‘Was it now?’ enquired Jyp, with gentle menace. ‘High time we had a word with such an enterprising guy. Now which door might his be?’
It was the furniture shop. I jabbed the plastic bell-push labelled Cuffee, heard the harsh shrilling echo through the place, but nothing stirred. Again, and there was nothing, and no light in the upstairs windows. Again, and the old man blinked. ‘How unusual! He is most often at home at this time. And his truck is not in its customary place. Perhaps he is clearing a house somewhere –’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. I looked at Jyp. ‘Unless he’s running that little errand right now –’
Jyp whirled. ‘The warehouse – c’mon!’ He loped off down the street, dragging the protesting shopkeeper stumbling after him, green apron flapping in the heavy air.
‘But captain – my shop – it’s not locked up –’
‘It won’t blow away! Steve, this time can you really hit the gas?’
‘If you’re sure it’s that im –’
‘I’m sure. I’m goddam sure! Though I’d just love to be wrong.’
‘Well …’ I swallowed. ‘I can try.’
The tyres screeched on the cobbles as we swung around the corner, and Frederick, tumbled headlong in the back, added a note of his own.
‘Stop!’ barked Jyp, crouched pale and drawn beside me. I stamped hard on the pedal, and he braced himself stiff-armed against the dashboard; he’d had speed enough to last him awhile. The back end almost broke away, fish-tailed madly for a moment before I brought her to a snaking, slithering sideways stop. I flicked off the ignition and slumped over the wheel, fighting off the manic laughter of relief. To think I’d ever baulked at a red light …
‘We’re here!’ said Jyp.
Following his gaze, I saw the same dim street, all quiet, all mundane, the same pile of scaffolding, the pale light over the warehouse door, quay and ocean beyond hidden in the shadow of emptiness; not a soul in sight. But Jyp snapped his fingers and pointed; from the shadows beyond us my headlights awoke twin answering glitters, and gleamed faintly on the dark bulk of a furniture van. Then the sea-breeze sighed a little, and the dark line dividing the warehouse doors seemed to deepen for an instant.
Jyp fought the doorhandle, then he was out and running. I tumbled out more awkwardly and sprinted after him. I caught him up as he reached the doors; they were ajar, creaking slightly in the breeze. There was no other sound, and still nobody in sight. Cautiously Jyp pushed the door back. Inside it was blackness, tinged with a thousand peculiar odours. Nothing moved, and I stepped after him, saw his silhouette in the faint light from outside cast around this way and that – then trip over what looked like a sack on the floor just inside the door, grunt and stoop down to it, turn it over. Emptiness gaped up at us, a ghastly mockery of my own surprise, all wide eyes and sagging jaw. I didn’t know the man; and never would, now.
‘Remendado,’ whispered Jyp hoarsely. The day man – I should have relieved him about ten minutes back –’
I stumbled back, sickened, deadly afraid, and something clattered underfoot. Jyp looked up – and then threw himself away with a yell as a long blade flashed into the light, hissed across the air where he had been. He vanished into the shadows, and suddenly they were alive with jostling forms, with trampling feet. Hands grabbed at me, a grip that slipped and instead threw me crashing back against the door – saving me, as another tongue of metal sang in front of my face.
I was free. So I ducked down, grabbed the sword I’d tripped over …
I didn’t even think of that. I didn’t think of anything. Perhaps I screamed; I remember a scream, and there’d been no other voices. But what I did do was fling myself aside, away, towards that line of light and through it, an instant before heavy bodies hurled against it slammed it at my back. And then, staggering on the step, I ran away.
I just took to my heels. It wasn’t blind panic, if there is such a thing; I knew what I was doing, selfish and ashamed. I wasn’t going for help, or anything like that; I was running in deadly fear. It was like trying to scale the side of a collapsing pit, crumbling under me. The clutch of those hands in the dark had ripped away any self-control I might have had, laid bare the sheer animal. I was running to save me. It was just some mad quirk that sent me in the wrong direction, away from the car, down towards the shadows of the docks and the nightbound ocean beyond.
And even as I ran, the door crashed open again behind me. I looked back, and there was no stopping then. Three figures, huge and lanky, came bounding out in the hazy lamplight, long coats flying, and after me in an instant. And in the hand of each there gleamed no mere knife, but a great broad swordblade, dully glinting.
Then I definitely yelled; and I ran all the harder. But it seemed to me that the shadows drew back, would not touch me, refused to hide me; and my pursuers loped long-legged at my heels. Out of the street’s end I bolted, chest bursting, and turned right because that was the nearer side, onto what was only half a street; on my left it fell away to a gleam of open water. I had run out onto the wharfside itself. But what I saw in that water stopped me dead as little else could, shaking with a fear far greater than any those pursuing figures could inspire. In that awed moment I forgot them completely.
Only by that starlit gleam was the water visible, a pool of blackness turned suddenly to a mirror of black glass, gently rippling. It was the image in that mirror that held me spellbound, a web of black lines, a thicket of leafless thorns. In utter amazement, all else forgotten, I lifted my eyes, knowing what the shadows had been hiding from me, what I would now see.
I knew, yet I was not ready for it. The thicket was a forest; a forest of tall masts, of tangled rigging and stern spars crossing the night. To either side they stretched before me, as far as my eyes would reach, stark against the stars, high and magnificent. The docks that only an hour or two earlier I had seen stand empty and forlorn were now thronged with many tall ships, moored clustered and close. So many they were, so high they stood, that sky and sea were all but blotted out. The pool I saw gleamed through the gap between a reaching bowsprit and a high-transomed stern. I may have heard the crash of feet behind me, but hardly noticed it. I was confronted with a wonder wider than my mind could take in, a towering glimpse of the infinite. Like the wind off the ocean it shook me, chilled me, showed me how vanishingly small I was, and all my concerns. I knew only too well it was no illusion; it was I who felt unreal. Where something like this could happen, fear seemed irrelevant.
Until the last moment, when the clatter of boots became too loud to ignore, and I heard the panting breath of my pursuers. Then, agonized at my own stupidity, I turned to bolt again; too late. A hand plucked at my sleeve. I tripped on a loose stone, spun around and crashed down on my back. Hard boots stamped painfully down on my arms as I struggled to rise. Winded, helpless, I wheezed for breath. Their long faces bent over me, silent, expressionless, leaden and grey in the faint light. A swordtip glinted, a great broad cutlass-thing, looking rusty and pitted and not very sharp. It swung idly back and forward before my eyes, so close it parted the lashes; then it went swinging up for a great slashing stroke. The animal kicked out in me again. I filled my chest with one fiery, sobbing breath, and screamed for help.
The sword did not fall; and I felt the feet that pinned me stiffen. Piercing yellow light fell across us like a net, and froze all movement. Someone had answered, a sharp voice from seaward, clear and challenging. Wood boomed hollowly, like a menacing gong. I twisted my head around and blinked. Down the lowered gangplank of one of the nearby ships another figure came bounding, tall and lithe. A shaggy mane of hair, golden in the light of the deck lantern, swung over broad shoulders and bare arms, long and muscular. ‘Well, cubbies?’ came the voice again, cheerful and insolent. ‘What’re ye nipping at tonight? Drop it, and back to your kennels! Or must I whip ye there myself? I’ll have no mongrels pissing around this wharf!’