There were more shrieks and yells, this time from behind us and much closer. We were surrounded: the maenads were moving in, about to attack. A shadowy figure ran straight at Arkwright and he struck out at her with his staff. The maenad fell at his feet with a grunt but others were sprinting towards us from all directions. I could hear their feet thumping on the dry earth. I whirled to meet an attacker at my left shoulder, swinging my staff in an arc. I caught her on the head and she overbalanced and fell away. I pressed the catch in my staff and the blade emerged with a click. It was a fight to the death now. Maenads were all around, some stabbing at me with long cruel blades, others charging with bare hands. Some had killed already. The mouth of one was dripping with blood and she had pieces of skin and flesh trapped between her teeth. I whirled round, trying to keep them at bay. There were too many to fight off and I'd no hope of help. Everyone else was in the same predicament. We were heavily outnumbered.
My only hope was to break out of the circle so I attacked, lunging forward, spearing my staff towards the figure directly before me. She fell back and I leaped over her body into an open space. The maenads were still shrieking behind me. I needed to link up with some of the others – Bill Arkwright and the Spook or even the Pendle witches – and fight alongside them.
A shadow loomed up from my right, and before I could spin to defend myself a hand gripped my wrist fiercely and tugged me away into the darkness.
'Just follow me, Tom!' cried a voice I knew so well.
It was Alice!
'Where are we going?' I demanded.
'Ain't time to talk now. Got to get away first . . .'
I followed at her heels. We ran away from the camp, heading roughly east. The sounds of pursuit faded, but when Alice showed no sign of slowing down, I caught her up and grabbed her arm from behind.
'I'm not going any further, Alice.'
She turned to face me, her features in shadow but her eyes glittering in the starlight.
'We've got to go back, Alice. They'll need all the help they can get. We can't just leave like this. We can't abandon them and think only of ourselves.'
'Your mam said that at the first sign of trouble I had to get you away. Especially if the maenads attacked. Get Tom to safety, she said. If anything happens to him, it's all for nothing anyway. Made me promise that, she did.'
'But why would it be all for nothing? I don't understand.'
'Whatever your mam's plan is for defeating the Ordeen, you're an important part of it, Tom. So we've got to keep you safe. We need to keep heading east. We'll be up in the mountains before dawn. They won't find us there.'
Alice sometimes hid things from me but had never told me a direct lie. I knew that she was following Mam's instructions, so reluctantly I continued east. I was still worried about the attack on the camp. There had been so many maenads down there, but I knew the defenders would put up a good fight. There was Mam's warrior guard, but also the witches from Pendle, the Spook and Bill Arkwright – he would certainly do his best to break a few skulls.
'Why didn't you or the Pendle witches sniff out the attack?' I demanded accusingly. 'And surely Mam or Mab would have known what was coming and raised the alarm too. What went wrong, Alice?'
Alice shrugged. 'Don't know the answer to that, Tom.'
I felt uneasy but said nothing more, keeping my worries to myself. Mam had already told me that her foresight was waning. I felt sure that the Fiend was weakening all our powers, making our mission more and more impossible.
'Come on, Tom. Let's move!' Alice cried, an urgency in her voice. 'More than likely they'll still be following . . .'
So we ran on a little further before slowing to a steady jog.
As we reached the foothills, the moon came up above the solid bulk of the dark Pindhos Mountains rising before us. No doubt somewhere ahead there was a route through them, but we weren't back in the County and didn't have either a knowledge of the terrain or a map to refer to. All I knew was that Meteora was somewhere to the east beyond this range. So we climbed as best we could, hoping to find our own way through.
We'd been climbing through a pine wood for about ten minutes – my body was starting to sweat with the exertion – when Alice suddenly came to a halt, her eyes wide. She sniffed the air three times. 'There are maenads following us. Ain't no doubt about it. They must have a tracker.'
'How many, Alice?'
'Three or four. Aren't too far behind either.'
I looked back, but even with the moonlight bathing the slope, I could see nothing of our pursuers through the trees. However, Alice was rarely wrong when it came to sniffing out danger.
'The higher we get, the more chance we've got to hide and throw 'em off our trail,' she said.
So we turned and hurried on. Soon the trees were left behind us and the ground became steeper and more rocky. The next time I looked back I could see four shadowy figures moving swiftly up the trail. They were closing on us fast.
We were following a narrow track between two huge crags rising up on either side when, suddenly, we saw a cave ahead, its dark maw leading downwards. The path led straight into it. There was nowhere else to go.
'We could lose 'em down there in the dark. Hard to track us too,' Alice suggested. Swiftly she sniffed the entrance to the cave. 'Seems safe enough, this one. No danger at all.'
'But what if it's a dead end, Alice? If there's no way through, we'll be trapped down there in the darkness.'
'Ain't got much choice, Tom. We either go in or turn back and face 'em on the path!'
She was right. We had no alternative. I nodded at her, and after using my tinderbox to light the candle I always carried with me, we entered the cave. The descent was gradual at first and the air was much cooler than outside. Every so often we paused for a second but could hear no sounds of pursuit. It wouldn't be long before the maenads came after us though. And what if we reached a dead end? That didn't bear thinking about.
But the path up to the cave entrance was well-worn, suggesting there was a way through. The tunnel sloped downwards more steeply now, each step taking us deeper underground. Suddenly we heard a faint rhythmical tapping within the wall somewhere to our right. Almost immediately there was a reply from the left wall.
'What's that, Alice?'
'Don't know,' she said, her eyes wide. 'Ain't the maenads. They're back there. Unless there are more of 'em already in the tunnel.'