Wolfhound Century

by Peter Higgins

  The first throw fell short. A boulder as large as a man’s torso whumped into the canal, jetting up a column of white water. Short, but close enough for them to feel the sting of the spray on their faces. The ripples reached the Sib and set her rocking. The next shot was closer. The mudjhik was finding its range.

  ‘Shit,’ said Lom and turned the boat again.

  As soon as the boat started heading downstream, the mudjhik halted its bombardment and went back to pacing them along the embankment.

  ‘It’s herding us,’ said Lom. ‘It could sink us anytime, but it wants to get in close.’

  I will not let you touch her. Weak as he was, he tried to force the thought towards the mudjhik, against the flow of its onslaught. I will bring you down.

  They heard the sea gate before they saw it. The light was failing. Twilight brought sharp fresh squalls of sleet off the sea. There were gulls now, wheeling inland to roost. The Ship Canal swung round the shoulder of a small hill and narrowed, channelling the flow of the Mir in flood into a bottleneck of concrete, and ahead of them rose the great barrier. On one side, the left as they approached it, were the lock gates themselves, three ship-breadths wide, and to the right a roar of gushing water hidden in a cloud of spray. The grand new hydroelectric turbine, turning the pressure of water into power to light the streets of Mirgorod.

  The immense lock gates were shut against them. They could make out the silhouette of the Gate Master’s hut at the far end, between the lock and the turbine, but no light showed there. Of course not. Night was falling. No shipping traffic would come now. None, probably, till the spring. They were alone except for the mudjhik, standing in plain sight next to the massive stubby gate tower, waiting for them.

  Lom fought the surging water with the oars, but there was nowhere to go. The skiff would either be brought up hard against the bottom of the gate or carried into the turbine’s throat.

  ‘A ladder!’ Maroussia shouted above the noise of the water. ‘Over there.’

  Lom could just make out in the gathering gloom a contraption of steel to the right of the turbine, away from the mudjhik, designed to give access to the weir at water level. All he had to do was take the Sib across the current without getting dragged into the churning turbine mouth.

  He could see nothing of what happened under the curtain of spray. There would be a grating, probably, to sift detritus from the canal. Maybe that’s what the ladder was for. To clear it. But even if there was a grating, the boat would surely be smashed against it. The whole weight of the river was passing through there: the force would be tremendous; nobody who went into that churning water would come out again.

  He let the current carry them forward and tried to use the oars to steer a slanting course across it, aiming for a point on the embankment just upstream from the bottom of the ladder. His arms ached. His head was pounding. There would be no second chance. The mudjhik was attacking his mind hard, not constantly but with randomly timed pulses of pressure, trying to knock him off balance.

  The skiff crashed against the wall, caught her bow on a jut of stone and spun stern-first away from the embankment towards the deafening roar and dark, blinding spray. Lom dug in with the left-hand oar, almost vertically down into the water, and turned the skiff again. She crashed against the foot of the ladder and Maroussia grabbed it. The boat kept moving. Lom crouched and leapt for the ladder. The impact jarred his side numb, but he managed to hook one arm awkwardly round a steel strut. He had slung the Exter-Vulikh across his back by its webbing strap and the Sepora was in his pocket. The Sib continued sliding away from under him. She left them both clinging to the metal frame and disappeared into the shouting darkness and mist. Lom scrabbled desperately for a foothold and barked his shin against a sharp-edged metal rung. Then he was climbing, following Maroussia up the sheer embankment side.

  There was nowhere to go. They were standing on a railed steel platform overlooking the turbines. A narrow walkway led across plunging water and slowly turning turbines to the lock gate tower, and beyond that was the lock itself, and the mudjhik. There was no other exit.

  Lom looked over the seaward side with a wild idea of diving into the sea and swimming for the beach. If there was a beach. But down there, there was no sea, only a cistern to receive the immense outflow from the turbines. It was a deep, seething pit of water. Hundreds of thousands of gallons burst out from the sluice mouth every second and poured into what was basically a huge concrete-walled box. You wouldn’t drown in there, you’d be smashed to a bloody pulp before the air was gone from your lungs.

  Across the walkway a door led into the lock gate tower. With a crash of masonry it shattered open and the mudjhik shouldered its way through. It stood there a moment. Its face was blank. No sightless eyes. No lipless, throatless mouth. Just a rough lump of reddish stone sat on its shoulders. But it was watching them.

  Lom raised the Exter-Vulikh and fired a stream of shells into the mudjhik’s belly. The clattering detonations echoed off the surrounding concrete, deafening even above the roar of the turbine sluice, but the shells had no discernible effect. Lom had not thought they would. It was a gesture. The magazine exhausted itself in a few seconds and he threw the gun over the rail into the water below.

  For a moment nothing happened. Stalemate. The mudjhik watching them from its end of the walkway. Lom and Maroussia staring back. Waiting. Then the mudjhik turned sideways and began to edge its way across the narrow steel bridge, squeezing itself between the flimsy rails. Lom reached for Maroussia’s hand — it was the time for final, futile gestures — but he didn’t find it. Maroussia had darted forward, running straight at the mudjhik. Lom felt its surge of raw delight as it grabbed for her, reaching sideways, swinging its leading arm wildly. He felt it reaching for her with its mind at the same time. Opening itself wide. Drawing at her. It was like a mouth, gaping.

  It’s trying to suck her in.

  Understanding slammed against Lom’s head like a concussion. And with it another thought. Another piece of insight.

  It’s too confident. It fears nothing at all.

  And he saw what Maroussia was trying to do.

  The mudjhik’s swing at her was too awkward a move for its precarious position on the walkway. She ducked and the arm missed her, sweeping through the air above her head. The impetus of the move overbalanced the mudjhik slightly. It stumbled and leaned against the walkway rail, which sagged under its weight.

  Lom pulled Safran’s Sepora out of his pocket and fired, again and again, aiming high to clear Maroussia, aiming for the huge eyeless head. The recoils jarred his hand and shoulder. He flung all his rage and defiance and disgust and hatred at the mudjhik’s undefended, questing, open-mouthed mind. He was still tired and weak — the power of his push was nothing compared to what he had done under the ground — but he felt the jar as it impacted. It was enough. Together, the mental onslaught and the heavy magnum rounds confused the mudjhik and added momentum to its stumble. The narrow guard rail collapsed under its weight and the mudjhik fell into the churning, roaring waters of the cistern below.

  82

  Maroussia was lying on the narrow iron walkway. She wasn’t moving. Lom ran across. He knelt down beside her and laid his hand on her head. She stirred, raised her head and looked at him.

  ‘Is it gone?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. It’s gone. Are you… are you OK?’

  ‘If that thing is gone then we can go back. I need to go back.’

  ‘It’s almost dark,’ said Lom. ‘And it’s a long walk back. There won’t be any trams till the morning. We’ll have to stay here.’

  She sat up slowly. She looked dizzy and sick.

  ‘No. I…’ But she had no strength for a night journey. No strength to argue even.

  ‘Just for tonight,’ said Lom. ‘We can stay in the Gate Master’s cabin.’

  The Gate Master’s lodge was an incongruous wooden superstructure on the lip of the sea gates. The lock on the door gave easily at a shove from Lom’s s
houlder. Inside was near-darkness. The smell of pitch and lingering tobacco smoke and tea. Maroussia found a lamp and matches. In the yellow lamplight the interior had a vaguely nautical flavour: large-scale charts of the harbour and the inner reaches were pinned to the walls, and more of the same were spread out on a plan table under the seaward window, with instruments, pencils, a pair of binoculars. There was a chair, the kind with a mechanism that allowed the seat to revolve and tip backwards. A long thin telescope on a tripod stood on the floor; heavy oilskins hung from a hook on the back of the door; a pair of large rubber boots leaned against the foot of a neat metal-framed bed. The Gate Master had left everything prepared to make himself comfortable when he returned: firewood stacked in the corner, water in the urn, a packet of tea, a box of biscuits. Lom pulled the heavy curtains across the window while Maroussia lit the stove and the urn. There were even two mugs to drink from. Maroussia sat on the edge of the bed and Lom took the swivelling chair, leaning back and putting his feet up on the table.

  ‘What if someone sees the light?’ said Maroussia.

  ‘There’s no one for miles. Anyway…’ Lom shrugged. ‘Shipwrecked mariners. Needs must.’ But he took Safran’s heavy revolver from his pocket and laid it on the table within reach.

  ‘Any bullets left in that?’

  ‘No.’

  Maroussia was looking at him. Her eyes were dark in the lamp shadow. Uncertain.

  ‘Before the mudjhik fell…’ she began, and stopped. He waited for her to continue. ‘I felt something. Inside my head.’ She paused again. Lom didn’t say anything. ‘I don’t know… There was a kind of sick feeling, like I was going to faint. Everything seemed very far away. And then… it was like a fist, a big angry punch, but inside my head. It didn’t feel aimed at me, but it almost knocked me over anyway. And then the mudjhik… went.’

  ‘What you did was crazy. Running at it like that. You were lucky. If it had caught you when it swung—’

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it? The mind-punch thing. It felt like you. You did it.’

  Lom said nothing.

  ‘And when you blew yourself out of the ground…’ said Maroussia. ‘How do you do that? I mean, what is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s something I used to be able to do. When I was a child. Then it stopped when Savinkov sealed me up. But since the seal was taken — actually before then, when I came to Mirgorod — It’s been coming back. I just… I just do it.’

  There was a long silence. Pulses of sleet battering at the window. Maroussia was examining the woollen rug on the bed. Picking at it. Removing bits of fluff.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said eventually. ‘I mean, what are you? Where do you come from? I mean, where do you really come from?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lom. ‘But I’m beginning to think I should try to find out.’ He took a biscuit from the box. It was soft and stale and tasted of dampness and pitch. He swallowed it and took a sip of tea. Cooling now. Bitter. He chucked the box of biscuits across the room onto the bed next to her. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Have one.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sleep then. We need to clear out early tomorrow. You can have the bed.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ll take the floor.’

  ‘We could share the bed,’ she said. ‘There’s room.’

  She was sitting in shadow. Lom couldn’t see anything in her face at all. Another scatter of sleet crashed against the window. The door with the broken lock stirred in the wind.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That would be better.’

  83

  Lom lay on his back, pressed between Maroussia and the wall. He was tired but sleep hadn’t come. As soon as he had got into the bed, Maroussia had pulled the blanket over them both, turned on her side, away from him, and apparently gone straight to sleep. He felt her long back now, pressed against his side, the length of her body stretched against his.

  The wind and rain had died away. He could hear the slow rhythm of her breathing and the quiet surge of the sea. And it seemed to him that somewhere at the edge of his mind he could hear Safran under the water, crying in his pain. But if he tried to reach for the thread of it, it wasn’t there.

  ‘Vissarion?’

  ‘Yes?’

  But she said nothing more. Only the gentle ebb and flow of her breath. The rising and falling of her ribs against him. He turned on his side so that his face was against the back of her neck. He could smell her dark hair. The moment of rest at the end of the pendulum’s swing, before it fell back and swung again. They would have time. Later. Or they would not.

  The mudjhik lay pinned under a hundred thousand gallons a second. On its back. It pounded the concrete floor beneath it, the floor built to take the brunt of the Mir in flood, pounded it with its fists and heels and head. The mudjhik would never sleep. Never die. No matter how long, no matter what it took. It would pound its way out.

  Somewhere, deep inside the angel-stuff, what remained of Safran wanted to scream but had no voice. Wanted to weep but had no tears. No mouth. No eyes.

  They overslept. Lom surfaced eventually to the sound of Maroussia making tea. She had drawn back the curtains and filled the cabin with grey dawn light. Lom stumbled out of bed and found the Gate Master’s shaving kit — a chipped bowl for water, soap, a razor and a small square of mirror — all set out neatly ready for use. He washed and shaved for the first time in… how long? He had lost count of the days. The mirror showed him the hole in the centre of his forehead with its crust of blood. He washed it clean and watched it pulsing faintly with the beating of his heart. He touched it with his finger. The new, healing skin felt smooth and young. The pulse inside it was a barely palpable fluttering.

  ‘Here.’

  Maroussia nudged him gently and handed him a mug of strong, sweet tea. She had found sugar. As he sipped it, she kissed him, once, quickly, on his freshly shaven cheek. He caught once more the scent of her hair and felt the cool bright touch of her mouth fading slowly from his skin.

  With the Gate Master’s razor he cut a strip of cloth from the bottom of his shirt, knotted it bandanna-fashion round his head to hide the wound of the angel mark, and checked the result in the mirror. The effect was odd but not unpleasing. Gangsterish. Buccaneering. Conspicuous, but not as instantly-identifying as a hole in the head. After a moment’s hesitation, he folded the Gate Master’s razor, slipped it into his pocket and turned to find Maroussia appraising him.

  ‘You’ll do,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen worse.’

  ‘And you look… fine,’ said Lom. She had washed her hair. It was damp and lustrous. Her cheeks were pink. ‘But you’re going to freeze out there.’

  ‘I’m too hungry to notice.’

  ‘We’ll find a café,’ he said. ‘When we get back. We’ll have breakfast.’ Coffee. Eggs. Pastries. That would be normal. That would be simple and good. Then a thought struck him. ‘Have you got any money?’ He had none. Nothing but a razor and an empty gun.

  Maroussia dug in her pockets and came up with a few coins. Enough for tram fares to the city, perhaps. Not much more.

  ‘I wanted to leave something,’ she said. ‘For the Gate Master.’

  ‘We’ll send it to him,’ said Lom. ‘Afterwards.’

  They stood for a moment in the middle of the neat cabin. They had set things as straight as they could, and Lom had made a temporary repair to the lock. It would hold.

  ‘We’d better go,’ said Maroussia.

  ‘Yes.’

  About the Author

  Peter Higgins read English at Oxford and Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College before joining the Civil Service. He began writing fantasy and SF stories in 2006. He is married with three children and lives in South Wales.

  Copyright

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2013 by Peter Higgins

  All rights reserved
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