Broken Arrow

have an audience.

'I'm really grateful for everything he did.'

Mark raised an eyebrow. I'll bet you are.

'You should have seen him in action.'

Mary gave a tight smile, then replied: 'I've seen him in action, thanks.'

'He took on all those men on his own.' Adele was gazing up at Robert with what could only be described as adulation. 'I don't know how I can ever repay him.' She placed a hand on Robert's arm, completely ignoring the look of disdain from Mary. Robert saw it, though, and shifted awkwardly around, closer to the woman who'd been at home worrying about him, wondering if he was alive or dead.

'Jack,' he said, 'would you mind taking Adele up to the castle, showing her what's what, getting her some food. She must be starving.'

'My absolute pleasure.' Jack offered the woman his arm. 'Come on, little lady.'

Before she took it, Adele leaned in and gave Robert a peck on the cheek. 'Thank you again for everything.'

When the pair were gone, Robert turned to Mary, who had now folded her arms. 'What could I do? She has no one. Just like you when we first met.'

It was absolutely the wrong thing to say. 'Lining up a replacement, are we?'

'Don't be silly, Mary. It's just — '

'Silly? Silly!' Mary breathed in an out slowly a few times. She looked like she was about to say something else when Mark decided he'd better cut in.

'The men you fought, they were the ones you'd been tracking? The cultists?'

Robert appeared grateful for the reprieve. 'Yes. We took several of them into custody. They're at The Britannia right now.' This was their main penitentiary, a hotel not far from the castle, guarded by Robert's men. 'We're in way over our heads with them, though. They're fanatics, religious nutters. I think I'm going to need Tate's help to figure out their overall game plan.'

Mark nodded, glancing over briefly to see Dale and Sophie still laughing and joking. He looked back at Robert, a serious expression on his face. 'So they're potentially a serious threat?'

'Potentially,' Robert conceded.

'Then you're going to need all the men you can spare to tackle them.'

'I suppose I…' Robert suddenly realised where this was heading. 'Look, Mark, we've talked about this before.'

'I know, and it never gets any further. I'm ready; you know it and I know it.'

Robert sighed, looking from Mark to Mary, then back again. 'What is this, some kind of ambush? I've only just got back, I'm tired and hungry, and you two are on me as soon as I get through the gate. We'll discuss this some other time.'

Mark wasn't sure whether he meant his problem, or Mary's, but persisted. 'I want to talk about it now.' Robert began to walk away from both of them. 'Please!'

The man stopped, hung his head, then said simply. 'I'll have a word with Jack about beginning your training.' With that, he carried on up the path towards the castle.

Mark smiled, then saw Mary was still frowning. He put an arm around her shoulder. 'Hey, you don't have to worry about him. He really loves you, you know.'

She shook her head. 'I just wish sometimes he'd show it more.'

'Yeah, I know what you mean.'

Mary followed his gaze across to Sophie. 'They're friends. That's all.'

Mark shrugged. 'I can understand it. He's older than me, gets to go out, play the hero…'

'Is that what all this is about? The thing with the training?' Mary asked him. 'Because if it is — '

'No,' he replied, but didn't sound very convincing. 'Not really… Mary, do you ever think about the past, about what we all went through? About what happened here?'

'You mean, do I miss it? Being in the thick of things, even though we were all nearly killed?'

That wasn't quite what he meant, but he nodded anyway.

'Sometimes. But not as much as he does.' She gestured towards the figure heading towards the castle. 'I just don't know what I'd do now if I lost him.'

Mark pulled her in closer and she put her arm around his shoulder. He thought about saying, 'You won't' but they both knew he couldn't make that kind of promise.

'Come on,' Mark said to her, more to get away from Sophie and Dale than to follow Robert.

So much had changed, thought Mark again. Yet it was true: so much was still the same. But there were so many questions left unanswered. Questions he was trying not to think about as they walked towards the castle.

Questions like what exactly had happened to Tanek's body during that final battle? Mark had seen him go down, seen him die. So why did the man who'd tortured him haunt his thoughts? Another phantom pain that refused to go away? Or something more?

It was then those words of De Falaise's came back to him and he gave a shiver that had nothing whatsoever to do with the cold.

'It is only just beginning, mon ami. It is only just beginning…'

CHAPTER THREE

It was cold, the snow was falling.

But then, wasn't it most of the time here? And he liked that; it reflected how he felt inside. He'd grown up in this environment, learned to block out the freezing temperatures. No, not block them out — welcome and embrace them. Let them influence who he was, who he would become. Let the cold touch his very heart.

To be fair, the temperature wasn't the only thing that had frozen that particular muscle. The death of his parents in one of the 'post war' Gulags — they were among the last to still be held after Khrushchev began his de- Stalinisation of the homeland — saw to that. Though officially their camp should not have even existed in the '60s, somehow it had slipped through the net — probably because it was in such a remote region, but also it paid to keep just a few of them operating. It contained some very dangerous prisoners, though in his mother and father's case it had just been an excuse to keep those with certain political or religious views out of circulation. He was too young to remember much of his infancy, just his mother's eyes, so full of love for him…

He found out later that the men who ran the camp treated prisoners like dogs. His father had been tortured regularly, his mother raped and beaten (the thought sometimes occurred to him that the man he thought of as his father might not actually have been that at all, but in the end did it really matter?).

When the camp's activities had finally come to light — or rather whoever had been sheltering and subsidising it finally decided to tie up a few loose ends — it was too late for his parents. He'd been shipped off to an orphanage in southern Siberia, to allow the weather to finish the job the Gulag had started.

In charge of that place was one Leonty Kabulov, a sour-faced man who believed in discipline to the nth degree. The slightest step out of line was met with severe punishment. Kabulov's role models were the Emperors of old, and he ran the place as one — delegating power to his underlings, including a brutish physical education teacher called Nikolin, who would run the children ragged on treks through the snow. But even Kabulov realised the necessity of letting his 'subjects' blow off steam every now and again. Which was why he often turned a blind eye if a fight broke out in the orphanage's playground. Many children had been badly injured that way, though the crowds that gathered round were thoroughly entertained.

He himself had been picked on by one lad called Yuri and this had ended in a fight. Yuri had pummelled him with his fists, breaking a couple of ribs and putting him in the infirmary, tended by a nurse who looked like something Dr Frankenstein had created in his spare time. He never complained; as bad as it was there, it was nothing compared to what his parents had endured.

When he was old enough, he was conscripted into the army. If he'd thought tolerating the orphanage was hard then training in the military taught him how easy he'd actually had it. They taught him how to kill, and it wasn't