Omega

21

'Only four this week, is it?' Dr Owen said, leaning back in his chair and swinging his stethoscope. 'You are all too damn healthy up here and that's a fact. I don't know why I come.'

Eileen grinned at him. 'You know very well why you come. For a morning out from the village and a lunch of grilled trout.' She patted her five-month belly. 'And to see how Junior's doing. Anyone'd think you were its grandfather, you fuss so much.'-

'Junior is doing fine without any help from me. I will concede your point about the trout, though… And to be honest, Eileen fach,' he continued more seriously, 'I worry about young Brian. A crying shame it is, a promising lad like that, only two years at Guy's and no way of ending his training. I feel I should be teaching him more.'

'Don't be silly, Doctor. He's learning a hell of a lot from you, working in the village with you two days a week, borrowing all your books, helping me in the clinic here – and I'm teaching him all I can, too. He'll end up as real a doctor as if he'd finished his time at Guy's '

They strolled out together into the May sunshine, still discussing Brian Sennett, the medical student who had reached Camp Cerridwen with his sister Olive in January. His arrival had been very welcome to Eileen, who in spite of Dr Owen's weekly visit to the little clinic that had been built on the end of Peter and Eileen's cabin, and his availability in a crisis, had begun to feel a little worried about her responsibility as the rapidly growing camp's resident 'medical officer'. She had, after all, only qualified as a nurse herself a couple of years before the quake. Peter, too, had been relieved. They had only just become reasonably certain that Eileen was pregnant and he was more anxious than she was about her overworking, so even a partially trained colleague for her eased his mind a good deal.

Camp Cerridwen was barely recognizable after a winter of work which had only been halted by one week's snow and (according to the village experts) slightly less than average rain. The camp now numbered 173 people, about three-quarters of them witches or children of witches and although some cabins were still overcrowded, everybody slept indoors, either in a cabin or in a lagged caravan. Building was now in full swing and within a month or six weeks was expected to catch up at least with the existing population, to an acceptable standard. They had stuck to the original C-shaped plan, with the buildings spread in an arc along the edge of the forest and facing towards the centre of the little plateau whose heart was the camp-fire. Cabins had their own rock-built fireplaces but it had become a social habit to light the central fire each evening, small or large according to the weather, and to gather around it.

The forest had, in fact, already receded from behind the first are of buildings as felling progressed, and a second row was springing up behind the first on the cleared ground. The biggest building of all was no longer the Central

Cabin, which was now used for a variety of small-group purposes such as practice sessions of the Music Club (the village had donated a battered piano and various people owned instruments from guitars to violins, an accordion and a cornet), Geraint Lloyd's surprisingly well-attended Welsh classes and talks by experts (such as the camp's solitary professional farmer) on their specialities which had now become necessary knowledge for everyone. Considerably larger than this, and a building achievement of which they were rather proud, was the Mess Hall. Central catering still had to be the rule, for the most economical use of their slim food resources.

The farm had been growing fast but still not as fast as the population. The six-hectare meadow had been fully ploughed before the winter and in much of it new sowings had replaced the winter vegetables. Every seed was precious, though fortunately several of the newcomers who had had both the time to prepare their flight and the foresight to think of it had brought more; but even those who were experienced gardeners were having to learn the unfamiliar skill of growing for seed as well as for consumption, with the next crop to think of and nowhere to buy new seed.

But the six-hectare field no longer sufficed, with the absolute necessity of keeping as much livestock as could be acquired and managed. So every patch of river meadow between camp and village had been pressed into service and the camp farm had become a necklace of meadows stretching the whole four kilometres to New Dyfnant.

With the onset of winter, the area around the Vyrnwy valley below New Dyfnant had become relatively peaceful. The scattered survivors had almost all drawn together into little communities, clearing and patching up villages, and there were large stretches of country without a soul in sight. Many cattle, sheep, and pigs and a few horses and goats, roamed wild; there had been much hunting and slaughtering of them for food and the wiser communities had been rounding them up for stock as well but with population less than a hundredth of its former size there were still many wandering free. On two or three occasions, New Dyfnant and Camp Cerridwen had organized joint round-up expeditions, with every rideable horse for which there was a rider, and had brought in a gratifying number which were shared out between village and camp in proportion to their populations. These expeditions had been careful to avoid clashes with other communities, conceding any disputed territory without argument, for there were still unclaimed animals to be found and the last thing most people wanted was any local feud springing up.

Also still to be found, fortunately, were a few hayricks and hay-filled barns far enough from communities to be unclaimed and winter feed was badly needed, so slower cart-expeditions were sent out for these. The cart-expeditions took with them one of the bee-keepers (of which there were six in New Dyfnant and two in the camp) on the look-out for hives, which in their winter somnolence could be sealed for the journey and brought home.

As a result, by the spring Camp Cerridwen possessed one bull and eight cows, a boar and two sows, six ewes (but as yet no ram, though they could borrow one from the village) two billy-goats and seven nannies, four geldings and three mares (again, no stallion but the village had several). Two of the mares were in foal, both sows were in farrow, only one cow as yet in calf and two of the nannies had been February twins of one of the adult nannies, while another was in kid. The ewes had not been found till April, so no increase was expected there for a while. They also had eighteen hives, sixteen of them flourishing, the other two colonies having failed to survive the winter, but their beekeeper was confident he could re-stock the two empty ones during the summer.

Four cockerels and sixty-three hens in the hen-runs were mostly of their own rearing from the original handful, for wandering poultry, being easily caught and cooked, had quickly become very scarce. No geese as yet but a drake and two ducks had been recently acquired and were being carefully guarded (especially from the camp's twelve dogs and five cats) for breeding. (Of the cats, incidentally, Ginger Lad was the undisputed king and two were heavily pregnant by him.)

One other thing had come from growing contact with the local small communities; the beginnings of barter and of the planning of output with barter in mind. One village, for instance, had once had a reputation for hand-weaving and two of the surviving older villagers remembered their skill; three looms and five spinning-wheels had been salvageable and the experts had set to at once training other spinners and weavers. In New Dyfnant, Jack Llewellyn had restored his grandfather's forge and remembering what he could (he knew metal in any case, being a proficient welder) was also training two youngsters; and already woven cloth was coming into New Dyfnant in exchange for ironwork and repair jobs. Two tiny villages down the valley, a couple of kilometres apart and manned by no more than half a dozen adults in each, had agreed to specialize, the one on livestock and the other on crops, to keep each other supplied. Other communities were beginning to wonder how they, too, could improve their position in the makeshift economy that was developing.

Inevitably, the internal economy of each 'tribe' became more or less communal, because at such a level of day-today survival nothing else would work. Camp Cerridwen, having started from scratch in survival conditions, was completely communal, both in the organization of work and in the use of products; the facts of life, not political or economic theory, dictated this. New Dyfnant stood at the other extreme, for thanks to Eileen's vinegar-mask warning, its population had survived almost completely, though the quake had done a good deal of physical damage; so the social and economic structure remained with all the impetus of habit, family pride, mutual knowledge and Welsh independence. But even that could not survive entirely; damage was uneven, community effort was needed for rebuilding and the closing of road-fissures and outside services and supplies had vanished. No stocks came into Bronwen's shop, no petrol to Jack's garage, and no liquor to Dai Forest Inn's cellars. No county salary to Dai Police, no church stipend to the Rev. Phillips and no National Health pay to Dr Owen or Ministry of Education pay to Geraint Lloyd. No money existed anyway. Yet all these people's services were still needed (even Bronwen's as barter organizer, Dai Forest Inn's as by now full-time Council chairman and Dai Police's as arbitrator of disputes and occasional enforcer of community decisions) and the village did not resent having to feed them. So gradually an ad hoc mixed economy had evolved with the boundaries between its public and private sectors constantly being adjusted by trial and error.

At the camp, Dan's chairmanship had become as full-time as Dai Forest Inn's in the village. He was still the undisputed leader, though by now he had an active camp committee to help him and was able to delegate a lot of the organizing work. The committee's most important function was the deciding of priorities and the division of labour, for between building and farming there was more than enough to be done. There was always, too, a balance to be drawn between the effective use of available experts and the need to give individuals a variety of work – for their own encouragement and morale, for the development as far as possible of a community of all-rounders and for the fair sharing of popular and unpopular tasks.

Moira, also, retained her unchallenged spiritual and Craft leadership – though the situation had changed somewhat. There were over a hundred adult witches at Camp Cerridwen now, so the time had passed, early in the winter, when they could still be a single coven. In fact, there were now fourteen of them, none of which exceeded the traditional maximum of thirteen members. Three of the fourteen had hived off from Moira and Dan's original one, so she now wore four proud buckles on the Witch Queen garter Dan had made for her as soon as three covens had entitled her to that status. Five of the other covens had arrived independently, four had hived off from them and the remaining one had been built around a High Priestess and High Priest who had turned up covenless. It had been a wrench when Rosemary and Greg had hived off from Moira and Dan but they all knew it had to be done. Eileen and Peter, initiated at Samhain and intensively trained, had set up their own coven in March and another first-degree couple, arriving in November, had been similarly accelerated and were doing well, though Moira still nursed their young group from the sidelines. The coven maintained the Wiccan tradition of independence and autonomy, but the leaders met regularly as a Council of Elders to discuss progress and any differences that arose or to agree on transfers in the few cases of personal friction.

'I still can't get used to it,' Dan told Moira. 'Remember the old law that covensteads must be at least a league apart? And the years people used to wait sometimes for second and third degree?'

'The league law belonged to the Burning Time,' Moira said. 'It couldn't work once the Craft went public. And as for waiting years – well, it's like an army – in peacetime it takes years to train an officer but in wartime you do it in months. You've got to or no army… And this is war, darling. We've felt the Angels of Lucifer probing often enough this winter, haven't we? Half our work's been psychic defence, just blank-walling them. But there will be a showdown, so our army's got to be ready.'

'I know… Anyway, with a hundred and twelve witches in one camp, and two or three dozen more asking to be initiated – what else can we do?'

'One thing about having fourteen covens,' Moira smiled, 'it fits very neatly into the calendar. Though the way things are growing, that won't last long.'

The calendar-fitting concerned the Temple which had been completed in time for the Spring Equinox and stood at one end of the are of buildings. It had not had to be large, as it was never used by more than one coven at a time, on a fortnightly rota of formal Circles. Larger-scale rituals, such as Festival get-togethers, were held in the Mess Hall. Covens also met informally in between as they felt the need or for training purposes mostly in family cabins.

The promise to Father Byrne had been kept, though it had surprised some of the newcomers and even provoked some grumbling; his little Catholic chapel was built at the same time as the Temple, facing it from the other tip of the arc. His congregation was now four adults and one baby, for two other newcomers – unknown to each other before they arrived – were Catholics, a forty-year-old carpenter and a nineteen-year-old girl art student. Shy but not hostile with the witches (both of them had arrived with witch neighbours who had picked them up as lone survivors of their families), these two had gravitated together and two months later had taken everyone by surprise by asking Father Byrne to marry them. The wedding had been an extraordinary affair; Greg and Geraint between them had rigged a public address system for the Chapel, and the Catholics and half a dozen Protestant non-witches had gone inside, while the rest of the camp had listened to the service from outside. A nearly completed cabin had been rushed ahead in time for the bride and groom to move in and they had been escorted to it in procession after a memorable wedding-breakfast – to which Dai Forest Inn, one of the village guests, had contributed one of his three remaining bottles of champagne for the 'top table' and a cask of home-brewed cider for everyone else. The newly-weds had remained shy but were clearly happy.

Spiritual leader Moira might be, but she – and in due course even those who had grumbled at the priority given to the Chapel – had come to appreciate the elderly Father's contribution deeply. From his doctrinal stance he never wavered; his own faith was total and he would always say, if asked, that the witches' religion was mistaken. But his humanity was total, also, as was his respect – practical as well as theoretical – for other people's sincerity. More than once he helped Moira to counsel people in distress, on a basis of simple human wisdom and innate spiritual strength without trespassing in Moira's beliefs or betraying his own.

'How do you manage it, father?' Moira asked wonderingly after they had, quite fortuitously, dealt together with a woman who did not know whether her son in Bradford was-alive or dead and had been suffering bouts of acute depression as a result. Moira and the old priest, strolling together and discussing the cultivation of lettuces, had come across her moping on the river's edge. Twenty minutes later, after a kind of spiritual pincer-movement of consolation, she had gone away almost smiling.

'Manage what, my dear?'

'To work so well with us when you don't agree with us.' 'But you manage it with me. I could ask you the same question.' Yes,but…'

'Moira, we have many differences but we have certain things in common. A concern for human beings and a belief in the reality of psychic power. And neither of us believes that the duty of converting the other is more important than the harmony of this camp. So we work together on the things we believe in and keep our own counsel on the things we disagree about.'

'Is it really as simple as that?'

'Did that poor woman go away a little happier – after you and I had talked to her together?' 'Yes, she did. I'm sure of it.' 'Then it is as simple as that.'

They walked along the river-bank for a while in silence and then he said: 'You and Dan and many of the others -you are good people.'

Moira flung an arm impetuously round his shoulders and gave him a quick squeeze. 'And you, my friend, are the nearest thing I've met to a saint… I suppose it's disrespectful to hug saints, though.'

'An interesting point of protocol,' he said with mock gravity, 'but since I am most certainly nothing of the kind, God help me, the point is academic… Let me see, what were we talking about? Lettuces, wasn't it?'

Camp Cerridwcn's quota of schoolchildren had risen to twenty-three, so the daily 'school bus' down to Geraint Lloyd's school was now a convoy of pony-trap and farm cart. One of the passengers, for the past month, had been Geraint himself.

The first indication of his intention of moving into the camp had been his request, in February, to the camp committee for permission to build a radio cabin in his own time at weekends.

'With this news network of ours building up,' he had explained, 'it'll be much easier if Tonia and I are in the same place. So I'd like to shift my equipment up here, if that's all right by you and sleep beside it. I can come and go to school with Liz and the children every day. And Tonia could do her camp duties more easily if she wasn't always commuting to take radio watches in the village. Besides, I have to charge my batteries up here already.'

The committee had agreed gladly and of course there had been a lot of volunteer help for him when he started building. The helpers had noticed at once that the plans for the cabin were larger than would have been needed for a bachelor and a radio bench but had said nothing, taking their cue from Tonia's smiling inscrutability, since she was not usually one to keep silent about anything that occupied her thoughts. When the cabin was finished, Geraint carted up his belongings from the village, culminating in a bed which was blatantly double. Tonia then abandoned the Spinster Shack and moved in with him. When somebody had commented on this with heavy-footed obliqueness, Tonia had said: 'Hell, we've been sleeping together for weeks, so why not do it in comfort? I love the guy and I guess he loves me. Any questions?'

There had been no questions. Mating was in the air at Camp Cerridwen; the tribal atmosphere, the survivalist way of thinking, the immediacy of manifested nature, all seemed to stimulate it. One or two of the partnerships, Moira feared, had been a little too hastily formed and sexual rivalry and jealousy were the predominant cause of such conflict as the camp suffered; but this she knew was natural and inevitable and she and Dan were reluctant to exert their influence unless things were getting out of hand or to give their advice unless it was asked for. When the people concerned were witches their own covens could keep an eye on any potentially explosive situations, and when they were not, the witch leaders were particularly anxious to avoid any suggestion that they were trying to dictate to the minority on personal matters.

'I hope the camp never becomes too large,' Dan said at one of the Elders' meetings. 'We've pretty well reached our optimum size. Everybody still knows everybody else, even if sometimes it's only slightly. So we still work like an extended family. A lot of things get sorted out by tribal opinion which'd have to be legislated for formally if we were any bigger. And legislation has to be impersonal. Once that creeps in, the whole nature of things changes.'

'It can't last, though,' Sam Warner said. 'On a national scale, I mean, once Britain's re-populated – which'll happen a hell of a lot faster than it did in medieval times because we've got the memory and the technical knowledge of modern civilization. We'll be instinctively moving towards it again, even if most of us don't really want to. Three or four generations and we'll be back in the old groove – or at least the beginnings of it.'

"Hardly our immediate problem,' his wife put in.

'I'm not so sure, love. Look – right now Britain's a land of small tribal communities and so's the whole bloody world if Geraint and Tonia's news sheets are anything to go by. And whatever's evolving inside those communities will have a big influence on what evolves out of them. The tribes and their-ways of thinking and living will be the bricks with which any new State will be built. And the mortar will be the memory of urban civilization plus salvaged technical knowledge. So what tribes like ours are doing right now is important for the future. It could determine the whole shape of the building.'

'Don't forget,' Greg said, 'that the bricks might get hit by a shower of mortar without warning any time. And it could be very uncomfortable.'

Moira laughed, 'When you lot have finished with the metaphors – what do you mean, Greg? Beehive coming out and taking charge?'

'Of course I mean bloody Beehive. Their way of thinking will be completely old-establishment. Probably nineteenth-century establishment, at that, because they'll have tightened up into a military and administrative clique convinced they've got a divine right to rule.'

'With a nasty extra dimension, though,' Moira pointed out. 'If Gareth Underwood was right about Harley – that he's not just made a strategic alliance with the Angels of Lucifer but got involved in black magic himself – Gareth's actual words were "hooked on it"

‘Well.'

Sam asked: 'What do you think that will mean in practice, Moira?'

'Dan and I have been thinking about it a lot,' Moira told him. 'All winter we've been picking up the Angels of Lucifer every now and then, but they've never been more than probing attacks, have they? It hasn't taken too much effort to fend them off. They've never tried a real psychic offensive, the sort of thing they did at the Banwell Unit against Ben Stoddart. We'd have known if they had. And frankly, after Underwood's warning we expected them to. So what are they waiting for? We think they're waiting till Beehive's ready to come out. That they'll synchronize their all-out attack with that.'

'Will we be able to hold it?'

'We will, Sam. We've got to believe we will or we're weakened from the start. But more than that – we've got to be ready to hit back. You know the rule: if you're under psychic attack, put up your defences and if the defences are strong enough the attack will bounce back on the attacker.'

'The Boomerang Effect.'

'Precisely. And in ordinary circumstances, white magic must confine itself to that and leave what happens to the aggressor to the Lords of Karma. Anything more than that is black. But there are times, particularly when thousands of innocent people are threatened, when the Boomerang Effect – or even binding – isn't enough, and deliberate counter-attack is called for. Only your conscience can tell you that… You may even have to hit first, once you know the attack is being prepared. And our conscience tells us that one of those times is on its way. Does anyone disagree?'

Several of them said 'No' emphatically and the rest shook their heads. Liz asked: 'Are we strong enough to mount an attack?… No, I don't quite mean that – we've got the strength all right but are we organized to do it? Psychic attack isn't exactly a thing we've trained ourselves for.'

'Haven't we? We attack disease often enough by launching concerted power at it from the coven working together. We've been taught not to launch it against people but if we have to, the technique's the same.'

'All right – but you say "from the coven". How about fourteen covens? What do we do – work under you and Dan as one giant coven? Or in separate covens but at the same time? Either way we ought to know about it and be ready. Even practise it somehow, if we can find a way of doing that without alerting the Angels of Lucifer.'

Moira looked at Dan. Time to tell them our suggestion, don't you think?' ‘yes, love, I do.'

'Right, then. We think we need a psychic assault group -and here's how it would work…’

22

Without Karen's help, Harley knew, the situation might have been far worse. Not that the putsch would actually have succeeded, of course; that was unthinkable. The gods had not put supreme power into Sir Reginald Harley's hands to mock him. His mission was inexorable because only to him had the vision of Destiny been fully revealed, the vision of a Britain purged and cleansed of its degenerate multitudes, a purified stock on to which he, Harley, was to graft the future, a wiped slate on which only he could write. Yet the gods still had their secrets, which they unveiled to him, their chosen instrument, layer by layer as the time was ripe. And he had no doubt that Colonel Davidson's attempted mutiny and Karen's part in rooting it out, had been such a lesson. There is poison within as well as without, the gods had been telling him; the human battalions which were his instruments of Destiny must be immaculate, worthy of their task, before the next step on the ordained path could be taken. The lesson had confirmed, as well, what he had already partly understood – that to fulfil his mission he needed his complement, the Dark Angel the gods had sent to him, Kali to his Siva, the magical consort of the bright male destroyer-creator.

He wondered sometimes (though he seldom thought of her now) how he had ever been content with Brenda. He had believed she had satisfied his masculinity. But that had been in the old half-blind days when he had relegated male-ness to a mere biological function, instead of the godlike creative essence which Karen had taught him it was. Their first coupling, a transformatory experience for him, had been on her second visit to Beehive. Since then she had come every month. John, she assured him, had been easily persuaded of the need for these visits, for there was much to plan between Harley and the Angels of Lucifer and the material benefits to the Angels had been immediate and continuing. But her real purpose had been the magical training of Harley and to this he had surrendered himself wholeheartedly, discovering in it a new dimension of power and awareness. Analytical habit had made him ask himself, at first, whether this was an illusion engendered by sexual euphoria. He had even put the question to her for she was always urging frankness in him.

Karen had smiled. 'Illusion? All right, let's try an experiment. Has anyone annoyed you today?'

'Annoyed?… My God, yes. Our so-called Prime Minister. He does as he's told, of course – but it's when he's trying to help that he's most disastrous. He created quite unnecessary problems at this morning's conference by sheer stupidity.'

'Right. Let's teach him a lesson… Make love to me, Reggie. But slowly.'

He was briefly taken aback by the apparent irrelevance but soon forgot about it. She conducted their mutual arousal with her usual (though never repetitive) skill and once he had entered her, commanded him to keep still. He obeyed, astonished at his own control, and she kept talking to him softly, unmoving herself. How long they stayed thus, he could not tell; locked in a motionless intimacy, tension mounting to an unbelievable pitch and then still higher, a mystical rapture in which body and mind and spirit were indistinguishable, a trance of almost intolerable brilliance which could not continue yet must not be broken…

Karen whispered: 'Picture him. Picture the Prime Minister. Hold his image in your mind…Now, command him to be silent. For a night and a day he cannot speak. We command him. Hold the image and the command, right through the orgasm. Are you ready?'

'Yes.'

'Now!' – and in that instant her pelvis began thrusting. They cried out together in a tornado of release, but somehow, he managed to hold on to the image and the command. He felt exhausted of every atom of his strength and it was minutes before he could even summon up enough strength to dismount her.

'How long did that take?' he wondered at last. ‘I haven't the remotest idea.'

She glanced at her watch, relaxedly matter-of-fact. 'Just under an hour.'

'It was incredible… Will it work?'

'Of course it will.'

She spoke with complete confidence but Harley still found himself nervous, next morning, about calling on the Prime Minister. He found the doctor.with him, puzzled by a complete loss of voice which nevertheless had none of the other symptoms of acute laryngitis. The patient's voice came back suddenly, and equally completely, at half past ten that evening. The doctor bluffed an explanation, not daring to mention the word 'hysteria'.

Harley never doubted Karen again.

It was during her May visit that he asked her help in questioning Colonel Davidson. The colonel had been caught red-handed, in treasonable conference with one of his captains, a lieutenant and a signal corps sergeant. The lieutenant had been the weak link in the plot, some unguarded words of his arousing the suspicions of a lance-corporal who was in fact one of Intelligence Section's 'ears' in the Army. The Section had planted a bug in the colonel's quarters and had pounced on the conspirators next time they met, as soon as they had said enough to condemn themselves. In their enthusiasm the section had incurred Harley's wrath, for as he pointed out, they had pounced too soon. 'For God's sake – if you'd given them a bit more rope they'd have hanged others as well as themselves. They're only the ringleaders and I want everybody. You'd better get names out of them and fast.'

The Section had got to work. After twenty-four hours Davidson had still said nothing except to rail at Harley as 'a witch-ridden megalomaniac'. The implications of a leak about his relations with Savernake Forest had alarmed Harley and he had ordered the interrogators to be less squeamish in their methods. This proved unfortunate, for the lieutenant died under questioning, and the captain and the sergeant, who had been brought in to watch what to expect when their turn came, somehow managed to commit suicide in their cells.

Left only with Davidson, who seemed impossible to crack, Harley did some rapid thinking.

Colonel Davidson, bruised and aching though he was, knew better than to be surprised when he was cleaned up, brought a fresh uniform, given a good meal, and taken under escort to Harley's private quarters where the escort handcuffed him to a chair and left. Here comes the softening-up bit, the sweet reasonableness, the proffered deal, he told himself. God damn Harley, that won't get him anywhere, either.

Harley came into the room, a young woman with long black hair at his side. So that's the Black Mamba, Davidson thought, deliberately ignoring her. The colonel's own spies had been efficient.

'I'm sorry about the handcuffs,' Harley said pleasantly. ‘I’d have done without them but my watchdogs won't let me. They insist on you being physically harmless before they'll leave you alone with me.'

'How right they are,' the colonel told him.

'Come now, Colonel, the time's past for dramatic gestures. So pointless. Your conspiracy has lost its leaders and hasn't a chance of succeeding. You may disapprove of me but I'm sure you'll agree that with your chance gone, even my regime is preferable to anarchy. So why not be sensible and cooperate?'

'With you – and that!' He jerked his head towards the woman.

The woman laughed.

Apparently unruffled, Harley went on and on, calm, reasonable, placatory. The colonel was puzzled. He sensed that it was all meaningless, that Harley knew perfectly well it would not succeed but that he was continuing the interview for some hidden purpose.

The woman just sat there, unspeaking, a faint smile on her face. In spite of himself, the colonel found himself glancing again and again in her direction, drawn by that face, drawn by those eyes. They were an unusual shape; the colonel, who knew his Far East, was certain there was no oriental blood in her but could understand why people thought there might be. And the size of them… the depth…

He was back in his cell, sitting bolt upright with a start.

When they had dressed him for the interview, they had given him back his watch. It was still on his wrist and he looked at it incredulously. He had lost at least an hour and a half, between succumbing to those great eyes and receiving the mental order to wake up. He knew it had been a mental order; he could still feel the impact of it, the quality of mocking triumph, even the femaleness of its sender.

What had he said before he was led back to the cell? In that hour and a half, what names had he given, what plans explained, what good men and women betrayed? Had black sorcery achieved what torture could not?

Colonel Davidson could only feel, with an awful certainty, that the pockets of his mind had been picked, emptied, rifled. For the first time in years he lowered his face on to his hands and wept.

General Mullard, anxious about morale, wanted the executions to be carried out secretly. But Harley decided otherwise. Seven officers, twenty-three other ranks and nine civilians were marched, handcuffed, for half a kilometre along frequented corridors to a large empty store-room, where they were led in and dealt with four at a time. The firing squad had been picked by Harley personally from the Hub Defence Battalion which was known colloquially as 'the Big Chief's Own'. Thirty-nine prisoners, four at a time, meant ten volleys, which echoed down the Beehive corridors for quite a distance. Six of the thirty-nine had been women.

At the same hour, five were executed in the Cardiff Beehive and two at the Norwich one, the only places outside London where Davidson had managed to plant supporters.

There were no more conspiracies and informing on even flippant critics of Harley's regime became a normal self-defensive reaction. General Milliard, a little grudgingly, admitted to Harley that he had been right.

Brenda, no longer in Harley's confidence, had known nothing of the would-be putsch until the mass arrests had included one of her own library assistants. Within an hour, news of the swoop had been all round Beehive and it had been a nerve-racking hour for Brenda, quite apart from her distress over the assistant whom she had liked and known for years. She was frightened both for herself and for Gareth. She expected to be picked up and questioned because of her closeness to the arrested assistant and she had feared that Gareth might be involved in the conspiracy. She did not think he was but knowing his secret views she had to face the possibility of it and of his having hidden the fact from her for her own safety. But no questioning occurred, then or afterwards, and Gareth rang up her up with a routine library query the obvious purpose of which was to let her know that he was not in trouble.

He came to her room that evening and, signalling to her to be careful, began a meticulous search for any newly installed microphone. Brenda understood and kept up a harmless conversation till he had finished.

'All clear,' he announced at last. 'I was pretty certain you hadn't been bugged since the last time I looked, when the Chief chucked you out – but with all this going on, I'd rather be quite sure… I heard about your chap Farmer. I really am sorry about him. Been with you a long time, hadn't he?'

‘Yes, he had… Were you…?' She did not know quite how to put it.

'In on the round-up? No, love, I wasn't. I knew Davidson and the other three had been arrested, the other day, but the whole business suddenly became very hush-hush.

No one in the Section was told what was going on except the people actually working on it. Next thing the rest of us knew was this morning when the other thirty-eight were pulled in simultaneously.'

"What'll happen to them, Gareth?'

'The charge is treason, Brenda. Every single one of them, including your pal – I'm sorry, love.'

'So Reggie’ll have them shot. Oh, my God… Who else will they find?'

'My guess is no one. With a thing this size, I know how the Section works. If they did expect ramifications, every last one of us would be on overtime, questioning the prisoners' contacts. But we're not. It was neat, quick and complete. I know the signs and I'd bet a year's pay they're satisfied they've rounded up everybody. One of the leaders must have talked and convinced them he'd left nothing out. Don't ask me how. It's all very untypical.'

'I did wonder myself,' Brenda admitted. 'When they arrested Jerry Fanner, they didn't question me or any of the staff. They didn't even search his desk. Just took him away…' She smiled bitterly. 'A grilling was the least I expected, now that I'm out of favour… Though it's a couple of months now since Reggie dropped me. I suppose I'm not even "out of favour" any more. Just unimportant.'

'Not to me,' Gareth said quietly.

'I know… Why do you put up with me, Gareth? I use you as an emotional punching-bag and you never complain.'

He shook his head diffidently and after a while he asked: 'Do you still miss him?'

T wish I could answer that one,' she said, frowning. 'I just don't know. Sometimes I think I miss the man he used to be – but how much of that is really nostalgia for the old days, before the earthquakes and the witch-hunt and the Dust?… I thought I'd miss the status of being Madame Pompadour, with everyone afraid of offending me. But I don't. There's no real satisfaction in having everyone scared of you. I thought the wolves'd be on me as soon as I fell from grace – but do you know what, Gareth? Most of them just steered clear of me, as though I were going round with a bell crying "unclean, unclean"… And the real people were much more relaxed with me, as though I'd rejoined the human race… The worst time was in between, when I knew that bitch had taken him over already but he kept me on out of habit – when she wasn't in Beehive, at least. I was humiliated but I was as stubborn as hell. I was not going to give in to her… You said he "chucked me out". He never actually did, Gareth. Just treated me as part of the furniture till the humiliation outweighed the stubbornness. Do you know how it happened in the end? We'd come back to his quarters together and I let us in with my key. I always kept it separate from my key-ring – don't know why, caution I suppose. Anyway, he was being emptily charming, talking about nothing and not thinking of me at all and all of a sudden I hated him for excluding me. I put down the key on the table – sort of instinctive gesture of rejection. I went to pour a drink and when I came back the key had gone. I had a feeling he wanted me to… to abase myself by asking for it back. I couldn't. He went on being emptily charming, as though nothing had happened – he still is, if we meet by accident. I never went back and we never mention the fact.' She smiled unpleasantly. 'My God, Gareth, if I were a black witch I'd have his wax image right here, stuck full of rusty nails. Hers, too. Does that mean I miss him? Go on, psychoanalyse me.'

He shook his head again. 'I almost wish you were a black witch. You'd be doing the country a service.'

'Don't tempt me…' Her smiled faded. With your, dangerous thoughts, I'm surprised you weren't in there with Colonel Davidson. Thank God you weren't. I'd as sure as hell miss you'

'No, Brenda. When the time comes, that won't be my way of fighting him.'

Brenda took a deep breath.

'Our way, Gareth,' she said.

23

'I sometimes wonder,' Norman Godwin told his wife, 'why the hell we ever took on this bloody Castle.'

'You've been wondering that every week for months -and you know very well why,' Fay said.

The early sunshine bathed the perfect mandala of the sunken garden, below the East Terrace on which they stood, and softened the massiveness of the thousand-year-old fortress of Windsor at their backs. The lawns of the quartered circle were not as immaculate as they had once been, certainly; but they were still not bad, for the Castle group kept them mown on a rota system, as a labour of love. Only one feature was new – the two-metre-wide altar, neatly built of stone blocks, where the north-pointing path of the equal-armed cross met the outer circular path. The ornamental pond at the centre, too, was kept meticulously clear of floating leaves.

'It might really have been designed as an outdoor witches' temple,' Norman mused.

'You've said that before, too.'

Norman smiled. 'Stop taking the mickey, girl. You were the one who spotted it in the first place.'

They stood brooding, remembering the day they had come; the three covens from Slough, banding together for defence through the worst of the Madness, with friends and families making up nearly sixty people. They had been lucky to survive, for this part of the Thames Valley had been hit hard; and they had owed that survival to the nostalgia of a middle-aged woman from County Limerick. Maeve Kiernan was a quiet hard-working member of the Godwins' own coven, who had lived in Slough for thirty years or more, but who still tuned in to the Radio Eireann news almost every day. So she had picked up the Taoiseach's announcement on vinegar-masks days before the earthquake – and those who listened to her had escaped the Dust. Apart from the covens and their immediate friends, there had been few enough to listen; for the anti-witch mania was intense locally and on one occasion Maeve had narrowly escaped lynching as a panic-mongering witch when she had bravely stood up and tried to pass her news to a cinema audience.

The defensive band, practically unarmed, had fled from Slough in convoy during the demented hand-to-hand fighting, and dodging fissures, had found themselves at the gate of the Castle. Strangely, there had been few people about and those that there were had been busy fighting each other. The band had managed to lock themselves in the Round Tower, where they had been unassailable, till the peace of death had settled on the turmoil outside.

They had emerged and decided to make Windsor Castle their home.

That it was defensible was a strong argument in favour; the heating problem was a strong argument against and had troubled them throughout the winter and spring -hence Norman's remark after an unseasonably cold May night. They had managed, somehow, to find enough small rooms as living accommodation which could be kept reasonably warm and yet were close enough together to be defensible. By some freak of geology, the Castle hill had been barely touched by the earthquake, which had inflicted no more than a few cracks in the Castle's inner walls and caused the partial collapse of the Salisbury Tower – though nearby Eton was a desert of rubble and fire had destroyed.most of Windsor. The Castle, although cold, was a fortified oasis.

But that, they knew, had not been the real reason why they had stayed. They were surrounded, almost too profusely, by a millenium of the history of their now-decimated people and its hold on them grew as the days passed. If they abandoned it, rats and vandals, broken windows and damp, perhaps fire from careless nomads, would make short work of much of it. Almost without debate, they were overtaken by a compulsion to become its de facto guardians.

So the situation had arisen, bewildering to the odd stranger who came and went, of a survival group as short of food, facilities and warmth as any other, solemnly taking on the extra burden of lighting great wood-fires in the hearths of the State Apartments in rotation to fight off the worst of the damp, and searching methodically for tremor cracks to make good, new rat-holes to plug up, loose roof-tiles to fix, burst pipes to mend and broken panes to re-glaze.

Most of them being witches or sympathizers, they had been regular in their esbats and sabbats. In fine weather the sunken garden was, as Norman said, an ideal outdoor temple, with its great Circle and four cardinal points already laid out. Indoors, the King's Dressing Room served admirably, being only five and a half metres square, comparatively easy to warm and free from any obtrusive symbolism, even the pictures being confined to Royal portraits which looked on undisconcerted by the skyclad rituals. (So far no one had been hardy enough to be skyclad in the sunken garden; that could wait for a week or two yet.)

Fay and Norman, knowing the strong tradition that the Order of the Garter had witchcraft roots, had been tempted to suggest using St George's Chapel for one of the Great Sabbats but had decided against it; there were Christians in their community who might well be offended, thus endangering the friendly relations which had been achieved. They had compromised by suggesting the Garter Throne Room, where the three covens had held a very successful joint Imbolg festival on 2 February.

Today, with the climbing sun already banishing the chill, Norman soon regretted even the appearance of doubt. The whole thing, he decided, had been worth it.

He put an arm round Fay's shoulder, turning to go back indoors. To his surprise, she halted and stiffened. He looked down at her questioningly.

'Norman – hush, listen…'

He listened but could hear nothing.

'I thought I heard an aeroplane,' she said.

'Oh, darling – don't be daft. It's months since we heard even a motorbike…' But then he broke off, amazed, as a slight change of wind brought the sound to his cars too.

They listened incredulously as it grew louder.

'It's a chopper,' Norman said at last. 'And it's getting closer.' Defensive instinct made him pull Fay down to crouch behind the wall of the terrace; strangers were treated with caution till proved friendly and a helicopter… His hand touched the butt of his automatic which he always carried when he was out of doors.

'There it is. Look.'

The helicopter had materialized on the eastern horizon and was coming straight and fast for the Castle. Norman and Fay kept out of the sunlight, watching.

Minutes later, the helicopter settled on the lawn below them, swinging slightly to reveal RAF roundels and cut its engines. A middle-aged man jumped out (his flying jacket did not seem to cover a uniform) and turned to hand down the passengers; a handsome woman about his own age, a younger man and woman with a baby and two teenage girls. The group stood together for a moment, looking up at the Castle. Then the pilot said something to the younger man and they both took out pistols and began to move forward warily towards the terrace's central flight of steps, the women and girls behind them.

Norman waited till they were about twenty metres away, then called out from behind the wall.

'Drop those guns, please.'

The two men turned towards him, saw his pistol and obviously realized they were infinitely more vulnerable than he was. The older man dropped his weapon and the younger followed suit after a second's hesitation.

'Move away from them… I'm sorry but we have to be careful. We've been attacked before. We wish no one any harm but we have to be sure… Right. I'm coming down to join you.'

The older man smiled as Norman walked down the steps, gun in hand. ‘I do understand. We're fugitives, too. But definitely peaceful.'

Norman-asked: 'Who are you?'

The smile became a laugh. 'One might say – your landlords. I know a lot has changed but technically I own this place.'

Norman heard Fay gasp beside him and then awareness hit him as he recognized the face… all the faces. For a moment, the conflicting impulses of caution and respect paralysed him. He suddenly felt the absurdity of the situation and he pushed his gun back into his belt.

'Forgive me, sir,' he stammered. ‘We weren't exactly expecting you.'

Once the first astonishment and embarrassment were over, the day went remarkably well. Norman had the feeling that the King and his family, while courteous, were uncertain at first how to treat the squatters at whose mercy they obviously were, even though Norman had given them back their guns at once. Norman, in turn, hardly knew how to treat his refugee Sovereign in such a bizarre situation, so fell into the same kind of watchful politeness.

But fortunately, from the moment they went inside, the evidence of the group's attempts at preservation (however makeshift) was all around them; and as the King came to realize their attitude and the work they had put in – a quixotic effort, in the circumstances of winter survival -he thawed rapidly. By the time they were all seated in the communal dining-room, he and his family were treating the squatters as friends. There were nearly a hundred people at the meal, for the group had grown since its beginnings, and rumour, running round the Castle in minutes, had made sure there were no absentees.

Norman had never been either royalist or anti-royalist, tending to take the institution for granted, and to regard any debate on its principle as being of purely academic interest with so many more immediate problems to think of. But today he had to admire, if only on a personal basis, the way his unexpected guest (or should it be host?) managed to combine an interested and interesting friendliness with an ex-officio dignity. This was an unreal situation, yet its unreality was here to stay, so must be accepted as real. He hoped he was coping as well as the King seemed to be… He glanced across at Fay in animated conversation with the Queen and the younger Princess; no awkwardness there, apparently.

The meal was finished but nobody left. The King turned to Norman and asked: 'Would you mind if I made a kind of after-lunch speech?'

'I wish you would, sir. I'm sure everyone's – er…'

'Full of questions?'

'Well, yes.'

The King nodded. 'I'll see if I can forestall some of them.'

Norman stood up and banged his mug on the table. In the instant silence which followed, he announced, hoping that his words sounded neither pompous nor abrupt: 'Ladies and gentlemen, His Majesty would like to speak to us all. But before he does, I'd like to say something – I don't know anything about protocol, so I hope it's in order. Just that, of all the strange things that have happened to us in the last few months, this must be about the strangest. I don't know what His Majesty's plans are, except that they don't tally with Beehive's. Perhaps he'll tell us. But I do know that in a sense he and his family are in the same boat as we are and for that reason alone, quite apart from any others, we're very glad to welcome them – if one can welcome a family into its own home…' There was a murmur of laughter, in which the King joined. 'Anyway, sir – this may not be exactly a royal welcome but it's a genuine one and we're delighted you're here…' He did not know how to finish, so he gestured awkwardly at the King and sat down.

Fay smiled across at him, reassuringly, during the applause.

The King stood up with a little bow of acknowledgement to Norman and the applause cut off quickly.

'Thank you very much, Mr Godwin – ladies and gentlemen… Mr Godwin needn't worry; I haven't the faintest idea of the protocol for such a situation, either. I don't think it's arisen before. But believe me, for anyone as hungry – and I will admit it, frightened – as I and my family were this morning, this has been a very royal welcome… I won't speak for long, for a very practical reason; I'm probably the only helicopter pilot present (it has become an hereditary skill of our family, fortunately) and it occurs to me that the sooner we get that machine under cover and out of sight, the safer we all are from any reconnaissance sorties that may be out searching for me and my family, as they probably will be soon enough. Beehive has several concealed helicopter bases which is how we managed to escape – and that should tell you a good deal about the situation in which we found ourselves… In brief, as Sovereign, I can no longer regard the Beehive administration as being the legitimate authority of this country and therefore – if the Crown has any function left at all – I have a duty not to appear to be its formal head. For that reason, I got out. Fortunately I was able to bring my immediate family with me. Any man would want to do that, of course, but I had an additional reason; if Beehive should claim that I have abdicated or died and should try to impose as my successor some relative of mine who is still in its power, it would have to compel some unfortunate cousin. And since my son and my elder daughter are both of age – and, as you can see, in good physical and mental health – such a manoeuvre would be rather unconvincing… Mr Godwin has asked what my plans are. Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I do not know yet. I hope the time will come when I shall know. Meanwhile, if you will have us -and if you feel our presence docs not add to your own dangers – we would very much like to stay with you…'

The rest of his sentence was drowned in an outbreak of applause. When it had died down, he went on: 'Thank you for that; we appreciate it very much. This is, after all, our home, or one of them – I don't mean that in the sense of economic or constitutional ownership which has become pretty irrelevant these days, but in the sense that we love it. And our more intimate knowledge of the place might even be useful in your admirable work to conserve it… Ithink it will be best if we neither regard ourselves as your guests nor think of you as ours, but instead regard all of us as one working community… One day, perhaps, what is left of our country will find once more a useful function for a Sovereign or perhaps not. I can't foresee the answer to that question. If it does, I will hold myself ready to fulfil that function. If not – and in the meantime in any case -my family and I will do our best to make our own contribution, as individuals, to the survival and rebirth of our tragically tiny nation. One thing I will not do, ladies and gentlemen – I will not be paraded as the figurehead of a corrupt and dictatorial clique, cowering underground in comparative safety until it feels ready to emerge and take control, by force, of those who have done the real work of surviving.' He paused and then suddenly turned and smiled. 'And now perhaps, Mr Godwin – will you and some of your friends help me to hide that chopper?'

Two or three hours later, the King and Norman were walking round the Castle precincts, the King answering the shy greetings of the people they passed. They found themselves at the entrance to St George's Chapel and the King went in, Norman following him. They stood for a moment looking along the nave and up at the delicate tracery of the fan-vaulted roof.

'You're witches,' the King said at last. 'You know what they say about the Order of the Garter?' 'Yes, sir.'

'I've often wondered if it's true – that Edward III was really a supporter of the Old Religion?'

'There seems to be quite a case for thinking so…'

‘I know, I've read Margaret Murray too.' He chuckled. 'I was totting up, a week or two back, sitting angry and frustrated in Beehive – apart from my own family, there are just two Garter Knights still alive so far as we know and one of them is senile.… Perhaps if I do ever get my job back, I'll recruit some rather more interesting new blood into it. After all, since Disestablishment stopped me being Head of the Church, I can be far more elastic in matters of religion. If anything, I have an obligation to be ecumenical… Wasn't there a controversy in your Craft, oh, about forty years ago, over whether there was such a thing as a King of the Witches?'

'Quite a heated one.'

'Wouldn't it be ironical if people started calling me that?'

24

'What are we going to do with Bill Lazenby?' John asked, after he and Karen had been riding for some minutes in silence.

'He tried to desert, John. That can't be forgiven.'

'Of course not. He's got to be punished, as an example. But he can't be re-absorbed afterwards. He'd be unwilling and resentful and a weak link… Oh, I know resentment can be harnessed and channelled, as a source of power -but not continuously in an operation like ours. We'd have to waste too much attention on him.'

'Of course.'

'And we can't just banish him because then he would escape. Join a white group somewhere – and we can't have that because he knows too much.'

'A great deal too much.'

'So we have to punish him and afterwards… Karen, there can't be an afterwards for him.' 'In other words, he's got to be executed.' John sighed. 'Yes.'

'I'm glad you recognize it, darling… Come on, race you!'

She spurred her horse and was away but John was soon beside her, for riding was one acomplishment in which he equalled and even excelled her, and in his more analytical moods he sometimes wondered if she gave him opportunities to prove it as a calculated sop to his self-respect. She was his superior in magical power, in ruthlessness and in charisma – he had long accepted that – but she still needed him so she took care to nourish his pride.

He was still captivated by her, more so than ever (Joy was a ghost from the golden past, too painful to dwell on), but he could look at her reasonably objectively. Could admire, at this moment, as she galloped with streaming hair towards Stonehenge, the brazen effectiveness of her barbarian-chieftainess image which indeed he had helped her to create, for he had a good eye for theatrical effect. Always side-saddle and black-booted, from the waist down she was fashion-plate Edwardian, but she had topped it with a startlingly flamboyant, close-fitting blouse of scarlet brocade, covered in bad weather by a scarlet cloak. A sheath-knife hung from a silver belt. For ten or fifteen kilometres around, this extraordinary figure, with its long black hair unbound in-fair weather or foul, had become the symbol of the awe in which the Angels of Lucifer were held. Once she had become known, she had only to make an appearance and people hurried to do as they were told.

At Beltane, the Angels of Lucifer had lit a huge bonfire, on high ground near their village, which was visible through the night from border to border of their territory; their subjects within those borders had looked towards it uneasily, and drawn their curtains. May Day itself had dawned fine and warm and Karen had astonished them with an action which, in some way that none of them could explain, increased their superstitious fear of her still further. She had ridden the bounds of her realm, erect and regal, with John beside her and an escort behind. Skirt, boots, belted knife, and side-saddle were as always, but from the waist upwards she was naked except for a large silver inverted pentagram that flashed between her breasts. Her nipples were painted as scarlet as her lips. The total effect, which other women might have made absurd, she made terrifying.

Since Beltane, rain or shine (she seemed impervious to either) she had always ridden abroad like that. She was an intensified symbol of the Angel's power and men quailed before it. But she insisted on being its unique focus. When Jenny, the ex-Banwell nurse, riding with her one morning, had presumed to strip off her own shirt in imitation of her leader, Karen had merely looked at her in commanding silence. Jenny had flushed and replaced her shirt. Since then, no one had dared.

Today, jumping from the saddle as she arrived at the Henge a length behind John, she was the laughing warrior queen. The escort stayed respectfully beyond the encircling earthwork while John and Karen walked together among the huge sarsen trilithons, recovering their breath after the hard ride.

'I like your idea, John,' she said after a while. 'What did you call it? – "testing our heavy artillery"… Yes.'

'It almost frightens me,' John admitted. 'There's so much power here. Have we the strength to handle it?'

'Strength? After all we've achieved?'

'Even after that.'

The sun had disappeared behind a heavy bank of cloud and the lowering greyness reinforced John's doubts. His question had been almost rhetorical, for until then Stonehenge had merely challenged him, not troubled him. But suddenly, in retrospect, it was no longer rhetorical. John shuddered.

Karen walked over to the Altar Stone at the focus of the bluestone horseshoe. She fingered it for a moment and then lay face upwards upon it throwing back her hair. She smiled serenely up at the sky. 'I dare anything that the Henge can do.'

'Don't try to frighten me with melodramatics,' John said, covering his unease with casualness. 'In spite of popular belief, that was not a sacrificial altar. The evidence is that it once stood upright.'

'A fallen phallus. All the more appropriate as an execution altar.'

'You mean Bill Lazenby?' John was no longer casual. 'God, Karen – we've never done that before.' ‘We have killed before.' 'But ritual human sacrifice…'

'Bill has to die – you've said so yourself. Why not make his death serve a purpose? That would be a real test of our "heavy artillery".'

He looked down at her, fascinated and half-repelled, knowing that in their own terms she was right and almost despising himself for his reluctance. There were no half-measures possible, along the course to which they were committed. Yet still…

As he gazed, the sun broke through, bathing Karen and the Altar Stone in unexpected light. It was surely a sign, an endorsement of her intent. But could she draw the others along with her?… Most of them, yes, without hesitation, but one or two might baulk. His own support, he knew, would swing the balance; together they could command the Angels of Lucifer, as they had done from the start. If he failed her now, what breaches would he open?

'Very well, Karen. Tomorrow at dawn? New moon's the day after tomorrow, so it'll still be in the waning phase.'

'Tomorrow at dawn,' Karen said.

The eastern horizon was clear, with only the thinnest gauze of morning mist hugging it, so there would be no difficulty about timing the sacrifice. The Angels of Lucifer, their bodies glistening with the belladonna 'flying ointment', insulatory and hallucinatory, which Stanley Friell had prepared for them, danced in a wild ring widdershins between the outer ring and the horseshoe, keening and yelping; they had been at it for half an hour, enraptured and tireless, a dynamo of power that built and built, a charge awaiting detonation by the sacrifice, and ready to detonate in turn the vastly greater power locked in the ancient stones.

Inside the great horseshoes of trilithons were only Karen, John and Sonia the Maiden, grouped around the victim spreadeagled on the Altar Stone. There had been no need to bind him, for Stanley had prescribed for him too, with a dose that paralysed his limbs but left him conscious and wide-eyed. The Maiden stood behind him, stroking his head and shoulders, crooning to him, whispering flattery to him, telling him what a fine man he was, what a worthy sacrifice, filling his field of view with a last inverted vision of the living. John faced East across the Altar Stone, awaiting the first glimpse of the sun, ready to give the command to Karen as she stood opposite him, ceremonially astride with the knife held high.

A sliver of golden fire flickered on the horizon, and John cried: 'Now!'

As the blood pulsed on to the Altar Stone, Karen led them to join the ring of dancers, the red knife still in her hand, laughing in exultation as the earth shook beneath them and the towering megaliths groaned.

'The epicentre was in the area of Salisbury Plain,' Professor Arklow told Harley. 'A strange phenomenon. It could be felt as a slight physical sensation in the Cardiff and Manchester Beehives – and, as you know, here in London -but not apparently in the more distant Beehives. And yet I've had no reports of actual damage. Have you, Sir Reginald?'

‘Not so far, Professor. All the Beehives reported at once, of course – that's an established drill whenever the seismo-graphic duty officers report a sizeable tremor. All negative, except that as you say Cardiff and Manchester felt it. But agents on Surface within reach of radio points in the area have been reporting all morning, as well. They all say the same; considerable public alarm, naturally, but only trivial damage… What's your prognosis? Are we in for more?'

That's what I mean by a strange phenomenon,' the professor said. 'After the past few months, we pride ourselves on having become more skilled than ever on reading the signs. A tremor of that magnitude should have given us warning. It did not. I've even been back over the last few days' recordings to see if we'd missed anything but there was nothing. The tremor did not fit into any normal pattern nor has it been followed by any normal aftermath. It just happened, Sir Reginald. And to be frank with you, as a scientist I find that most disturbing. I keep asking myself: "Why?" – and finding no answers… What's so unusual about Salisbury Plain?'

I have a very good idea, Harley smiled to himself. But if I told you, my dear professor, you would not believe me.

Moira sat bolt upright in bed, jerked awake by a vertiginous awareness of evil. Her movement woke Dan, who sat up beside her, looked puzzled and grasped her hand.

'Did you feel it?' she asked as the wave subsided.

'I felt something. Something very nasty. From over there.' He pointed south-east and Moira nodded. Although Dan was less psychically sensitive than herself, she knew from long experience that he had a better sense of direction. 'Savernake Forest?'

'Could be.' He was already out of bed and pulling on clothes. 'Hadn't we better call Tricia? If it's Karen and John, we need all the facts we can get.'

'If it's them and strong enough to wake us up,' Moira said grimly, 'we need the Elders.'

Within a quarter of an hour they were all gathered in the kitchen, the warmest place in that early dawn; the High Priestesses and High Priests of all fourteen covens, Tricia Hayes their best clairvoyant and old Sally who had heard them moving about and had got up to stoke the fire and make them a hot drink. Dan and Moira had not had to rouse them all; Tricia herself and several of the others had also been wakened by the psychic shock-wave and were already getting dressed.

'Well, Tricia?' Moira asked. 'What can you tell us?'

'Blood,' Tricia said. 'That's what I got first. And tall stones – megaliths. Then I pulled myself together and tried to be calm – it wasn't easy, I'd been overwhelmed at first… It's the Angels of Lucifer.'

No one asked 'Are you sure?' because they knew Tricia. If she was not sure, she said so.

'Megaliths,' Dan said. 'Stonehenge and Avebury are both on their doorstep.'

'It's not Avebury,' Jean Thomas insisted, a little unexpectedly because she was seldom emphatic about her own. clairvoyance. 'We know Avebury inside out and we love it. If it had been Avebury, we'd have picked it up. Wouldn't we, Fred?'

"Yes, I think we would… Could it be Stonehenge, Tricia?'

'I've never been there, oddly enough,' Tricia told him. 'Let me try…' She closed her eyes and everybody kept quiet, waiting. 'I suppose it must be. Nothing else could be that big… A road with a tunnel under it…'

That's Stonehenge,' several people said.

'I'm going to stop now, if you don't mind,' Tricia said. 'I'm not getting anything new and that awfulness hurts'

'Leave it, then, love,' Dan told her. 'Sally, anything hot for Tricia yet? She's shivering.'

'Coming up right now.'

'Do you realize what this means?' Greg asked. 'They're using the Henge as an amplifier. Animal sacrifice, if Tricia's right about the blood…'

'Not animal,' Tricia interrupted. "Human. At least, I think so. If it had been animal, the blood wouldn't have… swamped me like that.'

They stared at each other, appalled; for a moment no one felt like speaking.

‘I think Greg's right,' Sam Warner said finally, in a determinedly level voice. 'I reckon Liz and I have put in more study on stone circles than anyone here, although I'm sure most of you know at least something about them. They are focal points of power, even most detached psychical researchers accept that by now. We're certainly convinced of it… We all know the Angels of Lucifer are powerful. They're completely ruthless and they know what they're at. Well, if they're using human sacrifice to raise power and using Stonehenge as an amplifier – no wonder they woke us up 1'

'Any suggestions, Sam?' Dan asked.

'Yes. We all know that sooner or later we're going to have to fight the Angels of Lucifer head on. That's what we set up the Psychic Assault Group for and it's been shaping up well. So why shouldn't the PAG use an amplifier, too? The power's the same – it's there for the godly to use, as well as the ungodly… So is there a stone circle anywhere near here?'

'Geraint will know/ Moira said. 'And if he doesn't, hell find out. He's got plenty of archaeological books in his school library.'

Geraint did know, because he had helped to excavate it; a small but well-preserved megalithic circle a few kilometres away in the rising mountains west of Dyfnant Forest. It had lain for centuries buried under an ancient landslide, till gradual weathering of the topsoil had, in 1998, revealed a tell-tale pattern on an Ordnance Survey aerial photograph. The local archaeologists had moved in, Geraint among them, and in two years of volunteer labour had dug out the site. Now the circle stood clear and stark, looking a thousand years younger than its counterparts elsewhere because of its long burial.

Geraint wanted to take the Psychic Assault Group – the PAG as it had come to be called – to the circle himself but Tonia would not hear of it. He was still recovering from a bullet-wound in the right leg and was firmly confined to camp.

The wound was the result of the only shooting battle that had so far taken place in Camp Cerridwen itself. It had been quick and decisive and Geraint had been the only casualty apart from the two dead attackers. That the attack had failed was thanks to Gareth Underwood. Since his brief visit, Geraint or Tonia had been listening meticulously at 0745 hours every day on the designated frequency but none of the arranged code phrases had come through for several weeks. Then one morning Tonia had heard 'Jerusalem artichoke gammon' repeated twice. That had puzzled them. 'Globe artichoke' meant 'expect psychic attack' and 'Jerusalem artichoke' meant 'expect physical attack' – but there was no 'gammon' on their list. Obviously Gareth was trying to tell them something extra.

It was Greg who had hit on the answer. 'Gammon – ham – he's saying they're going to have a crack at your ham radio!'

They had posted concealed marksmen all round the radio cabin, day and night. Just before dawn on the third night they had seen two armed strangers moving silently towards the cabin. They had let them come far enough to have them surrounded, and Peter O'Malley, in charge of the night's guard, had called on them to halt. They must have been very determined raiders, for they had tried to rush the cabin, one of them firing as he ran, the other pulling the pin from a hand-grenade. In the dim light, Peter had managed to wing the grenade-thrower so that it dropped at the man's feet. The other man had tried to kick it clear, but too late, and the explosion had killed them both. Geraint, jumping from bed, had been hit by a shot through the wood of the door.

'Quite a compliment,' he had joked shakily as Eileen bandaged him up. 'Our little news network must be bothering them.'

The raiders were in civilian clothes, carrying Army issue weapons but wearing no identity discs. Father Byrne and the Rev. Phillips from the village had conducted an ecumenical funeral service at their burial. Earlier raids on New Dyfnant and the Madness had produced many unidentified but probably Christian bodies, so the priest and the minister had worked out an agreed procedure. The minister, reared in an atmosphere where Popery was anathema, had been suspicious at first but growing respect and liking for the gentle old priest had dissolved his doubts.

The attack on the radio cabin had not been repeated but the armed watch had been maintained.

The PAG had been the product of Dan's tidy mind but it was psychically sound and had been quickly agreed upon. Each coven had nominated its most psychically powerful member, which was not necessarily the same thing as the most psychically experienced. These formed the PAG, under Moira and Dan's leadership (Moira and Dan's coven being handed over to their senior couple while the PAG was in action). The idea was that when a psychic attack was to be mounted, the PAG would be its spearhead, raising the power as a group and directing it at its target. At the same time, each coven would be meeting and concentrating on feeding power to its own representative on the PAG. A simple two-tier pyramid of dynamism, with Moira and Dan at its tip.

Putting the theory into practice had involved some trial-and-error. First, each coven had chosen its own 'delegate', and practised feeding power into him or her within the coven's own Circle, while the delegate tried to direct the total to a single objective such as the telekinetic moving of a compass-needle, or a specific work of healing, according to the delegate's known talents. As a result, two of the delegates had proved unable to carry such a charge and had shown signs of distress, so had had to be replaced by others perhaps less talented but more robust. Again, by the original plan the PAG should have totalled fifteen – Moira, Dan and one delegate from each of the other thirteen covens. But three of the covens had found that their most effective delegate was in fact a duo (two married couples and a pair of identical twin sisters) who were used to working powerfully together but were no more than average apart. So the final total had become eighteen.

The next stage had been to weld the eighteen into a working group. Moira and Dan had begun 'limbering them up' by practising simple and familiar rituals with them, to get them used to each other. This had resulted in the replacement of one of the delegates, from the Warners' Traditional coven, who admitted he found the strangeness of the Gardnerian-type rituals too distracting for him to be able to concentrate on the task for which he had been chosen. His replacement proved much more adaptable and fitted in well.

At last the team seemed ready and they tried some directed work – at first without calling on the support of the covens. They had begun with telepathic projection of selected images, Tarot trumps, to three volunteers outside the group: Tricia Hayes the expert, one moderately experienced witch and one helpful non-witch who claimed to be completely insensitive. Their correct guesses, which on pure chance should have been around one in twenty-two, were one in four and three-quarters by Tricia, one in twelve by the witch, and a fraction under one in eight by the non-witch (who was so gratified that she began taking an active interest in witchcraft and was accepted as a postulant in Rosemary and Greg's coven). Moira and Dan were delighted; any group which could project with that degree of success, in an experiment which was uncharged with emotion, should, they knew, be a formidable force in the urgent determination of battle.

They had then repeated the experiment with the full pyramid, the covens being unaware of the cards being projected, but concentrating on feeding power to their respective delegates. The runs had only been short, because the camp was too busy to immobilize two-thirds of its population too often for too long – but the results had been startling. Tricia's success rate became almost complete, while that of the other two approximately doubled.

This was the stage the PAG had reached when Sam made his suggestion about the stone circle.

The sun was lifting clear of the forest behind them as the PAG reached the high ring of megaliths. They had left while it was still dark but they knew that by now all the covens would be up and assembled. The experiment was to take place between 8.00 and 8.30, with its climax timed for 8.30 exactly. Moira and Dan had reconnoitred the place two days before and decided what they intended to do, but had left the briefing of the PAG till they were in position in the stone circle. The covens' minds were to be uncluttered by any concepts other than power-feeding.

All the group were fully clothed. Moira and Dan much preferred to work skyclad or for special purposes ceremonially robed; but they had decided that the PAG must be as mobile – and, if necessary, inconspicuous – as a military unit, so they had trained in ordinary clothes, of a crosscountry serviceability, from their first meeting.

They arrived just after 7.30 and rested within the ring, getting the feeling of the great stones.

Just before 8.00, Moira told them: 'You see that wooden hut over there, about a hundred metres away? It's where the excavators used to keep their tools. Geraint said it'd still be here… We're going to set it alight, by psychic effort from inside the henge, at half-past eight exactly. Right – take your places, everybody and we'll cast the Circle.'

For the next half hour, they welded themselves together mentally, flexing the psychic muscles they had trained, building up the power to a higher pitch than they had ever reached before. After a while they began to feel the henge responding, the ageless currents which its builders had understood so well, stirring and resonating with their own group mind. The thought came to Moira as the perspiration beaded on her brow: We've been learning to walk, then run – now we're riding a stallion. She could feel, too, that other confluence of currents, the tide of supporting power from Camp Cerridwen in the heart of the forest

It was going to succeed. She knew it.

At half past eight, she cried: 'Go! Go! Go!', pointing the ritual sword straight at the wooden hut.

Her whole body shook and it was as though a white-hot flame surged through the veins of her arm. In the distance – it seemed leagues away, yet impaled on her sword-point – the wooden hut began to smoulder; she knew the surge of extra confidence in the group behind her and gasped again as it swept through her.

The hut burst into flames.. Moira did not move till it was burning fiercely and the immense tide flowing through her spirit and body had begun to ebb. Then she turned. Several of them lay panting and exhausted, their eyes closed. Others sat gazing at the flame-wrapped hut, still hardly believing it.

Dan put his arm round her, lowering her gently to the ground as she slipped into grateful unconsciousness.

25

'Don't misunderstand me, Harley,' General Mullard said. 'I am not saying that Operation Skylight will be a failure. It has to succeed, because it will be the end product of Beehive's very existence. We came underground to preserve a governmental and military machine which could survive while Surface was in chaos and emerge to take charge when the time was ripe.'

'I am aware of that,' Harley said, with the complacency the general found increasingly hard to put up with these days. 'Also that the time is ripe and that Operation Skylight will therefore take place on 21 June. Three weeks gives us plenty of time to prepare. What is your point?'

'My point,' the general said patiently, 'is that we shall be mounting Operation Skylight with about one half of the forces we originally envisaged. The virtual destruction of the hives at Birmingham and Bristol by the earthquake and the losses at other hives depleted the Army badly. And I know Davidson's lot were only a handful but they were in key positions, so that didn't help… Operation Skylight will take control of the country for you, as ordered. But we shall be thinner on the ground than I should like. There will be local reverses, guerilla activity from uncooperative elements and so on. Some of these Surface communities have had plenty of practice, dealing with the Madmen and with bandit groups.'

'A disciplined Army is rather a different proposition from stray lunatics and bandits.'

'Of course it is. But there are thousands of these communities, scattered over nearly a quarter of a million square kilometres of Britain. The population is estimated at just over 500,000. To control them, I have fewer than 6000 men. One infantry brigade plus supporting arms. I'd have been happier with a division. So don't expect instant miracles.'

'You have been training Beehive civilians as military reserves. I'll authorize you to call up two thousand of them.'

'But good God, man…' General Mullard took a deep breath to control himself and then went on with deliberate calm: 'In the first place, there is a limit to the amount of effective military training one can give to civilians in a concrete rabbit-warren. They will have their uses but not as reliable assault troops in a guerilla situation. And in the second place, what is Beehive for? To provide an effective administration which can start getting what's left of the country back on its feet as an organized State. To establish the King's peace…'

'Don't mention that man!' Harley snapped – his first show of real feeling since the interview began.

'All right, the State's peace. To provide services, a uniform system of law, meaningful currency – all of it very makeshift at first, of course, but beginning to work, and showing that it can work right from the start. The first days and weeks will be vital for establishing confidence in the Government. Vital. And if you give me two thousand of your five thousand skilled administrators, how are you going to manage that?'

'I suggest, General Milliard, that you deal with your side of the problem and leave me to deal with mine. The administration has some aces up its sleeve of which you may be unaware.'

Exasperation made the General indiscreet. 'Such as the Black Mamba and her little brood?'

Now it was Harley's turn to control himself. After a moment he said icily: 'Do not underestimate them. They have demonstrated their effectiveness in ways of which you certainly are unaware.'

'Oh, I'm sure they have. But I'm just a soldier. I stick to the old motto – "Trust God and keep your powder dry, in reverse order of priority". God being on the side of the big battalions. How many battalions the Devil is worth, remains to be seen.'

Harley stood up from his chair, 'Since you have mentioned priorities, General, let us get ours clear. Beehive's first task is to control Britain – swiftly, completely and ruthlessly. Civilian resistance will not be tolerated and your orders to the Army will make that quite plain. Where necessary, for example, hostages will be taken to ensure obedience and shot if it is not forthcoming. You have stated the problem yourself: our forces are small and our territory large. To establish control, therefore, they must be feared. What you so vaguely describe as "confidence" can wait. Instil fear, General, and you will have played your part in Britain's rebirth. And my two thousand administrators will be better employed helping you to instil it. They can return to their desks once our hold on the country is secure. And now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do.'

The general left, not trusting himself to speak. Is Harley quite sane any longer? he wondered as he strode along the corridor. Does he see himself as a rehabilitator of the country or as Genghis Khan?… And yet there's a horrible logic in what he says. Too few men to impose discipline on seventy or eighty times their own number -what other means is left but tenor? It might have been different if over the past months Beehive had shown a few 'signs of being helpful to Surface, even if the daily BBC bulletins had given useful advice to communities struggling to survive, instead of conveying nothing but a sense of detached, quarantined omnipotence, biding its time… It is too late now. I must play the hand I have been dealt.

Deeply depressed, General Milliard went to draft his Army's orders.

Harley had already forgotten him and was working his way through the morning's pile of documents that required his personal attention. Near the top was a note from Head of Intelligence, reporting that operative Gareth L. Underwood was missing, presumed killed, having failed to return from a mission in the Croydon area where gang warfare was rampant. Damned nuisance, that – Underwood had been a very useful courier between Beehive and Savernake Forest – he shouldn't have let the Section borrow him back for the Croydon mission. Now he'd have all the trouble of briefing a replacement.

Further down in the pile was a sealed envelope marked 'Personal'. Harley frowned, recognizing Brenda's handwriting. What now?… He slit open the envelope and took out the single sheet of private notepaper.

My dear Reggie, – I never thought I'd be writing you, or anyone, a suicide note. But here I am doing just that. I've got hold of a gun and I'm going up to Surface for a last look at the sky and the sun – and to save Beehive the embarrassment of disposing of my corpse. It's not just the ending of our long relationship that has brought me to this point, though it has, I will admit, contributed to my decision, because being involved with you helped to distract my attention from a problem that has since become intolerable. (Don't blame yourself for that – we were so careful from the start not to become dependent on each other.)

The real reason – which I hope I always managed to hide from you – is that almost from the beginning I suffered from Beehive claustrophobia. I used to dream about open skies and fields and rivers and wake up desolate. Waking up beside you, my dear, helped me to push these dreams aside. But in the past few weeks, they have become nightmares. I cannot suffer this troglodyte existence any longer. And since I am not equipped, by either temperament or toughness, to survive on Surface – nor in my present empty state particularly tempted to try – the quickest solution seems also the most desirable.

It's ironic, I suppose, that my access to the TSA room also gives me access to the list of secret Beehive exits! But don't hunt for my body. I shall walk it well away from, my escape hatch before I dispense with its services.

Good-bye, Reggie. Remember, if you think of me at all, the good times.

Brenda

Harley sat back, examining his reactions with some curiosity. Relief, yes; she was finished with, for him, and he preferred her out of his sight. Nostalgia? No; it was not an emotion he suffered from. Guilt?… No! He would not be blackmailed by those little barbed phrases – 'my present empty state', 'if you think of me at all' – revealing inserted among the sentences of pretended detachment. And she was no more claustrophobic than he was; of that he was certain. The whole letter stank of self-pity, of a determination to use her only remaining weapon – her own death – to punish him for rejecting her. Well, it wouldn't work. Let her rot, wherever she now lay.

He turned his attention to the next document on the pile.

Brenda's body ached in every muscle; she had not ridden a bicycle since she was a schoolgirl and even the fifty kilometres to which Gareth had considerately limited their daily target she had found heavy going at first. She had been driven, for the first two days, by an obsessive compulsion to get as far away from London as she could, as quickly as she could. Gareth, too had wanted to be away from the risk of any chance encounter with other agents who might know he was supposed to be going south not north-west. After that, she had pedalled doggedly, knowing that Gareth could have moved twice as fast and determined not to let him down. By the fifth day she was getting into the swing of it but net: body, so long deskbound, still protested.

Nevertheless she was happy. She realized that the Beehive claustrophobia which she had pretended in her 'suicide note' had been more real than she had thought. Aching and tired, she could still not keep a smile (no, a grin, a great big adolescent grin) off her face when she heard a bird sing, or resist calling to Gareth to stop for a moment when they crossed a river, or feel anything but pleasure at the smarting of her sunburnt forearms. The outside world – even fraught with danger and pockmarked with catastrophe -was a beautiful place.

Danger there was, though less than Brenda had expected. They both carried revolvers at their belts, and on their second day, during their mid-afternoon rest near Aylesbury, they had very nearly been surprised by four young men who tried to jump them and steal their weapons. Brenda had been overpowered, but had rolled on top of her gun long enough to keep her attacker from getting hold of it while Gareth knocked down one, evaded another and managed to draw his own gun and seize control of the situation. The attackers had withdrawn, shouting insults -Gareth had not needed to fire – and they mounted their bicycles and ridden away. Gareth had been furious with himself for such unprofessional carelessness, and Brenda only slightly less remorseful at the knowledge that she had been absorbing his attention at the time. After that, they had rested in places where they could not be approached unseen.

But all in all, Brenda was surprised and heartened to find how peaceable the decimated population was, how ready to be friendly once the first cautious mutual appraisals were over. Of their four nights on the road so far, one had been spent in a ruined and deserted house but three as guests of communities, the smallest being a family of six and the largest a village commune of more than fifty. One was already known to Gareth – he had a cousin in it, discovered by chance on an earlier mission – so there was no problem there. The other two they had approached with their hands clasped on top of their heads (this seemed to have become the recognized gesture for armed strangers seeking peaceful contact) and, after questioning, had been accepted. One had required them to hand over their guns till they left; the other had not even asked for them. At each place, they had paid for their keep with gifts from their rucksacks and pannier bags. Gareth knew from experience what was both easily portable and generally acceptable: tea, instant coffee, dried milk, chocolate, ballpoint pens, antibiotics, packeted seeds, concise medical and veterinary handbooks (which had quickly disappeared from library and bookshop shelves), clinical thermometers, batteries for digital watches, safety pins and other small treasures. He had smiled when Brenda, during their secret planning of escape in the TSA room, had announced her intention of bringing some lipsticks, compact refills, eyeshadow, and tights, but had been surprised to find how eagerly some at least of their hostesses accepted them.

It had been the evening talk that had been balm to Brenda's soul, and which made her memories of Beehive's daily preoccupations increasingly unreal. Talk of the practical problems of keeping alive, well, fed and warm; of big or little triumphs of ingenuity or determination; of the success or frustration of experiments in division of labour and inter-community barter; even in one place (Brenda could hardly believe her ears) of that perennial problem of Christendom, the repair of the church roof. Talk of human relationships, as absorbing, tender, foolish, astonishing, obtuse, splendid, farcical or transfiguring as anywhere, and yet, to Brenda, a world away from the hot-house pettiness and bitchiness of the equivalent talk in Beehive. Some talk of possible futures, mostly diffident, as though the speakers were afraid of being thought too hopeful too soon. And yet Brenda sensed this undercurrent of hope, this tentative dawn of confidence that what had been achieved so far could be built on – even if the achievement had been no more than survival and a wary friendship with scattered neighbours.

– .'I don't know whether it's magnificent or pathetic,' she told Gareth as they rested by the roadside under Wenlock Edge. 'I love their sheer guts and their… well, sort of shy optimism – you know? But then I think of Reggie and General Milliard – and the Angels of Lucifer – and 21 June, and I wonder just how much chance these people really have, once the bayonets and the bureaucrats move in on them. You know what? I've a feeling they'd do better without any imposed government at all. Does that make me an anarchist?'

'You said "imposed" government. There could be other kinds, in due course. Would you object to that?'

'Not if it emerged front these people. Beehive's kind will be alien to them – to everything they've been through. It is already, in their minds… Look, except for the Bicester place where they didn't ask, we've been telling them frankly we're Beehive deserters. And it's always made them even more friendly, hasn't it? That shows what they think of "the government"… What's it done for them, since the quake? Nothing at all, except to stir up this damn witch-hunt thing – which seems to have died out, by the way.'

'Not everywhere, Brenda. I've seen places where it's very much alive, I'm afraid.'

'So I've been lucky with the three communities I've met. But I'd like to think they're fairly typical – or if they're not already, they soon will be.' She laughed. 'I must be a naive optimist as well as an anarchist. Only five days out of Beehive and I'm starting to believe in people again.'

'It's the fresh air that does it.'

'And you, St George-on-a-bicycle.'

'St David, do you mind? I was born in Carmarthen.'

They fell to teasing each other; it was impossible to remain solemn for long. Besides, they both had an additional reason for a sense of well-being. On their second night out, lying in her sleeping-bag next to Gareth in his, still awake after he had gone to sleep, she had been oppressed by a feeling of self-reproach. Gareth was her only friend and had been for weeks; he was her comrade in a dangerous venture, which would have been far less dangerous for him on his own – though of course he had not said so. She was a liability gladly accepted because he loved her and she repaid his devotion with mere friendship. She remembered a phrase which had caught her imagination while she was studying ancient Irish tribal mores for her history degree: cairdes sliasait

, 'the friendship of her loins.' Did he not at least deserve that, in a partnership where death might be round any corner – or would it be an insult to his love, when she was not in love with him? And yet she loved him, as she had loved her dead brother or her longer-dead father… Her debate with herself had become more tortuous and amorphous as the sleep of physical weariness overtook her. Next morning she had tried to recapitulate it with a clearer mind and had realized with some surprise that consideration of her affair with Reggie had not even entered into it. The following night, unpacking their things in the room which the village commune had offered them, while Gareth put their bicycles away, she had with sudden decision zipped up their two single sleeping-bags as one double one and laid it out on the bare mattress of the big bed. He had not seen it till later, for she had gone down to join him and they had been immediately drawn into their hosts' company. When they had finally said good night and gone upstairs and he had seen what she had done, he had stopped short, unable to find words. She had smiled at him, hiding her own doubts, and had prepared for bed with deliberate unconcern. Once they were lying together, his respectful tenderness had brought a lump into her throat, and she had forgotten her trepidation in her determination to make him relax, even laugh. She had succeeded; and now, after three nights of increasingly natural lovemaking, she no longer tried to analyse the difference between loving. and being in love. She only knew that in spite of her uncertain future and the muscular weariness of their journey, she had never been so content in all her life. Certainly not with Reggie.

They arrived at Camp Cerridwen on the evening of the sixth day. Gareth received almost a hero's welcome, because the camp knew they owed the survival of the radio cabin (and probably of Geraint and Tonia) to his warning message; Brenda was swept up in it too but not merely by way of reflected glory. She felt an immediate rapport with Moira in particular, and since she was a librarian, schoolteacher Geraint and journalist Tonia adopted her at once as their personal property and virtually shanghaied her into the news network team before she could draw breath. They were eager to pump Gareth for information, too; he had to curb their enthusiasm a little, or they would have rushed on to the air to their British and foreign ham contacts with facts that could only have come from within Beehive -which, so soon after Gareth and Brenda's 'deaths', might have caused someone in Beehive to put two and two together. The two-man raid on the radio cabin, Gareth told them, had been made on the Army's initiative in consultation with Intelligence Section. It had not been repeated because, with the advantage of surprise lost, it would have required a larger force, which the Army could not spare during the preparations for Operation Skylight. But if they drew attention to themselves by being not merely a nuisance exchanging what news the hams could gather, but a real danger by transmitting Beehive secrets, Harley might order the Army to attack at once, regardless.

An Army attack was coming anyway; that was the central grim fact in the news which Gareth brought. But at least he could tell them the date and the time.

As soon as the welcoming was over, Gareth, with Brenda beside him, spoke to Dan, Moira and the camp committee.

'Operation Skylight – the surfacing of Beehive to take control – is fixed for 21 June. Zero hour is 0600 hours but some units will be setting out before that and others after. It'll all be carried out in waves, by shuttle-service from the secret helicopter bases around the various Beehives – the main forces coming from London. On the first day, they'll establish headquarters in about thirty places spread out over the whole mainland but thicker where the population's thickest. The places have been carefully chosen – mostly relatively undamaged small towns or large villages. The nearest one to here is Corwen, about thirty kilometres away. They won't be doing it with kid gloves. They'll requisition whatever they need and anyone who resists eviction or disobeys the Army's orders will be shot. On the second day they'll start imposing control over the surrounding communities, starting with the largest – and at the same time they'll begin announcing regulations and provisional tithe laws and so on.'

'Tithe laws?' Dan asked, incredulously.

'That's what they're calling them. How d'you think the administration and the Army are going to be maintained? The Beehive stores won't last for ever… And get this straight. It's going to be a military dictatorship, with no holds barred and Harley's administrative machine as the ruling caste. Big Chief Harley himself is the absolute dictator of Beehive and he has every intention of being absolute dictator of Britain. The Prime Minister's a puppet. My own guess is that after Operation Skylight, Harley won't even bother to use him as a figurehead. The Premier will either be framed as a traitor or simply meet with an accident.'

'Where does the King fit in?' Sam Warner wanted to know. 'The BBC broadcasts are still in the name of "His Majesty's Government", even though we never hear his voice.'

Gareth smiled wrily. 'Apart from Brenda and myself, the most distinguished defectors from Beehive have been the Royal Family. A few weeks ago the King, the Queen, the Prince of Wales and his wife and baby, and the two Princesses took a helicopter from one of the secret bases and disappeared. Being the King and a helicopter pilot, he was able to get away with it – though Harley still had the officer of the base guard reduced to the ranks. Intelligence Section did their nut trying to get wind of them. It wasn't till just before we left that an agent located them. Windsor Castle, of all places – the sheer cheek of it fooled Beehive, the Section never dreamed they'd go there. Holed up in it with a witch community, too… It's one of the priority targets for D-Day. Special task force to seize the Castle and take the Royal Family alive. Just like Camp Cerridwen. Dan and Moira are to be taken alive, too. I've a feeling that's a special request from the Black Mamba. I don't think Harley would have bothered with the "taking alive" bit as far as Dan and Moira were concerned.'

'Yes, that would be Karen,' Dan said.

'Never mind, they needn't catch any of you. Listen: the task force aimed at Camp Cerridwen is two platoons in four helicopters, taking off at Z minus one, which means, they'll be here about 0630. They have orders to kill everybody except Moira and Dan, but not to fire the camp – it'd start a forest fire and even Harley knows that every hectare of Forestry Commission plantation is going to be precious. The radio equipment is to be wrecked. So all you have to do is to move out on the twentieth – every man, woman and child of you – and hide in the forest, somewhere kilometres away, there's plenty of it. If you can do that, without leaving clues or even hinting at it in the village, you can save yourselves and the camp… If you ever have a chance to come back to it, that is,' he added sombrely.

"We'll worry about that afterwards,' Moira told him. 'We can hide ourselves and take Geraint's radio stuff with us. But there's something else you'd better know about. Eighteen of us, including Dan and me, will almost certainly be busy somewhere else on D-Day…' and she told about the Psychic Assault Group and the stone circle.

‘Do you find that… shall we say, a little bizarre?' Dan asked when she had finished.

'Setting fire to a hut by psychic effort? Three or four months ago I'd have thought you were either lying or suffering from group hallucination. But since then… Not only have Brenda and I personally experienced what the Black Mamba can do – which might be put down to hypnotism, just – but there's something else you don't know. You heard about the recent earth tremor, down south?'

'Yes. Two of Geraint's ham pals reported it.' There was a sudden gleam of extra interest in all the witches' faces and Gareth wondered why.

'The epicentre was Salisbury Plain. And just at that time, the Angels of Lucifer conducted a human sacrifice at Stonehenge. If that was coincidence…'

'It wasn't,' Moira and Dan said together, and Moira went on: 'We picked up the ritual – in fact, it woke several of us up. And our best clairvoyant insisted it was a human sacrifice. She saw the big megaliths, too. That's what gave us the idea of experimenting with a stone circle… Then when we heard about the tremors we thought it must have had something to do with it.'

They launched into a discussion of earth currents, ley lines and foci of power which left Brenda bewildered, though Gareth seemed to be taking an unsurprised interest in it. She was not disbelieving because the evidence was plain enough but she was soon out of her depth in the technicalities. But when they started talking about positive action against the Angels of Lucifer, she ventured to intervene.

'Did the Angels intend the earth tremors, do you think?'

'We don't know,' Dan told her, 'but we think it's unlikely. They were probably testing their own strength, seeing what power they could raise by human sacrifice at the Henge and not worrying too much about what the power actually did once they'd raised it. And they are powerful, even without ritual human sacrifice or a stone circle as an amplifier. So I'm not surprised at what did happen.'

'If I know Karen,' Jean Thomas said, 'she'll have been delighted at what happened.'

'But if you try to do the same thing – without the sacrifice, of course – couldn't it be dangerous?' Brenda asked. 'Couldn't you trigger off an earthquake or something equally disastrous?'

Moira shook her head. 'We'll be defending Mother Earth, not outraging her like the Angels of Lucifer. She looks after her own.'

'Do you really see her that way? As a conscious entity, able to decide who's on her side and who isn't?'

'Experience points that way,' Moira smiled. 'But yes -the short answer is, we do. We see the whole universe as conscious, at various levels of complexity and on various time-scales – various wavelengths, if you like. Witchcraft is largely a method of learning how to tune in to the right frequencies. All religion is, really… The Earth-Mother is one aspect of the Goddess, of what we conceive as the female polarity of the Ultimate – the side that gives birth and nourishes and re-absorbs and re-shapes, while the other side – the male polarity, the God – impregnates and energizes. We see all creation and activity as the outcome of polarity, even at Divine level… Again, all religions do, however they obscure it… The Earth-Mother is how the Goddess expresses herself on and in our planet, our particular corner of the universe. For the past two or three thousand years, mankind has over-emphasized the God-aspect and tried to push the Goddess into the background or deny her altogether. In the end, that's as much an offence against the God as against the Goddess; deny him his complement, and you deny him… Do you know what Camp Cerridwen is? Not just a survival community trying to feed and house and organize ourselves. We're trying to get ourselves back on the Earth-Mother's frequency, to talk to her and listen to her. Not only the witches, either – all of us, in our own way. Father Byrne, for instance; if ever a man talked to her face-to-face, he does, whatever he calls her… Am I answering your question – about our running into danger, I mean?'

Brenda hesitated. ‘Yes, I think you are – though it's a bit much to take in all at once. Can we discuss it some more, when you've time?'

'Of course we can. But right now the point is – we've got to fight the Angels of Lucifer on the Earth-Mother's behalf, if you see what I mean. And when we do, it's by putting ourselves on her frequency and calling on her power, so it can't be destructive except to her enemies. Does that sound naive?'

Brenda laughed, suddenly. 'I like you people. You make the most extraordinary statements without batting an eyelid and then ask solicitously if we think you're being "bizarre" or "naive". Tell you the truth, I don't know. But you're on the right side and you're doing something. So just tell me how I can help and we'll philosophize about it afterwards, win or lose.'

'Fair enough,' Dan grinned at her. 'Now, Gareth – down to business. Do you know how the Angels of Lucifer fit into Operation Skylight? From what you say, Harley and Karen must have planned something for them to do.'

'I'm only piecing hints together,' Gareth said, 'but I'm damn certain they've planned something. I was still courier between them and escort for her when she commuted with Beehive, up to a fortnight ago, and I kept my eyes and ears open. Karen has some kind of operation arranged for D-Day. And it's silly the way you pick things up – but their kitchen at her headquarters has a big calendar on the wall, where the cook notes things. I got a look at it last time I took her back and the cook had scribbled "Breakfast 3 am" opposite 21 June. That's two hours before sunrise and three before zero hour. My guess is that at sunrise, they'll be at Stonehenge, raising all the power they can to back up Operation Skylight. What else was their last experiment at the Henge for? It must have been a rehearsal for the time when Harley will need their support. And that means D-Day.'

'It makes sense,' Dan agreed. 'And that means our PAG must be in action at the same time.'

Jean Thomas turned to Gareth and asked: 'When you were at Karen's place did you hear anything about Avebury?' Everybody smiled; Jean and Fred Thomas's devotion to Avebury, the megalithic site nearly thirty kilometres north of Stonehenge, was known to everyone in the camp. Avebury was less spectacular and world-famous than Stonehenge, and its stones were smaller, but it covered a far greater area with Avebury village at its centre; many witches and occultists, and even archaeologists, found it more interesting and rewarding than its famous neighbour.

'Not much,' Gareth answered. 'I know it's outside the territory they control. I heard a bit of conversation about it once – someone suggested taking it over but Karen said no, it wasn't worth it, Stonehenge was enough. I sort of gathered there were only a handful of villagers living there.'

'That's good,' Jean said, and Fred nodded with her.

'What's your point, Jean?' Greg asked. "Want a second honeymoon there?'

'All right, all right, have your joke. But Fred and I have been thinking. We knew the battle with Karen's lot was coming; now we know it's on 21 June, and it's pretty certain they'll be at Stonehenge. If we want a power-house for the PAG, why not Avebury? There's more power locked up there than anywhere in Britain – even than Stonehenge, though I know you think we're a bit biased about that, so let's just say it's in the same league as Stonehenge. And they've been linked together in people's mind for so long, the psychic channels will be there between the two. We could make it the weak point in Stonehenge's armour.'

Greg was already peering at the map. 'But it's about 150 kilometres from here, love.'

'So what?' Fred supported his wife. 'We could rustle up enough bicycles and horses to reach there in four days at the most. Or even take one of these useless vans we've got parked here – we've got enough petrol stored and you do still sec the odd vehicle on the move, using its last tank-ful to look for new lebensraum. People don't pay much attention to them – just look up at the unfamiliar noise and then get on with what they're doing. Especially if they see guns… We could take the PAG, which is eighteen, plus half a dozen strong-arm boys to protect them. Two van-loads altogether, say.'

'But what for?' Sam Warner interjected. 'Tire ourselves out travelling, just to get a little extra power out of Avebury? We could end up even.'

'Not with Avebury,' Dan said. 'You know what? – I like the idea. Oh, we all pull Jean and Fred's leg about the place, but some of us do know just how powerful it really is. And it's a psychic "in" to Stonehenge, as Fred says. What's more, the Angels wouldn't be expecting an attack from there. It could be organized… What do you think, Moira?'

'I think Jean and Fred may have something,' Moira said.

26

On a hill by the Swindon road, a kilometre or two outside Avebury, twenty-six men and women watched the sun go down on 20 June from an abandoned house on the edge of a wood. They had been there for two days; Dan had allowed eight days for the trek from Dyfnant Forest, to be on the safe side, thinking that Fred's estimate of four days was probably an underestimate. He had been right. With diversions to avoid communities and having to cross the Severn above Cheltenham (the motorway bridge at Chepstow was reported to be held by a brigand group), the journey had taken six days.

They had decided, after some discussion, that motor transport was worth the expenditure of stored petrol. The camp's petrol reserves were higher than they had foreseen, chiefly because Greg's water-driven power system was increasingly efficient and an electrical circular saw meant that the petrol-driven chain-saw was rarely needed, and ploughing and harrowing were entirely by horse. So with much back-tracking to avoid fissures, they had travelled with two mini-buses, a car and one motor-cycle for scouring ahead. The total party had grown to twenty-eight – eighteen in the PAG, eight armed guards and two radio operators trained by Geraint and Tonia. The pack radios, ingeniously built by Geraint and Greg from cannibalized ordinary radios and useless TV sets begged from the village, had a maximum range of about fifty kilometres; one operator, with a guard to defend him and keep him company, was already in position, well concealed, with a good view of Stonehenge and further armed with a pair of binoculars. Every hour, on the hour, he sent the code word 'Cabbage', which meant 'No activity at the Henge', and Miriam, who manned the set with the PAG, acknowledged. She kept continuous watch in case of developments but otherwise they kept radio silence except for the brief hourly report. The crucial code word would be 'Aconite', meaning that the Angels of Lucifer were occupying Stonehenge – for the watching operator was Bruce Peters, who knew Karen and John and several of their group by sight.

The time would come, obviously, when the 'dozen or so prepared code words would no longer be adequate and Bruce would have to describe what he saw in clear for the benefit of the PAG. But by then the ether would be alive with the Army messages of D-Day and one short-range voice on a non-Army frequency (Gareth had been able to inform them on that) would with any luck pass unnoticed.

Two of the guards had spied out Avebury village as soon as the PAG were installed in the empty house. The little cavalcade had apparently managed to arrive without alerting the village; the approach had been very circumspect, by moonlight and without lights, and with slow and careful reconnaissance ahead of the main party. The vehicles were -well hidden in the wood and camouflaged.

The Avebury community, the spies reported, consisted of seven adults and four children; they slept, without posting sentries, in the Red Lion, the village pub which had (the Thomases remembered) several bedrooms. This was good news, for it made the PAG's plan of operation simple. The last thing they wanted was a battle.

The White City stadium, on the western fringe of central London, was a fortress. The Army had commandeered it ten days before Beehive Red and since then no one had seen inside it. There had been much coming and going of helicopters in those ten days and nobody living around had bothered to keep count, so it was anyone's guess how many remained there after the earthquake. The wise deduced that it was a Beehive helicopter base, and the wise (even, very soon, the foolish) kept away, because anyone who approached within a hundred metres was sniped at – one shot as warning and the next to kill. Nobody, of course, could get high enough to see inside. It was something of an anomaly, as the only known Beehive presence on Surface – though gradually rumours circulated of other stadiums and football grounds (all of them completely surrounded by stands or high walls) scattered around the capital which it was inadvisable to approach. As the months went by, the few local civilians who had survived the Madness and the winter had come to take them for granted and ignore them, from a safe distance.

But tonight those who lay awake noticed there were unprecedented noises of activity inside White City. Peering out of their windows they saw the glow of many lights reflected from the thin night mist above the stadium and they wondered. Then, in what should have been the deadest hour of the night, no one slept any longer, for the first of the helicopters clattered up into the sky.

Harley, sitting at General Mullard's side in the Operations Room five hundred metres below Primrose Hill, glowed with a euphoria which for once did not exasperate the general. Mullard was a soldier to his marrow; intelligent and sensitive, he could be plagued with doubts beneath his impassive exterior as long he was confined to sedentary planning but once the die was cast (he had a habit of muttering 'Jacta est alea' with a puffed-out breath of relief) the doubts faded away. Action, for good or ill, was an elixir; his expression did not change but his eyes had a new sparkle and his staff could depend on hair-trigger decisions from him even in the face of reverses – particularly in the face of reverses. Operation Skylight was going smoothly into action; the intricate timetable of troop movements out to the helicopter bases was running without a hitch; the Z-minus-four helicopters, first of the day's flow of shuttles, were all reported away. The first entries had appeared on the virgin wall-charts, and the WRAC girls, like uniformed croupiers, were sliding the first coloured symbols on to the huge map of Britain painted on the Ops Room table. For the first time in months, General Mullard felt one hundred per cent alive.

If Harley effervesced with excitement and confidence, who was he to criticize? At least the man recognized that this, for the moment, was the Army's show and did not interfere.

At Windsor Castle the entire community was barricaded in the Round Tower, with every firearm they could muster and the approaches barbed-wired. The courier from Camp Cerridwen had warned that the attack was to be expected at 0900 hours – the assumption being, apparently, that by then most of the community would be up and about in the grounds, unsuspecting, and even if the attackers met with difficulties, hostages could be taken to be shot at regular intervals unless and until the Royal Family surrendered.

But now it would be the attackers, not the defenders, who would be surprised.

As the Prince of Wales put it to Norman Godwin: 'If they want to take us alive they're going to have to blow us up first.'

At the village in Savemake Forest the prisoners huddled in the schoolhouse under armed guard, their hands tied behind them. Their bonds were hardly necessary, because they were all in a dream-world, thanks to the drugs which Stanley Friell had prepared for them. The drugging was purely to make them easy to handle and transport to Stonehenge; once they were there, an antidote would restore them to full awareness for Karen insisted that all sacrifices' terror would add to the power raised. Four of them – three men and a woman – were locals who had offended the Angels of Lucifer; the other two were an itinerant man and woman who had tried to pass through the village in their wandering, unaware of its reputation.

The seventh chosen sacrifice was sitting, unfettered and undrugged, with Karen and John, and she had chosen herself. Ever since Bill Lazenby had been offered up on the Altar Stone, Sonia Forde, the Maiden, had been transfigured. For her, the blood sacrifice had been a transcendental experience, sweeping through her in a blinding vision of power – literally blinding, for she had had to be led home and had not seemed to recognize her surroundings for three or four hours. Since then she had been in a state of mystic rapture. Two days ago she had not asked Karen but had told her, that she, the Maiden of the Angels of Lucifer, had been touched by their Master and granted the privilege of being the first Midsummer Sacrifice. Karen (who believed in neither God nor Devil, only in an impersonal cosmic power which she had the knowledge to tap and direct) had seen the light of ecstatic madness in Sonia's eyes and had agreed at once. It was an unexpected bonus to her plans; Sonia was twenty, auburn-haired, slim and nubile but (for neurotic reasons, Karen knew) virgo intacta. By all traditional standards, she was ideal. And her willing sacrifice would have a valuable psychic effect on the others.

Sonia sat now between herself and John, erect and proud. She had dressed her hair with great care and made up her face, heavily but skilfully and dramatically – as well as her nipples, for she wore nothing but a spotlessly white skirt and a necklace of pearls. To this infringement of her own regal monopoly, Karen had raised no objection; nothing must challenge the martyr's vision of herself.

Karen glanced past the entranced girl at John, wondering, with a rare flash of unease, at his expressionless face. Usually she could read his thoughts like a neon sign but as D-Day drew nearer, a screen had dropped between them. He had not argued with her and he had played his part in the planning efficiently and with apparent determination, but he had said little and none of that at all revealing.

She banished the unease deliberately. I am the channel of power, I am the leader. Nothing shall stand in my way today. Certainly not John. He will do what is required of him. As will Harley, afterwards.

At three in the morning, silently and keeping to the shadows as far as possible on this bright moonlit night, the PAG and their seven guards and Miriam approached the Red Lion. The PAG were to take no part in the capture, for they must remain as calm and rested as possible for the later psychic battle. Four of the guards surrounded the building to prevent anyone escaping through windows or back doors. The other three broke into the front door with a jemmy.

The sound woke the house and for two minutes there was uproar and shouting, but – thank heaven – no shooting. Five minutes later, all eleven of the villagers had been herded into the dining-room, the curtains drawn, and candles lit. They looked indignant and bewildered as Dan began to address them.

'I'm sorry about this, but please believe me, we don't want to hurt you or your property or to steal anything. You'll have to forgive us for the damage to the front door -that was necessary. All we need to do is to stay here for the next few hours. We can't say yet exactly how long it'll be. But it's absolutely vital that nobody realizes we're here. So we have to keep you all under guard till it's over and see that none of you leave or try to signal anyone outside. You can come and go as you please inside the house as long as one of us is with you.' He smiled, he hoped reassuringly. 'We've been as considerate as we can – you'll notice that two of our guards are women, and they'll conduct the ladies to the loo and so on. The only place you must keep out of is the lounge bar, because we'll be using that. And please make as little noise as possible when you're anywhere near it. If we eat or drink anything while we're here, we'll pay for it -we've brought a couple of sacks of assorted goodies for the purpose and I'm sure there will be things in them that you'll find useful.'

'But what's it all about?' the obvious leader of the group asked. He was a solid-looking man in his fifties whom they had heard addressed as Lenny. 'Bandits I could understand and serve us right for not posting sentries – we've had no trouble for months, so we got careless. But all this politeness with a gun at our heads… It don't make much sense, tell you the truth. What are you up to?'

'A fair question, Lenny – that's your name, isn't it?… Have you heard of the Black Mamba and her lot?'

The frightened reaction, of the women in particular, was immediate, and Lenny swallowed. 'Everyone round here has. But they've never troubled us. Are you from there?'

'Not on your life. They're everybody's enemies… Do you remember the earth tremors last month?'

'You bet we do.'

'And did you hear what the Black Mamba's gang did at Stonehenge that day?'

Even Lenny could not hide his fear at the question. "Word got around.'

'Yes, I'm sure it did. Well, this morning two things are going to happen. We've had word that they'll be doing it again today, probably at sunrise, and probably worse than the last time. And we've also had word that the Army's coming out of Beehive to try and take control of the country. Now I don't know what you people believe or how you feel about witches. But we're witches – white witches – all of us. And while the other lot are making use of Stonehenge for evil, we're going to do everything we can to use Avebury for good, to fight against the evil they're doing. The Red Lion's right in the middle of Avebury Circle. And that's why we're here.'

Dan paused, waiting for reactions. Lenny and the others looked at each other and then Lenny spoke.

'I'm Church of England, myself, and so's the missus here and the kids, and some of the others. Young Jane over there, she reckons she's a witch but she's a good girl and my wife's cousin, so we've been keeping quiet about it and looking after her… The way I look at it – if you're telling the truth, and I'd say you are, we're not going to stand in your way. I've lived with these stones all my life and I know there's power in them, whatever the Vicar used to say. Stonehenge too but that's dark to my way of thinking, never felt easy there even before all this. But our stones, they're light, they're different. And I'd leave it to them. If what you're trying to do is good, they'll help you. If it ain't, they won't – and they might even punish you for it, some ways. An' may God forgive me for saying it… You carry on, lad. We won't cause you any trouble. But keep your guards on us – you'll be too busy to have to worry about whether I'm lying to you. I ain't but I might be, mightn't I? So tell 'em to keep their guns loaded and then you'll be easy in your mind… Those others without guns, in the lounge -they'll be doing the magicking?' That's right, Lenny. Me too.'

'Well, good luck to you. Is there time for the missus to brew up some hot soup for everybody before you start?'

It had been a greater wrench than Rosemary had expected, the exodus from Camp Cerridwen into the forest. Most of the campers (there were nearly 160 of them, after the PAG had left) believed, against all apparent logic, that they would be able to return. The witches believed it by conscious decision with the object of bringing it about by envisaging their return with concerted willpower and imagination, and the non-witches had been generally infected by their confidence. Anxiety over Moira and Dan and the PAG, so far away and with the two leaders on the Army's wanted list, was inevitable and hardly unexpected. But the actual leaving of the camp, on the morning of the twentieth, had been a sadness whose intensity took them by surprise. They had built and ploughed and planted it with their own hands and leaving it empty was like abandoning an only child.

Everything of particular value that could be moved had been hidden in the storage cave and the entrance effectively camouflaged. It would be extremely bad luck if it were discovered and the witches did not believe in bad luck. Rosemary and Greg, with their coven, had spent an intensive half-hour on a spell to turn inquisitive eyes away from it.

Gareth had originally suggested that no hint be given to the New Dyfnant villagers of the evacuation plan but a few days' acquaintance with the relationship between camp and village had made him admit that this could be modified. Three old people, two sick, and three couples with young babies had been adopted by village families 'for the duration of the emergency', and the village, to a man, would have cut their own tongues out rather than betray them. Eileen, at six months the most advanced pregnancy in the camp, had been offered an almost embarrassing number of homes (New Dyfnant had not forgotten that she, above all, had saved them from the Dust) but had insisted on joining the exodus, clinching her refusal with the argument that her face, too, might be on the wanted list – and Gareth could not be sure it was not. To minimize dangerous knowledge, all arrangements, by common consent, had been through one person, Bronwen Jones the Shop, and only she had any idea of what was actually planned, though neither she nor anyone else in the village knew or needed to know just where the exodus was heading. Only she, indeed, knew the hour of departure – and two hours after it she passed the word to Dai Police and Dai Forest Inn to send up a herding party to bring the camp's livestock down to the village for lodging around the farms.

By that time all the men, women, and children of Camp Cerridwen had melted into the forest.

It would take a large-scale operation with hundreds of men to find them, for in the past quarter-century the Forestry Commission had extended the Dyfnant plantation till it covered more than fifty square kilometres south and south-west of Lake Vyrnwy. Peter O'Malley had chosen their destination and planned the route, for he knew the forest better than anyone in Camp Cerridwen – and knew, too, which species of tree would give them maximum cover from the air. He had ordered dark clothes and drilled everyone in what to do at the first sound of a helicopter engine. He had chosen an area towards Llechwedd Du, four or five kilometres to the west, where he knew of a small group of caves that could accommodate the whole party – and, most important for D-Day, could give the fourteen covens working space separated from the children and the non-witches who would look after them, so that they could concentrate without distraction.

It had been a heavily laden procession that had set out from the camp along the plantation 'corridors', for nobody knew how long they would have to hide, and they were carrying as much food as they could. Bedding was less of a problem; it was a warm June and the weather seemed set fair. Geraint and Tonia had been tempted to lug their radio equipment with them but it would have been impossible to carry the batteries as well, and since transmitting was out of the question and the PAG pack radios were much too far away to receive, it would have been of little use. So they had buried it, well wrapped in polythene sacks, half a kilometre from the camp the day before they left.

On the journey, Rosemary had kept an anxious eye on Greg, for although he had said little and maintained the cheerful exterior required of one of the founder members and acknowledged leaders of the camp, she knew that he had been worse hit than almost anyone by having to leave it. No one had put more ingenuity, craftsmanship and sheer hard work into it, from the start, than he. She could have wept as she watched him carry his precious alternators from the little river power-station to the cave with his own hands and then the heavy-duty batteries in a wheelbarrow – nothing, she knew, would he leave undone to make a new start possible if the chance came. She had had, finally on the last night, to order him to bed so that he would be fit for the march, otherwise he would have been up till dawn removing and hiding more and more pieces of treasured equipment.

But once the trek was over, the people under cover, and a meal organized, she was relieved to sense that his cheerfulness became more convincing. A new phase had begun and he was responding to the challenge. When everybody had begun to relax a little, he had started urging her, as convener of the Elders in Moira's absence, to call them together to plan tomorrow's support effort for the PAG, and shepherded Tricia into a quiet corner with instructions to see what she could pick up from Avebury. Then, at last, Rosemary could smile; for Greg, she saw, the worst was over. What tomorrow's worst might be, remained to be seen – but with the trauma of the exodus firmly behind him, he was prepared to face it.

An hour before sunrise, the covens were assembled and ready, in three caves so close together on a broken hillside that they were virtually interconnecting. Rosemary and Greg's group was in the centre cave, where Rosemary's voice could be heard by everyone if necessary. Tricia sat beside Rosemary, made as comfortable as possible with rolled bedding, for though her clairvoyance was usually in full consciousness, she could sometimes go into trance without warning. One Circle could have embraced them all but Rosemary would not tamper with the arrangements they had practised already when the covens were less closely packed; so each High Priestess cast her own, even though the smallest was barely two metres across. That done, Rosemary cast a Great Circle mentally, whispering to Greg that she was doing so. He nodded and suddenly she remembered – and knew he was remembering – the last time they had sat in their own Circle, one among many inside a Great Circle. A year ago today; the Midsummer Grand Sabbat on Bell Beacon… The wheel had come fully round. Some – perhaps twenty or thirty – of today's gathering had been there too; were they remembering?

Was John Hassell, on his way to Stonehenge, remembering his golden Joy? And if so, was it adding rage to his corrupted intent – or opening for him a chasm of doubt? Such wondering was wasted effort; they would need all they could summon up to feed power to Moira and Dan and the others.

Rosemary closed her eyes and slid her hand into Greg's. Curling her fingers, she could feel the fine hairs on the back of his hand and she was overcome with love for him. He gave a faint rumble in his throat, his habitual acknowledgement of any love-signal when other people were around and squeezed her palm against his own.

'Moira and the others are ready,' Tricia said suddenly. 'I can see the dark woodwork and the open fireplace… They're in their Circle, holding hands.'

With slow deliberation, Rosemary strengthened her union with Greg, and expanded it in her mind to include their whole coven. She could feel the ring of individualities closing and integrating, the group mind awakening, and when she knew it was ready she said quietly, 'Deosil now, deosil. She urged the power to her left clockwise, into Greg and the girl beyond him, and felt the surge from the man on her right. Soon the current was flowing as they had practised, a flywheel of psychic power through their unmoving bodies, deosil, deosil, amplifying itself with its own momentum. She knew, on the fringe of consciousness, that the other covens were picking up her cue and doing the same and she could sense the growing battery of sunwise whirlpools around them; but she diverted no attention to them, that was not her function. Her coven's power must all go to their link at Avebury, young Olive Sennett of the quicksilver mind, while the others concentrated on their own links. The flywheel of power was building, growing into a cone with its tip a shimmering vortex above the centre of their Circle, vividly clear to Rosemary's astral vision. Rosemary said: 'Olive.'

She visualized Olive, sitting as they had arranged on Dan's left; the rather bony young body, the pony-tailed brown hair, the wide mouth and surprised-looking eyes, the habitual crouch with one leg curled under her and the other thrust straight out… She felt an echo, an interlocking, and knew they had her. She said: 'Feed her.'

She was barely aware of the cave around them or of their physical bodies any longer; only of the ring of astral bodies, of linked minds, of the bright vortex of power they had created. On her command, the vortex reached out, not leaning, not losing its momentum, not changing its shape, but reaching out in another dimension to mesh with Olive and invigorate her.

Olive felt it, and exulted, and Rosemary knew. The current was flowing, steadily and strongly.

Then, astonishingly, with the current still unwavering, the cave and the hills and the forest recaptured Rosemary's awareness. The earth was real and alive around her; and not only here but Avebury as well, the mandala village with its sidestepped crossroads, its tree-crowned earthworks, its immemorial ring and avenue of stones. And all the land between, the rock and soil and water of Wales and England; a living organism, living and breathing and feeling, and they all a pan of it.

The vision sank again into the background, leaving the astral power-line to fill Rosemary's world. But she knew.

The Earth had spoken to her and She was on their side.

Miriam, sitting in a corner outside the ring of the Group with her earphones clamped to her head, broke the silence with one word: 'Aconite'.

Moira said 'Thank you', and the Group, unmoving, braced themselves.

The Army helicopter settled outside the ditch, west of the Henge and facing it. As the pilot cut his switches and the noise died, John could see the main group pacifying their frightened horses, three hundred metres away to the north of the perimeter, their reins tied to the road fence.

The main group of the Angels of Lucifer had come ahead on horseback, leaving Karen, John, Stanley Friell, Sonia and the six prisoners with their guard to arrive just before sunrise in the helicopter Harley had provided. John had not seen the necessity for the helicopter but had acquiesced. Only Karen knew its real purpose. It was to stay with her till Harley signalled that the success of Operation Skylight was beyond doubt and then fly her to Harley's side with the dozen or so Angels who really mattered and whom she had already secretly briefed. John and the others would be left to fend for themselves. If they caused any trouble -which Karen, despising them, did not envisage – a word from Harley to the Army would settle the matter.

But that was for later and Karen barely thought of it. Her whole mind was on the coming sunrise and the magical offensive whose impact would be felt across the length and breadth of Britain. Of that, Karen had not even a subliminal flicker of doubt. And when the smoke of battle cleared, she, Karen Morley, would be High Priestess – not merely of a handful of black witches, however effective, but of Britain itself. Power was her destiny. And on the path to power, John was an outworn tool and Harley a new and keen-edged one.

Karen stepped to the ground, the others following.

When his passengers were all clear, Captain Brodie leaned back in his seat and blew out his checks. 'What an incredible bunch,' he said to his co-pilot.

'That boss-woman gives me the creeps,' Lieutenant Denning replied. 'And who are those poor sods with their hands tied? They look bloody hypnotized.'

'Drugged,' Brodie said. 'The other chap's a doctor, the one with the bush-jacket on. And you know what, Den? If my guess is right, I hope those "poor sods" stay drugged.'

Denning grunted. Neither of them had any real doubt what was afoot. Harley's relationship with the Black Mamba was no longer a secret in Beehive and stories of her magical powers (most, but not all, apocryphal) had been circulating for weeks The name 'Angels of Lucifer' had been whispered, though cautiously. Once Beehive had got used to the idea, the general reaction had been 'At least they're on our side'. From that, among people already attuned by the witchhunt to the idea of magic being powerful and dangerous, it was an easy step to accepting as reassuring the knowledge that a group of black witches had been enlisted as Beehive's allies in Operation Skylight.

But like meat-eaters with abattoirs, acceptance was one thing, and having to watch the physical reality was quite another. The two officers gazed after their departing passengers with an uneasy fascination. The two young women naked to the hips, made up and jewelled, the black-skirted and black-haired one vibrant with a terrifying authority, the white-skirted and auburn-haired one surrounded by an aura of spiritual madness almost as terrifying. The unsmiling man in the black robe with the knife at his belt. The bush-shirted doctor, the very ordinariness of his garb unnerving beside the others. The six drugged prisoners, barefoot and clad in plain shifts like the Burghers of Calais. Their watchful guard in jeans and boots, carrying a shotgun. All moving towards the heart of the Henge, around which the twenty or thirty men and women who had been with the horses were now arranging themselves, all stark naked and even at this distance grimly but eagerly purposeful.

‘I don't think I want to watch this,' Brodie said.

'We're not going to be able to help watching it,' Denning told him, and, sickly, the captain knew he was right.

Sonia shed her skirt, laid herself gracefully supine on the Altar Stone and began to sing. The song was wordless, a quiet atavistic keening, an enraptured salute to the Master she longed to embrace, a resonant consecration of the blood still imprisoned in her veins and demanding the freedom of sacrifice.

The sound cut through John like a knife, sharper than the blade in his right hand. It was scarcely to be borne and Karen's evident gratification at it enhanced the torment. Still John did not doubt; he was here for a purpose and the purpose had been grasped to his soul since he had first set out for Savernake Forest. But would the sun never rise so that the unbearable song could be ended?

The Angels were circling wildly, widdershins between the megaliths as before, their cries in eerie counterpoint to Sonia's keening. Karen, arms high and wide, was intoning an invocation, its charged sentences weaving in the air like smoke. John, entranced by his pain, stared alternately at the horizon and at Sonia's pulsing throat on which the pearl necklace rolled gently back and forth like the creamy edge of a wave on a smooth beach.

Time stood still but sound and movement and rhythm did not.

Then, at the end of timelessness, the edge of the sun blistered the horizon.

John struck at the white throat. The song ended in a bubbling hiss, and the blood rippled down from pearl to pearl and spread over the Altar Stone. Sonia's head rocked sideways and the eyes, sightless and blissful, gazed into his own.

Moira felt the shock-wave of evil sweep over them and gasped, tightening her grip on the hands to right and left. Fighting back, she rallied. One of the Group had fainted but his neighbours had joined hands across him; the rule had to be 'no stopping for casualties'.

She knew, with a flash of certainty, what she had to do next.

She ordered: 'Joy Hassell! Project Joy to John!'

The Group heard and understood. Some had known Joy and the others had been given a photograph to study, for she was one of the prepared weapons. Bracing themselves against the black tide still flowing from Stonehenge, they worked together, building up Joy's image.

Sonia's body had been removed and the first of the prisoner-victims, bound and gibbering with terror from Stanley's reviving injection, had been flung down on the Altar Stone. He had slipped on Sonia's copious blood, and the two men responsible for bringing forward the victims were having a struggle to place him for John's knife. Karen's incantation had become specific, launching the tide of power in support of the 6,000 soldiers already fanning out in the skies of Britain, strengthening their resolve, binding any urge to compassion, numbing and paralysing all who would resist them. John, in a rage of destruction now that blood had flowed, roared at his assistants to hold the sacrifice still. He raised the knife.

In that instant the earth moved. The great uprights of the trilithons groaned at the tremor and one of the capstan lintels screeched.

Briefly, the screech merged with John's scream, and Karen failed to distinguish the two. Then she realized that John had dropped the knife and was staring transfixed past her shoulder. Karen spun round and saw what he saw: misty but unmistakable, Joy, his dead golden wife, as she had been at the Grand Sabbat before the lance impaled her but with a face of infinite love and infinite sadness.

John screamed again, then turned and ran.

Joy flickered, was gone – and reappeared, running ahead of him.

Half blind with fury, Karen snatched up the knife and dispatched the sacrifice, ordering the next to be prepared. She knew the source, now; Moira and Dan, her mortal enemies, were nearby and striking back. She flung venom at them and then directed all her power at John, who had reached a horse and leaped into the saddle.

He tried to ride away but could feel her power drawing the horse back, in a tightening spiral round the Henge, inwards and inwards though he tugged at the reins till the horse's mouth bled. Joy was away, beyond the earthworks, still calling to him, but he was helpless. He screamed again in misery and despair. The horse brought him almost to the Altar Stone and then reared in panic at another victim's dying cry. John was thrown from the saddle, hitting one of the uprights. He fell to the ground inside a trilithon archway and the horse bolted away, trampling him as it turned.

John lay there, three-quarters stunned, but conscious enough to know that his back was broken. He would never move again and he did not care. He watched, almost with detachment, Karen at her murderous work. Dimly he heard the exultant cries of the circling Angels of Lucifer and the shrieks of the victims. He did not care. He had willed all this and he was past redemption.

The earth was trembling again, quaking and shuddering under his ruined back. He saw, against the sky, the uprights of the trilithon move, scraping a hand's-breadth outwards along the underside of the lintel. A shower of splintered sarsen fell around him. What did it matter?

But through the haze of pain, golden Joy would not let him rest. She stood by the upright, urging him, pleading with him; it does matter, there is still something you can do, you can help to stem the tide you unleashed… There were others with her. He lay in a circle of people – Moira, Dan, other familiar faces… No, they must leave him, it was not to be borne… His eyes were drawn back, despite his shame, to the figure who pleaded with him, his golden Joy, his accuser, his dead beloved…

Then she was blotted out by Karen, towering over him with the knife, the two helpers behind her. Her face was a mask of hatred and she pointed at him with an arm that was red to the elbow.

'Now him!'

John was not afraid; death did not matter. But he was furious at her for obscuring Joy and he could feel the shadowy ring of Moira, Dan and the others, urging him.

The earth trembled again.

Something broke loose in the dying John and he cried: 'Mother Earth! Great Mother! Destroy her!' The last thing he saw was the uprights falling outwards and the huge lintel crashing down to obliterate Karen and himself.

At Avebury the battle had seemed endless; two more had fainted and even Moira, locked in a nightmare of clashing darkness and light, was beginning to wonder if she could survive much longer. But near the worst of it, she had felt John, or a part of him, reaching out to them; tormented and confused, he was a breach in evil's armour and she had hung on, gasping.

Then, without warning, the dark wave had shattered.

Knowledge of victory swept over them. Moira could feel the tears of relief running down her cheeks, hear the others laughing in triumph, some of them near to hysteria; feel Dan's arms around her; hear Miriam excitedly relaying Bruce's reports.

She bathed in the tide of success for a few moments longer, then pulled herself up. Quietening the Group, assuring herself that the three unconscious ones were all right and re-establishing control, she made them listen.

'We've broken the Angels of Lucifer, with the Goddess's help. They challenged her once too often. But she's still challenged. Right now the soldiers of Beehive are setting out to steal or destroy what the survivors have built. They'll be on their way to Camp Cerridwen at this moment – and to all the other places, some good and some not so good -but even the worst aren't as evil as what Harley wants to impose. He's damned himself by the allies he sought and the methods he used. He mustn't be allowed to succeed -I don't have to tell you that… Our people at home in Wales are still working to feed us power. So let's use it. Make victory complete… And remember, the Earth Mother's with us. You heard what Bruce reported – an earth tremor hit Stonehenge and brought down the stones on Karen and John. But it didn't reach here – or anywhere else, is my guess. And what does that mean?'

She held out her hands and the ring re-formed. When she knew it had re-formed mentally and astrally as well, she gave the word.

'Speak to the soldiers. Speak of peace.'

'It's as though the Earth had punished them,' Captain Brodie said, wonderingly.

The two pilots had watched the whole murderous ritual, held almost hypnotically in their seats, feeling its evil like a corrosive vapour in the air. When the huge sarsen trilithon had splayed outwards and collapsed on the Black Mamba and her High Priest (who seemed to have lost his nerve but been dragged back, in that crazy horseback spiral), Brodie had instinctively reached for his switches to take off, visualizing a shock wave that might damage the helicopter. But he had realized at once that no shock was coming, only the faintest tremble. It did not make sense because the trilithons were barely 200 metres away, and a narrow fissure had appeared in the ground across the heart of the Henge and reached almost halfway to where they sat. The chopper should have been shaken like a child's rattle… The horses, away on their right, had plunged and pulled at their reins and three of them had managed to tear free from the fence and had bolted. But then animals, Brodie told himself, sensed many things that men and helicopters did not.

'They're finished now,' Denning said. 'Look – without her, they don't know what to do.'

It was true. Most of the Angels of Lucifer were wandering or crouching among the megaliths, bewildered and aimless. Three or four were arguing between themselves, as though they had the will to assume leadership but not the agreement. The seven sacrificed bodies lay in a row outside the sarsen horseshoe, bloodstained and forgotten.

'What do we do, Skip?' Denning asked.

'I don't know, Den. I just don't know.'

Denning glanced at his commander and friend, concerned. It wasn't like the Skipper to be indecisive. He must be as numbed by everything as he felt himself… Denning turned his eyes to the Henge again and suddenly froze.

'Skipper – the Dust!'

Out of the fissure the dreadful miasma of the Madness was seeping, unnoticed by the Angels till it was already enveloping them. Brodie and Denning, well conditioned by drill, grabbed their respirators and snapped them over their mouths while the drifting cloud was still 100 metres away.

Then the Angels realized and panicked.

For a few seconds they ran hither and thither, hopelessly trying to dodge the Dust. Then two or three of them began to race towards the helicopter and, like a cattle stampede, the rest followed. Brodie took one look at the wild-eyed naked mob, coming closer every second, and hit his switches. The rotors whirled into life and the chopper rose, sliding briefly over the vision of crazed upturned faces and pleading outstretched arms, then banking as though to shake free of the horror… Up and up into the dawn sky till Brodie felt free and content to hover.

'They were doomed already – they'd breathed it,' Denning said.

'More than that, Den. They didn't deserve rescuing.'

'Do any of us? If Operation Skylight's allied to that sort of thing?' It was almost a seditious question and he wondered how Brodie would take it; for the captain, much as he liked and respected him, was a conventional soldier with a very simple sense of duty.

'That depends,' Brodie said, to Denning's astonishment, 'on what we do now.'

'Our orders say "In the event of complete loss of contact with Karen Morley and her group, you will report the fact, and your position, to Base, and await instructions",' Denning pointed out.

Brodie did not answer for a while but rotated the chopper slowly so that the horizon passed before their eyes in a stately panorama. Then he smiled and said, 'Damn the orders. We will spend a little time sweeping the area with our detector scoop open, to see if what I suspect is true -that the only Dust outbreak was at Stonehenge. Then we'll put her down in a nice field somewhere and think. Not awaiting instructions, Den – awaiting enlightenment… Are you with me?'

The lieutenant leaned back in his seat, feeling a contentment he had not yet even begun to analyse. 'I'm with you, Skip. I'm with you all the way.'

'B' Company was being transported by the RAF and the major resented the fact. Once, his company had had its own choppers, flown by pilots under his personal command; but all such privileged units had been stripped of their aircraft on Beehive Amber, every machine being transferred to a flexible common pool. The major knew it had been necessary; Operation Skylight, for example, could only have been mounted on a shuttle basis. But at least he might have had the luck to be shuttled by Army machines. The RAF had an infuriatingly irreverent attitude to 'Pongos'.

He felt unreasonably relieved when the RAF had deposited 'B' Company on the outskirts of the little Suffolk town of Needham Market, his alloted HQ, and departed. Not even a decent salute from that puppy of a flight-lieutenant. Oh well – forget them. 'B' Company had work to do.

The major wished he could pin down the vague feeling of unease that possessed him. He didn't dislike the RAF that much. And, anyway, they had gone.

He watched his three platoons deploy for the advance into the town – left front, right front and one in reserve in case of trouble. Of course there would be none.

Even as he formulated the reassuring thought, the firing started. Shotguns by the sound of it, from that house ahead of No 5 Platoon. But why weren't No 5 replying? The target was clear – he had seen the muzzle-smoke himself…

He rapped a fire order to the mortar section corporal beside him. A couple of mortar bombs through that slate roof and the rats would come running.

No 5 Platoon still hadn't replied to the single opening volley. What the hell were they up to? They were out of shotgun range anyway – they had the bastards on toast!

He realized the mortar hadn't fired yet, either, and he rapped over his shoulder: 'You heard me, Corporal! Get cracking?'

'Why?' the corporal asked, calmly.

The major could not believe his ears. He spun round to face the corporal, who stood by the mortar with his thumbs stuck in his belt.

'Why, man? Because I gave you an order! By Christ, I'll have your stripes!'

'There are people in that house, sir.'

'Of course there are bloody people! That's why I want it demolished. They're firing at us!' And what the hell was he doing, arguing with an NCO?

'Only warning shots, I think, sir. Our lads are still out of range. And the firing's stopped.'

'It'll bloody soon start again when they're in range!'

'I don't think so, sir. Look.' The corporal pointed past him towards No 5 Platoon.

The bewildering unreality of the scene left the major, for once in his life, without even an expletive. The men of No 5 Platoon were walking relaxedly towards the house. Some had their hands shoulder-high; one or two waved white handkerchiefs; some even had their hands in their pockets. And not one of them carried a weapon. The major saw, incredulously, the rifles and LMGs lying abandoned on the grass where the platoon had first deployed… And coming to meet No 5 Platoon, three civilians were emerging from the house, their shotguns broken open and cradled casually in the crooks of their arms.

'If I were you, sir,' the corporal said kindly, 'I'd take a walk into the town – more of a village really, isn't it? -and start making friends. There's bound to be a committee or something. See how we can fit in with them, like. After all, it's not many weeks to harvest. They could probably do with our help.'

He watched as the major stumbled away towards the houses without so much as opening his mouth. Not a bad old stick, as company commanders go, the corporal thought. Bark worse than his bite. Just a bit slow on the uptake, sometimes.

At Camp Cerridwen some of the Army assault group lay on the grass enjoying the sky – after all, they hadn't seen much of it recently – while" others strolled around the cabins inquisitively. Those with an eye for craftsmanship admired the way obvious amateurs had solved the problems of building. The Signals sergeant, who had been an electrician before he enlisted, muttered in frustration because the water-powered generating system had had its vital parts removed; it was obviously a neat job and he'd have liked to see it in action.

The assault group commander, a young captain with a face like a Mafioso, sat on the river bank arguing with his two platoon commanders and the CSM.

'I'd like it, too, for Christ's sake. But there's nearly 100 of us – and if we can get the wives out of Beehive (and take that grin off your face, Sar'-Major, you randy sod) we'd be more like 150. This place just couldn't absorb us. By the look of it, it's about the optimum size already – they wouldn't thank us for turning it into a ruddy town.'

'Couldn't we build another, downstream a bit?' one of the lieutenants suggested. He was, after all, a Welshman.

'Not enough hectares to support us,' the CSM said. 'You could see as we came up – they've got every meadow and clearing in use, right down to the village. No, it's a pity, but I reckon the OC's right.'

"What do we do, then?'

'Look around for somewhere with elbow-room, is my idea,' the captain said. 'Settle in and as soon as things are quiet, send the choppers for the wives.'

'I hope they'll be able to refuel.'

'Well, if they can't, the girls'll have to walk, won't they? Good for their figures. We're not leaving them in that stinking warren, that's for sure. Besides, if we didn't get 'em to the lads quick, we'd have a mutiny on our hands. And you know how seriously I view mutiny.'

Everyone smiled politely at the OC's little joke.

'I wish we could hang around for a day or two and meet the dreaded witches,' he went on. 'They've done a grand job here and it'd have been interesting to talk to them. But they'll probably stay under cover till we're well away. You can't blame them. After all, they may not know what's been happening.'

'Bet they do, sir,' the CSM said. 'They're bloody telepathic. My aunt was one. Unnerving – we couldn't keep a thing from her.'

'I think I'll stick to radio,' the captain said. 'You can always switch that off… Right, Sar'-Major, get 'em fell in. Take-off in twenty minutes. We'll put down at the village and ask if there's a site-around here where a mob of old sweats can plant spuds and things… And tell this undisciplined shower that if they leave so much as a fag-end littering this nice clean camp, I'll have 'em on jankers for fourteeen days.'

The Royal Navy had, naturally, suffered worst from the great earthquake of the year before, with its attendant tidal waves. Of its total tonnage, 64.3 per cent had been lost at sea, either sunk or flung against various coasts; 27.1 per cent had been damaged beyond repair in port; and the remainder, with the proud exception of HMS Ringo, had also been in port but less damaged so that repair might be possible when and if the facilities became available. No estimate of how many men of the lost ships' companies had survived was possible, because those fortunate enough to be ashore or to reach land had been cut off from all channels of command, and had had no choice if they wanted to survive but to regard themselves as discharged and try to join local communities.

So all that had been left of the Senior Service, as a functioning organization, was the Admiralty command structure in Beehive, unhappily lent piecemeal to the Army and RAF to keep them employed – and HMS Ringo, alive and well and living at Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.

HMS Ringo (Commander J. B. MacLeod, RN) owed her escape from the universal disaster to her function. A nuclear submarine designed for maximum-depth work, she had been on a survey mission 6000-plus metres down in the Cape Verde Basin at the time. Her mother ship on surface, Ringo's only contact with the outside world, had received the Admiralty's urgent warnings, and realizing that Ringo had not a hope in hell of surfacing and reaching port in the hours available, had wisely ordered MacLeod to stay where he was for as long as he could. The mother ship had then raced her guts out to reach Dakar, the nearest port, where she had in due course been smashed to scrap-iron by the tidal wave – though most of her ship's company got away and were absorbed, with seamanlike adaptability, into the life-style of various villages in the Senegalese hinterland, where the earthquake had wreaked much havoc and extra hands were welcome. Ringo had stayed below, riding out currents and buffetings unprecedented at such a depth, for another twenty-three days, till MacLeod calculated that surface conditions should be manageable.

The Admiralty had been incredulously joyful to learn, by atmospheric-laden radio, that they actually had a seagoing ship under their command, in full working order. They had ordered MacLeod to Stornoway, which was known to be usable and relatively clear of wreckage and MacLeod, a Hebridean himself, had been glad to comply. There, he was to await further orders, which were unlikely to be forthcoming until Operation Skylight.

There had been much to keep MacLeod and his men busy, for the Isle of Lewis had been hit by earthquake, tidal wave, and one – fortunately localized – Dust outbreak. Ringo's greatest gift to the island's survivors was her nuclear engines which could run virtually for ever. Within three weeks they had rigged a power supply to Stornoway itself and in the following months had steadily extended it to neighbouring homesteads. There had been nine marriages, during the winter and spring, between members of the ship's company and island girls, for the tidal wave, catching all too many Lewis men at sea or vainly trying to secure their precious boats at the last moment, had left many widows. MacLeod himself had every reason to believe that he was a widower, and only the impossibility of confirming the fact had kept him back from regularizing his very satisfactory relationship with the Provost's eldest daughter.

The warning order for Operation Skylight had seemed to come from an unreal world, but it was an order, and MacLeod and his officers had made the necessary preparations.

When the operational order came, MacLeod and half a dozen ratings were a kilometre outside Stornoway, puzzling over the problems of a blown-down power line that had to cross some awkward terrain, and for which new poles, which were in short supply, would somehow have to be improvised. The Yeoman of Signals came hurrying up the hill on a bicycle and handed the signal from to MacLeod.

'From C-in-C Home Fleet, sir.'

Commander MacLeod found himself strangely reluctant to look at the signal. He was aware, too, of the sudden anxious silence among the men at his side. With an effort, he read the signal – for some reason, aloud, which was not his habit.

'C-IN-C HOME FLEET TO HMS RINGO. PROCEED FORTHWITH TO STRANRAER WIGTOWNSHIRE AND PLACE YOURSELF UNDER COMMAND OF ARMY OFFICER I/C STRANRAER AREA TO ASSIST IN CONTROL OF CIVILIAN POPULATION.'

MacLeod looked around the faces of his men. He looked at the fallen line. He looked down the hill at the little harbour town. Then he turned back to the Yeoman of Signals who stood with signal pad and ballpoint ready.

Commander MacLeod said, loudly and firmly: 'Make:

"HMS RINGO TO C-IN-C HOME FLEET. NO THANK YOU. WE LIKE IT HERE." '

At Windsor Castle it took a little while longer than elsewhere for the position to become clear. For an hour or two, the wary defenders could hardly believe that the soldiers who strolled in the garden at the foot of the Round Tower were not setting some devious trap to tempt them out. When this misunderstanding was finally cleared up, the lingering military instincts of the assault group were a little disappointed that the King would not allow them to mount a ceremonial Royal Guard until after lunch. In the event, the mounting of the Guard was put off until the following morning, for the King decreed major inroads into the hitherto carefully rationed Castle wine cellar and the lunch – with soldiers, witches and the Royal Family amicably intermingled – became celebratory and somewhat prolonged.

General Mullard's professional nose told him that something was going wrong long before the truth penetrated Harley's megalomaniac euphoria. At first it was only a vague feeling; the sense of gathering momentum which always marked a well-conceived operation was taking longer to reach him than it should have done. The big Ops Room map was full of symbols, indicating units already airborne and reporting their positions en route. The progress chart on the opposite wall to Mullard's high desk had also begun to fill up on schedule; it listed the designated HQs and special objectives by name, and had blank columns for 'Take-Off', 'Landing', 'Occupation Achieved', with a wider one for 'Remarks'. Similar but smaller charts flanked it, for reports from regional Hives of the progress of their own operations. On all of these, actual departure times for the first waves had been entered in the 'Take-Off' column with commendable punctuality. The 'Landing' column had also begun to fill but too many of the times were anything from five to twenty minutes later than the ETAs laid down. If the weather had been bad, Mullard could have understood this, because the ETAs had been calculated on the basis of normal June flying conditions. But the day was fine, clear and almost windless everywhere. Some unknown factor was slowing down the flights by a roughly uniform percentage and the puzzle nagged at Mullard's mind.

As the shuttle proceeded, the delay was becoming cumulative. Second-wave entries were beginning to appear in the 'Take-Off' column and they were all behind schedule -some of them even more so than could be accounted for by the mysteriously longer flying times. Delays were taking place on the ground too, at the helicopter bases where all should have been going like clockwork. The general detailed a GSO1 to chase up the bases and the other Hives for explanations. The replies were all blandly reassuring; the shuttle was going smoothly, any delays were due to the late return of the first shuttles, there were occasional technical or refuelling problems but nothing more than had been allowed for in planning. General Mullard did not like it. Even the tone of the reports lacked the note of slightly nervous self-justification normally to be expected when the top brass asked questions. They were too bland and it was the general who felt nervous.

Beside him, Harley clucked with delight every time a new entry was made in the 'Take-Off' or 'Landing' columns. After a while Mullard felt in duty bound to remark 'The reported times are lagging behind schedule, you know'.

Harley brushed it aside. *What's a few minutes here or there? This is a military operation, General, not Trooping the Colour. Your boys are doing splendidly.'

Maybe, Mullard thought, with a sudden angry flash of dislike for the man beside him. But all he said was: 'There should be more in the "Occupation Achieved" column by now.'

'There are three – no, four. The others are probably too busy to report.'

'A force commander,' Mullard snapped, 'whether he's a lance-corporal or a bloody general, is never too busy to report.'

Harley smiled loftily. 'You're an old Blimp, Mullard.'

Mullard bit back a retort and instead snatched a phone. 'Get me Needham Market,' he barked, having picked one of the four 'Occupation Achieved' names at random. It took about seven minutes for him to be put through, announce himself and demand to speak to the force commander, and another two for a mere lieutenant to be brought to the radio.

'Sorry, sir, the OC's busy. The committee chairman's showing him around the place.' The boy's voice was amiably casual.

'Are you in charge in his absence, Lieutenant?'

'I suppose so, yes.'

'You suppose so.' The general's voice was pure ice. 'Then give me your own progress report.'

'Oh, we're settling in nicely, General. Nice place, nice people.'

Some instinct warned General Mullard not to react as he would normally have done to this incredible conversation, but to handle it like a nurse with a slightly delirious patient. 'Any casualties?' he asked calmly. 'On either side?'

'Oh, no. Of course not.'

'So I take it you have established control without trouble.'

'The question doesn't arise. I don't think you quite realize how things are, General. The war is over.'

This boy is mad, the general told himself. He's got to be. 'Is there any other officer with you at HQ at the moment, lieutenant?'

'Yes, sir. Lieutenant Spillman.'

'Put him on.'

After a pause, another voice. 'Spillman here.' 'Lieutenant, this is General Mullard. Did you hear the other end of this conversation?' ‘Ye-es.’

'Then you will realize that your brother officer's mind has become unhinged, for whatever reason. You will place him under arrest and have your commanding officer report to me personally by radio the moment he returns.'

Spillman's laugh was relaxed, genuinely amused. 'Oh, really, General Mullard. Get stuffed.'

The radio went dead.

Mullard stared at the telephone in his hand. In that moment, with awful certainty, he knew that he was not dealing with one mad officer or even two or even with a mutinous unit. He knew, and he could not tell how he knew, that Operation Skylight faced total, irretrievable, inexplicable collapse.

Like an automaton, he had himself connected by radio with Ashford in Kent, Ripley in Surrey and Lechlade in Gloucestershire, the three other names that had so far appeared in the 'Occupation Achieved' column. He deliberately watched his words because Harley was within hearing and he did not want to be involved with him for the moment. At Ashford he got a sergeant. At Ripley, he actually got the commanding officer. At Lechlade, a platoon commander's batman. To each, he listened carefully.

When he had finished, he put down the telephone and turned to Harley.

'Sir Reginald,' he said, 'your dream is over. Operation Skylight no longer exists.'

Harley stared at him. 'What are you talking about? Have you gone mad?''That's a question I'll have to go into with myself, later. But I am telling you. All four of those units have torn up their orders and laid down their arms. They have not merely fraternized with the local civilians – they are busy merging with them. They are not rebelling against Beehive. They have merely brushed Beehive aside as irrelevant. And you can be absolutely certain that all the other units and assault groups will be doing exactly the same. You're finished, Harley.'

Harley had jumped to his feet. 'Finished?' he hissed. 'You don't know what you're saying!… Get me the man at Stonehenge!'

Mullard shrugged and picked up the telephone. 'Get Captain Brodie, in the helicopter standing by at Stonehenge.'

While he was waiting, a stunned-looking Admiralty officer appeared at his elbow with a message in his hand. Mullard took it from him, read it, and laughed, passing it to Harley.

'Far-called, our navies melt away;

On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre…'

he quoted softly, and then into the phone, 'Yes?… Thank you.' He laid down the receiver. 'There is no reply from Stonchcnge.'

Harley screamed 'Colonel! Take over command! General Mullard has been taken ill!'

The GSO1 came running and looked at Mullard in bewilderment. The general stood aside, gesturing towards the command chair. 'You heard the man, colonel. Take over. For what it's worth.'

General Mullard walked out of the Operations Room without looking back. He went to his quarters and changed into civilian clothes. While he was doing it his wife came in. She looked at him, at first with astonishment but then with dawning understanding, though he had said nothing, only smiled at her.

'Where are we going?' she asked.

'Wherever the sun shines, Debbie.'

Deborah Mullard nodded and started packing two rucksacks. They hadn't used them since their last rambling holiday, three years ago. Her husband had often teased her for the nostalgia which had made her bring them to Beehive.

'You're taking it very calmly,' he said.

'Service wives are always ready to move, darling!… There's only one thing worries me, a little. Your face is well known. Might someone up there feel like taking it out on you?'

'If they do, my love, I've asked for it. But do you know what? Up there, I don't think anyone will be bothered.'

The WRAC corporal let the long rake with which she had been pushing symbols about fall disregarded on to the huge map. The map had become meaningless, anyway, and it was much more interesting to watch the Big Chief going mad, bellowing that single word over and over and over again.

'How about getting out of this mess?' the young flight-lieutenant beside her asked. 'We might as well, now. Coming with me?'

Dear Ned, of course she was going with him. If he didn't know that yet, he never would… They elbowed their way out of the disorganized crowd into the corridor, Harley's monotonous cry fading gradually behind them as they went.

'What does Gotterdammerung mean, anyway?' Ned asked her, curiously. 'I never was a Wagner buff.'

In the lounge of the Red Lion at Avebury, Lenny's wife was serving her standard panacea, hot soup. The three who had fainted were still a little pale but fit. Young Jane, who 'reckoned she was a witch', was skipping around on Cloud Nine. She had begged to be allowed to join Camp Cerridwen and after a talk with Moira and Dan, Lenny and his wife had agreed.

Four of the guards had gone to fetch the vehicles; the car would pick up Bruce and his guard from near Stonehenge, keeping an eye open for drifting Dust according to Bruce's radioed warning, though on this windless day the outbreak seemed barely to have moved beyond the Henge itself. The leaderless Angels of Lucifer had disappeared at once, Bruce had reported, heading towards Savernake Forest with every symptom of panic.

The PAG and Lenny's group sat around the lounge, drinking their soup and talking animatedly until the vehicles arrived.

Dan stood up. 'Well, Lenny – all of you – thanks a lot for your hospitality. I'm sorry we had to descend on you like that and I'm sorry about the front door. We'll look after Jane, don't worry.'

'Don't you apologize for nothing,' Lenny told him. 'I ain't figured it all out yet, and maybe I never will, properly. But I know a battle when I smell one – and I reckon something happened under our roof we can be proud of.'

'Can you smell victory, too, Lenny?'

Lenny smiled. 'Like a garden full of flowers.'

'Me too,' Dan said. 'Come along, boys and girls. Time to go home.'