The Country Escape (49 page)

His silhouette dipped for a moment, head lowered, then vanished from sight, leaving early-morning sunlight flooding in.

When Dawn brought out a cup of tea five minutes later, she found Kat still standing in the feed room holding the scoop of pig nuts. Loud, angry complaints were coming from the fields and pens as the sanctuary animals awaited breakfast.

‘Dougie was just here,’ Kat said, in a strangled voice.

‘I can’t believe I missed meeting him again! What happened?’

‘He offered me a million pounds to marry him, then invited me to the ball tonight.’

‘Bloody hell.’

‘I told him I could never trust him.’

‘I’d better do your other eyebrow.’

Unsettled by the Lake Farm livestock’s complaints,
the stag moved deeper into the wooded enclosure, but his way was barred by the stock fencing. He had cornered himself.

The tracker watched him closely through the trees, certain the moment was approaching. When the red-headed girl appeared on a quad bike to throw feed out into troughs, the stag watched her warily from his wooded couch, but he didn’t make a move to break cover. He seemed
content to hide there for now.

The tracker gave the signal to move in.

Dougie was still monstrously uptight when he arrived at the kennel yard just before seven. He needed the horses to soothe him, especially Worcester, the genial comedian, who liked to rest his moustached muzzle on his master’s shoulder and let out a sigh of such deep content it was guaranteed to lull even
the most fevered heart.

‘Why the hell have you turned so many out?’ he snapped at Gut, when he saw empty stables. ‘The horses have to be available at a moment’s notice today.’

Gut, whose English still extended only to a few words, babbled incomprehensibly in Hindi, miming finger-snapping and muscle flexing, then pointing to the sky and tapping his watch with a surprised shrug and
some eye-rubbing.

Dougie was getting a lot better at interpreting his head groom’s mimes. ‘Oh, fuck, they’re already out riding, aren’t they? I bet they left at bloody dawn. What weapons did they take?’ he demanded. ‘
Wea-pon?
’ He mimed a gun, then bows and arrows.

Gut mimed back something that was part light sabre, part
Saturday Night Fever
.

‘Spear?’ Dougie suggested, imitating
a spiking motion.

‘No, no, no, sir.’ Gut moved on to John Travolta dancing in
Reservoir Dogs
before striking a Rambo pose.

‘Machine-gun?’

As the two men mimed weaponry, like small boys enacting an imaginary battle, a member of the security team, who’d been posted beneath the arch in the entrance to the carriage courtyard, muttered at intervals into his lapel, then waited for
a response in his earpiece. The Russian party might have been out since dawn, but the house and its gardens remained under close surveillance from both Igor and Seth’s private squads. Head cocked in suspicion, the guard eyed Dougie and Gut’s strange dance through very dark glasses.

Dougie quickly gave up on his guessing game and stalked into the tack room to use the land-line to try to
summon Dair. A man who preferred to communicate with memos and letters, only using the estate’s walkie-talkies if the situation was life-threatening, the Scot had battled to get to grips with the satellite phone he’d been equipped with since Seth’s reign, but this time he picked up within two rings. ‘I knew you would be behind this, Everett.’

‘What the fuck is going on?’

‘I could
ask you the same thing. I’ve tracked these woods for days preparing to flush the best ground game. Instead, I now have guns, dogs and picker-uppers sitting in the back of a trailer wasting time while a fucking Russian is apparently galloping around Herne Covert with a cross-bow. He wants a stag.’

Dougie let out a groan of horror. ‘But Herne Covert’s right by the lake. The sanctuary’s beside
it.’

‘I’m on my way there now. Whatever you do, don’t let him near the farm and
don’t
alert Kat to what’s going on. It’s all under control.’

True to his word, Seth had set out on his daily run around the estate’s parkland instead of in his state-of-the-art gym. He found the early-morning air a revelation, his lungs filled with cool, dewy sweetness as he hammered along the
landscaped avenues. The contours of the park were far steeper than the settings on his machines and he soon regretted wearing such heavy ankle weights. The bodyguard accompanying him was already struggling to keep up, Seth noticed, as his ears pounded with MIDIval Punditz from his iPod. Dollar would have had no trouble keeping pace, he reflected, but she had always fallen into step with his life
perfectly, until she’d kicked him squarely in the balls because he wouldn’t marry her, then enacted her revenge by announcing she was leaving to marry someone else. That had not worked out – Seth had kept quiet his involvement in her lover’s murder conviction and the length of his sentence – but she had been far less compliant since her return, the controlled anger bubbling ever closer to the surface,
along with the rebellion. Seth knew she would not accept any wife he took, and had now grasped that he had to deal with it head on rather than tossing her playthings like Dougie to distract her.

He regretted sending her out with the Russian on his early-morning hunting trip. It was another thing she’d find hard to forgive. Igor was thoroughly unpleasant.

Mounted on Worcester,
whose normally kind eyes were already edged with white from the spurs assaulting his sides, Igor splashed through the ford, leading his three outriders, all of whom were trusted friends of long standing and always travelled in his coterie. They had hunted with him and his tracker across six continents. Breaking into a canter as he rode up the slope, he saluted the little man in Russian military
camouflage, barely visible among the trees, then jumped the horse through the gap where the fencing was broken. He posted one of his outriders there to stand point while the others crossed the field to open the gates on to the lakeside, where he intended to drive the stag so that he could pursue him through the parkland.

What Igor hadn’t accounted for was the panic-stricken reaction of
Lake Farm’s elderly grazing herd.

As the stag broke cover with textbook grace, he quickly drew unexpected outriders of his own – a llama and two alpacas, several sheep and goats flew alongside the big red deer as he belted into the sanctuary’s horse field, where a wall-eyed mare flattened her ears and gave chase too.

‘
Mat! Kon govno!
’ A stream of obscenities came out of Igor’s mouth
as he spurred Worcester in hot pursuit. To his alarm, he found two evil-looking Shetlands closing in on him in a pincer movement.

Dougie had borrowed Gut’s scramble bike to rattle to Lake Farm – taking his car would mean a huge diversion and going on foot was just as time-consuming. The tinny rattle shrieked at top velocity as he snaked through the parkland
and on to the causeway. One of the few structures in the Eardisford grounds that hadn’t been touched in Seth’s lavish restoration, the narrow wooden-planked promenade that stretched across the lake remained a decaying, slime-caked death trap of potholes and crumbling stone spine that he skidded across far too fast, almost pitching into the lake.

When he slithered into the farmyard behind
the house, the dogs surged out to greet him and Kat followed, still in her pyjamas. She had both eyebrows raised now, and was frantically wiping something off her upper lip. She looked furious and utterly beautiful. ‘When you said you’d come back later, I thought you meant
much
later.’

‘Igor’s galloping around here with a cross-bow.’ He ignored Dair’s advice to keep her in the dark, knowing
Kat needed to protect her livestock. ‘He’s after a stag.’

She gasped, eyes wide with horror. ‘We must stop him. That’s totally barbaric.’

Momentarily lost in those eyes – why had he never noticed the little silver flecks in the green? – Dougie took a split-second to catch up. ‘He’ll only hit trees – and us, if we get in the way. Dair think he’s after the big chap from Herne Covert,
but there’s not a chance of him finding him. The Lord Lucan of stags, that one.’

Hearing a thunder of approaching hoofs, they turned towards the open yard gateway. At the same time, Dawn leaned out of an upstairs window wearing a face-pack and a towel on her head, her high vantage-point meaning she was able to see beyond the farm buildings to the approaching stampede. ‘Ambush!’

The yard was filled with a clatter of hoofs as a stag led a charge of three horses, two alpacas, a llama, three goats and several sheep, closely pursued by four riders whooping with war-like shrieks, trailed by two fat Shetlands who ground to a grateful halt as soon as they saw the open feed-room door and headed inside.

‘That’s half my livestock!’ Kat ran to her quad bike and fired the ignition,
then opened the throttle so fast, it stalled.

‘And Harvey!’ Dougie retrieved the scramble bike and kick-started it, accelerating into the dust-cloud left by the stampede.

Dawn ran outside breathlessly as Kat frantically tried to get the quad started again. ‘What can I do to help?’

‘Get the Shetlands out.’ Kat started the engine again with a whoop.

‘To do what?’ Dawn
shouted over it. ‘Roman riding?’

‘No. Just stop them stuffing themselves.’ She sped off.

Having run in a big arc along the parkland’s open rides and around the beech woods, Seth found himself at the far side of the lake. His legs were really pumped now, lactic acid building, the punishment of uneven terrain and sharp cambers making him truly feel the burn. Music playing
in his ears, he ran along the lime avenue towards the lake, admiring its golden surface in the early-morning sun with the huge Jacobean house perched beyond it where a shower and massage were waiting. The bodyguard had fallen far behind, totally outpaced by his marathon-running boss. Again, Seth felt a pang for Dollar’s company. She would probably start competing with him on a run about now, putting
in a burst of speed, goading him to stay with her.

Imagining her racing ahead of him, he ran on to the causeway, not realizing how dilapidated it was until he was part of the way across and the uneven footing forced him to steady himself and look down. That was when he saw the crumbling stonework and the broken wooden boards, increasingly sparse underfoot. Making a mental note to instruct
his team to renovate it, he slowed to a careful walk, puffing hard. As he did so, he heard crashing through the beeches that ran alongside the lake.

Seth watched transfixed as a huge stag leaped out of the woods skirting the far bank, antlers tipped back, its eyes bright with alarm. Swerving left in a spray of earth divots, it headed straight towards him along the rickety causeway. As soon
as it saw him, it leaped neatly off the open side, landing with a great splash in the lake, and began swimming to the far bank.

More crashing was coming from the direction of the woods now, along with hollering voices. Three more terrified animals burst from the undergrowth, swerving left in the stag’s wake, and at first Seth thought they were more red deer. Then he took a nervous step
back as he was joined on the bridge by a llama and two alpacas, all boggle-eyed with fear and lolloping towards him at such speed that the metal struts supporting the planked walkway were shaking. When Seth turned to run back the way he had come, there was an ominous groan beneath his feet. He had just enough time to look down and register that he could see quite a lot of black, weed-filled water
when the rusted metal truss and rotten planks gave way and he dropped into the lake’s darkest, reediest depths.

The llama and alpacas cannoned to a halt to avoid falling through the hole too, sliding to a stop in a gaggle and snorting fearfully, heads shooting up and twirling like periscopes, well aware that danger was right behind.

A mountain of a horse was crashing out of the woods
now, its rider bellowing in Russian as he lifted his cross-bow to his shoulder, still galloping flat out, and took aim at the biggest of the long-necked hairy camelids trapped on the gap-toothed bridge. ‘I have the stag cornered!’ he yelled in Russian. Then he peered closer and swore under his breath as he realized it had no antlers. Instead of being a great trophy for his wall, it was a very
peeved llama.

Igor reined to such a sharp halt, Worcester almost sat down.

Standing up in his stirrups to survey the terrain around him, Igor spotted his target in the water twenty yards from the bank, its antlers like magnificent, skeletal sails on a well-battled flagship. Shooting an animal in water was never ideal, but he would let his assistants worry about recovering the trophy.
He had a clear shot. He let out a victorious bellow.

‘No!’ Kat screamed, as she hurtled on the quad bike along the bank of the lake, her eyes swinging wildly from the swimming stag to Igor taking aim on the far bank. There was no way to get close to the Russian without crossing the causeway or swimming the lake. Dougie was far ahead of her on the scramble bike and already accelerating
towards the frail old walkway. Abandoning the quad bike, she knew what she had to do. Shouting to get the Russian’s attention, she sprinted towards the lake, diving in over the rushes.

In the blackest water beneath the bridge, Seth was flailing madly, unable to swim to safety. Gripped by searing cramp, held down by his running weights, his cries for help inaudible over the shouts and engines,
he let out a sob of relief as he saw someone dive in, certain rescue was coming. It turned into a wail of anguish as he saw that she was swimming away from him.

Above Seth’s head, an increasingly infuriated llama was stumbling and crashing around on the broken planks, his panic-stricken alpaca friends herding around him, braying in terror.

Roaring along the bank towards
the walkway on the scramble bike, unaware that Kat was in the water behind him, Dougie eyed the crumbling ornate stone supports that sloped up from the lakeside to the elderly structure like flying buttresses. They made a perfect motorcycle ramp. He accelerated towards one, engine screaming.

Still a strong, fast swimmer, despite the long break from competition, Kat was between
Igor’s bow and the stag in just a few strokes.

‘
Bliad’! Wed’ma! Ty troop! Cuchka derganaya! Unbju!
’ Igor yelled, as the redhead blocked his shot. The stag was moving out of easy range.

He pointed the cross-bow at her threateningly. ‘Get out of the way,
rusalka
!’

‘No!’ She gave him the finger – which was probably ill-advised, given her situation – and trod water.

As
she did so, she heard a familiar bellow coming from the spinney beside the farmhouse and groaned in horror. ‘Please don’t do it, darling. Just this once, stay away from the water.’

But she knew it was hopeless as Usha came shambling companionably out of the bulrushes.

Eyes lighting at the sight of a pair of horns as wide as a sea eagle’s wingspan, the Russian aimed at the water buffalo.

Realizing he was about to take a pot shot at Eardisford’s oldest and most eccentric bovine resident, Kat plunged towards Usha instead.

With a victorious engine roar, Dougie’s bike landed on the far end of the rickety causeway in true stuntman style, back wheel spinning as he swerved it to face Igor on the opposite bank of the lake. That was when he saw that the causeway was already
quite crowded. Feeling it tilt and shake, he also suspected it was about to collapse.

Masked from view beneath it, Seth was coming up for the fifth or sixth time. The cramp in his legs had solidified to splints of pure pain that refused to move, the weights on his ankles felt like concrete and were now entangled with the weeds that kept dragging him under. He tried to shout again,
but there was so much noise nobody could hear him.

Glaring along the causeway at Igor – who was swinging his cross-bow sight between Usha, Kat and the stag, spoilt for choice – Dougie revved the engine, ready to hurtle across to him and pull him from his horse. ‘Out of the way!’ he shouted at the two alpacas and the llama. Instead of doing as they were told, the alpacas finally
jumped over a huge gap that had appeared in the planked walkway and came cantering towards him, eyes popping. Behind them, the big llama let out a furious spit of disapproval. Still at the far end of the long bridge, he hung back, weighing up his options. More aggressive than his companions, less keen on swimming than the stag, averse to motorbikes and not trusting the rickety, swaying structure
he was standing on, the llama spun round and sprang towards the Russian’s big horse, taking Worcester completely by surprise.

The llama was in a very bad mood now. Despite being less than a quarter of the horse’s great size, he threw back his head, puffed up his chest and reared against Worcester’s side, which was blocking his way.

‘Stop it, you fucking rug on legs!’ Igor’s bolt
swung back towards the llama again.

Seth’s bodyguard-cum-running-companion had finally panted around the edge of the beech wood. Taking in the scene, he fumbled for his radio mic to call for back-up. As he did so, two grey horses, a patchwork one with blue eyes, and several goats burst out of the woods immediately behind him, jinking past him and out into open parkland.

‘We have
a situation,’ he told his team nervously. Like most trained fighters, armed men held no fear for him, but large animals were another matter.

With an almighty scream of its engine, Dougie’s bike was still waiting to power its way along the planked platform, but the traffic was a nightmare. The alpacas were blocking his way as they loped towards him and then stopped, heads shooting
up. Exploding with impatience, Dougie knew he had to let them get across. He cut the engine and they shuffled cautiously towards him while he waited, feeling like an elderly motorist letting pony riders hack past.

Beneath the shadow of the bridge, Seth was weakening. He’d swallowed so much water he could barely breathe when he gulped and gasped to the surface each time, struggling
to stay there for more than a split-second before the pains in his legs corkscrewed him round and down, the weeds and weights holding him there. The muffled silence under water was far outlasting the brief, bewildering cacophony above it. This was, he realized with horror, probably the last sound he would ever hear. He would never see his parents again, his sister and nieces, aunties and uncles,
his friends and Dollar. He would never be able to tell Dollar just how much he loved her. He
had
to live. As he made one final desperate bid to surface, he felt something grab his hair. He reached up a hand to embrace his rescuer, only to find his fingers full of feathers.

Across the lake, Kat was treading water between Usha and the stag, still marking Igor’s cross-bow, which was
swinging around wildly now he was under llama attack. Her eye was caught by one of the Canada geese flapping and pecking furiously beneath the bridge. A part of it had collapsed, she saw, and broken planks bobbed on the surface. Then she did a double take. A hand was poking from the water. She let out a horrified gasp and started swimming towards it.

As the alpacas finally sprang past Dougie,
he kick-started the scramble bike again and let off the clutch. The bike roared into action towards Igor, who was trying to aim his cross-bow at the llama chest-butting his legs. Edging the bike’s wheels on to the narrow stone kerb at the causeway’s edge to bypass the gaping hole in the planking, Dougie glanced down and saw a shot of red hair in the churning black water below. As soon as he
reached a more solid footing, he slid to a halt and threw down the bike, running back to see Kat in the water below, swimming in frantic circles as she looked down into the black water.

‘Someone’s trapped down there,’ she cried.

‘Leave it to me.’ Diving in, Dougie almost landed on top of her.

‘I can handle this!’ She disappeared beneath the surface.

He dived down too.

Usha was bellowing mournfully in her bulrushes. Now unguarded, the stag had almost reached the far bank and Igor was once again trying to get a clear shot, ignoring the body-slamming llama, which Worcester was stoically enduring beneath him.

‘
Ty troop!
’ he muttered, as the llama spat on his boot.

Just as he lined up his cross-bow, there was a commotion behind him as a lynch
mob of balaclava-wearing saboteurs flew out of the woods.

Before Igor could take in what was happening, the masked men had pulled him from the saddle, swiftly disarming him before disappearing back into the trees.

Apoplectic, Igor shouted for his men, realizing for the first time that they were nowhere in sight. He’d kill them for letting him down like this.