Storm Child (18 page)

‘Let her go,’ Polly said,
pointing the gun at Mrs Brown who now had Charlotte in a stranglehold. The
woman shoved Charlotte away with a sour look. ‘Not so nice to be
lookin
’ at your gun from that end, is it?’ Polly grinned.

The next thing she saw was a man
beside Finch draw a dagger from his belt. Polly lifted her gun. ‘One step
closer and you get it,’ she said.  But then her eyes widened in shock at
what happened next.

‘Kill him!’ Finch shouted,
pointing at Isaac, still tied to the table.

‘No!’ Polly screamed.  She
fired the gun. Unprepared for the violence of the shot, however, she staggered
backwards and dropped it.  Sparks flew around the room as the bullet
missed its mark and ricocheted from the stone walls, hitting another hooded figure
who crumpled to the ground. Polly leapt up as the dagger sliced through the air
towards Isaac. She threw herself at the man, swinging with her sword, her
opponent changing the course of his knife and meeting her metal with his. 
The shock reverberated down her arm and she dropped the sword too.

‘Get them!’ Finch shouted as the
children from Polly’s cage poured out towards the doors.  All around the
room, men in hoods chased the escaping children. The man fighting Polly was
distracted for a second and she reached for her sword again, snatching it up
and bringing it down on his arm. He let out a howl, followed by one from Isaac
as her sword narrowly missed his head.

‘Watch what
yer
doin
’! I like this face!’

Polly grinned and Isaac flashed
one in return.

‘Finished swooning then?’ she
asked.

‘I weren’t swooning,’ he fired
back.

‘That’s what it looked like to
me.’

‘I lost a lot of blood that’s…
POLL!’ Isaac roared. ‘LOOK OUT!’

The man was up again and coming at
Polly. She lashed out with her sword and he ducked out of the way.

‘Annie!’ Polly shouted. 

Annie was staring at the mayhem,
the wolves still packed around her. It was clear that she wouldn’t be able to
keep control for much longer.  She was swaying on her feet, barely able to
focus.  It seemed that Finch knew it too, and he was inching towards her.

‘She can’t hear you,’ Charlotte
cried at Polly, now struggling against Mrs Brown’s grip. ‘She needs to
concentrate. If she loses them now we’ll all be savaged.’

‘Better that than sacrificed,’
Polly shouted back as she leapt away from the man who was attacking
again.  ‘We need the wolves to fight.’ Lunging forward as he regrouped,
she swung her sword down onto the rope binding one of Isaac’s hands. It fell away
and Isaac twisted over to try to undo the binding at the other hand. In a fluid
movement she swirled the blade back and across the man’s face, who dropped his
dagger and fell away, roaring in pain.

‘I didn’t know you could sword
fight,’ Isaac yelled as she cut away the binding at his other hand.

‘Neither did
I
,’
she grinned. Isaac bent to his feet and undid the knots there before leaping
down from the table. He caught a wince from Polly as she slid her gaze over his
bare, bloody chest.

‘It
ain’t
as bad as it looks,’ he said with a wink. ‘And I’m sure Annie can fix me.’

Polly nodded. She turned to look
for Annie to see that although the wolves snarled and bared their teeth at his
approach, Finch continued to move towards her, Annie now so dazed and exhausted
that she barely seemed to notice it.  ‘Can you get the other nippers out
of the cages?’ she asked, turning to Isaac again.

‘Can
I
!
Where’s the key?’

Polly turned to view her empty
cage, searching the floor. ‘I don’t know.’  She swung her blade at a new
attacker who was trying to rush Isaac, catching the man in the throat. She let
out a whimper as he fell, blood gushing from an obvious fatal wound, and then
stared up at Isaac, horror-struck.

‘It weren’t your fault,’ Isaac
said. ‘He’d have killed you first chance he got.’ He glanced down at Polly’s
adversary, now writhing and clutching at his neck, and then bent to take
something from the dying man’s belt.  ‘With a bit of luck, this key ought
to do it,’ he said, holding it aloft.

Polly nodded and turned to face a
new onslaught while Isaac dodged a blow as he raced for the nearest cage.

‘When I open the door you run for
your lives, you hear?’ he panted as he twisted the key in the lock. But it
wouldn’t open. ‘Damn it!’ he shouted, kicking the bars. His head flicked up
just in time to see the sword racing towards him and he ducked, throwing
himself forward into his attacker’s legs and bringing the man crashing
down.  There was a race to reach the dropped sword and Isaac won it,
flipping himself over and to his feet and bringing the blade down across the
man’s legs before retrieving the key from the lock and moving to the next cage.

But Isaac never had a chance to
try the next cage.  A shot echoed around the room and all eyes turned to
see Mrs Brown with the gun in her hand, Charlotte hanging onto her arm as if
trying to impede her aim. Annie slid down the wall, blood flowering from a
wound in her chest. There was a moment of hush, as though someone had dropped a
blanket over the world. And then the wolves woke from their sleepwalking and
began to snarl and drool, bunching together and advancing on the room at large.

‘You idiot!’ Finch shouted at Mrs
Brown. ‘Shoot the blasted things!’

She turned her gun onto the
nearest wolf and pulled the trigger. But nothing happened. With a look of
horror, she cocked it and tried again. When there was nothing but a dull click
for the second time, she hunted in a bag at her belt for ammunition. But she
would never find it.  The wolf sprang and pinned her to the ground as it
lifted its snout and howled in triumph.

‘Fire!’ Polly shouted at Isaac.

‘I
ain’t
got the gun!’ he yelled back. ‘She’s still got it.’

‘No, goat-brains! FIRE!’

Isaac looked puzzled for the
shortest moment, and then a manic grin crossed his face.  He leapt for the
nearest torch and yanked it from its bracket on the wall.  Polly did the
same and worked her way towards him, waving her flame as she went,
the
wolves backing away from her path. ‘We got to get Annie
out,’ she said as she reached him and they moved back towards the door, still
waving the torches.  Some of the Brethren had seen them and followed suit,
so that the whole room was now an eerie space of swift moving shadows and
sparks.  In the confusion, Polly searched for Georgina’s cage.  It still
swung above their heads, Georgina’s wailing weak and tired, the little girl
curled on the floor with a thumb in her mouth.  Charlotte joined them.

‘How will we get her out now?’
she asked, following Polly’s gaze.

‘We can’t.’

‘But we can’t leave her here –’
Charlotte began to argue but Polly cut her short.

‘She’s safe enough up there and
we can’t get to her while all hell is breaking loose.’

‘What about the other children?’
Isaac put in.

‘Same for them,’ Polly said. ‘They’re
safe in the cages so long as they don’t stick their hands out and try to pat
one of the wolves.’

‘It
ain’t
the wolves I’m worried about,’ Isaac replied. ‘What about the Brethren?’

‘I don’t see many of them
surviving this. An’ if we don’t get out now I don’t see us surviving it either.
We take Annie and we get her out, then we come back for everyone else.’

‘No!’ Charlotte cried.

‘Yes,’ Isaac replied. ‘I don’t
like it any more than you but Polly’s right, it’s the only way.’

‘What if we can’t come back?’

‘If we’re dead we definitely
can’t come back,’ Polly said.  ‘Stop
complainin
’
and give me a hand to lift Annie.’

‘Let me…’ Isaac handed his torch
to Charlotte and hauled Annie up over his shoulder. She looked like a rag doll
as she hung limply, her hair over her face.  But they had barely taken two
steps towards the door when Finch appeared, dagger raised and eyes full of
hatred. 

‘I will have my sacrifice… one
way or another!’ He rushed at Isaac and Charlotte rushed at him, stabbing at
him with her torch. But her eyes widened as he grabbed for it and held it fast.
The flames licked around his wrist but he seemed not to notice.

‘How…’ Charlotte whimpered.

‘I am single-minded of purpose,’
Finch said coolly, ‘and as such, a minor inconvenience like fire will not deter
me from my destiny and my rightful place at the Dark Lord’s side.’

‘It’s lucky you like fire so
much, because there’s plenty of it where you’re going!’ Polly yelled as she
leapt at him with her sword.  He dodged and swiped at her with the wooden
end of the torch.  Polly stumbled backwards and fell across the entrance
as Finch now loomed, his dagger poised.

Isaac did the only thing he could
do. With Annie still slung across his shoulder, he picked up Polly’s fallen
sword and hacked at Finch’s shoulder blade.  Finch fell back with a howl
and turned to him.

Charlotte searched for some sort
of fallen weapon.  But then her eyes fell on Mrs Brown’s pistol, lying
abandoned.  There was no ammunition, but she picked it up anyway. As Isaac
backed away from Finch, Charlotte turned to see the nearest wolf tear into a
member of the Brethren, and then hurled the pistol at the beast.  In the
same moment, she ran at Finch and grabbed the torch from his grip.  The
wolf turned with a snarl and bounded over. Charlotte ran into the space between
Isaac and Finch and guarded Isaac with the flame.

‘Take Polly and go!’ she
screamed.

Isaac hesitated, and then nodded.
At the same time as he raced for the doorway with Annie and ushered Polly up
the stairs, the wolf leapt at them.  Charlotte ran to follow Isaac and
Polly.  For a second she turned at the door, if only to see that the wolf
was not following.  The room was filled with the screams of adults and
children alike, smoke from the torches and their dancing light, and the ripping
and snarling of wolves that had spent almost their entire lives in captivity
and had nothing other than the taste of revenge on their minds. Finch was lying
just a few feet away, his throat in the jaws of a wolf and his arm a burned,
blackened stump. 

Sobbing now, Charlotte took one
last look around the room. The faces of the children in the cages would haunt
her for many years to come. Georgina still swung above it all, now curled up on
the bottom of her birdcage trembling. But Charlotte could do nothing for any of
them now.  She had to close the doors and let the wolves have their
way.  She began to push and shove at the wood, tears streaming down her
face.  But then the door snagged on something. She looked down to see that
it was an arm. 

She could stand it no
longer.  She ran for the anteroom and fled up the stairs to find the
others.

Twenty-four

Isaac and Polly were on the stairs waiting for her. They had
laid Annie down on the steps and Polly was doing her best to stem the flow of
blood from her wound with a piece of fabric ripped from the hem of her
dress. 

‘It’s hopeless,’ she said,
looking up at Charlotte’s arrival. ‘We need to get her to a doctor soon and
we’re miles from anywhere.’

‘We’ve got bigger problems right
now,’ Charlotte replied. She darted a glance over her shoulder and then Isaac
seemed to make the connection.

‘We need to shut the wolves in or
as soon as they’re finished their main course in there we’ll be pudding.’

‘The doors won’t close, I’ve
tried. And it’s too dangerous to go back down there now. We have to go up.’

‘But we still got to get back in
there whatever else happens,’ Polly cut in. ‘How else we
goin
’
to get Georgina?’

Isaac gave Charlotte a tight grin.
‘Perhaps you done us a favour. The pack will leave once they’ve had their fill
down there and if all the doors are open, they can trip up the stairs and away
onto the heath. Then we can go back in and get the nippers out.’

‘What if the Brethren are waiting
for us when we go back in?’ Charlotte asked doubtfully. ‘And where are we going
to hide in the meantime? What if the wolves are waiting to ambush us as we
travel home?’

‘We lock ourselves in a room
upstairs and we wait. I don’t reckon anyone will survive who isn’t protected by
a cage…’ he paused for a moment with a grimace. ‘I can’t say it’ll be a pretty
sight for the nippers watching but there’s no help for that. We’re keeping ‘
em
alive and it’s the best we can do.’ He glanced at Polly.
‘As for home,’ he added, ‘I don’t even know where that is now for you and me,
Poll.’

‘No point in
bleatin
’
about it,’ Polly replied. ‘First we got to get her upstairs.’

Isaac nodded. He swept Annie into
his arms and followed in halting steps as Polly guided them up the narrow
steps.  At the top, they left the secret doorway wide open, and opened the
outside door, so that the wolves had a clear exit.

‘What about our scents?’
Charlotte asked as they made their way through the main workshop and up a
flight of stairs to the first floor. ‘Won’t the wolves be drawn to us? What if
they don’t leave but lie in wait? Annie’s blood is all over the place and it
must smell like nectar to them.’

‘I
ain’t
thought that far ahead,’ Isaac grunted with the stress of Annie’s weight. ‘We’ll
just have to fight them.’

Charlotte paled. ‘What on earth
with?’

‘Beats me. Maybe I’ll throw Poll
at them. It’s enough to terrify any savage beast into submission.’

‘I heard that!’ Polly shouted
from in front.  She twisted the knob of the door to her right side and
opened it to reveal a dormitory full of dirty beds. ‘
Ain’t
exactly Buckingham Palace but it’ll have to
do.
’

Isaac laid Annie down on the
nearest bed as gently as he could. Polly and Charlotte joined him and gazed
down at her.  She was clammy, her forehead beaded with cold sweat, her
skin almost white.  The corset of her dress was now almost soaked in
blood.  Charlotte unbuttoned it as Isaac turned and walked to the
window.  She winced as she wiped away the blood, trying to find the wound
site.

‘I need more cloth. And some
water.’

‘I’ll see what I can find,’ Isaac
said, striding from the room.

‘Maybe it’s not as bad as it
looks,’ Charlotte whispered.

‘But she weren’t exactly strong
before it happened,’ Polly replied. ‘I honestly thought the magic were going to
kill her. I didn’t reckon on that old hag giving it a helping hand.’ She laid a
hand on Charlotte’s arm. ‘We got to be ready for the worst. You know that,
don’t you?’

Charlotte nodded.

Isaac returned with a bowl. ‘I
can’t say how clean it is but I done my best.’

‘At least we can clean some of
this blood away and I might be able to see what we’re dealing with,’ Charlotte
replied, taking the bowl from him.  Polly ripped another strip of fabric
from her dress and handed it to her.

‘I’d have torn some from mine,’
Charlotte said with a slight smile. ‘There’ll be nothing left of yours soon.’

‘It’ll give Isaac something to
look at,’ Polly said, returning the smile.

Charlotte began to mop at Annie’s
skin, rinsing away the gore.  Eventually, she gave a triumphant squeak.
‘There! See that, the bullet penetrated a lot higher than we had feared. It’s
really only her shoulder and nowhere near her heart.’

‘She’s still losing a lot of
blood,’ Polly said doubtfully. ‘That’ll kill her just the same.’

‘We’ll make a tourniquet and keep
her as still as possible while we wait. It’s all we can do right now but I feel
certain that it does mean we have some hope of saving her.’

‘It were lucky you managed to
ruin Mrs Brown’s aim,’ Polly said.

Isaac called to them from the
window.  ‘The wolves are outside. At least, I think it’s all of them. I
count three but there’s no way of knowing how many were killed by the
Brethren.’

‘What are they
doin
’?’ Polly asked as she helped Charlotte bandage Annie.
‘Are they
goin
’?’

‘No… that’s the strange thing.
They’re just sitting waiting outside the back door.’

‘Maybe there’re waiting for more
of their pack to join them before they head off,’ Charlotte offered.

‘Let’s hope so,’ Isaac said as he
gazed out. ‘I don’t fancy another round with them.’

Charlotte ran a critical eye over
him. ‘Perhaps you’d like your wounds attended to?’

Isaac looked down at himself.
‘I’d almost forgotten about all this. They did draw a right pretty pattern on
me, didn’t they?’

‘You want me to look at them?’

‘I’ll do it,’ Polly cut in. She
marched across the room and stood in front of Isaac, running her gaze up and
down his bare chest.  The blood was crusting in places now, congealing to
form sticky scabs.  ‘You’ll live,’ Polly said in a firm voice.

‘It’s a bit parky without my
shirt, though,’ Isaac said, regarding her with a mischievous look. ‘I could do
with a cuddle to keep me warm.’

Polly snorted and turned to
survey the room. She strode to the nearest bed and picked off a coarse shirt
which she threw at him.

Isaac laughed and pulled it over
his head. ‘Pongs a bit,’ he said, wrinkling his nose.

‘It doesn’t exactly fit well,
either,’ Charlotte said with a smile as he stood before them, sleeves halfway
up his arms and the hem revealing his navel. 

‘Shut your
complainin
’
and watch what
them
wolves are doing,’ Polly snapped.
Isaac grinned and turned back to the window and Charlotte caught a faint
half-smile from Polly as she turned her attention back to Annie.

Time passed. None of them could tell how long. Isaac grew
increasingly restless and far from being exhausted by his recent ordeal, he
seemed full of nervous energy and ready for more action. Polly spoke in short,
terse sentences, mostly to tell Isaac to sit down or shut up or resume his
watch at the window.  Whenever Isaac did return to the window it was only
to report that the wolves were still sitting outside and he couldn’t understand
for the life of him what they were waiting for.  Charlotte was quiet, her
thoughts absorbed by Annie’s perilous condition, her mother waiting for her
with not a clue whether she was alive or dead, and Georgina swinging in a cage
down below them. Would she think she had been abandoned? Would the other
children think that too?  And what if some of the Brethren had survived?
What if they had already spirited the remaining children away? What if some of
the children had been killed by the wolves?  The ones who had escaped
Polly’s cage should have been long gone before the commotion had begun, as they
all looked to have fought their way out, but in the melee it was impossible to
see for certain.  Charlotte didn’t know if she could live with herself
thinking that she had caused someone’s death, however unwittingly.

‘I can’t stand it,’ Isaac
announced, breaking into her thoughts. ‘
Them
wolves
are never
goin
’ to move and we can’t stay up here
much longer. If I don’t go mad we’ll starve.’ He leaned against the windowsill
and stared at Polly and Charlotte in turn. Polly watched him in silence for a
moment.

‘He’s got a point,’ she said
finally. ‘We
ain’t
eaten for hours and hours and we
ain’t
had a drink either. Staying here much longer won’t
help us and it
ain’t
goin
’
to help Annie either.’

‘We can’t go anywhere while the
wolves are still outside,’ Charlotte said.

‘But why are they waiting?’ Isaac
said as he crossed the room and took Polly’s arm.  He led her back to the
window. ‘Why are they just
sittin
’ there? What do
they want? I don’t know much about wolves but I know that
ain’t
normal behaviour.’

Polly looked outside and then
back to the bed where Annie lay. She wore a thoughtful expression. 
‘Perhaps it’s
somethin
’ to do with Annie.’

‘You mean the spell might not be
completely broken?’ Charlotte asked.

‘Judging by the way they ripped
up that room downstairs I think it was. But perhaps they’re still connected to
her somehow.’

‘Like a deeper loyalty? As if
she’s somehow leader of the pack?’

Polly shrugged. ‘Damned if I
know. But
somethin
’ is keeping them here and they
can’t still be hungry.’

‘Maybe they’re still angry at
being locked up for so long,’ Charlotte said.

Polly sniffed. ‘I don’t think
that’s it.’ She peered through the window again. ‘They don’t look very angry.
They’re just sitting down, calm as you like. But they’re all looking away from
the house, not at it, as if they’re guarding it.’

‘Georgina!’ Charlotte said
suddenly. ‘Could it be something Georgina is doing?’

‘She’s just a baby,’ Isaac cut in
doubtfully. ‘What could she do?’

‘She’s a baby with magic,’ Polly
said, nodding at Charlotte. ‘I see what you’re
gettin
’
at. She could be weaving a spell hardly knowing she’s
doin
’
it.’

‘If she’s scared, then yes. Don’t
forget, I lived with her,’ Charlotte said, ‘I know that she’s no ordinary
baby.’

‘But you were attacked by a
wolf,’ Isaac said. ‘You told us you were both terrified by it. Why would
Georgie keep wolves here if they scared her?’

‘If she sensed Annie’s magic
making them our allies, she could just be copying the spell? Or she may
understand Annie’s intentions and realise that she can keep their loyalty? Or
maybe she’s just plain scared and will grab at anything she thinks will protect
her, and understands that the wolves have strength.’

‘Do you think her magic is just
like Annie’s?’ Polly asked. ‘Annie can only enchant animals and heal. Do you
think that’s all Georgina has?’

‘It’s enough,
ain’t
it?’ Isaac said. ‘If she is keeping the wolves calm then we have a chance to
get past them and free everyone.’

‘What if that
ain’t
it?’ Polly said.

‘Then we’ll die trying.’ He
smiled. ‘It
ain’t
the first time today I’ve said that
either. But we’ve come this far to get her and I
ain’t
about to give up now.’ He began to make his way to the door.

‘You’re going out there?’
Charlotte asked, her eyes wide.

Isaac nodded. ‘One of us has to
and if I’m running from a wolf at least it’s something to do. I’m
goin
’ mad up here waiting.’

Polly joined him at the door.
‘Don’t even think about arguing,
Clotpole
,’ she said,
gazing up at him.  ‘I’m coming with you.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it, Poll.’

‘What do I do?’ Charlotte asked
as they opened the door.

‘I have no idea,’ Isaac said. ‘I
wish I could tell you but I can’t.  We could be eaten in a minute or we
could not.’ He looked at Polly and she shrugged in agreement. ‘If we do get
eaten then you’re
goin
’ to have to come up with a
plan of your own.’

‘And it’ll be a darned sight
better than anything this idiot can dream up,’ Polly said as she followed him
out. 

Charlotte let out a deep sigh as
the door slammed behind them. She was beginning to think that Polly was right
about Isaac; he was an idiot.  A handsome, charming, brave, infuriatingly
attractive idiot. She wondered if she might quite like an idiot like that for
herself.

As they drew closer to the open door, outside which sat the
three remaining wolves staring out towards the road and the heath beyond, the
bravado he had shown upstairs was now replaced by misgiving.  Isaac
shouldn’t have let Polly come on this foolish mission. If he was wrong – and he
often was about many things – they would both be ripped to shreds and Charlotte
would be alone apart from an unconscious Annie and a lot of terrified, locked
up orphans, some possibly-not-yet-dead devil worshipping maniacs and a pack of
vengeful wolves.  Not an ideal situation, he mused.  He glanced
across at Polly, whose encouraging glance back steeled his own resolve. 
She looked strong, ready for a new fight, and he had to be that too.  As
they crept past the doorway, one of the wolves turned its head and regarded
them through impassive yellow eyes. It let out a faint whine, but it did not
stir, and in a moment had turned back to its watch of the heath. Isaac
exchanged another glance with Polly and heaved a silent sigh of relief as he
gently and quietly closed the door to keep them from entering the house
again.  It seemed that their first test was over.  But they still had
the sacrificial chamber to go back into and who knew what they would find in
there.