Robin Jarvis - Fighting Pax

“Hoo hoo hoo!” the Jockey guffawed. “I’m not here because of you! You really do have an inflated view of your significance, even worse than that charlatan, Old Ramptana. No, we’ve known exactly where you’ve been skulking from the beginning. You just weren’t important enough to go chasing. Did you honestly think you were? Haw haw haw – that is very funny. Wait till I tell the Lady Labella; how she will laugh.”

“How… how is Carol? Is she OK?”

“The Lady Labella,” the Jockey rebuked him, “is in the pinkest of health. Since the advent of the Holy Enchanter’s son, she has been as radiant as the morning.”

Martin closed his eyes. Hearing that revolted him.

“And Paul?” he asked. “I mean the Jack of Diamonds, how is he?”

“The light-fingered doings of Magpie Jack are none of your concern, Martin Baxter.”

Martin gritted his teeth and fought the urge to smash the other man’s face through the large TV screen. It wasn’t easy.

“What about this new book?” he asked instead. “Was that part true? Is the Ismus writing a sequel?”

“Oh, most assuredly so. Wherever we go in this silly dreamland he has been tappy-tappy-tapping on his laptop, late into the night, shunning company and comforts. But it is not a sequel, for how can there be such a thing? ’Tis a furtherance of our merry lives in the Realm of the Dawn Prince. We of the Court are agog and breathless to be granted even so much as a fleeting glimpse of it, but that is forbidden for the moment, yes, for the moment.”

He gave a twitch of agitation and Martin guessed correctly that the Jockey had already tried and failed to read the manuscript.

“All will be revealed betimes though,” the Jockey continued. “A declaration shall be made this very day and the whole of this grey drabbery will know of it. Oh, such plans are a-place, such excitement there shall be for you all, yea, even the aberrants. We genuinely do all we can to make this drudging gloom more sprightly for you – perk it up and keep it lively, keep it bright and frolicsome.”

“You really shouldn’t bother.”

“Now, now, don’t irk. Let us not curdle this jolly day with your vinegary humour. I have come to rescue you from these dank grots and caves, fit only for worms and pin-eyed bats. You should be glad and singing.”

“You’ve already said it wasn’t me you’ve come for. So who, as if I didn’t know?”

The smirk slipped from the Jockey’s face. “My Lord Ismus wishes the Castle Creeper brought unto his presence,” he told him with great solemnity. “There is a covenant between them he is most keen to pursue.”

“I know all about that. It’s his maddest, most disgusting scheme yet. What I don’t know is how you persuaded the North Koreans to let you come here.”

The Jockey threw back his head and let out a throaty laugh.

“Persuade them?” he hooted. “They really aren’t in a position to deny me. When my Lord Ismus tells them to hop, they leap like hares from a burning field. Dear me, Mr Baxter, you cannot truly believe your raggle-taggle band of aberrants have been their guests these many months? You silly, dolting muttonhead. This impecunious country is on its knees and the people are suffering. Famine bites hard and their children are stunted and starving. Though they are friendless in this silly world, they are dependent on foreign aid, even from the West whom they despise. You and your young vagabonds have not been guests here, you have been hostages – and used as articles of barter for an increase in that aid. What wily hagglers they are. They have done well from the bargain. My Lord Ismus has been sending them oodles of food and fuel – such munificence! ’Tis a marvel their trousers still fit.”

Martin finally understood why the North Koreans had not explored ways of utilising Lee’s gift. They were too busy profiting from keeping him here. They hadn’t wanted to attack the Ismus, because they were accepting aid from him and now it was time for their benefactor to collect. This was why the Chief of the General Staff had looked so ashamed a few minutes ago.

“And have they also done a deal to keep their republic free of Dancing Jax ?” he asked.

The Jockey tittered behind his hand. “Of course they have! The Holy Enchanter has given his word not to distribute the hallowed text within these borders.”

The sentence had scarcely left his lips when the lights began to flicker.

“Oh, the Ismus is such a rascally swizzler!” he giggled. “His promises are spun of the most brittle, sugary strands. Now I am charged to fetch the Creeper. You are to be taken to the whirlycopter. There are some surprises and japes in store for you, Martin Baxter. What a thrilling Christmas you’ll have in this tedious sleep world this year.”

“Wait,” Martin called as the Jockey brushed past him. “I just want to know… is there anything of the Barry Milligan I worked with for over twenty-five years still left inside you? Was that only an act before? Is there no trace of that rugger-loving sod anywhere?”

The Jockey stared at him in puzzled amusement. “We are the Aces,” he explained slowly, as though to a simpleton. “We do not have to pretend to be who we are not, in these shabby dreams. I am, and forever was, the Jockey. The man you thought you knew as Barry Milligan was but a pretence of my invention because the jest suited me. No more than that. There was never a drunken headmaster, there was never a school nor a mirthless place called Felixstowe – there is only Mooncaster. That is the one reality. How pitiful it must be to be an aberrant and not know this plainest of truths.”

Martin looked away and the Jockey scampered out of the room.

In the tunnels, the lights were exploding and panic and chaos had started. Harrowing cries were echoing through the passageways. The Jockey clambered into a jeep, his pinching caramel outfit squeaking and creaking. Then he was driven off, towards the medical centre.

The Captain and two soldiers who had brought Martin here marched him in the direction of the helipad. Gunfire crackled in the distance. Martin hung his head. It was over. Dancing Jax had finally conquered everything.

EUN-MI WONDERED WHAT was keeping the reinforcements she had sent her sister to find. It had been too long. Where had Nabi gone? What was she doing? Had she betrayed the Republic in favour of her new Western friends after all?

The young English refugees didn’t dare move or utter a word. They couldn’t take their eyes off the barrel of the gun that continuously switched aim from face to frightened face.

“Do you want to shoot us?” Gerald asked quietly. “Is that it? You want to punish us? What crime do you think we’re guilty of?”

“You steal People’s Army weapons!” Eun-mi reminded him.

“That’s not the reason,” he answered. “That’s the excuse. Your hatred goes back much further. You just don’t like us, it’s as basic as that – xenophobia. How very sad in one so young to be so completely brainwashed into despising and persecuting the unlike. But then that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Because my young friends and I are different. The rest of the world has the Ismus to tell them that; you have your Supreme Leader. Pogrom is pogrom, no matter who’s behind it.”

“I shoot you first!” the girl threatened, aiming between his eyes.