Sky Wolves (24 page)

Fortunately, in the underworld, neither time nor distance operates as we know it. The thickly carpeted ground flew beneath Gentleman Jim’s paws, the points of light streamed past, and before long the River Lethe was narrowing in its bed and they could hear the noise of another river, flowing much faster and more noisily.

‘We’re getting there,’ Pico said in excitement from between Gentleman Jim’s shoulders. ‘Now all we have to do is find the pool and get him to drink.’

‘When you say
all
,’ said Gentleman Jim, but he was interrupted by a crashing, rumbling, tumbling noise. One river was pouring into the other by means of a great waterfall and the waterfall ended in a kind of pool.

‘This must be it,’ said Pico, staring out between Gentleman Jim’s ears.

‘He can’t go down there,’ said Gentleman Jim, scandalized. ‘He’ll kill himself – er – oh,’ he ended, having realized that Orion wasn’t
alive
in the normal sense of the word.

‘Is this the place?’ said Orion.

Both dogs peered over the edge. The water looked black and bitter, topped with a greenish foam. It did not seem in any way inviting. But it was the only pool.

‘Er -’ started Gentleman Jim, but Pico just said, ‘This is the place, yes.’

‘With the better water?’

‘Definitely,’ Pico said.

Orion looked at the churning sludge. ‘What does Hopeless say?’ he asked.

Gentleman Jim glared at him. ‘Drink,’ he said.

Orion looked as doubtful as he possibly could, then he said, ‘I know that you would not try to deceive me, for you are honourable dogs –’ and both Gentleman Jim and Pico had the grace to look a little ashamed – ‘so will you not drink with me?’

Pico began to say that, though they would love to, it would be much harder for them to get down to the pool, but Gentleman Jim interrupted him. ‘This water is not for dogs,’ he said firmly.

‘I see,’ Orion said. ‘Then I have no way of knowing that what you say is true.’

Gentleman Jim and Pico looked at one another in despair. This wasn’t going to be as easy as they had thought. Then Orion made a movement as if to leave, and Gentleman Jim stood in front of him.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘What harm can it do? You’re already dead – what have you got to lose?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Orion. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

‘If I can get behind him,’ said Gentleman Jim in an aside to Pico, ‘maybe I can push.’

But Pico was gazing up at Orion.

‘You are right, of course,’ he said. ‘If you are afraid, we had better return.’

Orion lifted his transparent chin. ‘I am not afraid,’ he said.

‘We can offer no guarantees, no assurances,’ Pico said. ‘As far as we
believe,
this is the water that will make you remember everything about yourself and why you are here. But we do not
know,
because we have not drunk it. If you prefer to forget, that is your right. We do not know what will happen if you drink.’

Gentleman Jim held his breath. Pico had told the exact truth. That was a novel approach for them, he realized. He eyed Orion warily.
You can bring a soul to water, but you can’t make it drink,
he thought.

Orion seemed to be assessing them both from a vast distance.

‘You are right,’ he said at last. ‘It is good that you have given up your foolish attempts to deceive me. And you are right when you say I have nothing to lose. I will try the water.’

Before their eyes, he returned to his former shape of a glowing light and disappeared over the edge of the ravine.

Gentleman Jim and Pico rushed to the edge. They saw Orion’s light glimmering over the surface of the water, hovering like a large, pale insect. Then suddenly it dipped downwards and, just as suddenly, disappeared.

‘Now what?’ whispered Gentleman Jim, but Pico could find nothing to say. It was as if the water had swallowed Orion’s soul.

‘Where’s he gone?’ said Gentleman Jim, and both dogs gazed in consternation as the water below them began to churn more rapidly than before, almost as if it was boiling. The surface bulged for a moment, then sank down again.

‘Orion?’ called Pico. ‘O – ri – on!’

The water bulged again and bubbles broke the surface.

‘GO AWAY!’ said a voice drenched in misery.

In agitation, Gentleman Jim ran along the edge of the ravine one way and Pico the other. The surface of the water bulged into the shape of an enormous man, but rapidly the shape disappeared.

Gentleman Jim licked his lips. ‘Orion?’ he began.

‘DON’T LOOK AT ME!’ cried the anguished soul, and he disappeared beneath the surface of the water again.

Gentleman Jim and Pico stared at one another in dismay.

‘Orion, you have to come out,’ said Pico, but Orion only howled again.

‘I can never come out!’ he cried. ‘I deserve only to drown!’

‘Now, look here,’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘There’s no use wallowing around! You have to come out and face up to what you did -’

He was cut off by Orion’s lament. ‘I can never face up to this!’ he cried. ‘It is monstrous, horrible! I DESERVE ONLY TO DIE!’

And as this howl faded it was taken up by another, far more terrible and unearthly – a vengeful, hate-ridden shriek, as if all the bad thoughts in the world had been condensed into a single cry, punctuated only by the rapid beating of
wings. Gentleman Jim and Pico looked at one another in even greater dismay, remembering suddenly, with horrible clarity, what the starry Orion had said.

The Furies were coming.

‘Of course, it might mean,’ Checkers pointed out, ‘that he’s in a good mood.’

Boris said nothing. He was too busy trying to dodge the shower of stones and skulls dislodged from the walls and roof of the cave. The tail had settled down and was now thumping erratically on the floor of the cave. Every time it thumped, the cave quivered, and Boris was drawing unpleasant conclusions about the size of the beast attached to it.

‘If we could get right up to him,’ Checkers said, ‘we could have a sniff at his bum.’

Boris’s look said it all.

Dogs can tell a great deal by sniffing the bums of other dogs. They can tell what mood they’re in – hostile or friendly – how well they fight, what they’ve eaten recently and so on. Normally, sniffing the rear end of another dog was a good first step to establishing a relationship, but when it came to the Hound of Hades, Boris was unsurprisingly reluctant. He thought that there must be a better plan, surely, if only he could think of it.

The tail was lifting itself now, then thumping downwards, once, twice… The third time, it remained lifted.

The two friends waited. Nothing happened. The dreadful thumping was replaced by a terrible silence.

‘Right,’ said Checkers. ‘I’m going in.’

And before Boris could shout ‘Wait!’ or ‘Don’t do it, Checkers!’ or ‘What – are you nuts?’ Checkers was running under the tail.

‘Checkers, don’t!’ Boris called at last, in a strangled bark. ‘It’s a trick!’

But Checkers went on bounding forward, following the length of the enormous tail.

Boris groaned aloud. He didn’t even bother about being quiet. Cerberus knew they were there, he was quite sure about that, and Checkers was bounding forward to certain death. Which meant that he, Boris, had to bound after him.

With a hopelessness born of utter despair, Boris plodded after Checkers. He aimed to stay to one side of the mammoth appendage, which was twitching evilly above him, but every time he tried to dodge it, it shifted position slightly, just as if it was tracking his every move. As in fact it was, Boris realized, and he would have had a sinking feeling, except that there was nowhere further for his spirits to sink.

Above him, the tail was growing in size and thickness, and Boris knew they must be reaching its horrid end.

‘It’s here!’ Checkers shouted excitedly. ‘I can see it now! It’s a big one – I can smell it from here! I’ll just see if I can get my nose tucked right in –’

‘Checkers – no!’ panted Boris, but he was too late.

Checkers had clambered on to a rocky ledge and thrust his nose upwards, right under the root of the tail. At that
precise moment, two things happened. Checkers staggered backwards, reeling from the smell, and the tail coiled itself inwards with lightning speed. Boris barely had time to flatten himself against the sides of the cave before it swept past him, wrapping itself round and round Checkers. And as soon as it had got him, it began threshing around, thumping him against the walls, ceiling and floor. Boris stared aghast as Checkers was butted into the wall just centimetres away, and the cave shook with the force of the blow.

‘Gnnnngggh!’ said Checkers, landing again next to Boris. Then ‘Ppphhhnnngg!’ as the great tail drove him powerfully into a nearby rock. And ‘Ggglllrrrkkk!’ as he pounded the wall again.

‘Checkers!’ cried Boris in distress, clambering uselessly after his friend.

He realized that Checkers was trying to tell him something, but he was greatly hampered by being squeezed to death. Checkers struggled valiantly in the coils of the tail, and Boris ran from side to side after him, trying to keep up.

At last, Checkers got his muzzle free. He shouted something at Boris, but Boris couldn’t hear, and he was finding it hard to concentrate, what with the cave falling in all around him and the imminence of death.

‘What?’ he cried uselessly. ‘What did you say?’

The great tail stopped thumping briefly as Boris scrambled over fallen rocks to get to his friend. Checkers was a sorry sight. His ear was bleeding and both eyes were swelling up.

‘I think I’ve got him cornered,’ he managed to say, as Boris reached him. ‘Now all we’ve got to do is –’

But the tail lifted again, before he could finish the sentence, swinging him high into the air, then battering him into the ground.

Boris growled and gnashed at the tail, trying to bite it, but it was too fast for him. All his life, things had been too fast for Boris and now his lack of speed was going to prove fatal to his best friend.

‘Boris,’ Checkers said, as he hit the ground again and lay still for a moment. ‘Boris – I think I’m done for.’

‘Don’t say that!’ panted Boris.

‘It’s true,’ moaned Checkers. ‘I can’t fight this one. You’ll have to fight him for me.’

‘Me?’ gasped Boris, as the great tail swung Checkers up again. ‘I’m no fighter, Checkers. I’ve never fought another dog in the whole of my life.’

‘Well – now’s – your – chance!’ panted Checkers, and with each word the monstrous tail pounded him into the rocks.

Boris wanted very much to protest. He wanted to say that he had never felt the urge to fight, he just wasn’t that kind of dog. And if he was going to start a fight for the first time ever, it wouldn’t be with the Hound of Hades, whose mounds of poo were five times larger than Gentleman Jim. He wanted to say that he wished he’d stayed in bed that morning, or let Mr Finnegan take him to the dogs’ home, but everything he wanted to say suddenly caught in the back of his throat. A surge of rage the likes of which he had never experienced before boiled up in him. It was rage at all the injustice he had ever experienced, rage at his owners and their fiendish infant and, most of all, rage at the diabolical hound that was pounding his best friend
into a pulp. Suddenly he knew himself to be what Jenny had said he was, the guardian and protector of Checkers. Rage coursed through his veins and into his muscles and pumped upwards into his throat, so that he released a savage howl.

‘SPAWN OF THE PIT!’ he howled, taking Checkers completely by surprise, and, tensing all his muscles, he sprang at the tail as it descended once more, driving all his teeth into it as far as they would go.

Jenny didn’t know how long she had lain, prostrated by grief, in the place where the body of her master had been, because time had lost all meaning. She simply slumped, crumpled and abject, her eyes firmly closed, as though all hope had gone.

Behind her, on the darkest shore, the corpses were gathering. She knew they were waiting for her, but she didn’t care. A black bridge appeared silently, lengthening itself over the stretch of water that separated Jenny from the corpses. She didn’t need to look; she knew it was there and that she was expected to cross it. Once she had, the bridge would disappear again, leaving her on the shore of no return.

It doesn’t matter,
she thought.
I have nothing to live for now.

But even as she thought this, a different voice nagged at her.

What about your friends?
it said.
What about Sam?

Sam. The small boy who had given her his heart.

If Ragnarok broke out in Sam’s world, he would be in terrible danger. Her friends were probably in terrible danger already because of Jenny. She couldn’t just abandon them to fight alone.

Slowly, as if it was unutterably heavy, Jenny raised her head. She kept her eyes closed, afraid of what she might see if she opened them. Despair and fear battled with loyalty in her mind.
Baldur,
she thought, then,
Sam.

She had no idea how to return to Sam’s world, or what she could do against all the forces of Ragnarok if she got there. It would be better, and far easier, to enter the darkness.

Yet, against her will, a picture of Sam’s face swam into her mind. Every day, when he saw her, his face lit up. Every afternoon, when he returned from school, he looked as if seeing Jenny had made his day.

Sam,
she thought, and it was as though she was calling him.
Sam!

He was her Golden Boy now and, holding the bright image of him in her heart as protection against the dark bridge and the gathering corpses, she finally opened her eyes. And there in front of her was the rainbow.

The bat-winged, snake-haired monsters were approaching and the air whirred with the beating of their wings.

‘Orion!’ shouted Gentleman Jim and Pico together. ‘You have to come out now!’

‘No!’ said the muffled voice. ‘Leave me alone! I deserve to die!’

‘But we don’t!’ Gentleman Jim pointed out. ‘You can’t leave us to the Furies! Come out and fight like a man!’