Then I heard another bark, so close it could have been on top of me, and another sound: branches cracking, heavy footsteps stomping through the snow. My god, I thought, the Troll King has come for his damned tail after all!
I buried my face deeper in the snow, covered my head with my heads, refusing to look up. And suddenly a grip like a dragon’s claw was on me. I wailed again, even I was hauled up and flung over on my back. My vision was swimming – I saw a monstrous head, a cavernous mouth gaping at me, eyes glaring wide and wild, while the sound of barking filled my ears.
“It’s me!” a voice boomed. The enormous troll shook me like a pheasant in the jaws of a hound. “It’s me, you bloody fool!”
It was only then that I realised the troll was speaking English. My vision started to focus. And there, above me, was the dim outline of a face that I did know. But I think it was the retriever licking my cheek that brought me fully back to my senses. I sat up. Or rather Fleming pulled me upright, and then hefted me onto my feet.
“It’s thunder, you silly Englishman. Only thunder.” I was gasping for breath, unable to speak. “Here.” He dusted the worst of the snow off my coat and out of my hair. “I’m guessing you found nothing then,” he growled softly.
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
He made a rumbling noise deep in his throat that I took for a sigh. And for a second, we just stood there in silence.
His huge shoulders, the whole frame of him, seemed to sag with exhaustion. And now the silhouette before me was that of an old, tired man at the end of his life. Wearily, he began to turn back towards the terrace – obviously retaining his sense of direction better than I – when over the swell of the storm, a scream broke from the house, so sharp, so piercing that my blood turned to ice.
Fleming’s head snapped up. “Malene,” he murmured. And then his murmur rose to a cry. “Malene!”
There was another anguished shriek from the house, answered by the shrill wind gusting through the treetops. It had hardly ended before Fleming was stumbling through the pine trees and I after him, his faithful retriever bounding along through the undergrowth ahead of us.
We broke cover of the trees and crossed the white expanse back to the house in seconds, thighs burning with the effort against the drag of the snow. Up the steps, across the terrace, blind to the hazard of slipping and breaking our skulls, in through the windows still flapping in the wind. The hulking man stormed ahead of me into the hallway, throwing aside the furniture that blocked his path like it was matchwood.
That was when the howling began. A weird and mournful skirl coming through the open door ahead of us. One hound at first, answered by the others until they were all at it, like a pack of wolves crying to a pitiless moon.
Fleming half-ran, half-staggered down the darkened hallway and threw wide the door to his sitting room, with me hard on his heels. The heat hit us once again like a hammer-blow. But he had no sooner crossed the threshold than he came to a dead halt. He stared and I peered round him. And this is what I saw.
The wolfhounds stood in a circle on their long legs under the boss in the ceiling, shaggy muzzles upturned, howls rising higher and higher till suddenly, savagely, they started barking, glaring up at the coat of arms with eyes full of hate, above which Fleming’s wife lay shrieking amid the rage of the storm.
There was a sudden crash as a window on the north side of the room blew open, the storm’s assault finally breaking in. The curtains billowed crazily as the room filled with icy blasts, the door behind us slammed shut. Even the walls seemed to be shaking now and the black chandeliers tossing and swinging in the buffeting air with a screech of grinding metal.
Fangs flashed white and cruel in the firelight, muzzles pinched, shoulder blades hunched. We, too, looked up. The stone boss was shaking – a little at first, but then with more and more violence until the symbols blurred. The noise was now a cacophony of rattling furniture and wind and howls and snarls and human screams.
All at once the boss cracked; and the next moment it was flung down to the floor below in a tumble of plaster and paint and dust. The dogs leapt clear of the falling masonry, their barks more savage than ever. The boss hit the ground, dashing stone in all directions, an explosion of dust; and when the dust began to clear, I saw lying there amid the rubble something that I can never forget.
Slick and shining in the flickering firelight, black as pitch and long as a man is tall, lay the curves of some creature’s tail. Thick as a man’s fist at one end and scaled along its length, the tail glistened among the shattered stone and plaster like a spill of oil. My eyes moved from one end to the other, where it tapered then spread into a clump of coarse, black hair. It seemed like the product of some obscene coupling between rat and bull. And I could not tear my eyes from it. In my chest, I felt my heart quail – as if the thing emitted some foul and malignant spirit to steal a man’s courage.
The wolfhounds shrank back from the hideous object, snarling and snapping, yet too fearful to approach. Then suddenly a shadow sprang forward from Fleming’s side. It was a moment before I recognised the retriever, the old Count’s favourite, whose thunderous bark split the dusty air. Without breaking stride, the dog seized the thing in his jaws, bound on, and then jumped, hurling himself and the tail headlong into the fire.
The black dog and the black tail were visible among the flames for hardly a second before the fire curled up around them, roaring out of the fireplace like a great belch of burning air.
And then, they were gone.
Not a trace of the dog. Not a trace of the tail. Vanished in the furnace.
The flames shrank lower now, the dogs sank down to their rug, their snarling ceased, the chandeliers stilled, and everything was quiet again. Even the wind retreated back into the night, leaving in its wake only clouds of gently falling dust.
Fleming stood in mute horror looking at the broken ceiling. Not looking perhaps, but listening. For there were no more sounds from above either. Malene’s voice had fallen silent.
Neither of us spoke a word. Nothing moved. The room and everything in it seemed frozen. Spellbound …
Until, quietly at first, then clearer, footsteps sounded above us. Faint across a landing, then the ring of leather on stone, louder and louder, descending the staircase, drawing closer. We turned to face the door, unable to do more. The dust had settled now. Apart for the broken boss, all was as it had been.
There was a smart double-knock and the door began to open.
A woman in pale green overalls stood in the doorway. “Count Trolleskjold,” she said.
He made no answer, only motioned his rugged head.
The woman spoke. “Congratulations. You have a beautiful new son. And the Countess is now resting.”
Upstairs, a baby started to cry.
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A Winter's Night Page 4