‘Help me to defeat our enemies and then we will fight,’ I offered.
‘We fight now!’ she cried. ‘I will kill you then cut out your heart, sending you straight into the dark! Your thumb-bones too I will take. You will be without honour, obliterated from the history of Malkin assassins. You will be nothing!’
She ran at me, wielding the spear again. She was beyond reason, having nursed her grievance all through the long years she had spent with the dead. I had my back to the pit and knew exactly what to do. Once again I avoided the spear, and this time delivered a blow with my fist to the back of her head. She fell into the pit without uttering a single cry. But once impaled upon Kernolde’s spikes she began to wail like a banshee.
‘I was told that a dead witch doesn’t feel pain,’ Thorne said, looking down to where Needle was transfixed by the long thin spikes. Each was over six feet long and very thin. Four had pierced her body, and she had slid down them, right to the bottom of the pit. One had taken her in the left shoulder, another through the throat. One had speared her chest, the fourth her abdomen.
I noted the broken spike that I had snapped off to free myself and remembered my own pain.
‘What you’ve heard is incorrect,’ I told Thorne. ‘She is in pain, all right, though she is mainly screaming with frustration at failing to kill me. She knows that she lost and, what is worse, that I defeated her very easily. Her body may still be strong but her mind is rotting and she’s fallen into madness. I overestimated her – she is a shadow of her former self.’
I almost pitied her, for she had fallen far from the heights she had once scaled as an assassin. I could only hope that I would never be reduced to such a state.
Now other sounds could be heard in the short pauses between the screams – rustles in the undergrowth. The other dead witches were approaching us, drawn by Needle’s anguish.
But then I heard something else. Thorne and I sniffed together, but this time it was not witch magic – an attempt to discover a threat or gauge the strength of an enemy. It was something that any human would have recognized instantly; something that would fill a forester with fear.
I could smell smoke, burning wood, and I suddenly knew what our enemies had done.
‘They’ve set fire to the dell!’ Thorne cried.
I hoisted the sack up onto my shoulder. As I did so, a strong wind sprang up from the west, howling through the trees. They had conjured a gale and fire using dark magic, and the damp foliage would prove no impediment. Now the flames would sweep through the dell, consuming everything in their path.
Our enemies would not be forced to venture into the dell to find us, fighting any dead witches they encountered. They would be waiting in the clearing east of the dell; waiting for us to be driven out by the fire-storm.
I anticipate a violent death but will take many of my enemies with me!
WHAT ALTERNATIVE DID we have but to run east? Already, even above the howling of the wind, I could hear the crackle of burning wood, and dark smoke gathered overhead, blocking out the light of the moon.
‘We will advance just ahead of the flames, then leave the dell and cut down those in our path,’ I told Thorne.
The words were easy to say, but to stay just ahead of the conflagration was far from easy. For one thing the smoke began to make our eyes water, forcing us into fits of coughing. Secondly the fire was advancing very rapidly, leaping from tree to tree and from branch to branch with a crackling roar; it threatened to overtake us at any moment, and our slow jog soon became a fast sprint.
There were animals fleeing with us: a couple of hares and dozens of squealing rats, some of them with singed fur, some burning as they ran. I thought of poor Agnes. If the fire took her, at least her agony would be brief and that miserable existence in the dell as a weak, dead witch would be over. But I knew that some inhabitants of the dell would survive by using their sharp talons to burrow into the leafy loam and down into the soft wet soil beneath. They had the means and the expertise gained by long years of survival here. It was not something that we could hope to do; we didn’t have time.
The trees were thinning but we could see little through the smoke. Suddenly I sensed something approaching us from behind, and whirled to meet the new threat. It was a dead witch – the other strong one, clothes and hair aflame as she ran past, oblivious to us. She was screaming as she ran: the flames were consuming her and she realized that her time in the dell was over. Soon her soul would fall into the dark.
Where was the kretch? I wondered. No doubt it would be waiting somewhere ahead. As we left the trees, a witch attacked us from the left; this time a live one, from the vanguard of our enemies. Thorne cut her down without faltering, and we accelerated away from the danger.
Even above the whine of wind and roar of the fire I heard the eerie wail of the kretch somewhere behind us. Then it began to bay for our blood, a powerful rhythmical cry, as if a score of howling wolfhounds were on our trail.
‘You are mine!’ it called out, its voice booming through the night. ‘You cannot escape! I will drink your blood and tear your flesh into strips! I will eat your hearts and gnaw the marrow from your shattered bones!’
We were curving away south now; our path would take us east of Crow Wood. I thought of the lamia still in the tower. If only she’d had time to shape-shift to her winged form, she might have seen us and flown to our aid. But it was too soon for that. There was no hope of help from that source.
Then, as I ran, the warning lights once again flickered in the corners of my eyes. Would I have time enough to lead Thorne to safety? But too soon the weakness was upon me again; I felt a fluttering in my chest and my breathing became shallow and ragged. I began to slow, and Thorne looked back at me in concern. I halted, hands on hips, aware of the irregular beating of my heart and the trembling in my legs. Now my whole body was shaking.
‘No! No! Not now!’ I shouted, forcing my body onwards, drawing upon my last reserves and every final shred of willpower. But it was useless. I managed to take only a dozen faltering steps before coming to a halt. Thorne paused and came back to stand by my side.
‘You go on!’ I cried. ‘You can outrun them; I can’t. It’s the damage done by the poison.’
Thorne shook her head. ‘I won’t go without you!’
I lifted the sack off my shoulder and held it out to her. ‘This is what matters. Take it and run. Keep it out of their hands at all costs.’