Sky Wolves (21 page)

Hati stopped prowling. ‘What bald patches?’ she said with a flick of her tail.

‘Oh, you can hardly tell,’ Flo assured her. ‘It’s just here and there that the scabs are showing through.’

‘Scabs?’ said Hati with unutterable scorn. ‘Bald patches? I do not
have
scabs,
or
bald patches. I am Hati the Magnificent and my pelt is unsurpassed. No one in all the nations of wolves can compete with me. My beauty is unrivalled and my pelt is as the Arctic snow or the long grass waving silver in the moonlight ’

‘Except for the bald bits, where the scabs show through,’ said Flo.

For a moment she thought she had pushed Hati too far. Her lips curled right back from her terrible fangs and the whites of her eyes shone. Flo was horribly aware that a fight to the death with Hati really wouldn’t take too long.
She watched, fascinated, as vanity vied with rage and finally won.

‘What
bald bits?’ Hati said, in a low voice, but with terrible menace.

Flo was ready for this question.

‘Well, the one between your shoulder blades, for a start,’ she said, knowing that Hati couldn’t see that particular spot, even though she twisted round, trying. ‘And the one on your neck –’

Hati jerked round the other way.

‘And then there’s really quite a nasty one just at the base of your tail. Looks as though it might be infected.’

Hati writhed round and round, chasing her tail. ‘I can’t see anything,’ she said.

Quietly, Flo crept up towards her, the Thread of Destiny forming itself into a great loop. Just as Hati turned another complete circle, she flung it towards her like a lasso. It dropped towards Hati’s body, falling to her paws, and Flo held her breath. But at the last moment, Hati twisted in a lightning movement like a snake, caught it between her jaws and pulled. Before she understood what was happening, Flo shot forward in midair and the rope wound itself around her own paws. Taken by surprise, she hung, trussed like a chicken and upside down, between the paws of the great wolf. She could feel Hati’s icy breath on her face.

‘You didn’t think. I’d fall for that one, did you?’ murmured Hati.

Flo wasn’t going to give in that easily. She thrashed wildly, but all her feet were tightly bound. As she reared and bucked like a kite on a windy day, while Hati remained quite still, she felt a dreadfully familiar sinking feeling.

I told you,
she said in her mind to Jenny.
I told you I wasn’t the right dog for this job. It’s all over now.

Hati lowered her muzzle towards Flo’s throat and Flo twisted again, trying to avoid the savage teeth. But however hard she twisted and strained, she seemed only to draw closer to Hati.
This is it,
she thought, and her mind went blank with fear. She stopped struggling and lay quite limp and submissive, with the great wolf towering over her.

‘That’s better,’ Hati said. ‘Now –’

Flo shut her eyes tightly, waiting for the terrible grip of Hati’s teeth.

‘Hmmm,’ said Hati, obviously enjoying the moment. ‘Well, little dog,’ she said, her words dripping venom. ‘What shall I do with you now?’ And she prodded Flo one way, then another.

Stop playing with me,
Flo begged her silently.
Get it over with.

‘The thing is,’ Hati went on, ‘we need to get this thread off you and give it to someone who knows what they’re doing with it.’ She tugged at the cord around Flo’s paws, but it only pulled tighter. ‘Someone who could devour the sun after all,’ she mused. ‘Now, who would that be? Oh, I know, yes.’

Even with her eyes shut, Flo could feel the great wolf smiling.

‘I know what to do,’ she said, and she lifted her muzzle and howled, a heart-stopping, chilling sound that froze Flo’s blood. It was both a war cry and a lament, and something else, like a summons.

With a sickening pang, Flo realized what Hati was doing. She was summoning Fenrir.

‘If I asked you where we were,’ said Gentleman Jim morosely ‘would I regret it?’

No one responded. Orion was striding with determination through the Milky Way, and Pico was travelling beside him in silent awe, his mouth open, as though trying to catch the Stardust. Around them blazed the millions of stars in the galaxy. Pico had never seen anything so beautiful, so enchanting. For the first time in his life, he had the sense of vast, incomprehensible distances and scale. Out here, suns burst into life and galaxies bloomed. There was no longer any sense of up or down, since in all directions the view was the same – millions and millions of stars suspended miraculously in the depths of infinity. Pico the miniature Chihuahua should perhaps have been daunted by the sheer immensity of space, but he wasn’t. He knew that he was little more than a transient particle, winking in and out of existence, but it didn’t matter. Just to have shared, for a moment, in the glory of the universe was enough. He felt part of the mystery and immensity of being. When a shooting star went past, his eyes filled with tears.

Gentleman Jim, on the other hand, merely felt sick. He felt as though his stomach was being used as a football by
a particularly aggressive striker. He only opened his eyes intermittently to make sure that the earth, a blue and shining ball, was still there. He knew that the lack of gravity and air pressure must be getting to him, since his thoughts were no longer making any sense. So he just kept his eyes and his mouth shut, and concentrated on keeping the contents of his stomach firmly in place.

Then, at last, Orion, who for some hours had said nothing apart from ‘Look – the Pleiades’ or ‘There goes Cassiopeia,’ suddenly said, ‘This is the place,’ and lurched forward horribly in midair.

Gentleman Jim said, ‘Unnngghh,’ while Pico said, ‘Where?’

‘There,’ said Orion. ‘You see below you the plains of darkness.’

Gentleman Jim peeped quickly, with one eye. He could see the earth and its oceans, rolling and lurching horribly, far below, and there, in the centre of a landmass, there was a great dark spot. Blinking, he had a sudden, fleeting sense of inky blackness.

‘This is where you must land,’ said Orion.

‘Right,’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘Er – how exactly?’

‘I have a plan.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘I shall fire you from my bow.’

Gentleman Jim managed a short, yelping laugh. ‘That was a joke, of course.’

‘No,’ said Orion. ‘You will be perfectly safe.’

Gentleman Jim boggled. This was obviously some definition of
safe
he didn’t understand. ‘When you used the word “plan”,’ he said, ‘I didn’t imagine you meant us
plummeting to the earth like stones. This isn’t a suicide mission, you know.’

‘You will travel to the earth on a beam of light,’ said Orion. ‘It will disappear as you enter the realm of Hades, where most light cannot penetrate. But you shouldn’t fall too far. And anyway, you should land in the soft earth of the asphodel fields.’

Gentleman Jim was unconvinced. ‘When you say
should
,’ he began, but Pico cut in with, ‘How will you know the exact spot?’

‘I cannot know the exact spot,’ replied Orion. ‘But I do know where the asphodel fields are. We are above them now.’

Gentleman Jim looked down, but all he could see was the dark spot on the face of the earth, which was rather like the red spot on Jupiter. It seemed as though the earth, at that point, was covered by an impenetrable gloom.

‘Ordinary mortals cannot see the abode of darkness,’ Orion said. ‘This is where all light ends.’

Gentleman Jim rather wished that he couldn’t see it either, but Orion was speaking again.

‘I will draw as close as I can to the earth’s atmosphere,’ he said. ‘Then I must fire my arrows of light and disappear. Dawn is approaching. The rest will be up to you.’

‘How will we know your soul?’ asked Pico, as Gentleman Jim struggled to assemble an argument. ‘Will it look like you?’

‘All souls on the asphodel fields look alike,’ said Orion. ‘There are countless thousands of them, like points of light above the asphodels. They have forgotten who they are, you see.’

‘Well, that’s helpful,’ muttered Gentleman Jim, who was really beginning to wish he’d stayed at home. In spite of Maureen. And the vet.

‘You must call me by my name,’ Orion went on. ‘Each soul responds only to its own true name. As it responds, it will take on the semblance of its former self. Mine will be rather good-looking,’ he added modestly. ‘I had a noble face.’

‘Not the face of a murdering butcher, then?’ asked Gentleman Jim, but Pico said quickly, ‘What must we do with your soul when we have found it?’

‘The river that runs through the asphodel fields is Lethe, river of forgetting,’ said Orion, ignoring Gentleman Jim. ‘The souls there are thirsty and drink continuously. But at its source, near where it joins the River Styx, there is a pool of remembering. You must lead my soul to this water and make it drink. It will not want to, because to drink from this pool is to remember past pain and regret, and to be subject to the torments of the Furies. That is why the souls drink continuously from Lethe, so that they will not have to remember. But if you can get my soul to the pool and make it drink, then finally it may repent.’

Gentleman Jim wasn’t happy. He had almost lost count of the number of things he wasn’t happy about. ‘Furies?’ he said. ‘Who are the Furies? You never mentioned them before.’

‘The Furies are terrible,’ Orion said with a kind of shudder. ‘Bat-winged, with snakes for hair and blood dripping from their eyes. They are the avengers of crime and their home is at the entrance to Tartarus, the deepest pit of Hades. They attack all those who repent with brass-studded scourges.’

‘Now, just hang on a minute,’ said Gentleman Jim, but Orion went on as if he hadn’t heard.

‘When my soul repents you must not let it slip into despair,’ he said, ‘for the Furies can sniff despair at a distance of a thousand kilometres. It is like meat and drink to them. My soul must pass into the Elysian fields, not sink into the depths of Tartarus.’

Gentleman Jim was speechless for almost a minute. There were many things he wanted to say, none of them polite. In the end, he settled for, ‘So, what will you be doing while we’re fending off these bat-winged, snake-haired monsters? And how are we supposed to fend them off, if you don’t mind me asking, before they kill us and eat us?’

‘They will not harm dogs,’ Orion said distantly. ‘They look after dogs. It’s a kind of hobby. My soul should fend them off, if it does not slip into despair.’

Gentleman Jim was not convinced. ‘There are a few too many
ifs
and
shoulds
for my liking,’ he said. ‘I can’t see that it’ll work. And I’m not happy about this plummeting through the air business. We could land anywhere. Hard.’

Orion bowed his silvery head. ‘It is true,’ he sighed. ‘But the alternative is to stay here with me and travel the skies.’

Gentleman Jim couldn’t think of anything to say to this. He certainly didn’t want to spend the rest of his days in space.

Pico, however, said, ‘Well, there is nothing I should like better than to stay with you and roam the universe for the rest of eternity, or at least for as long as I have left to live. But if I can do anything to bring you peace, then I will
even at the cost of my own life. We are not afraid to die.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Gentleman Jim muttered, but Orion said, ‘Dear friend, your heart is great, though your body is so incredibly titchy. All the nations of the world should honour your name. But as for your death, it will not come to that, I hope.’

‘Good,’ said Gentleman Jim.

‘See, we are approaching,’ Orion said.

And indeed, all the time they had been talking they had been drawing nearer to the region of darkness. Gentleman Jim made himself look, but it was impossible to see anything through the impenetrable gloom. Orion raised his bow and a beam of light appeared in the centre of it, poised and quivering. Then he released it and it hurtled forward at breathtaking speed, into the heart of the darkness, then disappeared.

‘I have fired many such arrows,’ said Orion, while Gentleman Jim was still gasping with horror, ‘in the hope that one might pierce the awful gloom somewhere near my soul and remind it of me. I do not seem to have been successful. But if you dare to ride the arrow, you will land in the asphodel fields.’

‘And break every bone in our bodies?’ said Gentleman Jim. ‘No thanks.’

‘Do not worry, my friend,’ said Pico. ‘I will go first.’ And, with Orion’s help, he ascended upwards to the centre of the fiery bow.

‘Pico,’ said Gentleman Jim urgently, ‘don’t do it!’

But he was too late. Orion drew back the quivering bow and, with a cry that might have been ‘Tally-hoooooo!’, the
tiny dog hurtled forward through space, disappearing into the inky blackness below.

Gentleman Jim’s ears and tail went down. His stomach appeared to be lodged in his throat.

‘Well, my friend,’ Orion said, ‘will you let your tiny companion face the region of darkness alone?’

Many rude thoughts passed through Gentleman Jim’s mind, but it was true that he couldn’t leave Pico unaided. And he certainly didn’t want to be stuck in space. With a sigh that shook him from his ears to his tail, he pointed his nose upwards and began to ascend.

A beam of light passed beneath him as he took up position in the centre of Orion’s bow. He felt a tingling sensation pass from his nose to his paws. It was warm and oddly soothing, but he did not feel comforted. Any moment now, he would plummet through the skies, to an unknown destination.

‘Ready?’ asked Orion.

‘No,’ said Gentleman Jim.

He wanted to ask if there was any alternative, or at least if Orion could fire his arrows more slowly, but his tongue appeared to be stuck to the roof of his mouth. He felt a sensation of quivering behind him as Orion tensed the bow and he shut his eyes tightly. He remembered something desperately important he had to say…

But the next moment all the breath rushed out of his body and there was a terrible yowling noise in his ears. He wished that whatever it was would stop, but then he realized it was him crying ‘Noooooooooooooo!’ as he hurtled forward through time and space.