In tiers above, the hosts of the sky waited for the Word.
(“Ye canna want me to shoot him! He’s but a bairn!”
“Er,” said Aziraphale. “Er. Yes. Perhaps we’d just better wait a bit, what do you think?”
“Until he grows up, do you mean?” said Crowley.)
Dog began to growl.
Adam looked at the Them. They were his kind of people, too.
You just had to decide who your friends really were.
He turned back to the Four.
“Get them,” said Adam, quietly.
The slouch and slur was gone from his voice. It had strange harmonics. No one human could disobey a voice like that.
War laughed, and looked expectantly at the Them.
“Little boys,” she said, “playing with your toys. Think of all the toys I can offer you … think of all the games. I can make you fall in love with me, little boys. Little boys with your little guns.”
She laughed again, but the machine-gun stutter died away as Pepper stepped forward and raised a trembling arm.
It wasn’t much of a sword, but it was about the best you could do with two bits of wood and a piece of string. War stared at it.
“I see,” she said. “Mano a mano, eh?” She drew her own blade and brought it up so that it made a noise like a finger being dragged around a wineglass.
There was a flash as they connected.
Death stared into Adam’s eyes.
There was a pathetic jingling noise.
“Don’t touch it!” snapped Adam, without moving his head.
The Them stared at the sword rocking to a standstill on the concrete path.
“‘Little boys,”’ muttered Pepper, disgustedly. Sooner or later everyone has to decide which gang they belong to.
“But, but,” said Brian, “she sort of got sucked up the sword—”
The air between Adam and Death began to vibrate, as in a heatwave.
Wensleydale raised his head and looked Famine in the sunken eye. He held up something that, with a bit of imagination, could be considered to be a pair of scales made of more string and twigs. Then he whirled it around his head.
Famine stuck out a protective arm.
There was another flash, and then the jingle of a pair of silver scales bouncing on the ground.
“Don’t … touch … them,” said Adam.
Pollution had already started to run, or at least to flow quickly, but Brian snatched the circle of grass stalks from his own head and flung it. It shouldn’t have handled like one, but a force took it out of his hands and it whirred like a discus.
This time the explosion was a red flame inside a billow of black smoke, and it smelled of oil.
With a rolling, tinny little sound a blackened silver crown bowled out of the smoke and then spun round with a noise like a settling penny.