He rounded on me, pistol in hand, and I ducked frantically. The shot whizzed wide, and I aimed a slash that should have opened him from chest to crotch. It was parried so strongly I was hurled back out onto the landing. I charged back at him. He parried again and skipped aside. I skidded on the rain-soaked floor, collided with a railing behind him, felt it shatter – and go flying out into empty space. I barely stopped myself at the edge, seeing the broken wood dwindle away into the dark below me – then rolled aside just in time as the cutlass crashed into the floor beside me. If I hadn’t been up that mast the black abyss would have held me one moment longer, and my head would have followed the railing. As it was I jabbed viciously, and he sprang back with a growl and a curse, blood welling from his side. That gave me time to scramble up, and I saw where we were: on a gallery running just below the roof, which was mostly open, with little waterfalls of rain pouring down. That emptiness beneath us must be the great hall. Almost certainly he was trying to get to the far side of the house, to some back stair and escape.
But he wasn’t going anywhere now. He was coming for me, letting Clare lie where he’d dropped her, confident he could clear me out of his way first; it showed. Breathing hard, wishing I had just a little more puff left, I levelled my sword.
He sneered – and lunged so quickly I yelped in panic and hopped away. But that overextended him, and he had to drop and duck aside from my own wide slash, right to the fragile rail. There he parried, twisted his blade and slashed at my ankles; I skipped and chopped at him, he caught it and rose to one knee, sending me staggering. I hacked two-handed at his head, he flicked up his cutlass and turned my blow against the rail, smashing it through. Then while my sword was entangled he sprang up and swung a cut. I got free and met it with another and we chopped at each in a flurry of fast blows, back and forth, high and low, with the lightning flickering overhead. I held him off; but three days, even of Mall’s training, doesn’t make a master swordsman – only one who can see the end coming. In this straight slogging match he was bound to win. He had height and strength and reach over me, and whatever nasty experience could make him captain of the Chorazin –
Agony spiked up my leg, and I yelled. His huge foot had stamped down on my shoe – and his clawed toenails pinned it to the spot. His heavy blade sang down on my head. I flung up my own, two-handed, and stopped it – just. But my head only came up to his chest, and he was stronger than me anyway. He leaned, and slowly but inexorably he forced my sword back down onto me. Effort twisted his face into a snarling grin, and threads of slaver dripped from his yellowed tusks.
Then I saw Clare stir and look up, her eyes wide; and suddenly I was back in the office, reading – reading the Chorazin’s database entry …
I caught his eye and winked, though my arms were creaking and it hurt to breathe. ‘Hey, captain – recognize anything?’
He started, stared, his cat-eyes glinting. ‘That sword! So ’twas thou slew Diego my first mate!’ There was laughter in the appalling voice. ‘Vaunt thyself not o’ermuch! Serviceable he was, a most valiant rogue, a lovely bully – but no match for me!’
‘Nor me – was he? And are you so sure you are? Your warehouse raid cocked up – what about that? Your lousy green light put out – the wind knocked out of your sails – how’s about that, Rooke? Or should I call you Azazael?’
That caught him! With a sudden deafening roar he forced me down on my knees, and loomed over me, spitting. ‘How cam’st thou by that name, swine’s stale?’
I’d remembered it from the database entry. ‘Oh – that’s my magic – don’t you remember?’ It’s hard to sound sarcastic when you’re fighting for breath. ‘You traced it back – sent your goons after me – all they got their paws on – a helpless girl! Too stupid – whole pack of you – too frigging thick to catch up with me – me!’
I hadn’t expected that to have the effect it did, the flicker of alarm in the yellow eyes, the sudden relaxing of the pressure. But it did the trick. There was a sudden, sickeningly meaty thump, and he jerked upright, rigid. Any man would have doubled up in helpless agony, but though his slatey face writhed and his cat-eyes bulged he held me still and hewed at me – too late. I’d seen what was coming, and he hadn’t; I ducked under the stroke, and clamping both hands on the hilt I thrust upward. I needn’t have. He gave a horrible gargling yell as the point took him just under the breastbone, but it was the rush of his own blow that drove him onto it and lifted him, impaled, kicking, over my shoulder. A gush of stinking blood burned my arm as he slid off the blade, toppled onto the railing in a shower of splinters – and over, out into emptiness. A terrible dwindling wail ended, abruptly in a splintering crash. Thunder detonated overhead, shaking the roof and showering us with rattling fragments of tile.
I didn’t look after him. I turned to Clare, hopping on one leg clutching the bare foot she’d applied where it mattered, and plunged for the landing. Rotten wood popped and crackled under us; I was afraid we’d fall right through any minute. We ran for the other stairs; there wasn’t enough left of the ones we’d come up. From the inner hall below a sudden uproar arose, and men spilled out across the floor; the crew had fought free of the cellar. Through the fighting Mall streamed like a comet, and where she passed the Wolves hid their eyes and bolted, or died.
‘Grand, Steve, grand!’ she shouted as she saw us. ‘Out, out, away and a’haste! Some other sending comes!’
In an avalanche of disintegrating wood we more or less fell the last flight. As we dashed out into the outer hall after the others the floor shook beneath us, and by the lightning that sizzled around the windows I saw the Wolf captain’s corpse sprawled on the shattered remains of the high thrones. Tremors ran through the ceiling; plaster fell, and the stone walls seemed to quiver and blur with the vibration. In the doorway stood Jyp, frantically waving the men out past him, his other arm hanging limp and darkened. Beside him Mall burned like a white-hot casting, her eyes too bright to look at, her hair rising in wreaths like smoke. Her outstretched sword-arm seemed to fence with the plunging shadows, and keep the tremors at bay. As we passed, last of all, she danced in behind us, backing away, swinging her sword in great hissing sweeps. On the floor a few wounded Wolves writhed or crawled; what others remained were spilling out of the windows in screaming panic, with no heed to us. Out we staggered onto the terrace, Jyp gasping as each step jarred his wounded arm; the rain came flailing down on us and he slipped and fell. I stooped to help, still supporting Claire – and stared in sheer horror.
The lightning was flashing almost constantly now, like a gigantic strobelight; and in its pulsing glare a strange change had come over the frontage of the mansion, some shifting overlay of shadows that formed a sinister image. The tall windows above the door seemed to change shape, to merge into two great dark ovals. It was as if a face had settled on the house, or became visible through it, a face with heavy sunshades resting above cheekbones undershot and fleshless, the door its stretched, screaming gape of a mouth – a mocking deathshead of a face. And even as we stared that face contorted; the whole housefront seemed to soften and swell, the mouth to work, the heavy stone lintel and pillars of the doorway flexing like lips, the rain-slickened stair a curling, glistening tongue reaching out hungrily towards us as we struggled in the rain. Suddenly Mall stood over us, aglow no more, her face grey and drawn, her hair plastered limp about her cheeks by the rain. But she stooped and seized Jyp as if he weighed nothing at all, drew his good arm up over her shoulder and dragged him away across the flags, out of the baleful shadow of the door.