Dogfighters: Under the Hill Read online

  They juddered to a halt on the tarmac, the engines sputtering out in what felt like a sudden solid wall of silence. Electrics fizzed by Chris’s ears as he put his head in his hands and awarded himself the count of three to rest. Then he scrambled out, jumped down onto the road and stood in numb horror, realising that once again he had underestimated the problem.

  The lights in the east, which he had taken for an unusual morning mist, were now zipping towards the battlefield like comets. It was another army, an army of the air, all clothed in brilliant silks and golden armour, with wings at their backs—metal feathered wings that beat like cymbals and tuned bells, so that his head was bemused by snatches of music. They had arrows and spears, henna-dyed beards, and fierce and beautiful faces. And it occurred to him that this—this flying glory of sound and strength and beauty—this must be Ben’s heritage, the terrible fate he had rescued Ben from.

  The ability to fly! God, if someone had rescued him from that, he’d never speak to them again. Somehow everything he could offer—a love so obviously torn, a messy house and a job that provided plenty of opportunities to die in nasty ways for a small payment and unlimited ridicule… Well, it didn’t amount to much, if this was what was stacked on the other side. No wonder Ben was finding it difficult to choose.

  The golden warriors descended on the battlefield like shooting stars. Five of them streaked towards the black dragon, where a now-recovered Oonagh reflected the dawn’s blue light in a pillar of bronze and copper armour. The man at point raised his bow and shot the spear out of Oonagh’s hand. She was still looking astonished when they grabbed her, blocked Flynn’s punch almost contemptuously, picked up the girl beside him and flew away, to where their king waited, beneath a pavilion of scarlet silk that was still having its guy ropes hammered in.

  Chris turned back to his plane. He didn’t know if he could get it off the ground again, let alone what he could do if all the ammo was already gone. The slowly broadening light had washed away all traces of the phantom Lancaster. He could only see the Mosquito, looking badly beaten, with scorch marks around its tail, the rudder hanging half off, holes in the side and the cockpit, and long scores down both wings—claw marks two inches deep.

  “Boys, are you there?”

  Nothing. The wrecked interior was empty and the radio didn’t even hiss in his ear any more. He had no idea what he could do to rescue the one known quantity in this mess from this new threat, but he picked up the crowbar he’d stashed behind his seat and went to try to find out.

  Chapter Ten

  As he grabbed fruitlessly for Oonagh, watched her be carried away between Chitrasen’s soldiers, oddly pliant in their grasp, something shifted in Flynn’s head. He was, for the first time, on his own with the dragon. He looked down and found it looking up at him, its tilted eye serious as it had never been before.

  “Now is the time for this pretence to end,” it said, half inside his skull, half whispered on lavender flame. At the words, the presence inside Flynn’s head writhed and snapped its bonds as if they had been cobwebs. Flynn recoiled back into himself with a start and was finally, resoundingly, alone in his own head.

  “You could have done that at any time,” he realised.

  “Of course. But now my queen needs me, and I have no desire to pander to your delusions any more. We go to her.”

  Suiting actions to words, Kanath hunched his powerful shoulders as he gave a dozen mighty flaps of his wings, driving them speeding past the combat below, taking them towards the pavilion, bare seconds behind Oonagh and her captors.

  “Fine by me, old chap. Why did you let us get away with it in the first place?” But he thought he knew. Oonagh believed in the prophecy, that if he was fated to be on her side, on her side he would be whatever his beliefs. She had continued her policy of giving him enough rope to hang himself. And if she hadn’t, would she have known enough about Liadain’s movements to be here, giving her all in the defence of earth?

  “Because the queen trusts those she has chosen to trust, and you were amongst that number. You did not prove unworthy to her at her hour of need—she would not be alive now if it were not for you. So you see her wisdom?”

  “I have to admit I was mistaken about her. But you lying to me didn’t make it any easier to find that out.”

  The dragon came roaring down upon the warriors in front of the pavilion, laying down a scorching path of blue fire. It set itself down on the blackened earth in front of Chitrasen’s throne, interposing itself between the king and his guards. Stretching out a claw it managed to suggest, wordlessly, that Oonagh might easily elbow her captor in the throat and run from the ground to its wrist, elbow, shoulder and thence back into her saddle.

  In fact she did none of those things. She only smiled up at Kanath and Flynn both, held out a hand made more regal by the fact that it was gloved in her enemies’ blood, and said, “King Chitrasen, may I introduce my good friend, Kanath of the line of Oriel, and my champion, Flynn the Navigator.”

  “I lie to you?” the dragon asked with a rumble of laughter. “When did I do such a thing? Still, you do not feel vindicated, to have worked out the puzzle by yourself?”

  “I mostly feel confused.” Flynn almost forgot himself and jumped down onto the scrubby, weed-choked grass of earth. The smell of it alone was making his bottom lip tremble. The thought of never touching it again was like a ravenous hunger, sticking his belly to his backbone, not leaving space for air or thought. “Um, Queen Oonagh, are we not meant to be rescuing you at this point?”

  The dragon’s mere presence on the hill had altered the balance of power. The Gandharvas guarding Oonagh sensibly edged away from her, and she filled the extra space with charisma. Every line of her from the proudly held head to her copper-shod boots proclaimed that she was a queen, not a captive, that she was here by her own will and would depart by it if she so wished.

  Given that Oonagh’s bodyguard were only being kept from death at the hands of the angry mass of Liadain’s grieving followers by a line of Chitrasen’s troops, the queen’s pose of untouchable power was, Flynn thought, a triumph of style over substance. Its doomed and futile quality gave it a certain magnificence, however.

  Nor was he the only one to appreciate it. All this time, the king of the golden warriors had done no more than sit and watch, with his hands steepled in front of his face, his index fingers touching his lips. He had a harsh and thoughtful face, like that of a warrior and a scholar, and his armour was as silver as his beard, cool in that host of gold-clad warriors.

  He had not yet moved to welcome his daughter, who stood just to the right of Oonagh, quite still in her ring of guards, with her bright open face smoothed into no expression at all, smudges on her cheeks and her long hair tangled down her back from the swim they had taken together through the sewers. She’d rolled the overlong legs of Flynn’s overalls up to calf height, and her bare feet were dirty and poised as ever, even on the grass of earth.

  From where he sat, perched on top of the dragon, Flynn watched as Ben left the knot of Oonagh’s fighters who had been protecting him, walked slowly and perhaps reluctantly through the army, up the hill towards the throne. Flynn could see the wave of recognition, the shock and then the decision to give homage, that went through each Gandharva warrior as he got in Ben’s way. He could see too the way Ben flinched every single time, as though he had been hoping to be stopped, rejected and given the perfect excuse to run away.

  Just on the edge of the field, Geoff could also see the dirty blond hair of the skipper. The real-life, flesh-and-blood, non-imaginary skipper, gleaming bright as a sovereign for a moment as he climbed into an early sunbeam, swinging over the field’s boundary, jumping down again, stiffly, moving as if weariness had settled into his bones.

  And maybe Flynn had made up the whole parachute-harness thing? He hadn’t been thinking terribly clearly when it happened—he’d been chased, and he hadn’t had the time to look properly. It had been dark when he threw the thing through th
e portal. He might have seen it wrong, remembered it wrong. He might be sitting here afraid to touch the green earth for no good reason at all. Wild and painful hope swelled in him. He knew it was false and cherished it anyway.

  “My daughter,” said Chitrasen at last, his voice rounded and full as that of a trained singer. “Approach.”

  Sumala’s hands twitched as though she had gone to raise them to smooth down her hair, realised the futility of the gesture. She paced slowly beneath the awning of the pavilion, until she was close enough to bend down and touch her father’s feet. She still looked doubtful, guarded, and Flynn’s tender feelings ached for her. He knew too well that there was never any going back.

  Then, as if to prove him wrong, the king broke out into a huge smile, rose and flung his arms around her. She stiffened, resentful for a moment, before putting her head in the hollow of his shoulder, letting him touch the single jewel that hung in the middle of her forehead, the only thing she had left of her untold riches. “Did she clothe you like this? This woman, did she do this to you?”

  “No, Father. I swam out of the city to freedom. I could not float while wearing so much gold.”

  “Do you know how much I worried about you?”

  “I’m sorry, Father. I didn’t mean to cause you anxiety.”

  “Of course you didn’t. It was this woman and her people. I knew when they first came to me, begging for my help, that she was up to no good. But now you are safe again, you can watch as she is punished and be satisfied that justice has been done.”

  Sumala turned, looked at Oonagh and then up at Flynn. “Y-es,” she said, drawing the word out into a space in which she could think. “Flynn, why are you sitting up there still? Come down. I want to introduce you to my father.” She gave the king a sideways glance and a smile that brought out dimples in her cheeks.

  “Flynn has been my champion, Father. He’s helped me ever since we met. I think he should be rewarded.” She turned the smile on Flynn, but when he didn’t move, it faltered. Frowning now, she balanced on one foot and rubbed the other on her calf. It caught in the rolled-up trouser-leg, making the fabric untuck. “Come on. Why don’t you come down? You don’t need to be afraid any more.”

  She stamped her foot prettily, though the effect was not the same without her many bells. Flynn almost obeyed, swaying forward without thinking, obedient to the tone of threatened hurt. But her stamp had completed the unravelling of her trouser-leg. The fabric slowly slid down her leg and pooled around her foot, touching the ground.

  Flynn wished he’d been wrong, but here in the broadening daylight, with no darkness to blame and no present threat, he could see it quite clearly. The moment the fabric of his overalls touched the ground the material instantly discoloured, turning from blue to a dingy, decayed brown. When she moved, even slightly, the trouser-leg tore like wet paper, separating from the better material above it.

  Yet the stain was spreading slowly upwards. When the knee tore out, Sumala finally looked down, followed his gaze. She breathed in, a hiss through clenched teeth, and bent to touch the decayed material. It separated beneath her fingers, leaving her with handfuls of brown flyaway thread that turned further into dust with every moment.

  When she looked up again, there was such pity in her gaze that Flynn had to close his eyes and turn his face away to hide the anguish.

  “I lost nearly seventy years living in Faerie,” he said, feeling the words lock the knowledge down, make it real. A trap he’d sprung on himself, a fucking fairytale irony that he should have known was going to happen to him. And God, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t been warned. He’d read Rip Van Winkle in his youth. It just wasn’t quite as funny from the inside. “And I traded another hundred for the powder to open the portal. The material’s a hundred and seventy years old in this world, and I’m almost two hundred. If I ever set foot in my home again”—he nodded at the handful of decomposed fabric she was still holding out to him, as though he could somehow turn it back with a wish—“that’s what will happen to me.”

  “Oh, Flynn!” She smeared dust over her face as she wiped her eyes. “So that’s why you wouldn’t come when we had the chance to leave, earlier?”

  “You should have gone without me.”

  “I didn’t know.” She shook her head. “But then why…” As she was struggling for words, one of the older, bearded warriors standing behind the king’s throne took off his outer garment—a long coat of pink silk, stitched with pearls—and passed it to her. Looking at the way age was creeping inexorably over the coveralls, wicking up from the ground like water to soak the whole garment, she shrugged into the coat and pinned it closed with a brooch of moonstone. “Why did you come out here with me? Why didn’t you stop trying to find a way out?”

  “Because you could still get home, and I wanted to help you,” Flynn answered. But it was a partial truth at best, and he’d had enough of holding back doubts and uncomfortable truths. What did any of it matter now? He might as well be perfectly honest—there was nothing left to lose.

  “And because I was trying to tell myself I was wrong. That perhaps when I got back it wouldn’t be that bad. Perhaps I’d been mistaken. Perhaps there would be a way. Except that now I’m too bloody scared to put a foot down. I want to talk to my skipper first. There are things…”

  Evidently he had not yet reached the depths of the pit quite yet. The new abyss that opened at this thought made him feel like he were sinking in the North Sea in the wreckage of the plane. He could feel the water coming in, and the pressure, and the cold. “There are things I’ve got to tell him.”

  “Like what?” asked a voice. The ranks of bodyguards who formed a living wall around the pavilion parted, and Ben walked through. He was clean shaven, with the neat modern haircut and the tan line of a watch strap around his wrist, but Flynn’s first reaction was to think, bitterly, He has no problem coming home because Ben fitted in here like a jewel into its setting. The slight coarseness of his humanity, the flesh and blood warmth and its imperfections only showed on a second glance. But when they did Flynn was ashamed of himself—ashamed of his jealousy, of his envy, and the selfishness they must have grown out of.

  You should be bloody hoping he’s on the level. But “should be” was as far as he could take it, today. He could acknowledge that his own stupid decisions weren’t Ben’s fault. But he couldn’t shift the iron ball of envy and grief and loss out of his throat by any more than that.

  Ben wanted to have that conversation, but there were other things that needed dealing with first, and he should have addressed them. He turned back to face the throne, resumed his measured walk towards it, trying to hide the fact that he was so nervous it had passed beyond a feeling and become an altered state of consciousness. He felt slightly flayed, a layer of skin missing and everything that much more intense.

  The experience of being surrounded by people like him, of belonging, was almost suffocating. Only now did he realise how used he’d been to being the outsider, the lone wolf, and he felt as though some part of his personality was being crushed by familiarity. The cool, unwelcoming look of the man on the throne was almost a balm in this situation, soothing him. Perhaps it was that which convinced him that whatever he’d been in another life, he was his own man now.

  Ben came to a halt next to Oonagh and dipped his head in a tiny nod of acknowledgement.

  “Karshni,” said the man—the elf king. Gandharva. Whatever.

  “Bless you,” Ben replied facetiously, and could have laughed at the discovery that his protective prickliness did not go away under pressure. He hoped for anger or amusement in return—those he would have known how to deal with, would have felt that at least some personal connection had been made.

  The king, however, only looked puzzled, and said carefully, “It is your name, my son.”

  “My name is Ben.” It felt good to have it out in the open in front of all these witnesses. “I have no idea what I was before, but in this life I am not…”
r />   Oonagh moved, darting forward and jostling him as she came. She stood closer than he found comfortable, both hands wrapped about his elbow. It occurred to him that the battle had only been a precursor to this—a way of getting this meeting to happen—that perhaps he shouldn’t pre-emptively ruin it. But it was hard not to flinch.

  “Good,” Oonagh interrupted. “Now you are present, Karshni, we can come to some peaceable resolution. Put aside your anger and let us give thought to how we can solve the problems of all our worlds.”

  Chitrasen leaned forwards and stroked the rubies knotted into his beard. His dark eyes flashed with something that was half-anger, half-intrigue. “Why do you presume to speak for me? You are my prisoner, shortly to be tried and executed for holding my daughter hostage, for turning my son against me. What makes you think you have the right to advise me, like a free woman?”

  Oonagh smiled at him, took one hand away and pushed the mass of diamond hair back from her face, “When Karshni left you,” she said, settling the hand on her abdomen protectively, “you told him that he must find a royal bride and give you grandchildren. That is exactly what he has done—trying to demonstrate, through his obedience, his love for you and his wish to be taken back into your favour. It is true we are not wed, yet, but you will surely not wish to execute the mother of your grandson?”

  Everything Ben had been sure about, everything he’d wanted to say—get lost, you and I have nothing in common, I am not your plaything and I want nothing to do with you—crumpled in his chest, leaving a vacuum that waited to be filled by something huge. He wondered what it was going to be.

  “What?” he said, at the same instant that Chitrasen’s look of blank shock became a forced laugh.

  “The boy is a degenerate. If he had been willing to fulfil his duty to me by marrying and having children I would not have…” he waved a disapproving hand at Ben, taking in his top-to-toe humanity, “…done this to him.”