Бен Ааронович - Lies Sleeping

I’ve faced groups like this at closing time. Drunk, angry people spoiling for a fight. You can talk down most Saturday night wastemen but there’s always a hard core who don’t think it’s a proper night out if someone doesn’t get hurt.

Among them rode men on horses, singly or in groups of three or four. They were straight-backed and arrogant and stank of money. I’d faced these too, but not as often – the likes of me didn’t get to feel their collars very often.

‘Who the fuck are they?’ I asked.

‘That’s the gentry and their servants,’ said blond Beverley. ‘All the liars, hypocrites, exploiters, dog-bastards, wankers, janissaries, Monday men, cat-ranchers and people who fly-tip in protected waterways.’

‘There’s a lot of them,’ I said.

‘What can I say?’ said Beverley. ‘It’s London, isn’t it?’

I couldn’t do the calculation in my head, but I was pretty sure that falling twelve metres at 9.8 m/s2 meant I was going to hit the flagstones in just over a second. And whatever the real time/weirdo memory of London ratio was, I didn’t think I had time to hang about.

I didn’t need to fight them all. I just had to reach Chorley before he got to the bridge.

‘Let’s go,’ I said, but Beverley put his hand on my arm to stop me.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Got reinforcements coming.’

I heard them before they arrived. It was like a thousand pots and pans being rhythmically rattled against each other. And through the soles of my feet the stamp-stamp-stamp of thousands of hobnailed sandals hitting the ground in unison.

But trotting out of the arbitrary draw distance came a pair of shaggy ponies, manes plaited and beribboned in yellow and green, drawing a wickerwork chariot with big wheels. Standing in the forward driving position was the first Tyburn, this time smartly dressed in a metal lorica, segmented skirt and deep red cloak. The only thing he was missing was a helmet with a horsehair plume.

He did a flash little stop and swerve so that the open back of the chariot was towards me.

‘Up you get,’ he said, and pulled me into the chariot. ‘Here they come.’

I looked to the west just in time for an entire bloody Roman legion to come jogging into view. Rank after rank, by the cohort and the numbers, but with no standard raised – no eagle.

The smell of blood rolled off them and, weirdly, olive oil.

They came to a halt in a clatter of iron.

‘Fuck me,’ I said. ‘I’m in an episode of Game of Thrones .’

‘Useless fucks of the Ninth!’ shouted Tyburn, and the legion muttered – a rolling sound like distant thunder. ‘You failed this city once.’ Jeers, catcalls, and I didn’t need any Latin to recognise that tone. ‘But the gods have given you a second chance.’

The legion fell silent – which was scarier than when they were making a noise.

‘And this time you’re going to get the job done!’ shouted Tyburn.

There were mutters and sporadic cheers.

‘Right?’

A cheer started in the cohort directly in front of us. It was taken up by those on either side and proceeded to roll outward and then back, finally to peter out as Tyburn held up his fist.

‘Right!’

Five thousand men cheered and stamped their feet in unison; the ponies shied and pulled away. Tyburn didn’t try and stop them. I looked back at Beverley, who blew me a kiss before running out to the flank with a javelin ready in his hand.

The Romans liked to outsource their cavalry, but every legion had a small contingent of its own. Small wiry men in mail on horses the size of Shetland ponies – their saddles looked ridiculous, with absurdly high cantles and no stirrups. But the points of their spears glittered in the sunlight.

As the chariot picked up speed down the road they formed up around us as an escort.

Up ahead Chorley had limped onto the bridge across the Fleet and looked back to find us bearing down in all our righteous fury. I saw him shout something and gesture and a brace of Norsemen barred the way.

‘Take this,’ said Fleet, and handed me a spear. I handed it back.

‘I’m not using that,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you got something a bit less lethal?’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

The Norsemen formed a line and braced their shields.

‘Time to earn your triple pay, boys!’ yelled Tyburn as the chariot went down the slope towards the bridge, picking up speed as it went.

The Roman cavalry surged ahead. There was a flurry of movement and then they wheeled away to the left and right. Straight ahead men at the centre of the shield wall were staggering backwards, or sitting down coughing up blood, with spears through important parts of their anatomy.

I could hear the screaming even over the mad thundering of our horses, but the line looked unbroken and we were going to hit it any second.

‘Hold on!’ yelled Tyburn.

Whooping, he vaulted over the edge of the chariot and ran along the pole until he was standing upright on the yoke between the heads of his horses, one javelin poised to throw, another in his left hand ready to go.

With another high-pitched yell he threw both spears, one after another. Two Norsemen directly ahead fell away and the rest looked at Tyburn’s face and scattered. The shield wall broke and the chariot ploughed through.

As we did, Tyburn dropped down on the yoke and scooped something off the ground as the chariot passed over it. Then he popped back up and ran lightly along the pole to join me in the chariot. He passed me a round Norse shield.

‘That better?’ he asked.

I took the shield – it was heavier than the riot shield I’d trained with, made with wood bound with a metal rim and a centre grip within the boss. It was well balanced, nicely made, but probably not supposed to be wielded as a primary weapon.

We thundered across the bridge and the horses only slowed a little as they climbed out of the valley of the Fleet into Ludgate Hill, or at least what would be Ludgate Hill when there was a gate for it to be named after.

A shanty town with a bridge attached Tyburn had called early Londinium. But, even worse, it was spread out so thin that it was practically the countryside. Only the fort to the north had any stonework. Everything wattle and daub and thatch – half of them being the traditional British roundhouse.

The roads, though, were wide and well maintained, and fanned out from the point where the bridge met the high ground like a net cast to catch an island. And ahead on Watling Street I saw Chorley halfway to the bridge already.

‘We’ll have him in no time,’ said Tyburn, just as something huge and dog-shaped leapt out of nowhere and killed the chariot’s left-hand horse.

The chariot pitched forward like an unexpected pole-vaulter and I think Tyburn threw me clear, because I have a definite memory of tumbling along the muddy verge, stopping and looking back in time to see a wheel scything into the thatch of a nearby roundhouse. The remaining horse was screaming and Tyburn was yelling as he wrestled with the Black Dog of Newgate Prison. I grabbed my shield that was, miraculously, nearby and legged it after Chorley.

If this turns out to be cyclical, I thought, I’m going to have serious words with whoever’s in charge.

It was less than a kilometre from Ludgate Hill to the north end of London Bridge.

I was younger and fitter than Chorley, but he had a head start and the occasional friend who tried to kill me. I wasn’t sure what death in the realm of memory would entail – probably nothing permanent. It wasn’t going to be this very short gentleman with a leather jacket and a switchblade that killed me. It was going to be the sudden transfer of energy from potential into kinetic.