Defender of the realm, p.15
Defender of the Realm, page 15
“Ha, ha!” Alfie yelled, triumphant.
But then the lava simply squeezed through the gaps and around the sides, until finally it poured over the top and kept coming. The radio crackled back to life and he heard LC’s frantic voice. “Majesty, Majesty! Where are you?”
“About ten seconds from being boiled alive.”
In the Keep, Hayley was working to fix the feed from Alfie’s camera. When it came back on the monitor, the lens was cracked, but they could see the lava flowing toward him.
“Get out of there!” barked Brian.
Alfie looked to the bottom of the hill. The crush was getting worse, as people clambered on top of each other to get away. “I can’t! Not yet.”
A large tourist bus was sitting abandoned. Alfie tried to push it around to block the road. Using the power of his armor, he edged the bus along inch by inch, but it wasn’t fast enough.
“Have you tried looking for the keys?” shouted Hayley in his ears.
Good point, thought Alfie, feeling stupid. He ran to the bus and jumped in. Sure enough, the keys were still in the ignition—the driver must have left in a hurry. Firing up the engine, Alfie crunched the gears and swung the bus across the path of the lava flow. It wouldn’t stop it, but he hoped it might slow it down.
The coach rocked as the lava buffeted the side. Alfie heard the wheels pop and the metal of the undercarriage begin to buckle. Time to leave. Flames rose up the doors—he wasn’t getting out that way. Alfie unsheathed his sword and plunged it into the roof of the coach, carving a hole as fast as he could.
As he pulled himself out, he saw that the lava had simply picked the coach up and was pushing it downhill. Most of the pedestrians had now found shelter in one of the side streets, but a group of four soldiers were stranded on top of a car. The lava had them surrounded and was rising fast, already halfway up the doors.
Alfie summoned Wyvern from his spurs and made a beeline for them. He scooped one soldier, then another, up onto her back. She whinnied with the effort, but held her position, hovering over the car.
Alfie could see that he’d have no time to make a return trip for the other two. The lava was almost up to the roof. He had to take them now. Straining every muscle, Alfie lifted the third soldier, holding on to him with one hand and gripping Wyvern’s reins tight with the other. The horse dipped, the weight pulling her within inches of the bubbling surface of the lava.
The last soldier—the freckle-faced young man Alfie had met farther up the street—screamed out for help. But Alfie couldn’t release his grip on the soldier he was already holding, and he was scared to let go of Wyvern’s reins, in case they all tumbled off.
“SAVE HIM!” the other soldiers yelled at Alfie.
But could they take the weight of another person? If Alfie didn’t help the last soldier then he would be killed for sure; if he did, they might all die. A telegraph pole burst into flames next to them. Wyvern lurched backward and the pole just missed taking them all down with it. The horse groaned—she couldn’t carry them all much longer. But now they were too far away to reach the last soldier. Lava was almost at the young man’s feet. Alfie couldn’t reach him in time. He’d hesitated too long and now he couldn’t save him.
A beam of light from above dazzled Alfie for a moment. An RAF helicopter descended through the smoke. Wyvern carried the first three soldiers clear while a winchman zipped down a line at double speed from the chopper, plucking the last soldier off the car’s roof just as it disappeared beneath the surface of the molten river.
Moments later, Alfie dropped the stunned soldiers off in a backstreet and then rode Wyvern up into the sky. Exhausted, he gazed down at Edinburgh. The heart of the city was in flames. It looked like a war zone.
The Lord Chamberlain’s voice came over his earpiece. “Come home, Majesty.”
Alfie steered them south. It felt like a retreat.
“My family and I wish to extend our sincere sympathies to the people of Scotland at this difficult time. The terrible events in Edinburgh have reminded us that we are all beholden to the power of Mother Nature … Sorry, I can’t do this.”
Alfie stopped reading, rubbed his eyes, and sat back in the chair at his father’s desk. Correction: his desk. The king’s desk. “Beholden? Who wrote this rubbish?”
“I did, Majesty.” LC scowled at him from behind the camera.
The director kneaded his temples and ordered everyone to reset for another take. Their sixteenth. Technicians tinkered with the lights. A makeup lady rushed over and dabbed Alfie’s face with a sponge. He could tell they were all just making a show of being busy while they waited for him to do a take without messing up. LC waved the makeup lady away and ushered Alfie into a quiet corner.
“Is there a problem, Majesty?”
“No … Yes! This stuff you’ve got me reading. It’s ridiculous. It’s not what I want to say.”
“And what exactly would you like to say, sir?” asked LC.
Alfie couldn’t shake the image of the terrified young soldier’s face from his mind. Pleading for him to help. The look of horror when he realized he wasn’t coming back for him. He wanted to find him, to explain that he was just a kid too, that he had been scared.
“I don’t know. But something real, from the heart … How about ‘sorry’? Sorry I was too weak to beat the Black Dragon. Sorry I couldn’t stop half the city being burned to the ground. Sorry I wasn’t brave enough to save that soldier.”
LC looked around the room nervously, but no one had heard Alfie.
“The young man is fine. The helicopter picked him up,” whispered LC.
“It should have been me!” snapped Alfie. “I need a break.” Ignoring the Lord Chamberlain’s disapproving frown, he stormed out.
Alfie found himself in the palace gardens. How many summer days had he spent exploring its warren of hedge-lined paths, herbaceous borders, and lakeside hideouts with Richard and Ellie when they were growing up? It felt like the whole world to him back then, an endless wilderness where he could roam free forever. Now he saw it for what it was: a garden surrounded by high walls, patrolled by guards, nothing but a mirage in the middle of a hostile desert.
He turned a corner and found Brian sitting on a bench.
“Blimey, can’t I take a simple walk without you following me?” said Alfie.
“I wasn’t. This is where I come to have my lunch.” Brian held up a Tupperware box full of sandwiches and a banana. “But you can join me if you promise not to kill the mood.”
Alfie slumped next to him on the bench. “Sorry.”
“Still stewing over that Edinburgh mess, eh?”
Alfie nodded.
“You didn’t run from the fight. That’s all that matters,” said Brian.
“It wasn’t a fight. It was a beating! You didn’t feel what it was like when the Black Dragon hit me—he’s too strong.”
“Maybe. But now we know he’s only a man too—at least some of the time.”
“How does that help if we have no way of finding out who he is?”
“I’m just saying, don’t be too hard on yourself. You did fine out there.”
“And next time, you’ll do better.” It was the Lord Chamberlain, stalking toward them between the flower beds. He continued: “After the coronation, when you are truly in command of your powers, you will be more of a match for that vile beast.”
Coronation Day, thought Alfie. It was less than a week away. The day he would be officially crowned king. The day he would fully become the Defender—for life.
“The cameras await, Majesty … ”
Alfie sighed and traipsed back inside to finish his broadcast.
“Would it kill you to give the boy some encouragement?” growled Brian, a few moments after he’d gone.
“I believe that is what I did,” grumbled the Lord Chamberlain, affronted.
Brian started to stomp off, then changed his mind and turned back to fire off another salvo at the old man. “You remember when his father became king, don’t you?”
“What an absurd question. Of course I do!”
“Then you remember how useless he was at first. He could hardly stand up straight in his armor without his knees knocking together. And the worst he had to face for the first year was a few grumpy marsh goblins.”
“Ugh, the scourge of the Fens. Yes, I recall.”
“So considering what Alfie’s had thrown at him already, it’s a miracle he’s still in one piece.”
“We’re losing, you know.” The Lord Chamberlain’s face was lined with worry. “With each new fragment of the crown, our enemy is evolving, becoming Drakonem—a dragon. The first of its kind on these shores since the Great Fire. If we do not stop it, then we will have more than His Majesty’s hurt feelings to worry about.”
That evening, Alfie found Hayley alone in the Tower, fiddling with a laptop.
“Where is everyone?” asked Alfie as he stretched out next to Herne on the sofa. The dog woke up for a second, yawned, then fell asleep again.
“Playing hunt the clue downstairs.” Hayley nodded toward the Archives. The Lord Chamberlain had everyone down there searching a thousand years’ worth of secret scrolls and tomes, trying to uncover the hiding place of the final crown fragment.
Alfie watched Hayley tapping away at her keyboard. “Wi-Fi not working yet?”
Hayley shook her head. “You mean ‘wee-fee,’ remember?”
It was what LC insisted on calling it, and it usually made Alfie laugh. But not tonight.
Hayley turned around and saw his glum face. “Cheer up, Alfie—it was only a smackdown from a dragon supervillain and a major volcanic eruption. Apart from that, it was textbook.”
Alfie laughed this time, but it was hollow. “It’s not about me. It’s about all those people out there. They deserve someone who can keep them safe.”
“You’re doing your best.”
“What if my best isn’t good enough?”
Hayley gazed over the laptop at Alfie, who was slouched on the old sofa like a rag doll. She shut down the computer. “Reckon you need a change of scene. My choice this time. Oh, but we’ll need a ride.”
Alfie shook his head. The last thing he wanted after the debacle in Edinburgh was to suit up again. But Hayley gave him one of her looks—she clearly wasn’t going to leave him alone until he did what she wanted.
Moments later he slipped on the moth-eaten tunic and transformed into the Defender. Wyvern sprang out of his spurs and Alfie offered an armored gauntlet to Hayley, pulling her up behind him.
“OK, then. Where to?”
Turpin couldn’t take much more of Fulcher’s snoring. They had been sitting in their car outside the Whisper Grove Rest Home for over a week now, on the off chance that they might catch Hayley sneaking in to visit her gran. On day four they had agreed they were wasting their time. But the powers that be wanted them to wait … and wait … and wait. Turpin suspected they were being punished for failing to bag her the first time. But this was getting unpleasant now.
Stuff it, he thought. She ain’t coming. He sneered at his partner, who was snorting and snuffling in her sleep like a hibernating bear. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Turpin put his head back and closed his eyes. And precisely two seconds later a faint shaft of light shot through the sky above the car, disappearing somewhere behind the dark building.
“Gran … I want you to meet someone,” said Hayley.
Alfie had taken off the tunic when they landed in the dark garden. It was way past visiting hours, but luckily Hayley’s gran’s ground-floor room backed onto the garden. It had been a simple matter to pry open the window and climb inside.
Alfie shook the old woman’s hand. “I’m Alfie. Pleased to meet you.”
“Knock me down with a feather,” Hayley’s gran said. “You look just like that young Prince of Wales.”
Alfie and Hayley shared an amused glance.
“Um, Gran, he is. Well, he was. He’s king now.”
The old woman burst out laughing. “Pull the other one, Hales!” But then she stopped, puzzled, when she saw they weren’t joining in. She looked Alfie up and down more closely, then flew into action, guiding her new motorized wheelchair to a mirror and brushing her hair. “How do you know each other? Do you go to the same school?”
“Hayley’s been working at the palace,” said Alfie.
“Yeah, IT mainly. Pretty boring. Place is stuck in the Dark Ages.”
“Look at me in my dressing gown with my hair like a bird’s nest, honestly. Sorry, Your Majesty,” said Hayley’s gran. “Oh, Lordy. Let me rustle up some tea!”
Without warning she reversed the wheelchair over Alfie’s foot before he could jump out of the way. She spun the chair around and reached for a button on a wall to call a nurse. But Hayley stepped in front of her.
“No tea, thanks, Gran. Why don’t we just have a chat?”
And chat they did. Hayley’s gran reveled in telling Alfie all about her “nice hotel” and how much better the food was here than when Hayley was cooking for her. Hayley didn’t rise to the bait; she was just happy to see her looking so well. She giggled as Gran showed off her Union Jack tea towels and commemorative mug collection from the last two coronations to Alfie. It turned out she’d even slept out on the streets of London the night before Alfie’s dad was crowned king, so that she got a good spot to watch the procession go by.
“I expect you were too little to remember much of that, Your Majesty.”
Alfie laughed. “Just call me Alfie, please.”
Gran smiled and nodded. “Suppose that makes you King Alfred the Second. Blow me sideways, you’ve got a lot to live up to, sweetheart.”
Alfie’s smile faded. “Yeah, I know.”
Hayley wondered if they should get going before he spun off into another bad mood. But before she could say anything, her gran had taken Alfie’s hand in hers. “Let me look at you.” The old woman stared deep into the young king’s eyes, sizing him up. “It’s only natural to feel scared. You’re so young. It’s like when I first drove a Tube train on my own. There was little old me, with all these carriages full of people rattling around behind. Their lives were in my hands and they didn’t even know it! It was a big responsibility for a young girl, all lonely and afraid down there in the dark. But as we came out of the tunnel into the fresh air at White City station, do you know what happened?”
Alfie shook his head. The old lady shot up from her wheelchair, arms wide.
“The sun came blazing out of a clear blue sky. I’d led everyone out of the night and into the light! Hallelujah!”
“Hallelujah!” cried Hayley, throwing her arms into the air too.
“Hallelujah,” Alfie added to the chorus and joined in the laughter.
A sharp rat-a-tat-tat at the door made them all jump.
“Everything all right, Mrs. Hicks?” It was one of the nurses.
Alfie dived under the bed and Hayley leapt into the bathroom as the door opened and the nurse stuck her head into the room.
“Oh, yes, my love. I’m just talking to the King of England.” Gran beamed.
The nurse nodded gravely. “I’ll go and get your medicine.” She shut the door and hurried off. Alfie climbed out from under the bed and Hayley emerged from the bathroom, snickering.
“We’d better go,” said Hayley, guiding her gran back into bed.
Her gran frowned at Alfie. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend first?”
Hayley sighed and kissed her on the cheek. “Maybe next time, OK? Night, night.”
Gran settled back in her bed, singing to herself as Hayley and Alfie climbed out of the window. “Good-bye-ee, good-bye-ee, wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee … ”
They didn’t say anything to each other until they were back on Wyvern, rising out of the garden.
“Sorry about that,” Hayley called out. “She gets confused. I think she got a kick out of meeting you, though. Thanks for taking me.”
“No problem,” replied Alfie. “I was honored to meet her. She’s quite a lady.”
“Yes, she is,” said Hayley.
She wrapped her arms around the Defender’s waist and hunkered down. As they sailed over the roof of the old people’s home, she thought she saw a familiar-looking car sitting across the street with two figures slouched in the front. “Mind if we take a quick detour, Alfie?”
Thunder boomed all around Turpin and Fulcher, waking them with a start and sending them tumbling out onto the road. Puzzled, they sprang up and looked all around for the source of the terrible racket. Then they noticed the roof of their car. It was covered in deep dents—hoof-shaped dents.
“This is … unacceptable! Unacceptable!”
Alfie and Hayley were sitting at the ops table, while LC paced around, fuming. His normally pallid skin was pricked with red. Nearby, Brian leaned against an ancient pillar, managing to scowl as he went at his teeth with a toothpick. Yeoman warders scurried around looking busy, but Alfie could tell they were listening as their king was given the mother of all tellings-off.
“LC, it’s fine. No one saw us,” Alfie said.
“You don’t know that,” Brian said. “Ever since Edinburgh the country is going Defender crazy.”
It was true: The Defender had been snapped by camera phones more than once as he tried to divert the lava on the Royal Mile. Nothing conclusive, but too many people had seen him there for it to be dismissed as a hoax this time. The overexcited media was now talking around the clock about “the superhero in our midst” and who it could be. And people were sending in pictures nonstop: weather balloons, Chinese lanterns, and really bright stars in the sky; anything and everything was now being mistaken for the Defender.
“As for you, young lady,” lectured LC, turning his fire on Hayley, “you’re still wanted for questioning by MI5! How do you know they’re not watching your grandmother’s care home, waiting for you to visit? The fact that you two weren’t recognized or caught is just … blind luck!”
