At the same time, all around it, twenty or thirty smaller tents and marquees were mushrooming up; and off to the right, a large gang of circus hands were bolting together a long row of animal cages. They assembled the cages in only a few minutes, and then at least a dozen trucks were noisily backed up to them. The trucks’ rear doors were thrown open, and ramps dropped down with a fusillade of banging and clattering. After a few moments, trainers dressed in flamboyant coats and tall hats and wigs appeared, leading out tigers and bears and elephants and zebras.
Once the animals were all safely locked up, the trucks were driven away to the far side of the carnival site. Meanwhile the trailers and horse-drawn caravans were being marshaled into a rough semicircle. It all happened so quickly that it was like watching a speeded-up movie. Electricians climbed up ladders to suspend strings of red lights between the cages and the caravans and the tents, and in front of the big top an archway was hauled up into position. A generator blurted, and all the lights flickered on, while the illuminated lettering over the archway spelled out Albrecht’s Traveling Circus & Freak Show.
After a few more seconds, the Night Warriors heard music on the wind, occasionally interrupted by thunder. In The Good Old Summertime, played on a barrel organ.
‘My God,’ said Dom Magator. ‘If this doesn’t make me feel like a kid again.’
They had reached a low ridge about a hundred yards away from the perimeter of the carnival site. Dom Magator sent Zebenjo’Yyx off to the right, so that he could cover Xyrena if and when she entered the big top. He sent An-Gryferai off to the left, close to the settlement of houses and barns, so that if she needed to take off and fly, the birch trees behind her would make it harder for anybody on the ground to see her.
He gave Xyrena a quick embrace, his heavyweight armor clanking against her gold-plated breastplate. Then he shook Jekkalon and Jemexxa by the hand, and said, ‘Break a leg, OK?’ All of a sudden he felt like Uncle Buck, not only because he was so well built, but because he really cared for these two young twins. They were good-looking, they were hugely successful, and they had nightly faced audiences of thousands. But this was their first time in Night Warrior combat. Dom Magator was confident that they had inherited all of the tactical skills they needed, but they had no experience yet of how harrowing it could be, fighting in nightmares; how bizarre, or how bloody.
Xyrena and the twins started to walk toward the carnival tents. As they did so, from inside the big top, the Night Warriors heard a muffled drum roll, and then a man bellowing through a megaphone. They couldn’t make out what the man was saying, but his announcement was immediately followed by a discordant blast of trumpets and a smattering of applause.
‘Sounds like show time,’ said Zebenjo’Yyx.
‘Xyrena, Jekkalon, Jemexxa…’ said Dom Magator. ‘You take it real easy, you hear me? And keep us up to the minute, OK? You need us, you just yell, and we’ll be right there before you can say “catfish po’boy with everything on it”.’
Xyrena circled around the back of the caravans and trailers, with Jekkalon and Jemexxa staying close behind her. Just as before, when Kieran and Kiera had explored the carnival site on top of the hill, all of the trailers had black blinds drawn tightly down at the windows, although they could hear voices and music and occasional bursts of shouting from inside some of the trailers, and there was a pungent smell of tobacco smoke on the wind.
From the direction of the big top, they heard another drum roll, longer this time, followed by another fanfare of trumpets, and another round of applause.
‘I think we should go see what’s going on,’ said Xyrena. ‘If it’s some kind of show, then the chances are that the Big Cheese is going to be there.’
‘Can’t we find our mom first?’ asked Jekkalon.
‘Come on, Jakki, you know what our priority is,’ Xyrena told him. ‘We have to pull the rug out from under this freak show as soon as we possibly can.’
‘You will help us find her, though?’
‘Like I said to my first husband, I promise I’ll try to keep my promise, but I can’t promise.’
They walked along the line of animal cages. The stench of tiger’s urine and elephant’s dung was overwhelming, and made Xyrena’s eyes water. The tiger snarled at them listlessly, but its eyes were dull and its fur was patchy and even if it managed to escape from its cage, Xyrena doubted if it had the strength even to run after them, let alone eat them. The bear was in much the same condition, sitting in one corner of its cage, endlessly rocking backward and forward like a mental patient in a rundown asylum.
In the last cage a Great Dane bitch was lying on her side on a heap of dirty straw, apparently asleep. Her pale honey-colored coat was caked with black mud and she was so undernourished that her ribcage was showing.
Jemexxa went up to the bars of the cage and said, ‘Such a beautiful dog. We used to have one when we were little — Princess, we called her. We used to be able to ride on her back, like a pony. Look at her — how could they treat her so bad?’
‘Come on,’ Xyrena urged her, ‘we have to get going.’
But just then the Great Dane stirred on her straw, and lifted herself up on her front paws, and turned her head around. Jemexxa clamped both hands over her mouth and took two staggering steps backward. Jekkalon said, ‘Holy shit! I don’t believe it.’
Even Xyrena found it impossible to believe what she was looking at. The Great Dane had the head of a human woman. She was very pallid, with a heart-shaped face and raggedy brown hair and pale green eyes, although the whites of her eyes were bloodshot. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt and there were clusters of dark red sores around her lips.
She stared at Xyrena and Jekkalon and Jemexxa, occasionally blinking. Then she stood up on all fours and came trotting over to the bars of the cage.
‘Who are you?’ she said, in a reedy voice, as if she were being half strangled. Xyrena could see now that there were crude stitch-marks all the way around her neck, where her head had been sutured to the Great Dane’s body. ‘Do you live in the village? I’ve never seen you before.’
‘No,’ said Xyrena. ‘We don’t live in the village. We’re just kind of passing through.’
‘You don’t belong to the circus?’
Xyrena shook her head. She found the dog-woman both horrifying and fascinating, both at the same time, but more than that she felt desperately sorry for her.
‘You’re naked but you’re not naked,’ the woman frowned.
‘Well, that’s my armor,’ Xyrena explained. ‘I’m a kind of a freelance warrior. Like a mercenary only I don’t get paid for it.’
‘A warrior?’ the dog-woman asked her.
‘Like I say, kind of.’
The dog-woman thought for a moment, and then she said, ‘Would you kill me?’
‘Excuse me? Would I kill you? Of course not.’
‘If I begged you to kill me, would you kill me?’
Xyrena didn’t know what to say. She opened her mouth and then she closed it again.
‘Look at me!’ the dog-woman insisted. ‘I used to be pretty. I used to have a husband, and children. I used to be so happy. Now look at me. I’m not even human any more.’
‘What happened to you?’ asked Jemexxa.
‘A clown happened to me. A clown with a gray face and gray hair and a bright green smile.’