Simon Green - The Man with the Golden Torc

"You soppy old softy, you," said Molly. She reached cautiously over and scratched one of the gryphons behind its long pointed ear, and it snuffled loudly in gratitude.

"Down!" I said suddenly.

Molly and I crouched down with the gryphons, just a gray silhouette in the growing dusk, while I watched the Sarjeant-at-Arms stalk out of the Hall’s main front entrance. He looked around the grounds, taking his time, but his gaze swept over Molly and me and the gryphons without slowing. Of course he wouldn’t believe the guns blowing each other up was just a malfunction. He lived to defend the Hall. More members of the family poured out of the entrance behind him, and the Sarjeant directed them this way and that with curt instructions. They swarmed around the exterior of the house, looking for signs of an attack or a break-in, while others fanned out across the grounds. A few even took off from the landing pads on the roof, in those clumsy old da Vinci helicopter chairs that the Armourer’s been trying to get the bugs out of for years. Rather them than me. They roared by overhead, spotlights stabbing down through the gathering gloom. I hadn’t expected such a dramatic response to a single incident. Presumably everyone was still on edge after the attack on the Heart. Or perhaps it was because I’d phoned and told them I was coming home…I liked to think so.

"You had to tell them you were coming," said Molly.

"The grounds defences have all been activated," I said to avoid answering her. "But as long as the Confusulum’s operating, they shouldn’t be able to lock on to us."

"Why are they all carrying weapons?" Molly said suddenly. "I thought you people mostly relied on your armour."

"Mostly, yes. But just recently there’ve been some serious attacks on the Hall. Really nasty ones. No one feels like taking chances anymore."

"Attacks?" said Molly. "By anyone I might know?"

"We don’t know who’s behind them," I said. "And if my family doesn’t know, no one knows. But that’s why they’re pulling out all the stops. The very thing I’d hoped to avoid, by sneaking in. Bloody Alistair and his stupid bloody robot guns."

"Should we leave?" said Molly. "Maybe come back some other time?"

"We don’t have the time," I said. "For better or worse, this is the only chance we’ll get. You still game?"

"Always," she said, grinning. "Let’s go start some trouble."

"Let’s," I said, grinning back at her.

We gave the gryphons a few last pats, and then pushed them firmly away and sprinted across the open lawns towards the house. In the growing dusk, we should look like just two more moving figures. If the family were bracing themselves for an attack by the kind of thing that had broken into the Sanctity, they shouldn’t be looking for merely human targets. I could feel the grounds’ defences trying to kick in: all the hidden trapdoors and deadly weapons, all the scientific and magical devices in their underground silos, but none of them could lock on to Molly or me as long as we were protected by the Confusulum. Force shields snapped on and off all around us, magical energies manifested and dispersed in a moment, and none of them could touch us. The grounds’ defences were baffled. But there were still far too many people around, too many Droods between us and the Hall. Someone would be bound to challenge us soon.

"We need a diversion," I said to Molly. "Something big and dramatic, to draw people away from the front of the house."

"No problem," said Molly, breathing just a little hard from the running. "Watch this."

She muttered under her breath and gestured sharply, and suddenly a huge dragon was hovering over the Hall. A massive creature, with a long golden-scaled body and vast, flapping membranous wings. It shrieked horribly as it descended on the Hall, a horrid horned head thrusting forward on the end of a snakelike neck. It was impossibly big, half the size of the house, and it tore great holes in the outer wall of the east wing with casual blows from its clawed hands. It breathed fire across the landing pads on the roof, sweeping away all the vehicles there in one great blast of flames. It screamed in triumph and slammed into the Hall with one great shoulder so hard that the whole building shook.

"Will that do?" said Molly.

"Where the hell did you find a dragon that size?" I said. "I am officially impressed, Molly. Honest. But that is my home, and I would rather like to have some of it left at the end of the day! Does the word overkill ring any bells with you? Are you sure you can even control it?"

"Of course," said Molly. "I once took a thorn out of its paw. Relax, Eddie, it’s not a real dragon. Just another charm off my bracelet."

"So the damage it’s doing to the Hall isn’t real either?"

Molly frowned. "Well, yes and no."

"Let’s get inside quick," I said. "Before the family works out what’s happening."

Most of the family had gone around to the back of the house by now to deal with the most obvious threat, leaving the front of the Hall undefended. Just open lawns between me and the front entrance. And then the scarecrows appeared out of nowhere, blinking in to block my way. First one, then two, and finally an even dozen. I grabbed Molly by the arm, and we skidded to a halt well short of them. They moved stiffly to take up defensive positions between us and the front entrance, their gloved hands stiff as claws. Unnaturally still, impossibly strong. Twelve scarecrows come down off their crosses, wearing battered clothes from various periods all the way back to the seventeenth century. The Drood family’s most hated enemies, made over into scarecrows to guard the Hall they’d threatened. Just because we could. The scarecrows’ faces were weather-beaten, taut, brown as parchment, and just as brittle. Tufts of straw protruded from the ears and from the mouths, but their eyes remained still alive, endlessly suffering.

"Are those the…?" said Molly.

"Yes," I said. "Someone in the Hall has panicked and let the scarecrows loose. Our fiercest enemies, defeated and put to use. Their bodies hollowed out and filled with straw while they were still alive, and then bound by unbreakable pacts to defend the Hall, to their destruction if necessary. Not dead, any of them. They couldn’t still suffer, if we let them die. If you listen in on the right supernatural frequency, you can hear them screaming."

"Oh, my God," said Molly. "That’s Laura Lye, the water elemental assassin, the one they called the Liquidator. And that’s Mad Frankie Phantasm. I always wondered what happened to them."

"No one attacks the family where we live and gets away with it," I said.

"We take that personally. And we always did like a splash of irony with our revenge. So now you know what waits for us, if we get this wrong."

"Why isn’t the Confusulum dealing with them?" said Molly.

"Good question. I think…because the scarecrows exist on the border between life and death, neither one nor the other. Their nature is already so confused the Confusulum probably couldn’t make it worse if it tried."

"Are we in trouble here?" Molly said carefully.

"Absolutely," I said. "Because of what they are, and what was done to them, the scarecrows can’t be hurt, stopped, or turned aside."

"So what do we do?"

"We take them down hard," I said. "Because in the end they’re just scarecrows, while we’re Eddie Drood and Molly Metcalf."

"Damn right," said Molly.

I armoured up, the living metal sweeping over me, and I went to meet the scarecrows as they lurched forward. The golden armour made me strong again, despite the pain stabbing through all of my left side now. I slammed into the first scarecrow and tore it apart with brute armoured force. I ripped its arms off, smashed in its chest, and then tore the head right off its shoulders and threw it away. The other scarecrows crowded around me, beating at me with their stone-hard fists, pulling at my shoulders, but even their unnatural strength was no match for my armour.