‘Here be the place,’ the reddleman said.
‘Temple Clearing,’ Saul said, popping out of his badger-run. ‘Where Venic turned and Red Shuck killed Sir Pagan. They found that Lazy-Eyed Jack fellow here with his gizzard gone.’
Venn walked slowly, stirring the mist with his stick.
‘Mattie were here,’ he said, ‘lying on this.’
He knelt and waved mist away from a long, flat stone — the size of a table or a tomb. Hewn from rock, smoothed by time. Someone had taken the trouble to haul it here from a quarry.
‘Scary Face Stone,’ Saul said.
I looked at it several ways, but couldn’t see it. Cracks in rock or knots in wood can pull a face, but this was featureless.
‘The name is a corruption,’ Saul went on. ‘Originally, it was Sacrifice Stone. Old even in Sir Pagan’s time. Our Palaeolithic ancestors used it. It’s been washed over and over in blood.’
There were traces of blood on it now.
‘You say the woman was lying here?’ I addressed Venn. ‘How? Arms and legs out, as if thrown away? Or tucked straight, as if on display?’
Venn thought about it, red brows knitting. ‘The second way.’
‘Her hands? Show me how her hands were. By her sides, or…?’
I made defensive claws, as if shielding my throat. Venn crossed his wrists, palms flat against his breast.
‘Never known an animal arrange kill for a funeral,’ I said.
Venn nodded. ‘Only one do have such a habit. That be a human man. But a human man don’t bite out a woman’s throat.’
That showed how limited the reddleman’s experience of the world was. As Moriarty and I learned during the Affair of the Hassocks Hobgoblin, some specimens of ‘human man’ have exactly that predilection. In this case, I’d seen Mattie’s wound and concurred that no man had done that damage.
‘Only a beast could have killed Mattie, but only a man would have laid her out,’ said Saul. ‘In the story of Red Shuck, Venic was sometimes man and sometimes beast.’
Nakszynski spat tobacco at Scary Face Stone, unimpressed.
I was conscious of my silver-loaded revolver. As if on cue, the howling started.
The others had heard this before, but all bristled. Even Nakszynski’s white hair rose under his patched hat.
I don’t know what men mean by fear. My nerves aren’t plumbed in that way. But that howling — softer, more expressive than I’d imagined from reports — pricked an instinct I’d thought dead. It was as if a sail-maker’s needle slid into the nape of my neck then drew down, scraping every bone-knob in turn. My wet skin crawled in disgust at myself, the others, the noise…
We looked around, but it was impossible to tell where the howling came from. I fancied it might be high up, in the trees — but dogs, no matter how big, don’t climb. Red Shuck wasn’t a cat — they scratch as well as bite and Mattie had no claw marks on her. Besides, I know cats. You can live with cats if you’re wary, but you can’t use them the way you can dogs. Red Shuck was being used.
Nakszynski, guns in his hands, wheeled about, scanning for movement. Venn stood slowly, in a fighter’s stance — a double-grip on his stave. The howl died down. There was a noise of birds taking flight. The Albino aimed upwards, but didn’t waste a shot.
Saul, not at all concerned, whistled shrilly.
It was a wonder Nakszynski didn’t shoot him there and then. I knew at once what he was doing.
In answer to his trilling came another howl. Longer, and closer.
With the mist and the trees and the wet, even the best tracker wouldn’t be able to run down Red Shuck in his own woods. But bringing the beast to us was easy. All we had to do was sound a dinner gong.
Saul whistled again.
XII
In the Carpathians, they say this about werewolves: there’s always a tree between you and it, but never a tree between it and you.
I tugged off my right glove with my teeth and stuffed it in a pocket. I like a naked finger on the trigger, no matter the cold. I unslung my rifle and took a firing position, stock to shoulder. Beyond the gunsight, I saw only trees. Thick black pillars in white mist.
There was movement in the mist.
We could still hear howling, but Temple Clearing was confusion to the senses. The noise didn’t seem to come from the moving shape.
I kept my gun up. Eddies and waves in the mist told me something big was coming, careening between trees, picking up speed. We heard crashes, saw lower branches shake. The thing was running blind.
Beats, like a galloping horse. It was coming fast and low, without regard for itself or us.
Another howl sounded, shrill and close and mocking, off to one side. Not from the onrushing creature.
I looked to the howling, bringing my aim round.
We were in The Chase with more than one beast.
I swung back to the more imminent threat, just as some big, black — not red! — and shaggy quadruped burst into the clearing, barrelling like a bull, snorting like a hog, foaming like a mad dog. I fired true and placed a shot in its skull. Momentum kept the thing coming. What was it? Venn whacked with his stave, which was snatched from his hands. I cleared my breech and reloaded. The Albino’s guns went off, blasting fist-sized red gobbets out of a woolly hide.
The howling kept up. I didn’t fire again. This might be a tactic to get us to waste our shots.
‘It’s Old Pharaoh,’ shouted Saul.
It must be dead or dying, but still it tore around, head down, butting at us. Venn, off his feet, slammed into me. I fell backwards into damp mist and put out my hand — which jammed painfully against cold rock. I fell onto Scary Face Stone. My rifle hit me in the face.
‘Git Priddle’s prize black ram,’ Saul explained.
I recalled the beast, which Priddle claimed was taken by Red Shuck. Stoke suspected Old Pharaoh was hidden from his tally-man, so the farmer could duck out of paying tax due.
Through agitated mist, I saw the ram was as big as some lions I’ve shot, humped like a buffalo, with curls of battered, hardened horn. Blood leaked from the hole I’d put in its bulbous forehead. Life was gone from saucer-sized eyes, but it took long moments for the message to reach the body.
Then, Old Pharaoh fell, dead.
Outside Temple Clearing, the howling abated.
I groped in the mist for my gun. Saul waded towards me — to help? His boot came down on my bare hand, crushing it against Scary Face Rock. Two or three fingers broke. Pain rushed up my arm.
I swore.
Saul tried to apologise. I kept swearing, at the pulsating hurt as much as the blundering idiot. Saul took me by the shoulders and helped me get my balance. I found the rifle on the ground, but agony hit again as I made a fist to pick it up.
I raised the gun in a rough aim, but could no more fit my snapped trigger-finger into the guard than you could thread a needle with a sausage. I threw the rifle down. My revolver was slung for a cross-draw. I had to reach into my coat and fish the gun out of my armpit with the wrong hand.
I laid against a bleeding wall of mutton, as if the dead ram were a pile of sandbags. Venn was beside me.
‘Sheep be driven,’ he said. ‘By a dog.’
I’d worked that out by now.
Even though we’d all suspected human agency behind Red Shuck, no one at Trantridge — including yours truly — had thought it through. With my hand swollen and useless and the smell of just-dead sheep in my nose, I had a moment to wonder whether Moriarty had seen the truth and not troubled to mention it. It was the manner of smug trick he was given to, a refined version of his testing via sudden missile or sharp question.