A man dressed as a great fighting general, he stood over the pathetic little form, put his hand to his mouth and gazed in horror at the blood, the exposed brain and the split eyeball. The cat looked more as if it had been shot than hit by a casually tossed stone.
‘Is it dead?’ he heard Cabal say, in clear, neutral tones behind him.
‘I didn’t mean to . . . How is that possible?’ Corde simply couldn’t take in how bizarre the sequence of events was. ‘I barely even . . . It makes no sense.’
Cabal was not interested. ‘Gather up your things immediately,’ he instructed. ‘We must be on our way before they find out.’
‘What?’ Corde looked uncomprehendingly at Cabal. ‘What are you talking about, man? Before who finds out?’
‘The cats, naturally.’ Cabal was already striding past him, heading westwards in the direction of the desert.
‘Cats, Mr Cabal?’ Bose was having difficulty in raising his voice to be heard through a mouthful of sandwich. ‘The cat’s owners, you mean?’
‘I mean what I say, and I am in deadly earnest. There are plenty of things to be rationally afraid of in the Dreamlands, and not all of them are as overt in their threat as wamps.’
Based on Cabal’s usual sang-froid, if he decided that killing a cat, even accidentally, was cause for a rapid decampment, that was sufficient motivation for Corde and Bose, who decided to hold their questions for later, quickly gathered up their belongings and headed westwards too.
When they caught up with Cabal his first words were, ‘In the shade of the ivy on the wall to the left is a cat. We are discovered already. Our only hope is to reach the desert and hope that their notorious laziness and dislike of discomfort prevents them following.’
Corde risked a sideways glance and saw that there was indeed the tumbledown remains of an old farm wall, upon which grew a generous dangling of ivy. Beneath it, he saw the glint of green eyes, and felt a strangely alien antipathy projected at him that did not make him think of tangled knitting and hairballs. He shuddered, and quickened his pace.
‘What is this?’ he asked Cabal. ‘They’re just cats. How is it that they’re dangerous?’
‘Because they are not just cats,’ said Cabal, now starting to break sweat as he, too, lengthened his step. ‘These are the Dreamlands, and what is here is the stuff of dream. Cats, as any rational person knows, are solitary, opportunistic, ambush predators, much like spiders, but with fewer legs and a better fan club. They are, by and large, stupid animals, the cleverest of the species being about on par with an average dog. I am no great admirer of dogs, either, I should add. My observations, while admittedly casual, are at least, therefore, objective. Cats, however, appeal to the anthropomorphising aspects of the human psyche like no other. They are credited with intelligence, cunning and an indefinable sophistication that, when regarded in light of their actual behavioural mores, will be observed to be pure phantasms. It is a deep belief, however, and that is where our danger lies, for the ridiculously inflated beliefs of generations of delusional cat devotees – and I use the term advisedly – are made concrete in the Dreamlands. Here they truly are intelligent, cunning, sophisticated and capable of the most exquisite malevolence, just as the dreamers who unwittingly weave them would want them to be. You have killed one of their number and, among far too many people, that is a capital offence. And so it is here.’
Soon the cats did not trouble to hide themselves, but sat erect like statuettes by the way, only their eyes moving as the three men hurried past. Then they rose and trotted along in a growing pack behind them, their tails low and twitching with anger.
There was no time to catch their breath and take stock. The horde of idealised kittery in their wake grew in numbers and in threat at every moment. It had long since ceased to be just a bunch of cats – now it was a furred stream that swept after them, an avalanche of claws awaiting the signal.
It was Corde who gave it to them. His evident panic increased with every step, every new recruit to the pursuing army, and his desperation grew with it. He was offered no comfort by his companions. Cabal was silent and focused purely on reaching the desert where the cats might desist. If he knew anything, it was that he loathed the thought of his last moments consisting of being swamped by an overindulged bunch of goldfish-botherers like their persecutors. Bose said nothing, but hurried along in a state of confusion, blinking furiously.
Then panic froze into hopelessness and a desire for some sort of resolution right at that very minute, and Corde stopped, spun on his heel, drew his sword, and bellowed, ‘Come on, then, you damn’d fleabags!’
He was probably expecting a moment of indecision on the part of the cats, a beat before they were faced down, or flew at him, all claws and spitting, but they did neither. They did not stop when he turned, but continued to flow across the ground, and he had barely time to cry his challenge when they were flowing over him too. He was surprised, and did not call out or scream, as he became coated in cat. He struggled, but soon enough he could not see or hear anything. His hands flailed and his sword fell.
Bose said, ‘Oh!’ and went to help him, but Cabal caught his arm and said, ‘If you hurt even a hair on one of their smug little heads, they will kill you too.’
‘But Mr Corde isn’t dead!’ he cried. Cabal just held his arm tightly and watched as Corde fell, and the boiling, purring pool of fur where he had stood smoothed out, and became distinguishable individuals again, then poured off in all directions as if they had appointments elsewhere.
When they had gone, Cabal finally let go of Bose’s arm. ‘Now he is,’ said Cabal.
There was little left, just an abandoned sword, a few scraps of torn cuir-bouilli and some tumbled pieces of equipment. Cabal watched a kitten a few yards away dragging off a finger bone, the joint gripped fiercely in its adorable little blood-smeared mouth.
‘And then there were two, Herr Bose.’
Chapter 13
IN WHICH THE DOMESTIC WONTS OF SORCERERS ARE INVESTIGATED AND CABAL CANNOT BE CONCERNED
Much as a rubber ball deforms on impact only to spring back into its usual shape, so Bose’s crumpled spirits soon rose above such small distractions as having two friends die in relatively rapid succession and in the most horrible ways. After all, life goes on, which in the case of Gardner Bose meant strolling along, whistling a jaunty tune and generally exhibiting a guileless, indeed witless, mien. On a village street, it would be acceptable. In the dun dunes of the alkali Cuppar-Nombo Desert, it was a little wearing.
At least it was not especially hot. The lack of water in the desert was more an accident of geography than extreme temperatures and, while it was a long way from cool, it was not unbearable. Of the environmental hardships, Bose’s whistling was by far the worst. It came slightly muted – although not nearly enough – by the handkerchief he had tied over his mouth and nose in imitation of Johannes Cabal, a measure to avoid breathing in more sand than was necessary. Cabal’s second innovation of wearing his baffled blue-lensed sunglasses Bose could not emulate, so he was reduced to squinting fiercely against the fine dusty clouds that blew up into dust devils given the excuse of any faint breeze.