“Rashidov!”
Darkness again and the risk of smashing into the rock face but if I stopped he’d be on me and I wouldn’t be ready.
His boots crashed over the stones behind me.
It was unlikely that he had more than nine shots in the magazine and he’d fired eight and I had to let him stay close so that I could stop him reloading if he had to but if I stayed close he would fire again if there was a ninth shot left and it couldn’t fail to kill if it caught me now.
Feet thudding and the stones scattering, the echoes running ahead of us into the dark. This was where it was going to be: I could hear the sawing of his breath and knew how close he was and knew that if he had one shot left he’d fire it as soon as there was light behind the target and that if the magazine was empty he’d drop the gun and use his hands and demolish me, destroy me with that demoniacal strength of his before I could do anything against him. So this was where it was going to be.
Stones flew upwards from our feet.
“Rashidov!”
Light came ahead of us and the ninth shot crashed and spun me round by the shoulder and I went down and reached for his legs and trapped them and felt his body swinging across my back before it hit the ground and the gun rattled against the stones get it get the gun and my hands groped, sweeping over the ground left and right left and right get it get it before he got it and flung it as far as I could because he might have a spare dip and I wouldn’t survive another nine, get up and run with the light spreading ahead of me and the first white flash of the snow as I reached the cave mouth and saw the gun and picked it up and threw it across the ledge, a whirling of bright metal as it disappeared.
He was coming for me when I turned round.
Shoulder burning from the shot but no paralysis.
He was coming fast with his head down and his hands reaching out for me and I went low and swung him down again but this time he caught at me and locked one arm and I twisted over and used the elbow in a curving strike against the side of his head and missed and hit the snow. His strength was appalling: if I left my arm in the lock he’d break it so I hooked back to the groin with one heel but didn’t connect because he was rolling over and heaving his body upwards, dragging me with him until I brought off a sword-hand against his knee and he screamed and came down again with his free hand clawing for my face.
Blood from somewhere: my shoulder perhaps. Spots on the snow.
He moved very fast and pain flared in my arm as the pressure came on — he was going to break it and I curved a thumb-shot for the eye and missed and struck again and missed and went on striking until his head rolled back and I felt the softness of the eye and struck again and dragged my arm free and went for the throat but he was strong in his rage and heaved himself up again with an animal sound, his big hands reaching to hold me while his boot crashed down on the snow beside my head, going to be no go because he wasn’t human, he was a crazed mind empowering muscle and motor nerves with the force of a monster and its intention was to kill and it would do it because it was programmed to do it.
I would need more than my own strength and my own skill if there were any hope of survival and I rolled over as he came for me again, trapping his right wrist and working on it and feeling him react because I’d damaged it before in the Trabant yesterday and the joint was sensitive. He had to move with the strain and I took him half-way over and got dear and ran for the ledge because that was the tool I was going to use, the weapon that could arm me against the cocaine, against the rage, against the monstrous strength of the man as he kicked upright and followed me with his boots flinging the snow aside.
“Rashidov!”
His name for hate, for death.
The leaden light was deceptive and the ledge was in front of me before I saw it but I dug my feet in and spun sideways as he came headlong for me. I think he would have gone straight over but there were small rocks beneath the surface and he scattered them, breaking his run and pitching across me and dragging me with him as the edge gave under the weight and we went over together, the air freezing against our faces and a cloud of snow drifting over us from the ledge. The drop was less than fifty feet but there would be boulders below and we couldn’t choose where we hit ground.
Weightlessness.
The earth tilted, the ledge angling over and pushing at the sky until the horizon was vertical and I was falling head first with one leg hooked round Kirinski’s neck and my arm locked in a hold that worried me because if he were on top when we hit ground I’d be crushed and he’d finish me: I went for the eyes again and he began shaking his head from side to side as we clung together in the rushing of the air with my fingers darting again and again until the hold went slack and I dragged my arm free, kicking against him and watching him float clear in the instant before we bit snow and rolled, its crust absorbing the momentum.
He was staggering to his feet with a boulder in his hands and I spun clear as he brought it down with his shoulders forward and his neck exposed, and I used a vertical sword-hand and felt the spine flex under it but it wasn’t strong enough to snap the vertebrae: the force dropped him and I followed up and he rolled over and locked my left leg and reached for my face with a claw strike before I could stop him. We were close now, clinging together, and neither of us moved.
The snow half covered us, its blue-white crystals absorbing the crimson as it seeped from my shoulder, its colour spreading and diluting, blood-red, rose-red, paling to rust beside his face as he lay motionless, resisting my force isometrically as I brought pressure against his hold.
Then he jerked an arm free and hooked it across my throat and I whipped my head back but the snow stopped me and I stared at the sky, feeling the slow closing of the windpipe and the first throbbing as the breath was blocked.
“Rashidov — ” he said through his teeth, “Rashidov.”
The lungs dragged for air and found none: his arm was strong.
The sky was darkening.
“Rashidov — ” he said softly.
Darkening.
The snow numbing the nerves, chilling the blood.
It would save us the unpleasant task of later ensuring…
Parkis.
Pressure and the sky darkening and the last throbbing of life, and night coming.
“Rashidov — ” he whispered.
Not the way.
The death-bringing black of night
This is not the way.
Rashidov… faint on the wind, his arm round me like a lover.
This is not the way to survive.
To survive you’ve got to move but I can’t move he’s — you can move if you try but there’s nothing I can — voices somewhere, voices in an argument, is this what it’s like when -
Don’t think.
Move.
Strength, no strength, he -
Move.
A hand. My hand. Where. Feel.
His face.
Eyes.
Move before -
Yes.
Fingers at his face, scrambling blindly, live things, live weapons, move faster, digging, clawing in the night, in the dark, this is the way, feeling the soft flesh, hooking down, hooking down deep, his body shifting, yes, his arm lifting to — don’t let him — lifting to stop my fingers — yes this is the way — and a breath coming and the lungs bursting, imploding, dragging the air in as his whole body moved, the rage coming back, the pain in his eye scalding him and now work now do some work.