"Who Dares Loses. My heart bleeds. Another one?"
I bought him a fresh Scrumpy Jack and a Theakston's Old Peculier for myself. My second pint of the night, and my last. I never took it further than the two, not any more. That was my limit. Exceeding it led to trouble. Anger. Flare-ups. Punches. Bruises. Police. Holding cells. Cautions. I'd been down that road too many times. I'd even done a short stint at Her Majesty's pleasure. Never again. The pleasure had been all hers.
"What d'you reckon, then?" Abortion asked. He was Devon born and after a drink or two his West Country burr always got thicker. The "r" of his "reckon" dragged while the "ck" in the middle all but vanished.
"I rrre'un," I said, "that blogger's pulling everyone's leg. Two grand a week? For washed-up non-coms like us?"
"The impression I got is they're not too fussy."
"They'd have to not be. I mean, there's me with eighty per cent hearing loss in one ear and a titanium plate in my skull, and there's you with your, well, habit. We're hardly what you'd call prime soldiering material. They'd have to be pretty desperate to take us on, and if their standards are that low then what sane person would want to sign up with them anyway?"
"Do you miss it?" said Abortion. It sounded like a non sequitur but wasn't.
"The army? What's to miss? Low pay. Appalling housing. Getting shouted at all the time. Getting shot at. Going round the world to visit the dingiest shitholes there are, putting your life on the line fighting a war some nob-end in Whitehall thinks is a good idea but no one else does, saddled with shoddy uniforms and shonky kit that doesn't work properly half the time…"
"That's a yes, then."
He had me bang to rights. "You know I miss it. Every fucking day. I'd give anything to pull on a uniform again, pick up an assault rifle and get out there again, mixing it up with the bad guys."
"You can't explain it to civilians, can you?" Abortion said. "They just don't get it. Having your mates around you the whole time. Ripping the piss out of each other at every opportunity but knowing you trust these people with your life. Being part of a unit, feeling part of something that's big and strong and organised. Like being a member of the best gang ever and no one's going to mess with you. You don't have that in civvy street, that sense of belonging. Here, everyone fucks everyone else over. It's all about yourself. Me, me, me. What can I get? What can I grab? Never happens in the army."
"I always used to think it's like being at school again but being a grown-up at the same time," I said. "All the benefits of school — order, schedule, hierarchy, someone cooking your meals for you — with none of the bollocks. Rules and regulations that keep things in line but don't interfere with you having a good time. And even the combat… Shit, you don't get a rush like that anywhere else. Fucking hairy-arse scary while it's happening, but afterwards — woo-hoo! And I speak as someone who got blown up by a fucking IED."
"Yeah, if that couldn't put you off enjoying active service, what could?"
"Well, it's like they say. If you can't take a joke…"
Abortion chimed in: "…you shouldn't have volunteered."
"So you think this is on the level, this Valhalla Mission whatnot?" I said.
Aborted teetered his hand in the air. "You can't know 'til you've tried. Suck it and see. But two grand a week's nothing to sneeze at. And the minimum contract term is three months."
I did some mental arithmetic. Twenty-five-thousand-odd quid. What could I do with that?
Actually, the question was what couldn't I do?
Clear the backlog I owed Gen, for starters. The Child Support Agency was chasing me up for arrears of near on ten K, the total sum I'd "neglected" to hand over during my more difficult periods after the divorce, plus interest. I'd have my rent on the flat sorted for a few months in advance. I'd even have enough left over to take a decent holiday, go somewhere nice, find one of the few warm spots on the planet down near the equator and catch some rays.
But it wasn't even about the money, I knew that.
It was about a second chance. To do what I did best. To do the only thing I really knew how to do.
When I got home I did a web search for "Valhalla Mission" to see if anything came up. Not one worthwhile hit other than the blog entry Abortion had talked about. Same with "Asgard Hall," the name of the castle the blogger mentioned. Nothing of any use. I assumed, if it even existed, it was some old crumbling pile that used to be called something else and new owners had taken it over and rechristened it.
Of course I had huge doubts and misgivings about the whole enterprise. It all seemed unspeakably dodgy. A hoax, even. We'd rock up at this place and either there'd be no one there or a camera crew would be waiting and it'd turn out to be some reality TV stunt or a game show or what-have-you. I had no desire to be an ordinary person bumped up overnight to celebrity class and be made a public laughing-stock and whipping boy, however much dosh was being dangled in front of me. I didn't want to be famous for fifteen minutes or even fifteen fifteen seconds. Those stories never ended well.
But if it was legit…
Well, obviously it wasn't legit. This was someone recruiting for a private army. This sounded like mercenary or private security work, and very much at the iffy end of that particular scale. Proper "risk management" agencies operated out of swanky offices in Mayfair and were run by ex-Sandhurst Ruperts with tight haircuts and tailored suits. They advertised properly; they didn't wait for word of mouth to bring in employees. They also didn't hire blokes like me who were technically disabled, who'd been invalided out. They liked their meat to be in tiptop condition, ace fighting machines with a thirst for blood and a barrel-scraping of scruples.
Whereas for the Valhalla Mission, the blogger wrote, "clean history and health are not a priority." In other words, we don't care, we'll take anyone. Like Abortion had said, not too fussy.
So the alarm bells were well and truly ding-a-linging in the back of my head, but it was surprisingly easy to ignore them. There was more involved here than me just clearing my debts with Gen and removing that rather large bone of contention from our relationship (if it could even be called a relationship any more). No doubt about it, if I paid that money off there was every chance I'd get my visitation rights to Cody restored. I'd be able to see my son again, take him out, go to the park and the pictures with him, re-establish myself in his life as his dad, actually get to know him and allow him to get to know me so's he could learn that I was more than just a voice on the phone he was obliged to talk to every now and then.
That was one hell of an incentive.
But to be a soldier once more — that was the really big, shiny, orange carrot.
So I phoned up Abortion and I said, "Let's do it."
And he said, "I knew I could count on you, Gid."
And I said, "This could be the biggest mistake I've ever made."
And he said, "Mistakes are just opportunities in disguise."
And I said, "What fortune cookie did you get that from?"
And he said, "It's not wisdom to mock the wise."
And I said, "But clocking smartarses round the earhole is."
And he said, "Wednesday. We'll go next Wednesday."
And I said, "I think I can sort my affairs out by Wednesday," knowing that my affairs wouldn't take much sorting out beyond asking for time off at Tony's Totally Toner and getting a neighbour to go in and water my spider plant while I was away. And I didn't even care if Tony said no or my spider plant died. I'd still go.
And Wednesday came around, and it was Wednesday now, and recalling Abortion's remark — "Mistakes are just opportunities in disguise" — as we trudged through the snow storm, I couldn't help but think, You couldn't be much wronger, mate.
Two miles? Three miles?
Distances were hard to judge. So was speed. So was time. In the midst of that whirling whiteness you couldn't be sure of anything. How long had we been walking? How fast? How far? No idea, no idea, no idea. The snow baffled your senses and your instincts. It
seemed to leech all certainty out of you and replace it with cold emptiness. It made you as blank as it made the landscape. There was so much of it coming down that the night sky scarcely seemed black any more; it was just one huge tumbling curtain of snow. Snow everywhere. White everywhere. Inside and out.
"Can't be much further," Abortion kept saying, over and over, like some Buddhist chant. "Can't be much further. Surely can't be."
But maybe we had passed it, I thought. The landmark. The giant-alike rocks. Maybe we'd blundered straight by, missing it in the storm, and Asgard Hall was behind us now, and we were staggering onward into nothingness, with the pure resolve of idiots. They'd find us tomorrow frozen stiff beside the road, buried to the waist in snow, conjoined statues of men, a work of sculpture with the title The Triumph Of Desperation Over Logic.
And then, lo and behold, there it was.
At first neither of us could quite believe our snow-stung eyes. It loomed before us, and it was almost too perfect, too obvious. Hulking great rocks protruding up, so sheer-sided and sharp that the snow could not easily settle on them. Huge, too, some of them, black spires and hillocks dotted across a shallow valley. A natural formation, had to be, but together they described a distinct shape. There the brow, there the nose, there the hands, there the knees. A supine, slumbering giant. The valley was his bed, and he filled it from end to end, and the snow, which according to cliche was always a blanket, was a blanket. It draped him smoothly, covering all but the bits that poked out.
It was a remarkable sight, and Abortion let out a whoop of joy, of vindication, while I grimaced a smile and felt, if nothing else, we were going to survive this ordeal after all, even though we didn't really deserve to.
Shortly after we spotted the giant we came across a turnoff, a track that ran perpendicular from the road, down into the valley. We took it, and crossed the sleeping giant's midriff, and climbed the slope on the other side, and found ourselves entering dense pine forest.
The track bored straight through the trees, and was broad and clear to see, for a while.
Then it narrowed and became winding. Either that or in the darkness we mislaid it. The tree trunks seemed to close in on us. We threaded between them, convinced we were still going the right way, or convinced enough at any rate, but in our heart of hearts far from sure. The grinding pain inside me was beginning to wear me down. My brain said I could carry on but my body was arguing otherwise. Each step was becoming a supreme effort, an act of teeth-gritting willpower.
Finally Abortion halted. "I hate to say this," he said, "but I think we're going to have to retrace our steps. Find the track again."
"I hate to say this," I said, "but I don't know if I can."
"We can't just keep going forward if it's only going to get us more lost."
"Mentally, I can't go back. It would be too much to take."
"Corporal Coxall…"
"Don't try that."
"Corp, we are turning back. That's an order."
"You can't pull it off, Abortion. Natural authority — it's just not you."
"No?"
"No."
"Okay," he said, "so where does that leave us? What should we do?"
As if in response, there came the eeriest sound I'd ever heard.
It rose, rose a bit more, then fell.
I stared at Abortion. He stared at me.
Seconds later, the sound came again.
And, from somewhere else, was answered.
A howl.
The howl of a wolf.
Three
"No fucking way," said Abortion. "That isn't… That's just not…"
But we both knew it was.
I dimly recollected that there'd been a program a few years back to reintroduce wolves into the wild in the Highlands of Scotland. It had seemed a pretty daft idea to me — let's let some dangerous predators loose in the countryside and see what happens — but a bunch of conservationists had lobbied hard to be allowed to do it, on the woolly-headed reasoning that wolves had once been native to the region, so why not again? They'd seemed surprised when local farmers started complaining about losing livestock, as if they'd been too busy hugging trees and crocheting pashminas out of mung beans to anticipate such an outcome, and eventually the Scottish parliament proposed a cull, but by then it was too late. The wolves were well bedded in and proliferating fast.
With the run of cold weather the animals had gone from strength to strength. A snowy climate suited them, and over the past three years their population had grown exponentially, as had their territory. They were now known to roam south of the border. They'd hurdled Hadrian's Wall, and packs of them had been spotted as far into England as Cumbria and the Pennines.
So, all in all, it perhaps shouldn't have come as a shock to me and Abortion to discover that there were some just here, in this area.
Especially since Sod's Law was so clearly in effect already.
The howls grew numerous. They were coming from several directions at once. Excited. Keen. Spreading some kind of good news — and I had a feeling in my gut I knew what it was.
"How many of them d'you think there are?" Abortion said wonderingly.
"Who do I look like, David ruddy Attenborough?" I shot back. "All I know is they sound hungry to me, and even if it's not us who's on the menu I don't want to stick around. Just in case today's the day they fancy varying their diet."
"But they don't attack people… do they?"
"Again, you're not talking to a wildlife expert here — just an ignorant twat who really doesn't like the idea of coming across a pack of wild carnivores in the middle of a dark forest in atrocious weather, and who thinks we'd be better off getting a wriggle on and seeing if we can't locate some sort of building around here to take shelter in, even if it's just somebody's shit-smelling outhouse. Generally I'd consider that our best course of action, wouldn't you? Instead of standing around like a pair of lemons while those howls get louder."
Which they were, and it didn't take an Einstein to work out that this meant the wolves were getting nearer. I simply couldn't believe that it was us they were zeroing in on. From the little I knew, I understood that the beasts were shy of humans and avoided us wherever possible. Set against that, however, was the fact that Abortion and I were the only other creatures at large in this forest, as far as I could tell. And one of us was bleeding. Not badly — the gash on my forehead had sealed itself — but clotted blood clung tackily to one side of my face, and the wolves would surely have smelled it. And maybe, once they had the scent of blood in their nostrils, it didn't matter where it came from — prey was prey.
We started to move as fast as we could, which was faster than before but, thanks to me, not the flat-out sprint that both of us would have preferred. A surge of panic damped most of my pain down and lent me renewed energy, but my either-busted-or-else-severely-sprained ankle was a hindrance that no amount of adrenaline could overcome. We lumbered in the opposite direction the howls were coming from, or so we hoped, but it was impossible to be sure. The trees confused things. So did echoes. Sometimes the bulk of the wolf pack appeared to be on our left, other times on our right. Once or twice it even seemed as though a lone wolf was ahead of us, an outrider, scoping out our positions and relaying the information to the rest. We'd seen nothing yet, not a glimpse of fur, a glint of an eye. Not even a shadow. And that was the most unnerving aspect of all. The howling was chilling enough, but worse, the animals making it were invisible. It was almost as if our surroundings themselves were the source of the noise, woods and landscape and snow all baying at us, taunting us, driving us on, quickening our pulses, shortening our breaths. The stormy night, toying with us. Nature itself our enemy, one we hadn't a prayer of defeating or evading.
I was flagging. The adrenaline had done its best but there were more cracks in me than it was able to paper over. I was barely holding myself together. Abortion kept dragging me along, a superhuman effort on his part, and I regretted every nasty thing I'd said to hi
m this evening, justified or not. He'd fucked up — so eager to get wrecked, he'd wrecked us — but when it really counted, he was coming through. I was just so much dead weight. He could have dropped me. Perhaps should have. If the roles had been reversed, there was no saying I wouldn't have dropped him and scarpered off on my own. Every man for himself and all that. But Abortion held on to me by the scruff of the neck and propelled me onwards, virtually carrying me, while I added whatever pathetic impetus I could with my one functioning leg and the feeble strength that remained in it.
Those wolves, however… Neither of us was in any doubt now that it was us they were after. The howls encircled us on all sides, a shifting perimeter that tacked and jinked with us whichever way we went. I could hear yips and yelps in the mix, unmistakable expressions of glee. They were having a high old time, our unseen pursuers. They'd got us surrounded. They knew we were frightened and exhausted and one of us was in rough shape. They outnumbered us. They had every advantage, and they were loving it.
"I swear," Abortion wheezed, fighting for breath as he forged on, "I swear to God… if I get out of this… I'll give up the weed and be an… honest citizen the rest of my life."
"Don't," I heaved, "make promises… you know you won't… keep."
We burst into a glade. There was an outcrop of tall rocks at one end. The rest was a flat amphitheatre, almost perfectly oval. As soon as we got there I realised this must be where the wolves wanted us to be. They had herded us to this spot like sheep. I could tell because the instant we reached the clearing, the howling stopped. Abortion and I likewise stopped. We had to. Abortion was utterly drained. He couldn't go on. And me, I was long past going on. We both slumped to our knees in the snow, him a trembling, winded mass, me groaning helplessly.
The silence was expectant. Terrible.
I noted that the snowfall was slowing, thinning. The air was clearing. And I waited. We both waited. It was all we could do.
Then: eyes.
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