“Perhaps and perhaps not, but hardly a victory upon a grand scale. I propose a far more noble scheme and one which I think might appeal to your sense of grandiosity as well as of justice.”
“Speak on.”
“I propose a battle of champions, to be held here and now.”
“Champions, battle, what is all this?”
“The protagonists are well known to each of us, light against darkness, good against evil, your man against mine.”
“Men? What men?”
“The sleeping Kings of Brentford!” said Professor Slocombe.
“What?” Kaleton’s head shrank into his shoulders, his chest bulging out to receive it, then he sprang from his seat to land upon all-fours. “You know of this?”
“Of the old battle, of the sanctuary, yes I know.”
Kaleton bounced and shook. Low howls and guttural sounds broke from his twisted mouth. Jim wondered where the lavs were. With a shudder, Kaleton rose once more upon two feet. He stared at the Professor, trembling and shaking. “There was a battle once,” he whispered, “long, long ago, when your people and mine fought, but then …”
“But then you were defeated.”
“Defeated, never! Look where you stand, Professor, does this look like defeat to you?”
“Then you have nothing to fear, you may enjoy your sweet revenge.” With that the Professor turned upon his heel and strode off down the long walkway towards the arena. “This is my challenge, Kaleton. Take it if you dare.”
Jim watched Kaleton. He was perched upon his crooked heels, frozen as if lost in thought. In reminiscence, perhaps? The Professor strode on. Jim glanced down, the Gladstone bag was there at his feet. The old man had gone off without it. In his recklessness he had surely left himself undefended. Jim was moved to take action, but lacked the wherewithal. Should he open the bag? Chuck the whole lot at Kaleton? Or simply run like mad?
Without warning Kaleton shot past him, bowling him from his feet. Jim felt that hideous strength, the raw elemental power. It fairly put the wind up him. Climbing into the nearest seat Jim flopped, powerless to do bugger all except look on.
Moving with a fearsome energy Kaleton bounded down the walkway after the Professor. “Raise your warriors!” he crowed. “Raise your dead king, your champion! This time, the reckoning will be swift and bloody.”
Pooley sank into his seat and sought his hip-flask. And now Professor Slocombe was standing upon the artificial turf of the sports ground, arms raised towards the sky. Kaleton bounded about him like a monstrous hound, calling insults and provocations. And light was growing in the arena. A curious glow illuminated the two tiny figures, foreshortened to Jim’s fearful gaze. Pooley popped the cork from the hip flask. “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight,” he wondered.
Professor Slocombe mouthed the syllables of an ancient spell:
“‘And good King Bran had a battle axe
King Balin a mighty sword
And the warrior Kings rode out to war
And they met at the river’s ford’.”
And there came, as sounds and as movements, a great restlessness within the very bowels of the earth, a rumbling beneath the streets of Brentford. Old Pete’s dog Chips set up a plaintive howling which went unheard by his snoring master, the Hartnell Hear-it-all having been switched off for the night. At the pumping station, the mighty beam engine gasped in a lost Victorian voice. And beneath the water-tower something stirred. Beneath that tower of stone, forces long slumbering came into wake-fulness. A sound, a call, an awakening.
Outside the teepee at the bottom of the garden, two braves ceased their dance and stood sweating beneath the stars. Their faces shone. “And now it begins,” said Paul Geronimo, “the dance is over, the great old ones return, now it begins.”
And so did it begin. From behind the yellow varnish of old portraits unviewed for a century in council cellars, faces gazed forth, eyes blinked open. Musty tomes and librams heaved, pages turned. From out the coffers of the museum, dust-dry hands reached up to take musty weapons, the rotting halberds, the lances and war-swords. Memories unstirred for a millennium, memories hidden in old walls and crumbling fallen waterfronts, in grassy mounds, in dolmens, long barrows, hill-forts, earthworks and holy groves. Memories. And the warriors beyond memory awakened, returned. The warriors arose from their unmarked graves.
And through the walls and floors, the stairwells and window casements from out of the worn flagstones and cobbled courts, the warriors breathed life. And up through the tarmac which smothered the old thoroughfares and swallowed up the ground of Brentford where once stretched dew-dappled hedgerows and corn-fields mellow with golden harvest reaching out to the gently flowing Thames, came Bran.
Bran. Bran the brave and just, the slayer of men. Bran with that great head of his, which still spoke on long years after it had been parted from his body. Bran with those great arms of his, which had broken men and cradled babies. Bran with his wild blue eyes, and even wilder hair-do. Bran the blessed. Bran of old England. King Bran of Brentford.
It was definitely him! King Bran’s great hand closed upon the shaft of his battle-axe, drawing it from its museum case. He raised it to the heavens. Stretched up his arms, those arms of his with their steely thews, their cords of muscle, their knotted, tightened sinew. Raised up that great head of his, with its wild blue eyes, sweeping whiskers and quite improbable coiffure. And he called with a cry of triumph, “To arms! To arms!”
Rune’s Raiders bumbled about in the shadow of the gasometer as a seismic tremor rumbled beneath their feet.
“Something is occurring,” said Inspectre Hovis. “Rune, open the door or I will not answer for my actions.” He turned his pistol upon the mystic. “Make haste now or it will be the worst for you.”
Rune threw up his arms and in desperation addressed the gasometer. “Open, Sesame!” he cried. “Open … Sesame!”
Inspectre Hovis raised his pistol. “You bloody pillock!” he swore.
“And good King Bran had a snow-white steed.” Now the warriors were mounting up their horses. Steeds reformed from the dust of ages, reanimated by the words of the Professor’s calling. And the horsemen moved out towards the stadium, towards the new lair of their ancient enemy. A dusty legion passing through a dreamworld, at once foreign, yet oddly familiar. And they were of heroic stock, sprung from that mould long broken, long crumbled into nothingness. These Knights of old England, of that world of forests and dragons, of honour and of noble deeds. Holy quests. And the dust fell away from their armour, from the dry, leather harnessings, from those regal velvets. And the golden crown of kingship, with its broken emblem, rested upon the brow of Bran. The once and future King.
And the Kinsmen and the men-at-arms, the Knights Royal, breathed in the new air, the new unnatural air, laden with strange essences, flavours of this crude, uncertain century. And they rode on without fear. The boys were back in town!
High in the stadium, Pooley gulped Scotch and wondered what was on the go. The Professor stood alone at the very centre of the stadium, but Kaleton was nowhere to be seen. The stadium was silent as the very grave and had just about as much to recommend it. For in the stillness there was something very bad indeed.
“By the pricking of my thumbs something wicked this way comes,” said Jim. And he wasn’t far wrong, for now came a chill wind and the sounds of distant thunder. Pooley gazed up towards the weatherdome, but it had completely dissolved away. The stadium was now open to the sky. Lightning troubled an ever-blackening firmament and the stars came and went as trailers of cloud drew across them like darting swords. “Looks like rain,” said Jim “which would just about be my luck at present.”