He drove forward with his truncheon, a stabbing blow in the manner of a duelling swordsman, finding his target, the nearest man's solar plexus. It should have doubled his assailant up, had him writhing on the ground, clutching at his stomach. It didn't.
The blow jarred Jock Houliston's arm right up to his shoulder, had him almost dropping his weapon. The other seemed unaware that he had been struck, came on unhindered, strong cold fingers encircling the constable's throat. Squeezing, throttling. And more of them were coming in on the fray, sheer weight of numbers bearing him to the ground.
Jock Houliston fought in blind fear, swung his truncheon again but it was wrested from his grip, his arms pinioned behind him. Kicking, bone-jarring, toe-breaking blows that found their mark but brought not so much as a gasp of pain from his attackers. His legs were seized, his body lifted up. To the dungeons?' Someone asked the question in a lisping hollow voice.
'Nae.' There followed a pause as though the one to whom the question had been directed was thinking, forced to make an instant decision. 'There's things happenin' at the Castle, we'd better keep clear. Nae, ta the bog, 'tis quickest!'
Houliston was aware of being carried, borne over rough ground, jerked and shaken, his stomach threatening to erupt. His trained mind again; you're a policeman, they're assaulting you. The wood and the marsh is teeming with police, you'll be rescued any second.
But nobody came to his rescue. Wherever the search party had gone they were oblivious of his fate, a land of mist and silence, the only sound the steady tramping of feet across soggy terrain. Houliston closed his eyes. It was a nightmare and when he awoke it would be gone, just a few faint awful memories. Cat-napping on his bed in between double shifts, in the morning they were going to scour Droy Wood. It had played on his mind. His captors had stopped and the fingers that gripped him bit deep into his flesh, burned him with their cold. Lifting him again, above their heads into the fog, thick greyness everywhere.
He knew only too well what they were about to do, smelled the foul gases of some nearby bog. One last time he tried to struggle and gave up because they had him imprisoned at full stretch with their unbelievable strength. A shout, more of a whispered croak. 'I'm a police officer and you're under arrest.'
Next came a sudden sensation of freedom, a release from those bony manacles, a wave of vertigo as he was catapulted into the air. Going up, flailing the air with arms and legs, slowing as he reached his apex. Starting to fall, a kind of headlong dive, instinctively taking a breath and holding it. And then he hit the bog.
A splash as though the water had solidified, wallowing up to his thighs in slimy stinking mud. Struggling, sinking in another foot. Up to his waist now, floundering and trying not to panic. More than just a bog, quick sands with shallow-rooted rushes cunningly disguising it so that an unwary traveller might stumble into it. Nature's own death-trap.
The mist had eddied and for a few brief moments PC Jock Houliston saw his attackers again, ringed around the edge of the bog, their hideous faces masked by the shadows cast by their wide headgear. He could not see their expressions yet he felt their malevolence, a blast of sheer cold hate. Why, oh Jesus Christ, why are you doing this to me?
He sank in another few inches; it was too late to try and extricate himself by lying full length, he had gone in too deep. The mud stirred noisily, greedily, devouring him by the second, pulling him down avidly.
'Just bloody well tell me why.'
No answer. These creatures who roamed the mists of Droy Wood and its marshes answered to nobody for their actions. The laws were of their own making, since the days when they had been commanded to apprehend those who came ashore secretly, and they saw no reason to change anything. The policeman had resigned himself to death, did not even attempt to prolong his life when his chin slipped below the shifting mud. It was dark, night already, he had been in this bog for hours; it had seemed only minutes. And somewhere, not too far away, he could hear men shouting, dogs barking excitedly as they picked up a scent. One last flicker of hope had him opening his mouth, mustering his breath for a final scream that would bring the search party in this direction.
He almost made it, but his cry for help was drowned by a rush of foul liquid mud pouring into his open mouth.
Thirteen
Andy Dark hauled himself up into the lower branches of the towering oak tree, pulled Carol up behind him. Climbing, helping her from one bough up on to the next, and all the time Bertie Hass was still shooting. The shots vibrated the damp night air, then died away to a frantic metallic clicking. A snarling and growling, an animal yelping with pain somewhere. They're wolves, all right,' Andy muttered. 'They can't be anything else.'
'It's impossible.' Carol closed her eyes, tried to convince herself that at any second she would wake up. Please God let it all be a nightmare, a fever brought on by stubbornly walking home in the pouring rain the other night. She hadn't been picked up and raped by a stranger, not imprisoned in those terrible dungeons. The German didn't exist, she wasn't clinging to a branch of a tree, scared she might fall, with ravenous wolves down below. Because wolves were long gone from Britain.
The wolves were baying more persistently now, If you peered into the gloom you could just make out flitting shadowy shapes that might have been Alsatian dogs. Only you knew they weren't.
'Something's gone terribly wrong,' Andy said.
'What do you mean?'
'It's like the whole wood has come to life. Not just a crackpot German who's still fighting World War II. Time hasn't just slipped back forty years, it's reverted centuries, maybe even further, got sort of all mixed up. Like it's been waiting for thousands of years for something to happen and now it's all happening at once. A kind of spoof film only you're bang hi the middle of it and it's' all for real.'
'What are we going to do?'
'For the moment we can't do anything except stop right here.'
Waiting and listening, knowing that it wasn't a fevered dream, praying for it to get light. For the mist to clear; for a party of searchers to appear armed with guns. Clutching at vain hopes, knowing in their hearts that they were all going to come to nothing.
'I can't understand why somebody hasn't come looking for us,' Carol said.
'Surely they've found the Mini and your Land Rover. They must know we're in here so why don't they come?'
They probably have,' he replied. 'But I guess… the wood isn't the same for everybody. Maybe all they see is fog and a dense wood that they have to rely on the dogs to search. I don't know, it defies explanation. I'm only guessing anyway.'
Seconds later they heard the German screaming, hoarse cries of fear, a renewed snarling; it sounded like the wolves were fighting among themselves. It lasted perhaps a minute, no longer, and then the silence roiled back.
'How horrible.' Carol Embleton was trying not to conjure up a picture in her mind of a strange uniformed man being torn apart by savage beasts that should have been extinct for centuries.
'He didn't make it up into the trees,' Andy said quietly, slipping a reassuring arm around Carol. Time had run out for him. I reckon that parachutist coming down out of the sky tonight was his death sign. Poor sod, but he wasn't. real, to explain it simply. I guess he didn't feel anything. I can't explain it any other way.'
They lapsed into silence, reluctant to put their thoughts into words. It would have to get light eventually; at least they hoped it would. There was no guarantee. Droy Wood defied not just the laws of Nature but those of the universe as well.
'What's that?' Carol must have dozed, awoke with a start, aware of a numbness in her legs, cramped so that she might have fallen if Andy had not been supporting her. She heard a distant rushing sound like a series of waterfalls in full spate, recalled a childhood visit to the Elan Valley where she had stared in awe at the mighty foaming dams.