Thirsh made the most of those seconds. He arrived at the giant to find it still in a state of nervous paralysis analogous to a skittish terrier being rushed by an unexpectedly aggressive rat, and capitalised on this by hacking fiercely at the giant’s left leg while swearing furiously, like a lumberjack with coprolalia. A real giant of flesh and blood would have been mightily discomforted by such attentions, but this giant, being more like a collection of diligently murderous telegraph poles than anything else, only regarded them with mute incomprehension until the initial surprise dissipated and it noticed that Thirsh had more limbs than was permitted locally. Ercusides had considered the possibility of too many targets to deal with concurrently, and had provided the dreffs with a simple but useful tactic to give themselves a little leg-plucking time when challenged. With a fast sideswipe, the giant’s left arm swept down out of a darkening sky and Thirsh was suddenly travelling backwards much faster than he had charged, and doing it a yard off the ground to boot. Its immediate situation thus simplified, the giant was returning its attention to the fitfully struggling Holk when part of its group consciousness reported that something was peering into its chamber and asked what the standard operating procedure was for such an occurrence. The three head dreffs were considering how to respond to this, when the reporting dreff added a slightly panicky addendum to the effect that the face had gone and now a snake or possibly a limb, yes, definitely a limb, one of the ones without the foot on the end, was in through the entrance hole and was tipped by something shiny and PAIN! PAIN! PAIN! At which point the report stopped, and the dreff Brains Trust was left fairly sure that this was a good thing as obviously the problem had gone away, until they noticed that the group consciousness was definitely a member short – and why were they tilting dramatically to one side?
Cabal withdrew his hand from the dreff hole on the front of the right knee and examined the dead animal impaled on his switchblade. Not a zoologist by training or disposition, his examination was perfunctory and finished with him tossing the corpse away with the same dismissive flick that the giant had so often used to dispose of wamp legs and man limbs. He snapped the blade back into the knife’s handle and dropped it into his trouser pocket, before hastily shinning down the leg, dropping the last metre and running clear, keeping an eye on the giant as he waited for the inevitable. Nor did he have to wait long: there are only so many contingencies rodents can be trained for, and the loss of control over one leg was not on that short list. The sinew wood hung as a dead weight, stylishly carved with three points of articulation, from the giant’s right hip, and all the dreff panic in the Dreamlands would not keep the construct upright any longer. With some unhelpful waving of arms, the giant fell sideways very heavily, the right side smashing to splinters on impact, the head falling off and bouncing across the square to a muffled cacophony of dismayed squeaking.
Cabal had intended to make a circuit of every dreff hole in the fallen giant to introduce them all to his switchblade, but the destruction had been greater than anticipated and, apart from some spastic flexing in the wrecked timbers, it seemed unlikely that it would ever again represent a threat. Thus, when one of the surviving dreff emerged stunned and disorientated from the head, he made no move towards it, but simply watched it wander in a circle, sniffing the air and trying to understand what had just happened to it.
Shadrach’s foot stamping down hard probably came as something of a surprise to it. Cabal watched, unconcerned at the animal’s death, but unimpressed with the motivation for it. Shadrach stamped on the animal again, his expression one of pure petulance. ‘Horrible creatures!’ he spat. ‘Disgusting little rats!’
‘They bear no resemblance to rats whatsoever,’ said Cabal, tetchy rather than angry. Shadrach’s pomposity and pettiness seemed to define him as a person, and neither endeared him to Cabal. If he had hidden qualities, they had been very well hidden indeed. Cabal turned his back on him, and went to Holk.
He reached the still clenched hand around the sergeant just as Osic, the mercenary with culinary leanings, reached them at a run. ‘I thought the others would find cover before me,’ he panted. ‘What happened?’ He saw Holk’s terrible injury and his shoulders sagged with dismay. ‘Oh . . . Oh, by Nodens – not the sergeant.’
‘Thirsh is over there somewhere,’ Cabal gestured off into the darkness. ‘He may still be alive.’ Osic nodded, and ran to investigate.
Cabal knelt by Holk. The sergeant was terribly pale and deeply unconscious. Cabal opened the giant’s hand with little difficulty: robbed of its motivating force the sinew wood was just wood, and the fingers swung back easily on their knuckles and joints. He took a deep breath, and weighed up the options. Movement made him look sharply to his side. Shadrach, Bose and Corde were hesitantly shuffling forward, none of them offering any help, appearing to Cabal’s eye to be little more than the oafish onlookers drawn to any disaster. Cabal suddenly realised how much he hated this ‘Fear Institute’ and its selfless members. ‘You,’ he snapped, pointing at Shadrach. ‘Get my bag. It’s by the wall.’ Shadrach hesitated, unused to being spoken to in such a way, but Bose made a move to comply. ‘Not you!’ Cabal barked. Bose stopped, looking quite similar to another stunned dreff that limped by at that moment. Cabal pointed very deliberately at Shadrach. ‘You. Get me my bag.’
As he waited, he checked Holk’s pulse. It was weak and thready, and Cabal expected the worst. The blood loss was heavy, and although he made impromptu knots in the severed major blood vessels, the segeant’s chance of surviving the shock seemed infinitesimal. Shadrach arrived with the Gladstone bag and dropped it by Cabal with ill grace. Cabal ignored him, taking out his surgical instruments and the very few chemicals he carried that might conceivably be of use. It was a loathsome thought, and he banished it as soon as it started to coalesce, but just this once, he wished he were a doctor. That he was not could not be helped: he could only try to apply his skills in raising the dead to preserving the living. He had no great expectations. ‘I will do what I can,’ he said, in an undertone to Holk, and began.
Holk did not die that night, much to Cabal’s apparent satisfaction and inner consternation. Thirsh, too, was alive, although he had to discard his cuir-bouilli breastplate, which had crumpled under the fierce impact of the gigantic backhanded blow. Better that than his chest, which, while bruised and painful, was at least still where it was supposed to be, as distinct from snugly fitting against his spine, his lungs crushed and heart burst by the new arrangement.
Even though the city was now safe, at least until some new horror moved in, the zebras refused to pass through the line of the outer walls. Osic and Thirsh constructed a litter from bedrolls and lengths of wood culled from the fallen giant, a curiously pathetic object in the clear light of day, and placed Holk upon it to drag him from the city to where the zebras waited. What was left of Gesso that they could find, they gathered up and hauled out of the city, too, to be buried in the gently rolling hills below the sinew trees. Thirsh had at first suggested burying him in a small overgrown garden he had noticed on their approach, where beautiful flowers grew, but Cabal had remembered the ghoul in the temple cellar and intimated to the others that anyone who was buried within the city would not rest there long.
He also took with him a block of sinew wood and a captured dreff, but would not explain why. He strapped the block to his saddle, and kept the dreff in an extemporised cage fashioned from Gesso’s helmet and a length of quarter-inch chain that had once formed part of the dead man’s sword belt, criss-crossed across the helmet through holes he had punctured for the purpose. The dreff sat behind the chain bars and regarded Cabal with curiosity, as did the others, but still he would not discuss his intent.