The Progeny of Able (The Burrow of London Series Book 1) Read online

  The Burrow of London Series

  part one

  the Progeny of Able

  Peter S. Case

  Copyright © Peter S. Case 2014

  The right of Peter S. Case to be identified as the Author of

  the work has been asserted by him in accordance with

  the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2014

  by Black Earth Books

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  All rights reserved; no part of this publication

  may be reproduced or

  transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying or otherwise,

  without the prior permission of the author.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

  businesses, places, events

  and incidents are either the products of the author’s

  imagination or used

  in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual

  persons, living or dead,

  or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-910740-02-6 (Hardback)

  ISBN 978-1-910740-01-9 (Paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-910740-00-2 (MOBI, E-BOOK)

  Cover design by Omar Kazam

  Cover images of foxes by Cecil Aldin (1870-1935), PSC Private Collection

  Background cover image from Archetypa studiaque patris, Georgii Hoefnagelii, 1592

  Black Earth Books

  Greater London, KT1 2RG

  www.blackearthbooks.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Glossary

  Burrow of London Series part two Able Asunder

  Able Asunder Chapter One

  Able Asunder Chapter Two

  Author Page

  Chapter One

  Twenty Years Earlier...

  He could barely run any more. A river of blood swept down his right front leg streaking his scarlet fur a sticky black leaving a trail of maroon paw prints staggering behind him. Scarcely registering the ancient tunnels, he was relying upon his muscle memory to lead them out of the Burrow and into the safety of the cool night air and the streets of Hantsa London beyond the graveyard. His head was swimming and he was running in a dream with flashes of roots and hard packed earth reminding him this path was forgotten, the exit disused and known only to a handful of historians. Closed for centuries, they had needed to blast a hole in the bricked-up entrance, a hole that wouldn’t remain undiscovered for long. But he needed to rest.

  A grimy outcrop of rock roughly grazed his shoulder sending him stumbling to the ground.

  “We’ve got to stop…Hailey…for a moment.”

  Her sides heaving, she gave him a nervous look but fear and instinct drove her onwards.

  “Hailey, I need to stop!” he growled after her. “It will be all right. Just let me catch my breath.”

  They had come to a halt at a bend in the mud tunnel where it wrenched itself upwards, an incline that stretched for another mile before an abrupt stop and a grave exit. The dark was absolute, yet foxes have an innate sense of the placement of things and the two exiles had no trouble navigating to a resting place.

  Hailey glanced anxiously over her shoulder sniffing their trail and smudging her nose on a dangling dust covered root. With an impatient sigh she adjusted the wiggling bag strapped to her back. She was lean and marked by the beauty of one who has struggled to attain little in life but appreciates that little as if it were the most beautiful thing in the world.

  “The changeover of the watch lasts at least half an hour,” he gasped from the ground, recognizing her concern. “They won’t notice anything is amiss for another ten minutes or so. Besides, we are well ahead of them.”

  “Still,” Hailey rushed, “once we are out, we’ll have the Exit Guardians to contend with across the entire expanse of London.” Kneeling down beside him carefully shifting the cradle to the ground, she continued, “If we are out before they raise the alarm I think we will be safe after, however, we can't be sure…” She stopped and gave a sniff. “You are hurt, Samson. I can smell the blood.”

  “A scratch, only a scratch. I’ve gotten worse from a late night and a bad dream,” he laughed in painful spasms like chopping wood, his light, aged, sinuous frame rattling away the pain.

  “Let me feel,” she replied sliding her head out of the loop and carefully setting down the satchel in a rocky nook, initiating a shift and a movement within.

  “You must keep him still, Hailey, if he begins to cry…”

  “Roe is stout, like his father, he knows not to cry. Now let me have a look.”

  Samson carefully raised his right paw, allowing Hailey a space to examine the wound.

  “What about your family, Samson?” she asked, tenderly prodding his ribs with her snout.

  “They will remain,” he responded, trying not to wince, “in the hopes of finding some answers. Once I have seen you settled I will return to the Great Burrow and to them.”

  “You risk so much for us...too much.”

  He stopped her probing with a turn of his head and a gentle growl.

  “It was our decision, Hailey, and we would risk far more if it meant protecting you and Roe. Haven't you finished yet, vixen?”

  “Not yet but I have found the wound. It's tiny.”

  Suddenly she stopped gave a hard sniff, then a lick, and muffled a cry.

  “Samson it is...”

  “It is what it is. All that matters is that Roe is safe and you are on your way. Let’s get moving before I pass out and you have to carry us both.”

  On the verge of responding, a slight breeze tickled past her whiskers. It was the touch of a distant door opening and closing, the pressure difference from the passage of a body through a small opening. Then there was another followed by another and another, a sensation too subtle for a Hantsa to detect but like a gale force wind to the heightened senses of a fox on the run.

  “They are through the opening,“ he groaned and rose. “They are coming.”

  He staggered for a moment against the wall, while she began to gather the bundle wedged comfortably between two round rocks.

  “Hailey, we’ve got maybe ten minutes on them. Look, the path forks ahead. I’ll run a length down the descending tunnel and create a diversion, you follow the path up to the graveyard. If I remove my shirt and blow part of the entrance, the scent and the smoke should create a false trail and buy you a few minutes. This will cause them at the least to divide their forces. If nothing else, you know, even injured I’m formidable.”

  She hesitated for a moment, riddled with doubt, then crossed to him and whispered, “I know what you have always taught, that the wild animal is still hidden within us, that our instinctual kinsmen will bite through their own arm if caught in a trap. Samson, you are old and injured, and haven’t truly fought in years. Let’s blast the main tunnel here and go together. Or at least you take Roe and I’ll stay.”r />
  “No,” he growled fiercely, “I don’t want to blast the main tunnel here as it may collapse entirely before you are clear. It is my responsibility to protect the boy; yours to raise him. Go now or I will rush towards the enemy immediately and fight them head on.”

  He gave her a look she recognized all too well, one that meant there was to be no compromise.

  “Listen to me,” he responded to her hesitation. “I know them, I trained them and there are only three which means they will take the prevailing scent.” With a quick jerk and tear his shirt hung like a rag from his mouth. “Don’t look back Hailey, no matter what you should hear and take this dagger.”

  He pulled a short unadorned blade from his pack with his jaws and passed it to her.

  “It is unlikely you will see one but if you are unlucky enough to come upon an Exit Guardian be merciless and do not hesitate. “Go, he said in a deep whisper and then continued with a wink and a devious smile, “I will see you above.”

  She took the blade and gave him a last intense look and all fell quiet for a moment, their breathing subsided and the hollow echo of the empty tunnel faded into a knowing filled silence. They touched noses for the briefest of seconds and shared the shortest of breaths.

  “Samson, you and your family have given us more than any other fox would think we deserve. But out of everything it is the kindness that you have shown which is the most meaningful. Thank you.”

  A sob cut short, she looked in his eyes, turned, and in one fluid movement had her precious satchel across her back and was ascending the tunnel at a run.

  Samson watched her go, then hobbled up after her, before veering down and away at the fork. He had to work fast and through a mountain of pain. As the tunnel reached bedrock he smiled. His blood would pool nicely in the crisscross of crevices.

  Swinging his pack around, he gave a shrug and released a long silver blade that ended in a hilt shaped muzzle. The guard, fashioned to cover the jaw and snout, contained within it a strong leather grip made to bite down upon. A brief image flashed through Samson’s mind of a bright summer’s night and the glint of a hundred foxes armed with such weapons pounding a charge on either side of him. Putting the hilt into the ground he carefully placed the blade between his paws and gently probed his wound with it. His face was strained but the pain made him chuckle.

  “Let’s face it,” he grumbled, “this isn’t the worst thing I've had to do to myself.”

  With that, he dug his rear paws into the rock and shifted his weight onto the razor sharp tip. He could feel the blood begin to flow more freely and the flat metal edge of the broken dagger that was causing him so much pain. His wound hadn’t been so severe after all. Now, however...well, he hoped the extra blood would shift the scent.

  He hobbled deeper into the tunnel allowing the blood to dribble along his path, his paw prints continuing to mark the way.

  Finding a spot in the ancient tunnel where the stone above looked particularly precarious he withdrew a small plastic capsule from his pack with his mouth, stood on his hind paws, and, while shuddering and fighting the pain, wedged the capsule in a small crack. Without hesitation or remorse he grabbed the short nylon pin chord with his teeth and pulled it free. Stumbling away as quickly as he could he heard a sharp click then a short explosion sent him flying into the air against the opposite wall. He felt rather than heard the snap of a rib under the roar reverberating throughout the tunnel. He was on his feet immediately, amazed he did not lose consciousness. Coughing as he breathed in the phosphorous haze, he found the small but deadly rockfall, managed to place his back against a boulder and shift it up enough to place the bloody rag of a shirt underneath.

  The ruse would work, but not for long.

  “Sometimes I amaze even myself with what this old body can take.”

  He turned away, ascending the tunnel out of the dense smoke and reached the fork just in time to catch the probing glance of stolen Hantsa torches approaching from around a distant bend. Coming to a halt, he stemmed the flow of blood with a bandage, wincing from the broken rib, but was unable to stop a string of bloody drool from seeping out of his mouth onto the ground. He looked back down the tunnel and hoped the smoke and smell would be bait enough.

  The mud floor began to give way to gravel, lichen and the occasional green weed as he followed the faint scent of Hailey and Roe. He could feel the shift from the foetid air of the city to the fresh night air above and with it he could sense something was not right. The approaching lights had disappeared behind him, presumably lured by the diversion, but ahead he could hear the sharp clang of metal and the yapping shrieks of foxes in a fight.

  The Exit Guardians had been clued ahead. How could they have known? The realization rolled over him; betrayal. Gremian. It had to be Gremian. Something began to take over then. Something his aged bones had not felt for many years. A remembered gracefulness, disused of late but hibernating fiercely below the skin. A growl not more than a whisper began to rise from his throat as his pace quickened and the pain throughout his body dissolved into the night air. It was a growl deep and resonant and was a sound few foxes had it in them to make. The shrill battle cry of the Guardians, the Burrow's most lethal fighting force, was nothing. He was Samson, known as Master, General, the Indestructible Jaw and sometimes simply the Thunder.

  His tail shot out straight behind him as he reached a sprint, his mind blank, his muscles relaxed but his focus fierce. A breeze, a flake of moonlight from a crack above, gravel giving unto paving stones and steps bathed in a bluish light all passed him in a flash. The tunnel widened into a small but neat crypt; a rectangular opening allowing the night air and a light rain to glisten the sides of a sunken sarcophagus. He heard shrieks and laughter ahead. There were at least two voices and the breathing of half a dozen others.

  “Mite, mite, mite… Little lady thought she could escape and take her bastard spawn with her. What do you think? Shall we let her watch the little pup's head crack and split all over these lovely gravestones?” More laughter and snickering.

  Hailey, lying on her side and covering the bundle of Roe, could hear a faint rumble coming from the tunnel exit and the soft patter of a fox sprinting. She smiled faintly and through gasps of breath managed to speak.

  “You are all deaf. Can’t you hear it? Can’t you hear what is coming to devour you? What is coming in my wake?”

  They turned in unison just in time to see Samson, blade in jaw, leap from the rectangular grave and, with the whip of a shoulder, send his sword flying through the air to rend the Guardian Fox closest to Hailey in two. They scattered immediately and formed a practised defensive position as Samson slowly drew his sword out of the flesh and the earth it had come stuck in. He stumbled but the fierceness of his growl kept them at bay.

  “It is Samson, but he is injured. Look his coat is streaked with blood. Mankill, Sar, the vixen.” It was Gremian, their commander, who indicated with his head towards Hailey and Roe. The games they had been tormenting them with had come to an abrupt end with the arrival of Samson. Failure in the mission to kill her and the boy would mean a death sentence for themselves. They had to keep Samson on the defence and formed a wedge to back him away from Hailey and Roe.

  Samson could see the glint of a blade being drawn by the one called Sar just as he felt the base of a tree with his tail. He had only moments and with that realization he let the feral fox within him loose. He crouched down, feigning a trip, making them close in sure of an easy kill and just as they were upon him he leapt into the air kicking off the tree behind barrel rolling over their heads. He flipped once as he hit the ground, leapt again and decapitated Mankill before the dirty fox could even let loose a bark.

  Once back on the ground he rolled over on his side sending his sword in an arc just in time to parry the stroke Gremian aimed at Hailey’s chest. Gremian immediately backed away into the group at the tree. Samson quickly grabbed the satchel containing Roe between his jaws and, with a tremendous roar, hurled the pup wit
h Hailey attached over several gravestones into the darkness beyond.

  Gremian had reformed his line and they advanced, swords drawn. Samson sensed the formation behind him and immediately flipped onto his back and pushed. The breeze of swords passed over his prostrate body as he sliced into the exposed underbellies of three more guardians, spilling their offal onto the Highgate grass. Only two and Gremian remained.

  The first to come at him with sword swinging was flung aside and skewered flank to flank. The fox called Sar managed to parry once then twice then broke off and paced around him before rejoining Gremian.

  “I have to give it to you, Samson, you’ve still got it. But you can’t best me. Look at the state you are in, you can barely breathe, your adrenaline is running out. What then?”

  Samson knew he was right and that his overpowering rage would soon be spent. He said nothing but increased his glare and growl. Sar circled behind him, then closed in. He felt the shift to attack before he heard it. It was enough and with a flick of his head the sword shot out of his mouth spinning in the air behind him with such force that it carved Sar from shoulder to tail cleaving his beating heart in two.

  For a moment Gremian stuttered and looked unsure, then took a deep breath and smiled, “You’ve given up your weapon, Sammy, now what?”

  “I found you, Gremian, don't you remember?” Samson hissed across to his friend. “Amongst the young fighters I heard the rumours of your skills with a blade. I rescued you from the pits. I trained you myself, for so many years, and yet in the end you betray us when our need is greatest. Why?”

  In the betting pits of the city, where the poorer classes went in desperation to die or make a quick and meagre fortune, Gremian had stood out as the eldest son of a fallen aristocrat. Someone with intelligence and a base desire to do harm must always be approached with caution. Samson realized it was too late. He had not heeded his own trepidation when he had found Gremian all those years ago.