Herbie Brennan - The Faeman Quest

‘How?’

Corin spread his hands in a helpless gesture and smiled broadly. ‘You think the Table of Seven let me know their plans?’ The smile faded and he added soberly, ‘But I can guess. At least I can tell you what I’d do if I wanted to use manticores as weapons.’

‘What?’

Corin took a deep breath and released it as a sigh. ‘I’d herd them into position, feed them St John’s wort, then stampede them into your army.’

Pyrgus stared at him. ‘My Gods!’ he exclaimed as the implications sank in. He found himself picturing the scene. St John’s wort sent manticores berserk. One great beast could kill a score of soldiers before it was slaughtered in its turn. A herd of them would decimate an entire army within minutes. The bloodshed would be unimaginable.

Corin shrugged. ‘May never happen, Pyrgus – it’s only rumours. May not be what the Table is planning at all. Haleklind is always full of gossip.’

Pyrgus said, ‘Did you know there’s a colossal herd massed on the Empire’s border?’

‘Of manticores? No, I didn’t.’ He looked seriously at Pyrgus, waiting.

Pyrgus closed his eyes briefly, reopened them and said, ‘We have intelligence that the Table of Seven plan to attack the Realm using manticores as their secret weapon. I don’t know exactly how they propose to use them, but after what you’ve just said…’ He let his words trail off.

Corin, who knew Pyrgus very well, was staring at him intently. ‘That’s not all, is it?’

Pyrgus shook his head. ‘The Realm may retaliate with a neutron spell.’ He could not quite bring himself to tell the whole truth, which was that Blue had no intention of waiting to retaliate. At the first definite sign of threat, she would order a pre-emptive strike.

There was silence between them. ‘Oh,’ Corin said at length. He looked away, as if unwilling to meet Pyrgus’s eye. ‘Neutron spells are illegal under international law.’

‘Nevertheless…’ Pyrgus said.

‘A neutron spell would kill the entire Haleklind army and wipe out the manticores.’

Pyrgus realised he would have to tell him. ‘Actually, it could be just the manticores. My sister may not wait for the Haleklind army to get involved.’

‘ Just the manticores?’

‘I know, I know,’ Pyrgus agreed. He reached out and gripped Corin’s arm. ‘We have to do something.’

‘How can I help you? How can the Haleklind Society for the Preservation and Protection of Animals help you?’ Corin glanced briefly towards the door. ‘Hael, we’re a subversive organisation now: there must be something we can blow up.’

‘I’ve had an idea,’ Pyrgus said. ‘How many men can you muster?’

‘Muster for what? Are we talking soldiers here for fighting? Or saboteurs? What?’

Pyrgus knuckled his eyes tiredly. ‘Corin, I don’t suppose you know how manticores might be safely herded? Large numbers of them. Without too much risk of stampede.’

‘Actually I do,’ Corin said. ‘You use torches made from rosemary.’

Pyrgus looked up. ‘The plant?’

Corin nodded. ‘Manticores don’t like fire, but they’re not nearly as afraid of it as other animals. You might shift them using torches, but they could just as easily turn on you. They don’t seem to mind taking a small burn if it allows them to disarm you – knock the torch away, I mean. But burning rosemary has a peculiar effect on them. They won’t come near it for one thing, so you’re safe from attack; and at the same time it seems to sedate them, so you can usually persuade them to move where you want them to without too much difficulty. Is this what you need men for?’

‘What worries my sister is the herd on the border. I thought if we could move it away…’ He sighed and made a helpless gesture. ‘It would buy us time, at least. But the operation would have to be quick and clean. If the manticores move towards the border…’

‘Queen Blue will use the neutron spell?’

‘She might. Dammit, she will! I know Blue.’ He looked at Corin. ‘Can you find enough men for the job? They’ll have to be sensible and quick off the mark and able to follow orders precisely and have enough initiative to deal with emergencies – if a manticore left the herd, for example.’

‘It’s a huge herd,’ Corin said, shaking his head. ‘We’d need an awful lot of good men.’

‘So you can’t do it?’

‘I didn’t say I couldn’t do it,’ Corin told him. ‘If you supervise the making of the torches, I’ll round up the men.’

‘Something’s happening,’ Henry said quietly. There was no change on the Operations Table yet, but it looked like definite movement on the viewglobes. He leaned forward for a better, closer look.

There was a lot of noise in the Situation Room – people talking, people moving, people shouting orders – but Blue seemed to be attuned to him because she was at his side at once. ‘What’s the matter, Henry?’

What was the matter was that the manticores were moving. He was almost sure of it. And if he was right, it was war and his wife would vent the fury of a neutron spell on Haleklind. ‘I’m not sure,’ Henry said. ‘Maybe nothing.’

Blue stared past him at the globe. ‘You think they’re moving, don’t you?’

‘Blue,’ Henry said, ‘about the neutron thing -’

‘Don’t make this any more difficult for me, Henry. I must preserve the Realm.’

‘Yes, but not that way. Not by killing thousands… probably tens of thousands…’

Blue said tiredly, ‘Tell me another way. You were here when we discussed it. Tell me a better way.’ When Henry didn’t answer, she turned her back on the globes. ‘There’s no sign of troop movements,’ she said firmly. ‘They won’t use the manticores without conventional back-up. It would make no sense.’ She stopped to stare around the bustle in the Situation Room, then added almost dreamily, ‘I’m sure Madame Cardui will alert us to troop movements.’ Henry thought she looked exhausted, which she probably was. They’d both missed sleep lately.

He turned back to the globes. The technology was not a million miles away from what he was used to in his own world. The feed came from cameras strategically placed at points along the border. What the cameras saw could be changed, at least to some degree, by remote control. Since the equipment used magical energy, the enemy could cut no cables, could block no television signals; and the cameras themselves were so well protected they were virtually indestructible. But there were three serious flaws. The first was that the picture quality was poor. The second was that the pictures themselves were small, with no means of enlargement. (Mr Fogarty had once explained why: something to do with a geometric progression of energy needs.) The third, and most troublesome of all, was that the picture could not be refreshed in real time. Instead it reacted to the position of the moon. The result was that in certain phases, the pictures on the viewglobes ran as smoothly as a movie, while in others the update was jerkier than an old dial-up internet connection. Unfortunately they were in a jerky internet moon phase at the moment.

Blue was probably right. If there were no troops to back them up, it would make little sense to send the manticores stampeding across the border. Except that he thought he’d spotted movement close to the herd. Not troop movement, to be sure – so far there were only a few figures – but maybe the preliminary to troop movement: forward scouts searching out the best positions for an approaching army. Or maybe nothing at all, a small party of Haliklind tourist hikers who’d wandered off the beaten track. Henry shut his eyes. He really would have to stop thinking the worst in every situation. If this went on, he’d start imagining Lord Hairstreak had made a miraculous comeback and was plotting to take over the planet.