Working Wonders (22 page)

The wolf moved forward, slowly. It sniffed the air. The others backed away, pointlessly. The wall of ice that was the side of the ship was right behind them. There was nowhere to bolt.

In the full light of the moon, the wolf arched its back again and howled. In a shot Arthur saw why wolves had always been part of folklore, despite usually looking like grumpy oversized dogs. This was no dog. This was a pure wild animal, that could smell them from a mile away and wanted warm fresh meat. Its insides were as cold as the ice around them.

And still the creature advanced. Its eyes reflected the moon, and seemed to shine out of its head. It still took its time.

‘Oh …’ Gwyneth, Arthur vaguely realized through the iron grip of fear that had taken control of his own head, was sobbing. He put his arm round her and patted her ineffectually on the shoulder.

‘I can’t believe … This is just so
stupid
.’

Sven was staring straight ahead, absolutely frozen to the spot. Arthur went through his possible options and couldn’t for the life of him think of one. Sweat broke out on his forehead as the wolf stepped forward yet again. His hands, anxiously struggling in his pockets, hit against something. He drew it out. It was the bore ice Johann had given him. It was the nearest thing to a weapon he had.

‘Oh God,’ said Arthur. He darted a look at the others. ‘Stay here.’

‘What? What! What are you doing!’ said Gwyneth hysterically. Sven remained in his catatonic state.

‘Just stay here, okay? I think we might have one shot.’

‘You’ve got a gun?’

‘No. Look, I’m going to distract it, and you two have to run back to Johann’s hut, okay?’

‘But … but he’ll chase us.’

‘Not if I’m there.’

Arthur’s face was grim, reflected Gwyneth, and his jaw was incredibly set.

‘Get ready to run, okay? Sven?’

‘Uh?’

‘Run. With Gwyneth. When you hear me shout.’

‘But …’ Gwyneth held onto his arm. ‘This is
madness
.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘This is – we’ve got one shot at this, okay? You understand? There’s nothing else to do.’

She nodded mutely. Sven stood there, not moving at all.

Arthur turned back again to face the beast, motioning the others to get behind him.

The animal turned its full attention to Arthur now. It seemed to know, somehow, that this was where the battle would be joined.

Arthur steeled himself and kept on walking forward. Part of his brain was screaming at him, ‘What are you doing! What are you DOING!!!!!’ But part of him was almost calm, accepting his fate. It was saying, ‘Ah, almost certain death. So
this
is what it’s like?’

When there were only ten feet between him and the wolf, he stopped and they eyed each other for five … ten seconds. It felt like forever under the freezing endless sky.

Arthur took a deep breath. ‘OKAY,’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Run NOW!!!!! NOW!!!!!! AIIIIEEEE-EEEEEEE!’

And he screeched at the top of his lungs.

He’d expected the beast to be quick, but not this quick. The next thing he saw was the animal, seemingly far too high in the air, bearing down on him from nowhere with a blood-curdling howl.

As fast as he could, he raised the hard resin of the bore ice, remembering what you were supposed to do with dogs – grab their forepaws and move them as wide apart as you could. He had personally doubted his ability to ever perform such a grotesque act on an animal, but right at this moment …

Almost without thinking about it, he rammed the ice bore as hard as he could at the animal’s head. With a whinnying shriek, the wolf wobbled slightly to the side, but was only deflected momentarily from its course, and its paws still knocked Arthur backwards onto the ice.

He could smell the creature’s hot breath. For a second, Arthur and the wolf were eye to eye. Then the animal opened its enormous jaws, sparkling with saliva.

‘HnNNurggh!’

Arthur didn’t know where he found the strength, but he pushed himself up, unbalancing the wolf, who staggered backwards, growling.

Arthur thought … but before he had time to do anything, the wolf tackled him again, this time from his left side, and both of them were crashing down on the snow once more.

This at least gave him a chance to drag his right hand free from the wolf’s paws. He was still clutching the ice bore. Scarcely thinking about it, he plunged it as far as he could into the wolf’s ear.

‘Grraaaa!’ The wolf shook its head furiously and twisted out of Arthur’s reach. The ice bore skittered away across the ice. Both their heads shot round to follow its progress. It was certainly too far away for Arthur to grab it. The wolf refocused its attention.

‘Oh God,’ Arthur breathed to himself dully. He tried to raise the strength for another almighty push, but there was no purchase on the ground beneath him. His fingers desperately scrabbled at nothing. And once again, the slavering jaws were moving down, ever closer. He closed his eyes …

He opened them again a second later, at a high-pitched yelping noise.

The wolf was buzzing in consternation, although his front paws were still firmly planted on Arthur’s chest and arm.

Behind him, barking madly, and skittering along the hard-packed snow towards the ice bore, was Sandwiches.

‘Sandwiches!’ shrieked Arthur. The wolf could scoop him up in one gulp, then come back to Arthur as a main course.

The dog picked up the bore and shuffled joyously up towards Arthur.

‘NO, no, that’s not what I meant!’ said Arthur, cursing himself. ‘Don’t bring the stick to me. Don’t fetch! Sandwiches, don’t fetch!’

But the little dog trotted on towards him. The growls from the wolf came from deep down in his belly.

In the distance, he could hear Gwyneth and Sven screaming. So much for the brilliant running-away-to-get-help plan.

With a grunt, as Sandwiches dropped the bore at Arthur’s hand, the wolf stretched out one paw and took a swipe at him. And blindly, instinctively, without even thinking, Arthur grabbed the ice bore and thrust it as hard as he could, deep as a sword, into the animal’s chest.

A terrible groaning tore across the plain. It was a horrible, horrible sound: an animal in pain. Or, to be more correct, two animals in pain, as Sandwiches had taken a nasty clap to the head from an errant paw, and had skittered backwards, bouncing his head off the hard-packed snow. Arthur watched, dumbfounded, as the terrible weight came off his hand and chest, and the great creature arched up, roaring its agony.

Suddenly, as if from nowhere, a huge boulder came crashing out of the sky and hit the wolf square in the forehead. Immediately the howling stopped and the creature sank to the ground. Everything was still. Arthur found he was blinking rapidly.

‘
For fanden
!’

The sleigh driver stepped out from the woods.

Arthur turned round in amazement to where Sven had dashed forward to cradle Sandwiches in the snow.

The driver came forward, gesticulating.

‘Sven, what’s he saying?’

Sven looked up, his face pale and strained.

‘Um, he’s saying, sorry, but he had to hide up a tree because … um … because a big wolf came.’

‘Right,’ said Arthur. ‘Okay.’

And he wandered back to Gwyneth who was standing trembling violently, and enfolded her in his arms.

‘Hey,’ said the temp. ‘Good trip?’

‘Um … it was very interesting,’ said Arthur. ‘Actually, you won’t believe what happened …’

‘Yeah,’ said the temp, chewing. ‘Anyway. There’s lots of messages for you. Ooh, is the dog wearing a new hat?’

Sandwiches stalked in proudly wearing his enormous white bandages. Sven followed him, still watching his every step nervously.

‘Morning!’ said Arthur cheerily. There really was nothing, he thought, quite as likely to buck you up as cheating death, fighting a wolf and getting to save a gorgeous woman you really fancied. She had held onto him all the way home. He was definitely getting somewhere. It didn’t do to rush these things. Deep down, he was a bit worried. He hadn’t felt like this about someone in … God, years. Fay had just been – well, he wasn’t thinking about Fay any more. But she certainly hadn’t been as calm and attractive and … Oh, yes. He wasn’t going to move too quickly. That was best.

What did she have to do? Gwyneth was thinking mutinously. Strip naked and spreadeagle herself on his desk? All the way home he’d put his arm round her like a brother. Well, that was enough. She couldn’t be bothered with all this. She decided to take a walk before going into work, to settle herself. After all, he wasn’t the only bloody man in the office.

‘Hey,’ said Sven. He looked grey.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, yes.’

He didn’t look it, though. He looked like he’d stayed up all night worrying about a dog who, even now, was jauntily approaching the rubbish bin with an expectant look in his eye.

Oh, well. Everything was fine. Arthur buzzed on through to the boardroom. There was a chunky, badly-dressed man standing there in a cheap suit. He looked vaguely familiar.

‘Hello?’

‘Yeah, hi …’

The man stuck out one hand and used the other to scratch his nose. ‘Hi – I’m Howard Phillips?’

‘Howard?’

‘I wrote the piece in the
Herald
?’

Now Arthur recognized the little snotrag. He’d broken the story Ross had leaked to him, and he was the journalist who’d approached Arthur in the park.

‘Get out of my office, shithead.’

‘No, no!’ As the man moved towards him, Arthur noticed he had a slight limp. ‘You don’t understand! I have to get this story. I’m going to lose my job if I don’t.’

The man sat down without being invited, heavily. Arthur noticed he was sweating and sticky strands of hair clung to his bald head.

‘Yeah, sit down,’ said Arthur sarcastically.

‘Look, I’m sorry, but it’s just my job, okay?’

‘It’s just your job to try and lose me my job. Right, yes, I sympathize. Coffee?’

‘Yeah, that would be …’

‘No! You’re not having any coffee!’

‘Oh.’ The man looked mournfully at the floor, and rubbed his hand on his bald spot, which looked agitated and red. ‘Can I have a glass of water, then?’

‘No. Oh, yes okay, you can have a glass of water.’

Arthur cursed himself for getting up and betraying the weaker hand, but if he had a heart attack …

‘Thank you,’ said the man. ‘I get a bit sweaty on assignments.’

‘Thanks for sharing.’

‘Look,’ said the man. ‘I just want to put your side of the story.’

‘No, you don’t. You want to dredge up evil insights into the spendthrifts at the planning office.’

‘Yeah, yeah I do, yeah,’ said the man sadly.

‘Ooh, you gave in quickly.’

‘I’m not a very good journalist.’

‘Okay,’ said Arthur. ‘Go somewhere else please.’

‘I can’t,’ said the man. ‘I have to stay here and find out about Denmark or my boss is going to fire me.’

‘What do you know about Denmark? Oh, bugger it.’

The man smiled greasily.

‘Yes, I’m very naïve,’ said Arthur. ‘Was that actually a secret journalist trick, to make me cough by looking pathetic?’

There was a pause.

‘No,’ said the man. ‘I got lucky.’

They walked out past the open-plan. Arthur noticed with half an eye that Sven had covered the area with ‘I visited Denmark’s Best Ice Shop 2002!’ posters and made a mental note to have a quiet word about project confidentiality. He
didn’t
notice Howard very quickly reading his post tray upside down, and extracting an envelope from it, sweating even harder as he slipped it into his pocket.

Arthur invited the journalist out for a walk, figuring if he was going to have this snivelling wretch following him around, it was probably best to do it in the open air.

‘Why do you limp?’ he asked him, curious, as they made their way across the car park and under the hideous piss-stained underpass, past the
Big Issue
sellers they no longer noticed.

‘Huh,’ said Howard. ‘I dunno. For the last three weeks there’s this bloody little sausage dog or something that comes past my house every day exactly when I’m leaving for work and bites me on the leg.’

‘The thing is,’ said Howard. ‘The paper’s out to get you.’

‘Really?’ said Arthur. He’d just picked up this week’s edition. On the front page it said,

After unveiling plans to spend millions of pounds on a second ice rink for Conventry, planners from the city office have been off on their latest hairbrained scheme – to Denmark!

‘What were they there for?’ said random passer-by Miles Sampson. ‘To see Santa Claus?’

‘A random passer-by?’ said Arthur.

‘Yeah,’ said Howard. ‘It was late.’

‘But why?’ said Arthur. ‘We’re only trying to do something cool for the people – sorry, did I just sound really Tony Blair?’