his arse, it’s that one.” He turned to his men, who were lowering their strange load onto the ground. “Shall we?” He gestured to the bench.
Norman smiled and made to return to his seat. But before he could take a step, he was jerked back. Looking down, he found three hands clasped around his arm.
“Now’s your time, stud. Great destiny, and all that,” Lincoln growled.
Alexander said nothing. His eyes said it all.
Norman felt himself nodding. What choice was there?
They headed back to the bench. Norman took a seat beside Lincoln, both of them to Alexander’s left. With two more chairs filled, the councillors’ bench didn’t look quite so bare. He tried not to wonder whose seat he was sitting in right now—were they trapped, or rotting somewhere out in the city?
He kept his eyes resolutely on the table, trying to ignore the pressure of hundreds of stares from the audience.
Cross your fingers for me, Allie. This could go badly.
Lincoln grumbled as he eased himself down, laying his rifle down on the bench with a reverberating clatter.
“How did you get here, Mr Lincoln?” Evelyn said.
Lincoln clapped his hands together and rubbed vigorously. “Well we were pinned down over at City Airport, just like you said,” he roared. “And, boy, they didn’t want us there. Rounds going over our heads every other second. I thought we’d be blue and bloated by sundown.”
His companions, who were all young dirty men, had stepped back from the package and stepped to the side. They were wiry and strong, gaunt-faced and stoic, but there was no hiding their exhaustion. Each of them was liberally covered with odd scrapes and bruises, charred by hot shrapnel, and half-blinded by dirt.
“But?” Alexander said.
Lincoln shrugged. “Well, boys and girls,” he said, addressing the room at large, “would you believe an old goat’s tall tale?”
“Stop playin’, Oliver. I have minutes before I git back to droolsville,” Agatha said.
“When they stopped shooting, we came out and saw their banners all over the city—they wanted us to see. They were marching north.” He barked, and slapped his knee. “Praise God for small miracles, folks, because they’re gone.”
By the time Lincoln finished, the room was on its feet, cheering.
*
“They’ll be back,” Evelyn said. Even her icy crispness couldn’t quite stamp out the celebrations.
People hugged and cheered. From elsewhere in the tower echoed laughter from the wounded and those tending them on the higher floors. Norman spotted Allie and Richard embracing, and he smiled.
He would have given a whole lot to be up there holding her, then. Mystery or not, good news was good news, and he’d seldom had opportunity to celebrate of late. He’d have liked to do it with her.
He settled for a hearty pound on the back from Lincoln and a shared smile of relief with Alexander.
The jubilation died down and eventually they were all seated again.
“It seems the knife is no longer at our throats,” Alexander said. “Perhaps we have a little time to prepare. If they are gone, we may stand a chance of communicating our plan to all of us who remain.”
“For the grand finale? The big showdown on horseback?” Thompson snorted. “What is this? The Lord of the Rings?”
“It is what it is,” Norman said. He blinked, surprised that he had spoken. Yet he found that the words came easy, and the pressure of all the stares afar failed to rattle him. “We’ve been suffering too long to go on wittering. We’re in the shit, and we have to dig our way out. Marek’s right: brass tacks, and now!”
The crowd bustled with cries of assent.
“Braah, he speaks the truth!”
“Leastways, the young’un sees sense.”
“The Chosen One’s got a tongue, after all. Hear him, every’un!”
That last cry had had a rough and gravely sheen, but had a touch too much of Allie and Richard’s voices to miss.
He thanked them silently.
Lincoln growled appreciatively, and his eyes twinkled with amusement as he turned them upon Evelyn and Thompson.
Evelyn shook her head with a tired sigh. Thompson scowled in turn and put her hands up in mock surrender.
“What is this you’ve brought before us?” Evelyn blustered, jutting her chin in the direction of the package in the centre circle.
“Ah! A treat for us all, and no mistake!” Lincoln said. His voice was suddenly excited, the kind of mindless enthusiasm of a young boy.
Norman knew that tone. Lincoln always sounded that way around machines. Especially Old World machines.
He leaned forward in his chair, along with hundreds of