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

  “Amazing, even the great Samson, the indestructible Samson, seems to have a weakness. And not just any weakness but one the Burrow had cleansed itself of long ago.” Gremian smiled, his face unmarred by any flicker of guilt. “Trust. Do you think the world we live in deserves such a thing?”

  Gremian moved lightening quick, flipped into the air, and thrust his sword to fast to see. His blade met only air, then damp earth. Stunned, he slipped on the dewy grass falling on his side and felt the grip of jaws around his throat and face. Samson bit and after a slow, grinding crunch sent Gremian flying head first into a gravestone. Gremian rolled over, the strength to move taken from him along with one of his eyes. His anger and his hatred came in little gasps as he looked into the face of the old fox approaching through the grass and weeds.

  “My greatest weapon, pup,” Samson growled, “I could never throw away. It’s me you fool. It’s me.”

  The words echoed through Gremian's mind even after the blanket of darkness settled over him.

  In an overwhelming rush Samson's injuries caught up with him and swooning, he staggered against a nearby headstone and collapsed onto the ground. The stars spinning, the constellations dancing, the cool breeze whispering him to sleep, he could feel the bliss of oblivion closing in and the concerns of the past month pass away. The untended grass cushioned his back and the soft notes of grasshoppers ticked away the hour of the night. He could feel the soft hum of the graveyard, a peaceful bubble inside the heavy endless drone of the Hantsa in London. Sleep was nearly upon him, his lids thudding closed, when a scent gave him the slightest nudge. A scent coming from the open grave behind, producing a picture of their pursuers and the fight yet to come and of Hailey and Roe somewhere in the dark. One last push, Samson, he thought. One last push and I can curl up in one of these graves and stay there forever.

  Pulling himself off the ground he twisted and wrung himself like a wet canine hoping to wake and rejuvenate his quickly cramping muscles. Half dragging himself to the fallen Guardian he managed to gather his sword and reattach it to his satchel. By this time the scent had increased and he could just hear the faint cries of soldiers as they crowded towards the exit.

  It was past midnight and he paused briefly, frozen between trots, when a wild cousin released a high pitched bark somewhere in the dark of the cemetery. The yapping of a dozen hungry pups followed in response. The mother was probably on the trail of a rat or rabbit. It was not the cry of a wild fox looking for a mate. That was much less aggressive, almost melodious in its mournful tone. As a retired Exit Guardian one of his responsibilities was to make sure no fox or vixen born in the Light satisfied their less than civilized urges with a roaming wild companion. There was a time when that crime frequently met with banishment from the city. In these filthy days however, he thought, the making of slaves out of the wild foxes went uncontrolled and unpunished. Then, of course, there were the Shadow Foxes and he wondered how many were about to be let loose into Highgate Cemetary.

  The call drifted off and as he rose to all fours, it disappeared out of the cemetery. Staggering from gravestone to gravestone, careful to leave no trail, he climbed a small rise, maybe ten meters from the exit and, once there, could hear a weak gurgling coming from behind the nearest headstone.

  Peering behind it he saw Hailey on her side, the satchel covering Roe still attached to her back. It was then he noticed the trail of flattened and disturbed grass where she had tried to drag herself to safety.

  Limping to her he gently placed a paw on her shoulder and tried to shake her awake only to see that her eyes were open, her breathing had evened out and that she was looking at him.

  “Hailey, are you all right?”

  She gave him a weak smile and reaching forward, gathered a small twig between her jaws. Samson stood silently as she slowly carved into the damp earth the words...Yours now...then gave a sigh and was gone.

  He stood crippled and motionless, the unreal weight of the loss leaving him numb. A small insignificant looking cut was on her ribcage, clean and without blood. Yet he knew the wound passed through to the other side where her blood had seeped onto the midnight grass.

  Perhaps for the first time in his life Samson felt defeated, unable to move or do anything more. Then he heard a quiet peep and a soft shifting coming from the satchel on Hailey’s back.

  Roe needed him now more than ever. Even if I don’t have the strength, he thought, I will find the strength.

  “All right, Samson, there is no time to grieve,” he puffed.

  Gently shifting Hailey onto her front he eased the satchel off of her back and placed it gently on a nearby tomb. Glancing over his shoulder he could tell by the echoes coming from the tunnel that he had perhaps five or six minutes. He would not leave Hailey’s body. Most likely she would be taken to the city gates and strung up with the common criminals to be picked at by rats and other vermin. Nor did he have the time to bury her with the respect that he felt she deserved. There was only one thing to do.

  Nearby, draped over a headstone, abandoned by some carousing Hantsa youth, was a grey hooded sweatshirt, twisted, damp and dirty. Threading the satchel onto his back, Roe tucked inside, he trotted over to the garment, grabbed it in his jaws and carefully placed it over Hailey. He then wrapped the thick cloth arms around her mid section and around her face. Tucking her feet in the bottom he tied it closed with a littered piece of string. The makeshift shroud lightened his spirits slightly. Although it was not the traditional funereal linens, the respect in which the fabric was given was as it should be. Pulling her towards the tunnel he laid her down gently in the grass and quickly gathered as many loose twigs and leaves as he could find. Reaching into his own satchel he pulled out a red fuel cannister and struggled to unscrew the filler cap. After what seemed an age, he carefully poured a small amount of fuel onto the pyre he had created and dribbled a trail of fuel back to the crypt entrance placing the last remaining explosive charges amongst the petroleum soaked granite. He pulled the plugs and dove with Roe into another open sarcophagus nearby. The explosion was deafening and would undoubtedly wake up half of the Highgate Hantsa population. Exactly what he hoped would happen. Fifty Hantsa stopping the fire and investigating the explosion would force the soldiers to find another exit by which time they would be well on their way.

  On their way...to where, he thought.

  After the dust had settled he peered over the ledge to see the entrance grave had collapsed upon itself and blocked the tunnel. He saw the pyre was burning strongly and then realized there was one last bit of horrid and dirty work to complete. Running in the direction from which he had heard the wild pups chirping, he sniffed the air looking for the den. It wasn’t hard to find and as he removed one of the males from the litter he tried to ease the guilt by telling himself that the pup would most likely die within the first year anyway. He asked for forgiveness and suffocated the poor creature as painlessly as possible and removed Roe from the satchel. Placing him gently on the ground, the tickling grass inspired a barrage of giggling yips. He wrapped the wild pup in the satchel and hobbled back to the pyre before placing the bundle in the flames. They must believe that the mission was completed and that, although Hailey put up a heroic fight, Roe had died with his mother.

  Kneeling down before the blaze out of respect, he had no words of hope to offer the smoke. Finally he looked at Roe now sitting on the ground beside him. The little pup had woken up and was looking, with blue flecked eyes, calmly back at him.

  Samson, son of Flint, the greatest warrior the Burrow had ever known was now to raise a child. There would be no returning to the burrow or to his own family. He couldn't even tell them why.

  As he grasped Roe in his mouth to begin their journey together, Hailey’s last words, etched in the damp earth, now burned in his mind. The fate of the kingdom, of all foxes born into the Light of London, and of this pup, was now on his aged shoulders. This responsibility, he thought. All of this responsibility. Yours now.

  C
hapter Two

  Fifteen years earlier...

  Of the innumerable tunnels in the Great Burrow of London none had the opulence of the Paw Maul, that heavy shouldered avenue shrugging its way to the magnificence of the Palace of Collaring. The Palace, once the home of the Royal family, was now a place of condemnation and torture where the council of brothers gave birth to the fierce fear by which they ruled.

  Ursula hoped the upright and noble look she wore successfully masked her feeling of complete apprehension. She could have left the city secretly by one of the many ancient tunnels which only she knew the entrance to. Being one of the last remaining chroniclers has its advantages, she thought. In the end, though, she had decided to make a statement, a statement wrapped in an act of defiance. Besides, after what happened, her conscience wouldn’t allow such a vanishing act.

  It all had started from such a calm state of certainty that it was hard to believe it had created such an uproar. The decision had come shortly after the death of her husband.

  Then there was Scarlett, her daughter, whose childish muzzle had dripped home a bloody bundle that very morning, revealing a plump and broken rat.

  “Something for my little brothers,” she had squeaked. “I know, Mama. We aren't allowed to take our own rats. But no one saw me and nobody need know and they'll have it waiting for them when they come out. Mama? I thought since father can't be here I would do it. I don't want them to miss out. It's a tradition.”

  By the end of her short speech she had a defiant look and had swished her little tail with a resolute horizontal slash, a habit she had developed since her step-father had gone missing last year. How will she ever explain to her little Scarlett what she is about to do?

  As if on cue four pairs of little paws began to patter, with the occasional hefty kick, against the inside of her belly. She stifled a tear and thought to herself, “This isn't about her, or the hope these pups could bring us. There is no more hope. I have had enough. I have simply had enough.”

  Her claws clicked and echoed in the empty passage. Trying to distract herself she began reflecting upon the brilliance of where she was. Nearly ten tail-lengths in

  height the tunnel was constructed in such a way that it allowed a continuous fresh breeze to wash away the foetid air at the heart of London. It remained one of the few miracles of engineering from the past that still functioned and was in stark contrast to the dank and dark dens that made up the rest of the Burrow. But how? How could the London Foxes have ever built such a thing or anything else that they relied upon for survival? It was a question all freed foxes asked themselves. With nothing but paws and a jaw how did the foxes of old write a book, carve a statue or even make a fork? How did the mosaics in the halls ever come to life or the spectacular feats of architecture ever become reality? She had seen a painting once, hidden from the council by an uncle, a spectacular dance of colour so real she thought she could leap into it and run wild with the mystical characters within. She had sat in front of it all night until her father had forced her to bed in the morning.

  There hasn't been a new painting in at least a hundred years. What was made before is all we have, she thought. Unless we risk the surface and steal it from the Hantsa. Even those treasures aren't for us. They aren't made to suit us. Society has become a dilapidated patchwork of ancient recyclables and the foreign waste from above. Anything new, anything fresh, is a dream. What is it? The great mystery. Something is missing, something isn't right. We had something wonderful, something sublime, something that gave our great wakefulness meaning and it has been lost. The lost Art.

  Engrossed in her thoughts, she stumbled on a red brick paving stone which had ground its way free from the countless others stretching into the dim distance of the Maul. She fell into one of the glossy large curved obsidian panels covering the wall of the tunnel, bumped her nose, and with a shake of her head gazed at the distorted reflection wreathed in a golden haze from the traditional gas lamps lighting the way. She looked tired. Her head dishevelled, her whiskers sagging and clumps of thick fur giving way in a disorganized pattern to thin. Then she looked into her own eyes. She saw despair and sadness but as she looked deep into those hazel voids, that buried stubbornness emerged with that sharpness of mind poised behind it. For a moment, it wasn't her looking back but a younger vixen. The same eyes in a righteous and ambitious younger fox. The same eyes that had been inherited by her daughter.

  She dusted herself off and looked at the lamps descending into the distance. Reflecting off the black volcanic glass, they were some of the last that hadn't been replaced by electric bulbs. This was something the foxes below shared with the Hantsa above, a growing reliance on technologies they little understood. The flickering flames gave off a faint amber glow and warmth that was contrary to the purpose of Ursula’s solitary journey. She was resolved now, however, and continued on her way with a renewed purposefulness.

  In a few hours, she thought, this would be a bustling hive of activity. It was a horrid thing to be the centre of attention within such a small community, but now the word had leaked and the controversy reverberated city wide. This was part of the reason she wanted to arrive at the council chambers before morning. The majority of foxes were still asleep in their dens. She sensed a large part of the city would descend upon the hearing. And for good reason. She was going before the council because she did not want to give birth within the confines of London. In the grip of an angry resolution she had made this decision, one that had never been made before nor had even been proposed by a London vixen born into the light. Her children, she thought to herself, would be short lived, wild and controlled only by their instincts.

  Just as she was pondering the inevitable scandal, she saw an old and mangy tail flicking haphazardly in and out one of the many tributary tunnels which led off from the main artery of the Paw Maul. First the tail, then a portion of a cart, then a bit more body. Ursula grimaced and quickened her pace. It was Audley the bone-man. An incredibly sweet tod whose impoverished and emaciated state was no hindrance to a jaw that could wag gossip better than a gathering of vixens on a hen-hunt. She wasn't in the mood nor could she afford the delay and hoped to slip past while he was focused on moving his rickety cart of goods into position.

  “Don't, don't,” he said in a whisper. “You mustn't come a calling and uninvited to boot. But I had that charm. I had that characteristic. Even the old fool couldn't help but take me in.” Every now and again as he mumbled and pushed he would lean back and give himself a great scratch on the back of the head. “Now where to sell this rubbish? In the alley? In the pipe? He hasn't the mange, you hear....he hasn't!”

  With that he spun on his hind legs, looked the creeping Ursula straight in the eyes, and said, “Its not the mange, damn you!” He hovered for a moment, a stunned look on his face, then finally dropped to all fours. “Ah, I see you've come to lend a hand, pup. Well you are a bit late, but still plenty to do.”

  “Audley, good morning,” she sighed gently, “I wish I could help, I do, but I've got a meeting with the council.”

  “The council? Ah, no time for their nonsense. What would you want to do with the council? Best to stay away, pup. Keep out of those public places or you'll get the mange, you hear?” He toyed with the quilt covering his mound of goods as he spoke.

  “Its the council, Audley, our government. They don't have the mange. No one has had the mange for many many, years. It was eradicated, don't you remember?” She looked at his tatty and worn robe, then down the tunnel, and after taking a deep breath of his particular odour said, “Audley, it's me, Ursula. Look, I'll stay for a moment to help unload the cart. Then I need to trot.”

  “Ursula. Ursula? Oh, yes, the child of Finan. He went the wrong way, my dear, and never came back. It is kind of you, Ursula, my pup. It is a gentle load but one of quality, my dear, one of quality.” With a dramatic flourish he flung the covering cloth away, revealing the mound beneath.

  She gazed sceptically at a heaping mash of green
and brown on top of a cart fuzzy with mould and mildew; a combination of ripped cloth and leather with the occasional unidentifiable bone sticking out. Off to the side, in a place of precious honour, sat the prizes of his collection; a length of copper pipe, a broken door knocker and an incomplete rat skull. If the mange was still lurking anywhere, she thought to herself, it was within this pile of trash.

  “Yes I see that, Audley.” Gingerly, she grabbed the copper piping, laid the quilt flat on the paving stones next to the wall and began prodding at the collection. “You used to have a very different collection, Audley, when I was younger. Do you remember?”

  “Different? How so? Not as nice, I should think.”

  After a quick glance to make sure they were indeed alone, she whispered, “You had such an amazing array of ornaments. Do you remember? You would boast about exploring in the forbidden tunnels smuggling out artefacts of real value. You and my father were quite the archaeologists.”

  Pulling his paws out of the sticky mass he looked her in the eye. His mind, teased by a lost thought, was struggling to grab hold of it.

  “Tunnels. Yes...yes...I found it there...and I brought it back. Not the mange...no...no...they always said...they did...if you find it...Able will show you the way”

  Ursula's eyes grew large and as she took a short breath she lunged at the old fox, pushing his head below the cart while desperately looking side to side.

  “Audley, you musn't say that. Are you mad?” Her ridiculous question came out as a reflex, a result of her shaking fear, as he was undoubtedly a bit twitchy in the mind.

  She struggled to keep him down as she whispered urgently in his ear.

  “The cult of Able was banned centuries ago by the Chairman of the Council himself. You risk both of us. If anyone should hear and especially in a public place like this it would mean death for the both of us.”