So that left Bracknell and Windsor. There was no way Ed was going to get anywhere near anyone in the Windsor camp. There was so much security there it might as well have been Guantanamo Bay.
Ebenezer had found out that most of the kids from Maidenhead were practising Christians. Sandhurst had become Hell’s Angels, Slough were a bunch of obnoxious yobs who spat at the world, the Ascot kids were misfits, Windsor were trying to act like royalty, and it seemed that the Maidenhead kids had got religion. They reminded Ed of Mad Matt and his acolytes at St Paul’s.
Everyone had found their own way of coping with this new world; they were free to create their own identities. The kids around here were only doing what teenagers had always done – trying to find out who they were and how they fitted in.
Whatever helped you make it through the night.
And here they all were, sitting in different sections of the grandstand. Six blocks of colour. Red, white, green, black, blue and gold. The Ascot kids were sitting right in the centre. To their right were Maidenhead, past them Bracknell and then Slough. To their left were Sandhurst and then Windsor. Ed was glad that he was a good distance from Josa’s mob. He didn’t want the complication of having to deal with them right now.
A few kids were warming up their horses, an equal number of girls and boys cantering up and down the straight length of track in front of the grandstand. Others were trying to form up in a line at one end. Some of them looked steadier in their saddles than others. A couple of the horses were already out of control, their riders yelling at them to hold still, and kicking them uselessly with their heels. One girl’s horse had taken off and was galloping madly round the track in the wrong direction.
A ragged little band of musicians was playing tunes, on trumpets and trombones, drums and cymbals, anything that could make a loud noise. It reminded Ed of the band that used to play at England matches, blaring out ‘Rule Britannia’, ‘The Dam Busters’ and ‘The Great Escape’.
Right now the Ascot band was playing the national anthem because the Mad King was coming out on to the track, being pulled along on a little wagon by four kids. Another kid, a little scary-looking, was riding at their side. He had a shaved head and a blank face and made a point of not looking at anyone. The King was wearing a little plastic crown on his massive head, a child’s toy, and had a cloak draped round his shoulders. He was happy, grinning and laughing. Ed didn’t know what to think. Was he being presented as a freak, a figure of fun? Or was he having the time of his life?
Maybe both.
In front of the wagon strutted Arno Fletcher, with a long staff in his hand.
‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen,’ he called out, and miraculously all the kids in the grandstand grew quiet. ‘Welcome to the fifth New Ascot Race Meeting, which promises to be the biggest and best ever. Just you wait and see! So give it up for the Mad King himself, King Nutjob the Thirty-first!’
The grandstand erupted.
The races were getting under way.
55
Once the whooping and cheering and stamping had died down Arno raised his staff for silence again and walked over to the King.
‘And now a word from our sponsors,’ he shouted. ‘From the host of this world-famous event. Tell us, Your Majesty, how doth it hang?’
The King turned to the crowds, his mouth lopsided, and he wailed at them, a jumble of vowels and no consonants, more like an animal howling than human speech.
‘He says you are all very welcome,’ Arno shouted. ‘Even if you are a bunch of useless, scum-sucking delinquents and special-needs cases.’
Kids laughed and stamped their feet.
‘And please place your bets with the royal bookies.’
Boys and girls were making their way through the grandstand, taking bets off the kids, while down on the track the King was bellowing at the crowd. Once again Arno stepped up to translate.
‘His Royal Highness has decreed that today is a good day to die. So let the mayhem commence!’
And mayhem it was. The first few races were simple sprints along the straight in front of the grandstand, with two riders from each camp in every heat. They careered down the track, frantically whipping their horses and each other. There didn’t appear to be any rules. The riders were allowed to do whatever they wanted to win the race.
Some of the horses collided with each other, with the riders trying to knock their rivals out of their saddles. There was lots of shouting and laughter coming from the grandstand mixed in with hurled insults and obscenities. The biggest cheers of all came when riders fell off their horses, and often a race would end with a group of riders dismounting to punch and kick each other at the finish line. Sometimes they wouldn’t even get that far and would sit in their saddles, halfway down the track, trying to smash each other to pieces.
The crowd loved every minute of it, cheering, jeering, laughing, winning bets, losing bets. And Ed cheered just as loudly as anyone else for the Ascot runners. He needed Ascot to do well if his plan was going to work.
There were ten races in the morning, with some riders racing more than once. Maidenhead won four, Windsor, Ascot and Bracknell won two each. Slough and Sandhurst had so far won nothing. Ed wasn’t sure that horse racing was their thing. So Ascot were comfortably in the middle, but until they moved on from the horse racing there wasn’t anything much Ed and his team could do to help out.
The main horse race of the morning was the Big Kahuna, a complete circuit of the track. Arno had told Ed it was about a mile and a half long, and it was in the shape of a giant triangle.
There were mostly different riders out for this one, three per camp, and these ones looked to be more confident and in control. Ed saw that the Golden Girl was racing for Windsor, and he was interested to see if she was as good on a horse as she wanted everyone to think. He also recognized one of Josa’s boys riding for the Slough team.
As before, the riders lined up behind a rope that was stretched across the course by two kids. The King had his arm raised and the two kids holding the rope were watching him intently. He wailed something. It could have been ‘On you marks, get set, go!’, it was hard to tell, but when he dropped his hand the kids dropped the rope and the runners were off, thundering down the straight, their hooves throwing up clods of earth behind them.
There weren’t as many of the dirty tactics as in the earlier races; this one was obviously taken more seriously. As they neared the first bend, however, two of the Sandhurst horses came in from either side of a Maidenhead rider and sandwiched him, lashing out at him with their whips and terrifying his horse. They eventually broke away, laughing, and the horse they’d hemmed in veered off to the side and jumped over the low fence at the edge of the course where it went charging into the field of tents.
For a while the horses got smaller and smaller, racing away down the second side of the triangle, so it was hard to see what was happening. A couple of them dropped out at the next bend and came trotting back down the track, but most of the horses were now coming back towards the grandstand.
The track was massive and most of it was only separated from the road by hedges, trees and a low chain-link fence. A few kids had been placed as guards at several points round the edges, but it was too large to make fully secure. As the horses came thumping down towards the final bend, the Golden Girl was comfortably in the lead. She sat well in her saddle and was by far the best rider. She looked like one of those horsey girls who’d grown up hanging around stables. The Windsor kids were standing up, cheering her on. Not even a dirty trick could stop her now, surely? And then a gasp went up as a sicko wandered out on to the track, right in front of her.
‘Kill the bastard!’ someone yelled from the Slough section of the crowd, and a chant started.
‘Kill the bastard! Kill the bastard!’
Golden Girl’s horse was spooked. It shied away and went skittering across the track, kicking up its back legs. The next horse slammed into the sicko, which fell under its hooves and was t
rampled. Two other horses went right over it. The rest swerved round it. Golden Girl fought to get her horse calmed down and back into the race, but three riders had gone past her before she was up to speed. She didn’t give up, but rode heroically, urging her horse on, and as they rounded the bend she was neck and neck with the number three runner. Now they were on the home straight, galloping along towards the finishing post. The screams and shouts from the crowd were deafening and Ed was trying to drown them out, yelling his head off – the rider in front was wearing the white colours of Ascot.
Golden Girl edged past the second horse, and was biting at the tail of the front runner. The Ascot rider, another girl, probably couldn’t believe her luck. Her mouth was open wide and she looked half terrified, half elated. Golden Girl edged forward, forward, forward … but just couldn’t quite make it – and Ascot were first over the line.
The Ascot kids went mental, half of them running on to the track and crowding round their winner. Golden Girl looked deeply pissed off. She was complaining to anyone who would listen and nudging her horse over to where Arno Fletcher was standing with the King. When she got there, she started a massive row, other kids joining in as a party from Windsor went over to argue their case.
Ed glanced up the track. Two of the Ascot guards were beating the sicko’s lifeless body with clubs. The boy on horseback with the shaved head who had ridden in with the King, and who Ed thought of as the king’s bodyguard, was sitting there, watching them expressionlessly, like a supervisor. Nobody else was paying them any attention.
The bodyguard turned round and clocked the commotion by the King and he galloped back. As soon as he got there, everyone backed off and stopped arguing. They were evidently scared of him. He was still blank-faced, though, and not looking directly at anyone. His presence there was enough by the look of it. Now Arno was able to get everyone quietened down and raised his staff to get the attention of the kids in the grandstand.
‘The King has made a ruling. Ain’t that right, Your Royal Bigness?’
The King wailed, nodding his head.
‘The result stands. Ascot win. Zombies on the track is a natural hazard. And what the King says goes. Now get back to your seats and prepare thyselves for the next event, loyal subjects and honoured guests and tossers! For now we present, in all its gory glory alleluia – the King’s Road!’
Ed looked at Kyle and they nodded to each other and stood up.
It was time to go to work.
56
Ed and Kyle walked down the aisle towards the track with Sophie and a tall, well-built kid called Sean, who seemed to be the closest thing the Ascot camp had to a champion. They weren’t used to winning anything, but Ed and Kyle were hoping to change that.
Ed knew a little about the King’s Road event; it was a variation on British Bulldog. Sean ran through the finer points as they made their way to their start position – a section of track marked out by two ropes on the ground.
‘We’ll be there,’ Sean explained. ‘In the catchers’ box. There’ll be five kids from each camp and we can’t leave the box. Up to ten kids from each camp set off from the starting line.’ He pointed to the far end of the track where a large group was starting to gather. ‘We don’t usually field more than about seven. And they have to try to get past the catchers to the finish line.’
‘Is that it?’ Ed asked. ‘Are there any tactics?’
‘I guess,’ said Sean. ‘As a catcher, you’ve got to decide whether to protect your guys going through, or try to catch runners from other teams. Also, if a runner gets through they’re allowed to go back to try to free their friends, so watch your backs. Winner is the team with the most runners past the line when the music stops.’
‘How long is that?’ Ed asked.
‘No idea. Arno and the King decide. Never soon enough. I warn you, it’s fun, but pretty brutal.’
‘This is gonna be a blast,’ said Kyle, grinning in anticipation.
They were joined by a rather large kid who introduced himself as Green and high-fived them. Ed reckoned he’d make a solid enough barrier, but wondered how fast on his feet he’d be.
‘You have any tactics?’ Ed asked.
‘We normally just make it up as we go along,’ said Sean. ‘And try not to get hurt too much. It’s basically chaos.’
‘OK.’ Ed looked down towards the runners. ‘Any of our guys get to us, we form up around them and escort them through the box.’
‘If any of them get to us,’ said Green. ‘We tend to be a bit useless.’
‘Gonna be different this time, soldier,’ said Kyle and he slapped palms with the kid.
‘Oh, there is one rule,’ said Sean. ‘You mustn’t step outside the lines or you’ll get disqualified and pulled out of the game. That’s only catchers, not runners obviously. You can tell who the runners are because they’re wearing black armbands.’
Arno was over at the side of the track, chatting to the King and the musicians, the king’s bodyguard sitting nearby on his horse. Arno looked up at the sky, nodded, said something that made the King laugh and they approached the barrier.
‘OK,’ he shouted, raising his staff. ‘May the best team win and may the worst team lose and may the good Lord keep you all safe and sound, you filthy rats.’
The King tipped back his head and howled and the band started playing, belting out an out-of-tune but enthusiastic version of the Carmina Burana theme that they used on The X Factor. Ed was so busy listening he forgot this was the signal to start the game. By the time he’d turned to look, there were about sixty runners belting down the track towards him.
Some of them were already fighting, a few stronger runners trying to take down weaker ones. Two girls had stopped completely and were laying into each other. There were collisions, shoving and punching, but the main body of runners kept on coming.
Ed had faced up to enough rabid sickos in his time not to be scared by a bunch of kids, and was more amused than anything. He got himself ready, shutting down any outside distractions. He knew that the hardest part of taking on a pack was choosing which individual to go for and not being confused by too much choice.
The Windsor kids had formed up into a sort of ram, with two large boys at their head and the rest massed behind them in a column. It looked like they were going to try to blast their way through over to Ed’s right, so he didn’t have to worry about them for the moment. The Sandhurst kids were relying on their size and strength and intimidating look. They were singing a song to the tune of Carmina Burana as they came.
We’re Sandhurst kids.
We’re Sandhurst kids
And we will kick your arses!
The rest of the runners were coming in an unruly mass, the Ascot kids scattered among them. Ed saw one stumble and fall and get trampled on, and he wondered whether any of them were even going to make it as far as the catchers.
And then there was no time to think as the two groups clashed.
Ed saw a blur of faces and bodies and picked out a slightly smaller kid, a boy wearing the green shirt of Bracknell. He was nippy, dodging about between the catchers, and had easily slipped past Sophie. Ed lunged at him, got hold of his shirt, swung him round and slammed him to the ground, slightly harder than he’d been meaning to. The kid cried out and was too winded to get up. Ed saw that Kyle had got hold of another Bracknell kid and thrown him down as well. Now Ed had to decide whether to hold on to his captive or try to knock down another.
Before he could make a decision, though, a Bracknell catcher nipped over, grabbed the boy and pulled him into the Bracknell area. Ed was going to go after him when he saw that the Slough catchers had caught one of the Ascot runners. Two girls had hold of his arms and looked like they were trying to tear him in half. Ed barged into the Slough section and slammed the two girls into each other. They were so surprised they let go of the Ascot runner, and Ed and Kyle cleared a path through to the back of the catching area and sent him on his way home. So that was at least one they’
d got through.
While they’d been distracted, Kyle’s captive had got to his feet and was stumbling through the catchers. Kyle threw him to the ground again and told him to stay there.
There was a major brawl going on over at the left-hand side, and Ed saw that some of the stronger runners who had got through were coming back to free trapped friends.
Still the band played on.
And then Ed saw Kenton and Josa piling their way through the catchers. Josa was snarling like a cat. She headbutted a girl who tried to get hold of her, and the girl dropped to her knees clutching her face, blood pouring out from her shattered nose. Kyle made a move on Josa and she butted him too. Ed grinned. It would take more than that to stop a bonehead like Kyle.
Suddenly, though, Ed had problems of his own to deal with. Kenton was coming straight for him, his tattoos making him look like he was wearing a mask.
Ed froze. Kenton wasn’t going to stop. He was knocking other kids out of the way as if they were straw dummies. Ed made a frightened face and ducked to one side. Kenton gave a shout of triumph and spat an obscenity at Ed, but, as he sprinted past, Ed calmly stuck out a toe and tripped Kenton so that he came crashing down face first into the hard ground. He lay there, stunned.
Ed spotted Green and dragged him over.
‘Sit on this one for me, mate,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, don’t let him up.’
Green grinned and did as he was told. Ed turned to see if Kyle needed any help and saw that he was running down the track towards the start line, with Josa over his shoulder, kicking and screaming and pummelling his back.