Professor Slocombe mouthed the syllables of an ancient spelclass="underline"
“‘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.”
And then Jim saw it. The cruel dark shape cutting through the midnight sky. The great, crooked wings sweeping the air. The long narrow head, the trailing feet, eagle-taloned, lion-clawed. The thin, barbed tail streaming out behind. “The Griffin!” Pooley ducked down into his seat. Further praying seemed out of the question, God was no doubt sick of the sound of Jim’s voice. Pooley’s nose came into close proximity with the Gladstone bag. “The Professor!” Jim sprang up, scanned the arena, in search of the sage … the old man had vanished. “Oh dear,” said Jim, “oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!”
And now he could hear the sounds of the flapping wings and further shapes filled the sky. The legion of King Balin rode the sky above Brentford. The legion of the forever night, raised by the force-words of the arch-fiend Kaleton. And at the van upon that most terrible of beasts, rode Balin. “Balin of the black hood. Balin whose eye was night.” Balin whose sword blade was the length of a man, although considerably narrower in width. King Balin of the iron tooth, the bronze cheek, the ferrous-metal jaw. Balin, the all-round bad lot. King Balin led his evil horde down towards the army of his enemy.
“I am going to count to five and then I am going to shoot your head off,” said Inspectre Hovis. “I should like to say that there is nothing personal in this, but I would not lie to a condemned man.”
“Abracadabra Shillamalacca! Come out, come out, whoever you are!” cried Hugo Rune.
“One,” said Hovis, “and I mean it.”
“Shazam!” cried Rune. “Higgledy-piggledy, my fat hen …”
“Two, three …”
“I’ll huff and I’ll puff …”
“Four, fi…”
“Look there, sir!” shouted Constable Meek. “Up there, up in the sky!”
“Birds?” said Hovis, squinting up. “No, not birds, bats! No! Bloody hell!”
“And there, sir, who’s that?”
Hovis peered about, following the constables wavering digit. On one of the high catwalks of the gasometer a solitary figure was edging along, carrying what looked to be a couple of heavy suitcases. “What’s going on here?” Hovis demanded. “I demand an explanation!”
“What’s he doing, sir?” The solitary figure was lowering one of the suitcases down the side of the gasometer on a length of rope.
“Is this your doing, Rune? Rune, come back! Stop that man, Constable!”