Bookweird (8 page)

“Do you think Simon's missed them?” Norman asked through his teeth when he could hold it in no longer.

The little stoat replied with assurance, “No chance—old Simon's the finest hunter in these woods. Didn't he sniff out the long snouts? They don't even know we're here yet.”

Norman nodded, tried to believe this, but the image of the three wolf rangers coming ever closer tormented him.

“But how can he take them on alone?” he asked, breaking the silence again. “I mean, one stoat against three wolves. Isn't that…” He decided not to worry about insulting his friend. “Isn't that a mismatch?”

Malcolm didn't turn to look at Norman. As he answered, his sharp eyes remained focused on the forest darkness. “Simon'll pick his spot. He won't meet 'em on the ground. He'll stay up high, in the trees, and keep his distance. That's why he took the bow. Hand-to-hand, not even Simon is a match for a long snout. But wolves are no archers, nor are they climbers. As long as he's in the trees, he's as safe as houses.”

Norman took a serious look at the woods around them and wondered whether they wouldn't be better up a tree themselves. But the next wolf howl froze his motions and thoughts. It had changed—closer and angrier now, mixed with growls. Neither boy nor stoat spoke as they listened. Both knew that Simon had sprung his ambush on the wolves. Each tried to imagine the progress of the battle from the sounds. The night became filled with fierce wolf cries, bitter barks and every now and then a high-pitched yelp of pain. Only wolf sounds were heard. Simon fought silently; so too would he succumb silently. If Simon fell in battle, there would be no howl of despair or pain. The boys would not know until it was too late.

The sounds of the skirmish may have lasted only a few minutes. Then a silence blew through the forest—no howls, no barks either of victory or of anguish. Could it have been that easy? Had Simon's arrows picked off all three of their pursuers? If it was that easy, Norman found himself thinking, why hadn't they ambushed the wolves sooner, rather than blundering madly through the woods? He kept this thought to himself. Even he knew it was too much to hope. Maybe he just didn't want to jinx it.

After that, the two were more silent than ever, waiting, either for the return of Simon victorious or for the wolf assassins to burst into the clearing and finish the pursuit for themselves. Norman had almost given up hope when they heard the rustle in the trees above them.

“Simon,” Malcolm cried. His relief breathed through his voice. Norman felt it too: so the old warrior had done it.

His relief was short-lived. “Shh,” Simon whispered as he came closer. “It's not over yet, boy. Get yerself up in the branches, now. Be quick about it.”

Accustomed to obeying battle orders swiftly, the young stoat did not hesitate. He did not seem to think about where to go, leaping immediately into the tallest tree, a thick pine that overshadowed all the rest. He scampered up the trunk effortlessly, chattering as he moved. “Did you get any of them, Simon? Are you all right?”

“Got one,” Simon huffed. “His running days are over. The others scarpered when they saw it was just me. They musta figured who you—” Simon Whitetail did not finish his answer. His breath was ragged. He must have run at full tilt through the forest canopy to reach them before the two remaining wolves did. “You, beast,” he said when he had regained his breath, meaning Norman. “Can you climb?”

Norman eyed the stout pine that Malcolm had scaled. The lowest branches were too high for him to grasp from the ground, and he did not have a stoat's sharp claws to allow him to just scamper right up the trunk. No other nearby tree offered the same safety. Only a few straggly aspen saplings persevered in the shade of the big pine. Norman wasn't sure if any of them would hold his weight. Maybe if he looked farther away.

The deep belly howl of a wolf close by decided for him. His body was moving before his mind, hands grasping the likeliest of the nearby aspen saplings, feet scrambling beneath him, snapping twigs. The thin aspen swayed under his weight, swinging like a reed as he climbed higher, until it seemed it would bend right over and
deposit him on the ground if he climbed any higher. Norman only hoped that he was high enough. He had no idea how high wolves could jump, or whether they could chop down a tree.

These visions tumbled through his head as the first wolf crept into the clearing. Norman saw only the bright yellow glow of its eyes and heard the low anticipatory growl. A second set of eyes soon appeared beside the first. They kept low to the ground but peered up. Knowing their prey, they scanned the trees and sniffed the air. How is it possible that they don't see me, Norman managed to wonder, but only for a second.

In another breath, the wolves leapt to action. All snarls and flashing teeth, they assailed the slim trunk of Norman's tree. The sapling lurched under their weight. Their front paws stretched up higher on the trunk and pushed again, and Norman looked down into the eyes of the animals that hunted him. A horrible, sickening fear overtook him as he gazed into the narrowing eyes. It was as if these eyes had always hunted him. He knew the jagged teeth beneath them, the salivating mouth and the meat-tasting breath. This was the big bad wolf of every kids' story. It knew him, knew his terror. Norman's legs went weak beneath him. He hardly felt his feet slip. He only felt himself falling. His hands knew better, grasping the trunk and arresting his fall, but the wolves saw what had happened and redoubled their assault. The big pink creature was afraid, and fear was a wolf's desire. Norman's feet dangled just beyond the wolves' reach now. He clung to the tree with his arms, but without a foothold he was sunk. It was only a matter of time before his strength gave way.

If you died in a book, Norman wondered, did you die in real life, or did you wake up again in your bed?

He did not hear the whoosh of the arrows. Nor did he hear the wounded yelp of the wolf. All he heard was the beating of his own heart, the sound of his terror. He was losing his grip, sliding slowly down the tree toward the gnashing jaws of the hunters below. But arrows were flying now. From high in the pine, Simon unleashed arrow after arrow at the wolves below.

When Norman finally hit the ground, only one wolf remained on its feet, but one wolf was enough. The arrows had stopped flying now, and there was an awful silence in the clearing as Norman shook off the fall and scrambled backward away from the dead wolf's arrow-riddled body. The remaining hunter crouched low and let out a murderous snarling growl as it slunk toward Norman. Its eyes gleamed cold and angry, imagining its vengeance. So utterly animal was its movement that its speech surprised Norman.

“So this is the fearsome beast of the forest?” The wolf's voice dripped with disdain. “Big you might be, but clumsy and soft. You'll make a good meal, you will. I will howl over your corpse tonight, and my murdered brothers will hear their vengeance in the spirit world.”

Norman used his arms to crawl backward as far as he could.

“That's right, little piglet, squirm,” the wolf snarled. “Try to wriggle away.”

The wolf reared now on its hind legs, an extraordinary pose. He loomed over Norman. Even if Norman could have pulled himself to his feet now, the wolf would have been taller. The wolf now reached behind his back and pulled a long, wide weapon from his shoulder scabbard—the wolflaird's broadsword. Though Norman had read about this fearsome sword in a half dozen Undergrowth stories, he could not have imagined it to be so deadly looking. The wolf wielded it with two hands, his paws wrapped deftly around the heavy hilt. Twirling it slowly above his head, he stepped closer again to Norman. The sword cut the air, making a deep whoosh, whoosh like a helicopter blade, and then, suddenly, without warning, the point of it was at Norman's head. The tip of the blade rested on the bone of his forehead, sending a sharp pain through his skull like an ice-cream headache, but the wolf put no weight on it. He did not want it to be over yet.

“That's a look I know, little piglet. You'll be wanting to beg for your life right now.”

Behind the wolf, a sudden movement caught Norman's eye, then a flash of glinting steel, and the wolf turned, surprised, as if stung by a wasp.

On a tree stump six feet behind the wolf stood Simon Whiteclaw, defiant, with sword drawn.

“Leave the child alone. Avenge yourself on me—if you can.” Even on the stump the old warrior wasn't even half the height of the wolf. The wolf's broadsword's reach was three times that of the little stoat rapier.

“It was me who killed yer mates,” Simon taunted. “I sent the arrows that rid this undergrowth of their filth. You're next.”

This taunt was too much for the wolf hunter. He let out a mad howl as he lunged toward Simon, hurling himself and the heavy sword with full force at the defiant stoat. But Simon was too quick for him. He leapt gingerly from the stump to the branch of a nearby tree, from there to another, and while the wolf was still pulling the blade of his heavy sword from the stump where it had landed, Simon swept down on a slender whip of pine bough. The bough arced downward, behind the wolf, giving Simon the chance for a quick swish of his rapier. When the wolf turned again, holding a bleeding ear, Simon stood high in yet another tree.

“Try again, you lumbering oaf,” he scoffed.

But the wolf wasn't going to play by Simon's rules. The next sweep of his great broadsword sliced the branch away from beneath the stoat, sending Simon tumbling to the ground. Norman stayed long enough to see the brave stoat warrior get to his feet, but then Malcolm was tugging at the collar of his pyjamas, urging him to follow.

They scrambled as noiselessly as they could through the undergrowth, with the sounds of blades swooshing and hacking at branches behind them. At the first clearing, Malcolm jumped onto Norman's shoulder and they ran through the open land. There was no use being stealthy anymore. The wolf had sniffed them well and could track them easily now. All they could do was get as far away as possible. If Simon somehow won, somehow managed to disable a wolf four times his size, then the old warrior would find them. If he could not, if even his wiles and sword skills weren't enough, then they were doomed. It would be the assassin who caught up
with them, not the crusty old stoat warrior. They did not look back. They dared not. They could imagine the shape of their pursuer well enough.

Neither boy noticed when the sun rose behind them. They had reached a small stream before they realized that it was daylight. Norman, remembering something about bloodhounds and scents, stepped gingerly to the middle of the stream and, finding it no deeper than the middle of his calves, continued downstream. The little stoat on his shoulder whispered his hopeful approval—“Yes, we'll lose him like this.”

Norman ran as long as he could through the stream. Gradually it widened and deepened. When it came to his knees, Norman waded back out, on the same side they had entered.

“Maybe the wolf will think we've crossed,” he suggested.

They ran along the bank all day, as slowly the stream widened into a river. The ground beside it became softer, flatter, greener. Every minute that they ran, their hope grew. If the wolf had beaten Simon, he would have been upon them by now. But even this hope had a flip side: if Simon was victorious, surely he too would have caught up with them.

Early in the afternoon, the boys staggered to a halt. Norman threw himself to the ground, exhausted, in a grove of wild apple trees. Malcolm, better rested for his ride on Norman's shoulders, leapt to life and quickly collected an apple feast for the two of them. They ate wordlessly but not silently, scarfing the fruits noisily like wild animals.

“Perhaps he went in the opposite direction on purpose—to lead any others away from our trail,” Norman said, out of the blue. They both had been having the same silent conversation. Each had been debating with himself, searching for a scenario in which Simon was still alive. Malcolm did not reply.

Three days was how long it took them to reach the borderlands, following the river out of the mountains into the region of free villages between the Wolflands and the domain of the city hares. The Borders lay on the other side of the river, but they had
missed their chance to cross. At nightfall on the first day, they consulted the map and discovered that this was the very river that defined the edge of the Wolflands. By then, neither boy wanted to go back to the narrow point of the stream. There was nothing left but to follow the river until the first bridge.

They heard Edgeweir before they saw it. The rattle of cartwheels on cobblestones echoed down the river. The boys slowed their pace and approached quietly. Soon the chatter of animal voices joined the sound of the wooden wheels on the bridge stones. Traffic on the Edgeweir bridge was busy at this time of the day, as traders and gatherers hurried back to the shelter of homes and inns before nightfall.

Norman and Malcolm watched from the safety of the woods as the traffic dwindled. A trio of truffle-hunting pygmy boars trotted gleefully over the bridge while the sun set, singing hunting songs and chortling over their day's discoveries. They were followed soon after by a lone figure, hunched and moving slowly. A cowl covered his head, but as he crossed, the dusk light was enough to illuminate a fox's face—reminder enough that the Borders didn't guarantee safety. Wolves and foxes were tolerated in the Borders, and the wolf lords tolerated the rough independence of the border villages. The last creatures across the bridge were two badgers—warders, the Borders' police and defence force. It was their job to protect the citizenry of the Borders. Sturdy fighters and canny forest men, many of whom had spent their early career on the other side of the law, they were more feared than thanked.

Norman watched them lumber across, sharing a lit torch between them and muttering incomprehensibly. The boys' eyes followed the light down the road, waiting for the sound of their buckles and chain mail to jangle out of earshot.