He was amazingly strong for such a thin man; perhaps it was the strength of madness, for as we rolled on the ground he kept me pinned easily and he was trying to bite me, on the face and throat. I kept him away but with only the greatest difficulty. I could smell his breath, a strange faecal odour, and his yellow eyes blazed like candles in his snarling face. Fear was my friend — I locked my hands around his neck and, made more powerful by my terror, I held on for grim life, while he thrashed and kicked and scratched at my face and body. But he was too much for me, and he broke my grip and rolled on top of me, red mouth gaping, drooling and searching for the big veins in my neck. And I could only keep his sharp teeth from my life by pushing weakly on his sweat-slicked chest and shoulders. My grip was slipping and his face closing into my soft flesh. I screamed: ‘Goody, get the poniard!’ And with a heave that took all of my remaining might, I flipped him off my body and managed to pin one of his arms with my knee as he writhed on his back on the ground. I grabbed his free right arm with my left and for a second stared down at the hideous face of this beast-man. His eyes left mine and suddenly looked beyond me, above me to my right, and then I felt the rush of air past my face and two thin girlish arms, locked around the handle in a double grip, plunged the poniard hard down punching through his left eye and beyond into his tortured brain. The beast jerked once, twice, and then was still: the body limp, the arms spread wide in the shape of a crucifix. . the head nailed to the earth floor by a foot of cold Spanish steel.
I fell back panting with exertion. Goody rushed into my arms and I held her rocking slightly and gazing at the dead man — for truly in death he was no longer an animal. Just a man, dead. His wolf kilt had ridden up over his hips during the fight and I noticed that between his legs there was. . nothing. Just a dark ugly scar. It was then that I recognised him: it was Ralph, the rapist who had been beaten, mutilated and exiled from Thangbrand’s in my first few weeks there. Well,
I held Goody in my arms for a long while, staring at the dead man while she cried silently into my chest. Then I wrapped her up in a cloak, checked on Bernard — he was unconscious but breathing easily — revived the fire and then tended to myself. My right arm was swollen and sore but only bruised. I rubbed it with snow to reduce the swelling and the cold numbed the pain to some extent. Then I wrenched the poniard out of Ralph’s skull and cleaned it on his kilt before dragging the corpse out of the hollow tree across the clearing and into the treeline. I had no strength to dig a grave or even find stones to cover the body. So I just left it there, thirty yards from our camp, out of sight in the trees. As I walked back to the warmth of the fire I heard the first of the howls. A lonely sound, mournful in the silent forest — and I hurried my steps back to Goody and Bernard.
I dozed until dawn, with Goody clasped in my arms, and the wolves making their ghastly night music in the forest around us; and at first gleam, I scrubbed my face with snow and searched our wooden hideout in the dim morning light for anything that could help us. I found an old iron pot and set it by the fire filled with snow. But, apart from that, I found nothing but some scraps of cloth, mouldy and stinking and a few old bones that looked disturbingly human. I gathered the bones and took them to where I had left Ralph’s body at the edge of the clearing. But the body was gone. The place had been churned up by the feet of dozens of wolves and there was a little blood on the snow and a few scraps of fur but nothing else. It was Wolf Month in Sherwood and these starving animals would eat old boots if they were left outside a cottage at night.
Bernard was still unconscious, with a great knot on his temple from Ralph’s club. But, as far as I could tell, his skull was not cracked and I believed he would wake up in time. Goody was sleeping again and, given what she had been through in the past day and night — watching her parents’ deaths and then taking the life of a monster herself — I was happy for her to be unconscious, too. I realised that we were not going to go anywhere that day. I couldn’t carry Bernard and Goody and I reasoned that it would be better to stay warm in the tree shelter than to go wandering about the woods without knowing where we were or where we were going. So I set about gathering more firewood, breaking off dead branches and hauling them into our shelter. I grew hungry as I worked and once or twice I heard the wailing of wolves and hurried back with my armful of wood to the safety of the camp.
I built up a good fire and a stockpile of wood for the night and managed to get a few hours uneasy sleep. Hunger was gnawing at my belly — it had been a day and a night since we had eaten that meagre meal of pork scraps and dry bread under the holly tree. I even began to envy Bernard, who was still unconscious and therefore oblivious to hunger pains. He was pale but his heart was beating regularly. I covered him with his cloak and let him lie. Goody woke in the mid-afternoon, asked about food and accepted a drink of warmed water instead. I felt slightly in awe of her — ten years old and handling this situation like a grown woman, like a seasoned soldier, in fact. I still could not get used to the idea that she had coolly dispatched a madman with a single strike of my poniard. But then she was the daughter of a warrior and had grown up among outlaws. Violent death at Thangbrand’s was hardly an uncommon occurrence.
As the dusk settled around the clearing, the wolves began their mournful chant. First one and then a second joined the chorus. Then three and four. The pack was being summoned and, as if I were a wolf myself, the hair stood up on the back of my neck.
‘It’s really quite beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Bernard. ‘Almost in harmony but not quite. And so sad. .’
I was so pleased to have him back with us that I rushed over and embraced him. ‘Don’t smother me, boy,’ he said testily. ‘And stop that ridiculous snivelling.’ He was exaggerating, of course. There was merely a suspicion of dampness about my eyes. But I was very happy to have him back in the land of the living. He groaned and sat up feeling the knot on his head. ‘So what happened?’ he asked. ‘My head is killing me but I feel I haven’t had a drink for a lifetime.’ And so I told him, the words tumbling out: the wolf-like man, the club to his sleeping head, the fight and Goody’s life-saving poniard strike, and about the madman’s body being eaten by wolves.
Bernard nodded and then winced at the head movement. ‘You are a very brave girl,’ he said to Goody, who blushed. ‘So what is our plan?’ he asked me.
Together we considered our situation: night was falling but it was no longer snowing; we had no food, but we did have warmth and shelter; then there was the possibility of Murdac’s men still looking for us; and the possibility of other survivors needing our help. Should we stay put? Or push on south and hope to find some cottage where we could beg for help? And then there were the wolves. . Our discussions had been punctuated by a rising volume of howls, and they were close by. In the treeline at the edge of the clearing, from time to time, I caught a glimpse of eyes glinting in the darkness, catching the reflection of the firelight. Here and there a grey form moved in the trees.
Bernard stopped my talk with an upheld hand. ‘I think it’s clear that we must stay here tonight, if we all want to remain in one piece.’ He gestured at the dark wood where three separate sets of animal eyes could now be seen. He was right. The howling had stopped. The wolf pack was assembled on our doorstep, and we were going nowhere.
We built up the fire and for half a dozen hours of that long night nothing much happened. We dozed and drank hot water and watched the eyes come and go in the tree line. Then, long past midnight, a slinking shadow detached itself from the dark wood and a wolf trotted across the white clearing before disappearing into the forest on the other side. He was a big animal, but lean, and he eyed us malevolently as he crossed in front of our pathetic shelter. Then, in ones and twos, made bold by the first wolf’s crossing, other animals came out of the darkness and began to approach our camp. We piled more branches on the fire and, at first, the animals moved away from the roaring heat. But gradually, they came back. Eventually, one wolf sat on his haunches a mere dozen feet away. He yawned massively and I could clearly see his huge tongue and his teeth glinting in the light of a great full moon.
We stared at the hulking animal in silence. It yawned again, curling back black lips to reveal the big, razor sharp killing teeth. I pulled a branch from the fire, and waved it to fan the glowing end into flames. Then I hurled it straight at the wolf. It dodged easily and moved away a few paces — but then returned to exactly the same spot. And his brothers came out to join him, more than a score of lean grey beasts.
‘Don’t waste wood like that,’ said Bernard. ‘We are probably going to need it.’ I looked at the woodpile at one side of the tree shelter and I knew with a sinking heart that he was right. Though dawn could not be all that far away, we had barely enough wood even to keep a small fire burning for the rest of the night. I cursed myself for not collecting more. The wolves gathered in a loose ring around the edge of the firelight, looking like the fiends of Hell, all big teeth and eyes and savage hunger. After the haunting beauty of their howls earlier that evening, they were strangely silent. But they didn’t sit still — some peeled off to investigate behind our hollow tree, others changed position to observe us from the left or the right with their evil yellow eyes. Bernard and I had armed ourselves with clubs; Bernard had a stout tree branch and I had Ralph’s weapon. We stood on either side of the
