Chapter 26
Arrowcatcher
Like I said, I’ve always taken pleasure in my ability to be still and quiet when I’m hunting or looking at things without them noticing me.
So much satisfaction that I’d allowed all my concentration to focus on what was happening in front of me and not enough on what was creeping up the stairs behind me.
The sharpness was unmistakably a knife at my throat. I could feel the hotness of breath on my ear as a voice barely whispered in it.
They are the Russians. And they’ll kill us soon as look at us. And if they don’t, they’ll do worse, like they did to Freya.
The knife released the pressure and went away as Storm took her hand off my mouth. I slowly turned to look at her, conscious that the voices below were carrying on their conversation and so hadn’t heard us.
She looked furious, almost sizzling with anger, like fat in a frying pan. I leaned towards her and whispered as softly as I could.
I think they’re OK, I said. Not Russian
She shook her head twice, violently, without breaking eye contact. Then she reached up and grasped my chin, her face hard as a sledgehammer, not a shred of give in her eyes, only a sudden kind of cold contempt at my not getting it. Her fingers were tight as a vice.
Not Russian? she breathed.
And then as if she’d run out of words that might help communicate with someone so dense, she shook her head and stabbed her finger at her neck. Then two fingers at my eyes. And then back at her neck and then furiously down at the trio sitting round the fire.
She wanted me to see something I’d missed.
So I again edged to the margin of the shadow where it slashed in from the lip of the window opening and looked.
At first I saw nothing odd. Certainly Grey Hair had nothing odd about her neck, and nor did Scar Girl.
But then Bear Shirt stretched and leaned in to put another branch on the fire and as the embers rekindled, I saw it swinging clear of the neck of the sweatshirt, catching the glint of the flames.
It was the same necklace, the twin to that same strange key on a steel ball necklace that the man I had killed had worn.
The necklace that had made Freya almost suicidal again.
The key to all our fears. The key that obviously unlocked their identity, however nice they seemed.
The key proved it. They had to be Russians.
I eased back into the shadows feeling like I was stepping back from the edge of a much bigger abyss that had nearly seductively pulled me past the point of no return, and into its depths.
I was stupid. I was soft. I nearly got us all killed by strangers, history repeating itself.
Storm must have seen the apology behind the shock in my face.
It doesn’t matter, she whispered. We just go. And we go now.
There was a new toughness in her voice. She’d taken charge.
I followed her as we crept back down the stairs, silent, scarcely daring to breathe.
I retrieved my bow and the quiver full of arrows, gripping them tightly so there was no chance of them rattling and giving us away as we ran fast and low along the shadow the fire threw across the open ground towards the safety of the trees beyond.
Trouble is the trees didn’t just hide us. They hid the fallen wall and the glass window in it that cracked under Storm’s foot and made a sharp unnatural noise that split the night air like an axe.
Shit, she said.
We both froze and looked back. All we could see was the dark tower bisecting the half circle of firelight illuminating the trees beyond it.
I don’t think they heard, I said.
And then we saw them. Two silhouettes coming round the edge of the tower and barrelling towards us. And barking.
The dogs were on our trail.
Storm suddenly looked lost, not in control any more.
I grabbed her, shook her out of her freeze, and dragged her alongside me as we pelted helter-skelter through the tangle of trees and undergrowth that whipped us as we passed.
I risked a fast look back and saw the two dogs had stopped and were sniffing at the fallen wall, and then just turned and ran on, now with Storm a few paces ahead of me.
For a treacherous moment I believed the dogs would stop there and go back to the fire, but then I heard bodies crashing through the vegetation behind us and realised the chase was still on.
Don’t stop, I gasped, keep running, we just keep running.
Storm caught a branch in her face that nearly slapped her off her feet, but she righted herself and kept hurtling forwards without a sound other than the breath hacking out of her mouth as she ran.
It was a desperate low and feral noise, like pure fear.
I realised the same sort of noise was coming from me.
I didn’t dare waste a moment looking back, but I could hear the noises behind me getting closer, and then I thought they had faded away, but then I realised that it had started to rain and the sound of the raindrops hitting the leaf canopy all round and over us was drowning out the sounds.
I think could have run through the pain and the harsh burn in my lungs and gone on and on for ever.
That was certainly my intention. But then Storm got ankled by something in the undergrowth and tumbled hard, half somersaulting and sprawling awkwardly amid the brambles and tree roots.
I skidded to a stop to lift her to her feet.
And then heard the sharp barking and growling behind me.
I turned then to see the new dog was ten feet way, at bay, barking excitedly at us.
I instinctively held my hand out.
It’s OK, I whispered. Hey, it’s OK…
The dog just barked louder.
Get out of the way! hissed Storm from behind me.
Sometimes the past is gone for ever, like a hole in the ocean, sometimes a ghost of it remains in the mind, blurry and indistinct, more a memory of a memory even, closer to a feeling than a true recollection. And sometimes it’s just sharp-edged and real as if it’s happening to you all over again.
That’s how I remember the next few seconds.
Storm wanting me to get out of the way.
The new, strange dog braced in front of me, teeth bared, ready to attack as it barked its challenge in my face, hard to see clearly in the dark, but easy to feel as a noisy painful future about to happen.
Distant sound of whistling as Bear Shirt and the others try and get the dogs back.
And I have time to think that it’s good that the sound of that whistling is still far away, that they haven’t run wildly into the dark after their dogs.
They’re being safe, they’re not being reckless, not like me, but we might still get away with it because they aren’t coming yet and so we have a chance to escape into the night.
And then much too soon, much too close the other dog bursts out the bushes behind the one at bay and bounds right past it.
And jumps for me.
And Storm hisses to move again,
and I don’t because this other dog, the old strange dog, Digger’s friend who might be called Jip is all over me, whining and wagging and licking and I turn to tell Storm it’s OK and as I do so I open up her view of the barking dog that is not barking now but looking at me and Digger’s friend and before I can say No she lets loose with the arrow she has ready
but thought is faster than words and I’m already raising my hand to stop her
and I see everything in detail as she lets go of the wet bowstring and the rain sprays off it and the arrow is heading for the dog
and then my hand feels like a hammer hit it, a brutal, blunt impact that is – even before I realise exactly what just happened – irrefutably serious and irrevocable, a life thing that cannot now be undone
and it is a dull, numbing blow even though I see now that the sharp tip has sliced its way neatly through the hand that I have thrown out to try and block the arrow from killing the dog
the arrow that now sticks out halfway on either side of my hand
it almost looks funny, and I hear myself grunt and choke off a half-laugh as I stare at it. It wasn’t a proper kind of laugh of course. More like the sound of my mind catching up.
The dogs are silent. Like they sense something really different has just happened and don’t know how to react either.
The only sound is the wind and the drizzle in the trees, and the distant whistling of the three round the campfire.
Storm seems frozen in horror. And because it is too new a wound to have had time to make itself at home and settle in to the serious business of really hurting, I acted like nothing important had happened.
It’s OK, I lied and turned back to the dogs.
Digger’s friend whined at me and licked my good hand as I reached down and turned him around by main force.
It’s OK, I said again. Good boy. Go now.
I shoved him away towards the distant glow of the fire, and then I turned and grabbed Storm, pushing her in the opposite direction, and ran on after her, hoping the dogs wouldn’t follow.
They did for a bit, running with us, not chasing, and my memory goes blurry again, maybe because I was trying to run and not catch the arrow that was sticking a foot out of either side of my hand on anything as we passed.
I ran with it sort of cradled against my chest, point down, the feathers rasping against the crook of my neck.
I don’t know how long we ran. But by the time we stopped the dogs had stopped following us and when we held out breaths and tried to hear any whistling or other noises of pursuit over the pounding of our hearts hammering in our ears there was none, and the dogs were gone.
We hadn’t seen them peeling off and heading back to the fire.
Too busy trying not to fall over what was in front of us to see what was falling off behind us.
We sat back on a fallen log and tried to suck enough oxygen back into ourselves to feel like humans and not just frightened prey.
Dogs are gone, panted Storm.
I didn’t have the breath to do anything but nod. At the time it felt like a miracle. And some miracles happen without you noticing.
Your hand, she said.
I nodded again.
Sorry, she said. I—
I shook my head and snapped my fingers at her.
Knife, I said.
It was all the talking I had breath for. And, I suppose, all the conversation I had stomach for too.
She took out my knife and held it out. I rested the arrow on the trunk and chopped the knife down, severing the feathers. I felt the impact as a sharp shock that spasmed my hand. All the breath I’d been furiously getting back inside me punched back out into the air in a gasp of pain.
Mouse, she said.
I yanked the arrow through the hole in my hand in one fast move. It was already hurting so bad I thought I might as well do it fast as it couldn’t be worse.
I was wrong about that too. I grunted again and bent double over my hand.
Mouse, she said again, sounding close to tears. Are you—
I stood and looked at my hand. I couldn’t see much. It felt smashed. But I could make a fist.
It didn’t break anything serious, I said through gritted teeth. Let’s go.
You must be bleeding, she said. We should…
I held out the cut arrow,
Keep this, I said. We’ll need the arrowhead.
But you’re bleeding, she said, we should—
I could feel the wetness in my hand. It was just wetness, not anything spurting. No artery bleeding me out like that deer in the quarry.
Next time we stop, I said. Bleeding’s fine. It’ll wash out the dirt until we can get a clean dressing on it.
That wasn’t a sensible thing to do, but it wasn’t a sensible kind of night. We ran on.
At some point we found the canal again and stopped, once more sobbing for breath.
I’m going to wrap your hand, she said.
I let her. And that was the first time I realised how hurt I was.