hal hesitated. Thoughts of the strange, dangerous creatures that now existed beyond the city boundaries dampened his curiosity. But then a soft, lilting song floated out across the drifts, so light and organic it could have been a breeze itself. It was hypnotic, and before he knew what he was doing he had advanced to the end of the darkened side street.

The sight was stranger than anything he could have imagined. A column of tiny figures was making its way along the gutter — men, women and children little more than eight inches high, dressed in clothes that appeared to come from a range of different eras: medieval, Elizabethan, Georgian, some in Victorian top hats and long coats. Hal even made out miniature horses and minuscule dogs in the sombre procession. Some of the figures carried tiny lanterns aloft on crooked sticks to light their path as they walked and sang. A strange atmosphere hovered around them, like an invisible mist into which Hal had wandered. It felt as if he was in a dream, watching himself watching them.

The little man at the head of the column had a long, curly beard and eyes that gleamed all black as if cast in negative. He noticed Hal and held up a hand. The others came to a sudden halt. All eyes fell upon Hal.

‘What are you doing here?’ Hal said. It sounded as though his voice was coming from somewhere else.

‘What are you doing here?’ The little man’s voice had a deep, echoing quality.

‘I live here,’ Hal replied. He realised that he felt drunk or drugged, for he was responding to something that was inherently absurd, yet it all made the clearest sense to him in a way that things only did when you were intoxicated.

‘These are not the Fixed Lands,’ the little man said, puzzled. ‘These are the Far Lands. You are in Faerie, Son of Adam. Take care.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Hal replied. The little man’s face darkened and Hal decided it would be best to change the subject. ‘Where are you going?’

‘From here to there. And probably back again.’

‘Your song is very… pleasant.’

This compliment pleased the little man immeasurably. ‘We sing the Winnowing as we walk the boundaries of our dreams,’ he said proudly. ‘It is a song that came from the days when the worlds were new and we have learned it so deeply that it sings in our hearts, even when we sleep.’

‘Why are you singing? Are you celebrating something?’

The little man grew horrified at this. ‘Celebrating? Celebrating?’ he roared so loudly that Hal took a step back. ‘We sing to save the worlds! We sing to bind the weft! To keep all Existence from unravelling! For if we did not, who would? I ask you that, Son of Adam! Who would, in these dark and desperate times when all is falling apart?’

‘Oh. I see,’ Hal said, not seeing at all.

The little man leaned forward to peer at Hal curiously. ‘Is it…? Do my eyes deceive me? A Brother of Dragons?’

Hal grew instantly tense. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said, edging backwards.

‘A Brother of Dragons!’ The little man turned to his fellows and clapped his hands excitedly before returning his attention to Hal. ‘Then you join us in the defence of the worlds. You stand on the edge of the Great Gulf to hold back the night.’

The words filled Hal with a terrible dread. ‘I can’t do any of that.’

The little man looked puzzled at first, and then increasingly disturbed. ‘But you are a Brother of Dragons.’

‘Stop saying that!’ Hal snapped. ‘I don’t know what any of this means!’

With his heart thumping so hard that his pulse filled his head and drove out all thoughts, Hal ran from the side street, slipping and sliding through the snow, desperately searching for the life he knew.

The General sat in his office in Magdalen’s president’s lodgings surrounded by books describing military victories in minute detail, and sketches and paintings by war artists from down the years: the Crimean, the heat and dust of the South African veldt in the Boer War, the swamping mud of Flanders, the march into Berlin, the Belgrano going down, Kuwait with the burning oil fields in the background, Baghdad broken by cruise missiles. And there, at the end of the room facing his desk so that he would always see it, a painting of the Battle of London, four Fabulous Beasts circling, belching fire at a black tower while the capital burned in the background. The greatest defeat in a campaign of many defeats. A whole platoon wiped out by shape-shifting creatures in Scotland. The retreat from the Lake District. The Battle of Newcastle, during which the city was razed to the ground and the entire RAF obliterated.

And now this latest assault. He would defend his country with every whit at his disposal, but he couldn’t help thinking that he would be the one in the long, unbroken line of British military leaders who would preside over the complete destruction of the island nation.

On his desk were photographs of his wife and daughter taken before the Fall. These days they barely knew him, their presences passing like ghosts at irregular meals, or during the occasional function when he never even got time to speak to them. Would his sacrifice ever be recognised?