I looked up and saw that Thorne was crossing the clearing towards us. Each hand held a large wriggling hare. She reached us and held one out to Agnes. The dead witch seized the frightened animal, then immediately sank her teeth into its neck and began to suck its blood. Within moments it had stopped twitching; it was drained and dead. Then she started on the second one.
‘You’re a good girl, Thorne!’ Agnes cried when she’d finished. ‘That’s the sweetest blood I’ve sipped since coming to this miserable dell.’
‘I wish I could do more for you,’ Thorne said. ‘You’ve always been good to me, Agnes, and it pains me to see you like this.’
Suddenly I sensed danger and sniffed the wind. Our enemies were close at hand.
‘They’re no more than ten minutes away,’ I told Thorne. ‘It’s a risk, but we need to take refuge in the dell now, before it’s too late.’ I turned to Agnes. ‘Follow as best you can.’
I led Thorne to the edge of the dell. ‘There are still pits and traps – those crafted by Kernolde many years ago. Some I will avoid; others I’ll leap. We must move fast but follow close on my heels.’
So I sprinted into the dell, taking the same route that I had taken all those years earlier when I fought Kernolde. But no dead hands reached up to clutch my ankles now. Last time I had called out a challenge and drawn the witches towards me; this time we had the element of surprise, and the dead would be scattered amongst the trees. Only the two very strongest and fastest might be able to intercept us. And we were lucky, as the third had already left the dell to hunt. She might roam for miles and spend several nights away before returning. Or she could reappear at any moment.
I still had the exact location of each pit clear in my mind, and soon I was leaping over the first one. I never even glanced back to see if Thorne was safe. The girl was as sure-footed as I was and her reactions were just as quick.
Soon I sprang over a second, then a third, but at one point I dodged left to avoid a long thin pit that was impossible to jump: a tree trunk formed a barrier at its far edge. I remembered the way in which Kernolde had tricked and almost defeated me – by digging an extra pit that was unknown to me and filling it with sharp stakes to spear me. A sudden thought struck me.
What if she had dug other pits? What if there were more that I was unaware of?
I calmed myself, picking up my pace through the dell. Such pits might or might not exist. But as long as I took the same route as last time, we would surely come to no harm.
Soon Kernolde’s tree came into view; it was an ancient oak, the tree within which she had stored her magic. Despite the action of the elements during the intervening years, some of the ropes still hung down from the branches. From those she had once hung her defeated enemies.
I motioned to Thorne and we came to a halt. I pointed to the pit with my forefinger. It was still partially covered with branches and bracken, onto which many autumns had layered a bed of mouldering brown leaves. But at the edge I saw the large hole through which I had fallen, to be impaled below. We walked around the pit and turned, leaning our backs against the huge tree trunk as once Kernolde had done. It was strange to return to this place after all these years. My life had circled me back to the same spot, and I somehow sensed that I would soon face a similar crisis.
There was a rustling to my right. Something was approaching. No doubt it was one of the weaker dead witches – no real threat. After a few moments there were other louder sounds: the breaking of twigs underfoot, the heavy confident steps of someone who was not afraid to betray their presence.
A dead witch came into view. She was tall, but even if I had known her in life she would have been a stranger to me now. In place of her right eye was a black empty socket, and the flesh on that side of her face was missing, to reveal the skull and cheekbone. The remaining eye, however, glared at me with hatred. There was something very unusual about this dead witch too. Into the leather belt that held up her blood-splattered skirt was tucked a long blade with a curved handle shaped like a ram’s horn, and she carried a long thin spear.
Dead witches don’t usually arm themselves in this way. Their extreme strength, claws and teeth are sufficient weapons.
Suddenly I knew her, and everything was instantly clear. This was Needle, one of my predecessors, the witch assassin who had been defeated by Kernolde. Such a clan sister could have been an ally, but the hostile stare of her remaining eye said otherwise. It was filled with madness.
‘You have crossed a line!’ Needle hissed. ‘I rule here. This is the place of the dead, not the living. Do you come to challenge me, Grimalkin?’
‘Why should the living challenge the dead?’ I demanded. ‘Your time is over. Kernolde defeated you and I defeated her. One day my time will also be over, and I will take my place here alongside you. We should be allies. There is a dangerous foe approaching.’
‘Kernolde used trickery. She used the dead in her cause. Had she fought fairly, I would have defeated her, and in time you too would have died at my hands. So let us put that to the test now. Let us fight now – just the two of us!’
‘First help me to defeat our common enemy,’ I asked. ‘What do you say?’
‘Who is this enemy?’
‘They are supporters of the Fiend. They want what I carry within this bag.’
I untied the sack, lifted out the head of the Fiend and showed it to Needle.
She smiled grotesquely and her white skull-bone gleamed in a shaft of moonlight. ‘I have no love for the Fiend,’ she said. ‘But neither do I care for you! They call you the greatest of the Malkin assassins. It is a lie!’
I returned the Fiend’s head to the sack and was just preparing to tie it shut when madness flickered in Needle’s remaining eye and she ran at me, the spear pointing towards my heart.
I dropped the sack and the head, and prepared to defend myself. The most powerful of the dead witches were fast and very strong; much stronger than the living could hope to be. They could tear off my limbs with their bare hands. But this was worse: Needle was a trained witch assassin with a fearsome reputation. She would not be easy to overcome.
Thorne drew a blade and started to move towards my side, but I waved her back – my pride bade me deal with this dead assassin alone. At the last moment I twisted my body aside and the point of the spear missed me by inches. My blade was in my hand but I did not use it. Once I had cut the head from a dead witch in this very dell. To stop Needle I would have to do something similar – maybe even cut her into pieces. I decided to try to reason with her one more time. I still hoped that she might become our ally.