Chase the Morning

Chapter Nine

It was the same sun we’d spent all yesterday cursing, but we cheered it when it rose. Over the hill it came, just like the cavalry, flashing its golden sabres between the trees to warm our spirits and thrust back the pursuing dark. Now Jyp and Clare and I stretched and sighed, basking like lizards on a long slab of rock. The rest of the party lay scattered on other warm spots round about. Nobody moved, except to grunt and shift as a wound twinged, or to throw an arm over their eyes to blot out the feverish swirling behind their lids. After nightlong hours of terrified blundering through tangles that whipped and slashed and strangled with an almost human malice, just lying here and not moving was everything we could want, lulled by the soft thunder of the nearby falls. We’d done it; we were away, we were safe, and we could be back at the ship by nightfall.

And we’d got Clare. It felt almost unreal. Here she was, flaked out on the rock shelf beside me, just as if we were back sunbathing on the office roof at lunchtime. We’d got her out, got her away. She could go back to her old everyday life now …

She, and I. That started up all sorts of odd thoughts. I clenched my eyelids tight in a vain attempt to shut them out. I wished I could sleep, but the events of last night still ramped and roared through my mind, untameable. That wild flight through the jungle, with the storm and God alone knew what else baying on our heels, seemed almost an anticlimax after what had gone before. Somehow we’d held together –

No, not somehow. I knew how. None of us, not the bravest among us, would have dared lose sight or sound of Mall, if they’d had to tear off a limb to keep up. Mall had held us together, though herself drained and shaken, leading us in a great arc around the slopes away from the castle and the deadly paths to it, and down, down towards the far end of the little valley that led to the falls. As the first greyness showed in the sky we reached it, the first light that showed each man his neighbour’s face, and scored upon it the same haggard terrors and utter exhaustion he himself had felt. All except me; for nearest me, warm in the crook of my arm, was Clare, and on her face was only a wide-eyed wonder and delight.

That had come as something of a shock. After all she’d been through, God alone knew what I’d expected – probably to find her shattered, stunned, an uncomprehending wreck. I’d a fair idea I would have been. At best I was praying the effects wouldn’t be too lasting, that she’d be able to get back to something like her old crisp confident self again. I certainly hadn’t expected to find this new Clare, relaxed, accepting, apparently blissfully happy in my company and asking no explanations, not even a word about going home. It occurred to me that after days of dark and terror and rough handling even the bloodshed and horror, the manic flight, must have spelt revenge and exhilarating freedom. This rest and peace probably felt like paradise. But I’d have to watch her, later, in case some reaction set in.

A shame, really. I felt oddly relaxed with her myself, in a way I never had back at the office. If it hadn’t been so unnatural I might almost have preferred her like this.

I rolled over on my side again, and swung an arm out to her; but it only flopped over the edge of the shelf. A sharp qualm of alarm faded; I remembered her saying that the moment she could get back on her feet she’d go down to the pool to bathe, which she certainly needed. Days in the Wolves’ tender care – though mercifully she seemed to think there’d only been one – had left her ragged and filthy, and she’d added a fair quota of gore helping Mall tend our wounds. Probably she’d assumed I was asleep, and wandered off without disturbing me. She wasn’t worried, and nor was I, not really; there were sentries posted, but under this clear sun our impromptu camp felt safe enough anyway. It was realizing I stank to high heaven in the heat, too, that brought me to my feet. Just the thought set me itching; having Clare around was reviving civilized ideas. Cool water and clean sleek skin glided through my mind. One or two other ideas darted about like teasing fish, but I let them slip away. I wasn’t the sort to take advantage – no way. But all the same …

All the same, it might be as well if I kept an eye on things. I stretched, a little stiffly, no more; there were a few twinges from misused muscles and cuts half-healed, but otherwise I felt startlingly fit. Jyp stirred as my shadow fell across him, winced as he jarred his arm a little, then sank mumbling back into sleep. There was no disturbing him, anyhow; or any of the others I could see. The camp slept; only the sentries stirred at their stations in the shade. I clambered off down the rocky slope towards the falls.

The trees grew high around them, the undergrowth greener. As I pushed through, shreds of colour on a crisp-leaved succulent bush caught my eye. Strands of pastel fabric, very ragged and shapeless, translucent with damp; the remnants of Clare’s clothes, set out to dry. I hesitated, feeling awkward; but I could still feel her clinging to me in the long night, still see her, bruised and breathless, dragging herself painfully up against the wall to plant that sharp kick just where the Wolf captain felt it. The way she’d kept hold of her sanity, her strength of mind, all through this nightmare I’d accidentally wished on her – she was one hell of a special person. Even when she was just my ideal secretary, smart, efficient, loyal, I’d felt a sort of admiration for her, cool but strong, a touch protective, maybe. I’d never lost sight of how big a help she was to my career; I’d have looked after her, too. But that admiration welled up far more powerfully now; and something else with it, like the first sharp thrust of a seedling through its shell, raw and wet and unconfined, searching for shape and purpose. I saw something new in her – something of Mall …

I drew a deep unsteady breath. The air was cool and fragrant with blossoms. Maybe I’d always wanted her; but unconsciously felt I had her, in the ways that mattered. Was it just protective, that admiration, or possessive? And she – she’d felt something for me, all right; enough to get her kidnapped. Could that be why her various boyfriends never stuck around long? Because it was really me …?

Beyond the bushes there was a brief swirl of water, and in my mind she turned, basking, the sun gleaming on her flank, her outstretched arms. All those teasing ideas leaped up at the thought; old ideas, highly traditional ideas. To the victor, the spoils; none but the brave deserve the fair; that kind of thing. Not that I’d go forcing myself on her. Perhaps I wouldn’t even need to say anything; it would all just fall together. It’d be natural enough, after all, something fitting, something right. Something I’d earned; or we both had. The hell with sense; the hell with holding back. Maybe she’d been right, Mall; maybe I had been cheating myself of … something. Quietly, unhurriedly, I parted the bushes and stepped through onto the sandy fringe of the pool.

Clare was there, but not alone. With her, beneath the glassy fringes of the fall, Mall stood, naked as she was, thigh-deep in the foaming water. She stooped over Clare, arms around her, hands across her back clasping her close as Clare clasped her, her parted lips fastened on Clare’s in a deep, searching kiss. Neither woman moved; they might have been statues in a fountain, their tangling hair carved in one flowing mass of ashy gold. Neither saw me. Without the faintest idea why I took a single step forward, and my feet tangled in Mall’s clothes, shed carelessly on the sand. I turned numbly and went back into the bushes again.

Still dazed, I made my way back to my perch on the rock, and sat down with a bump. I slumped there for I don’t know how long, till I felt a shadow lean over between me and the sun. Cool hands rested lightly on my shoulders, as they often had at the office, lingering to massage away tension. Affronted, shocked, I shrugged them away, and looked up angrily as I heard Clare’s cool giggle. She met my glare with wide, amused eyes, bit gently on her knuckle and stood contemplating me for a moment, swaying lightly from foot to foot. Then when it was obvious I wasn’t going to say anything she shrugged, smiled and drifted away down the slope to another vacant patch of rock. She caught my eye as she stretched out, and smiled again. I looked away, only to find Jyp awake and regarding me with his clear eyes.

‘You’re all mad at her of a sudden. How come?’

I growled. ‘Angry? Me? Why should I be? I’m just … Jesus, I’m worried, if you must know! Still worried – about her! Drifting about like that – doing things she’d never even bloody dream of, not … Not normally.’

‘You so sure? What kind of things?’

‘Christ Jesus, man! Isn’t it obvious? I mean, look at her! Wandering about just – draping herself round everyone, giggling like a bubblehead – that’s not the Clare I know! As if she doesn’t give a damn – as if she thinks this is just some sort of dream or fantasy!’

‘I’d bet that’s just exactly what she does think,’ murmured Jyp.

‘Hey, come off it! She doesn’t exactly need to pinch herself – not after booting that Wolf in the ghoolies! If she doesn’t know she’s awake, she’s off her bloody rocker!’

Jyp heaved himself up painfully. ‘Number of times I’ve seen this happen – Steve, listen! She’s far more deeply rooted in the Core than ever you were. And also, I guess, she’s more used to using her imagination. You had some time to get used to all this, to shape what goes on for yourself. You’re sure it’s real ’cause you don’t have strong fantasies or more likely you’ve sat on them. But nobody’s told her. She knows she’s awake, sure – but in no world she understands. She’s adrift. So, are you surprised she finds it easier writing this off as some kind of a fever dream, a delirium? Where the path of least resistance is the smoothest. Where it’s best to just take things as they come, to follow as her instincts lead her. It’s one hell of a lot better than being driven right off her trolley – and believe me, if she’d been a tad less stable –’

‘Great!’ I snarled. ‘So she just thinks she’s in some kind of neverland – where she can get up to all sorts of things she’d never normally do, and it doesn’t matter! Like, well … fantasies.’

Jyp chuckled. ‘So? Does it?’

A huge yellow butterfly came to perch on my knee. Irritably I brushed it away. ‘Okay! But what about when she finds it’s no dream?’

‘Will she? Steve, I guarantee you, maybe two days after we get her home that’s just exactly what it’ll seem like. She’ll remember there was some sort of fracas at the office, that you and some friends got her away from some thugs and that she’s very, very grateful to them – but mostly to you, ’cause you’ll still be there. That’s all. And in time even that’ll blur.’

‘Yes – but the others there –’

‘I’d be damn surprised if they remember that much. Memories rooted outside the Core, they don’t last too well, not if they’re not reinforced. How much did you believe, that first morning after?’ I was still digesting that one when he added, ‘And isn’t that just as well? That all she’s gone through won’t leave its mark on her?’

I thought. I felt so much to blame for what had happened to Clare. I’d almost been afraid to face her, at first; but if it wasn’t going to haunt her so much … ‘That’s a point, I suppose.’

‘Sure it is. So where’s the harm?’

I boiled. ‘The harm? Jesus! Just because she won’t remember – does that make it right for her to go throwing herself about – so anyone can take advantage –’

‘Oh? Like whoever gets a sudden urge for a swim?’ His tolerant grin took the sting out of the comment; most of it, anyhow. I remembered my nice little line in self deception, and shrivelled. Something of Mall, eh?

Nobody likes feeling a bloody fool. I bit my lip angrily. ‘Listen, there wasn’t any harm in that! It needn’t have come to anything – and so what if it did, anyhow? She’s had boyfriends; it’d be normal enough! There’s a vast bloody difference between me and Mall –’ I stopped dead, grating my teeth in embarrassment. But Jyp only opened his eyes wide in understanding, and his grin turned a little wry.

‘Uh-huh. Maybe. Maybe. You sound kind of shocked.’

‘Shocked? Of course I’m bloody shocked! I know Clare, remember? I’ve known her for years –’

‘Steve, most people don’t even know themselves that well! Not till something strips the surface back – dreams, maybe, or great danger – and what’s underneath comes through. Dreams, and danger! And she’s wrapped up in both!’

‘But Clare! Clare, of all people! She’s just a nice normal girl! It’s not the sort of thing she’d ever –’ I petered out again.

‘Well no, or it wouldn’t be under the surface, would it? It’s still part of her. Some of the things you did last night, you’d never dreamt you could – but they’re part of you, too. Along with a lot that’s less creditable. Smile – you’re human. You, me, Clare – we’re no goddam plaster saints. Once in a while we slip. And if we don’t overdo it, it can even be fun.’

‘Fun? Jesus! I mean, look, I’m as sophisticated as the next man – but Clare … Clare of all people! Why?’ Jyp didn’t say anything, and I brooded, shivering in the sun. ‘Christ, it’s not as if I can’t understand the … the magnetism of the woman, I’ve felt it. Fluttering around the same bloody candle myself – you know that. Only it took a little unfriendly help. It bloody well would, wouldn’t it? For me.’ I spat out the bitterness. ‘And I just got burned. To the victor … Only some are more victorious than Others, aren’t they? Naturally!’

Jyp shook his head sympathetically. ‘Mall, Clare – lord sakes, boy, you just don’t know which one you’re more jealous of, do you?’

‘Sod that!’

‘Whatever you say. So it’s Mall you’re truly mad at?’

‘Yeah! Flaming mad! What the bloody hell d’you expect me to be, dancing for fucking joy?’ But the words tasted false; and after a moment I closed my eyes and let my head sag. ‘No. No. Ah, crap. Can’t be, can I? Not even jealous. Not allowed.’

Jyp’s eyes were searching. ‘’Fraid you’d seem a mite ungrateful?’

‘Well, yes! The most ungrateful s.o.b. this side of the sunset; but –’ I brushed that aside. ‘It’s more than that – isn’t it? Her kind; it’s in their nature, right? To love pretty much as it takes them.’

Jyp chewed on nothing a moment, considering. ‘So you do understand. Never would’ve expected it, Steve. You’re full of surprises.’

‘After the castle – yes, I understand. Some of it, anyhow. You told me, didn’t you? About people who move outward, towards the Rim, one way or another. Who change and grow – towards evil, or towards good. And Mall’s one of them. Immortals, I mean. Or what would you call them? Goddesses. Demi-goddesses, anyhow.’

‘Just beginning to be, yeah. You don’t often see it, that fit coming on her. Guess it’s got to be there under the surface all the time, though; what makes her such a hell-fighter. Then something wakes it up, and – whizbang! Though, jehosaphat! I tell you straight, I never saw her like last night before, never quite, and for whole minutes at a time. That’s a big step she took. Some day, maybe, a long time from now, that’ll break through forever, and in the end she’ll just slough off the surface like ragged ol’ slops and blaze pure. But till then she’s got her feelings and her weaknesses like the rest of us – maybe more so. When it passes, then she’s at her weakest, all over. Then she really backslides. She needs …’ He frowned. ‘I don’t know. Love, comfort. A lot of it. She reaches out where she can.’ He considered me again for a moment, ‘Not still mad?’

I sighed. ‘No. Maybe not. It’s just … well, the ancient Greeks – with all those randy gods and goddesses around …’

‘Yeah?’

‘No wonder they turned out philosophical, that’s all.’

He laughed softly. ‘I’ve been there. Believe me!’

But he didn’t elaborate. It was my turn to weigh him up. ‘How about you, Jyp? You on your way to becoming a god, too?

‘Me?’ I expected him to laugh again, but he looked mildly appalled at the prospect, like the office junior offered a vice-presidency. ‘No! I’m barely past my first century yet. Got a long way to go – if I want to. But I doubt I ever will. Guess I’ll just go on going around in circles, long as I’m spared – but at least they won’t be ever-decreasing ones. Keep moving, keep living, keep the blood flowing and the vices polished up till one day the meter runs out – that’s how most of us keep going. But some, some with a real passion, a real spirit, they start losing the taste for anything else. They narrow down, they fine out, they grind themselves down to needle points. More and more they become that passion; you can see it in ’em.’

‘Like Hands!’

‘Sure, like Israel Hands. If he lived long enough and he’d half a brain he’d burn right down to a mind of fire and sparks and flying iron. He’d maybe become somebody’s gun-god, somewhere in time, and be whistled up at their ceremonials to cast new cannon, or have gunners sacrifice to him for better aim. Maybe when the storms go trampling ‘cross the skies men somewhere say to their children “Hark! There’s ol’ Israel’s cannons, scaring up the stars!”’ We chuckled, though I still tasted bitter bile. ‘But Mall now,’ he mused. ‘She’s harder to nail. Justice, that’s a part of her passion; but so’s a good fight, and music. And a kind of wisdom, insight, when she’s least troubled …’

I nodded, thinking back to that starry night by the wheel, when she’d drawn my life out of me as few others could have. He pressed on.

‘It’s mostly the ones like that who make it, they say. Who reach the Rim, cross it maybe – who knows? – and come back transfigured. Come back somewhere, anyhow; time means less, the further Rimward you get. Maybe she already has come back. Maybe it’s Minerva we’re shipped with, Steve boy; or Diana. Or some hunting goddess of our first forefathers, squatting in caves among the Great Ice. Or some power only the future’ll know, when all those clever little boxes of yours have crumbled back to the silica beaches they came from. I don’t know. Nobody does. But it sure can happen.’

It was a sobering thought; and when Mall came back from the pool a little later I was ready to look at her with new eyes. But she had never seemed more ordinary, pale even, with her curls plastered damp around her face, rawboned and ungainly instead of sleekly graceful. She looked like a autumn wood wind-stripped of its leaves, and she avoided meeting my glance – or, I noticed, Clare’s. It came to me then that maybe last night had put her through an experience more shattering than any of ours. ‘Bide but ten minutes idling!’ she announced flatly. ‘Then up straitly and to the ship!’ A chorus of groans and complaints arose, but she rounded on us stridently. ‘You witless pack of puling whipjacks! D’you fancy another Bedlam night i’the woods, then? We’ll scarce be to the beach by sunset!’

That did it. Nobody claimed their extra ten minutes, and my urge for a swim vanished mysteriously. Suddenly we were all hopping and hobbling, buckling belts, priming pistols and loosening swords in scabbard. As we moved off Clare fell in beside me and took my hand, quite naturally; then, spotting Mall, she reached out the other to her. Mall hovered, obviously a little nonplussed, till I waved her over impatiently. It didn’t take much effort. Clare pushed her in between us, and I felt Mall’s hand clasp mine and clutch at it like a handhold on a cliff. My resentment was fading fast. Her fate might be the loneliest of anybody’s – and if she really would remember me a thousand years, better it wasn’t bitterly.

The trail soon grew steep and narrow, forcing us apart; and we had to help Jyp. Since he couldn’t hang on to the branches and the outcrops he slipped a lot, and every jolt was agony to his arm. He made it worse by continually looking around sharply at everything except his footing. Wounds had been treated with what was to hand – my powder-burned hands with juice of bitter aloes, for one; but he had nothing to stem the pain, except alternately and colourfully cursing the Wolf who shot him, and his own stupidity.

‘At least he didn’t hit the bone,’ Clare encouraged him. ‘Or just chipped it, anyway. An inch over and he’d really have broken your arm –’

‘He’d ha’ blown it clean off,’ said Mall sombrely. She seemed as edgy as Jyp, continually looking back over her shoulder.

Clare winced in sympathy. ‘Oh god! Well, you’re lucky he didn’t have an automatic, at least.’

I looked at her sharply, but she just smiled. It was just as Jyp had said; she was moving in a dream, almost, accepting, not questioning. Not thinking through the implications of what she’d said. And yet still the old Clare, all right. Unconsciously or not, she’d made a pretty good point.

They were such all-round stinkers, those Wolves, I couldn’t imagine them missing a chance to spread that bit more mayhem. Why didn’t any of them have modern weapons? They could surely get them easily enough. Why not tommy-guns or M-16s instead of cutlasses? Why not, for that matter, naval guns instead of muzzle-loading cannon, fast pursuit boats instead of sailing ships? It had never occurred to me to ask. But in one of our brief halts, at noon under the spreading shade of a vast star-apple tree, Jyp was ready enough to talk – I suspect because it kept his mind off the pain, or other things.

‘Sure, they could use ’em. So could we. Once in a while some Mutt’n’Jeff does get his mitts on what you and I’d call a modern gun, and raises plenty ruckus – mostly till he jams it, or his ammo runs out. Then what? Chances are he ruins it trying to repair it. And for ammo, he could just about handcast .45 shells, I guess; hand-turn new cases, maybe, or save spent ones. Stuff’em with black powder or gun-cotton, at half the power – but making the firing caps, fulminate of mercury or some such stuff, that’s tough work. Hard as handcrafting a whole new musket, even hand-rifling it – one he’d have not rouble loading. But he manages – and then maybe his second or third homemade shell blows in the breech and takes his hand off. See?’

‘I begin to,’ I said, wondering. ‘They’ve never heard of industry out here – of mass-production –’

Jyp gestured airily. ‘Oh, heard, sure. But industry’s big; it binds folk together, ties ’em down. And you need a whole chain of industries to make your modern weapons, or ships, or anything else. Men don’t settle too long out here, or sooner or later the Core’ll suck them in once again. So who refines the gas for your fast boats? Who turns out the plugs and cams and piston-rings? Or trues the steam-cylinders, even? Not many places’ll run to more’n a shipyard or two – and the workers come and go. There’s no call for more; we don’t miss it. Out here a man can live and sail and fight any way takes his fancy, all the ways we’ve ever done –’

‘Up until the Industrial Revolution,’ said Clare thoughtfully, rolling her head around. ‘Like a barrier …’

‘The what?’ Jyp looked at her dubiously. ‘Not one of those Wobbly types, are you, lady? Skip it. Me, I’m glad they went and gave you the vote, but –’

I interrupted hastily. ‘What she means is, out here you can’t ever go the way the Core has. And a lot of people there do think it was a mistake. Not me! Though I’ll admit you seem to live better than I’d have expected without progress – in medicine, for one thing …’

Jyp forgot himself, started to shrug and winced heavily. ‘Ah, we’re short on progress all right; but we’ve got other advantages …’

Clare lifted her head from my knee, and grinned. ‘You mean disadvantages, don’t you?’

‘Lady, I mean what I say. You’ve only seen the rough side of it, so far. We’ve other things going for us. Other forces, other wisdom.’

‘Magic?’

‘A word. It covers one hell of a lot of things. Like something that’ll knit up my arm for me in a few hours when we get back aboard Defiance – and it can’t be too soon. How much further now?’

‘A few miles – maybe four. Mostly downhill. We’ve skirted the ridge, we’ll come onto the beach from further around the bay.’

‘A few miles!’ he echoed, and glanced quickly up at the sun, and the hillside behind us. ‘You’ll be dragging me by my boots, then.’

‘You’ll manage,’ I told him firmly. ‘Saving your lousy neck got me into this. You don’t think I’m going to waste it all now?’

I didn’t say anything about it, not while Clare was within earshot; but it was then, remembering those first mad moments on the misty wharf, that something else began to worry me. All through the march back it nagged at me, and more than once I caught Clare looking at me, evidently wondering why I’d gone so silent and preoccupied. But I wanted to wait till I could get Jyp alone, and my chance didn’t come for hours. We were clambering down the last slope then, pushing nervously between thickets of cutlass-bladed aloes. What little sky we could see between the trees was reddening fast; but at least we knew we’d make it in time, when the men in front hailed and pointed excitedly. A faint streak of light was showing at the bottom of the slope, the distant beach shining through the forest’s fringe. You could feel the immediate relief, the infectious lightening of everyone’s mood, even the wounded; all except Mall and Jyp. She was grim, silent, vigilant, snapping the head off anyone who spoke to her. He had fallen uncharacteristically silent, moody even, so jumpy he started at every odd noise; and in that twilit forest there were plenty.

‘Well,’ I ventured sympathetically, helping him sit up after a really bad fall, ‘you’re having a rough time, but at least we’re not dragging you yet –’

‘Rough!’ he agreed, tight-lipped, cradling his arm. ‘Ah hell, could’ve been a whole lot worse.’ He looked back upslope, listened a moment, then shook his head. ‘Should’ve been, when you think about it.’

‘Glutton for punishment, aren’t you?’

‘Hell, no! We got off lightly, that’s all. Maybe too lightly. How many Wolves did they sic on us last night – a hundred and fifty? No more. Okay, that leaves more’n half the shipload unaccounted for – where were they when the lights went out?’

I began helping him get up. ‘That’s what’s spooking you? They must have been covering the trail, surely. Lying in wait. They didn’t expect us to take to the tall timber – I didn’t, I can tell you! With any luck they’re still blundering about up there now –’

‘Aye, with any luck!’ Mall called up sourly from below. ‘But a’nightfall things may change. Enough lingering; it stays for no man!’

‘He can’t stand!’ I told her angrily, but Jyp brushed me aside and staggered up.

‘She’s right! Me, I’ll not feel safe till I set my feet fair on old Defiance’s planks again!’

That brought back my own troubles. ‘Yes – and what then?’

‘Then?’ The thought cheered him. ‘Home ‘n beauty, and a great weight off your mind – mostly in gold!’

‘God knows, you’ve all earned it! But what about me?’

He glanced at me, considered a joky answer, and visibly changed his mind. ‘Okay, what about you?’

‘You’ve said Clare … won’t really remember any of this. But me? What about me? Am I just going to forget it all?’

Jyp stumbled past me down the muddy slope, into the heavy-scented tangles of hibiscus ahead. ‘Depends,’ he flung back over his shoulder. He caught a branch with his good arm and began picking his unsteady way down.

‘What on?’ I repeated the question as I skidded after him. ‘Jyp, I want to know! It matters, damn it!’

‘Steve –’ he grated between his teeth, ‘it’s not so simple – if I could tell you – I would – okay?’

Our boots skidded and slipped, bruising the bright hibiscus blossoms, and they bled glossy black sap onto the earth. I didn’t ask any more.

Among the trees down below I saw the leading sailors break into a run, and Mall do nothing to hold them back, only stop and wave us impatiently on. Clare came skipping back to help, and a long low ray of sunset set a flush on her bare limbs and jewels of fire in her hair. With the other stragglers we came stumbling down into long grass, hissing in the soft wind. Through the last curtain of trees I saw the grey-blue champaign of the ocean, and the sun’s rim blazing its furious last against the stifling clouds.

The sea shimmered a moment the colour of fresh blood; the light dimmed. We emerged into the first rosy flush of island twilight. There lay the ships, a mile or so away in the sheltered arm of the bay. Faint windrows riffled across the calm water, like smoke across a mirror. And there on the shore were the boats, luring even the wounded to hurry on, forgetting their pain, eager to get free of even the shadow of that forest. The fit hands held back to help them with nervy patience, casting black looks up at the treeline as the uneven column straggled along the beach. We weren’t under the cover of the Defiance’s guns yet, and twitched like kittens at every rustle. Orders were passed down the line in hoarse whispers. Pistols were clicked to half-cock, swords drawn; every bird that fluttered up risked a dozen deaths, though fortunately nobody was actually fool enough to fire. When we came near enough we waved frantically at the ship – we didn’t dare hail them aloud – and got a laconic reply. It seemed like the first tangible link between us and safety, however weak – the thread that pulls over the lifeline. We all felt our spirits lift and leap like the boats, coming alive under our hands as we ran them down into the light surf.

It seemed almost like an anticlimax as we bundled into them, unopposed. I even heard some of the madder hands wishing the Wolves had come down after us, so they could have shown them what for. When the castle came briefly into view as the first boat bounced out through the shallows, a great baying call of mockery and defiance went up. I remembered the jarring, meaty thump as my sword ran through the great Wolf captain, and ground my teeth in exultation, forgetting how starkly terrified I’d been. I caught Clare about the shoulders and hugged her tight. She looked up at me and laughed, and we watched the hateful shore fall further behind at every stroke.

Only Mall seemed not to share the feeling, and perhaps also Jyp. She sat hunched and still in the bows of the other boat, her hand near her sword, constantly looking from ship to shore as if measuring the distance some unknown menace might travel in our wake. Jyp was slumped exhausted in the stern of ours, but his eyes flickered across the same course, ship to shore and back again; and after a few minutes he began to force his injured arm to flex, trying to stop it stiffening.

‘Stop it, you berk!’ I told him. ‘You’ll start it bleeding again!’

‘Sure, but at least I’ll have the use of it!’ he answered quietly. ‘Like I said – not till I set my feet on that deck … And maybe not even then. We’re getting off too lightly.’

‘Twelve dead and eighteen wounded is light?’

‘Well, no. And may be Mall put the fear of … Mall into them! But odds are they’d not give up so easily – not the Invisibles. They’re planning more hell yet. Maybe it’s already here.’ His pain-reddened eyes rested on Clare for an instant. ‘Something we’re carrying with us, maybe.’

She huddled back against me. ‘What’s he saying?’

‘Nothing. He’s feverish. Can it, Jyp. This is just Clare, right?’

He nodded, perspiring as he flexed his arm. ‘Right. I trust your feelings, Steve. Wanted to be sure, that’s all.’ He leaned back and closed his eyes. I found myself swaying away from Clare a little, looking her up and down, meeting her gaze hard.

‘Just Clare,’ I repeated, and, rather hesitantly, she smiled.

Even so, it was a moment of deep relief as we came under the lee of the Defiance and saw the mate in the bows waving us in. The derricks creaked out, and I noticed May Henry, muffled up in a bright bandanna, among the sleepy hands who shuffled up to tip rope ladders down to us.

‘And a sling and chair for the wounded!’ yelled Mall impatiently. ‘Shift your idle scuts!’

With a last glance back at the shore she drove her men up the ladders, helping such of the wounded as could climb. I was already helping Jyp up, with Clare beneath us; Mall came shinning up the boarding steps past us, swearing at the slowness of the hands above. Together, straddling the rail, we bundled Jyp up and over. Hearing his feet thump decisively on the deck, I was about to chaff him about his definition of safety when I saw the look on his face. I looked up sharply – and stiffened.

As we were meant to. The horror of the sight held us just long enough. Rising in the rigging, bobbing in the breeze by the noose about its throat, the grotesquely twisted corpse of a yellow dog –

The flung nets exploded over us, caught Clare opening her mouth to scream, Mall swinging her leg over the rail and reaching for her sword, me turning to shout a warning. We were jerked violently back, toppling over the rail and crashing in a tangled heap on the planks. All in silence; but a sudden hoarse shout went up.

I tore at the net, only entangling myself further – but freed Jyp, nearest its edge. He scrabbled up and swung himself onto the rail. Heavy boots boomed across the deck after him, but I saw him launch himself away in a creditable swallow dive, his injured arm outflung. From below came shouts and splashes as sailors, warned by the struggle, flung themselves off the ladders and out of the boats. A ghastly baying of Wolf voices arose, the crackle of pistols and the flatter bang of muskets. My sword was snagged under me; I struggled for it, flopping and twisting like a landed fish, with Mall clawing and snarling above me. Then, planting her knee in my stomach, she heaved herself up and caught two great handfuls of the net, about to tear it apart; and she might have managed, even with her inner fires dulled. But May Henry loomed above her, dough-faced, glassy-eyed, and struck down viciously with a belaying pin; Mall fell kicking on top of me, clutching her head, and I felt her jerk as the pin sang against her skull a second time.

With the force of that blow the bandanna slipped – and Clare, trapped beneath Mall and myself, screamed in horror. From beneath it gaped a great jagged gouge in the she-pirate’s throat, a black bloodless trench, bare to a gleam of spine-bone. I surged up with a yell, throwing Mall off me, and grabbed Clare. With the net still tangled around us I hurled myself at the quarterdeck ladder, and by some access of strength I almost made it. Till my foot slipped in a pool of tarry slime, and I came crashing down almost on top of something horrible that lay in the door of the foc’sle cabin. A firescorched mass, surrounded by a great star of charred timber, only vaguely human in outline; but by a hank of long hair and a scrap of ragged black that had escaped at one edge I knew it must be the girl Le Stryge had called Peg Powler. They had come prepared this time; and polluted water had not put out their flame.

My hair was seized, my head jerked back. I stared up into Wolf eyes and others, dark eyes narrowed in exultant, gloating faces. Not handsome faces; their silhouettes were odder than the Wolves’. Their earlobes drooped low, their lips were scarred, their brows oddly flattened and narrowed, and the whole was covered in lacy traceries of black, paint or tattoo that all but hid the coppery yellow shade beneath. Against the glowing sky something swung up, fell. A burst of agonizing light –

I don’t know whether I went out entirely, or for how long. I seemed to feel myself being turned over, my head bumping sickeningly on the deck, the blood-stopping bite of thongs; and I do remember being hoisted bodily, trussed like a hog, by hands that were deadly cold. Yet perhaps I was already ashore by then, the swaying motion that of the pole I was slung from, the soft sighing rush the wind in the leaves again. My first clear memory was the deadly sickness, the rush of vomit in my throat, the coughing panic as it almost choked me. I managed to turn my head to clear it, just; and after that, though my skull seemed to swell and contract at every throbbing heartbeat, I felt a bit more alive and aware. Very shaken and light-headed, though, and utterly exhausted; unsure whether what I could see of the procession that bore me was real or a fever dream, flaring and flickering like the torch-flames, stuttering like the drums and the low droning voices. Long Wolf-limbs strode and shuffled, half-dancing to the dull beat. Shorter ones stalked beside them, naked and covered in that same black tracery; the red torchlight and the shifting muscles gave it a horrible animation, like a grating into hell. Only the feet that carried me didn’t dance, but plodded along, leaden and stolid as any laden ox. They paid no heed to any obstacles, branch or jutting rock, but blundered into them and past, and swung me against them just as carelessly. Battered, bruised, scratched and sickened, I lost all sense of time till I was flung bodily down among soft grasses, with the pole on top of me. The jar made my head swim again. I barely caught the hoarse whisper from the dark beside me.

‘Howdy.’

At first I couldn’t speak. ‘Oh – hi, Jyp. Didn’t make it, eh?’

‘Caught me in the shallows. This goddam arm. Not the Wolves, the Caribs – not nice guys. Held my head under a few times for sport – God knows why they didn’t just finish the job.’

Fear crawled. ‘The others? Mall – Clare –’

‘I’ve seen Clare. Zombies dumped her up there a ways – awake and okay, so far. Mall I didn’t see …’

‘She – they hit her pretty hard, Jyp.’ I didn’t want to say more; nor he to hear it.

He was silent awhile, against the background of jabbering Wolf voices. ‘Skipper’s here, anyhow, and what’s left of the crew.’

‘Jyp – did you see? May Henry –’

‘And the mate – and Gray Coll, Lousy Macllwine, Dickon Merret – yeah, I saw. Lord, that was a neat trick they pulled. There was I half afraid the ship’d been hit first – right from the moment I saw the castle was a trap. It made sense – but when I saw them all waving, natural as kiss my ass … There’s more’n Wolves behind this, or these Injuns. There’s a brain.’

I shivered in the chill breeze. ‘The Indians – who are they, anyhow?’

‘Amerinds. Caribs – what the dagoes named the sea for. After wiping them out, mostly, or enslaving them. They’re regular guys enough, the ones left; but this isn’t them.’

‘You mean – these are the originals? Another hangover in time?’

‘Kind of looks that way.’ He fell silent as footsteps approached, stopped a moment, then hurried on. ‘You said – they hit Mall real hard?’

‘She – she may be dead, Jyp.’

‘That could be the worst mistake they ever made,’ he said at last – thoughtfully, not vengefully. ‘She –’ I heard him choke and gasp at the thud of a boot. I got the same treatment next, not hard but right in the kidneys. Writhing, I was only dimly aware of being untied from the pole. My hands and legs still bound, I was dragged bodily through the grass till it vanished abruptly on bare rocky ground, where I was dropped. I lay blinking, thinking how bright the torchlight seemed; then a hand in my hair hauled me to my knees, and I saw the two tall fires, and the white stones between, and the dark silhouettes passing to and fro.

More than that I didn’t make of them, just then, because chains rattled suddenly, and ice-cold iron snapped around my throat, pinching the flesh painfully. I pulled away instinctively – and found I wasn’t alone. Clare and all the rest of the crew, Pierce and Hands and the crabbed little steward among them, were slumped in rows on the cold ground beside me, fastened together with what looked like old slave collars. And next to me, uncomfortably close, sat the Stryge himself. He curled his lip in something like a sarcastic greeting, but I paid him no more attention, because next in line sat Mall. Alive; but her head hung, she was deadly pale, and a thick clot of blood caked her curls at the forehead. Her lowered eyes were dull and glazed, and my heart sank; I saw concussion there, if not a fractured skull. A biker had looked like that, after a pile-up I witnessed; and he’d died in the ambulance.

Stifled cursing told me Jyp had been dumped just behind me. ‘So what’s this?’ he demanded. ‘We in line for service, or what?’

‘Undoubtedly,’ grated Stryge through his stained teeth. ‘Though I should be in no haste about it, if I were you.’

I knew what he meant. My eyes were adjusting to the light, and the more I saw of the crowd that was gathering the less I liked it. Apart from the Wolves there were ordinary men and women both among them, more than a few evidently Haitians. Not all were the dark-skinned villager types, though, and those looked better fed and complacent. The rest were mulattoes, Haiti’s powerful aristocracy – well-groomed creatures who could have jetted in from London or New York. Gold gleamed around their necks and their fingers, jewels flashed in the firelight; some wore elegant powdered wigs and carried quizzing-glasses, but others sported hornrims and chunky Rolexes on their wrists. The heavy robes they all wore looked well cut, and the vevers and other strange symbols swirling about them shone with sequins and gold bullion. These elegant creatures mingled grotesquely with the naked Caribs in their war-tracery, and yet they jangled with ornaments just as valuable; not only brass bangles and spirals about arm and neck and ankle, but rings of pure soft gold weighing down their distorted ear-lobes, plugs of gold through lips and nose catching the fire redly. Here and there, too, white faces gleamed among the crowd, white of all shades, sallow as old parchment or bleached albino-pale; many of them, too, wore heavy earrings and ornaments in styles long forgotten, others unmistakeably modern hairstyles, glasses even. One blue-rinsed matron had upswept diamanté frames, pure Palm Beach chic that looked incredibly grotesque and sinister here. I had the odd feeling I was watching a gathering from far away, from long years apart in the island’s terrible history; and I knew it could be true.

But whatever their origins, swaying, jostling to that soft sinuous beat, they all looked alike, horribly alike. If ever I doubted the brotherhood of man, I saw it paraded before me that night – at its worst and darkest. Kinship is a terrible thing when it lies in cold, devouring looks, merciless, ruthless, utterly selfish or actively malign, weighing us up like prospects for a show. I could imagine Romans looking that way at captives in the arena, or predatory Western tourists at some of the nastier Bangkok cabarets, more with cruelty and delight in degradation than plain old lust. It had less effect on me than it might; I was too worried about Mall and Clare. But it did cross my mind momentarily that there were worse ways to be than empty. If my life had been hollow, fuelled by nothing but ambition, at least it hadn’t been filled with that sort of feeling, driven by those drives. At least emptiness was neutral – not a good thing maybe, but not a bad one either, depriving nobody but myself. Or was it?

It was as blinding in its way as that crack on the head, the sudden shock of recognition. They might have been ambitious, too, these people, just as I was. They sure as hell looked it; they looked just like the types I knew. They might have cut everything else out of their lives, just as I had; got what they wanted, where they wanted – and what then? A plateau. Nowhere else to go; or a long, long wait. And what could they do then? I’d been sensing it already, that emptiness in my life, that gnawing discontent – right from that moment at the traffic lights. Sheer ambition – casual sex – they’d been growing less enjoyable all the time, these sterile pleasures of mine. When they finally waned, what then? What would I have gone looking for, to fill up my hollow life? What short-cuts to rewards I felt I deserved, to fulfilments I felt cheated of? What else, that I mightn’t have known was evil, because I hadn’t left myself enough feeling, enough empathy, to judge? Suppose I came across something like this … Would I have woken up, one bright morning, and seen that look in my shaving mirror?

Back and forth they swirled, chattering, drinking, reaching up a hand to caress the tall white stones as they passed them. The stone was stained and scarred with what looked like firesmoke; it highlighted some sort of markings on them, rough crude scratchings hardly worth being claimed even as primitive art. They looked childish, moronic almost, and yet this elegant, excited crew was greeting them with an almost sensuous reverence.

‘Take me out to the ballgame!’ remarked Jyp laconically. ‘What’s the big attraction, old man? This is some sort of houmfor, right?’

Stryge sneered. ‘More than that, infant! Can you read the signs on those stones? I thought not! That is the work of these red savages, these Caribal apes, carved before other men came to these islands. This is a sobagui, an altar, one of their ancient shrines – and their cult, you will remember, was amusing.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said, with a sudden sinking feeling. ‘It’s not only the sea that’s named for them, is it? Caribals … Cannibals?’

‘You got it,’ said Jyp. ‘Can’t you just see it, them and the Wolves squabbling over our chitlings? Me, I’d sooner feed the Caribs – any day.’

‘Would you?’ Stryge spat in the dust. His voice was venomous with contempt. ‘When they slashed open your sides while you still lived, to stuff you with herbs and peppers for the spit? They worshipped cruel gods, that tribe, preying on their hapless neighbours to feed their observances. When slaves mingled with them, raised in cruelty, shaped with the lash and the brand – oh, they understood such worship all right. Some took it, mingled it with their own Congo witchcraft and the brutalities their masters taught them. They worshipped a new god then, one who set himself above the rest, whose rite could bind and bend them to his will. A cult of wrath and anger and revenge, drawing its strength from all things common men call vile.’

He turned to me, his gaunt face working with strange emotions. ‘You, boy – do you hear those drums? Do you? You who would not leave well enough alone, you who would meddle in the affairs of forces past the scope of your empty dreaming! They are the drums I made you hear, far away, beyond the ocean and the sunset, the tambours maringuin. They speak a name, softly yet; soon, more loudly, till the hillsides throb with the beat, and all in town or village tremble and bar their doors, clasp their charms tight against loup-garous and mangeurs moun. For this is the cult of Petro, the dark way of ouanga, the leftward path of vodun that can twist and deform even the Invisibles themselves into shapes of vicious evil. And this, tonight at these ancient stones, this is its ancestral tonnelle, the temple where it was first proclaimed.’

I felt deadly cold; but I was running with sweat. ‘You mean – that it was a ceremony like this? In the boiling water? That they were going to sacrifice –’

‘Triple idiot!’ raged the old man. ‘Crétin, can you not listen to a word I say? It was not some such ceremony! It was this ceremony! Here! Tonight, child of misfortune! A rite of sacrifice – and something more! And all your fool’s labours have served only to lead us to it! Not only she you sought to snatch back – all of us! To share her fate!’

He spoke loud enough for Clare to hear. I looked up in alarm and met her eyes, wide and wild with fright – and yet searching, I could tell, for some word to say. ‘You tried!’ she choked. ‘You tried – that’s what matters –’

But the others were silent, even Jyp; and Strgye laughed coldly. ‘You may think little enough of yourself to say that, child! But a chit’s life, or this hollow shell that calls itself a man, what are they to mine? I for one did not live in the worlds so long to be turned out of them on such a fool’s errand, and left to wander my own way back again!’

‘Then do something about it!’ barked Jyp. ‘Or go choke on your own forked tongue, you old copperhead –’

‘Stay!’ said Le Stryge, very sharply, and the fire gleamed on his greasy coat as he leaned forward, listening. Or was he listening? He seemed intent on some sense; but it was not one I shared. Then, very coldly, he laughed. ‘Do? What can I do, fettered in cold iron? No strength in me will pass it. Find me a force from outside, now … But for that, even could it be done, it is too late. Something comes, some other approaches …’ Suddenly the sweat stood out on his high brow and he cried out softly. ‘Evil is here! A strength – an evil ancient and strong. Not of my kind –’

He rounded on me, wild-eyed and panting, so hard he almost pulled Mall over. ‘You! You starver of your soul, you waverer between good and evil, taster of neither – you worshipper of emptiness, of gauds and trinkets! This is your doing, this you have brought on us! It draws nearer … nearer …’