watched his face as the fox licked the grey film from his eyes. I saw his mouth twitch under her tongue. I saw his eyes flicker and open.
He sat up. 'What's the matter, Father?' he asked. Because I was weeping. He never saw me weep before.
I came to my son and I held him, carefully at first, because he'd been to a place you should never return from. Our embrace was awkward, ugly, and I realised as I did it how rarely I'd held him over the years he'd been with me, which made me sad for him. I remember thinking how he'd had no mother, no childhood, just blood all his life. That was no way for a boy to grow up.
By the time I made sure he was warm and truly living, the vixen had gone. I never saw it again, but I think I know well enough who it was. Styr remembered nothing of the night before, only the raid, and the moment as he put the skin over his head. I asked him where he had been while he was dead, but he had no knowledge of it. It was late in the day by this time, and getting cold. The wood I'd gathered for his funeral pyre was heaped behind us, and we fired it now to keep warm. I was wounded from the fight the night before; I'd begun to shake and tremble. But Styr was unharmed. He looked at me, his face lit by the flames, with a rare smile on his face and said,
'Do you know what the worst thing about it all is?'
'What?'
'That you beat me in a straight fight.'
Styr carried on building up the fire, with the idea of burning the two wolfskins. I sat and watched him as if he'd disappear at any second; I was more scared of him than ever after that. He worked like a machine until the blaze was roaring, and then we chucked on the skins and stood back to watch them go up. I was thinking, at least I'd rid the world of those horrible things. But you know what? The skin of the dead wolf, Styr's skin, that one burned well enough. But mine was untouched; the fire couldn't damage it any more than the bullets and shells of the night before. It just lay there on the fiery embers, quite a sight, glowing red with heat but without a single hair singeing.
We argued a while about what to do with it. Styr thought we'd better take it with us, but I wouldn't trust him with that thing. In the end, we buried it. We dug down about eight feet in the thick clay and dumped the skin at the bottom of the hole, and then filled it in afterwards with stones and sticks and twisted bits of metal to make it difficult to dig up. Finally, we scatted masonry on top to conceal the place. Looking back I suppose we should have taken it with us to make sure it was disposed of properly. Someone would know how to destroy it. But I was sick with it and wouldn't have it near me.
That's the story of what happened that day. It left us both changed. I had less heart for the fight Styr, I would say, went the other way, as if the taste of so much blood had made him greedier for it.
And the fox? Even Cherry couldn't tell me who that was. Perhaps Odin sent it. But I believe it was Loki, who in a funny kind of way is related to my son.
As for the Wallace brothers, you can imagine I was pretty surprised when I heard they were back in operation a few months after we'd killed them. Or at least one of them was. James had disappeared, but Percy was still active, apparently. Cherry told us he'd accepted an offer from Conor to organise some disposal in East Ham when there was finally an uprising some months later on. I couldn't believe it at first I'd seen them both bleeding on the end of Styr's dagger. But Cherry told me the only way to kill that sort was while they were wolves. Sticking any number of daggers in them had obviously done no good; so we'd missed our chance after all.
After I heard about it I went back to no-one's land, alone, to check it out. I found a great mound of stones and earth, and a huge pit dug in the ground where we'd buried the remaining skin. I searched the area but found nothing more, only the remains of a human body, just bones now, scattered widely over the site.
My guess is that the brothers came looking for their skins, maybe their souls sniffed them out. When they found only one there was a fight, and if the rumours are true it was Percy who won. He took the skin and left the body of his brother to the halfmen, who came and ate his flesh and gnawed his bones, which we found scattered about months later.
24
One again, it is the night of no moon. A year has passed since Siggy and Styr fought to the death, and since then Siggy has helped the resistance many times with money or with assassination, but still he refuses to join them. The arguments between the halfmen leaders and the rabble of human fighters goes on. Proud humans, unwilling to take their orders from a dog, even though they have no decent leaders of their own. And the only man who could do the job prefers to play Robin Hood rather than take up the mantle his family left him.
It drives everyone crazy – Signy, Dag, Styr, the whole resistance movement. This is what he was born for. Signy continues her flow of information in dribs and drabs, promises more, far more, when Siggy joins. But Siggy will not and nations suffer for his stubbornness. Styr begs, Melanie pleads, Dag sends emissary after emissary, offers to come in person. But Siggy is unmoved. All he wants is to be let alone to live his life. As if his life is his own! As if he is not right at the heart of this story.
Melanie pig, grumping and groinking her way past market stalls and in and out of side streets. It's dusk. No longer possible to oink and grunt your way around out here in daylight. Muswell Hill has more than its share of halfmen, but with pogroms running at about one a week, no one's safe. Melanie knows how to snuffle around out of sight. She's had plenty of practice in no-one's land. These days she has to keep her do-gooding for the hours of darkness.
Do-gooding! Fat, porking old do-gooder she is and always was, as Siggy found to his advantage. Now she wants to spread her good deeds to the whole of London and beyond.
Get-rid-of-Conor. That's what it all boils down to. Get rid of Conor and down comes the Wall. Get rid of Conor and there's an end to pogroms. Get rid of Conor and there's a chance for people to live a decent life. One bad man more or less doesn't alter the great sum of human happiness or misery too far, unless he happens to be Conor. What tyranny was ever more total than that suffered by Londoners under him? Sometimes it seems to her that the only thing that keeps the tyrant in power is the illusion of humans that it's only the halfmen he wants to crush.
'Your turn next,' mutters the fat old thing, as she spies a hoarding above a bakery shop in Closewell Street: 'Full blood humans only.'
Your turn next. Certainly. Already, in fact. The baker has to give up half his earnings to the war effort, and keeps his youngest son, who has a face like a pig anyway, in during the hours of daylight. The lad had already been beaten half to death on his last day at school, where he grunted in an unfortunate manner during lunch hour. But the baker blamed the halfmen, not Conor. You could kick the halfmen. You could keep them out of your shop. What could anyone do about Conor, except obey?
Melanie's feeling cross now, and somewhat out of breath. Out of breath because these days she really is fat. Courtesy of her Siggy. Do-gooding doesn't mean to say you don't have to eat well. Always on the lookout for extras, just as she always was, only these days the extras aren't just scraps and crusts, a couple of chops, a rusty oil drum to make a spare bedroom out of. Extras these days are juicy joints of roasted meats, basketfuls of cake, fish, fresh veg, butter. Interesting stuff, food. Fascinating, in fact. But even more interesting to Melanie are other extras. Hatfuls of jewellery, bullion, gold, silver. Dag Aggerman has no better worker on his behalf within the whole of London. On her back now a rucksack full of glittering necklaces, bracelets and rings, to be handed over under a badly-lit awning behind a pie shop in Cresswell Street.
One of Siggy's hauls.
'What does it cost to keep you in groceries, Melanie?' he asked, when he dumped the jewels on the sofa a few days past.
'It's not me as needs grub, you knows that,' she grunted, fawning over the pretty things. She put one around her neck and cavorted about, while Siggy grinned.
'Keep one – evening wear. You look gorgeous,' he told her and kissed her ear till she squealed. Well, what use does a pig have for jewels? Truth to tell, Melanie would have liked to keep one, but Dag needed the money more. Food for soldiers, food for guns. Conor's success was slowed, but not stalled, let alone reversed, for all Signy's information. Only let Siggy join the fight and the information would be endless. Last of the Volsons! Signy would not defeat Conor for the sake of the people. Her father's dreams meant nothing to her now. Unless it was a Volson doing the glad work, the glad work meant nothing to her. For its own sake, justice was meaningless.
