The Red Queen (60 page)

I saw a glimpse in his mind of a vast cloud of
rhenlings
flying.

‘Do not be afraid,’ I assured him. ‘We have a . . .’ I tried to think how to describe Hannah’s device, calming down as I understood he was afraid for me, because night was coming and it was darkmoon. ‘It’s all right! There is . . . a force/power here that keeps the
rhenlings
out of the city/Northport. We are within its protection.’

‘There is no force/protection!’ Gahltha sent. ‘Go back to where you were/safe. Marumanyelloweyes said the
rhenlings
could not go there.’

‘No, you are . . . you don’t understand,’ I said, but my heart began to gallop at the thought that the device Hannah had left behind so long ago might have failed. We ought to have considered the possibility. ‘Don’t worry, we are close enough to get into the buildings of the barud-li before it is full dark.’

‘No!?’ Gahltha sent, and the terror in his sending was unbearable. ‘You cannot go into the barud-li! The
rhenling
horde nests/sleeps there, thousands upon thousands of them, and when it is dark they will rise to feed.’

My probe dissolved in horror and I wrenched myself free of the hands that held me and turned to the west to see the sun was touching the horizon.

‘It was Gahltha,’ I gasped. ‘Hannah’s device must have failed.’

‘But how do you –’ Ana began.

I cut her off ruthlessly. ‘Gahltha says the city is full of
rhenlings
and they will rise to feed when it is dark.’

‘But there is nowhere to hide,’ Dragon said.

‘It will be full dark in about ten minutes,’ Swallow said. ‘We have to run
into
the city, now.’ He overrode me when I tried to protest. ‘There is no other way. We must get close to the buildings and watch where the
rhenlings
come from, then take shelter accordingly. They will not begin their night’s hunt by looking under their noses.’

‘Elspeth, he is right,’ Ana said. ‘Ahmedri waited at the mouth of their lair and they didn’t see him. He used a silver blanket and we can do the same.’

‘Forget about the blankets. There is no time to find them. Leave everything and run,’ I said.

Ana obeyed. Taking hold of Dragon’s hand, she began to run, dragging the other girl, until she ran, too. I reached out to Dameon but Swallow batted my hand away saying that he would bring the empath. ‘You are the one who matters. Now go! Stop for nothing and no one.’

‘He is right,’ Dameon said urgently. ‘You run for us all.’

I turned to the city and broke into a sprint. Behind me I heard Swallow shout to the androne to defend me from the flying mutants. Moments later I heard the androne pounding along behind me. I glanced back to see its burdens spilling willy-nilly from its hooks and shelves, but it did not heed them. Behind them, Swallow swerved to avoid the flying objects, and Dameon kept pace, running hard and trusting utterly to the other man’s eyes. I turned back to Northport and ran as hard as I could, gradually coming up behind Ana and Dragon, then I saw Dragon stumble and fall.

Even as I slowed instinctively, my own foot broke through a crust of earth over a crumbling remnant of a black road and I fell hard. All the wind was knocked from me, but worse, my ankle screamed. I ground my teeth together and got to my feet, ignoring pain, and hobbled on as best I could. Ana had hauled Dragon to her feet and they were running again, making straight for the nearest building.

Suddenly all the scrapers and the flat plain before them turned red as blood. Fox fire, I thought, irrelevantly. Then I reached the top of the slope and stopped dead, for there was a gap in the row of buildings before me and I realised it was a street running down the steeply sloping ground beyond the ridge where the city began, and I saw the vast, red-tinged labyrinth that was Northport. Then the ruddy light thickened and darkened to the red-brown of congealed blood and I looked around to see the sun setting, and the dark tide of cloud running across the sky in its wake was quenching the reds and golds of the dusk sky. In seconds it would be pitch dark, and no moon would rise this night.

I turned to see Swallow and Dameon running up the slope to the left. They had almost reached the buildings, but when I tried to run again, my leg collapsed under me. It would not support me; worse, I was bleeding copiously. I had just passed a broken depression in the ground a little way back down the slope and I knew it was my only chance. If I could crawl back down to it, I could press myself into it and lie still and quiet, praying that Ana was right and that the swarm would be too intent on flying to notice bloody prey at its doorstep.

I crawled to the depression and rolled into it, panting hard, my ankle throbbing. Lifting my head above the crumbling rim of the depression, I saw Swallow and Dameon vanish down the side of the building. Further around, I could see Ana and Dragon crouched in what looked to be a niche in its facade. Seeing their white faces turned to me, I farsent to them both and expressly forbade them to come back for me.

I rolled on my back, remembering the androne had been following me, and saw it looming over me against the long closing seam of red in the dusk-lit sky. Then I heard the unmistakable beat of running paws. I looked around, thinking it must be Darga, or Rasial, but the beast racing up the slope towards me was a wolf. I saw clearly jaws agape, red tongue lolling, its torn ear and grizzled muzzle, its glowing pitiless eyes. It was Gobor, who had been driven from the Brildane pack after he had tried to kill me! I screamed as he leapt and landed with his paws either side of my head. I reached out to catch the ruff of fur at his throat, trying to hold him off, expecting to feel his teeth close on me, but he lay down beside me, half atop me, crushing the breath out of me. Confusedly, I thought he had somehow followed us, waiting for a moment to make good his threat to kill me.

‘Quiet tha, dinrai,’ he snarled, his mismatched mindvoice scything painfully into my head. ‘This one comes not to devour tha but to defend tha.’

A single beat of astounded silence, and then I heard a great soughing as of a wind sweeping through a forest of trees. I turned on my side to edge out from under the wolf and looked at the buildings, my heart quailing at the sight of endless streams of birds pouring from hundreds of glassless windows and cracks in the scrapers to form a monstrous whirling cloud overhead, stained red-black by the last glimmer of dusk, just visible against the dense flat darkness of the sky.

Only they were not birds.

‘Be still/be quite,’ Gobor sent. ‘Beasts there are that run with the
rhenlings
unwinged/unflying. They will come like a wave over the ground. These this one can protect tha from, so long as the fliers dinna ken tha.’

Remembering his ability to freeze the will to move, I lay still, fearing he might exert it on me. My mind was reeling at his unexpected appearance, at his offer of aid, when the last time we had seen one another he had sworn to tear my throat out. Then I pushed aside all thought and tried to quiet the sawing of my breath, the battering of my heart. I pressed my face to the white earth, striving to be silent, trying to be earth. The sound of the
rhenlings
grew louder and I could not stand not to see. I turned my head very slowly, and looked up.

Terror cleaved into me at the sight of the
rhenling
column curling inexorably downward, towards me, like a peak in a great dark wave of the ocean. Their rank, unmistakable odour came before them and the rustling of their wings grew. The air seemed to vibrate. I did not run. I could not and there was no use in it. I could not coerce them.

‘Maruman,’ I whispered, watching my death approach, and fear gave way to a stabbing sorrow at the knowledge that I would never see him again.

But before the
rhenlings
could reach us, the most piercingly dreadful shriek rent the air and a dazzlingly bright light shone out in a widening wedge, slicing open the darkness. I turned to see the androne had turned its face up to the ravening
rhenling
horde and light was pouring from an opening in its forehead, but it was a thousand times brighter than any light it had shone before. Its mouth was open as if it screamed, and I realised
it
was making the terrible shrilling sound too. Overhead, lit by the swathe of white from its headlight, the column of
rhenlings
exploded in a dozen different directions. Many fell dead, or maybe stunned, and the rest were wheeling and coiling and colliding, clearly confused.

‘Run,’ Gobor barked the command in my mind, even as he leapt from the depression.

I sprang up and began to hobble forward, ignoring pain, galvanised by terror. The wolf paced me, though he could have left me and covered the ground to the buildings in moments. Then I baulked, for coming along the ground towards us were a pack of what looked to be oversize and wingless
rhenlings
moving with the terrible jerky grace of giant spiders. When they were close enough for me to see their fangs and the glistening whites of their eyes, I remembered my little belt dagger and groped for it even as Gobor leapt into their midst, snapping his jaws on one then another and another. For a second there was a hiatus, then another pack that had clearly been hanging back, dismayed by the wolf’s attack, surged forward and the wolf vanished in a dense flurry of leathery lumpen black bodies. He gave a terrible howl and I felt a desperate rage flow through me.

I staggered forward to help him, screaming and wielding my knife. One of the creatures leapt at me and I felt its teeth and claws slash at me, and thought of the Endrax virus. Holding it from my face and neck, I drew on the dark force at my core and hurled it recklessly at the pack as if they were a single mind. I spent myself in a single burst. It was as if a giant hand slapped at the land-bound mutants and they fell as one.

I stumbled to my knees beside the wolf lying in their midst and slashed at the
rhenling
still fastened to his head. It fell away with a spatter of dark blood. I looked up and saw with horror that the flying horde had split, one column pouring towards the androne, and the other punching down towards me.

I looked up to see if I could see Swallow or one of the others, and in the wash of brightness from the androne’s headlight lighting up the fronts of the buildings, I saw a flash of white at a window ledge, and to my utter astonishment a white wolf appeared on a ledge on another building. Further along something moved and I glanced at the next building to see another wolf step onto a sill. Then there was another on a roof and another two on the next roof, and yet another stepped out onto a jutting balcony. Suddenly there were wolves strung out across the buildings, all standing like pale statues.

The Brildane; but had they come to watch me die, I wondered, and how did Gobor fit in? I was utterly bewildered.

Then a single wolf began to howl. The sound clearly distressed the
rhenlings
, for the leading edge of the great dark wave broke away and coiled back to spear at the wolf that was calling. But it had fallen silent and another of the wolves began to give the same unearthly cry. Once again a great sheet of the
rhenlings
tore away from the main body and curled back towards the wolf uttering that tormenting sound, as yet another wolf on another roof took up the cry. More and more
rhenlings
were peeling off from the flock in wild and aimless circles. But not all were aimless. Even as I watched, I saw one wolf swallowed by a clot of the creatures.

Then Swallow was there, reaching out to me. ‘We’ve found a place –’

‘No, get the wolf,’ I gasped, pointing.

He did not argue but reached down and scooped the limp wolf into his arms, then he stood as I pulled myself up. I used him as a crutch as we made our unwieldy way towards the buildings. I gritted my teeth at the pain, coercing myself to run, knowing I must be damaging myself but uncaring. Belatedly I realised the shrilling sound the androne had made had stopped, and I looked over my shoulder to see one column of
rhenlings
falling on the androne. I saw the androne vanish under them and begin to fall. Then its light was extinguished.

All was darkness.

‘Ye gods, I can’t see a curst thing,’ Swallow gasped, stopping. ‘It’s close. Try to find the gap between . . .’

Then I heard Dameon calling my name and there were hands taking mine, and it was Dameon lifting me into his arms, and telling Swallow to make haste. I heard the leathery whisper of wings overhead and Swallow gave a cry of rage and then we were stumbling through a door and down steps. There was the sound of scuffling and something fell.

A door slammed and there were several thuds against it.

‘Are you hurt?’ I heard Dameon ask. ‘Your leg is wet.’

‘I am fine,’ I said, shrugging off his hands. ‘The wolf . . . It is Gobor, who tried to attack me by the Skylake . . . he saved me from some wingless
rhenlings
.’

‘I thought it must be Ahmedri’s wolf . . .’ Swallow began. Then he cursed and muttered, ‘Damn that filthy thing, it took a piece out of me.’

‘It was, I think,’ I said. ‘I mean I think it was Gobor who was with Ahmedri all that time. He must have followed us. He is hurt . . .’

‘We can do nothing for him until we can see,’ Swallow said. ‘If only I had my pack. Ana stuck in a lightstick. But maybe it is better not to have any light just yet.’

We all fell silent for a moment, listening.

‘The other wolves . . . did you see them?’ I asked.

‘Other wolves?’ Swallow said doubtfully, vaguely. ‘No. Did you see where Ana and Dragon went?’

‘I saw them hiding in a niche when the
rhenlings
came out and then they vanished, so my guess is they are in a place like this,’ I said.

‘What did you mean about other wolves, Elspeth?’ Dameon asked. ‘Do you mean the Brildane?’

‘Yes . . . I think it must be Rheagor and his pack. They suddenly appeared in the buildings after the
rhenlings
had all flown out. They must have been hiding, using their abilities to stop the
rhenlings
attacking them. They came out in the open and started howling – first one and then another. It confused the
rhenlings
 . . . distracted them. Drew them. I don’t understand.’ I felt I might vomit. Leaving the warmth of Dameon’s arms, I groped my way to the wolf. Physical contact enabled me to feel the pulse of his life, but his thick fur was sodden and warm with what could only be a great deal of blood. I could hardly take in that the wolf banished from the pack in the mountains for trying to kill me had appeared to save me.