Felidae on the Road - Special U.S. Edition (21 page)

CHAPTER 6

L
ike a kamikaze diver going down into the raging inferno of the waves, I plunged into the dark forest without the faintest idea which way the killer had gone. Behind me, I heard Diana run out of the house. Her assortment of floodlights made the place look like an open-air disco. But I took no interest whatsoever in that. I was possessed by my wish to make mincemeat of Alcina's murderers, although I was ready to admit without the faintest envy that they had more experience of butchery. My vision of death had left me in an oddly fearless state. Fear, I thought, is for those who believe themselves immortal. But in the next few minutes, and not just then, I was to discover that things were rather more complicated than that.

My instincts had spontaneously set me on the right track, for I heard a rustling noise in the deep darkness of the undergrowth, a rustling noise moving away from me at the same speed as I was trying to get at it. What's more, it seemed to be coming from two directions at once, which suggested that Crazy Hugo and the mastiff had now parted company and were running away separately. Running away from me, too - what a triumph! I speeded up and began to run. Bushes and branches whipped into my face as I raced madly on, taking daring leaps over hillocks. High on the opiates manufactured by the body itself, I pursued the phantoms of the night, absolutely convinced I could overpower and execute them. Another sound began to accompany the rustling: an angry growling, the kind made by creatures at bay. I ignored the awkward question of why two such ruffians should fear a flyweight like me; paradoxically, the angry sounds made by my quarry gave me positively supernatural powers. Full of enthusiasm, I raced on, faster and faster and faster. Soon I could hear them only just ahead of me. I could even pick up their scent. That was odd: they didn't smell at all as I'd expected. Well, what did I think they ought to smell like? Employees at the city cemetery after a rather unsavoury exhumation? They didn't smell a bit like that. The scent given off by their glands reflected wild, restless life, along with all the complicated overtones and messages which only an animal nose can decode.

The two of them ... Two of them? Suddenly I wasn't so sure whether I really was after two fugitives. Because the closer I came, the more confused did the rustling sounds become, drifting apart as if a whole group were fanning out. Or was I suffering aural delusions caused by the rustling of the leaves which we were all brushing as we ran past them? Before I knew it I seemed to have caught up with my quarry and be running parallel. I felt fear ... but hadn't I foresworn fear only a few minutes ago? Hadn't I banished it from my life long ago, seeing no use for it in the face of death? However, worse was to come. Suddenly we weren't level any more. One of us had put on a sprint, like the winning horse in a race, while the others had throttled back their speed in a very curious way. And of course the idiotic racehorse was none other than your friend Francis Ironheart. With the goal so close to my eyes, or rather my ears, I'd overdone things. The enemies I'd been pursuing were now behind me, and all of a sudden they were after me instead of vice versa. At the same time, my thirst for revenge instantly changed to naked desire for survival. It dawned on me, with all the unpleasantness of an electric shock, that I'd gone and fallen into a trap. No one had really been running away from little Francis and his threats of revenge, oh no! They'd thrown him a bait in the shape of Alcina's body, that was more like it, thereby luring him out of Diana's house to finish him off at their leisure. Now
that's
what I call a brilliant plan, I thought. I evidently knew my way around the diabolical thought processes of psychopaths as well as Michael Jackson knows his around the New York subway system.

Well, the damage was done, and the open-air slaughter of one stupid sucker couldn't be far in the future. I cast a hunted glance behind me, and shuddered. Like signal lights on a coastline shrouded in banks of mist, demonic eyes were blinking among the dark thickets of young evergreens. God Almighty, was there a whole pack after me? Or was it 'just' Crazy Hugo and the mastiff who could double back on their tracks so quickly they were like sheepdogs and seemed to be everywhere at once? My little heart was hammering as wildly as if fuelled by pure cocaine. My paws had become the hooves of a racehorse galloping mindlessly on, its pain numbed by a pain that was even worse. I was beginning to feel dizzy. Everything started going round and round in front of my eyes. I saw the first deep blue shimmer of dawn above the treetops. Morning was breaking.

Then I felt their sulphurous breath on my neck. And yet again I heard the growling, but it didn't sound frightened this time, it sounded full of cold rage. It was finally drowned out by a howl and then abrupt bursts of shrill squealing which couldn't have sounded worse issuing from the throats of the mad. So who actually were my pursuers? Though I was about to offer the brutes my guts for breakfast any moment now, I didn't dare look round again. The sight of them might well deprive me of my reason, and if I was going to die I wanted to do it with a clear head. I owed myself that much. The mad cries grew louder, following one another in quick succession, venting their feelings in a murderous screeching ...

Right ahead of me I saw the thick branch of a rather gnarled tree. It was an arm's length above the ground, like an automatic barrier across the path I was taking, which was covered with ground ivy. And on this branch lay an old acquaintance. That was all I needed in my desperate situation. I identified it by the vast left paw with the last of the moonlight shining on it. The rest of the creature, a body ten times bigger than mine, was hidden in the shadow of the tree, so that the figure as a whole was just a vague silhouette. Only its ears, very like our own, burned themselves into my memory in spite of my distress because of the tufts of stiff hair like brushes growing from their tips. The creature's eyes, staring at me in silence, glowed in the dark like phosphorescent crystals in a coal mine. He was Monster Paw, he meant the end of all my hopes, and he seemed to have a wonderful knack of timing, always turning up just at the crucial moment.

Before I could whisk under the branch and away, Monster Paw rose on his hind legs and arched his upper body like a Titan. What a lovely situation: a bunch of bloodthirsty bastards coming up behind me, hardly able to wait a moment longer to evaluate the results of my tin-opener Gustav's laborious experiments in fattening me up. And ahead of me the presiding spirit of the entire performance ready to jump down and grab the first and most delicious piece. All right, so I wouldn't be a spoilsport and ruin this magical spring morning for the lot of them. I came to an abrupt halt.

Monster Paw came at me with a gigantic leap of such grace that it took my breath away. I saw him stretching out all his limbs in flight, claws extended as far as they would go, as he underwent metamorphosis into an aerial acrobat. I resigned myself to my fate. It was a great comfort to think this perfectly formed monster's carving skills would usher me into a better world. Gave the whole thing a touch of style.

To my surprise, however, Monster Paw's flight lasted longer than I expected. He obviously had some other landing place in mind than Francis Airport. The monster merely whooshed past me a millimetre overhead and then, judging by the squeals of pain, crash-landed right in the middle of my pursuers. They set up a mighty hullabaloo behind me, and I plucked up the courage to glance back. But the dim morning light was giving no secrets away, and I could make out nothing much except for flying tufts of grass and murderous pairs of eyes batting to and fro like juggler's balls on fire. I could hear things, though. The thunderous bellow of Monster Paw, the screeching of my hunters, a sound somewhere between fear and hatred, and all the time a tearing and a rending and a cracking - I could only guess at the bloody spectacle being played out there in the darkness.

I stepped on the gas and went full speed ahead. Let the forest monsters fight until they could only haunt the place as extinct species in impassioned conservationist pamphlets. What did I care? At least there'd be one pleasing side effect: the serial murders would stop. In spite of my glee at the idea, of course I couldn't help turning my head to look back as I fled, so as to keep one eye on the gloomy spot where battle still raged. And of course I couldn't help meditating on a couple of points either. Why had my spooky pursuers chased me at all, giving me such a nasty scare? If they wanted to finish me off, surely it would have been easier for them to do the deed right away, the moment I entered the forest. Or was I suffering from delusions? Was Monster Paw the real murderer, and had I just happened to help him commit another massacre? But then why had he spared me when I was standing right in front of his nose, first in line for the chop? And why did Alcina have to die? Her demise didn't fit the methods of the murderer, who preferred killings en masse. Was there a real Black Knight after all, a degenerate but crafty creature who thought he'd found an opponent worthy of him when I turned up in the forest?

I bumped straight into him. Him? Well, the Black Knight, of course, who else? Unfortunately, my observations of the battlefield combined with my attempts at deduction had called for my entire concentration, so I'd completely forgotten to turn my head forward again and avoid the danger in time. I didn't know how long I had been running or how far I now was from the combatants. But just as I turned to look the way I was going again, I found myself looking straight into the eyes of the apparition I thought I had seen on the cliff-top, whether as dream or reality. A glance somewhere between demonic powers of suggestion and a curious amusement transfixed me: I could hardly escape it. It was too late for me to come to a complete halt, so we collided with a dull thud and lost our balance. I pushed my opponent over - in the confusion of the moment he was hardly more than a swirling shadow - but he didn't fall to the ground. Something much nastier happened instead.

As luck would have it, the Knight of the Mournful Countenance was standing on the bank of the stream I knew only too well. If you ask me, it deserved first prize for the most importunate brook on God's earth. Before we tumbled head over heels into the water, I noticed in passing that just to put the lid on it, we'd picked the widest and roughest part. The moment we struggled up to the surface again, the current carried us away by main force. Now squealing, now involuntarily testing the water quality, I saw my victim in the distance, paws splashing about in panic. He was yelling for help in a most unknightly way. However, his true shape was still a mystery, because eddies of water kept washing over it.

By now dawn had cast a soft veil of copper and gold over the whole landscape, but unfortunately my sense of aesthetic beauty had temporarily lapsed. So as the sun rose in its full splendour, Hugo and I continued our boatless boating expedition, struggling the whole time to keep from drowning. Sometimes he was under water, sometimes I was, sometimes we were wailing in chorus for someone with a life-saving certificate, sometimes solo for Jacques Cousteau. The grotesque part of it was that a shoal of extremely inquisitive fish of a purplish colour swam along with us throughout this shipwreck scene. We must both have been a pitiful sight.

Finally the current became calmer and the water less deep. My limp body, by now rather resembling a mass of algae, was caught against a rise at the bottom of the stream bed and stayed there, feeble waves washing gently around it. Half unconscious, I opened my mouth and rendered unto the stream the things that were the stream's. Then, smeared with mud and wet as a mop, I got to my wobbly paws and looked around for my fellow accident victim. However, there was nothing to be seen. Perhaps he hadn't survived; perhaps he'd gone to a watery grave. One small step for him, but a great one for Felidae kind. That poor deranged mastiff would have to go murdering solo now.

Suddenly I heard the sound of splashing water. Whipping round, I saw two pointed ears coming up behind a branch that had fallen into the water. Wonderful to relate, however, those ears were apricot-pink, a most unusual colour for a Black Knight. The rays of the sun, stronger now, lit up the head rising from the water so that it looked like a snowball floating against the background of dark green. I knew that head, a bright one in every sense of the word ...

'Ambrosius!' I cried joyfully, simultaneously resolving that if I ever found my way back to Gustav, I must somehow convey to him that I urgently needed a visit to an optician. Our poor colour vision doesn't exactly equip us to discover the Technicolor process, I'll grant you that, but even a mole may be expected to be able to tell the difference between light and dark.
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'B-b-bloody hell! The second ti-ti-time today I've had to take a bath in this damn brook!' said Ambrosius crossly, clambering up on the branch sticking out of the water, with some difficulty. He'd turned into a mass of algae too.

'I'm terribly sorry, my dear fellow! I thought you were the Black Knight. Anyway, I only saw you at the very last minute, when I couldn't stop myself. What they elegantly describe as a chain of unfortunate circumstances. How come you crossed my path?'

We both shook ourselves vigorously and waded to the grass of the bank, which was speckled with daisies. Early in the morning as it was, the sun had already switched on its incubator heater, so at least it wouldn't take our fur too long to dry off. Ambrosius lay down on the grass and sneezed.