The London Pride (3 page)

The Temple Bar dragon coughed. His raised eyebrow and the talon he was pointing at their shields made the question clear: where was the shield of the fallen dragon?

Clearly the ‘Ulp’ and ‘Ook’ he got in response was not satisfactory. He chuffed in irritation again. Then he waved them off. They stumbled their way into the sky looking distinctly and comically like two ungainly drinkers escorting a third, and much drunker, friend homewards. They headed south.

The Temple Bar dragon didn’t look a bit comical. He looked deadly serious. He cracked his wings open and hurled himself at the night, heading west, towards the unnatural glow now surrounding the distant British Museum like a ghostly blue dome.

Running away was one thing, but running back was quite another kettle of fish. In fact, it was probably a pretty old and unrefrigerated kettleful, because it stank, especially when you were running back into the danger you’d begun by running away from in the first place.

As the chariot bumped and swerved through the streets, Will caught Jo’s eye. She nodded, as if able to read his thoughts.

‘I’m trying to remember what Dad always says about being brave,’ she said. ‘That it’s not about doing something fearlessly, but being scared, and then doing it anyway. You know?’

He nodded. His mouth was too dry to reply.

She grimaced. ‘It sounded good when he said it. But it’s not really helping me much.’

‘I know,’ he grunted. It wasn’t helping him much either. Nor was seeing how white and drawn his sister’s face was.

He looked down and found he was unconsciously rotating the scarab on the bracelet round his wrist. He stopped, suddenly aware the string was fraying a bit. He didn’t want to lose its protection. He should have it on something solid, like the metal loop his mother kept hers on, attached to her …

‘… Key ring!’ he said.

‘What?’ said Jo.

‘Mum’s got another scarab on her key ring, hasn’t she?’ he said excitedly. ‘We could put it round her wrist and then she’d be able to move like us!’

Jo sat up. ‘Brilliant.’ Then she sank back and looked at the passing streetscape, visibly hit by immediate second thoughts.

‘But, Will, imagine her waking up in all this. I mean, we sort of eased into it as it first happened. It might shock her too much …’

‘You mean send her loopy?’ he said.

‘Or give her a heart attack or something,’ she said. ‘It is sort of like a vision of hell, or your worst ever nightmare isn’t it?’

‘We’d be there,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I mean, we could help her get her head round it …’ He didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

‘So you’re saying we should go there now?’ she said, sounding equally tentative. ‘Yeah. Maybe you’re right.’

It’s not always great when people agree with you. Especially when their voices are betraying the same doubt you’re feeling. He tried to think straight.

‘Well, I don’t think we should be going anywhere by ourselves,’ he said, backtracking a bit. ‘I don’t think that’s sensible or safe. And I think if we have the chance of going to help Mum, we should go with the Fusilier because he has a gun and can stand up to dragons, and we can’t.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘OK. That’s sensible. That’s a good plan too.’

‘Running off to Mum now, not knowing what was watching us in the dark would be thrashing,’ he said. ‘It’d be … foolhardy.’

Never in his life had he used the word ‘foolhardy’ before. He must really be reaching for excuses, he thought, caught between the tug towards his mother and the knowledge that if her extra scarab was indeed their one big chance, it was important to make sure they got it safely, rather than lose it by snatching hurriedly at it.

And even as he thought this, a weasel voice at the back of his head sneered at him and told him he was making excuses for his cowardice.

‘I’m just saying that if there’s a chance of doing it with an armed escort …’

‘Will,’ Jo said, half laughing. ‘I get it! Armed escort? Good idea. You’re barging through an open door! It’s what Dad would say, right? The 7Ps.’

Their dad always went on about the 7Ps, which was an army training thing to remind you why charging ahead without a plan was a really bad idea. In fact, Will had also realised that the 7Ps were a good thing to remember when gaming, to avoid thrashing. So Jo bringing them up now was spot on the money and made him feel good again.

‘Proper Prior Planning Prevents Pathetically Poor Performance,’ he grinned, reciting the 7Ps like a comforting spell. ‘Maybe the Fusilier will—’

The thing dropped straight out of the night sky above them without warning, filling the road with its wings, stopping them like a roadblock.

It happened so fast that they were all thrown forwards into the front of the chariot, and by the time they had untangled themselves enough to peer over the edge, Will had convinced himself that a large black dragon was waiting to roast them and then tear them to bits.

It wasn’t a dragon. It was another winged woman, with a stern face and flowing robes and the wingspan of a light aircraft. She was already talking earnestly to the three firemen who were standing in front of her looking up into her eyes.

One of the strangest things about her was that she had another winged figure held under her arm, like a piece of luggage. With a nasty shock Will recognised the flying helmet of the pilot who had crashed to earth when the Mighty Bast had cursed all the military statues into immobility. He could still hear the terrible metallic crashing KER-DOING the pilot had made as he hit the courtyard flagstones.

‘Right,’ she was saying in a clipped and commanding voice like a severe schoolteacher addressing a rather slow group of students. ‘We’re clearing all the casualties out of the museum front yard first, and then working our way back from there. We don’t know what’s going on in the museum but that’s where the danger’s centred. You three cut along there now and see what you can carry.’

‘That’s my Victory,’ said Quad, turning to Jo and Will. ‘She’s normally on top of us on the arch.’

Will could remember how the statue on top of the Wellington Arch normally looked, with the winged angel at the highest point so that it almost looked like she was driving the chariot. Most people didn’t notice the yelling Quad holding the reins beneath her.

‘She’s got huge wings,’ said Jo.

‘I know,’ said Quad approvingly. ‘Keep the rain off me, they do.’

‘I am not your umbrella, young Quad,’ said the Victory, her eyes snapping up and catching Jo and Will. ‘Ah. I had heard there were two regular people still moving. I hadn’t expected them to be so … small.’

‘Small?’ said Jo, with just the hint of an edge to her voice.

Will put a hand on her shoulder. This didn’t seem a good time to be making an enemy of a thirty-foot angel.

‘We’re here to help,’ said Jo.

The Victory raised an eyebrow and cocked her head on one side.

‘The soldiers helped us,’ said Will.

‘We thought we could handle the little St Georges,’ chimed in Tragedy. ‘Free up some of you bigger ones to deal with the larger soldiers. And they want to see the Fusilier who’s down near the St George’s plinths, see? See if they can talk to him after midnight heals all.’

As he heard Tragedy explaining, Will felt as though his plan was quite well-joined up. His heart lifted a bit.

The Victory uncocked her head and lowered the eyebrow.

‘Good idea,’ she said. ‘Though we do not yet know if midnight will heal the broken
and
remove the spell too. We’ve never seen magic like this.’

Will’s cheerfulness lurched downwards again.

‘Now, stay back here and wait,’ said the Victory. ‘We’ll bring them to you. No idea what’s in the museum or when it might come out fighting.’

‘It’s a cat,’ said Jo. ‘A cat with earrings. Egyptian. And it has lion-headed women as its soldiers.’

‘Does it indeed,’ said the Victory. She nodded to herself. ‘Egyptian cat, eh? Interesting.’

‘See?’ said Tragedy. ‘They’ve already been useful.’

‘They have,’ said the Victory. ‘Thank you. We shall ponder it. Now, wait back here and we’ll bring you the Georges. We’ve a lot of soldiers to move before midnight or it will be disastrous. It’s going to be Dunkirk all over again, except by land.’

She rose, wings swirling the air into a down draught that buffeted them as she turned and flapped towards the museum.

‘Dunkirk?’ said Tragedy. ‘Who’s he?’

‘It’s not a he,’ said Jo.

‘She, then,’ said Tragedy. ‘Pardon me. I ain’t educated like some.’

‘It’s a place,’ said Will, remembering his history lessons. ‘In the Second World War the army got stuck on the wrong side of the English Channel and all the little boats and ships of Britain went over and brought them home, all higgledy-piggledy, little yachts and pleasure-steamers and coal barges and whatever floated. Ordinary people did it, saving the soldiers. Because they couldn’t save themselves.’

Tragedy looked round.

‘Well, we’re ordinary enough,’ he said. ‘We better get on with it.’

There was a pause.

‘I should like to take a peek round the corner though.’ Tragedy stepped off the chariot. ‘You coming?’

‘Will?’ said Jo.

‘I’ll be right back,’ he replied. ‘It’s just up there; I’m not going far.’

He followed Tragedy the fifty metres to the corner and looked around. There were figures moving everywhere, stone and bronze statues of all ages and sizes weaving through the forest of frozen humanity, gingerly carrying the unmoving bodies of military statues as they wound their way through the maze.

Will had felt torn about coming to see this, worried about leaving even fifty metres between him and Jo, but when he saw the crowd of helpers working together to rescue the fallen, he knew he’d done the right thing. Of all the weirdness he had witnessed since time stopped and the dragons began moving, this was the most strange, and he would not, he admitted to himself, have missed seeing it for anything.

He was watching two worlds impossibly coming together, not colliding, but passing through each other. The statues took care not to knock any of the people, but only in the way you wouldn’t want to walk into a tree trunk if you were walking through a forest, and the people … Well, as far as he knew, they could not see any of this, and if they did, they would not remember it when they started moving again.
If
they started moving again.

He saw strange combinations as they passed – bewigged politicians and aristocrats carrying tin-hatted soldiers from both world wars on their shoulders as if they were carrying a boat between them. He saw winged Victories and angels labouring in flight just below the level of the rooftops as they carried away stiff bronze bodies hanging from each hand. He saw a statue he recognised as the Officer from the Artillery Memorial, the one who had led the sortie against the museum, being trundled past on another chariot, this one driven by two fierce girls in flowing robes.

‘Oi!’ said Tragedy. ‘Icy Girls, where’s your mum then?’

One of the girls looked at him.

‘She stopped moving like these ones. We left her behind.’

As they passed, Tragedy turned to Will.

‘Their mum. Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni. Call her the Red Queen, we do, cos she was such a warrior. S’pose that’s why she’s stopped too.’

The firemen ran up. They were carrying two small statues and a big one of a soldier in a tall bearskin hat with a long bayonet on the end of his musket.

‘Come on,’ they said. ‘No time for standing round gawking with your mouths open. Thought you wanted to help!’

They put the big statue into the back of Quad’s chariot and wedged the two smaller ones on either side of it. They were indeed the St Georges who had made friends with Will, and he had seen that they made up for their size with speed and bravery: they wore armour but had their heads bare, heads that looked much too modern for their medieval get-up, like a couple of ‘jolly good chaps’ from the 1920s. Which is, in one way, exactly what he had found them to be: jolly good and willing to sacrifice themselves to help rescue his sister.

There was something else about them that had changed.

‘They’re glowing a bit,’ he said. ‘Bluish …’

The fireman closest to him nodded.

‘They all are. Something to do with whatever is stopping them moving.’

Will remembered the blue light from within the museum, and the chanting and the blue flash that had radiated out from it as Bast had roared her curse. He looked more closely at the statues. There was a thin coating on them, not quite like a frost, more like a skin of water that wasn’t wet and didn’t slide off the metal beneath.

‘No time to hang around,’ said the fireman. ‘You get these two back to Grays Inn Road. Then, Quad, you go like the clappers and get this Grenadier back to Pall Mall. You’ll be cutting it fine, so get a ruddy bend on.’

Will and Jo held on tight as Quad flicked the reins and set them in motion, overtaking a pair of marble women in togas who were carrying a heavily bemedalled soldier in Victorian dress uniform sporting an impressively lavish moustache and a surprised expression on his unmoving face.

‘Mind your backs, ladies!’ whooped Tragedy. And they were off.

And as they jinked through the stalled traffic and the groups of statues rescuing other statues, the worst thing was not the unfamiliarity of it all, or the slight seasicky feeling caused by the swervy stop–start motion. It was that the streets – frozen in time before the lights had come on – were not as dark as they had been.

‘It’s the people as well,’ said Jo. ‘They’re getting a blue glow too.’

She was right. The thin film, the not-quite-frost and not-quite-wetness that coated the statues was also covering the people, making them glow a faint blue that – when the pavements were crowded – provided their own source of light.

What neither of them said, as they passed these knots of people, glowing in the dark, was that somewhere in the city their mother was like this, encased in a skein of blue magic, unmoving and alone.

The thought of this kept them quiet for a good ten minutes. Will saw they were on High Holborn and picking up speed as they got closer and closer to the Fusiliers Monument in the middle of the street. He saw the broken-backed figure in the distance and felt like retching at the sight of it.