The Cockatrice Boys (17 page)

The track narrowed here, between steep mossy banks, and the surface underfoot became a gluey mixture of snow and deep mud; sometimes she sank up to her knees; she lost a shoe and barely managed to rescue it by delving down in freezing mud with her hands, then lost the other one altogether. Only the knowledge that it would be wholly impossible to battle a way through that fallen tree kept her from turning back.

But what if this path leads nowhere, comes to a stop? she thought.

Then I'm really done.

But a path has to lead
somewhere,
doesn't it?

She struggled on. Eight eights are sixty-four, eight nines are seventy-two.

After a while the path widened again, and the surface improved; now it was firm rock or frozen earth under layers of fallen leaves and snow. Sauna, wincing as she walked on bare and burning feet, remembered an old rhyme that her mother used to sing about souls after death making their arduous way through purgatory and its trials.

If hosen or shoon thou ne'er gavest nane

The whins shall prick thee to the bare bane.

That old ballad that Mam used to sing. Mam was Scottish, of course. She knew all those old rhymes. How did the refrain go?

This ae night, this ae night,

Every night and alle,

Fire and sleet and candlelight

And Heaven receive thy soul …

I just wish I could see a bit of fire, a bit of candlelight.

She came round a clump of trees, and found herself in a clearing. An
assart.
She remembered Dr. Wren explaining the word one day when the
Cockatrice Belle
was running through woodland and came to an open space.

“It is a strip of land in the middle of woodland, my child, which has been opened out, the trees felled and uprooted so that the ground can be cultivated and crops grown. And mostly there will be a house, probably the dwelling of the first farmer who reclaimed the land; often the house may be very old. Assarts are old, hundreds of years old, from when the whole country was covered by forest; these days folk do not choose to live in woodland glades.”

There was a house in the clearing.

Oh, Dr. Wren, how I wish you were here.

Dr. Wren had also told them stories in between periods of instruction. “People need stories,” he said to Dakin and Sauna, “to remind them that reality is not only what we can see or smell or touch. Reality is in as many layers as the globe we live on itself, going inwards to a central core of red-hot mystery, and outwards to unguessable space. People's minds need detaching, every now and then, from the plain necessities of daily life. People need to be reminded of these other dimensions above us and below us. Stories do that.”

So he told his stories, which were always startling and often beautiful. The strange, the really strange thing about them was that like dreams they vanished. The very moment after the final sentence was spoken the listeners would find that the whole web of the story had melted from memory, however hard they tried and struggled to hang on to even a single thread.

They complained about this to Dr. Wren, and asked why it should be so.

“We can remember other stories—like Alfred and the Cakes or Bluebeard. So why not yours?”

He laughed and said, “Mine are intended to be lost. And none the worse for that. They are supposed to sink out of view, deep down to where they will do the most good.”

If only I could remember one of those stories now, thought Sauna. Just the smallest scrap of one.

But it was no use; she could not. Even the attempt was some help though. It seemed to brace her mind against the sight that she was expecting.

Nine twelves are a hundred and—a hundred and—

The house was very small, stone-built, with a thatched roof. It stood at the opposite end of the clearing. If there had ever been any crop grown in this woodland place, its harvest had long ago been reaped. Snow lay level and untrodden over the sloping ground. Nobody had walked this way for many hours.

But in one of the windows of the house—it had two, both at ground-floor level—there was, unmistakably, a light. The dimnest, smokiest blink, yet a light.

Sauna limped on. What else could she do? There was no possibility of going back. And so far as she could make out the track led on no further than this clearing. Behind the cottage the hill rose steeply. And if there had been a track she could not have followed it. She had come to the end of her strength. She felt unbelievably weary, hollow with hunger, sick with cold. Only this extremity of need drove her on.

For as she neared the cottage, her unexpressed terror was confirmed—one, she now realized, that had been lurking at the back of her mind for the last few hours.

A dark shape stood outside the door—a thing, an effigy of a person, not a real person but a grotesque figure made out of wicker or willow wands. Dozens of wands were loosely, lavishly coiled round to make a bulbous, huge head; masses more sprang from the neck and ran down bulging out into a grotesque body; wands from the shoulders were buckled in at the wrists and spread out again as fingers, curved into a clutching gesture.

Sauna stood still in a numbness of horror. For here was the cottage, here was the figure of her dream.

Then a comforting thought came to her. Perhaps this is all of a dream—the longest, worst dream I have ever dreamed, but still no more than that.

I had better go into the house. Perhaps that will cause me to wake.

Mustering up all her courage, she walked up to the motionless figure, walked past it and knocked on the door. Nobody answered, so she lifted the latch and went in.

Chapter seven

The
Cockatrice Belle
crept along very slowly and mournfully in the days following the loss of Sauna.

When they were still at Falstone, Lieutenant Upfold had had the sensible idea of giving the dog Uli Sauna's skipping-rope and ordering him to follow her track.

This worked well so long as the road ran beside the railway, but at Hawick the track of the coach carrying the kidnapped girl diverged from the rail turning north-eastwards, while the train was obliged to continue straight on in a northerly direction.

“Should we send a separate party of men along the road to follow the scent?” worried the colonel. “There aren't many monsters about just now.”

“On the whole I think it will be best to keep all our forces together,” advised Dr. Wren. “Remember what happened at Willoughby. The lack of monsters may mean they are massing elsewhere. Besides, we may pick up the track at Peebles.”

Not happy about this, but as there really seemed no alternative, the colonel accepted Dr. Wren's counsel. He was extremely put out though before they reached Peebles, when the archbishop insisted on a visit to Melrose, which took half a day.

“What in the world is
that
for?” demanded Clipspeak sourly.

“I need to consult the library there,” was Dr. Wren's calm answer.

When the archbishop returned to the train, the colonel was pacing to and from, on indignant watch for him.

“Well?” he snapped. “Did you find what you hoped for in the library, may I ask? It's as well there are so few monsters about! Your little side-trip might have cost us dearly!”

“I fear they must be massing farther on. No,” said Dr. Wren, “I hardly hoped to find anything. But it was needful to check.”

“To check
what?
What, pray, were you looking for?”

“Michael Scott's last book.”

“That feller that wrote
Tom Cringle's Log?
”

“No, Colonel, no, no,” said the archbishop patiently. “The other one. The thirteenth-century alchemist. As I believe I told you, his grave is in Melrose Abbey, and he is said to have stipulated that his last book, his greatest achievement, should be buried along with him.”

“So? Well? Well? Was the book in the grave? Or the municipal library?”

“No, it was in neither of those places. The grave had been opened some time during the last century, but only a single page of manuscript was discovered in it. That
had
been deposited in the municipal library, but it seems that, just last year, it was stolen.”

“Disgraceful,” remarked the colonel, not particularly interested. “Even public libraries ain't safe from vandals these days. So you had a wasted visit, when we might have been on our way.”

“Oh, not entirely wasted,” said Dr. Wren peacefully. “Knowledge is always useful. I had a description of the man who stole the page.”

At Peebles there was still a somewhat unnerving shortage of monsters. But here the intelligent hound Uli once more picked up the scent of the coach that had carried off Sauna. The trail, not surprisingly, led northwards towards Edinburgh; but then, to the colonel's surprise, it turned west once more, avoiding the main line to Edinburgh and seemed to be heading for Linlithgow and Falkirk.

“Just as I expected,” said Dr. Wren with satisfaction. “They are making for the Crook of Devon. A most unchancy place of evil fame and bad repute.”

“Then why the plague don't they go across the Forth Bridge and turn left?” demanded the colonel.

“Ah well, there are some natures, Colonel, who strongly dislike crossing running water, specially in wide channels, and will go out of their way to avoid it.”

The train suddenly jerked to a halt.

Bellswinger's voice came over the intercom.

“Basilisk attack, sir.”

“Are the men at action stations?”

“Yessir.”

Colonel Clipspeak hurried off to the observation platform, from which the sky looked like Guy Fawkes being celebrated on
Le Quatorze Juillet,
as the flaming Basilisks hurtled in to attack, and then bore off again into the darkness with the agility of gulls and the ferocity of eagles. Luckily the Cockatrice Corps had picked up a number of tips in Basilisk warfare as they travelled through the Border Country; this bleak, hilly territory, once ravaged by border raiders, was now the perching place for aerial predators and the natives had learned various canny ways of confronting them. Or, rather, con
backing
them.

“Ye should never, never face a Basilisk heid on,” an aged Ettrick shepherd instructed Bellswinger. “They are like the Mirkindoles in that respect. Ye should aye gang at him tersy-versy. Shoot at the fearsome beast over your shoulder.”

“But suppose that two come at you, from opposite directions, at the same time?”

“Och, ye'll juist hae tae deal wi' them in a parabolical manner.”

Lieutenant Upfold, who had cousins in Australia and had visited that land, partly solved this problem by constructing boomerang-rockets, fired by curving projectile pistols. These missiles, flying round in circles, achieved considerable damage among flocks of Basilisks, and were by far the best weapons yet devised for dealing with the unpleasant antagonists.

During the current attack, when the Basilisks were flying low and keeping in close formation, the boomerang-rockets had marked success, knocking down at least seventy-five per cent of the attacking force, and causing the rest to sheer off south-westwards and take refuge in the Pentland Hills.

The train had to halt while the battle raged. A protective screen had to be lowered over the windshield, and it took time to lower and then raise it again. When calm finally succeeded the crackle of pistol-fire and the menacing shrieks, hisses and whistles of the Basilisks, the colonel gave the order to get under way without delay. But while wind-power was still being mustered, a desolate cry from alongside the track caused Sergeant Bellswinger to hesitate.

“Beg pardon, Colonel, sir, but—was that a call for assistance?”

“Help me—oh, please, help me! Help!
Help!
”

“Can it be one of our men, snatched off by a Basilisk?” asked the colonel, frowning. “Light a flare, if you please, Sergeant.”

In the greenish light of the flare, they saw a man feebly crawling up the embankment towards the track. He was covered in mud.

“I don't think it's one of ours, sir,” said the sergeant. “All ours are accounted for. No serious casualties this time, I'm happy to say. But this fellow looks to be in a poor way. Something about the cut of his jib seems familiar. Clinch and Mollisk, go down and give him a hand.”

The injured man seemed unable to walk. He had to be carried.

A ferocious growl from Uli, the Gridelin hound, could be heard as the sufferer was carried aboard, which soon gave a clue as to his identity.

“Good gracious, sir,” said Sergeant Bellswinger. “Why, it's our bad penny turned up again. It's Tom Flint.”

*   *   *

Sauna's feeling of utter terror, as she lifted the latch of the cottage door and walked in, was not at all diminished by the smell that met her from the interior. It was quite disgusting: sour, stuffy, a mix of dirty, decaying food, and something sweetish and chemical which reminded her of the flat in Manchester. An
armpit
kind of smell, she thought, peering ahead, trying to think how Dr. Wren would have described it. The sort of stuff that people smear over themselves or pour down a drain to try and drown something horrible that's underneath.

The interior was almost entirely dark to anyone coming from out of doors, so she stood still for a moment, until her eyes grew more accustomed. On her left there was a dim glow, and a mild warmth at floor level, and a faint scent, one of the better components of the engulfing odour of the house. This was familiar, and took Sauna back to those summer holidays with Mam and Dad—it was the smell of a peat fire.

“Hallo?” she said hoarsely. The effort it took to open her mouth and speak was enormous. “Is—is anybody here?”

And the answer she received shocked her so badly that her legs almost gave way beneath her.

“
Sauna? Is that my little Sauna?
”

It was the voice she had heard twice on the train: the faint, shrill, wailing travesty of Auntie Floss's voice.