style="font-size:15px;"> That drew a big laugh from the crowd; then all other words were lost in the rising din.
Flea freed himself from the crush and pushed on. Ahead, he saw Red climbing a tree near the bridge. Flea shinned up after him until he was far above head height and could see all the way across the Black River Valley.
An old stone bridge crossed the steep valley in a single span. Both the bridge and the road on either side were blocked solid. Gawkers ambling out of the City to see the action met out-of-towners streaming into the City for the Feast. All the passing places on the bridge were occupied by black-robed Wild People selling souvenirs to the tourists. Imperial soldiers had set up a roadblock to try and take matters in hand, but were just making things worse. To complete the chaos, a donkey pulling a cart into the City had met a camel carrying a mountainous bundle of hay out of it. Neither was prepared to pass the other – or reverse.
From high in his tree, Flea surveyed the scene cheerfully. His plan had worked. By a mixture of luck and guile he had persuaded the Temple Boys to do what he wanted. If the day went well, surely he’d be properly accepted by them. He felt happy.
‘Bloody tourists,’ he said to Red. ‘Don’t see how anyone’s going to get through this.’
Red ignored him.
‘You know Big’s plan to rob the magician? I thought –’
Red said, ‘Leave it.’ He snapped off a long, thin twig and started poking a man’s turban with it. The man turned on his neighbour; angry words were exchanged. Red gave a stiff lopsided grin, wiped a tear away from the corner of his ruined eye and handed the stick to Flea to have a go.
Flea tried to get the conversation going again. ‘So, how long do you give this magician before the Temple Police throw him out of town? A day?’ He dropped the twig on the angry man’s head.
Red snorted. ‘Half a day if he’s lucky, but it won’t be down to the Temple Police. This is the Feast. The City’s going mad. If he’s a troublemaker the Imps won’t even let him cross the bridge. You watch.’
They stopped for a moment to watch the Imps, Roman Imperial soldiers, failing to organise the chaos on the bridge.
‘There seems to be a lot of people to meet him.’
‘Maybe he’s that good,’ Red answered.
Flea shook his head. ‘If he’s that good, why haven’t we heard of him before? I heard someone asking if he was the Chosen One. What was all that about?’
‘Shut up, insect,’ snapped Red. ‘Can’t you stop talking? Can’t you stop . . . thinking?’
Flea did shut up, but quickly began to feel bored. The sun was weak, but the sky was bright white and made his eyes water. He narrowed them to slits and scanned the landscape on the other side of the bridge, the rocky slopes of the Black River Valley and then the pale scar of the road winding down from a notch in the soft shoulders of Olive Tree Hill.
He couldn’t stop thinking of what he’d just heard in the crowd. Is he the Chosen One? What if this magician really was someone special? Suppose he was a great king in disguise, a cross between King David the Giant-Killer and King Solomon the Magician? That really would be something, and in years to come he’d be able to say, Ah, yes, I remember when the Chosen One first came to the City. Of course, no one had any idea who he really was and I had a bit of a job persuading my friends to come and see him, but I had a feeling, you see. And you know what we were planning to do? Rob him.
As Flea drifted off on his own train of thought, the clouds broke up and the sun pierced through. Suddenly, there were clear blue skies to the east, but for a single small cloud. If he squinted and forgot the cloud looked like a dog, he could almost imagine it as a chariot drawn by a winged horse, and he could almost definitely see the magician in the back with a golden bow and a quiver of burning arrows.
And now the winged horse was pulling back its lips to show long red teeth, jagged as saws. The feathers on its wings were as sharp as swords – one sweep of them and Roman heads would tumble. But the archers on the battlements had seen the threat. Now they were pulling their bows back into quivering arcs.
‘Watch out!’ Flea cried. And as the arrows leapt upwards in a black swarm the magician raised his right arm. Fire shot from an outstretched finger and he drew it across the blue dome of the sky to create a blazing barrier so the archers’ arrows flamed and fell in charred twists. Now he started shooting his own arrows. They smashed into the battlements, turning soldiers into flaming, screaming, dancing monsters before they tumbled to their deaths.
The magician reined in his snorting steed and circled Flea’s tree in his chariot, wreathed in smoke, shining with strength, and at the sight of him, the crowd fell to the ground, wailing and moaning in terror.
Only Flea – Flea the Brave, Flea the Magnificent – dared to meet his calm and level gaze.
‘Well done, courageous Flea. You have saved me, you have saved your friends and you have saved your City. As your reward, Flea . . . Flea . . . FLEA, you idiot! Wake up! What are you doing up there?’
Flea blinked and looked down. Big and most of the rest of the gang were at the bottom of the tree.
‘What’s going on, insect?’
‘Nothing,’ Flea said. ‘Nothing.’
‘Well, since you’re up there, keep watching! Don’t go all la la like you usually do.’
Big opened his mouth into a stupid gape and rolled his eyes up into his head. Flea scowled across the crowded bridge.
And really did see something.
On the other side of the valley, a dense little group was moving down the road from Olive Tree Hill with purpose. People seemed to be clearing the road ahead of it. Above the background noise Flea thought he could hear faint cheers.
‘Something’s happening!’ he called down to Big, who grabbed Snot. Together, they wormed their way through the crowd towards the bridge. Halo scrabbled up into the tree with Flea and Red. Flea helped him on to the branch and held him tight. Halo was inclined to get excited and fall off things.
In the middle of the bridge, the stuck donkey had managed to back the cart hard against the parapet, the camel was attempting to turn sideways and a man carrying a pitcher of water was stuck between them, trying desperately not to let it fall. At the same time, the heaving press of people was stopping any man or beast from going backwards or forwards and more people were trying to squeeze on to the bridge all the time. To cap matters off, Flea saw Big and Snot jump on to the cart and start stamping and yelling in imitation of the driver.
Problem. They were making so much noise they’d attracted the attention of the Imps. The two Temple Boys on the cart showed clearly above the heads of the crowd and made easy targets for the soldiers, who started to shoulder their way towards them, all leather plates and polished buckles.
And now something strange was happening on the far side of the bridge, behind the soldier’s backs.
The little group Flea had seen had arrived and the crowd
