by Iain Banks
Basically he got a two-minute start and then we all chased him. If he lasted for half an hour or got back to his bike without getting splatted again, he’d won. If he managed to splat any of us, we started the next day’s play a point down, but he had only one paintball for each of us, and we were allowed Noisy Death, meaning we could yell out when we were shot, which meant everybody else would know where we were, so if you were the prey, just slinging your gun over your back and running like fuck was generally agreed to be the best course and never mind trying to splat anybody back. There were more rules about not being able to cross the great lawn or the herb garden to keep it all interesting, but that was the gist of it.
We were quite far into the depths of the garden by this point, up near the arboretum (whatever that was – we had no idea at the time, though there were a lot of funny-looking trees around) with acres of parkland, the overgrown glen, the ornamental lake and the old walled garden between us and the house and the courtyard with our bikes in it. Opinion was divided whether this favoured us or Wee Malky.
Wee Malky disappeared into the darkness of an overgrown path, going mostly in the wrong direction, and Ferg and I counted down on my phone and his watch.
‘That’s a weird fu—’ Callum Murston began, then remembered you weren’t supposed to swear in front of George, in case he parroted the same language. ‘What sort of weird fu— what way’s that to go?’ he asked, pointing at where Malky had taken off into the undergrowth.
‘Could be quite a good choice, actually,’ Hugo said thoughtfully.
‘Aw, could it, ectually,’ Callum said.
George’s deep voice rumbled into action. ‘May I have a gun too, this time, please?’ He was the least paint-spattered of us, though even he’d taken a couple of stray hits – partly due to his sheer size, you had to suspect.
‘No, George!’ Hugo told him.
‘Oh.’
‘Zat no two minutes yet?’ Callum asked, annoyed.
‘Still fifty seconds to go,’ Ferg said.
I made a mm-hmm noise in agreement.
‘Aw, come oan!’ Callum said, slapping his gun. ‘That must be two minutes now!’
‘Forty-five seconds to go,’ Ferg said crisply.
‘Fu—’ Callum began, then just roared, ‘Ahm off !’
‘Ah wondered what the funny smell was!’ Phelpie yelled, as Callum stormed off, ducking under the hanging leaves and disappearing into the darkness of the path.
‘The rest of us might actually choose to adhere to the rules,’ Ferg said tightly, taking Phelpie by the collar. Phelpie shrugged him off but he stayed with the rest of us until the two minutes was up.
‘Right,’ Hugo said, when there was under half a minute to go, ‘there are at least half a dozen different ways young Malcolm can take back to the house, starting from that path.’ Hugo was in the officer cadet force at school and naturally tended to assume command. I think he regarded Ferg and me as his trusty yeoman lieutenants, though frankly we thought of ourselves more as ascetic commissars keeping a steely eye on the efficient but politically suspect toff. ‘He could even go as high as the top reservoir and still get back round to the house.’ Hugo clapped his brother on the shoulder. ‘I propose that George and I take the least demanding, lower route, to cut off his approach via the north side of the lake.’
‘Loch,’ Phelpie said.
‘Whatever,’ Hugo replied.
Ferg concentrated on his watch, lifting one finger.
‘Go,’ I said, and pocketed my phone.
Callum lost Wee Malky and blundered off into a bog, getting very annoyed. Most of the rest of us set off up the same path, taking different trails and tracks off it as it progressed, while Hugo and George and Phelpie took the most direct route back to the house. There was an offside rule about just lying in wait for the prey, but – appropriately – nobody entirely understood it. This party of three was halfway back to the house when they heard a lot of shouting uphill and assumed that Wee Malky had been spotted. Hugo left George in Phelpie’s charge and climbed a handy tree to take a look. When he got back down George had gone.
‘You were supposed to look after him!’ Hugo roared at Phelpie.
‘Aye, so? I told him no to go! What else could I dae, man? He’s a fuckin monster!’
At this, Hugo stepped forward and raised a hand and Phelpie thought a proper fight was about to kick off, but Hugo seemed to get a grip and just asked which way George had gone.
The stories diverge at this point. Later we reckoned Hugo was telling the truth and Phelpie sent him in the wrong direction deliberately, just to fuck with him, though Phelpie’s never admitted this.
All the shouting they’d heard involved a false alarm; some of us had spotted the mud-smeared Callum and mistaken him for Wee Malky. When we did see him, finally, it was a good quarter of an hour later, and there had been some mobile phoning to coordinate the hunt – supposedly banned, and not easy with the patchy reception on the estate, but sort of tolerated when somebody was proving particularly elusive, and also technically more effective where we were by now, high up on the wooded hillside that looked down on the main gardens.
‘There he is!’ Josh yelled.
About half the chasing pack had got together at the north side of the upper reservoir, near the furthest western extent of the house gardens before they gave out on to the rest of the estate and the grouse moors and plantation forests beyond. The upper reservoir was there to feed the ornamental lake and other water features below; it was a simple, slim, delta shape, a dammed miniature glen surrounded by woods with a grass-covered dam wall forming its eastern limit and a long, steeply sloped, stone-lined overflow at the far, south edge.
Josh had spotted Wee Malky running along the top of the dam wall, sprinting like a hare for the far side, where the overflow was.
A few of us had been up here already, before we’d been allowed in legally. The overflow had no bridge over it; if you wanted to cross it you’d have to walk along the submerged top lip of the thing: about seven metres of round-topped, weed-slicked stone under an amount of overflowing water that varied according to season and recent weather. There was deep, brown-black peaty water to one side – and reputedly some sort of undertow that meant you’d never surface again if you fell in – and that steep, twenty-metre-long slope of slimy-surfaced overflow on the other, pitched at about thirty-five or forty degrees and with stumpy stone pillars at the foot you wouldn’t want to encounter at the sort of speeds implied if you started sliding down from the top.
Callum claimed he had made this perilous crossing, as did a few older boys, but nobody we trusted had witnessed anybody doing it. Wee Malky was making straight for this scary, bravery-testing obstacle and the track on the far side, ignoring the steep grass slope of the dam wall dropping away to his left. There was a track at its foot that led back to the house, but that one constituted good going; he’d be overtaken by a faster runner. The way up the far side of the shallow stream that ran from the bottom of the overflow was covered with brambles and nettles, and looked almost impassable. If he crossed the overflow and we didn’t follow him, we’d lose him.
We were twenty-five minutes into the chase by this point, even not allowing for Callum’s early start, plus we were out of paintball range – a high, lucky shot might just hit Wee Malky, but it wouldn’t splat – so Malky crossing the overflow without pursuit would mean he’d win, we’d lose.
We all started yelling, and raced along the shore track after him, hoping to put him off just with the sheer amount of noise we were making. Hugo appeared, running from the other direction, joining us at the top of the dam summit.
‘Anybody seen George?’ he asked breathlessly. I don’t think many of us heard him; nobody answered, just streamed past him, turning along the top of the dam. Hugo jogged after us. ‘Look, have any of you seen—’
Wee Malky was at the overflow. We saw him step down carefully onto the round-topped, water-covered stones. The waves spilling over the t
op came up to his ankles. He started walking along, arms outstretched, the flowing water splashing out around his trainers. He wasn’t taking it slowly, either; he knew he needed to get to the other side fast and be in cover to get back out of paintball range.
He was halfway across and our sprint after him was starting to tell on our legs when somebody at the front of the pack suddenly pulled up, coming to a stop and causing somebody else behind to slam into him, making them both stumble and producing a mini pile-up behind them. They were looking down at the foot of the overflow.
‘Look,’ Hugo said, jogging up from behind, ‘have any of you guys seen …’
‘…George?’ somebody said.
Wee Malky had stopped in the centre of the overflow. We were coming to a straggled halt on the top of the dam.
Down at the bottom of the grassy slope, stepping down the halfmetre into the concrete channel and then wading upstream to the foot of the overflow slope, was George, holding, in both hands, a sword almost as big as he was.
‘Where’d that fucking come from?’ Phelpie breathed beside me. My throat didn’t seem to be working properly. ‘House,’ I managed to say, gulping, remembering the circles and fans of weapons arrayed across its walls.
The blade glittered in the sunlight and looked sharp as a newly broken bottle. Wee Malky was stock-still and staring down at George. George looked up at Wee Malky, making a threatening gesture with the big sword. George was still smiling, but that didn’t feel like it meant much beside the naked reality of that shining metal edge. George looked up towards us, held the heavy sword one-handed, and gave us a thumbs-up sign.
We had all come to a near-complete stop now, strung out in a line across the top of the dam, a few of us still stepping forward a little, to see properly. Hugo was shouting, ‘George! George! Just stay there; put the sword down, old son! Look, I’m coming down!’
George held up one hand to his ear. He was right at the foot of the overflow now, where the water zipped down and sprayed up against the stone stumps and – now – against George’s feet and bare calves, also darkening his khaki shorts. Maybe the water splashing all around him and fountaining up past his waist meant he couldn’t hear.
I looked at Wee Malky as Hugo started gingerly down the steep grass slope of the dam. Wee Malky looked petrified. He’d been running hard with all the desperation of having been pursued by a baying pack for nearly half an hour on a hot summer day, so he was drenched in sweat, his shirt sticking to him, his curly hair darkened to black and plastered against his skin. His eyes were wide as he looked at me. His head turned and he stared back down at George. He wobbled as he did this, arms waving wildly before he steadied again.
Nobody followed Hugo down the grassy dam. I suppose that sword – suddenly so adult compared to our play guns – had sent a chill through all of us. Everything felt very still, as though the air had coagulated around us.
I held one hand flat up to Wee Malky, patting the air, mouthing him to remain motionless, but he was still staring at George, who was continuing to waggle the sword. If it had just been a stick he was holding, it would have looked comical. Callum Murston came up and stood beside me, covered in drying mud, breathing hard and wiping snot from his nose.
Hugo was moving slowly down the dam wall. He had one hand on the grassy surface, helping him descend without going arse over tit, and the other held out to his brother, as though petting him, stroking him from a distance while he kept talking to him, telling him to put the sword down, that it was okay, that the game was over and it was time to go back to the house for drinks and cakes, and to put the sword back.
While we were all watching this, Callum raised his gun and fired, hitting Wee Malky in the head with a yellow splash of paint.
Wee Malky yelped and fell, splashing into the water on the overflow side, one arm reaching out to try to grasp the round stones at the summit, but failing. He started sliding down the slipway, arms flailing as he tried to stop or slow himself.
‘Aw, fuck,’ Callum said quietly.
‘What the—’ I started to say to Callum.
‘You fucking—’ Ferg began.
‘Ah, fuck youse,’ Callum breathed. He took a lungful of air and bent towards the distant figure of George, who was watching Wee Malky slide helplessly towards him and waving his sword enthusiastically. George was still smiling, though not so much. He shifted his feet, widened his stance. Wee Malky started screaming, high and faint and ragged, like he couldn’t get his breath.
‘It’s over!’ Callum roared down at George. ‘That’s the boy deid! Ah shot him! Put the fuckin blade down, ya big Mongo cunt, ye!’
Halfway down the steep grass slope and giving the tricky descent his full attention, Hugo hadn’t seen Wee Malky fall and start to slide down the slipway, but he must have realised what had happened. He gave up on his tentative, safety-first, no-sudden-movements approach and stood up to start running down the grass, taking only a couple of steps before one of his feet went out from under him and he started falling, limbs flailing even more wildly than Wee Malky’s.
‘Hi! Ahm talkin to you! You fuckin listening, ya moron?’ Callum was yelling at George, who just smiled back and waved the sword.
In some ways, the worst thing – the thing that plagued my nightmares for years – was watching Wee Malky trying everything to save himself. It hadn’t been his fault he’d fallen in the first place and now he did all he could to stop himself falling further; within a second or two you could see him trying to use his hands and fingernails as claws to scrape through the layer of weed into the stone beneath, then, when that did almost nothing to slow him, he tried to grab at the lengths of weeds, to use them like ropes he could hold on to. He even wrestled for a moment with his paintball gun, attempting to use it like an ice axe, but there was nothing on it the right shape and sharpness to bite through the weed, and hold.
Usually with something like this – though in the past, of course, it had always been something less than this, something sickening only at the time, like the rope on a tree swing breaking or somebody going over a bike’s handlebars – you could comfort yourself that, had it been you, you’d have tried something else, been more resourceful or just quicker-thinking, so that what had hurt your friend wouldn’t have happened to you.
Even at the time, though, and for all those years of nightmares afterwards, nightmares that still resurface for me about once or twice a year, I knew I’d have been just as helpless as Wee Malky, my fate as hopelessly out of my hands.
Hugo landed heavily at the foot of the grass slope, but bounced back up, only to fall over again immediately as his broken ankle flopped out from under him. It looked horrible, like his foot was held on to his leg only by his sock. Phelpie, a couple of metres away from me, went white. Hugo shouted in pain, then yelled at George as he got back up and started hopping towards his brother.
I looked at Ferg. ‘We should—’ I said, and started forward towards the top of the slope. Ferg didn’t say anything, just grabbed me by the upper arm with a strength I wouldn’t have known he had. So we stood, in that terrible frozen moment, the air grown thick around us, the edge of the sword like a crease down all our lives, a flickering hinge that would divide our histories into the times before and after this instant.
Wee Malky sounded hoarse with fear as he raced down towards the slipway foot. George stood there, the sword raised above his head. In the last moments, Wee Malky gave up trying to stop his slide and brought his gun up, aiming at George and trying to fire, but the gun wouldn’t work.
‘George!’ Hugo screamed.
‘Give it up ya—’ Callum screamed too, and started firing at George. A couple of us joined in and landed a couple of shots; none burst, just bouncing off George and plopping into the water.
Wee Malky was the last one to scream as he came careening down the slipway and slammed into one of the stone stumps with a thudding noise we could hear from the top of the dam, an impact worse than the one we’d all felt when Hugo h
ad landed at the bottom of the slope. Wee Malky’s voice cut off and he sort of draped round the stone pillar, a step away from George, who turned and brought the sword down from high above his head, whacking into Wee Malky’s body, making it jerk. George paused, straightened, raised the sword high again.
About half of us looked away at this point. Phelpie fainted, crumpling onto the grass, and another two or three of us had to sit down. Hugo had fallen again and was forced to drag himself the last metre to the side of the overflow channel. He looked on despairingly as his brother landed the final couple of blows; they fell with dull thuds we all saw and felt rather than heard.
The water around George and heading away downstream was flooding with red now. What was left of Wee Malky looked like a pile of sodden rags wrapped round the base of the little stone pillar, his body shaken and pummelled by the tearing, scooping water, but otherwise unmoving.
George laid the sword down carefully on top of the pillar, smiled a great beaming smile – first at Hugo, then round at all the rest of us – and raised both his clenched fists high above his head in triumph.
The pathologist’s report said Wee Malky had been knocked unconscious by the blow against the stone pillar at the foot of the overflow channel. He had been killed by multiple blows to the body and head by a long, sharp-bladed instrument, and died of either blood loss or major head trauma; both had occurred within such a short interval it was impossible to say and, anyway, made no practical difference.
We never saw George again; he went back into a secure unit and stayed there until he died a couple of years back. We barely saw Hugo again, either; he spent his time at school, on holidays abroad and behind the once again closed-to-us walls of the estate. The ankle healed fine; he’s run marathons since. He studied medicine at Edinburgh and as of last year he’s a cosmetic surgeon in Los Angeles. They love that accent. Trust it, too. Though of course everybody thinks he’s English. Apparently he’s given up trying to persuade them otherwise.