Бен Ааронович - Lies Sleeping

‘And you think you can just wish Merlin into existence?’ I asked.

‘No.’ Chorley gave me a disturbingly confident grin. ‘I think we can change existence so that Merlin is real. Given enough magic – enough juice, so to speak.’

‘Wow. I didn’t realise we were going to have to section you – I was hoping for a trial.’

But I was wondering whether he was right. There were definitely moments when I suspected that Beverley somehow warped the world into a more congenial shape around her. But she was a goddess, and did things beyond mortal ken. And anyway, if it were that easy Lady Ty’s husband would be ageless and her daughter slightly less gullible.

‘Martin,’ said Lesley, pocketing her pistol, ‘he’s stalling.’

‘Of course he is,’ said Chorley. ‘Are you ready?’

Lesley transferred the sword to her right hand.

‘Lesley, this is insane,’ I said. ‘He’s talking bollocks.’

Lesley ignored me and caught Chorley’s eye.

‘I do this and, whatever else, Punch dies?’

‘Dead as a doornail,’ said Chorley.

‘Good enough for me,’ said Lesley and swung the sword.

As I told the subsequent inquiry, I wasn’t sure what I thought I was doing, but I wanted to try and disrupt Chorley’s insane bit of ritual. Given that Lesley was armed with a sword, and Chorley wasn’t, my choice was obvious. While Lesley was swinging I tensed. And as she hit the bell I threw myself at Chorley.

There was a flash that had nothing to do with reflected photons, and a beautiful sound.

The sword is a singing sword, I thought, as the chime struck me like a wave of freezing water. My shoulder struck Chorley just below the armpit and he staggered. I was counting on him being more centred, but he must have been distracted by the beauty of the chime. Because he went over backwards, off the side of the cornice.

And me with him.

I’ve got to stop doing this, I thought, as I fell into the rainy black.

A much shorter distance than I was expecting. And onto mud, not flagstones.

I’d lost my grip on Chorley, so I rolled away on general principle. But not fast enough to avoid getting a kick in the head. I rolled some more but managed to hit a tree – and that’s when I knew where I was.

‘I don’t have time for this,’ said Chorley. Of course he didn’t. Because we were still falling and sooner or later real gravity was going to forcefully introduce us to the real flagstones of real London. ‘Deal with him,’ he said.

Not liking the sound of that, I used the tree trunk to pull myself up.

I was standing in light woodland, in dim grey light, morning or evening – I couldn’t tell – with a light drizzle and mist. Three metres in front of me was a short white man in a yellow buff coat, matching trousers and big floppy cavalry boots. He wore a breastplate over his coat and I just had time to register the pistol he was pointing at me when there was a click, a hiss, a loud bang and a cloud of smoke. Nothing else happened.

Matchlock pistol – effective range five metres in ideal conditions. Which these weren’t.

My cavalier didn’t seem at all surprised at the miss. He calmly stuffed the pistol in his belt, and pulled out a rather fine cavalry sabre with a basket hilt and an effective range of whatever it got close to.

Weirdly, my Metvest would have served quite well if only I could have persuaded him not to stick me in the face, or the arms or the groin – particularly not the groin.

I considered surrendering, but settled for ducking behind the tree.

The man gave me an annoyed grimace, like a builder who’s just been asked to do a bit of extra finishing up, and stepped forward. I could see in my head what was going to happen next. He’d feint one way and then stab me with the point when I moved the other way. The trunk of the tree suddenly seemed very small.

I was about to leg it in the other direction, on the basis I wasn’t the one wearing the metal armour, when a high-pitched ululation from nearby interrupted us both. My poor cavalier had just enough time to grumpily turn to face in the right direction when a javelin whistled out of nowhere and pierced his throat. He staggered a step backwards and then fell with a look of profound irritation on his face.

I was expecting Tyburn, but instead got a much younger white guy, tall and lithe, with blond hair spiked up with grease and blue swirls on his face and naked chest. A golden torc gleamed at his neck and a cape made of dozens of beaver pelts stitched together hung rakishly off his shoulders.

Before I had a chance to speak he closed the distance between us, grabbed me and kissed me on the lips. Proper snog too, with tongue and everything. Not only was it not terrible as kisses go, it was also strangely familiar.

‘Beverley,’ I said when we broke for air. ‘What the fuck is going on?’

‘War has come to London,’ he said and then, after a pause, added, ‘Again.’

‘Chorley is heading for the bridge,’ I said – looking around to get my bearings. ‘And I have to stop him.’

I was standing on high ground three hundred metres north of the ancient Thames, about where St Paul’s Church was standing in the real world. The landscape had a strange unreal quality and was shrouded in a weird mist, as if I were playing a video game with a short draw distance.

I was still falling.

None of this was real.

But I’ve learnt that just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean it’s not important.

I could look east at the wide and winding course of the river and see Londinium as a vague smudge. No walls, though – too early for them. The bridge was still there – laid low over pontoons to the first of the islands that made up Southwark. I thought something glittered on the central span.

To my south was the road, curving east before dropping down into the Fleet valley to that bridge and up again into Londinium.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘The road.’

‘Whatever you say, babes,’ he said and, grabbing my hand, starting running.

Fuck me, but these ancient rivers were fit. It was all I could do to keep up and I didn’t have any imaginary breath left to speak. This close to the city, the road was the proper full Roman – three metres of cambered gravel with big drainage ditches either side. The Fleet was about a kilometre ahead and I could actually see Chorley on the road, halfway there. But he was walking – limping, in fact – and I reckoned I could take him.

But Beverley wouldn’t let go of my hand.

‘Hold up, babes,’ he said.

There was a bestial howl from across the river and something black and doglike bounded down to the bank. Behind it thundered a couple of hundred men on horses, all in variations of the cuirass and long coat worn by my dead friend with the matchlock pistol.

That would be the Black Dog of Newgate, I thought, and the cavaliers might be riding the missing horses from Brentford.

To the right of the river crossing appeared, as if spawning into a video game, a couple of thousand burly men in mail and armour made of small plates of metal. They carried round shields, spears and axes and swords. On their heads were helmets that most definitely didn’t have horns on them.

‘So that’s where the Holland Park Vikings went,’ I said. ‘Mr Chorley has been a busy, busy man.’

Had he known there’d be a confrontation? Or was it just his usual planning in depth? I decided that would be one of the many things we would have a conversation about by and by.

And, if the unreconstructed Lego merchants weren’t enough, another mass came boiling out of the indistinct wattle and daub rectangles of Roman London. This was a rabble dressed from every period in London’s history – stout men in doublet and hose, crooked bravos in puffy shorts and jackets with slashed sleeves to show the silk shirts below. There were top hats and bowlers, swords and muskets and clubs and pikes. From this levy en masse came an ugly, hate-filled muttering.