A Different Kingdom(109)

And two eyes were a foot from his face. Vast, amber circles, they were slitted with pupils black as jet, red lines veining the yellow cornea. They blinked once, slowly, and Michael could see the massive muzzle; striped by moonlight, the faint shine of the teeth that lined it.

Terror galvanized him. He screamed aloud as his entire body convulsed with effort, the cords in his thick neck riding out of the flesh and neat to snapping. His arms pushed up with enormous force, a strength dredged from the bowels of his fear, and the heels of his hands impacted with the wolf's throat. He felt something give way in there, a wet snap, and then the heavy beast was punched into the air. Air flooded his lungs, and he flowed to his feet with something of the old hunter's grace.

The others were lunging for him.

Without thought, he launched himself towards the window, adrenaline powering the neglected muscles of his legs. He hit the Venetian blind and felt the sharp edges slice at his arms and shoulders, and then the glass doing the same, but with a bright flare of pain, deep and cold. He was weightless, his stomach turning and his ears full of the demented howls of his attackers, anger in them, disappointment—and fear?

And so it ends, he thought, and he was smiling as he fell, a moment of free fall crammed with reflection. He wondered what the shattering impact of the concrete pavement would be like.

Branches whipped at his face, along his torso, cutting and whipping his flesh.

The wood. Still there.

He hit something hard and unyielding, a thicker branch. It crushed the breath out of him, popping his ribs like sticks, and then he was careering past it.

Again. This time a spray of twigs and lesser branches that lashed his face. And now he was being buffeted from branch to branch in a kind of arboreal pinball, yelling with the pain of his broken ribs.

And a final, enormous impact that left him lying on his back with his lungs flat and airless: the surrounding trees a wheeling kaleidoscope of shadow and moonlight.

He struggled, and finally sucked in a huge draught of air that fuelled his scream of agony. Then he was breathing quickly, carefully, his ribs an orchestra of white-hot daggers jabbing his sides.

But I'm alive.

He hauled himself to his feet, grimacing. Around him the trees reared up, a diffuse silvery radiance that was the moonlight illuminating the topmost branches high above. Down here he was enveloped in Stygian gloom. The ground gave moistly under his feet, mud and moss, the mulch of millennia's leaves. The tree trunks glowed faintly, phosphorescent mould plastering the bark. There was a reek of dampness, of rot and decay. It stirred memories. He squeezed his eyes shut until the darkness had seeped into them and he was no longer totally blind.

He was in the Wolfweald.

Something stirred in the wet earth at his feet. He jumped backwards, the lurch sending the jagged needles of his broken bones grating.

The leaves shifted there, mud rose up. He blinked furiously, trying to make it out. His injured arm dripped blood upon the earth but he hardly noticed.

Something coming out of the ground.

He remembered, and white terror flooded his brain. He saw Nennian's face as they tore him to pieces.

Two black horns or ears surmounting a broad skull. A long muzzle thrusting its way free of the ground. Powerful shoulders below the heavy head, all utterly black, mud-covered, stinking of decayed leaves and deep day.

He ran.

He had time to think: This is the end. It finishes here. I am the last loose end. And then he heard the awful howl of the beast behind him and the patter of its feet on the dead leaves.

He blundered along like a drunk, careering into trees, tripping over roots and having his forehead slashed by low branches. His lungs worked and wheezed like a leaking set of bellows, and the pain of his injuries mingled with the chill race of his adrenaline to make a cocktail of energy, high-octane panic. He sounded like a mad ghost, all laboured breathing and the jingle of the keys in his pocket.

It was not enough. He was losing blood steadily and his air supply was constricted by the racked agony of his broken rib cage. And he was not fit. He was an overweight man who smoked and drank too much, who spent his days on one side of a bar or the other. The city living was heavy in his limbs, a millstone settling with fatal weight across his chest.

I'm going to die here, he thought. The fairytale finishes.

Michael! This way!

What? A voice? Had he heard it or imagined it?

Michael!

There she was. Cat, plain as day, beckoning urgently to him, Just as she had once many years before in the wood. beside his home. A laugh got past the strangled constriction of his throat. She was going to save him again. It would be all right.

Something struck him from behind and knocked him on to his face. His mouth was full of the stinking leaf litter and there was a dry snarling, like the rip of a chainsaw, in his very ear. He rolled in the filth of the forest floor. The beast was on top of him and there was a green light spilling out of its eyes. The black maw descended and he reached up to fend it off. It was like grappling with slimy mahogany, solid wood that nonetheless bulged with muscle. His fingers slid along its smooth throat. Stone-hard paws scrabbled at his chest, ripping his clothes away, popping buttons, tearing into his flesh. He shrieked with pain and fury. The teeth lunged for his face and he punched the wolf's head aside, skinning knuckles. The jaws fastened on his forearm and it was as though a razor-edged vice was crushing the bones. There was a metallic rattle as his keys slipped from his pocket.