Munch did, but quickly and with surprising agility, and Kali felt a surge of panic. She had known this was never going to be easy, but it was only at this moment she realised how hard her survival was going to be. Caught off guard, she flung herself desperately to the left as Munch's knife pierced the air in the spot she had stood a half- second earlier. That she had avoided, but unexpectedly Munch also rammed his elbow into the side of her head as he moved. Stunned, her head ringing, Kali felt herself weaving away and supporting herself on one of the beams holding up the stables, without a clue as to where her assailant would come from next.
The knife slammed into the beam hard, sending a chunk of wood and splinters flying into the air, and Kali felt the whole structure vibrate. Had the wood not been in the way, she would have been missing half her skull. With a gasp, she stumbled back into the stable proper, Munch wrenching his blade from the timber and following.
'Where's the key, girl? Tell me before I slice you in two!'
'Go to hells, you bastard!'
A distraction, she thought. She needed a distraction. Then, on the stable floor, she spotted the patch of straw into which Horse had first bled and, swallowing at its warmth, plunged her hand into it, flinging it in Munch's direction. Under normal circumstances it might have bought her a second before it was batted away, but with Horse's blood causing the straw to stick to Munch's face, it bought her two. Kali used the time to reorientate herself and ran back towards the yard.
'Come here, girl,' Munch called from behind. No longer playing by his own rules, he signalled to two of his men to block her path. She spun to face two more, blocking the way she had come. And Munch came relentlessly on between them.
Kali spun where she stood, double-taking on any possible escape route, anywhere she could run to buy more time, but there was none. But then something clicked in her head. Whether it was her rage or the booze coursing inside her, she couldn't say, but she was seized suddenly by a rush of… well, she didn't know what it was, only what it made her do.
Surprising herself as she had at the Spiral, Kali ran straight for the nearest of Munch's men, and as he raised a sword to stop her she leapt upwards, using his sword arm as a platform to leap onto his shoulder, and from there onto the stable roof, the recoil from her heel sending the man staggering forwards onto his face. One of the men on the roof came at her and Kali spun, bringing her leg up and around, impacting with the side of his head and sending him flying from the roof, crashing into another of Munch's men on the ground. Another came and she ran straight at him, clutching his chest and flipping herself over and above him, maintaining her grip so that as a result he himself was flipped as she landed, slammed down, dazed. Working her way around the roof — kicking, throwing and punching any man who stood in her way, despatching them into the air until none were left above — she manoeuvred herself until Munch was directly below, staring up at her in some amazement amidst the chaos she'd caused. Kali panted and stared back, and she hoped her message was clear. Get ready, you little bastard. Because I'm coming.
She only wished she knew how, because she was making this up as she went along.
But so too now was Munch. Snarling, he flicked an arm at those men still standing, ordering them towards a stack of barrels that reached to the lip of the roof, and they began to clamber up towards her. Kali didn't give them a chance, booting the highest barrel down at them, scattering them aside. She booted another, and then another, and as they arced through the air, leapt out between them, landing and rolling in the midst of those who meant to do her harm. The first of the barrels had already crushed a man to the ground, and the second, come to a stop on its side, she booted again, rolling it into the legs of her nearest assailant, buckling the man over it, onto his back, where she leapt and knocked him cold. As another came at her, she dropped to her haunches, curled her fingers under the rim of the third, upright barrel and, with strength she hadn't known she possessed, spun it end over end, sending it smashing into his chest where he instinctively caught it, dropped it, and screamed. Kali didn't let it go to waste. Seeing another of the men coming straight at her from behind his broken-footed comrade, she ran forwards, heaved the barrel up and then kept going, using it as a battering ram to crush him up against the stable wall. The barrel shattered and, with a groan, the man slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Kali spun, panting and sweating, ready for the next.
But that was it — other than the men guarding Aldrededor and the others, she'd done it.
Now it was just her and Munch.
He stood there, his knife held in readiness by his side, smiling, waiting. Why the bastard hadn't attacked alongside his men, she didn't know. Maybe he wanted to use them to tire her out. Maybe he just wanted to see what she'd suddenly become capable of. It didn't matter, because all she could see, behind him, was a weeping Aldrededor and her now dead Horse.
Kali roared, and disregarding the caution she had felt when the fight had begun — knowing somehow that whatever move he made now she'd cope with — ran straight for Munch.
He raised his knife. But she didn't give him the chance to use it.
Kali used her speed to leap upwards, pirouetting in the air and sweeping her leg around to catch Munch with a sickening kick to his jaw that knocked him sideways. She landed, rolled and rose, spinning up from a crouch to bring her other leg around and deliver an equally numbing blow to his opposite side. Turn the other cheek, you bastard, she thought — they teach you that in church? Munch spat and grunted, as much with surprise as with pain, and, double-whammied, staggered about like the drunks he had slaughtered. Kali gave him no time to get his bearings, racing in at him and grabbing his knife hand by the wrist, at the same time bringing up her knee so that it impacted with his underarm, numbing his nerves and forcing him to release his grip. The gutting knife clattered to the ground and Munch stared at her, mumbling something incoherent. Kali didn't care what it was, using her leverage on his arm to twist him towards her and then ramming her elbow, hard and again and again and again, into his face. Munch grunted with each blow, blood spouting from his nose, and weaved backwards, totally stunned. As he did, Kali booted him first in the crotch and then the chest, and finally under his chin, sending him crashing backwards to the ground. She bent over him, panting, hot with rage, and pulled back her fist.
She was about to deliver the first of what she intended to be a volley of blows when it happened again. A vision. Only one much more painful than before. She suddenly couldn't punch anything, and all she could do was slam her hands to the sides of her head.
The last thing she saw of her home and her friends was Munch rising, snarling, and reaching for his knife.
And then agonising pain plunged her into blackness again.
Chapter Six
Boots, again. Thudding this time not into her side but hard onto the ground. Many, many boots, thudding down one after the other, in militaristic rhythm.
The sound of marching.
But Kali saw nothing, saw no one. Only a sea the colour of blood. No, not just the colour of blood, for blood it seemed to be. Viscous and slow, it spread languidly across a flat and desolate landscape beneath a sky the colour of fog. A sea of blood that flowed ever outwards, seemingly without shore, until it covered all there was to see.
There was screaming, too. A distant and tortured screaming of many mouths that, though it seemed far away, was nevertheless all around her. But again, she saw no one — in the midst of the blood and the screaming, she stood all alone.
Kali stared down at the sea and wondered — was this the hells? Had she, despite everything she believed, been taken by Kerberos? Was she there? Would she see Horse?
There was movement on the horizon and she looked slowly up. Something was coming towards her. No, not something — many things whose bootfalls were in time with the marching she heard. Huge, looming figures that were somehow familiar in shape and somehow not, a dozen at first, and then a dozen behind, and then a dozen more still, marching towards her, advancing in rank after rank after rank.
Marching through the blood.
The ground trembled, and the blood flowed away in sluggish banks, revealing layer upon layer of bones — human bones — whose flesh had rotted where they lay. And the skulls and ribcages and femurs were crushed
