The spaceship, if that's what it was, had seemed to be landing to the west of the city while the road Randall was following led north, so as soon as he came to a side road he set off down it, humming a tune to himself.

He felt good, even though he was still fuggy with fatigue and shivering with the cold. It would soon warm up, he knew, and it gave every sign of being a bright, sunny winter's day. On top of that, his enemies were dead and he was on his way to make contact with an army of machine servants that would serve his every whim. The priests thought he was still in Elmton. They would be turning the whole city upside down looking for him but they wouldn't find him.

Maisey was safe. He was pretty sure that the fireballs he'd seen in the sky the night before had been the city killer satellite being destroyed, since it was the most direct threat to his life. If his infected machines had had access to a small cache of nuclear charges, enough to take out one enemy asset, the city killer satellite was the most obvious target. That meant that VIX had no way to destroy the city until he could gather an army of orcs and that would take days, by which time the war would be over, one way or the other. It was still possible that the priests would take Maisey hostage when they learned the identity he'd been living under and learned that the girl was important to him, but you didn't harm hostages and he could negotiate her release when the two sides met to discuss the terms of the ceasefire.

He was hungry. He should have asked the heavies for something to eat. Never mind. Soon he would be able to feast like a King every day. An image popped into his head of himself sitting at a medieval banqueting table with cooked birds, suckling pigs and a haunch of venison arrayed before him while acrobats and jugglers performed in the centre of the room. He would take a single bite from a chicken drumstick, then throw it over his shoulder for the dogs to fight over. He smiled to himself, but then his stomach rumbled at him. Soon, my friend, he thought, patting his belly reassuringly. You must be patient for now, but very soon you will never be empty again, I promise.

There was a robin singing somewhere. He tried to ignore it and listen for the sound of machinery. He imagined a hatch opening in the side of the landed spaceship and vehicles trundling out armed with whatever the infected machines could find to serve as weapons. There was something, he thought. There very faintest industrial hum, difficult to make out over the sound of rustling tree branches and rising and falling as the wind changed direction. It seemed to be coming from... That way. There was a ditch running along the side of the road. He chambered down, stepped carefully across the stagnant water sitting at the bottom, and climbed up the other side, pulling himself up by the beech saplings growing up the side of the bank. Then he set off across the field of cabbages, his expensive shoes soon becoming plastered with mud.

As he walked the sound seemed to grow louder and soon there was no doubt. There was machinery ahead of him, the first time he'd heard that sound since he'd gone into the hibernaculum, a lifetime ago. There was a line of trees ahead of him, growing alongside another road. The sound was coming from the other side. He could see something through the trees, the sun reflecting brightly from something metallic. He could also see movement. Randall picked up his pace, almost shivering with excitement. This was it! He was almost home...

He had almost reached the trees when he saw that there was a small group of human figures standing amongst them. They had their backs to him, watching whatever was happening in the next field, and at first Randall took them to be farmers or travellers who'd witnessed the landing and been captivated enough by the sight to overcome their natural superstitious fear of the unknown. It wasn't until he was almost among them that one of the men, who'd been leaning against a tree as if tired or injured, roused himself and took a couple of steps away from it, moving awkwardly as if in pain. Randall froze, recognising the outline of his body, the shine of his slicked back hair. At the same time the man turned, alerted by some small noise Randall had made. Their eyes met...

Loach grinned. A grin of pure evil. A grin of malice and hatred that promised an eternity of torment for the unfortunate soul on the receiving end of it. Randall felt his whole body turn to ice while at the same time his legs turned to water, shaking as they struggled to support him. He staggered to the side, almost fell into the muddy field. He felt his face go white, felt his eyes widen and his jaw drop. He could only stand there, as if hypnotised, as the mob boss took a lazy, sadistic step towards him...

Then Loach staggered, ruining the moment as the damage his body had taken during his battle with the orc Chieftain caught up with him. Two burly men ran out to support him. Randall could have run then, could have tried to escape, but it was as if the mob boss had cast a spell over him, paralysing his limbs and washing away all rational thought with a tidal wave of terror. How was this possible? Loach was dead! He had to be! How could even Loach survive a battle with a machine that was virtually a tank on two legs. He had to be dreaming. Fatigue had caught up with him. He'd fallen asleep on his feet and was having a nightmare...

"George Randall," said Loach, grinning again. It was a grin that almost made Randall lose control of his bladder and wet himself. "I was prepared to search the whole country for you. The whole world if necessary, and here you are, right out of the blue, falling right into my lap. It's almost enough to make me believe in Miss Harper's God."

As if summoned my the mention of her name, Jane stepped out of the trees to join the three men, followed by Emily. The former eco-terrorist eyed Randall with interest. "You left us to die," she said conversationally. "Everyone else did die. All those soldiers and labourers, over a hundred of them. Butchered like pigs..."

"As if you care for the lives of humans," said Jane absently, staring at Randall.

Emily nodded thoughtfully. "Fair point," she conceded.

"Gentlemen," said Loach to his two henchmen. "Would you bring our friend a little closer, please?"

Brick and Sandbag marched towards Randall, and the sight of the two men advancing towards him like two mountains of flesh broke Randall's paralysis. He turned and tried to run, but the two henchmen were surprisingly fast for their size and they caught him easily, their huge, meaty hands closing around his arms like manacles of steel. Then they turned him around and marched him back to Loach as helplessly as a mouse in the jaws of a wolf. They threw him at Loach's feet and he fell into the mud with a soggy squelch.

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Randall looked up at the mob boss glaring down at him. Now that he was closer he could see the dark circles under the man's eyes and the tremble in his limbs. The man was clearly in pain, although he had no obvious injuries that Randall could see. "You look awful, Dinsdale," he said, summoning all his remaining willpower to give no outward sign of the terror he was feeling. "Like a well tenderised steak."

"You boasted once that you had fought and killed an orc and that I hadn't," replied Loach. "Well, I have now killed an orc Chieftain. What do you say to that?"

"I wouldn't have believed it possible," admitted Randall. "How did you do it?"

"Can we stop pretending that this is some friendly reunion of old friends?" said Emily, striding forward to give Randall a heavy kick in the side. "This bastard left us to die. He betrayed us." She glared down at the former businessman. "Didn't you?"

"Yes, I did," Randall admitted. His one chance of survival now, he decided, was to admit everything and appeal to their self interest. He'd done it before, many times in his career as one of the world's most powerful businessmen, but never with anyone who hated him as much as these people.

"I decided that I didn't need you any more," Randall said, "and that things would be simpler if you were out of the way. You'd both have done the same thing. Don't bother to deny it."

"I don't deny it," replied Loach. "But it wasn't me who did it to you. It was you who did it to me. In my profession, reputation is everything. You have to inspire fear in subordinates and enemies alike. If you allow people to cross you and you don't kill them, you lose that fear, you lose the respect. That's why I have to kill you. I know you understand."

"I do," replied Randall. "However, I'm hoping that you might be persuaded to make an exception on this occasion. Those machines over there..." He gestured towards the field on the other side of the trees from which the sounds of mechanical activity were still coming. "...Will answer to me. They will not follow you. Not unless you're with me. Without me, they will ignore you at best, attack you at worst, but if you're with me you will be Generals in my army and one day you will be Kings." He nodded to Emily. "And Queens."

"Until you betray us again," said Loach.

"We can go face them together. You can have your two friends..." He gestured back to Brick and Sandbag. "...standing right beside me, ready to stick a knife in my back the moment I do something they don't like. If I betray you, if you even think I'm betraying you, you kill me. You can listen while I tell them to obey all of us equally, with none of us able to withdraw authority from any of the others. We will command the machines together."

"You will tell them to obey us, not you," said Loach.

"No," replied Randall. "I won't."

"You will or we'll kill you."

"Kill me then," said Randall firmly. "You're going to kill me anyway, in which case it will give me some satisfaction to know that you will lose any hope of being able to control those machines. You will have no choice but to make the best life for yourself you can in this awful, primitive world while whichever faction of machines wins the war will go back to their civilisation and leave mankind grubbing in the dirt down here on Earth."

"We'll let you live if you hand control of the machines over to us," said Loach.

"To you, you mean. You have no intention of sharing power with the girls, have you? You'll abandoned them just as I tried to."

"What do you care? You'll be alive. You can go live happily ever after with Dolly and Maisey. You can have a good life. A happy life, and all you have to do is..."

"No," replied Randall flatly. His heart was hammering in his chest and fear was making him feel almost physically sick but he made himself meet Loach's eye as he rose to his feet to stand before him. The man respected courage and confidence, he knew. If he showed those qualities, perhaps he could impress the mob boss enough to form a new relationship with him. A relationship of two men who hated each other but who had much to gain from working together if they could put aside their differences.

"You want to die?" said Loach, raising an eyebrow at him.

"I'm prepared to die. I can't live in this world. I can't live without my modern comforts, all the benefits of twenty first century life. I'm a modern man and I can only survive in a modern world. Those machines can give me that. I won't let you take thar away from me."

"If you really loved Dolly, you'd be happy to be with her in any world," pointed out the mob boss.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm only fooling myself into thinking I love her. What kind of love is it if I love modern comforts more? Whatever the case, the fact is that I would rather die than give up control over the machines. I'm willing to share control over them, but I won't give up my share of control. I'll die first."

"Is your love for them small enough to watch while I torture Dolly and Maisey to death? I will, you know. I've done worse in my time. I will search for them and find them, and then I'll make you watch as I peel the pretty skin from their bones. You can listen to their screams until you give me what I want."

"You've got to find them first, and that'll take time. We've got this one opportunity to take control of those machines. Soon, they're going to be trundling off to Elmton to attack the priests. Then, an army of orcs will arrive to tear them to pieces. Maybe the infected machines will be able to send more reinforcements from space. Maybe they won't. Maybe this is it, the infected machines' one and only assault against the armies of VIX. We have no idea how many machines we managed to infect with yama666. Maybe very few. Just enough to cause VIX a temporary nuisance. Do you want to squander this opportunity searching for a couple of women in a city of a hundred thousand or will you settle for what you can have here and now?" He stepped closer and looked Loach squarely in the eye. "What's it be? A quarter of something or all of nothing?"

Loach stared back into Randall's eyes and a battle of wills took place between the two men, each of them waiting to see who would blink first. It wasn't just pragmatism that would determine the mob boss's decision, Randall knew. Loach hated him. Really, truly hated him. Randall could only imagine how much pleasure the other man would get from slashing his stomach with a knife and watching his entrails spill out. Was the hatred strong enough that Loach would abandon a once in a lifetime opportunity in order to satisfy it? Or maybe Loach would decide that he simply couldn't trust Randall, feared that Randall would find another way to betray him and the women. If he suffered another betrayal, his two henchmen might decide that he was a liability, not worthy to be leader of their organisation. They might decide to kill him while he was physically unable to defend himself.

The worst feeling of helplessness Randall had ever known came over him as he waited for these calculations to work themselves out in Loach's head. Loach frowned across at him and Randall stared back, his stomach tingling as if he could already feel the blade slicing through it. Would it hurt? he wondered. Even if it did, he suspected that the knowledge of the damage his body had taken would be worse than the pain. A thousand times worse.

He looked into the other man's eyes, therefore, like a rabbit staring at the headlights of an oncoming car, as he waited for him to reach a decision.