Josh stood beside her. The drumming sounded louder, and sharper. The dogs began to bark more enthusiastically, because they had obviously picked up the scent.
“Come on,” he urged Petty. “They’ll kill us if they catch us.”
He pulled her behind him with her bare feet reluctantly slapping on the ground. Up ahead of them, the street was filled with billowing black smoke from a burning office building. “Come on, we can use the smoke to get away from them.”
As they neared the smoke, however, Josh heard more drums, right in front of them. He stopped, and turned around. The drums were still following them. He turned back, to see four men approaching through the smoke. A drummer, with his side-drum, beating out an endless and terrifying rattle. Two dog-handlers, with bull terriers wheezing at their leads. And a tall man wearing an angular black hat, his face covered by a hessian mask. As he walked toward them, he swung his shining sword from side to side, as if he were cutting off wheat stalks.
“Is that a Hooded Man?” asked Petty, gripping Josh’s arm.
Josh nodded. Behind them, the drums came closer and closer, and he could hear the dogs yapping in a frenzy of excitement.
“Who are they? What are they going to do to us?”
“I don’t know. It’s me they want. They must have followed me here.”
There was no point in trying to run. Josh knew that the dogs would catch them before they had covered less than fifty feet. All they could do was stand and wait as the Hooded Man walked up them; two more Hooded Men appeared from behind.
“Well, Mr Winward,” said the first Hooded Man, in a harsh, muffled voice. “We have you.”
“What the hell are you after me for?”
“Isn’t murder enough?”
“I never murdered anybody. What those guys did when they rescued me, that was nothing to do with me.”
“Come now, Mr Winward. The murder was committed in effecting your release from custody. That makes you a co-conspirator.”
“I told you that I wasn’t interested in making trouble. If you’d let me go—”
The Hooded Man lifted his sword and prodded Josh in the chest with it, again and again. He didn’t prod hard enough to penetrate his shirt, but Josh could feel the point against his ribs.
“You are a liar and a subversive and a murderer, sir. You are one of the rats that run in the sewers beneath our society, spreading the plagues of dissent and faithlessness. Believe me, you will suffer for what you have done.”
Another of the Hooded Men came up to Petty, and took hold of the sleeve of her dress. “And who is this whore?”
“Don’t touch the girl. Let go of her. She has nothing to do with this.”
“I can find that out for myself, thank you. Both of you are coming with us.”
“Well, sorry about that. I’ve only been here since one o’clock this morning. I can’t go back to your London. Not for seven hours yet.”
“We’re not taking you back there,” said the Hooded Man. “We have a house here, just as we have houses in every reality that we can visit. Now, let’s be moving on, shall we?”
The Hooded Man prodded Josh again, in the shoulder this time. Then he prodded him yet again, and again, and this time the point actually broke the skin. Josh stepped back, covering his shoulder with his hand. The Hooded Man stabbed him in the forearm.
“I said, let’s be moving on, didn’t I? So let’s be moving on.”
He stabbed Josh twice more, but this time Josh held his ground. He had never been physically brave, even when he was training in the Marine Corps. Suddenly, however, he felt an extraordinary rush of power – a power that was totally overwhelming, like nothing he had ever felt before, ever. It was partly anger, and frustration, and a sense of injustice. But it was much more than that. It was a complete absence of fear. He wasn’t afraid of the Hooded Men. He wasn’t afraid of their swords, or their dogs, or anything.
Without hesitation, he ducked forward and seized the Hooded Man’s wrist. He twisted his arm around and pulled the sword right out of his hand. Then he elbow-punched him very hard in the chest. Beneath the black tunic he could feel a deep, bony ribcage, and he was sure that he felt something crack.
The Hooded Man dropped to his knees in front of him. The two other Hooded Men drew their swords and one of them shouted, “Dogs! Let the dogs have him!”
But Josh lifted the Hooded Man’s sword and shouted back, “Stop! You let those dogs go and I’ll take his head off! I swear to God!”
To his own amazement, he realized that he meant it. And the Hooded Men must have realized it, too, because they stayed where they were, and one of them lifted a cautioning hand to the dog-handlers.
Josh gripped the Hooded Man’s white Puritan collar and pulled him on to his feet. The Hooded Man felt bulky and disjointed, as if he had all of the components of a human body, all the bones and liver and intestines, but all thrown together willy-nilly. He had a smell to him, too – a sweet distinctive smell that reminded Josh of rotting apricots. He pressed the sword-point into the Hooded Man’s back and said, “Now it’s your turn to be moving on, pal. And I warn you I’ll kill you if you give me any problems.”
He stepped backward, away from the Hooded Men and their dog-handlers and their drummer. Petty hesitated, but Josh said, “Come on, Petty. Let’s get out of here.”
Petty followed him, and together they began to retreat along the street toward the smoke that still poured out of the burning offices. The Hooded Men remained where they were, but the drummer started up a single, threatening beat, like the beat that used to accompany condemned men to the scaffold.
“You can never escape us,” said the Hooded Man. “We can follow you to the ends of the earth. We can follow you to the ends of every earth.”
“Just shut up,” Josh told him, and pulled at his collar even harder.
They walked into the whirling smoke, and the other Hooded Men were gradually blotted out of sight, although they could still hear the persistent drumbeat. The smoke was hot and filled with flying sparks. It smelled strongly of burning varnish and their eyes filled up with tears.
Petty started to cough, and even the Hooded Man began to wheeze for breath.
“As soon as we’re clear, I want you to run,” Josh told Petty.
She coughed and nodded and waved her hand.
“You will suffer for this,” the Hooded Man grated. “You will beg to be put out of your misery, I swear it.”
Josh ignored him. He dragged him as far as the end of the office block, where the smoke began to thin out, and then he released the grip on his collar, pushing him away.
The Hooded Man took two or three steps back, apparently staggering, and for a moment Josh thought that he was going to fall over. But then, without warning, he pulled a long dagger out of his tunic and lunged at Josh from the right-hand side, trying to catch him underneath his sword. He was so quick that it was almost unnatural, like a special effect in a movie.
His dagger sliced at Josh’s side, but Josh dipped to the left and swung the sword over his head. The Hooded Man tilted back, and feinted, and tried to stab Josh’s wrist. There was a clash of steel on steel – one cutting edge against another. The Hooded Man spun around and kicked at Josh with his buckled shoe. Josh swung at him, again and again, and the sword-blade whistled through the smoke.
The Hooded Man dodged to the right, and then to the left, and then he suddenly rolled over on the ground and stabbed at Josh’s knees. Josh jumped back and whirled his sword in a great circular sweep. He was only trying to protect himself, but at that instant the Hooded Man tried to stand up. The sword hit him in the side of the neck – knock! – cutting right through his hessian hood and almost taking his head off.