Dalip kept a wary distance, and closed on it from the rear. There wasn’t much blood left to pool, but what there was shone thickly around its hindquarters. He prodded it with the outstretched knife, pushing the point into its hairy back, through the skin and into the fat below.
The boar didn’t move, and he thought it safe to assume it was dead.
The guard, on the other hand, was weeping as he tried to hold his wounds together. In the shadow of the tunnel, Dalip found it impossible to tell where clothing finished and flesh started. Both were bloodied rags.
‘Why? Why?’ the guard sobbed.
Dalip didn’t know, beyond naked barbarism and utter contempt for life. The man couldn’t be moved◦– he screamed in agony when Dalip tried◦– and perhaps with modern medicine and a team of doctors, he might have survived. Scarred inside and out for certain, but alive nevertheless.
He died too, slowly, sadly, knowing he was going, sliding inexorably into darkness and terrified of it. He died clutching at Dalip’s forearm, and only let go when he slid to one side, awkwardly trapping his head in the angle between the wall and the door. Not that he cared any more about comfort.
Dalip walked back out into the pit and stood centre stage. He threw the knife down and looked up at the geomancer, dressed in her finery.
‘Are we done here now?’ he shouted at her. ‘Are we?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and stood, adjusting her skirts, readying herself to leave. The steward tapped his silver-tipped cane against the balcony, in annoyance or impatience or just out of habit, and scowled at Dalip.
Who bent down and caught up as much blood as he could off the floor, before flinging it up at his captors.
Most of it either fell back or flecked the high walls of the pit. But one or two drops reached their targets. The steward stiffened as something touched his cheek, and the geomancer saw it without knowing her back had its own darkly shining jewel clinging to the fine fabric.
‘There. That’s your share of this butchery.’
He stared up, his bloody hands raised to them, while they stared down. Whatever they were expecting, they got defiance, not supplication. They got his red palms and drying scabs instead of his fear.
They still left, and he had to drop his arms by his side at some point. He hung his head, and went to pull the body out of the way of the blocked door.
19
Mary made the top of the last rise. Even at a distance, the gorge that divided the two peaks was discernible. The base of each mountain was forested, like most of Down that she’d seen so far, but higher up where the slopes grew steeper, bare grey rock dominated. The peaks, facing each other over the chasm, were high but rounded, scraped clean by the wind and the rain.
She still couldn’t see the geomancer’s castle which, Crows assured her, was behind the rightmost peak, tucked in a hollow with a lake.
Crows puffed up behind her. ‘We should turn back before it is too late.’
‘Shut it, Crows,’ she said. Between them and the gorge was uninterrupted forest, and this was the last chance she had to get her bearings and see if there was a different route. But the best choice seemed to be the simplest: meet the river that bisected the mountains, then climb up past the gorge to the very top, where they could look down on the castle unseen. It looked like hard going, with a lot of scrambling over loose rock especially just below the summit, but far from impossible. By going for the more difficult ascent, she hoped to avoid anyone guarding the way from the valley up the lea side of the slope.
The sun was creeping lower to the horizon, and the moon would only rise halfway through the night: enough to hide her once she was in position, and enough to let her climb down while it was still dark.
She took one final look and pointed her toes in the direction they needed to go, angling down the ridge and heading for the start of the gorge. The forest covered her, and she tried to keep to the right path, even though she’d lost all her landmarks.
She seemed to be doing this all by herself. Crows was dragging his feet, and she was fed up of waiting for him. She’d given him the option of not coming, and he’d said he’d take her to where she’d be able to see the castle. She understood he didn’t want to get closer, but he should at least keep his promise, and without complaining every step of the way.
And then, almost on cue, she heard a wolf howl. She stopped and rolled her eyes.
‘Just what we needed.’ She didn’t know if it was the wolfman, or a regular wild wolf, but actually, she did know. She didn’t even have to bet herself which it was.
Crows drew level with her, and licked his lips nervously.
‘We can avoid him, right?’ she asked. ‘Like we did before?’
‘Perhaps someone else has come through the portal. If so, he’s far away, and not looking for us. If not, he could still be looking for you. He doesn’t hunt on his own, Mary. Ever.’
‘He did that first night. It was just him.’
Crows shook his head. ‘No. The forest would have been full of them. When you moved off, they followed you. When you started questioning the wisdom of where you were going, they attacked you. The wolfman is never on his own: he is scared of Down, scared of its spaces and its silences, scared of being alone and scared of not being owned. He joined with the geomancer to stop himself going mad, and he lives in fear of her sending him away.’
‘Oh. Okay. Let’s hope he’s after some other poor bastard then, and not us. At least for now.’
She checked the direction of the sun through the canopy of leaves, and set off in what she guessed was the right direction, which was downhill. They reached the river, and walked upstream alongside it◦– there was no need to go all the way down to it, just keep it on their left. Then uphill towards the clear, bare rock beyond the forest.
The ground bent upwards, and the trees began to sprout from between weathered boulders and moss-covered outcrops of stone. Soon the river was below them, rumbling away between the walls of the deepening gorge. The wolf howled again, plaintive and symbolic in a land devoid of human habitation, a wilderness made more wild by desolation.
The vegetation stopped abruptly at a steep ledge. Above it, there was no cover, nothing to mask her from view. She was, of course, still wearing orange.
Down’s gifts only seemed to run to buildings, not clothing. She almost turned back then, realising what a stupid thing she was doing, and that any half-blind idiot would be able to spot her, the only splash of colour pinned to a mountainside. Then again, if she could draw down darkness and make fog, could she camouflage herself with what she had around her?
There was only one way to find out. She stooped down and collected a double-handful of dry, brittle leaves, all browns and dark reds. She knew what she wanted, and she could see it in her mind.
A cloak like Crows’, not black and ragged, but the colours of nature, muted and ending beyond the edges of the cloth so that it looked like a storm of leaves, continually moving and changing.
She threw the leaves she held up in the air, and let them fall around her. She scooped up more and cast them backwards over her.
And when she straightened, it was done. She was wearing a shifting mirage of browns and greens and reds which trailed out behind her and flowed over her arms. She brought her hands together, and the folds of the cloak closed over her orange boilersuit, concealing it beneath the fluttering, rustling cloth.
It wasn’t her, and was still part of her. Like the hem which had no definite beginning or end, neither did she now. No longer isolated and self-contained, she was growing into the landscape as it was growing into her. Let the wolfman and his gang find her now.