"Well, John, it's a lovely day for this group of children, as they assemble here in Downing Street, and it'll be a lovely day for the Prime Minister, too. It's been a difficult week in Westminster, this week, and I'm sure he'll be glad to be dealing with schoolchildren rather than his cabinet for at least one afternoon. And here he is, with his wife and one of his own children, coming out of Number 10 now, waving the cameras as he comes to greet these children, winners of a Blue Peter competition. And who knows, perhaps some of them might be able to help him with his current troubles - all of them won their place here by suggesting new policies for children - and that's just the sort of headline grabbing policies that the Prime Minister needs right now to distract his political opponents from...
"Hang on, wait a moment - there's some kind of commotion in the crowd waiting and watching at the end of Downing Street - I think its some kind of demonstration - there's some shouting - the police are moving in - there appear to be a group of people, all in some kind of uniform, pushing their through the crowd - and Special Branch are trying to get the Prime Minister back inside Number 10 - the police are trying to restrain the crowd - some of them are trying to move the children - its rapidly descending into chaos here in Downing Street... Oh my god! What's that?..."
All at once everybody stopped shoving and shouting - a shiver ran through the crowd and they all instinctively drew back, huddling together, even before most of them had seen the long dark shape dropping from the rooftops above. One of the policemen fired his gun as the thing dropped and everyone in the crowd ducked and then stayed there, crouched down, hardly daring to look at the shapeless mound of clothing now that had fallen into the road.
Then, slowly, it began to rise, taller and taller, stretching up out of the pool of its blood red coat tails, its bone white head swinging this way and that, its long, thin fingers twitching, searching for a scent. The Erl King had come to Downing Street.
Someone in the crowd began to scream and the policeman with the gun began to fire wildly as the Erl King swept round to face him. Galvanised by the firing the crowd began to panic, everyone suddenly blundering about, still bent double, running into each other, the walls, out into the street, driven senseless by the fear the Erl King brought with him. Out in the road two police horses bucked and reared, their hooves flailing over the heads of the scurrying people.
The gun didn't seem to worry the Erl King at all. He swayed for a moment and then darted forward, barely seeming to move at all, snatched up the policeman and flung him across the street into the abandoned cameras of the press. The moment the shooting stopped the crowd froze once more and a sudden silence descended. Someone somewhere was whimpering in a high, terrified voice.
The Erl King paused once more and then swung round slowly to face the Prime Minister, who was standing in front of the door to Number 10, surrounded by the children visiting him, desperately trying, ineffectually, to shelter them. A single long, white talon bent out to point at him and the thin, hunched figure tensed, as if about to leap...
"Stop, in the name of the Royal Order of Magi - You are under arrest!"
The Erl King swung back towards the gates as Ridley soared up over them, her black staff pointing straight down at him. Behind her the gates began to buckle and stretch, the metal bending to make a doorway through which more Magi poured. The Erl King turned and crouched as Ridley sailed over his head, coming back down to earth in front of the Prime Minister and the children. He seemed to be about to leap at her but as more Watchmen gathered around him, leaping up to occupy window ledges and rooftops, trying to cut off his means of escape, he shrank back even further, indecisive.
There was a grinding noise from out in the street, following by a metallic clattering and shrieks from the crowd as a bronze statue of someone on horseback leapt down from its podium and came ringing and sparking up towards the gate. Behind it came more statues - generals and prime ministers - waddling on their stiff metal legs: Winston Churchill clanging like a great bell as he came, his raised arms creaking into life.
The Erl King tensed and leapt and Ridley leapt too - but he was too fast. He twisted in the air and then there were two Erl Kings and then three, four - dark figures ricocheting across the narrow confines of Downing Street, bouncing from wall to wall. The Magi tried to catch them, but they were too fast, too numerous. And then one of them reached the rooftops and exploded into a flurry of black, rasping crows, and the air was full of beating wings and shining feathers and somewhere in the confusion a thin, scarlet figure fled across the rooftops and away.
Ridley dropped back down again, landing next to Oscar.
"Murray, stay here, try and get this mess in order - the rest of you, follow me - we can't let him escape this time!" Then she turned and slipped an arm round Oscar's waist, lifting him up, "And you, you are my good luck charm, come on!"
She turned back through the gates to Downing Street, to where the police horses had been; only now they weren't police horses at all. For one thing they were still rearing up on their hind legs and their hides had turned a deep purple colour, but something about their legs had changed, their back legs had become thicker, stronger, so that they could happily walk on just the two of them, while the hooves on their front legs had divided up into thick, simple fingers that clacked together loudly as they moved. And they had sprouted horns from their heads, great, thick, spiralling horns which twitched and turned, swivelling round as their heads turned back and forth.
Ridley grabbed hold of the reins of one of them with her free hand, put a foot in a stirrup and swing them easily up into the saddle.
"Yales," she explained, simply, "The traditional mount of the Knights Watchmen - Knight Mares, they used to call them..."
And with a flick of the reins, she swung the Yale about and they set off up Whitehall at a clattering lope.
It was not the most comfortable journey Oscar had ever endured. The saddle had changed shape along with the horse, but it didn't help with the Yale's strange, off kilter run that felt like they were constantly in danger of tipping over. But, on the other hand, galloping through the centre of London on a mythical animal is just about fun enough to make up for any discomfort.
Ahead of them a thick flock of squawking black birds wheeled and scrabbled over the roofs of the buildings, diving between streets and across open spaces. They jinked and turned in hot pursuit, the Yale swerving between buses and then leaping over the bonnet of a car in one heart-stopping rush.
They came rattling over Trafalgar square, splashing through the fountains, scattering tourists and pigeons as the sound of police sirens grew around them, then they turned sharply after the birds up a side street.
They cantered up the street, as Oscar and Ridley scanned the skies for the birds.
"There!" Oscar spotted them, flocking round a church spire in the distance.
Ridley urged the Yale on, up past Leicester Square, where the police cars were already gathering, sealing off streets, ushering people off the pavements.
They flashed past Chinatown, Oscar getting a glimpse of mouths full of food in restaurant windows, hanging open in amazement as they went past, and then they were at the church they had seen ahead of them, plunging into thick maze of smaller streets.
The flock of birds was getting thinner now, losing its numbers, getting harder to follow. Ridley turned into a wider road and then turned again, trying to catch their track.
They came out into a leafy square that had a small park in the middle of it. People scrambled out of their way as they came trotting in, jostling each other to get out of the park, while two policemen fought against the flow, trying to get in. In the commotion two or three ravens, all that was left of the flock of birds, flapped noisily up from the grass onto the roof of an odd little black and white building in the centre of the park.
"Lost him!" Ridley wheeled the Yale round, looking for something that might help them pick up the trail again.
They were alone in the park with the policemen, who, now they were finally in, looked like they wanted to get back out again and who backed away nervously as Ridley trotted up towards them, staring at the Yale's horns in fear.
"Did you see him?" barked Ridley. The policemen stared back at her, open mouthed.
"The Erl King," added Oscar helpfully. The policemen now stared at him, no wiser.
"The terrorist," said Ridley. The word seemed to wake them up.
"Clear the streets," said one of them.
"Fugitive on the loose," added the other, as if glad to be saying something that sounded like it made sense, "Armed and dangerous."
"Do not approach," added the first one with a kind of satisfied finality.
"Absolutely," said Ridley, "I think that would be a very good idea," and she turned the Yale away from them, back across the park.
"Do you think he was deliberately trying to confuse us?" asked Oscar.
"Almost certainly," said Ridley, grimly, "There'll be Magi scattered all over London now..."
"But someone's bound to find him, then."
"Unless..." Ridley suddenly sat up straight in the saddle, alert, "Unless that's his plan: like the Museum, distracting us, splitting us up, so he can attack us where we least expect!"
She wheeled them round and urged the Yale forward, out through the gate to the park and down a side street towards the main road. They came cantering out from between two tall buildings and Oscar suddenly realised that they were right outside the White Tower. The police were already there in force, with cars pulled across all the roads, blocking all directions off.
The Yale bucked and wrenched round, balking at the flashing lights, as policemen ducked and ran from them. Ridley pulled hard on the reins, pulling them round and the Yale leapt up, bouncing over the roof of a police car and down the other side into the empty road.
Almost immediately sirens started up behind them as they went careering down the road at full tilt, and Oscar could hear the complaining of tires from somewhere behind. Ahead of them was another junction, with more cars blocking it off and this time with policemen running forward, trying to stop them.
A police car came squealing out of a side street, fish-tailing to a screeching stop as they swerved round it and then they were leaping and dodging between policemen and parked cars as Ridley tried to get them through the cordon.
The Yale leapt another car and then slipped on landing, it hooves scrabbling for purchase on the tarmac. Thrown this way and that, Oscar suddenly found himself pulled out of the saddle as Ridley jumped clear of the beast. The Yale scrambled upright again, whirling this way and that, scattering policemen, as Ridley ran for a side street, still carrying Oscar.
"No time for all this..." she gasped, but Oscar couldn't see how she hoped to out run all these policemen while carrying him.
Then she grabbed hold of a lamp post as they ran past and they sprang outwards and upwards: she kicked off against a wall and then bounced off a window sill, a cornice, and suddenly they were up on the roofs of London and running, bounding, leaping along between the chimneys.
Ridley swung Oscar round, onto her back, and he clung on for dear life as she leapt across a narrow alley and went sliding across the wide roof of a theatre, then a single, suspended, breathless moment as they arced out over a wide street in one long jump, a thump, a landing, a run and another leap, the empty air around them unnaturally silent.
Then they were back among the roofs and the turrets and the chimneys, careening down tiles, then catching hold of a balustrade to swing out and across to a flagpole, the sudden rustle of leaves in the roof garden and gravel underfoot, then slipping across a sloping glass roof to a wide, flat area where they dodged between aerials and pipes to a higher roof beyond.
The roof of London was an extraordinary place. As he bounced along, Oscar felt that he was seeing somehow behind the scenes, places that only pigeons ever visited, lonely gargoyles that no one ever noticed, deserted floors of buildings with weeds growing in them, odd little wells and courtyards with no doors to them, a view of the city that few ever got to see.
Even the famous sights were unrecognisable from up here, they leapt at you, unsuspected, the unnervingly empty Trafalgar Square, the broad run of the top of Admiralty Arch, the leads of Whitehall, and then there they were, dropping once more into the chaos of Downing Street.
