David yowled and crashed into the night, hitting the soft wet ground and rolling.
The Dolorous Grey roared by. All he could hear were the carriages, its wheels but yards away. All he could feel was its rolling boiling breath.
He hit something and stopped so abruptly that his teeth slammed together, biting the inside of his cheek and filling his mouth with blood.
He lay there a moment, trying not to choke or throw up. The muscles in his legs shook as he pushed himself to his feet. He knew that much, you always got up. He fell on his arse again.
Cadell came into view, bag over one shoulder. “You right, lad?”
“Think so,” David said.
“We better get moving. They won’t let us go that easily.”
True enough, a little down the line, the Dolorous Grey shrieked and rumbled and came to a furious halt.
“I suggest we run,” Cadell said. He motioned over at the Dolorous Grey, smoke billowed from the train, wreathing the air in clouds veined with fluttering darkness.
David blinked. His head rang with all the discordance of a half dozen broken bells. He knew he should get up, and start running, but his body resisted the babble of his thoughts. He wondered if he would have taken it all so calmly if he’d not a little Carnival remaining in his veins.
And that thought had its own terrors. A little Carnival! A little wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. He could be here crooning at the moons and the rain, instead he had the spiders of his addiction crawling in his veins.
Cadell was saying something. David blinked at him. “Up now. Up.”
“What?”
Cadell grunted, bent down and gripped David by the shoulder, dragging him from the edge of the railroad and onto his feet. “Anything hurting? Can you walk?”
David nodded. He felt his body finally listening to what he required of it.
He had more aches than he could catalogue but, at the same time, fear dulled them, a short-lived remedy no doubt, but one for which he was oddly grateful.
Cadell made a noise in his throat. “Then we’d best get out of here.”
Sounds echoed from the Dolorous Grey through the dark and the pounding rain, doors slamming open, boots crunching hard on gravel and the stuttering, shrill laughter of the Roilings. From the engine room, something howled.
David shuddered, he had heard an imitation of that sound on one of the radio serials he used to listen to as a child. “Is that what I think it is?”
Cadell nodded; his face wreathed in shadows that failed miserably to hide his dismay. “Quarg Hound, and a big one. I haven’t heard that cry in over two thousand years.” There was another howl and another and another. “Three of them, time to run, Da-”
David was already sprinting into the darkness, away from the train. He turned, Cadell stood by the tracks staring at him.
“Well, hurry up then,” David said.
Behind them the Dolorous Grey returned to rumbling life, and its whistles shrieked until the Quarg Hounds shrieked back. David was not sure which was the more terrible, but he had no doubt what those hounds would do if they caught him.
So he ran, and ran hard, his breath coming fast and hot in the driving rain. The train behind him – wheels slipping loudly, whistle shrieking – continued on its journey south, down to Chapman.
David could not see how he and Cadell were ever going to make it to the city. The Dolorous Grey raced there, the Roil was down there, and all of it was intent on stopping them.
The land quickly became overgrown. Lantana and a dense and prickly scrub known as Meagre’s Knife closed in around them, but it did not stop the rain. The sodden ground sucked at his boots with every step. Twice they stumbled into overgrown streams, Meagre’s Knife tearing at their faces and hands, blood-warm water thigh high, the stones beneath treacherous. David was soon shivery and exhausted.
However, there was no stopping for them, the Quarg Hounds were always close behind, their guttural ravenous howling drawing nearer by the minute.
Cadell closed with him, glancing left and right.
“That’s funny,” he said, his voice thin and hopeful, he lifted a hand and David couldn’t shake the feeling that he smelt the air with it. “I remember this place. Vaguely and distantly. Bah, David when you get to my age things blur and each turn of the road or rise of the hill becomes familiar.”
David looked at him askance, opened his mouth to speak, and a Quarg Hound crashed into his back.
David grunted, the wind knocked out of him, he fell forward, arms flailing about.
Then he tumbled, through the tangle of lantana, the scrub giving way, cracking and scratching. David tried to hold on, but couldn’t. All he could think of was that Quarg Hound coming down behind him, David pitched headfirst into a much broader, much deeper stream.
The water rushed up and it was cold, then he was through, his head clipping a rock. He gasped with the cold and the pain, and sucked water into his nose and mouth.
As though on springs, he jumped to his feet, retching, head swinging this way and that. This isn’t good.
He raised one hand as though to point, or perhaps to ward something off. He couldn’t remember, so he lowered it again, turning in a shaky circle as he tried to clear his head. What was he doing here?
The cold stream tugged at his knees, slowly pulling him down; knees, thighs, groin and belly.
The Quarg Hound that had tumbled down after David yelped and pushed away from him towards the edge of the stream, convulsing so savagely David could hear its back cracking. David watched it die, the Hound’s shuddering limbs folding up, and it sank into the water dragged down and away by the current. He knew he should be afraid, but he just couldn’t manage it.
“David!” Cadell shouted from above.
David’s vision narrowed to splotches of light and dark and pain. He tried to focus on Cadell’s voice but couldn’t, his head pounded as though a hundred hammers were trying to beat their way out. The pain dimmed, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
He blinked.
“I’m here,” David yelled. Or tried to because no sound escaped the torpid cage of his lips.
His voice failed him, followed by his legs. David fell forward, a numb and silent weight; his head slipped under the water and cold darkness found him.
Lassiter was laughing, and David’s parents were egging him on.
“David! David, wake up.” Someone shook him. “You must wake up.”
“I-” David said, coughing up more water. He stopped at last, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm and whispering, “Are they gone?”
Above the stream, from behind the thick shield of lantana, came two rough growls. Cadell jerked his head in the direction of the sound. A Quarg Hound tumbled out of the dark, shrieking as it struck the water. Cadell walked over to it, gripped its shuddering head and snapped its neck. He looked back at David, and winced. “Now, you must try and stand.”
David struggled to his feet and stumbled, falling forward, the cold had seeped into his muscles turning them stiff and sore and clumsy. His nose ran. His knees were raw. And his head, what had happened to his head? “I seem to be having difficulty.”
Cadell nodded, pulling David up again and letting him lean on his shoulder, one arm reaching around David’s back and gripping his right arm so tightly that it hurt; numbed only a little by the chill radiating from Cadell’s fingertips.
“I’m just so tired.” David tried to pull away, but he couldn’t manage it.
Cadell nodded. “Of course you are, so we’ll just keep going. This water is colder than it ought to be. What say we follow it to its source? I suspect what we find there might help us.” A shadow of a grin passed across his face. “I thought this place was familiar.”
Even with Cadell’s aid, each step was a challenge. When he closed his eyes, the whole world would spin and tumble in too many directions, and yet, several times he found himself almost falling asleep. This was worse, because Lassiter waited behind his eyelids, or his father, both mocking corpses, already beginning to rot, things rotted fast in the rain and the heat. David batted at spiders, the memory of their webs.