Meat

Twenty-six

Magnus was thankful for Bruno. There was a man he’d picked for the right reasons. There was a man that was loyal. When they’d broken out of the cells, Bruno was the first there. He directed four of the others as they freed Magnus from the railings.

Magnus didn’t like to remember it. After so long hanging there, the spikes were almost part of his legs. It had taken three of them to hold his weight and an extra man to wrench free each leg. The pain was different, worse: his wounding in slow, jerky reverse. He’d vomited and then, mercy of mercies, passed out.

Now he was on his bed, legs washed and bandaged by Doctor Fellows – another good man worth every illegally supplied bullock. Fellows said that he was a strong man and there was a chance he would make it. A chance. That was all Magnus wanted. That was all he’d ever needed to make things work for him. Magnus could do with slim chances what others could not. Most of the men Magnus knew didn’t even know a chance when they saw it.

He might heal.

He might not lose his lower legs.

He might walk again.

And if he could do all that, there was no reason he couldn’t carry on running the town by controlling every single cut of meat that would ever be fried.

But his stomach was a vice of tension as he tried to ward off the pain that owned everything below it. The level of the pain varied from intolerable to insane-making. He rose and fell with it. The thing that surprised him most was how it had cleared his mind of all peripheral concerns. He was thinking more clearly than he had for months.

His plan was a simple one. Bruno would take every surviving guard in Magnus’s employ and go immediately to MMP. There they would join up with all the stockmen and workers from the plant. They’d number at least three hundred men. That made the odds against Collins and Shanti ten to one. Not even Collins was good enough to survive those kinds of numbers. Finally, through the simple violence and force that had always ruled the town, Magnus would regain control. But that wasn’t the end of the plan. With the crazies eliminated, Magnus would take all his men and storm the Central Cathedral. They would capture the Grand Bishop first, as an insurance policy and to weaken the will of the Parsons. Then there would be a pogrom in which Magnus planned to end religious influence in the town overnight. They would burn every Book of Giving and every Gut Psalter in Abyrne and atop the conflagration cook the bodies of every Welfare worker. Perhaps they’d eat them too. It would have the desired effect on the minds of the townsfolk. In fact, yes, that was what he’d do: he’d eat the Grand Bishop’s roasted heart in front of every person in the town. They’d never forget the image of his flame illuminated face, feasting on the core of his enemy.

Bruno had already left. The plan was in effect. Only time lay between him and the new future of Abyrne. Only waiting and pain. He’d survived the worst of that already at the hands of Shanti’s demonic twin bitches. Those girls and their father would live a lifetime of pain before he let them die. He’d see to it personally. He knew how much their suffering would aid his recovery.

He looked down at his legs. Already the bandages were soaked through with fresh leakage. It was spreading gradually out onto the white sheets. He had lost a lot of blood and though Magnus wasn’t short of anger to fuel the ensuing weeks and months of convalescence, Doctor Fellows had expressed concern over the blood loss. ‘If anything kills you now,’ he’d said, ‘it’ll be the life blood you lose and how quickly your body replenishes it. Because you were inverted, the wound did not bleed as much as it might have. You’re fortunate to be alive.’

Fortunate wasn’t a word Magnus would have used to describe his situation. But he could accept the benefits of the second chance Bruno and Fellows had given him.

A symphony of agonies swelled upwards from his legs and he closed his eyes against this new tide. This was how it had been ever since they’d lain him down. Something to do with the blood trying to flow in places where it could not, the doctor had said. Magnus clamped his eyes tight but couldn’t prevent tears escaping. His yellow teeth showed through the fur of his beard as he grimaced. The pain was so loud he didn’t hear the door open.

When he opened his eyes, he was looking at the Grand Bishop. Behind him stood the full complement of his housemaids, ten of them. Magnus was too shocked to speak. The Grand Bishop approached, the femur club held casually at his right side. From time to time it twitched to the clenching of his fist.

‘I’ll make a religious man of you yet, Rory.’

The Grand Bishop smoothed his gown from his buttocks and sat down on the edge of the bed. The movement made Magnus cry out through his clenched teeth.

‘Your domestic staff have been telling me of your mistreatment of them. It’s more than just heavy-handedness, apparently. They say you wilfully and knowingly force them into all manner of degradations. Bestialities, one might even say.’

The Grand Bishop raised the femur club and brought the head of it to rest in his left palm. He tapped it there a few times very gently. He leaned very close to Magnus. So close Magnus could smell the rot on his breath.

‘We have laws against that sort of thing in this town you know.’

‘When have you ever adhered to a single law?’ said Magnus through his teeth.

‘You’d be surprised just how pure a man I’ve been all these years.’

The Grand Bishop moved the head of the femur club a little closer to Magnus’s knee. Magnus caught the motion and tensed. Even that caused the oceans of pain to rise up. His breaths shortened against the threat.

‘Seeing as you’ve ruled this house without a thought for law or decency, I’m going to allow it to rule you in exactly the same way. I will accompany you to your basement where your female staff will be free to make use of you in any way they see fit. And I mean any way. I will be there purely to offer the succour of our God and to accept your conversion before the end of your life.’

The Grand Bishop tapped Magnus’s shin with the tip of his club. Magnus screamed.

‘I must say, Rory, I’m rather looking forward to it.’

The maids approached and the Grand Bishop moved out of their way. Magnus saw the looks on their faces. There was still fear there but they were rapidly overcoming it. When it flipped into anger, he would be lost.

‘Please go ahead, ladies,’ said the Grand Bishop.

Looks passed between the maids and they stepped forward. Hands reached out and caught Magnus by his hair and beard. They yanked and he screamed again. More hands took hold. They pulled him to the edge of the bed. As one, they hauled him off. His torn legs landed heavily and the screaming reached a new pitch. Magnus tried to make himself understood but no words would form through his agony. In this way, they dragged him along the upper hall, through his study and bumped him down the stairs. Each of the women grabbed tools from the walls and drawers.

They jostled to be the first.

She’d have slept badly anywhere in her condition but the wind at the top of the wooden observation tower, had troubled her all night. Cold and insistent it had whined through the gaps in the tower’s planks and chilled her back no matter which way she lay. She was grateful for dawn’s grey arrival; staying awake would be less of an effort than trying to sleep.

The pain and unsteadiness in every part of her body were constant companions now and she decided it would be safer to stay up in the tower than to try and come down. It had been dangerous enough climbing up there. The towers weren’t used or maintained much any more and some of the rungs were missing on the access ladder. She’d risked it because she realised there was no way she could get close to any of the barns where the Chosen slept.

When they sensed her approach, a rigid tension rippled through the herds. It passed from one field to another and through every barn until it was quite clear they all knew she was there. Ten thousand of them setting their minds against her. Perhaps they sensed her sickness and would not tolerate it. She believed that for a while. In time, though, the reality settled over her making her original assumption seem very foolish.

It was simple. They could smell the flesh of their own upon her gowns and probably from her very skin. They knew that she was one who ate them, one for whom they died. Why would they want her near? Why should they let her shelter with them?

There wasn’t long to wait now and she knew it. She had begun to look at things differently in these last few days. There had been time to think, time to be most terribly afraid of what lay beyond her physical end. She was separated from a God who did not speak to her. She was therefore cut off from every other Parson, even the Grand Bishop – this was not something that could be discussed with any of them. She was the natural enemy of Magnus and every MMP worker because she had religious power over them. She was the enemy of the townsfolk because she was an enforcer of the Welfare’s protection.

Surely now, as she finished her life, she could at least be honest with herself.

When the light was strong enough to see by, she stood and looked over the slatted wooden wall of the tower. Down in the fields a thin mist lay between the hedges. Above it rose the well-defined edge of every field and the walls of the barns. In every field around her, the Chosen began to leave the barns. They walked with a crippled gait, rolling a little to each side. Once outside they stretched and yawned. In every field the Chosen stood next to each other, touching. Some leaned their heads together. Some used the stumps of their fingers to rub at the necks and backs of others. This was the kind of contact she had never known.

But she did not envy them.

Here were creatures that spent their short lives herded and controlled by the stockmen. Naked and downtrodden they lived every day of every season outside or in a barn. They were mutilated from birth to suit the townsfolk’s purposes, to suit the laws in the Book of Giving and the Gut Psalter. Finally, they were systematically unmade to feed the hungry mouths of Abyrne. And many mouths there were. For generations it had been so.

Silent in her tower, she watched them as the sun came over the horizon, watched the way they faced it – every single one of them – and seemed to absorb its light. Minutes later, before the stockmen arrived, they broke into random groups or re-entered the barns, behaving once more like animals.

The Parson lay down again when the stockmen came. She didn’t want to be seen or challenged. She lay down on the damp, slowly decaying boards and wept.

For she knew her truth was no truth at all. No God would ever answer her calls. How could He?

The loss of a hundred Parsons was in part to blame but even with the extra muscle they’d have lent, it might not have been enough. The townsfolk were fractious and anxious. They’d been shocked by the blasts at the gas facility. The realisation that there was no more power in the town – not even for the wealthiest areas – had hit hard. Rumour spread from house to house about the struggle for supremacy between their Meat Baron and the Welfare.

Other stories made the rounds. Prophet John had a band of warriors and planned to starve the town into converting to his insane ways. The supplies of the Chosen were dwindling. Prophet John had friends at MMP who had already begun to dump meat by the truckload and bring on a famine. Other tales told of a mass slaughter that had begun; to reduce the Chosen and push the prices of meat up further. Abyrne would then be split between the rich and the hungry. Most of the townsfolk had suffered a little hunger from time to time; a week or two in a year when meat was in short supply. And it was true, a few people did live at the edge of starvation but there’d never been a threat like this hanging over Abyrne. The Chosen existed in huge numbers – God’s sacrifice for his people to live upon. If the numbers of the Chosen were reduced too greatly the whole town might face a famine.

The grain bosses heard the rumours too. They had their own spies and the stories they’d heard were closer to the truth. They couldn’t let the slaughter take place if they were to continue to supply grain in previous quantities. They didn’t care what occurred in Abyrne as long as the town survived. It was the grain bosses’ men, more organised than the average dwellers in Abyrne, who led the townsfolk in a column to Magnus’s mansion. Their demands were simple: No culling of the Chosen. No discarding of valuable, usable meat. A guarantee that Prophet John would be brought to task and executed.

It said much about the balance of power that they went to Magnus and not to the Grand Bishop.

The delegation started out as a few hundred of the more outspoken and courageous townsfolk. As they marched through the streets of Abyrne, their numbers swelled. People stepped out of their houses to watch them pass and when they learned where they were going soon decided to join them. By the time the front of the column reached the road out of the centre of Abyrne there were thousands of people in it.

When they found the mansion empty but for the stringy remains of Rory Magnus, they wrecked it. A couple of youths set fire to the curtains in the drawing room and the big old house began to smoulder. The defilers ran out and watched the flames take hold. When the house began to collapse in on itself, releasing huge upward gusts of sparks and flame, they took that fire into themselves and turned away.

They marched out to the road and, jeering and chanting, turned away from the town. The grain bosses and their workers were lost in a mass of townsfolk they could no longer control. The column flowed out of the mansion’s grounds and towards Magnus Meat Processing.

Parfitt decided to smoke his cigarette outside. The atmosphere in the dairy was nasty now, worse than the sense of doom in the slaughterhouse. Each cow that came for manual milking struggled and ended up being not only restrained but beaten too. The new dairy boss made no effort to control the violence. It made Parfitt sick.

The greyness of the morning had never really lifted and though it was brighter now, the clouds hung like a low ceiling, pressing down on everything, suffocating it all. He walked away from the dairy block so he wouldn’t have to listen to the thrashing of bodies and the curses of his co-workers. He walked to the fence line to look out at the road and across the fields to the wasteland beyond.

If he hadn’t picked that moment, he realised, he wouldn’t have been one of the first to see Shanti and Prophet John arrive with their tiny entourage. They ran with a very particular kind of intention, focussed and purposeful steps bringing them swiftly towards the gate. His only thought at that moment was that they must have come here knowing they would die, a misguided suicide squad whose deaths would change nothing. He felt nauseous despair. He feared for them.

Across the space between the front gate and the nearest buildings of the plant came Torrance with a crowd of stockmen and dozens of Magnus’s black-coats. Dull grey reflected off every blade, chain and meat hook. Fearing he’d be seen, that he’d be expected to lend a hand, Parfitt backed away along the fence line and crossed to the rear corner of the dairy from where he could watch unseen.

There seemed to be some words exchanged between the mismatched factions; Shanti and Collins speaking for their group, Torrance for the superior number. Collins’s and Shanti’s people did not enter the main gate. None of the stockmen stepped outside it. Torrance’s faction became by degrees more frustrated and belligerent. They began to taunt their opponents. Soon every hand with a weapon in it was raised and shaking as the guards and stockmen jeered. Parfitt could even see some of them laughing. If he’d been with them, he’d have been laughing too. The band of skinny, ragged tramps standing outside the gate had no more chance than the Chosen.

As he had the thought, Torrance took the fight to the Prophet. He released a group of thirty or more stockmen and they charged through the gate. Parfitt didn’t believe what he saw next, didn’t even understand it. Faster than he could follow, the stockmen fell. Blades swung and whirled but made no contact. Instead of the tramps being hacked up, the stockmen were cut down by blows Parfitt wasn’t convinced he’d even seen. Machetes and boning knives clattered onto the road, dropped by dead or unconscious men – Parfitt couldn’t tell which from this distance.

The jeering inside the perimeter of the plant died away to silence.

At the same time Parfitt saw a smaller group approaching the Prophet’s band from further down the road. They were running. Two of them, a little further back than the rest, were giving very similar-looking little girls a piggyback. An extra ten bodies and two children, thought Parfitt. It still wasn’t enough. They’d tire and the numbers would be too great for them.

News of the arrival of Prophet John had spread and now Parfitt turned to see stockmen and other workers, armed with whatever tools they could find, running from every part of the plant to join to the defensive force. Torrance had told them to expect it. No one had realised it would come this soon. The pack of men in the forecourt grew and, having not seen the recent defeat of their own colleagues, the new additions brought fresh enthusiasm to the ranks. The shouting began again, louder.

There seemed to be some confusion on the part of Torrance about how best to take the Prophet on. Getting his own men to retreat from the front gate further into the plant’s grounds would be difficult enough. They wanted blood. Most especially they wanted Richard Shanti’s blood. Parfitt heard the man’s name shouted again and again. They hated him for being a traitor. Fingers and blades were pointed at him, threats to gut him, castrate him while he watched, promises to saw off his living limbs.

Weakness buffeted Parfitt and he swayed for a moment. A sick sweat broke all over him. This was the end for the Prophet and Shanti. All of them would die today. Then the town would get back to the way it had always been, ruled by bloodlust and greed. He felt he was on the brink of some final possibility, a gesture in the name of a last stand. He didn’t know John Collins, nor did he really know Richard Shanti but he believed in them more than he believed in the mob of MMP stockmen, more than he believed in Magnus and his guards. Why, he didn’t know.

It was seeing another party approach from the town that made his mind up. He recognised the feared figure of Magnus’s closest man, Bruno, at the head of more black-coats. Shanti and Collins and their tiny group of rebels would be trapped.

Parfitt backed away from it all.

The Grand Bishop watched the smoke rise with a swelling sense of dread. He stood in the road halfway to the MMP plant with every remaining Parson. They numbered about two hundred and none as skilled or experienced as those he’d already lost. His grip of Abyrne was slipping. He cursed himself as he stood there with his Parsons spread out behind him. He couldn’t afford to appear weak in front of them but he couldn’t take his eyes from the uprush of black fumes.

The curfew he’d ordered wasn’t working.

Now he found himself trapped between the workers he would come up against at the plant and the angry rabble that would soon be following them along the road. Circumstance was funnelling him into a narrow corridor. He’d run out of choices.

Turning away from the fire, he set off toward the plant. In the distance he could see fields where the herds of the Chosen roamed and the barns where they sheltered. He gave no command to his Parsons.

He knew they’d follow him.

They had no more choice than he did.

They stood amid the bodies of the first group Torrance had sent out, each of them serene.

In front of them was the main gate and just inside it a raucous crowd of combatants that was growing larger all the time. The crowd swore and taunted and waved their various weapons. Shanti saw clubs of wood and bone, cleavers, meat hooks, machetes and chains.

He glanced back down the road and saw the second party arriving at a run with Hema and Harsha being carried. Trouble couldn’t be far behind.

‘What’s the plan?’ he asked Collins.

‘For me, for my followers, this is it. We make our stand in front of all these workers and all those townsfolk that will no doubt soon arrive.’

‘Yes, but what’s the plan?’

Collins smiled but it soon faded.

‘The plan is to never be forgotten, Richard. The plan is to martyr ourselves.’

‘Maybe there’s another way to do this. You might win. You haven’t lost a single man yet. Maybe you can come with me.’

‘We can’t. I can’t.’

‘But if you triumph, there’s no need for you to stay.’

‘We’re not going to triumph.’

‘John, come on. Of course you won’t if you talk that way.’

The second group arrived and Shanti’s girls ran to him. He bent and kissed each of their heads, then stood and held them beside him.

Collins turned to him.

‘I would have liked to get to know you better, Richard. I wish we’d had a little more time. But you have to see that all of us are making sacrifices today. Some will be in blood, others in service. You have your place in this and I have mine. The scales must be balanced and this is only the very beginning of the repayment that is owed.’ Collins looked down the road and saw Bruno and the rest of Magnus’s men approaching in the distance. ‘You have all the knowledge you need now and you know what to do. Take your girls and hide. Don’t let anyone see you. Go quickly now.’

Collins put out his hand and Shanti grasped it. There were many words that passed in that silent communication, but not enough. Shanti took a hand of each girl and together they crouched and ran away from the gate and the shouting mob, away from the road where Bruno and his men would soon arrive. They crept into the long grass and down into the ditch below the hedgerow. From there they half ran, half stumbled away from town following the smell of rot.

She woke to the sounds of angry shouting, of men spoiling for affray.

It wasn’t clear how long she’d slept for. This time she’d entered such a deep sleep that it might have been a few hours of blackness or a whole day. Her first act was to vomit but nothing came except the pain of spasms contracting around the growth inside her. Crying, she stood up. Weakness of the legs and a fog of dizziness brought her straight back to her knees.

So. The rest, no matter how deep, had done little for her.

None of this was going to be easy.

With more will than physical power, she used the top of the tower wall to haul herself up. Once there, the top of the wall came to just above her waist. Its only function, she assumed was to stop stockmen from falling. She was grateful for it.

Her vision cleared and she saw it all.

To her right, the MMP plant and the burgeoning gang of workers and black-coats that thronged near the entrance. Beyond the gate, she saw – finally – Prophet John Collins. There was no mistaking who it must have been. A smooth-headed man dressed in rags and a band of two or three dozen others that looked much the same. They stood calmly whilst the men inside the plant appeared close to frenzy. She felt that Richard Shanti should be there too but there was no sign of him. She wanted him there, somehow. The idea of his presence comforted her but she knew the reality would be that Magnus had done away with him or was about to. It was a terrible pity.

In front of her, a few fields away, was the road connecting the plant and the town. Along this she could see three distinct groups. The first, nearest Collins, was another group of black-coats. Some distance behind them, far enough that the former group might easily not have been aware of them, was a huge band of Parsons led by a man she recognised even from this distance. The way he walked, the tilt of his head and the set of his shoulders; she knew the mannerisms all very well. And yet not well enough.

The final group was the largest and still quite distant. As far as she could make it out it was simply a huge crowd of townsfolk. The head of the column advanced but the tail never ended. It stretched right back into Abyrne. There was no way to calculate how many there were.

Everyone heading to the MMP plant.

Everyone ready to spill blood.

She was weary of it. Surely there had been enough blood let in this town. Enough to fill a river that stretched to eternity. Suddenly, everything she recognised and understood was wrong. Not just flawed, but so completely warped it made no sense at all.

She turned her attention back to the tiny group made up by Collins and his followers and felt a fierce protective instinct for them. They must each have known with utter certainty that they would die, and there they stood ready, steadfast. Only one other creature shared such nobility.

Perhaps they still had a chance, though.

She turned to go to the ladder and tripped over the hems of her gowns. She landed badly, not able to react quickly enough to protect herself, and hit the side of her head against the opposite wall of the tower. It stunned her. There was more pain but that was easy to ignore now. Pain was the essence of her reality from waking until sleeping. Urgency flared in her mind and she remembered Collins.

She had to move fast. Ignoring the blood trickling into her right eye, she lowered her legs to the rungs and began to climb down. Three steps from the bottom she committed to a rung that wasn’t there and didn’t have the strength to hold herself. She fell the rest of the way landing on her back in the churned mud of the field.

She rolled onto her side, grabbed at one of the tower’s supporting legs and pulled herself upright. A few paces away was a high bolted gate. One of many that kept the Chosen secure. She hobbled to it. It took all her mental effort to pull open the bolt. Then, leaning away from the gate and using only her diminishing weight, she hauled it open. Further along the dense hedgerow, there was another gate.

She staggered down to it.

The Grand Bishop led the Parsons at a fast walk but it wasn’t fast enough to stay ahead of the column of townsfolk drawing up behind.

The crowds that had set out from so many doors across Abyrne were fuelled by fear and anger. Their huge numbers lent them a shared strength and stamina. Not long after leaving the mansion, those at the front had broken into a trot and everyone else that was able had followed suit. Seeing the hurrying group of Parsons up ahead did nothing to slow them down.

The crowd sensed the power of its numbers and began to pursue the Parsons rather than merely follow. They were hungry for meat and ready for confrontation in order to get it.

The Grand Bishop heard the hurried panic in his own footsteps and realised he had to make a decision. If they tried to open the gap now, the crowd would run them down. His only option was to turn and face the townsfolk, talk to them as he had so many times before in the streets, in the squares and in the Central Cathedral. He’d give them God’s word they’d receive everything they required. He held his hands up to the Parsons behind him and stopped. He wanted time to regain his breath before the townsfolk caught up to them.

Atwell was right behind him.

‘What are you doing, Your Grace?’

‘Trying to prevent the end of the world. If we don’t turn and face the townsfolk, we’re finished. When we’re gone, the town will destroy itself.’

‘But wouldn’t it be safer to outrun them and take refuge at the plant? Then we can address them from safety.’

‘No. If they’ve chased us all that way, they’ll have no reason to listen. They’ll have lost all respect. We must face them.’

The Grand Bishop pushed his way back through the panting Parsons. Then, with his back to the fast approaching crowd he said to them, ‘Stand firm. Don’t give an inch or show any emotion. The Welfare is the highest authority in the town, God’s voice to His people. Let’s act like it.’

He turned to face the oncoming throng of townsfolk and grain workers. When they were still two hundred yards distant, he held up his hands with his palms to them. He set his expression in stone and waited.

The front ranks approached quickly. They were thinned out by their pace but they were only the vanguard. Hordes were close behind them. They saw the Grand Bishop but continued to run. Their faces were full of rebellion and disrespect, twisted by a feral mob spirit, knowing anything might happen and that nothing could stop it once it began. The Grand Bishop noticed many of them were armed with iron bars or lumps of rubble and brick. He filled his lungs in a final attempt to control his breathing.

He made eye contact deliberately with as many of the approaching men and women as he could. He kept his face stern and imperious. The crowd’s pace slowed. The front ranks thickened as more drew up behind them. They became a wall of faces.

He noticed how thin and hollow-faced so many of them looked while the Parsons were plump, robust and ruddy cheeked. He knew his voice would only reach the first few hundred, possibly a thousand townsfolk. After that, word would have to pass back on its own. He waited until he was sure the column had stopped and that enough folk had caught up to hear him.

‘Townsfolk of Abyrne, you are God’s children in God’s town. As His representative, as the keeper of your welfare, I tell you this: A great blessing has come to pass this day. Rory Magnus, the man who kept the town on the edge of starvation because of his greed, Rory Magnus is dead. He is dead because God wants a righteous town where everyone eats and no one starves. He wants a town where there is order and piety through compassion, not violence. He decrees—’

‘What about meat?’ shouted a voice. He couldn’t see who’d said it.

‘You shall have it. The whole town shall have meat. Go back to your homes. Allow my Parsons and I to continue to the plant where we will regain control of all production. Then we can distribute God’s divine gift of nourishment fairly and abundantly.’

‘But we’re hungry now,’ someone else shouted. ‘What are we going to eat right now?’

He knew he shouldn’t have considered the question, allowed it to linger in his mind. He should have just continued and ignored it.

‘Yeah,’ yelled another voice. ‘We want meat today. Now. Not some fucking distribution.’

More voices joined in.

‘He’s right.’

‘No distribution.’

‘Give us meat.’

‘We’ll not starve.’

‘We want it now.’

The Grand Bishop raised his hands once more to placate the agitated voices.

‘Please, please. That’s enough. You shall all have full stomachs, as God is my witness.’

A couple of the Parsons to his right backed away from the crowd. Just a couple of inches, more of a flinch really, but the townsfolk sensed it even if they didn’t actually see it.

‘Stand firm,’ hissed the Grand Bishop from the side of his mouth.

‘We want meat.’

‘I’ve already told y–’

‘We want meat.’

A chant had begun.

‘We want meat.’

‘Good townsfolk, I implore you…’

He was losing control.

The chant intensified and spread back through the crowd. Anger flared in their eyes again.

‘WE WANT MEAT.’

Someone threw a broken brick. It hit Atwell between the eyes making a loud, damp thud. Something had broken inside.

The chant stopped.

Atwell staggered half a step back, unsure what had happened. Blood cascaded from the wound, down his face and onto his robes staining them an even deeper red. He dropped to his knees and fell on his face.

The chant began again, spoken quietly now, not shouted.

‘We want meat… We want meat.’

Boots and bars tapped the broken road surface in time with the syllables.

‘We want meat… We want meat.’

The chant gained power, townsfolk from far, far back giving their voices to it.

Someone threw another brick. The Grand Bishop saw it coming and ducked. He didn’t see which of his Parsons it hit but he heard the cry of pain.

There was a moment, it stretched long between chants. In the moment both sides knew something was about to happen. It rose like an invisible wave. At the end of the moment every Parson turned away and started to run. At the same time, missiles shot from the mob and thundered into their turned backs. Stones hitting heads, rocks hitting backs and legs. The Parsons began to fall and the suddenly rushing mob trampled them into the tarmac with its thousands of stomping feet.

The Grand Bishop lifted the hem of his robes and fled.

The ditch was just deep enough that, if they kept their heads down, no one would see them from the road or from the plant. From time to time Shanti stopped and peeped up over the long grass and weeds that grew unchecked along the verge.

Collins and his followers had split into two lines. One faced Bruno’s men, the other the MMP gate. Bruno’s arrival had emboldened Torrance and the stockmen anew – their enemies were now trapped in a pincer as well as outnumbered. It couldn’t be long before someone made a move on them. Shanti didn’t want to see them butchered but going back to help would do no good. He had his part to play, as Collins had said. There were no more choices now.

Further ahead on the other side of the road was the rear perimeter fence that surrounded the meat packing plant. Shanti knew it was old and poorly maintained. Breaking through would be easy. He knelt down.

‘Girls, I want you to stay here. Lie down in the ditch or go further back into the hedge, but whatever happens, do not come out to look for me. No one must see you. Understand?’

Two solemn nods and with them, quiet tears.

He hugged them tight.

‘If there was any other way of doing this, a way that meant we could stay together, I’d do it. But there isn’t.’

In his mind he said to them: But if we survive this, it must be without either of you seeing the inside of this plant. No one should ever see such a place again.

‘So, hide now, my sweethearts, and I’ll come back for you as soon as I can.’

He gave them each another kiss, telling himself it would not be the last.

Then he scrambled farther along the ditch, far enough that none of the fighters at the gate would see him. Finally, he darted up over the lip of the ditch and across the road. The fence was completely broken down in one place and he ran straight over it to the wall of the first building. The wall was made of wood. He pulled nine thimbles out of his pocket and pressed his eight fingers and one thumb into them.

Then he began to tap, loud and hard, on that wooden wall, like a madman playing a tuneless piano.

Collins stood beside Staithe and with his back to Vigors.

In the road right behind them stood Bruno and his crew – ready to go at it again but with reservations. Ahead were too many men to count. The followers stood back to back with eyes on each faction. It was fine to die this way and Collins was more than ready. His life had gone on far longer than he’d planned. He might have died that day back in Magnus’s study had it not been for the realisation that he could do so much better, so much more.

However, he didn’t mean to give the opposition an easy victory. He and his followers would take as many as they could and hold the rest off for as long as possible. But the light in their bellies would not last forever. Sooner or later the energy would be spent, and at that moment they’d succumb to the odds.

He harried himself over how best to use their small numbers. Finally it came to him. He spoke into Staithe’s ear and the message passed swiftly. Unseen by their opponents, they all put their hands behind their backs and touched for strength and friendship one final time.

‘NOW!’ cried Collins.

The thirty lean, rag-attired followers all faced the front gate and rushed in past the barrier. They split, fifteen slipping past the right side of the mob, fifteen passing to the left. Collins saw the look of outraged disbelief on Torrance’s face as he flitted past the man. It had been the perfect move. Now the stockmen and black-coats had to fight on two flanks and Bruno’s men would have to join them rather than having the advantage of attacking simultaneously from behind.

At no time in their brief fighting past had the followers needed to land the first blow – Parsons and black-coats had needed no invitation. Stockmen were no different. The attacks came furiously; hate propelling the swipe of every weapon. The faces of the followers were serene as they danced between the slashes and thrusts.