He jerked his thumb to his right. Albert craned his neck past the slope of the steps to see, except that Albert couldn’t see anything. Where the Square should have been, there were only people—hundreds and hundreds of people spread across the valley floor, like a gigantic living, pulsating floor. As he noticed it, he heard it too, the distinct, discordant cacophony of the melding of scores and scores of individual voices into a single sonorous entity. And, as he watched, more people came, as if in answer to the call, more and more, from every direction, heading towards the crowd, joining it, swelling it like an ocean gorging itself on tributaries.

Slowly, wearily, Albert walked back until he stood before the tent once more, where he stretched, feeling gingerly at his aching back. Conflicting opinions struck at each other in his mind. Prostrating himself at a time like this seemed like a cowardly thing to do, but he was drained from all the excitement, and something told him there was a lot more ahead. His head was still hurting, a lot more than it had a few hours ago. To lie down now might not be good for the ego, but it would certainly make things easier for his body if he gave it an hour’s rest. And he wouldn’t mind changing out of these clothes. They smelled of sweat and sick.

He walked in, through the partition and froze, his face aghast at the sight that greeted him.

Five feet ahead of him, in the exact centre of the tent, proudly stood the misshapen, monstrous, grotesque half-beast, half-unnameable, all bust, all snarling, Spirit of Soldiery.

27

Two hours later Albert emerged from his tent, still feeling tired. He hadn’t got much rest, and the sight of Ma D’Amato’s masterpiece staring him in the face every time he’d opened his eyes hadn’t helped. Neither had the little hard object that stabbed him in the thigh whenever he’d rolled on to his side. When he’d finally fished around to figure out what it was, he’d found the little bit of coal that Theo had given him, back at his apartment. Her ‘lucky stone’ she’d called it. Somehow, it had survived everything, all his adventures, intact. Maybe it actually was lucky. Which didn’t mean that he was—certainly not at getting any sleep. Finally, having given up on the ambitions of rest, he got up and prepared for the mission. Before he left the tent, he took Theo’s lucky stone out of his discarded trousers, slipping it into his pocket. Something told him they’d need all the luck they could get.