‘Steve!’
It came from the last alcove along the right-hand wall. So like the rest that we hadn’t even looked into it – and there in the dark, kneeling, her ash-blonde hair straggling and slick about her stained face, was Clare.
Her arms outflung, she was fighting to tear her wrists free of the rusty iron cuffs bolted about them, straining against the massive chain that ran between them through thick staples set in the stone. But at the sight of me she shrank back, then repeated my name slowly, disbelievingly.
‘Steve … Steve? I … Those shots … I couldn’t see … just that awful giant of a woman … and then I heard … I heard … Steve!’ But by then she was babbling, wavering on her knees – and I flung myself at her just in time to catch her as she flopped forward; she felt light and fragile as a bubble, after Mall.
Not quite a classic faint, but nearly. Her eyes were open, but wild, and she writhed in sudden panic as Mall strode up behind me. Small wonder; I was half-afraid she’d heard Clare call her a giant, which she certainly wasn’t. But she did look it then, looming over the lantern like a statue of Fury. The lamplight glittered on her face as it flushed first red then deadly white, anger itself coursing like a living light beneath her clear skin. She left no doubt why, though, when she snatched up the chain and tugged at it.
Clare’s eyes flew open, and widened in sudden horror; she shrank back. ‘Steve! Look out!’
Mall shook her head reassuringly, reaching for Clare’s hands. ‘Soft, soft, my mistress, I’m no Wolf. We’ll straightway pluck the gyves from off these white wrists of yours –’
A harsh, rasping laugh rang through the cellar. ‘But to fasten ’em about thine own, thou barren bitch! Leave the doxy be, or stay in her stead till thou starv’st!’
We swung around as one, and saw what only Clare had seen. Jyp’s voice filled the silence. ‘Ah – crap!’ And that about seemed to sum it up.
We weren’t total fools. Jyp had set a watch on door and stairs. And where the single huge Wolf who now stood on the middle steps had come from, I couldn’t imagine – short of walking through the wall. But there he was, queasily resplendent in a frock-coat of scarlet and filthy lace, with a bell-mouthed pistol levelled at us all. Evidently he was some sort of commander or captain. He stood taller and thinner than the usual run of them, and his hair was left lank and black about his shoulders, but powdered with what looked like gold-dust; his beard was trimmed to a Vandyke point, with sneering moustachios. And though he stood alone, he had an air of unshakeable confidence. Then I saw why, and why no watch at all could have done us any good – except possibly Stryge’s. Around his bare feet the rats were scampering, a whole flood of them pattering down the stairs. And as they gathered around him they sat up swiftly – and on up, rising and swelling as fast as blown flames to manheight and above, tall Wolves riffling their gaudy plumes and stretching with luxurious relief. There could have been a hundred and fifty or more, jostling there on the stairs.
For a long moment nobody said anything; and then Jyp shook his head sadly. ‘From rat to Wolf – piss-poor progress. I call it. Me, I liked you better as you were.’
Mall gave a slight cool chuckle. And it was the same laughter I had heard from her on the beach, the same strange sound; deep and dark and echoing, almost, before it left her throat. She hefted her sword lightly, still chuckling. The Wolf stiffened in alarm, and levelled his gun. She shrugged, opened her hand and let it fall; and the Wolf relaxed. But even as the blade clanged once on the stones she whirled about, turning her back on the Wolves, seized Clare’s chain in both hands – and in a shower of sparks, with one sharp wrench, she shattered chain and staples together. Bits of metal pattered across the flagstones, and smoke curled from the cracked stone around their roots.
She scooped up her sword then and turned back to us, left staring, with a deep satisfied breath and a slow unearthly smile; and it came to me with a slight shiver that somehow she did look taller. Then she looked at the stunned Wolves, threw back her head and laughed again, more loudly, a sound that rang as ordinary laughter might in a bronze bell, or a whole chime of bells, striking strange resonances and harmonies off each other. It was a daunting sound to me, and to the Wolf more terrible still; for he threw up his hands like a man attacked, and fired. Mall’s sword flashed at a speed I couldn’t believe, there was a bang louder than the shot, and the Wolves crowding the stairs ducked away in panic from the spitting sing of a ricochet. She had turned the shot in mid-flight.
The lantern toppled unheeded at her feet, but the light did not falter, it grew, it swelled, for it really was coming from her, shining in radiance from her clear skin, glinting among her hair as it streamed out in some immortal wind. And I, kneeling at her feet with Claire, felt that light blaze through me as if I were a bubble of thin glass, understood at last what had so strongly drawn me to her. Then she cried aloud, once, and stretched out her sword. Light flashed from it, clear and fierce as her gaze, merciless to the shadows it chased. The sword hissed through the air, the Wolves bayed and blinked – and with one laughing shout of ‘At them, Defiants!’ she sprang towards them. We could no more have resisted a whirlwind; dazed and dazzled, we were snatched up, borne along in a comet’s train. Even Clare at my side was shouting with her, and laughing wildly at the flash and bang of my pistols as I fired them into the mass on the stairs, and flung them after. Then with an almost solid crash we were on them, and the killing began.
The mêlée was terrible, swirling this way and that; for the Wolves, though daunted by the sight of Mall transfigured, did not turn tail as they might have – as I would have, or any normal man. They were huge, and had more than twice our numbers; and without Mall we would have been lost. Something drove them as she led us, something dark that devoured light even as she radiated it. We saw it in their maddened eyes as they threw themselves at us, tearing at us with their terrifying strength even as we cut them down, forcing their way down the weapons that thrust through them to reach the wielders. But where she came they could not stand, and she leaped to the aid of men borne down, straddling them like a tower of flame. I clung to Clare and hewed out where I could, and in a sudden swirl of men Jyp caught hold of us both and thrust us towards the stairs where the fight was clearest. A Wolf leaped in my way. I hacked at him as Mall had shown me, he went down and I lunged at the last one in my way. But even as my sword ran through his throat I was bowled aside in a flash of scarlet, and slammed winded against the wall. I heard Clare shriek once, and reeling away, struggling not to fall back into the mass, I saw the scarlet-clad Wolf captain, menacing me with his cutlass, dragging her off up the stair. I swung at him, we crossed blades, but another Wolf brandishing a great Spanish poniard sprang in my way and aimed a stab I couldn’t parry. A flash and a bang scorched my ear, the Wolf’s face convulsed, and he doubled over; looking around, dazed, I saw Jyp below, gesticulating with his pistol. ‘Hey, don’t just stand there!’ he screamed. ‘Get after her!’
Bouncing off the walls like a drunkard, I staggered to the top and out, gulping the cold air in to clear my head. The hall was empty, but a muffled cry and a crash came from the stairs to one side; lightning flared, and the Wolf captain was hobbling along the landing above, lugging a cobwebbed and struggling Clare after him. I ran to the rickety stair and up through the track they’d left, leaping from step to step, hearing many collapse behind me. The boards of the landing were rotten, too, and more than once both the Wolf captain and I were sunk to our ankles in powdering wood, cursing ourselves free. At the landings’ end there was another stair, and though Clare kicked and thrashed at him as he dragged her up it, she delayed him not in the least; and he was fast. He reached the top long before me, and made straight for a wide door; but by a great mercy it was stuck, and he had to hammer at it and finally, as I reached the top, hurl his great weight bodily against it. And with that, as the doors flew open, I was on him.