Mark Chadbourn - The Hounds of Avalon

This time Shavi laughed heartily. ‘Mallory, your self-deprecation belies your true essence. I can see it. Allow yourself to see it.’

Mallory nodded, but the question he really wanted answered died on his lips. He wasn’t concerned about himself. His desperate need to know the meaning of life and death, and whether death itself was an ending, was driven by Sophie. Was there hope for her, somewhere beyond the world? Would he ever meet her again?

They travelled for as long as they could, but the cold forced them to take regular breaks in any shelter they could find. At Barnsley House, Mallory searched for the Fabulous Beast and Jenny at Shavi’s insistence, but they were gone. Yet there was still a faint echo of their presence in the air, like the intense atmosphere in a cathedral.

Somehow they made it across the freezing wastes without dying from the cold or starvation. They had come across many people frozen in their homes, their last fuel now ashes in the fireplace, their cupboards bare. After the Fall and the plague, humanity was barely clinging on; the new ice age was a crisis too far.

As they neared Oxford, they became distracted from the humanitarian crisis. Not far from the outskirts, Mallory reined in his horse on a ridge to survey a curious sight: a row of figures moving across a field in the wan, late-afternoon light. At first he thought they were residents of the nearby village, but their regimented actions made little sense.

‘They are not human,’ Shavi said quietly, as if he could read Mallory’s thoughts. His head was back, his eyes closed so that he appeared to be either listening intently or smelling the air. ‘I feel

… despair. It rises off them like smoke from a bonfire. They are all empty… shells given animation. Their humanity twisted, perverted.’

Shavi’s words confirmed what Mallory thought he could see: weapons protruding from the bodies of the figures themselves as if they had been implanted by some horrific surgical technique. ‘The enemy,’ Mallory said, recalling his encounter with them at Cadbury Hill. He scanned the area. ‘Advance troops.’

‘They are encircling Oxford,’ Shavi said. Mallory didn’t think to ask how he could possibly know this. ‘That is where the last stand will take place. And the enemy wants to make sure that no one will leave alive to drum up any further opposition.’

‘Then the sensible option would be to stay outside town, mount some kind of guerrilla action behind enemy lines.’

‘It would, if you think we could survive out here and maintain cover while their troops mass.’

Mallory considered what Hunter had told him about the vast and increasing numbers of the Lament-Brood in Scotland. ‘What’s the alternative? Suicide? If we go into Oxford, we’ll never get out. They’ll have us trapped. Then how will we find the Void and destroy it?’

‘The Brothers and Sisters of Dragons should be united for the last stand. That is the will of Existence.’

‘What if Hunter hasn’t been able to get through enemy lines?’ He paused, then answered the question himself. ‘That’s a risk we’ll have to take. He’ll be heading towards the meeting place, so that’s where I ought to be.’

In the distance, purple mist drifted against the gleaming white background. Mallory knew it was more of the enemy, circling closer, drawing their lines together. ‘Let’s wait until night falls, then slip through between their patrols.’

In the depths of a copse now stripped of summer leaves by the biting cold, they watched the distant movement of dark figures against the snow, occasionally swathed in that eerie purple mist like soldiers on a First World War battlefield. Their numbers were increasing slowly, the space between patrols growing smaller. Night wasn’t coming fast enough. The horses stamped restlessly on the edge of the stand of stark trees, snorts of hot breath billowing.

Twilight eventually came in fast and hard. Mallory and Shavi shook relentlessly with the cold, yearning for a fire or some movement to warm their blood. The dangers of exposure were readily apparent, and whenever Mallory saw Shavi’s eyes begin to flutter shut, Mallory shook him awake with hands that could barely feel what they were touching.

Eventually, though, the cold proved the greater enemy and even Mallory began to succumb. His eyelids grew heavy and he fought to keep them open, pinching himself hard on the face, punching tree trunks, while watching for the last glimmer of light to fade.

The enemy moved across a field, ghostly against the growing gloom. Mallory’s eyes dimmed momentarily, and when he forced them open again, the enemy were even nearer; Mallory could hear the crunch of their feet in the frosted snow. He pulled Shavi down, then eased them a few paces backwards so that they could more easily merge into the background vegetation.

Complete darkness was only a few minutes away.

Through branches and twigs, he watched the patrol’s slow movement along the edge of the copse… and watched… and…

He woke with a start as activity exploded around him, cursing with the realisation that the vampire cold had sucked away his consciousness. It was dark, but the snow added an eerie luminescence to everything. Streams of purple mist floated amongst the trees.

Shavi’s cry for help echoed from somewhere nearby. Mallory forced himself alert, then propelled his stiff, cold body forward in a lurching, drunken motion through the silver trees, his limbs too numb to feel any sensation. With a shock, he realised that the enemy were everywhere. Their ghostly figures loomed all around, sometimes standing motionless so that they appeared to be part of the copse itself, at other times stalking at a slow, measured pace. The oppressive atmosphere of despair made Mallory even more sluggish. There was whispering, too, so subtle it felt like the wind in the branches, urging him to give up, give in, die.

Another cry for help. The direction now clear, Mallory propelled himself forward once more. Two members of the Lament-Brood had Shavi pinned. Deep ruts marred the snow where he had been dragged. Blood ran down his face from a head wound that must have stunned him, and now one of the Lament-Brood was poised to complete the job with a spear protruding from its forearm.

Mallory drew Llyrwyn and the copse was suddenly flooded with sizzling blue light so strong that it shocked him motionless for a split second. Sapphire flames blazed around the edge of the blade, and the familiar smell of burned iron flooded the air.

Though the Lament-Brood appeared to be little more than machines, the two holding Shavi shied away from the burning sword. The spear hung mere inches from being plunged into Shavi’s face.

Mallory bounded in, swinging Llyrwyn in an arc. It sliced through neck muscles and bone with a sizzle and the head flew into a snow drift where it stared at Mallory with wide eyes.

The other attacker, a more brutish and alien creature than his decapitated comrade, swung an arm with a fan of knives protruding from the wrist. His blood now hot and pulsing with adrenalin and the strange energy of the sword, Mallory ducked the attack, drove Llyrwyn hard into the creature’s belly and then used all his strength to rip upwards. As it flopped backwards hanging in two halves, Mallory grabbed Shavi’s arm and yanked him to his feet.

‘Leave me here,’ Shavi said. ‘If you try to get me out they will have you, and that will be the end of all hope for humanity. You are the important one now, not me.’

Mallory looked around. The Lament-Brood were moving towards them from all directions through the ghostly trees. Shavi was right: if he ran, he could escape through the gaps to reach the horses. If he had to manhandle Shavi, he wouldn’t have a chance.