Another of the handlers hesitated, was made to turn; his left leg slid into mud to the knee, and then the right. Behind him two of the soldiers were going down. The other men laid their poles and spread themselves flat, as Segle had done, holding fast to the rope. One of them, desperate, threw himself on the heaving backs of the dogs. They were sinking too; as he hit them they turned and snarled and tried to bite him. But their bodies were giving him support, keeping him clear, and however many dogs suffocated it did not matter.
The break handler felt the water rising over his forehead. He screamed. They did not hear it. The scream was the last of his air, his life, a silver bubble which wriggled its way to the surface and broke. His body involuntarily prepared to make another scream, but as his chest expanded for it his lungs drew only mud.
The black bitch ran on alone, through the reeds, dipping her nose low. Her tongue touched the water and lapped the scent she had pursued all the way down from the fort. From the strength of it she knew the prey were only yards ahead, and she knew that she was gaining. She could think of nothing but the quarry. Her handler’s voice had given her an order: until countermanded, it would push all else from her brain.
The scent-stream turned and moved to firmer ground, away from the softest mud. The reeds parted in front of the black bitch and her eyes dimly discerned running shapes against the moonlight and the night grey of the coastal sky. She heard them shout with fear. Power bursted to her muscles and sinews and with her feet leaving the ground she sprang, throat-high. In the instant of her flight she tasted rosewater and then the full weight of her body struck and was bringing the human down.
Her training was not to bite the quarry, not to attack unless it showed resistance. She was merely to subdue and hold it until her masters came. But as the girl beneath her struggled and screamed, the black hound felt other hands closing below her jaw and on the back of her head and she knew she was fighting for her life.
A strength like that of no human she had ever known jerked her head upwards and back. Before her neck broke she saw white and smelled the welter of her own scents and those of the marshes and the prey. Vertebra parted from vertebra: her spinal cord tore and leaked fluid. Damaged tissues fired a blizzard of faulty impulses to her brain, fading, quickly going dark, and she received no more.
4
Segle held closely to Tagart, her face in his shoulder.
“Are you hurt? Did it bite you?”
She shook her head.
In the marshes at their backs they could hear the shouts of the soldiers. The plan seemed to have worked – the hounds had come across Tagart’s clothes. But whether they had been stopped or merely delayed, there was no time to waste. Other teams might be dispatched from the Trundle.
“We must keep going,” Tagart said.
He helped Segle to her feet and pushed the lifeless body of the dog aside.
She touched his arm. “Listen.”
Away from the shouting and the soldiers, to the south, sounded the distant crash of breakers on a sloping shore.
It could not be much further to the sea.
They went on; and now it was Tagart who led the way.
The ending of the reedbeds was signalled by the fluting cry of a curlew, disturbed from its feeding in the creek. For several seconds it had stood with head bobbing in uncertainty, alarmed by the approaching noise of rustling stems; and when Tagart and Segle had come out of the reeds it had taken wing, twenty feet over the glittering mud, passing in front of the moon. Other birds in the creek and in the saltings heard its cry and shared the alert: redshanks, whimbrels, oystercatchers, and their own distinctive voices were added to the curlew’s as they too opened their bills and flew up.
“The tide’s out,” Segle said.
They left shin-deep footmarks across the width of the creek and entered the saltings, among the glasswort and sea-purslane, stepping over gullies and gutters of wet mud. The glasswort gave way to seablite which scratched softly at their legs. Before them was the rising slope of the beach; behind them was silence, and no sound of pursuit.
Their feet crunched on shingle, climbing to the low crest of the moonlit shore: and there from west to east spread sparkling sea, the waves angled in broad sweeps and tumbling into surf, almost luminous where the foam broke and slid back into the oncoming crests.
Tagart wearily took Segle’s hand and led her down to the water. Their scent could still be traced, even across the pebbles. It was time to make sure they would be followed no more.
It was time to slip into the sea, to swim beside the beach, to come out where it was safe and sleep an untroubled sleep; and afterwards, with the sun on their bodies and the wind blowing subtly along the shore, to find food and clothing and make a start on all the questions.
The water was warm. A wave slapped at their knees. They went in further. Wordlessly they drew together. With the friendly sea swelling to their waists, they let the water wash away the mud from their skins, the filth of the marshes, clean and healing, gentle, soothing, billowing in a dark cloud, merging with the currents until all trace of it was gone.
The Stone Arrow Page 22
