There was only one person who didn’t make him feel ashamed. Ella. She’d accepted him for what he was. And what made him lie awake at night staring into the blackness, his guts sour with worry, was the thought that he had no idea what had happened to her. Whether she was all right.
When they’d first brought him to Windsor, and he was lying there, sick and puked out, too feeble to even move, he wondered if they’d brought her here to the castle, and he wondered what he’d do if she came looking for him. He’d wanted to hide from her. Decided that she’d be better off with him out of her life. He’d only make things miserable for her. He was bad luck. She’d said it herself.
She didn’t need to be saddled with a dog’s dinner like him.
But at the same time he hadn’t wanted her to see him dead. And he’d known that if he wanted to survive he had to get well, to eat more, to look after himself. So when the kids brought in buckets of slops he’d made sure he was first to the trough, kicking back the other vermin down there, searching through for the best bits.
And this will to survive had remained strong at Maidenhead, where they’d been penned up outside. He’d killed another father soon after he’d arrived. The diseased old pus-bag had been top dog there before the newcomers from Windsor had been herded in. He’d wanted to fight Malik when he shoved to the front to get the best scraps. Malik had waited until he was sure no kids were around and strangled him like the other one, squeezing the life out of him with his bare hands. No one argued with him after that. The adults left him alone.
He could sense what they were feeling, as if he could soak up their thoughts and emotions through his pores, getting a weak pulse from their dull minds. They were hungry and confused and angry, in a sullen, sulky, depressed kind of way. And he was depressed from being among them for so long like this. He was used to hunting them, stamping them out; that’s all he’d ever thought of. Lashing out against the world that had made him what he was. He couldn’t kill all these ones, though – the kids would notice that something was wrong. Being with them, soaking up their pathetic, tiny, animal thoughts, he’d wondered if he’d been right. He didn’t belong among children, but he didn’t belong among adults either.
And now here he was. A pig. About to be taken to the slaughterhouse. Already the cage was being opened. A kid was poking through the bars at the back with a spear to shift them all out of there. It was starting.
This was his last chance to try to speak.
He looked at the boy and he looked at the adults and he kept quiet.
Stubborn.
Stubborn and stupid and ashamed.
But they weren’t used to taking on someone like him. He would show them today how to fight.
64
Ella was sitting with the Windsor kids. Waiting. Not sure if she wanted things to happen quicker or slower. She’d made herself watch the horrible gladiator fight, straining to see if Malik was there. So relieved when he wasn’t. And now here was the last event. With the last of the grown-ups. Was he going to be among them?
She’d lost him when they’d been attacked near the woods and the same thoughts had kept going round and round in her head ever since Go had told her about the races … Had he been killed? Had he escaped? Had he been captured and treated like a grown-up? Was he going to be here today?
She’d told Go all about him, explained that she’d been with a friend, a boy who looked like a grown-up. Asked Go to find out if he’d been picked up when they’d found her. Find out if anyone had seen him.
Go said that as far as she knew no one had.
‘His face is scarred,’ Ella had said. ‘People think he’s a grown-up. But he’s not, he’s just a boy.’
‘We didn’t find anybody,’ said Go. ‘I was there. I’d of seen if there’d been any other kids. We almost didn’t find you. You were buried under a pile of dead ones.’
‘Dead grown-ups?’
‘Yeah. A lot got killed in the attack. We couldn’t bring them all back here.’
‘So Malik could have been killed?’
‘There were no other children, Ella. Just you.’
Ella had begged to be allowed to see for herself, to look at the grown-ups in the dungeon. See if Malik was among them.
He wasn’t.
He’d gone.
She prayed that he was safe somewhere.
The raggedy band started playing Darth Vader’s music, ‘The Imperial March’ from Star Wars, and kids were riding into the arena.
Golden Boy came in first, arm in the air with a clenched fist. Half the kids were cheering, half booing. He pulled his sword from his scabbard.
‘This is my sword,’ he shouted. ‘This is it! I shall not return it to its sheath until it is stained red with the blood of the fallen.’
‘He can be such a tosser,’ said Go.
Behind Golden Boy came the scary-looking Ascot boy who was usually guarding the King. He was wearing a white sweatshirt over his clothes, the hood up and half covering his face. Then, from Sandhurst – Ella had quickly learnt the colours of the different camps – a big boy in leather on a horse that was a bit too small for him. He was sitting uncomfortably and looked all wobbly. If Ella hadn’t been so anxious she would have laughed. From Slough there was a girl with a ponytail, her head shaved round the sides. Then there was a boy from Maidenhead and a girl from Bracknell, both with lances.
They all went round and round the arena, encouraging the kids to cheer for them and throw more stuff into the ring. All sorts of rubbish was fluttering down. The Maidenhead rider speared a teddy bear on his lance and held it up in the air, grinning.
At last the band stopped, and the people stopped cheering and making so much noise, and the riders got ready, drawing their swords, patting their horses’ necks to calm them down.
Everyone was waiting now. Ella wanted to be sick. Time had slowed down until it felt like it had stopped.
And then a great shout went up as the grown-ups were forced into the ring, shielding their faces from the light. These ones were bigger and stronger-looking than the first lot. They didn’t seem so scared and confused. They were angry, ready for a fight, the pick of the pack. Most of them were fathers, but there were some nasty-looking mothers among them, baring their teeth at the kids. One ripped down her top and bared her breasts at the crowd who screamed with laughter. Ella just felt embarrassed.
The grown-ups spotted the riders and formed into a group, waiting. Ella searched them, looking at their faces, the way they were standing, what they were wearing, trying to see if Malik was among them.
No, just ugly, diseased grown-ups, mothers and fathers and …
There. Right in the middle of the pack, trying not to stand out.
Ella wished that time really had stopped and would never start again.
Malik. His movements so familiar to her. Sniffing the air, his head turning and twisting to check out the whole area, thinking, planning, getting ready.
What could he do? What plan could he have? What hope did he have against these kids with their horses and their sharp weapons? Their swords and lances.
All her fault.
Golden Boy raised his sword and charged, shouting, ‘Windsor …’
And the rest of them followed. All shouting except for the bald boy.
‘Bracknell …’
‘Maidenhead …’
‘Sandhurst …’
‘Slough …’
65
The horses were coming, thundering across the arena, and Malik was moving. He wanted to stay in among the pack where he’d be a harder target to pick out. The half-naked mother stepped forward, snarling and hissing. Golden Boy galloped in, swinging his horse round so that his sword arm was on the right side, chopped down, aiming for the neck, but getting her across the face and cutting it diagonally. She hissed again and staggered sideways and, as Golden Boy pulled his horse round so that he didn’t career into the tightly packed mob of bodies and lose momentum, it knocked into her and she went down.
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The Bracknell girl with the lance was right behind him; she managed a direct hit on a young father, the head of the lance going right through him. The horse carried her on, but she wasn’t able to pull the lance clear and, rather than risk being unsaddled, she let go and left it there as the man flipped and flopped on the grass. She yanked out a sword and slashed at a pack of grown-ups who were crowding round her. Malik saw two fall down before the Bracknell girl was able to pull away. It was all happening fast. There were horses on both sides of him now. He had to thin the kids’ numbers. He had to take some of them out of the game.
He chose the Sandhurst rider first. He wasn’t confident in the saddle and was kicking wildly and swearing as he tried to get his horse to do what he wanted. And now the horse bolted, racing across the arena, and Malik picked his moment. He waited until the jittery animal came close then darted out of the pack and jumped in front of it, waving his arms in the air. The horse reared up and the Sandhurst boy gave a disappointed cry as he went tumbling backwards over the rear end and landed with a heavy thump on the blood-wet grass. In its mad scramble the horse trampled on the boy’s legs and he rolled clear before crawling towards the side of the arena to get away. Two Ascot guards scrambled over the barrier to help him.
Malik was still moving. He was out in the open and exposed. He was right behind the Bracknell horse, however. The girl was good, but her horse was panicking, spooked by the riderless Sandhurst mount that was whinnying as it dashed about the confined space, looking for a way out. Malik slapped the rump of the Bracknell horse as hard as he could and it bolted, crashing into the Maidenhead horse. The two of them blundered into the barriers where the Bracknell horse tripped, spilling the girl into the seats. Spectators shrieked as they jumped out of the way of the rider. The Maidenhead boy managed to stay in the saddle, but had lost his lance, which had become tangled in the barrier.
That was two down, four left.
A shout.
Malik spun round.
Golden Boy had spotted him.
66
Ed was impressed with the grungy sicko. He was smaller and slighter than the others, probably the youngest one out there. He must be a teenager. His face was awful, like a doll that had been chewed by a dog. Knotted with scar tissue. Ed sometimes gave into self-pity when he looked at himself in a mirror. Greg had cut him badly down the cheek and without proper surgery the wound hadn’t healed well. Compared to the young sicko, though, he was a fashion model.
He was used to seeing sickos, used to the way the disease ate away at them, erupted from under the skin, making their faces a vile pizza of boils and lumps and sores, with other parts rotted and falling away. This sicko was one of the worst Ed had ever seen. He was also the best fighter he’d ever seen. He was fast and seemed clever.
It was chaos in the arena and a lot of the sickos were just wandering aimlessly; others, seemingly made bolder by the young sicko, were more dangerous and made murderous dashes at the riders. It was clear that Golden Boy and the others hadn’t been expecting any real opposition from the sickos. This was meant to be kids showing off their horsemanship and their skills with sword and lance. This was meant to be a one-sided polo match, but the young sicko had turned it into something different. This was a competition now, and the spectators were enjoying it.
This place had held so many races over the years; so many bets had been won and lost. Ed had been struck, when Golden Boy had led the riders into the arena, that this was how it used to be. Riders coming in and parading around before a race.
Surely nothing quite like this had ever been seen here before.
‘Look at him go, man,’ said Lewis, who was sitting next to Ed. ‘My money’s on the sicko.’
‘Let’s hope he makes that Windsor twat look stupid,’ said Kyle.
Golden Boy tried to run the grungy sicko down, but he darted back into the main pack and got lost among them.
Golden Boy viciously cut down an older father on the edge of the pack, slicing half his face off. The Maidenhead boy had got his lance free and was now charging at the pack himself. They parted, suddenly exposing the young sicko, and it looked like his game was surely up. There wasn’t quite enough space in the arena for the boy’s charge to gain speed, however, and the young sicko just had time to shunt the tip of the boy’s lance down into the ground where it stuck fast. The lance levered the boy up, lifting him out of the saddle and tipping him over to the side. He let go of his weapon and flung his arms round his horse’s neck and somehow managed to cling on.
Both actions had got a massive cheer from the crowd and Ed glanced over at Arno. This was supposed to be the triumph of good over evil, but one of the demons was winning the crowd over.
One of the kids needed to kill him, and kill him quickly.
Ella was trying to push her way to the front of the grandstand, but all the kids were up and out of their seats, blocking the aisles, shoving each other this way and that for a better look, shouting and roaring. Someone barged into her and knocked her to the floor. She was in danger of being stepped on.
She couldn’t see what was going on in the arena. From the reactions of the crowd it sounded like it was going crazy.
‘Let me through,’ she screamed. ‘Let me through!’
They ignored her, or didn’t hear her, didn’t care.
‘Let me through …’
It was hopeless. She’d have to find another way down.
The grown-ups were being thinned out. The shaved-head boy in the white hoodie was expertly riding through them, chopping to left and right. Malik wanted to keep well clear of him. With his white hood hiding his face, he reminded Malik of the guy in Assassin’s Creed. And that’s what he was – an assassin. The Slough girl and the Maidenhead boy had stopped moving, they were too penned in by bodies. The Maidenhead boy didn’t seem to have another weapon now that he’d lost his lance and was kicking the sickos who clawed at him.
The Slough girl sat there, her sword rising and falling, rising and falling rhythmically. Malik recognized her as one of Josa’s gang that had tormented him back in the day when he’d been Tyler’s bitch. He sneaked in closer, never taking his eye off that deadly, flashing steel, up and down, up and down, blood flying off the blade. He timed his move, leapt in, grabbed her forearm and easily pulled her from the saddle. She really hadn’t been expecting this and went stage-diving into the pack of adults. He left her there, floundering about on the ground as the adults pawed and groped at her.
The Maidenhead rider had seen what was happening and slid out of his saddle, elbowing his way towards the fallen girl. Well, that was brave at least and Malik left him to it. The Ascot Assassin was also coming over to help, cutting a path through the sickos.
The three of them had their hands full and now was Malik’s chance. He needed to get an advantage. He wanted a horse. He wriggled clear of the grown-ups and ran into the centre of the arena, getting Golden Boy’s attention. Golden Boy gave a happy whoop as he closed in for the kill.
Malik had observed how Golden Boy’s skills had been getting sloppy as he’d grown more and more angry.
He was still armed, though, and on horseback. This was no time for Malik to get sloppy as well. He’d wanted to show these kids how to fight, not how to die.
Golden Boy was coming fast, his sword up, leaning forward slightly, his face red with fury, teeth bared like a grown-up. Malik stayed still, tensed, letting the boy pick his target and line of attack. As Golden Boy got close enough, he took a swing. Malik was ready. He quickly dodged round to the other side of the horse and, as it went past, he grabbed Golden Boy’s boot and boosted it upwards, spilling the already overbalanced boy, made heavy by his black and gold armour, out of his saddle. He tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Malik hurried to keep up with the horse, slowed it by pulling at the flapping reins, then easily swung up on to its back. Roy and Waggers and Tomasz and the other survivalists back on the farm all those months ago had taught him how to ride.
; To ride and hunt.
And he’d discovered he was good at it. He felt comfortable being back in the saddle. This horse was well trained, a joy to ride. Malik cantered round the arena, getting the feel of it. Golden Boy was standing up and Malik guided the horse towards him, nudging him over with the horse’s flank and, as he tried to get up again, knocking him down again. Some of the crowd were yelling abuse at him, but some were laughing and cheering. They hadn’t expected this. A sicko on a horse.
The Maidenhead boy and the Ascot kid had rescued the fallen Slough girl and taken her to the side. Maidenhead was now running over to help Golden Boy. Malik left them to it. The Assassin was the real threat. He rode over to the centre of the arena.
Malik wheeled his horse round and was close enough to look at him properly for the first time, even though most of his face was shaded by the white hood. He was pale with dead eyes that showed nothing. A memory stirred deep down in Malik’s brain. There was something familiar about him.
Was it just that he looked so much like the Assassin’s Creed killer, or was it something else?
Where did Malik know him from? Think.
Ed didn’t know what to think. His plans had been to try to win the races for Ascot and choose his prize. But Kyle had had to retire from the first gladiator event after Josa had attacked him. So there had been no points there. As far as he could tell, Ascot was just behind Windsor in the scoring. Whichever of the two teams won this event would be the outright winner. At the moment, however, he was rooting for the young sicko on the horse. The guy was going to be killed. There was no way of escaping from the arena alive.