Grim with worry, they drove all around the inland borders of the farm, a massive pie-slice some three miles in perimeter. They saw nothing unusual. The public road and both the roads leading in and out of Ablach were deserted, at least by anything larger than rabbits and feral cats. That meant either the vodsels had already escaped, or they were still on the farm somewhere.
The most likely hiding places were the derelict cattle sheds, the stable, and the old granary. Esswis drove to each of these in turn, shining the Land-rover’s powerful headlights into filthy black cavities and echoing spaces, hoping that four vodsels would stand luridly revealed. But the cattle sheds were eerie with emptiness, their floors moated with a slurry of rainwater and the compost of cows long gone. The stable, too, was the same as usual. Its contents were all inanimate. Cluttering up the rear lay bits and pieces of Isserley’s previous cars (the doors of the Lada, the chassis and wheels of the Nissan). The rest of the space was mainly taken up by Ensel’s attempted hybrid of a Fahr Centipede hay-turner and a Ripovator fork-lift. With its farrago of welded appendages it had looked grotesquely comical when Esswis was towing it out of the steading; in the spotlit gloom of the stable, its rusty claws and gleaming spines seemed more sinister. Isserley peered into the greasy, solder-spattered cabin, to make sure there were no vodsels inside.
The old granary was labyrinthine, full of nooks and compartments to hide in, but access to these crannies was only for creatures that could fly, jump, or climb ladders. Monthling vodsels, with their quarter-tonne of stiff flesh, were not so sprightly. They would either be on the granary floor, or not there at all. They weren’t there at all.
Back at the main steading, Esswis screeched the car to a standstill and elbowed his way out of the door, taking his shotgun with him. He and Isserley didn’t need to confer about what should happen next. They climbed over a stile and began to stump across the frosty stubble of the field leading to Carboll Forest.
Esswis handed Isserley a torch the size of a thermos flask. She shone it back and forth across the fields as they hurried towards the trees.
‘A fall of snow would have helped,’ she panted, detecting no tracks in the dark expanse of muddy earth and prickly harvest debris.
‘Look for blood,’ said Esswis irritably. ‘Red,’ he elaborated, as if she might be at a loss without this extra guidance.
Isserley stumbled along beside him in silence, humiliated. Did he think a big shining trail of crimson was going to blaze out of acres of field? Just because he played at being a farmer and landowner didn’t mean he had any more of a clue than she did. Men! Armchair heroes the lot of them, while women were sent out to do the dirty work.
They reached the forest, and Isserley shone the torch to and fro across the dense jostle of trees. The very idea of the search seemed hopeless: a narrow beam of battery-generated light flickering around an acre of arboreal gloom.
Nevertheless, before very long, she caught a fleeting glimpse of pink amongst the dark boughs.
‘There,’ she said.
‘Where?’ said Esswis, squinting grotesquely.
‘Trust me,’ said Isserley, savouring the delicious realization that he was less sharp-sighted than she.
Together they loped through the thicket, Isserley leading. Within moments they could hear more snapping and rustling of bracken than they themselves were causing; another second, and they had the creature exposed in their sights. Eyes met across the forest floor: four large and human, two small and bestial.
‘Just the one, eh?’ grimaced Esswis, disguising his relief behind a bluff of disappointment.
Isserley was breathing hard, panting embarrassingly, her heart slamming in her chest. She wished there were a big icpathua toggle growing out of the ground that she could flip like a sapling, causing needles to spring up from the earth. She was aware, all of a sudden, that she had no idea what Esswis actually expected her to do.
The vodsel had lumbered to a standstill, and now stood cowering in the torchlight, naked and sluggish. Clouds of bright steam swirled around its head as it wheezed for breath. Removed from the warmth of its pen, it was pathetically unfit for the environment, bleeding from a hundred scratches, pinky-blue with cold. It had the typical look of a monthling, its shaved nub of a head nestled like a bud atop the disproportionately massive body. Its empty scrotal sac dangled like a pale oak leaf under its dark acorn of a penis. A thin stream of blueish-black diarrhoea clattered onto the ground between its legs. Its fists swept the air jerkily. Its mouth opened wide to show its cored molars and the docked stub of its tongue.
‘Ng-ng-ng-ng-gh!’ it cried.
Esswis shot the creature in the forehead. It flew backwards and bounced off a tree trunk. A cacophonous chuckling erupted nearby, making Esswis and Isserley jump; a pair of pheasants catapulting themselves out of hiding.
‘Well, that’s one down,’ muttered Esswis superfluously, striding forwards.
Isserley helped him lift the carcass off the ground. She grabbed the ankle end, and her hands were instantly slippery with blood and half-frozen shreds of flesh. Amlis Vess had done this poor animal no favours in letting it go.
Even as they prepared to carry the carcass, figuring out how best to tackle its joints to distribute the weight manageably, Esswis and Isserley were coming to the same conclusion. A pale frosting of light was building up on the horizon, diffusing upwards into the cyanose sky. They were running out of time.
Having dumped the vodsel under a bush for collection later, they hurried back across the fields to where they’d left the Land-rover. Barely pausing for Isserley to get in next to him, Esswis started the car up with a hideous cough of ignition and a stink of choked petrol. He drove off at high speed, seemed dissatisfied with the vehicle’s progress, and belatedly released the handbrake.
Once again, they drove all the way around Ablach Farm; once again, the open road and both farm tracks were deserted. The outlines of the mountains beyond Dornoch could be made out plainly now, and something which looked worryingly like another vehicle’s headlights was winking somewhere on the road to Tain. On the way back into the farm, a misty impression of the open sea was starting to luminesce out of the murk.
‘What if they’ve gone to the firth?’ suggested Isserley when the car stood idling in front of the steading again.
‘There’s nowhere to go,’ retorted Esswis dismissively. ‘What are they going to do: swim to Norway?’
‘They wouldn’t know the sea was there until they got to it.’
‘We’ll check there last. The roads are more important.’
‘If one of the vodsels drowns, it could get washed up anywhere.’
‘Yes, but they’ll stay away from the water if they’ve got any brains.’
Isserley clenched her fists in her lap, struggling to keep her temper. Then suddenly she was distracted, frowning, trying to hear something above the puttling of the motor.
‘Switch the engine off for a second,’ she said. Esswis complied, his hand first hesitating around the steering wheel for a while as if he was unfamiliar with its physiognomy. Then the car shuddered into silence.
‘Listen,’ whispered Isserley.
Flurrying through the chill air came the distant but unmistakeable rumble of large beasts, running en masse.
‘The field near Geanies,’ said Esswis.
‘Rabbit Hill,’ confirmed Isserley at the same instant.
They drove there immediately, and found two vodsels trying to climb out of the western field, to get away from a scrum of bullocks snorting and pawing the ground behind them.