The Complete Tales of Transition Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Gareth K Pengelly.

  Writing and illustrations by Gareth K Pengelly.

  No part of this book may be taken, sold or reproduced without the express consent of the author.

  All characters portrayed are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Contents:

  Book One: Knights of Old

  Book Two: A Dying Land

  Book Three: The Woodsman’s Three

  Knights of Old

  The desert wind howled in the distance, the plaintive mourning of long-forgotten djinns. The swollen red sun began to set in a shimmering haze, casting the sands into a ruddy glow, lending them all the appearance of breaking waves in an ocean of blood.

  Apt. For there would be much blood spilled before this night was done.

  The city stood, hunched and indomitable in the centre of the whispering sands, a stone fortress of rearing walls that had weathered the grinding storms for centuries. It looked old, it was old, but even so, spires of steel pierced the sky; antennae, radar dishes, broadcast towers. The additions looked out of place; this was an ancient city, but its new owners had changed things to fit their thoroughly modern and sinister purpose. And the hapless denizens that already lived there had no say in matters. A mile wide, a mile long, the sprawling city was home to thousands such innocents, yet none were abroad. Not this night. They were hidden away, doors barred, not daring even to peak out their windows.

  For on this night, as with so many others of late, the slavers were abroad.

  The knight stood high atop the dune and watched the city through the whirring lenses of night-vision binoculars. The gentle breeze rustled his long, red cape and the shifting sands beneath his feet hissed and stirred, but electronic wizardry beyond even the ken of its wearer kept him steady, working diligently and silently away beneath the alloy of his armoured legs. He’d been stood for hours, binoculars raised to his eyes, watching for the procession of vehicles entering the city along the sole road that led in and out.

  The slavers.

  Yet his arms didn’t tire; the servo motors in his armour’s elbows had locked in position; neural stimulators at various points in his armour massaging away any aches and pains in his limbs with tiny, regulated bursts of electric current.

  He was a tireless sentinel, a patient observer.

  Then, finally, the last vehicle disappeared deep within the city, the great gates closing with a clang of finality, audible even from this distance. And the watcher at last lowered his binoculars and let them hang from their strap. From a pouch on his waist, he withdrew a cigar, long, thick and heady with chocolaty aroma. The end of a gauntleted finger rippled with stealthy, flameless heat and he lit the cigar, clenching it in his teeth and savouring the first long, slow drag. It had been a long night already.

  And it had barely even begun.

  He turned, looked down the slope of the dune to the clustered forms of his troops waiting down below. Twelve, including himself. They numbered so few these days. But twelve would hopefully prove enough for the task ahead. Ordinarily their armour would be shining silver, glinting in the red light of the setting sun. But for this mission, shimmering refractor-fields swathed their alloy plate, rendering it translucent and all but invisible in the ruddy gloaming. Only the faint blue glow of their visor slits betrayed their presence.

  Their leader strode down the dune, his every step sure and easy, thanks to the compensatory motors and gyros built into his battle-suit. As he approached, no words needed to be exchanged; the night-vision binoculars having transmitted, in real-time, everything that he had seen, directly to their own heads-up visor displays. As one, the troupe turned and walked, heading away from the city that receded behind them.

  Up ahead, a village, squat and dusty, grew nearer with every footstep. The houses of sandstone, low and flat-roofed. When had it last rained here in the dusty desert? Ten years? A hundred? To the warriors, from a homeland of lush farms and tilled, green fields, such a thing was unthinkable. Thin goats wandered to and fro, munching on a thistle here, a piece of dry scrub there, bleating pitifully to themselves as they did. A crowd of desert-dwelling folk, as dry and dusty as the houses they lived in, clustered in the centre of the village by the well that served as their only source of water. Men, women, children; they stood, thin, weary, yet still holding themselves with a fortitude born of necessity, a staunch pragmatism in each stance and expression that few westerners could ever hope to match. For what use bemoaning your lot when you lived in a desert? The sandstorms would not be moved to pity. The sky wouldn’t rain out of mercy, seeking to ease your cracked skin with its cooling touch. The life of a desert dweller was one of daily, inescapable struggle.

  And they bore it with grim dignity.

  Yet there was something in their faces that the knights couldn’t help but notice; a haunted, desperate look that shouldn’t by all rights be there. It spoke of the natural order of things usurped; of long-settled routines being upheaved. Of a quiet, simple life being thrown into disarray. Yet there was something else there too, something fighting against the misery. As the knights approached, holofields dissipating to reveal gleaming silver plate that filled the air with a low hum of power, something akin to hope began to show on these poor folk’s faces. The very sight of these warriors, striding, desert dust swirling about gleaming boots to the sound of thudding metallic footsteps, seemed to break the spell of melancholy that had weighed down upon these people. Like mediaeval peasants long under the thumb of a barbaric feudal lord, standing, open-mouthed, as shining knights on thundering chargers arrive to depose him in the name of the rightful king.

  The leader of the plated warriors only hoped that they could do justice to that hope.

  The village elder, a tall, wiry man of dark, wind-worn skin and long grey hair, stepped forth from the crowd to address the troupe of warriors. His words were halting, as anyone’s would be addressing such looming steel giants, yet his tone was one of a wise man, a leader, someone used to the weight of responsibility. His brown eyes fixed on the leader of the warriors as he spoke.

  “The slavers. Did they arrive as I said they would?”

  The knight nodded, exhaling a cloud of blue cigar smoke as he replied.

  “They did. And our man will now be in the city.”

  The village elder nodded, still taken aback at how easily these warriors spoke his village’s tongue. In this part of the Sahara each tribe would often speak a completely different language to that of the next. Of the few westerners that had ever passed them by, none had ever known more than a few, halting words of his people’s native dialect. Yet these metal-clad strangers spoke his tongue as though born to it.

  “That’s good. But Al-Shakim is a fortress city. It wasn’t always, but since the slavers moved in, they’ve built it up. The walls are now fifty feet tall, the gates heavy and barred. They have an army of men, hundreds, with rifles, guard towers, even a helicopter. How is your man going to get you in? And even if he does, how are you to prevail against such odds?”

  A small smile crept across Lord Arbistrath’s face as he took another slow drag on his cigar, before answering, his stubbled-yet-still-aristocratic face shrouded in a haze of cloying smoke.

  “We’re the Tulador Guard; it’s what we do.”

  ***

  Oh god, where were they now? Andrew slowed for an instant, gazing about with tired eyes at the iron bars and cold sandstone walls of the corridor they now found themselves marching down. Was this some kind of prison? The air was damp with sweat, heavy with the scent of piss and body odour. The only light was from dim electric lamps high overhead that flickered and buzzed. Bu
t he didn’t have long to take in the scenery; a brutal kick from behind forced him on, hissing in pain.

  “Andy, are you okay?”

  “Silence!”

  The concerned face of Sue, his wife, contorted in pain as she, too, was kicked by heavy boots. At her cry, anger flared in Andrew’s breast, goading him to turn, to attack his wife’s assailant. All the indignities, all the hardships in the world he would gladly suffer, but no-one touched his wife. Yet he didn’t turn, he didn’t go to punch their mocking captor. He’d already tried resisting. The livid bruises on his face reminded him of how futile it was to struggle.

  He simply glanced at his wife with sad, helpless eyes, then continued, shuffling along in the queue of other poor souls, every step punctuated with the clank of the heavy iron chains that bound their feet and wrists as much as they weighed down their hearts.

  Dark-skinned guards stood on either side of the corridor, AK-47 rifles hanging across their chests, slung from harnesses about their shoulders. No emotion did their African faces portray. No pity for their hapless prisoners. Yet at the same time, no contempt either. Hilarious though it might seem, Andrew knew that this was nothing personal. This was purely business. These men were traders.

  And human life was their bread and butter.

  A screeching metallic sound from up ahead as one of the prison cells was opened. The queue shuffled forwards, haltingly, as one by one the prisoners were unshackled then thrown into the cell. Sue was grasped forcefully, her feet and hands unbound, then thrown into the cell to land hard on the stone floor. Helping hands from her fellow prisoners reached to help her rise. Finally, it was Andrew’s turn. The guard twisted the key, the cruelly pinching shackles falling from his ankles and wrists and allowing a surging rush of blood to fill his numb extremities once more. He almost cried with the relief. But a hard boot to the arse thrust him into the cell and he skidded to his knees.

  With a second tortured screech of metal on metal, the cell bars behind him were closed. The sounds of heavy boot-steps receded down the corridor. Then a second heavy door clanged shut.

  And, finally, there was silence.

  Sue’s arms wrapped about him in an instant, crushing him tight, her spare frame shuddering as she sobbed in relief mingled with fear. He understood only too well her feelings, for he felt the exact same mess of emotion within. Only the staunch self-control of years of police service kept them from showing on his face.

  “Where are we?” she asked him, parting enough to look at him with tear-filled eyes. Her hair, once a golden-blond, now streaked grey with advancing middle-age, hung dry and lifeless over her bruised forehead, still painfully swollen from where one of the pirates had knocked her out in the initial struggle. “Why did they bring us here? What do they want with us?”

  “I don’t know…” he finally admitted. He reached up with a gentle hand and stroked her dirty cheek. “But we’ll get out of this. I promise.”

  She nodded slowly but didn’t seem convinced. After twenty-five years of marriage, Sue could always see through his bluffing, no matter how well-meaning. Tearing his gaze from his wife, Andrew looked about the cell that they were in. Maybe twenty feet by twenty feet. Bars at one end, sandstone walls forming the other three sides. A trench at the far end, no doubt for pissing and shitting in. By the smell emanating from it, they weren’t the first guests to ever be held here. There were five people in this cell alone, including him and Sue. Half the complement of the truck that had brought them here.

  And theirs, he recalled with a shudder of horror, had been only one of many, many trucks in the convoy that had driven across the desert.

  The other prisoners looked just as weary and dishevelled as he felt himself. One other couple and a lone traveller, by the looks of things. The couple clung together for comfort. The single traveller, a man, had his eyes closed, retreating behind the darkness of his lids into the comparative safety of his mind.

  Curious eyes regarded Andrew; a man, one half of the other couple, perhaps in their early thirties, watching him from where he sat back against the wall.

  “Are you alright?” Andrew asked.

  The young man’s frown deepened.

  “You’re English,” he stated. His accent was American.

  Andrew nodded.

  “I am.”

  “How? I thought Britain was sealed off now? The borders closed, no-one allowed in or out? I didn’t think Brits were allowed to travel to foreign parts, not these days?”

  Andrews shook his head sadly.

  “My wife and I are retired. I took my police force pension and bought a house in the South of France, long before the border closed. When the government changed over and that Lord Stone fellow took power, British ex-pats were asked if they wanted to return home or stay where they were. We chose to stay in France…”

  The American gave a sad laugh.

  “I bet you wish you hadn’t now, eh?”

  Andrew gave a weary nod.

  “Our daughter, Lucy, pleaded with us to return to England when it all kicked off. Told us that she didn’t know when the borders would be opened up again. That it might be years before we could see each other again. But we’d only just retired, only just moved, couldn’t be arsed to pack up and move back again so soon. Thought it would all blow over. I mean, no-one believed what they’d shown on the telly, did they? That huge plane, hanging in mid-air? It was a trick, an illusion. Like that Derren Brown chap. No man possesses powers like that. Not outside of the movies.” His eyes glazed over, lost in memories, haunted by regrets that could never be rectified. “We lost all contact with her as soon as the borders closed. Skype, telephones, email; nothing gets through to Britain now. We even drove to Calais, but we got turned away at the border. No ferries crossing to England. Not anymore.” His eyes lowered to the dusty floor. “That was five years ago…”

  The American’s face was sympathetic.

  “So you went on holiday to Kenya, to take your mind off things…”

  “Some holiday that turned out to be, eh?”

  Sue whimpered and Andrew held her tighter, closing his eyes, before opening them again as quickly as he could. Would he ever be able to close his eyes again without the memories of that fateful night flashing behind his lids? He’d seen some terrible things during his thirty years in the Met Police. He’d seen the corpses of murder victims. Consoled women who had been raped. Rescued abused children from the homes of junky parents. All grim, yet all expected in the line of duty when working in a city the size and population of London. But that night on the yacht? It was supposed to have been a relaxing night out, an all-inclusive catamaran ride out to sea, where the resort guests could party, dance and sip champagne on the rolling ocean waves as stars twinkled in the clear African night sky.

  But then that rusting brown vessel had loomed closer and closer, the sound of its diesel engines ruining the serenity of the evening. Then the engines themselves drowned out by the clatter of AK-47s, white-hot lead flashing in the night and mowing down the hapless crew. The screams of the guests as Somali Pirates leapt aboard, smashing men, women and children alike to the decks with the butts of their rifles, before binding hands and feet and hauling them away. Andrew himself had fought like a lion to keep the assailants from his wife. But they had been too many. The butt of a rifle had caught him in the cheek and sent him crashing to the wooden boards. Then a descending boot had knocked him out cold.

  The Yank was right. How things would have turned out different had they never stayed in France, had they heeded the warnings of their daughter and made their way back to Britain before the border had closed. They would have avoided all of this. Alas, things couldn’t be changed now. Years of working in the police had left Andrew pragmatic as they come. He knew they had to make the best of this situation. Figure out a way to escape. But how? The iron bars behind him were plagued with surface rust, yet still thick and unyielding. All the guards they’d seen, either the black Somali Pirates or the Arab-looking men that
they’d glimpsed after entering the city, all had been heavily armed.

  But doing something, anything, was better than doing nothing.

  He uncoiled himself from Sue, rose, his ageing joints creaking in protest, his head dizzy with hunger. How long had it been? Two days since last they’d eaten? He felt weary beyond anything he’d ever felt in his life, but with a surge of determination he pushed the fatigue to one side and began to scrutinize his surroundings. There was a window, high and barred, at the other end of the cell. The dim red light of sunset glowed from without. Yet it was too high, too small to think of trying to escape through. The bars were sunk too deep into the sandstone blocks to stand a chance of removing.

  He turned, facing the cell door. He grasped, first with one hand, then both. The bars rattled, but the lock held firm. Ten men wouldn’t be able to open this door. Damn. How about the walls of the cell? This place looked old, maybe some of the brickwork was crumbling? He began to make his way around the edge of the cell, checking closely for imperfections.

  “What are you doing?” the American asked.

  “Looking for any way to escape.”

  “Can I help?”

  Andrew nodded.

  “Do the same as me,” he told the man. “Start from the other end and check along the edges of the bricks for crumbling mortar. If it’s old enough, worn enough, then maybe we could lever out a block, who knows? Doing anything is better than just sitting here.”

  The American nodded, but his partner, a tiny, waifish girl, with short-cropped brown hair, shook her head and sniffled, her eyes red-rimmed with tears.

  “There’s no point. We’re not going to be able to escape. You saw their guns. Even if we get out of the cell, they’ll just shoot us as we run.”

  Silence greeted her words. No-one argued. For they knew, of course, that she was right.

  “There’s always hope,” Andrew told her.