“Maybe they don’t like wolves.” Will bared his teeth in a nervous grimace. “I can’t say I’m too comfortable around them either.”
“They’re here to help. Let’s go see them.” I strolled towards the gate and sensed Will hesitate before he followed.
Shad reared up onto all fours as we approached. Will edged behind me, and I hid my amusement.
“Not long now.” I didn’t know how much human speech Shad understood in this state, but wolf senses would probably make his grasp of the situation better than mine anyway.
I was scared and elated at the same time. Getting high on adrenaline. A wild grin kept stretching my face. I stripped off my shirt, threw it under the apple tree and gripped my spear. Bring it on.
Shad’s ears pricked forward, and he spun towards the theatre. The pack rose as one. Their fur fluffed out, as if they were ready to spring at something.
Will started to say something, but his gaze wavered over my head, and his jaw hung open. I turned and looked up.
Figures were climbing into view in a line along the roof of the theatre and its adjoining buildings. They ranged out in menacing silence, silhouetted against the pale early-morning sky, and stared down at us.
So this was the Hare army. I recognised them. Not as individuals, but as a group. They looked like a biker gang. These were the men who’d fought that deadly battle I’d walked into outside the theatre the previous week. Some of them, anyway. The other combatants had almost certainly been Tin soldiers, and I wondered which family the one who died in my arms had belonged to.
They had bows and arrows. They were about to fire.
“Cover,” Big Luke yelled.
Will and I pulled up two shields each and held them vertically like a wooden wall to protect ourselves and the wolf pack. Others did the same thing all over the square, and just in time, for a heavy rain of arrows thumped into the shields. The force of the blows took me by surprise, as did the next flight, which followed within seconds.
Will grunted. “Fucking hell, this is bad.”
“It’ll be okay.” As far as I could see, everyone was huddled behind a shield wall and fully protected.
“They’ll be down among us soon, and these lumps of wood will be useless.”
“We’ve got these guys to help us.” I grinned, first at Will, then back at the wolves, and shouted, “We can take these bastards, can’t we?”
Shad howled his answer, long and low, and the rest of the pack joined him.
No more arrows thumped into our shields, but some individual shouted from the theatre roof. I couldn’t make out the words, but the tone sounded ominous. I sneaked a look around the side of my shield.
He was a thin, bald old man, dressed in a cape of feathers. He held an ornate staff at arm’s length.
“A wizard.”
“Huh?” Will peered at me from behind his shield.
“They’ve got a wizard with them. Or a witch. Or something.”
The old man’s voice took on a new note of command. He pointed his staff at the houses behind us and bellowed a single word of command.
Everything paused; then a woman screamed.
“That’s Delores.” Will spun around in a crouch.
Something heavy crashed over and through the top of the hedge. Something moving very fast. Three huge panthers tore into the wolf pack right behind us. The pack fell onto them, and in an instant our immediate vicinity became a snarling, snapping, ripping, biting, blood-splattered nightmare.
Will and I scrambled away from the melee and watched in horror, only remembering to hold our shields firm when a third flight of arrows struck from above.
Another imperious call came from the roof, but this time it was matched by a similar call from Andrew. He, Fliss and Linda sheltered behind a semicircle of shields, holding hands and boldly facing the Hare wizard. Andrew shouted something at him directly. They ducked as a storm of arrows thudded into their wooden wall, but stood tall again straightaway and glared up at the roof.
The wizard waved his staff both ways along his battle line, and the archers took aim again, but their arrows fell harmlessly only a few feet from their bows. The wizard screamed in rage, and something invisible battered into our magic team. They and their shield wall staggered back a step, but they held firm, and Andrew barked a defiant laugh.
“They’re coming down,” Big Luke shouted.
The archers had abandoned their bows. They bumped and shuffled down the sloping roofs, dropped to the ground and drew swords as they ran toward us.
The wolf pack was being ripped to pieces. They fought the panthers with everything they had, but half of them lay dead, and all of them were mauled. Shad snarled and snapped viciously as he backed away, while two of the cats advanced on him.
I dropped my shields, grabbed a spear and ran at the nearest one. It was awesomely powerful. It turned on me at the last moment in a blur of speed and drove itself onto my spear point, and I rammed hard and forced the sharp stake deep into its chest. It screamed hot spittle into my face and fell heavily on top of me.
It was like being crushed under a velvet-coated car. The fight between wolf and panther continued around me and next to me and over me. The dead cat trapped my legs, but Will dragged me clear and helped me scramble away.
“You’re fucking mad.” But he laughed wildly.
“Come on.” I grabbed another spear and rammed it into the flank of the cat Shad was fighting. Will rammed his spear in alongside mine, and we held on while the huge animal screamed in pain and rage and pushed hard against its struggles, trying to keep it away from us as much as to kill it.
Shad ripped out its throat, and it fell dead at our feet. The other wolves rounded on the remaining cat and backed it to the apple tree, where it hissed and lashed out at them with its massive paws until their combined weight bore it down. It disappeared beneath them, and its screams of rage and agony mixed with the wolves’ savage snarls.
The soldiers were among us, and everyone was fighting. Cindy and Debs walked forward steadily and spun their fire ropes faster than the eye could follow, flashing them in the faces of the Hare soldiers, breaking the assault on their group as insiders circled around and caught the invaders in a pincer movement. Big Luke led his insiders at the run and clashed against the main force.
We joined Luke’s fight, where the Hare numbers were greatest. I wielded my heavy spear as if it were an extension of my arms, which is exactly how it felt. At first I tried to club and repel rather than stab. But the Hare were experienced warriors armed with all kinds of wicked blades, and I found myself fighting for my life and killing them as savagely as they wanted to kill me.
The spirited defence had taken the invaders by surprise, but they rallied to the shouted orders of their wizard, and the ensuing violence was brutal, almost overwhelming.
Min’s voice carried across the noise. Her brief burst of song was urgent.
“Min,” Will and I shouted at the same time. We broke free from the fight and sprinted around to Jimmy’s house, where he and Delores were trying desperately to hold off twenty Hare soldiers, while Min clutched her throat and staggered, glaring mute hatred at the wizard.
We charged into them from behind. I stuck my spear through the nearest Hare back and accidentally hoisted him into the air. He screamed as he arched. I threw him off the end of the spear into a group of his brothers and stabbed them all repeatedly. One of them caught me a glancing blow off the top of my head with a club, and another sliced my forearm with his blade, but I felt only rage, and they both went down under my feet.
A brawny Hare warrior swung his arm around Min’s neck and dragged her backwards towards the garden. I couldn’t reach her. There were too many soldiers between us. I stabbed and kicked like a madman, but the big man kept dragging her farther away.
Will flew at him and used his spear like a club. It snapped across the warrior’s back, and he threw Min to the ground. Will stabbed at him, but the man grabbed the spear with one ha
nd and pulled Will towards him while he swung his machete with the other.
The terrible blade seemed to move in slow motion. It sliced Will’s throat wide-open. His blood jetted and showered Min as his body crumpled to the ground.
Two wolves hit Will’s killer from behind and dragged him down. He screamed like an animal as they tore him to pieces. The rest of the pack ripped into the other soldiers surrounding me and killed them in seconds before streaking back into the garden to attack the remaining Hare force.
I ran to Min. She cradled Will and rocked him. I rested my hand on her shoulder for a moment. Then I left her to mourn in private and walked into the garden.
The battle had come to a bloody end once the wolves piled in. The only attacker to survive was the wizard. He pointed his staff down at Andrew in a menacing gesture before turning to disappear.
Andrew hung his head.
My legs wouldn’t support me anymore. I crumpled to the ground in the midst of the carnage.
Chapter Sixteen
Tara stood over me in a dazzle of rising sun. “Are you all right?”
I nodded.
“Sure?” She crouched to lay a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll be okay. Thanks.”
She squeezed my shoulder and moved on to the next exhausted insider. She and her assistants had already treated the wounded, including the werewolves as they changed back into human form and their injuries became apparent. Only nine Axe warriors had survived.
“I didn’t know, you know.”
Delores took Tara’s place in the sun halo.
I squinted up at her. “That your dancers were Hare panthers?”
“Yes. If I’d known, I never would have hooked up with them and brought them to the square.”
“I know.” I understood why she wanted to talk, but I simply had nothing more for her. For anyone. I’d been hollowed out.
People brought clothing into the garden and helped the Axe warriors to dress. Big Luke and Jimmy were piling Hare bodies onto carts and wheelbarrows. Others were laying the dead insiders out on one of the lawns. I hadn’t seen Min since Will died.
A new commotion broke the subdued air when the Axe mothers and children arrived in the square. Ban strode naked into the garden with Anya’s wolf body cradled in his powerful arms. He had eyes only for Shad.
Ban lowered his sister’s body to the ground and crouched beside her, stroking the fur around her neck and murmuring something to her. Then he straightened and swung a haymaker punch that knocked Shad flat on his back. It would have knocked most men into next week.
Shad got to his feet again and worked his jaw. “Ban.”
“Half our warriors are lying dead out there.”
“I know. There are more of our dead here.”
Ban half turned away and swung another massive punch at his alpha, but this time Shad deflected the blow with his forearm.
“I am hurting as much as you are,” he growled. “I gave you one because you needed it. You want another one? You will have to earn it.”
The two big bruisers stood toe-to-toe and glared at each other for long moments before Ban turned on his heel and strode back into the Wild.
Shad lifted Anya from the ground, held her tenderly to his chest and buried his face in her neck fur. When he raised his head, his tears were flowing freely. “Come,” he told his people. “We will care for our fallen.”
Min stood over me. “I can’t sing for them, but I want to be there when they tend to their dead. Are you coming?” Her throat sounded raw and painful.
I squinted up at her. “They didn’t need to die.”
“What?”
“If you and I had stayed in the Axe village, Tyac wouldn’t have attacked them on their way here. He wasn’t interested in them. It was us he wanted. They would have arrived here alive, and there would have been enough of them to take the panthers and the Hare army. I said this back there, but no one would listen.”
Her voice cracked into a hoarse whisper. “If we’d stayed alone back in the village, the ward would have faded after a few days, and Tyac would have got in.”
“We wouldn’t have been alone. They needed to send a war party here, not the entire tribe. If Anya was the only one who could sing the ward every day, she could have stayed with us. They would have managed fine when they got here.”
Angry tears blurred my vision. “Anya would still be alive. If the war party had got here in full strength, maybe Will would still be alive too.”
Min stared at the ground. A tear dropped into Will’s blood on her shirt.
“And we were leading Tyac right back to our friends in the square.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, smearing the dried blood that covered me. “You know what, love? I’m sick of other people making decisions for me. I’m sick of people assuming they’re qualified to do that. It isn’t going to happen anymore.”
She raised her head. “You mean me.”
“Among others, yes. I love you, Min, but I won’t let you control me anymore. The spoon-feeding me with only as much information as you think I can handle? That stops now. Overruling my judgement on the basis that I only remember one life? That stops too. If you love me, love me for who I am now, not who I was.”
She broke eye contact to watch the Axe leave. “You coming?”
I had some thinking to do. “Say goodbye for me.”
The silence inside the theatre made my ears roar. Most of my tools were scattered over the garden, leaving me a solitary hand axe and three wood chisels on the bench. I’d have to go round and collect them in a while. Not that I’d be doing anything more to the theatre while Tyac was still coming after me.
I stood centre stage and gazed through dust mites dancing in shafts of sunlight, but my mind was elsewhere, and I saw only violence and blood and terror and pain.
Rage exploded inside me, and I hurled the axe across the stage. It thumped into a solid vertical beam at just above head height. I imagined the beam was Tyac’s head.
“Got one of them for me?” Andrew spoke from the arena. He shuffled up onto the stage, carrying a duffel bag over one shoulder and his flute bag over the other. He looked as if he’d aged twenty years in a single night. “Know what they’re calling you out there?”
I shrugged.
“Lion man.” He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know, do you? You were roaring all through the fight. Roaring like a lion.”
What fresh bollocks was this? All I’d been doing was shouting in the heat of the moment.
“Tara said it, didn’t she? You’re a lion.”
Whatever. I nodded at the bag. “Leaving?”
“Yep. Can’t stay now they know I betrayed them.”
“Will you go to the Hare?”
“Hell no. That bitch read me like a book and used me.”
I understood. “All you wanted was for the square to live on.”
“More than that. I had this vision for the insiders to see the wider world out in the Wild and for the square to be a place where people would come together. The last thing I expected was that she’d attack us. And I didn’t know about those fucking cat dancers working for her neither.”
“Where will you go?”
“Dunno. Somewhere the Hare wizard can’t find me.”
He stood passively while I hugged him. Then he left without another word.
I stayed under the shower for ages, long after the blood had washed off and swirled down the drain. Hot water blasting onto my aching muscles helped physically, but didn’t improve my frame of mind.
I made a pot of coffee, my first in days, and leaned in the front doorway to enjoy the sounds of another innocent Barbican day getting under way.
“Lion man.” Jimmy joined me. “You okay?”
I shrugged. “You?”
He copied my shrug. “It’ll take some getting over, but we’ll manage.”
A seagull cried overhead. Answering calls from the harbour echoed up the narrow lanes.
; Jimmy gestured over his shoulder with his thumb. “Don’t feel bad about the theatre. I can’t do the stuff you do, but I’ll do what I can until you come back.”
How long would that be?
He nodded at the row of abandoned motorcycles up the lane. “Might put them in the square. Those Hare guys don’t need them anymore.”
That wasn’t a bad idea. “I’ll take one for Min and me.”
“Take two. She can handle a bike.” He held out his hand awkwardly. “Look after yourself, Joe.”
I pulled him into a hug. “You too. We’ll come back as soon as we can.”
I poured another mug of coffee and returned to the doorway to enjoy the seagulls’ song, but my peace crumbled when the black car drew up at the kerb and Sebastian Merritt climbed out.
“Good morning.” He brushed past me into the building. My building.
I followed him as he strolled into the arena and onto the stage. He glanced around the place with a coolly interested air as I placed my coffee on the bench.
“Major activity in this area last night, Joe. Major. Are you ready to talk to me about it?” He turned his sleek smile towards me.
I caught him off balance, ran him backwards across the stage, slammed him into the upright beam and pinned him there with my hand around his throat. The axe handle jutted from the timber just above his head, but I was careful not to look at it directly.
If this bastard was Tyac, could I kill him while he was a man? Could I grab the axe and take his fucking head off?
Yes. I glared into his eyes and knew I could kill him.
He knew it too. For the flicker of an instant his eyes showed fear. Normal fear. Normal, human fear. And I knew in my gut he wasn’t the monster.
I hoped I was right anyway, because I released him and stepped away. “No, I don’t want to talk to you at all. Leave me alone.”
He was smooth. I’ll give him that. He adjusted his tie, smoothed his lapels and smiled as if I’d never laid a finger on him.
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