Matt’s body was caked in filth, his hair stuck to his scalp in thick clumps. A cut on his cheek was bleeding. But it was the pain inside his head that was making his teeth ache. He had failed.
He walked in defeat across the beach to where Solon was kneeling next to the Abbot.
Matt had never seen a dead body before. He slowed, unsure of what to expect.
Solon had pulled the Abbot’s hood respectfully over his face, leaving only the old man’s pale chin and wiry grey whiskers visible beneath the folds of cloth. His hands were tucked inside the sleeves of his robes and his arms folded in front of him. The wet material clung to his body like a heavy skin. It was clear that the fall into the sea from such a great height had broken him.
‘We must get his body somewhere dry and safe.’ Solon’s voice was thick with anguish.
‘After we find Brother Renard, we will lay the Abbot to rest. Then we deal with your father.’
Matt kneeled next to Solon, feeling more desperate than ever. ‘That man, that monster, is not my father. Whatever happened when I… I brought him here destroyed his mind… or whatever was left of it.’
‘No matter. He will pay.’ Solon stood. ‘Help me carry the Abbot to higher ground. We must lay him somewhere safe, where animals can’t reach him.’
Matt didn’t reply but instead reached for a stick and sketched in the dry, hard-packed sand above the tideline. Within seconds, a simple plank coffin appeared.
‘You have broken the Rules again,’ said Solon after a moment.
‘This is no time for the Rules,’ said Matt.
Together they lifted the Abbot inside the coffin. Solon dug around in the rocks until he found two flat stones, placing them gently and reverently on the Abbot’s eyes. Matt dropped the heavy lid.
‘It should keep out any animals until we can bury him properly,’ said Matt.
Carik suddenly came sprinting round the rocky point.
‘RUN!’ she screamed.
A line of knights in matching black armour, wings forged on their shoulders and silver spirals on their breastplates, was marching swiftly towards them behind Carik, their heads cowled in chain mail, each figure outlined in an eerie yellow light.
‘Animations!’ said Matt in astonishment, scrambling to his feet. His father couldn’t have imagined this army – he was a Guardian – so who had created them?
There were six knights, each one at least two metres tall, and marching with unnatural speed and an extraordinary choreographed precision, their bony joints visible through the chain mail. But it was their heads that horrified Matt.
Each had only half a face.
Matt’s first idea was to imagine a machine gun, but he knew he couldn’t. Gunpowder wouldn’t make its way to the far corners of Scotland for another century at least, never mind rapid-firing guns. He’d already violated history enough. What could he do to fight these creatures?
Carik leaped up on to a ridge of rocks and released a flurry of arrows, hitting one or two of the knights in the back and puncturing their armour. The resulting wounds oozed a thick bubbling black liquid on to the sand, melting everything it touched as the knight dissolved to a hissing puddle.
‘Don’t let that stuff touch you!’ Matt yelled at Carik in warning.
It was too late. Carik screamed in pain when one of the creatures turned towards her, splashing the oozing tar on her hand and blistering the skin on contact.
‘It’s some kind of incendiary ink, like sulphur and coal tar,’ Matt began to explain to Solon. ‘It’s burned her, though she’ll be—’
But with a howl Solon had already charged among the five remaining skeletal soldiers, swinging and thrusting his broadsword, reducing one to fizzling liquid with a lucky stab to the image on its breastplate.
‘Aim for the breastplate!’ Solon shouted, wiping the ink on his clothing.
Instantly the liquid ate through the wool of Solon’s tunic. Matt could smell burning flesh as Solon screamed. Frantically the young monk ripped the cloth from his body and grabbed a handful of wet seaweed, pressing it hard against the smouldering wound.
The minions honed in on Matt, who had scrambled on to the jagged rocks that lined the shore. With no time to think, Matt used the tip of Solon’s sword to scratch a weapon on the face of the rock.
This had better work.