The Beast of Seabourne (47 page)

The birds, carrion feeders usually, were not used to their prey fighting back. With cries of alarm, they disengaged and flew off, the huge wings beating around Skelton's head as he thrashed at them. He wiped blood from his eyes and swung his furious gaze at Oz. Anger distorted his features and his eyes bulged, but one arm hung limply by his side.

“You meddling little
sod
!” he roared. Bloodstained saliva flew from his ugly mouth as he lunged forwards.

“Oz, look out!” Ellie screamed.

But there was no need. Oz could see him coming. He had plenty of time to move away. Instead, he stood his ground and waited for Skelton's pawing advance. At the very last moment, Oz feinted right and then left. Skelton reacted reflexively. When his good arm captured nothing but air, he grabbed at Oz with the broken one. It was what Oz had been waiting for. Instead of ducking, he reached forwards, grabbed Skelton's shattered forearm, and yanked. Skelton let out a gurgle. His body lurched to the side, pain driving him in the direction of Oz's yanking arm. He staggered, balance gone, his feet losing purchase as he toppled backwards. The momentum tipped him over the lip and down the steep slope leading to the roof of the chasm. Oz turned his head away, not wanting to see, but he could do nothing about what he heard. There was a rushing hiss of crushed bracken and the snapping of many twigs, followed by a scream and then, sickeningly, a dead silence.

“Did you just see that?” Ruff said. “The birds attacked him!”

“No,” Oz said, in a voice that choked with effort. “They don't ever attack live prey. They're carrion feeders. What they thought they were attacking was a dead rabbit.”

“
A dead rabbit
?” Ellie repeated, staring at him in shocked bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”

Oz's heart was thumping so hard against the ribs of his chest he felt like it must burst through. A swirl of emotions fought for dominance in his head. Horror and awe and wonder and relief battled it out. He held out a trembling hand, showed them the ceramic ring, and shook his head. “It was Soph,” he said tremulously.

“Soph?” Ellie said.

“I heard the kites. They were the only thing around, and I began to imagine what it would be like if they attacked and…” The words spilled out like water from an overturned bucket. “Soph projected a holoshield over Skelton's head so that the kites just saw his hat as a dead rabbit lying on the mountain…”

Ellie stared at him with her jaws hanging open wide enough to house a small plane.

Ruff was blinking very rapidly, his face still ashen, his voice thick with emotion. “I know you couldn't have done it without her, but it was you that ran up that slope, mate. You who took on Skelton.”

“Someone had to,” Oz mumbled.

The only noise for several seconds was the sound of their breathing as they recovered from their efforts. Oz couldn't forget the scream and the sudden silence that followed.

“Do you think he's…?”

Ruff shook his head. “Don't know and I don't care.”

Oz looked unhappy, but Ellie had no qualms. “Ruff's right. He was going to shoot us, Oz. With a bit of luck, he's fallen in and broken his neck.”

“You don't mean that,” Oz protested.

“Well, I'm not volunteering to go in and take a look, that's for certain,” Ruff said. “I vote we take Niko back to camp and get the mountain rescue people back here pronto.”

“But—”

“Oz, I saw his gun fall. But he could have another one in his backpack. It's mad to go back in there,” Ellie pleaded.

Oz nodded reluctantly. It was mad. “Ruff, come up and give me a hand.”

Quickly, Oz took off his coat and jumper and put the jumper on Niko, and Ruff did the same. They lowered him slowly down on the rope to where Ellie waited by the tree. There, they managed to get him dazedly on his feet. Slowly and carefully, they descended the slope, stopping only to find the Aikman gun, which Oz picked up with a gloved hand. It felt like a plastic toy. It was difficult to believe it possessed so much power.

Twenty minutes later, at the bottom of the escarpment, Oz walked thirty yards to a small, steep ravine and tossed the gun into it.

“Right,” he said, wiping his hands. “Let's get out of here before anything else totally weird happens.”

Chapter 22

The Rescue

Now over the horizon, the sun climbed swiftly in the pale blue sky. Despite the early hour, the welcome trickle of warmth it provided was the perfect antidote to the chill, black horrors of the night. Already, the thin spattering of snow showed signs of yielding to the day. They could hear the trickle of water everywhere as percolating melt sparkled in the silver runoffs spilling down the mountain.

Niko recovered quickly once they got off the escarpment, enough to start stumbling along on his own without the support of Ruff's arm under his shoulder. All attempts at conversation were met with blank stares. It looked as if his brain was still rebooting as he trudged along a few yards behind the trio.

“So,” Ellie asked in a low whisper, after glancing behind to see if Niko was taking any notice, “what are we going to actually say to Miss Arkwright when we get back?”

They were making slow but steady progress on the wide tramway, which stretched away across the flat moor top like a ribbon.

“If we tell her everything, she's going to think we're bonkers,” Ruff said.

“And it'll get Niko into deep trouble for something he had no idea he was doing,” Oz agreed. He too had been wondering just what their story was going to be. The prospect of telling anyone even some of the truth—that they'd somehow managed to divert the school trip, gone in search of one of Morsman's artefacts, and calmed the Beast of Seabourne in the process—was a non-starter. They'd sworn to keep Soph a secret amongst themselves, Caleb Jones, Mrs Chambers, and the Fanshaws. Telling the world would change everything. Then there was Skelton…

“Wait,” said a hoarse voice from behind them.

They turned as one. It was the first time Niko had spoken, and the cost of that effort was plain to see. He looked terribly pale and suddenly lurched over to a large boulder, where he was promptly sick.

“So, what do we tell him?” Ellie hissed.

“Depends on what he remembers, I suppose,” Oz said.

“I know exactly what to tell him,” Ruff said with conviction. Ellie and Oz both looked at each other warily, but Ruff was already walking back towards the wan-looking Niko.

“Better out than in, eh, mate?”

Niko turned a sickly green face up at him. “Why are we here on top of mountain?”

“Good question,” Ruff said. “Don't you remember?”

Niko got shakily to his feet and shook his head. A hint of colour was returning to his cheeks, but his eyes looked glassy with confusion. “I remember getting into sleeping bag and Mr Skelton putting head through the tent to make sure I am all right…” He faltered and shivered violently. “But I do not know how I got here.”

“Sleepwalking, mate,” Ruff said in a way that suggested that it was the most natural thing in the world. “You must have been confused by your strange surroundings, got up, had a wander about, and got completely and buzzardly lost.

We found you up there”—Ruff waved a hand vaguely in the direction they'd just come from— “halfway to the North Pole.”

Niko frowned and stared at Ruff disbelievingly. Then his face cleared somewhat, as if he'd found an answer to a troubling question.

“I have been having nightmares.” Niko spoke in a whisper. “For weeks. Very bad, horrible dreams.”

“Could be cheese,” Ruff said.

“What?”

“Eating cheese on toast at night gives me terrible nightmares. I'd stay away from that if I were you.”

“But I haven't—”

“Stinky cheese is the worst.” Ruff added cheerfully. “Gorgonzola, eeugh. Tried that?”

Niko went an even paler shade of green and turned away to retch again.

“These things tend to work themselves out,” Ellie said reassuringly to a hunched-over Niko, at the same time as shaking her head in disapproval at Ruff out of Niko's line of sight. Silently, she mouthed, “Cheese?”

Ruff threw his arms up in a gesture denoting bewildered delight at the success of his spontaneous suggestion. And, to their surprise, as with anyone faced with the inexplicable and unable to come up with anything better himself, Niko, bizarrely, warmed to the idea.

“Perhaps it is cheese. Or migraines. My father gets migraines. He sees funny colours and smells funny things.”

“Yeah, that's probably it,” Ruff said with enthusiasm. “Migraine brought on by cheese. I bet there was loads in that soup they gave us last night.”

“Yes, cheese soup, that's exactly what it tasted like,” muttered Ellie.

Ruff glared at her.

No one wanted to hang about to chat. They started walking again as Niko, still troubled, asked questions. It was pretty clear that his memory for the events of the night was a complete blank. His dawning inquisitiveness was punctuated only by a need to stop and retch drily a few more times. On the second occasion, Ruff pulled the other two to one side, out of Niko's earshot.

“Right, it's pretty obvious he's clueless about all this,” he said in a low murmur.

“Think he remembers attacking Skinner or Pheeps, then?” Ellie asked.

“I doubt it,” Oz mused. “Hang on, let me ask Soph.”

There was, of course, no need for Oz to ask Soph anything while he wore the ring, and the answer to his unvoiced question appeared in his head in a way that was as natural as thinking.

“Soph says the neuroware thing that brainwashed him creates an automaton state. She says that it's unlikely that any cognitive memory will remain.”

“I didn't know you could speak Soph,” Ruff said with a little shake of his head.

“You mean it was like he was possessed while he was doing all that stuff?” Ellie asked. “Doing it without really knowing he was?”

“Yeah,” Oz said as Soph confirmed Ellie's interpretation. “Just like Richard Worthy was.”

Ruff nodded. “But what if Skelton starts blabbing?”

“That's if he's still capable,” Ellie mused.

“He is,” Oz said. “Soph knows. Don't ask me how, but she does.”

“Shame,” Ruff muttered.

“But Skelton isn't going to want to blab, is he? He threatened to kill us, remember?” Ellie reasoned.

“Well, we have to come up with something for Arkwright,” Oz said. “We can't tell her about Skelton for the same reason we can't tell her about Niko being the Beast. No one will believe us unless we have proof. And the only proof we have is Soph.”

Ellie and Ruff nodded. They had to keep Soph out of this. They agreed to stick with Ruff's sleepwalking idea and simply added to it. Somehow, disoriented in the dark, Niko had stumbled over Ellie's tent before wandering off. Skelton had followed and then Oz, Ellie, and Ruff had set out in pursuit, footprints in the snow their only clues as to where Niko was. When they finally caught up with him, they'd taken shelter in the cave where Skelton's “accident” had taken place. It sounded weak and implausible, but the alternative was so mind-blowing, and the consequences so unpleasant for all, especially Niko, that even Ellie put up no objection.

At around eight, they heard the helicopter. It zigzagged across the sky on the horizon until, ten minutes later, someone in it saw their waving hands. It zoomed low in acknowledgement and then shot off to get help. At eight twenty-five, they crested the final ridge and stopped to look down at the little tent encampment below them. In the few hours they'd been away, a lot had changed, not least of which was that it was overrun by police vans, ambulances, and orange Land Rovers with
Mountain Rescue
emblazoned across their bonnets, one of which was haring up the slope towards them.

They'd just started down the hill to meet the Land Rover when someone spotted them from below, and the shout went up. After that, things happened very quickly.

The Land Rover picked them up and, as they pulled up on the edge of the encampment, it was immediately swamped by the rest of year eight with Miss Arkwright in the vanguard.

She grabbed Ellie, Ruff, Niko, and Oz in turn, tears of relief running down her face. They gave a quick, garbled explanation before some ambulance people arrived, wrapped them in blankets, and hurried Niko away. Ten minutes later, the other three were sitting in a warm police van the size of a small bus, sipping hot, sweet tea. There, they explained to an efficient-looking policewoman and a fit-looking older man in walking boots where exactly they'd left Skelton. The man, his face weather-beaten under a mop of curly iron-grey hair, whom the policewoman introduced as Mr Edwards (“Just call me Bryn”), Chief Coordinator for the Beacons Mountain Rescue Service, listened attentively as they explained. However, when Oz finished, he faced a frown of disbelief.