The Faeman Quest fw-5 Page 26

  ‘Yes, but they wouldn’t be the first, would they?’ Pyrgus snorted. ‘We would.’

  This time Madame Cardui shook her head. ‘No, we would not,’ she said firmly. ‘The treaty specifically bans the use of neutron spells against faeries or allied races. It says nothing about manticores or other animals.’

  ‘Well, it should do!’

  ‘That may be so, Pyrgus,’ Madame Cardui told him, ‘but at the moment it does not. If we specifically target the manticore herds -’ She gestured towards the viewglobes, ‘- the effects will be isolated from all the main population centres and there should be no collateral damage whatsoever. Once we make the strike, we will announce that the Haleklinders had developed breeding manticores as weapons for military purposes and that our aim in removing these weapons is purely to preserve peace. Legally, the Haleklinders have no grounds to strike back at us and if they were tempted to strike anyway, even they do not have sufficient power reserves to wipe us out completely. We, on the other hand, have sufficient reserves to remove every living being in Haleklind.’

  It was the fact she said it so calmly that chilled Henry so much. ‘That’s what I mean,’ he told her soberly. ‘Every living thing in Haleklind includes our daughter at the moment.’

  It had a chastening effect on Blue. He knew that, even though she tried to hide it. She started to say something, but Pyrgus cut across her. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘do we have to act at once? This very minute? Can we wait a day or two before wiping out the manticores?’

  Blue glanced towards Madame Cardui and General Vanelke, who were standing together – like newfound allies, Henry thought – near the edge of the Operations Table. Vanelke glanced in turn at the viewglobes. ‘They’re not positioned for an immediate attack,’ he said. ‘But they’re positioned to be positioned.’

  ‘How long?’ Blue asked.

  ‘The ones closest to our border… half a day… twenty-four hours at the most.’ Then he added unexpectedly, ‘But if you take the whole strategic situation into account, it would be longer – somewhere between forty-eight and seventy-two hours, I would estimate. They’re not stupid. They know what they’re facing and they’d want to make sure of every detail. That takes time.’

  ‘Cynthia?’ Blue asked.

  Madame Cardui shrugged. ‘I have no specific information that an attack is imminent. What worries me is the very existence of the manticores. As the General says, we could have a border incursion in half a day.’

  Blue turned back to her brother. ‘All right, Pyrgus, what did you have in mind?’

  ‘Two things,’ Pyrgus told her. ‘I’m more familiar with Haleklind than anybody here. I suggest I go back there. Prime objective to find Mella and get her to safety. I have contacts who could be helpful. Secondary objective, to find out if there’s any way to defuse the situation. Call it a diplomatic mission. At very least I might be able to buy time. With Mella still in Halkelind somewhere, time may be the most important thing.’ He stopped and stared at her expectantly.

  Henry opened his mouth to support Pyrgus, then closed it again. Blue could get stubborn if she thought they were ganging up on her. He waited. After a long moment, Blue said, ‘Yes. Yes, Pyrgus, that’s a good idea. Can you go at once?’

  Pyrgus nodded. ‘ Yes.’

  ‘Alone or with back-up?’

  ‘Alone,’ Pyrgus said.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Henry told him hurriedly.

  But they both turned towards him.

  ‘Not a good idea,’ Pyrgus said.

  ‘I don’t trust the Table of Seven,’ Blue said soberly. ‘It’s bad enough to risk a Crown Prince. I’m not prepared to risk my King Consort.’

  ‘It would also be bad politics,’ Madame Cardui put in. ‘We would be acting at too high a level.’

  ‘Pyrgus,’ Blue said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I can give you two days – at most.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Blue said, ‘That’s assuming there’s no change in the present situation.’

  ‘I understand,’ Pyrgus said again.

  But Blue clearly wanted to make absolutely sure he really did understand. ‘If there is any evidence – any hint or suggestion – of an attack by the Haleklinders, or Madame Cardui brings me any intelligence that such an attack is imminent, I shall order the immediate use of neutron spells specifically targeted to wipe out the manticores. All the manticores…’ She turned to Henry with a bleak smile. ‘At least we can be sure Mella will be safe. Whatever she’s up to, there’s no way she will be anywhere near a manticore herd.’

  Forty-Eight

  Hairstreak was in the forest for almost an hour before he heard the screams. They were some distance off, but carried an interesting degree of urgency. It was difficult to be certain, but he thought it might be a female scream. Specifically a girl’s.

  ‘What’s that?’ Aisling asked.

  Aisling had been slowing things down. With his new body, Hairstreak could walk indefinitely without tiring, but Aisling was a bundle of complaints after the first few hundred yards. Her feet hurt. Her legs hurt. She scratched her hand on a thorn bush. She was out of breath. The forest was smelly. Couldn’t they rest a little while?

  ‘Somebody in trouble,’ Hairstreak said tritely. ‘You stay here: I’ll go and find out.’

  He expected she might protest, but she only said, ‘Please be careful, darling.’

  It was odd to be called darling, but he rather liked it. ‘Use your whistle if anything comes near you.’

  ‘Of course,’ Aisling said. She stood on tiptoe to give him a brief kiss. He liked that as well.

  The scream came again.

  Hairstreak flicked his new body into turbo mode and ran. Mostly he kept to the paths, but from time to time found it convenient to push his way directly through shrub and bushes. Although his mind was occupied, he was aware of the scrapes and scratches that resulted; and also the pain. Consolidated Magical Services had enabled the body to feel pain in the normal course of events, since pain was a necessary – and familiar – signal of malfunction. But the pain was less intrusive than it would be in a natural body and if it grew troublesome, he could always switch it off using a small stud built into his left nipple. On the whole, he was too distracted to care. The screams – they were definitely girlish screams – had to mean Mella was in trouble: after all, the forest was not exactly teeming with young women. She’d been caught by a manticore, perhaps, or fallen down and broken her stupid leg. But the question was, which Mella? With luck, it would be the real one. In which case he could finish her off and resume his search for the clone. But if it was the clone…

  He kicked his speed up another notch.

  The screams were continuous now, and closer. There was an overlay of other noises, an animal growl and a snapping sound like the breaking of bones. Someone was under attack, but so long as she was screaming, she was not dead. Hairstreak put on another burst of speed. He ran along a narrow pathway, then left it for a more direct route. He broke through a screen of bushes and found himself in a broad clearing. He was no longer alone.

  The manticore seemed seized by a frenzy. It was crouched over the girl, stabbing at her viciously with its scorpion tail, tearing at her flesh with its hideous fangs. The girl’s clothing was ripped and her body streaming blood. If she had fought the beast when it first attacked, she was not fighting it now. Her body was as limp as a rag doll. Her eyes were closed, her throat bloody and exposed. The girl was Princess Mella, to judge from the remnants of her torn clothing. She was not the one screaming.

  For Hairstreak, it felt as if he had been struck by a slo-mo spell. The pace of time dropped to a crawl. The great scorpion sting thudded like a background drumbeat, stabbing the ground in some hideous reflex now the girl was dead. He turned slowly towards the source of the screams and uttered a profound, slow prayer of thanks to the powers of Night: the girl screaming was the Mella clone, standing paralysed several yards from the manticore, her back ag
ainst a tree. She looked terrified, but physically unharmed.

  The manticore dropped the body of the girl and swung its head around to stare at him with glowing, insane eyes. It opened a mouth packed with bloodstained teeth and roared, a sound so vast the trees on either side of him reverberated and rustled their leaves. Then, still with the appalling slowness that characterised the whole encounter, it launched itself forward and began to run towards him. Rippling muscles propelled padded feet in stately haste.

  The manticore was huge. This was the first one Hairstreak had seen close up, outside of the laboratory. They were about the size of a medium-sized dog when they were finally released into the wild, but it seemed as if they only started growing at that point. This one was larger than an ox, large as an elephant in height and appreciably longer when it uncurled the scorpion tail. Despite its size, Hairstreak pondered for a moment on the possibility of fighting it. At another time he would never have entertained the thought, but there was something in his new relationship with the Lady Aisling that spurred him towards heroic deeds. And it was a practical thought. His new body was virtually indestructible – or so the salesman claimed.

  But there remained a weak point: his natural head was as vulnerable as it ever was. One crunch of those massive teeth and he was dead. He remembered a time when he would have welcomed that outcome, but that time was long gone. He was on the brink of the coup of his entire career, poised to rule the Realm and countries beyond, poised to become the greatest Emperor history had ever known. This gory scene showed beyond all doubt his luck had changed. Princess Mella was dead. Her terrified replacement stood unharmed only yards away. He would have to calm the clone down, of course, persuade her to forget the horror of the last few minutes. But she had always been amenable and he expected no trouble. So perhaps best to waste no time in dangerous heroics. Especially when Aisling was not even here to see them.

  Slow time reverted and he was faced with a beast hurtling towards him at breakneck speed. For something so large, it managed to move with the swiftness of a striking snake. The long forelegs ate distance at an alarming rate. It was already more than halfway across the clearing. In seconds he felt a wave of heat from its foetid breath. Strangely, the predominant smell was that of ageing fruit. The creature roared. Hairstreak pressed the control on the whistle around his neck.

  The tone was too high-pitched for faerie ears, but the manticore reacted at once. It stopped dead, only yards away from him and stood for a moment, swinging its great head from side to side. Then, in a curiously cat-like gesture, it raised one foreleg to brush against its ear, as if trying to remove a flea. A puzzled expression crept into its eyes and it backed off a few steps. Then, suddenly, it swung away, and bounded across the clearing. Hairstreak had assumed it would simply run, but it took time to swoop and grab the limp corpse of the dead Mella. It turned towards him, her body hanging from its mouth. (The face looked surprisingly serene in death.) Then the manticore blundered away into the depths of the forest.

  ‘Uncle Hairstreak!’ shrieked the Mella clone. ‘I was so frightened, but I knew you’d come to find me!’

  He had been wondering if he might have trouble with his Mella clone since he entered the clearing and realised the two girls must have met. It was difficult to predict the effect of an encounter with one’s clone. It might even have shaken his Mella’s carefully induced determination to become Queen. But her words reassured him. She was still the same old Mella he had nurtured so carefully over the past few years. Hairstreak walked across and put one arm around her shoulders. She was trembling, but she looked up into his face with trusting eyes.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘I need to get you home.’

  ‘To your Keep?’ asked Mella.

  With a sudden surge of satisfaction, Hairstreak shook his head. ‘To the Purple Palace,’ he told her. ‘I think it’s time you took your rightful place.’

  Forty-Nine

  Blue would kill him, Pyrgus thought, if ever she found out. And in truth he might deserve it. However informal the arrangements, the fact remained he was on a diplomatic mission. It was also a fact that he had ignored protocol, skirted sanctioned arrangements, evaded Madame Cardui’s official spy (delicately designated Personal Assistant to the Crown Prince), given his entourage the slip and disappeared to carry out a mission of his own. It was practically treason, but what could he do when the lives of thousands of innocent animals were at stake?

  ‘You never sent that wine you promised,’ Corin said, grinning, as they shook hands.

  Pyrgus smiled bleakly. ‘I’ve been tied up. Bit of an emergency on, actually.’

  Corin waved him to a seat and pulled up a second chair beside it. The gesture was typical; and not simply because he and Pyrgus were old friends. Corin was a man who disliked formality and never felt the need to sit behind a large desk in order to impress people. ‘There had to be trouble, otherwise you wouldn’t be back so soon. Is this about your niece?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Pyrgus said. ‘She was in Haleklind – still is, we think – but that’s not the problem.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s no news of your manticore,’ Corin said. ‘But I’m sure she’s safe. She’ll certainly have joined one of the major herds by now. They’ve spread all over the country.’

  ‘Actually…’ Pyrgus said uneasily. This was the point of no return. He was about to discuss Realm policy and military plans with a citizen of what might be classified an enemy nation. But he would have trusted Corin with his life. ‘Actually, it’s the manticores I want to talk to you about…’

  ‘I thought it might be. I assume you’ve heard the rumours?’

  ‘What rumours?’ Pyrgus asked quickly.

  ‘There’s been talk that the Table plan to use the manticores for military purposes. Turn them into war-horses or something.’

  It occurred to Pyrgus suddenly that with all the talk of manticores as weapons, he’d never thought to wonder exactly how they would be used. ‘Do you imagine that’s true?’ he asked.

  Corin shook his head. ‘Absolute nonsense. A soldier would have to do the splits to mount a full-grown manticore. And if he managed that, he’d never control it. These are wild beasts, Pyrgus. Magnificent animals, but you know how difficult they are. Difficult and unpredictable. One minute they’re grazing quietly, the next they’re ripping you to shreds if you aren’t careful.’

  ‘So you think there’s nothing in the rumours?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I just said they couldn’t be used as mounts. They might still be used as weapons.’

  ‘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, wa
s 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?’