فصل پنجاه و دوم

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Death from Above

The bus picked up speed. On its roof, the Gunner got painfully to his knees and bent over the hole in his side.

“Just a hole. None of the important stuff. People live with worse.” He pulled a field dressing from his webbing and loosened his jacket. He pressed the dressing to his side and grimaced as he quickly wound the tapes around his midriff and tied them off.

“Sound as a pound,” he grunted. Nevertheless, he slumped back and sat with his legs wide.

“Get me breath back.”

His breath was coming hard. He leaned his head back and looked at the sky and the clouds and the rain dropping into his upturned face.

An angry roar snapped him back into the now.

The Minotaur was hauling itself back onto the roof at the rear of the bus.

The Gunner looked around. He couldn’t see anything he could use as a weapon. The bus was accelerating toward an intersection. The traffic light hanging over it had just changed to green. The Minotaur got to its feet.

The Gunner dragged himself upright and braced himself to meet it.

“Come on then, Oxo. Do your worst.”

He knew that the longer the bull kept its mind on him, the longer the kid and the glint had to make themselves scarce. He flicked a look behind him at the approaching intersection.

“I don’t approve of hurting dumb animals, but in your case I’ll make an exception.” The Bull roared and charged. The Gunner braced, and as the Bull was about to hit him, he squatted low—and as the Bull made contact, the Gunner used all the remaining strength in his body to thrust upward. He put everything into it, and felt the just-tied straps on his dressing break as he flexed.

If it hadn’t been for the scything horns and the Minotaur’s shriek of rage, it would almost have looked funny, like two ungainly ballet dancers, one throwing the other into the air in a clumsy lift.

The Bull’s impetus met the Gunner’s upthrust. Its hooves left the roof and its legs bicycled in midair, and then there was a thunk, and the Gunner dropped back on the roof of the bus and the Minotaur stayed where it was, suspended over the intersection, its horns jammed over from Above the steel arm holding the traffic lights above the unseeing traffic.

It roared in rage as the Gunner pulled away on the top of the bus. Its roar was loud enough to turn the rainwater that was beading on the bus roof into a spray that hit the Gunner in the face. He blinked and waved at the Bull.

“Cheerio, cock. Always say beef should be well hung, don’t they?” He couldn’t bring himself to grin at his joke. He watched the struggling Minotaur until the bus turned a corner and he couldn’t see it anymore. Then he bent over his burst wound dressing and concentrated on reattaching it.

At least the kids were safe now, he thought. And that thought did give him an reason to grin as he hunched over the growing pain in his side.

George and Edie sprinted down the street in the wake of the bus. The revolver bumped heavily in George’s pocket as he ran. Luckily, it was a one-way system, so there was no chance of losing the bus if they moved fast. A tall lorry kept pace with them, blocking out the sky.

They rounded a curve to find there was a lot of traffic, but no bus to be seen. The lorry pulled away from them.

“Where did they go?” panted Edie.

“Dunno,” answered George. “He’ll probably be okay, don’t you think?” “I hope so.”

She rummaged in her pocket for the sea-glass.

“We’re okay, aren’t we?” he said.

The glass was blazing.

“No,” she said.

They turned around, scanning the street. They could see nothing.

“What is it?” said George, his hand closing around the suddenly comforting shape of the revolver handle in his pocket.

“Where is it?” said Edie, puzzled.

There was a noise. A small one. A creak, from above them. As one they stopped panning the streetscape and looked up, straight over their heads.

Something dark and horned wrenched itself free from the traffic lights over their heads and dropped like an anvil.

They had time to jerk out of the way of its hooves as it crashed to the ground, but not enough time to escape the grabbing hands that caught them—Edie by the upper arm, George by the throat.

They had no time to cover their ears and escape the blast of victory that roared from between the Bull’s teeth as he lifted them in the air and bellowed triumph at the storm clouds above.

George could see Edie struggling and kicking and trying to shout something at him, but he couldn’t hear a word. And before he could think what to do next, the Minotaur had jerked him down to its muzzle and was sniffing at him, and then tasting his face with a tongue like a thick slug.

George gagged, and then he was lofted in the air, and he saw Edie being sniffed at in turn. And as the tongue lolled out and swirled over her hair and head, he saw the plea in her eyes and the way she flinched; and he saw too how the flinching pleased the Minotaur, and saw its strange mouth twist into an openmouthed panting smile; and it was much more than George could take.

It wasn’t the beast’s leer, so much as the look and the flinching shudder in Edie’s eye that spiked the protective anger that made his hand pull out of the jacket with the revolver in it.

He held steady and tried to keep still as he pointed it at the Minotaur.

And as he did, Edie managed one tight little word of reminder. Eye.

And he adjusted his aim and found the hot eyeball rolling up to meet his over the gun sight, and the Bull began to roar, and the black prickly feeling flushed up into him. And not for a moment did he think the bullet he’d made wouldn’t work; only that he might spoil this by missing. And so as the heavy gun shook in his hand, he thought of nothing but controlling the shake; and everything was suddenly still, and the tiny eye he was targeting suddenly seemed big as a barn door and: Blam!

George felt the gun buck in his hand. The roaring was cut off like a knife. The Bull’s hands spasmed open, and George and Edie dropped to the ground.

The Bull’s head rocked back, then forward, then back again, shaking faster and faster, its mouth straining to make a noise as it juddered horribly like it was trying to shake the bullet—George’s bullet—out of its head. Then it stood up, looked at George with an eye leaking something like molten bronze, snarled, and began to lunge at him—then dropped like a stone.

For a long beat, all George could hear was his own breathing and heart pounding.

“Bull’s-eye,” said the Gunner.

George pulled Edie to her feet, and they watched the soldier limp toward them behind a battered but defiant smile.

At their feet the Minotaur’s carcass began to collapse into a fizzing heap of bronze filings that the wind caught and began to disperse.

“Bloody brilliant. Now tell me you ain’t got a maker’s hands. And just in the nick of time, eh?” The Gunner was hurt, George and Edie could see from the way he walked, hunched to one side, one hand holding the dressing tight around him.

“At least he can walk. Probably means it’s going to be okay, don’t you think?” said Edie quietly.

George checked his watch. It was 3:13. He reached for the pocket in his coat, the coat Edie was still wearing. He found the dragons head.

“Look. I’ve got to get to the Stone in less than half an hour,” he said. “I better go. Then I’ll come back, and we can figure out a way to help you back to your plinth before midnight.” She took off the coat and passed it to him.

“We go together,” said the Gunner. “We’ve come this far together, we end this together.” “But you’re hurt.”

“I know. My luck turned—”

“Because you broke your—”

“Enough talking. We need to move. And you need me, son, because the Walker’s gonna be guarding the Stone, and I ain’t done all this to have you walk into his hands at the last minute, right?” He led off, straightening with every step, visibly pushing the pain out of his consciousness as he went.