The Changes Trilogy

by Peter Dickinson

  Her hands were moving already. The jungle grew at her fingertips, and through it the tiger stalked and roared, and the woodman’s sons adventured. Nicky saw a child which had slept through the din wake slowly, sit up and start listening, as though this were how every morning of its life began. Terrified of breaking the spell, Nicky tiptoed to a window.

  She could see the house clearly now; white and square, very big, with a low slate roof ending in a brim like a Chinese peasant’s hat. Here a cheerful stockbroker had lived six months before; along these paths his children had larked or mooned as the mood took them; an old gardener had mown the big lawns smooth enough for croquet. And now they were all gone, and the lawns were lank, and murder crept across them. Any minute now …

  A crash of glass, and a cry, and then a wild yelling. A naked white man was running across the lawn with a Sikh after him. The naked man ran faster and disappeared among trees, and the Sikh stopped and trotted back to the house. A cracked bell began a raucous clank—the alarm signal—but stopped before it had rung a dozen times. One, two, three, four men jumped from an upstairs window and ran to the largest of the outbuildings. From another window a figure flew, tumbling as he fell; when he hit the grass he lay still, and a second later Nicky heard the crash of the big pane through which he had been thrown. In the twanging silence that followed, Nicky studied the geography of the buildings and tried to plan for disaster. Suppose a sortie of robbers rushed from the house, would there be time to get the children down the stairs? The robbers had chosen the barn for their hostages because it was set nearly a hundred yards from the other buildings, and they could fire it without endangering themselves. Supposing the four men now cowering in the large outbuilding—just as far away across the paddock-like turf, but more to the left—plucked up their courage for revenge.… A hoarse yell wavered across the grass, rising to a sharp scream, cut short.

  Nicky looked over her shoulder to see how the children were taking these desperate noises. Should they leave now, and risk meeting a party of escaping robbers, or a returning patrol? No. Ajeet still held them enthralled: the woodman’s second son was exchanging riddles with the tiger that had no soul. The tiger had already possessed the soul of the elder son, but needed a second man’s soul to make up a whole tiger’s soul. Nicky crossed the room and looked down the steep stair. Gopal had finished soaking the straw and was standing, watchful but relaxed, behind one doorpost. He had closed one leaf of the door. Nicky was on the point of going down to ask what he thought about moving the children when his stance tensed. She darted back to her window.

  A man had led a huge horse from the outbuilding door. A strange figure moved beyond the animal and two other men came behind. The horse stopped. The two men went to the strange figure, bent out of sight and heaved.

  The knight erupted into his saddle. He still looked strange, because his armor was so clumsy, but now he looked terrifying too—a giant toy which someone has put together from leftover bits of puppets and dolls, and then brought to gawky life. He put out his hand and a man passed him up his spear; a little crimson flag fluttered below the point. Now the man passed him a big timber ax and the knight hooked it into his belt, then turned and said something to the men. Two of them went back into the stables, but the third put a trumpet to his lips and blew a long, shivering note. The knight kicked his heels against the horse’s ribs and the big animal started a slow trot over the lawn, toward the barn. Nicky heard the second leaf of the door creak shut, and the bar fall into place. The third man had followed the other two into the stables.

  Beyond the knight a dark figure appeared from a downstairs window and stood for a moment, round as a bubble, against the whitewashed wall. Then Uncle Chacha was trotting across the grass, unhurriedly, as though he were slightly late for an appointment. Nicky could see the knight’s face now, for the gawky helmet hung back over his shoulders and clanked dully as he bounced in his saddle. His hair was tight gold curls, his cheeks smooth; his nose was a ruin—broken in some old fight and mended all lopsided; below it his handsome mouth grinned cheerfully. As he came he fitted the lance into a holder, so that it stood up like a mast behind his thigh. Now he could wield his ax, two-handed.

  Nicky looked around the room for something to throw, though none of the windows was near enough over the door; she might unsettle the horse for a minute, perhaps. But there seemed to be nothing in the loft except hay and children. She craned back out of the stench into the murderous sweet air.

  The knight had ranged his horse alongside the door and already the big ax was swung up over his shoulder for a blow. His armor had gaps between the separate pieces, to allow his limbs to move freely; really it was only pieces of boiler and drainpipe held together with straps.

  He looked up to Nicky’s window; his green mad eyes caught and held hers; then he laughed, as Mr. Tom had said, like a lover, and swung the ax. The blade crunched through the half-rotted planking and he wrenched it free and hefted it for another blow. Nicky didn’t dare look to where Uncle Chacha came trotting over the sward; his best hope—his only hope—was to catch the knight unawares and thrust through one of the joints of his armor. Instead she looked toward the stable.

  The three men were out of the door again, two of them carrying another brazier and the third an armful of weapons. The carriers put the brazier down and one of them pointed at Uncle Chacha. The third man dropped the weapons, lifted the trumpet and blew, just as the ax crashed in again. One fierce note floated across the green.

  The knight heard it, looked over his shoulder, saw the pointing arm, saw his attacker, and kicked the big horse around. As it turned he hooked the ax back onto his belt and lifted the lance out of its holder on the return movement. The pennon dipped. The brazier party stood still to watch the fun. The knight’s boots drubbed mercilessly at the horse’s ribs, so that horse and man rushed on Uncle Chacha like a landslide. Uncle Chacha glanced once over his shoulder to see whether danger threatened from behind, then waited for the charge, his curved gray blade held low in his right hand. Nicky tried to look away again, but the dread of the sight held her transfixed.

  Uncle Chacha just stood and waited for the lance point. He was a round, easy, still target. Only when the bitter tip was a second away did he begin to move, to his left, out from the path of the horse.

  Nicky gulped. He had dodged too soon. The point had followed him around.

  But with a single flowing twist, long after he had seemed committed to his leftward dodge, he was rolling and falling to the right, in toward the battering hooves, the way the knight could not expect him to go; and then, as the spear point spiked uselessly past, he was still falling but rolling out, with his sword whistling up behind his back in a long, wristy slash.

  The stroke did not seem to have hit anything, but by the time the knight was turning his horse for a fresh charge Uncle Chacha was on his feet and picking up something from the grass—a stick with a red rag near the end. Three foot of severed spear. He felt the point, turned for a moment to wave a cheerful hand to Nicky, threw his small round shield to one side and waited for the knight in the same pose as before—except that now the pennoned point hung parallel to the sword, his left hand grasping the cut shaft.

  The three men by the stables had put the brazier down and were sharing out the weapons. One of them shouted to the knight and he called back, then came again more cautiously.

  His boots drubbed and the horse bore in. The knight seemed to have an incredible advantage, fighting down at the small round man from that moving tower of muscle, and protected too by all his armor. And his ax—though he had to hold it one-handed, rather far up the shaft, as he needed his other hand for the reins—was so heavy that even held like that any blow from it would surely cleave turban and skull. The knight seemed to think so, for he was grinning as he came.

  Uncle Chacha balanced to meet the charge. Nicky thought she knew what he would do. He would wait again until his enemy was almost on him, feint one way to commit the ax to a blow that
side, then dodge around the other side of the horse and either pull the knight from his saddle, or wound or kill the horse so that he could fight the knight level. He would have to be quick, though: the other three men would soon be dangerously near.

  But this time he didn’t wait. When the horse was six feet away from him he made a long skip to his right, so that the knight had to turn the horse in to him, one-handed. As the big animal came awkwardly around, Uncle Chacha moved again, leaping forward with a shrill, gargling shout. The knight’s ax came up, ready for him, but the fat man leaped direct for the charging horse, sweeping the pennoned spear sideways and up in front of its nose at the very moment that the wolf-cry of his shout cut short in a snapping bark. The terrified horse, bred and trained to pull brewers’ drays through orderly streets, shied sideways from the onslaught, and half reared in a swirling spasm that gave the knight far too much to do to allow him to smite at his attacker. Uncle Chacha struck with his sword and the knight had to drop the reins and raise his iron arm to parry the whistling blade; even before the steel clanged into the drainpipe, the knight’s own spear point was lancing up into the armpit which the raised arm had exposed.

  He was still grinning as he toppled.

  Uncle Chacha, bouncy as a playful cat, flicked around the plunging animal and his blade flashed through the air again. Nicky heard the thudding jar of the iron doll hitting the turf, but no cry at all. Then the horse was careering off toward the woods and she could see how the knight lay, his feet toward her, his gold curls hidden by the bulk of his armored shoulders, and the half spear still sticking into him, straight up, as though it had been planted there to mark the place where he fell.

  The men from the stables were only ten yards further off. Nicky yelled “Look out!” and pointed. Without pausing to study the danger Uncle Chacha lugged the spear from the carcass and ran for the barn. To fight more than one enemy you must have your back against a wall. Nicky left the window and rushed down the stairs, barely noticing as she crossed the loft that Ajeet now had the woodman’s son locked in a death wrestle with a six-armed ogre. The children sat as still as if there’d been nothing outside the window but birdsong.

  Gopal had been watching the duel through the long slit where the knight’s two blows had knocked a whole plank out. Now he was lifting the bar of the door.

  “Shut it behind me!” he hissed. “He cannot fight three men!”

  “Wait!” whispered Nicky. “Then you might catch one of them from behind.”

  A thud told that Uncle Chacha had his back to the planking. Peering through the slit, Nicky saw the rush of his pursuers falter as he faced them—they had seen what had happened to the knight. They were all three terribly young, just murderous loutish boys, eighteen at the oldest. Now they quailed before the hard old warrior standing at bay, glanced uncertainly at each other and crept forward with their swords held stiff and low. They must have plundered some museum for them.

  Gopal crouched where the doors joined, like a runner settling into his blocks at the start of a race. The robber at the near end passed out of Nicky’s line of sight, his back toward her.

  “Now!” she whispered, and threw her weight against the big leaf. Gopal stayed in his crouch until the gap was wide enough; just at the moment when steel tinkled on steel outside, he exploded through. Nicky forgot her duty and rushed after him.

  The nearest man had heard, or felt, the movement of the door and had half turned, so that the point of Gopal’s sword drove into the soft part of his side below the rib cage. His face contorted; with a bubbling yell he buckled and collapsed. But the small blade had gone in so deep that his fall wrenched the hilt out of Gopal’s hand, and the boy now stood weaponless.

  The middle man, who had just skipped back out of reach of a lunge from Uncle Chacha’s lance, wheeled at the cry, then rushed toward this easier victim. Gopal waited his coming hopelessly, but knowing that you have more chance if you can see your enemy than if you have your back to him. Nicky, who had checked her outward rush as the first man keeled over, scooped up some turf from the stack by the barn door and hurled it, two-handed, over Gopal’s shoulder into the attacker’s face. The brilliant summer had dried the turf into fine dust, barely held together by the dying roots of grass. The man staggered in his charge, blinded, and the next instant Uncle Chacha’s lance had caught him full in the neck.

  The third man dropped his sword and ran around the corner of the barn. No one chased him.

  Without a word Nicky and Gopal walked panting to the other side of the doors, where there were no corpses, and leaned against the wall. Uncle Chacha picked up his shield and joined them.

  “Three more killed,” he said, “and one run away. Not bad.”

  “What happened at the house?” said Gopal.

  “They are good soldiers. Many of them slept with weapons by their beds. Wazir is dead, and Manhoor, and young Harpit. We have killed perhaps half of them, but a group are defending themselves in the big bedrooms on the far side. We are hunting through the other rooms before we attack them. Perhaps we will have to burn the house around them. Look.”

  A man, an Englishman, was running along the top of an eight-foot wall. He must have climbed from an upstairs window. Another figure, turbaned, dashed out of a door, planted its legs wide apart and raised its arms in an age-old pose. The arc of the risaldar’s bow deepened; then it was straight. The man on the wall threw his arms wide between pace and pace and tumbled with a crash through a greenhouse roof.

  “I must go back,” said Uncle Chacha.

  “I expect the other horses are in that stable,” said Nicky, “and the rest of the armor. If you turned the horses out you could set fire to the stable and burn the saddles and things as well, and then you wouldn’t have to fight any more knights on horseback.”

  “You are right,” said Uncle Chacha, and trotted off across the grass, still as light on his feet as if he hadn’t spent the morning fighting for his life against grisly odds.

  “You go too,” said Nicky. “He’ll need a hand with the brazier. I’m going to take the children home.”

  “That was a good throw, Nicky,” said Gopal. “Thank you.”

  He gave her a gay salute with his bloody sword, made two practice slashes with it, and ran off after his uncle. Nicky climbed to the loft with legs like lead.

  Ajeet’s tiger was dead, with its skin nailed to the temple door. In the temple the woodman’s sons were marrying queens.

  Nicky nodded to Ajeet, who put her palms together under her chin.

  “And so ends the tale of the tiger who had no soul,” she said.

  The children watched her in silence.

  “Thank you, miss,” said the redheaded girl.

  “I’m going to take you all to your homes now,” said Nicky.

  A squealing like a piggery racked the loft.

  “Quiet!” she yelled, and the squealing died.

  “Now listen to me,” said Nicky. “My friends have killed half the robbers. Ajeet’s father beat the worst of the men on horses and killed him too. The rest of the robbers are shut up in the house, but a few have run away. Some of them may be hiding in the woods, but it’s all right—they can’t hurt us if you do what I say. There’s a pile of flints by the ditch over there, and I want you each to pick up two of them, or three if you’ve got a pocket to put the third one in. Choose stones which are the heaviest ones you can throw properly and straight. Carry one in each hand, and if you see anybody who looks like a robber, lift up your arm and be ready to throw, but don’t throw till I shout. Do you understand? Just think—thirty big stones, all held ready for throwing. One man won’t attack an army like that. You’re an army now. Soldiers. And you’re going home.”

  She led them down the ladder. Ajeet came last. By the flint pile she marshaled them into a crocodile, with the smallest children in the middle clutching their useless but heartening pebbles. But the big boys and girls, back and front, were armed with flints that really would make an enemy hesitate. S
he looked for the last time toward the house. A flurry of shouts and a scream rose from the far side. A wisp of smoke came from the stable, and Gopal was leading a huge horse over the grass toward her.

  “The other one bolted,” he said, smiling. “But this one is too darn friendly. Can you take him with you?”

  Nicky dithered, frightened by the animal’s size.

  “I’m used to horses, miss,” said the redheaded girl. “I’ll mind him.”

  She took the halter and Gopal started back toward the battlefield, in a careful copy of Uncle Chacha’s energy-preserving trot.

  “Now,” said Nicky, “I don’t want to go past the house and along the road because that might make things difficult for my friends. Who knows the best way across the fields?”

  Several voices answered and all the hands pointed the same way. She chose a dark, sensible-looking boy as her guide and set off. They crossed the big lawn, skirted a little wood, used a tarred footbridge to cross a dry ditch among bamboos, and came to a gate at the end of the garden. They wound slowly up the wheatfield beyond, tramping their path through stalks which had already dropped their seed and were now so brittle that the first gale of winter would push them over to lie and rot. A sudden rustling, as of a large animal disturbed, shook the stems to their left.

  “Ready!” shouted Nicky. Thirty fists came up with rocks poised—though the pudgy arms at the center scarcely rose above the wheat stalks. Out of the wheat a naked man bounded like a startled deer. He gazed wild-eyed at the children for a moment; then, amid whoops and jeers, he was scampering up the hill. Nicky called her army into line of march again. That must have been the man she first saw escaping across the lawn in the gray, chill air before sunrise. She looked to her left and was astounded to see that the sun had still not crossed the low hilltop, though the air was gold with its coming. Less than an hour ago, then, the attack had begun.