Five miles further on, they realised Sophie's attempt at masking their presence must have succeeded. The dog had fallen back - only a little, but it gave them some respite.
As they went over another hill, they spotted a house almost hidden amongst the trees to their left, smoke rising from the chimney. Parked next to it was a battered van. The tyre tracks in the snow showed it was regularly in use.
'Where does he get his fuel from?' Mallory said, bringing them to a halt.
'Some of the more isolated farms have their own tanks. Maybe he found one that had been abandoned. What are you going to do?'
'Steal it.'
Sophie shook her head, the exhaustion making her emotions whirl.
'Don't worry, we'll bring it back. We'll get to Knowlton, do the business . . . bam . . . back tomorrow.'
'I don't know—'
'Think of all the people in the cathedral we'll be saving.'
His comments made some kind of sense, and she didn't have the energy to argue. He led her to the hedgerow and made her drop down below the line of sight. 'If I can get in it, I can hot-wire it,' he said. They crept along as quickly as they could.
At the gravel driveway, they paused, but there was no sound apart from the drip-drip-drip of melting snow from the tree branches in the wood that encircled the house.
'You wait here,' Mallory whispered. 'As soon as I come out, I'll throw the door open and you can dive in.'
She glanced back up the road. 'Just hurry.'
He kept low to the passenger side, which was furthest away from the house. It took him five minutes of working on the lock with his Swiss Army knife before it popped. He listened. Nothing. But when the door opened it gave a loud squeal. His breath caught in his throat. With heat spreading down his back, he listened again: still nothing.
Just as he was about to wriggle on to the van floor, the house door slammed open and the sound of running feet approached.
'Shit,' he muttered.
Around the front of the van appeared a dishevelled, large-boned man with the wild-eyed appearance of someone who had retreated from the world. He brandished an old shotgun with shaking hands. 'Get away!' he screeched. 'Get away! Get away!'
He pulled the gun up and fired wildly. Birds rose screaming into the air. Mallory had thrown himself backwards an instant earlier when he realised the van's owner wasn't going to waste any time talking. He landed on his back and rolled on to his feet just as another blast raised a shower of wet gravel an inch from his boot.
His instinct was to sprint to Sophie and get out of there as fast as possible, but the gun had already been reloaded and there would be a clear shot at his back if he ran. Another retort made his head ring. Shot passed his head so closely that his hair moved with the turbulence. Mallory launched himself to one side and bounded into the trees, weaving randomly. Wood splintered past his ear.
'You won't kill me!' The man's voice had the crackling paranoia of someone who had been unbalanced by existing in a climate of fear for too long.
Mallory had hoped his attacker would retreat into the house, but irrationality consumed him. He ploughed into the wood on Mallory's trail, obsessed with the idea that he would never find peace until the destroyer of his equilibrium was eradicated.
Mallory cursed at such a stupid distraction. His only choice was to go deeper into the woods to lose his pursuer, then circle around to get back to Sophie. But his legs were leaden, and as the shot whistled around him and branches crashed to the snowy ground, it was clear that the wild man was more likely to bring him down with his random shooting than if he had been taking aim.
He pressed on, running from one side to the other while trying to keep his balance on the uneven ground, with its fallen branches and hollows hidden beneath the covering of snow. He was faster and more agile than his lumbering pursuer, who was struggling with loading his shotgun on the run, but his progress was slowed by the increasing thickness of the wood and the old brambles and detritus that clogged the ground between the trees. In the shade the snow had not even started to melt and his footprints marked his direction clearly.
He slipped behind a trunk to catch his breath, pressing his back against the bark so he wouldn't be seen. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of ragged breathing and pounding feet against a background of constantly dripping water from the higher branches. The sun gleamed brightly through the branch cover, making the snow glow. With his dark clothes, it would be even more difficult for him to hide.
He drove on into the wood.
Five minutes later, he decided it was time to stop running and to attempt to circle back. Annoyingly, his pursuer had managed to keep pace with him, while the random shooting had kept Mallory permanently wrong- footed. The hunter wasn't going to give up until Mallory was dead.
Mallory came up suddenly on a snow-filled hollow about forty feet across that would take him out of his pursuer's line of sight. He skidded down into it and instantly turned to his left, scurrying low across the bottom. Ahead of him was a large area of bushes, tangled brambles and dead grass where he would leave no tracks behind him. On his hands and knees, he crawled into it, wriggling past the tearing thorns until he was hidden in the very heart; it would be impossible to get through standing upright. All he had to do was wait until the hunter got caught up trying to follow him in, then rush out of the other side and back to Sophie. Holding his breath, he waited.
It wasn't long before he heard the hunter hurrying through the crunching snow. He had reached the lip of the hollow, was obviously surveying the area cautiously.
Come on, you hick bastard,
Mallory thought.
The sound of booted feet sliding down into the hollow: the wild man was picking his way along the mess of Mallory's tracks, the gun undoubtedly pointed dead ahead. Tension gripped Mallory's chest.
When the hunter passed into the thicket, kicking at the brambles that attempted to ensnare his boots, Mallory propelled himself forwards, low and hard. He burst out of the other side and hurtled up the bank and over the lip. The gunfire was so loud he thought his heart would stop; the blast ripped a chunk out of a tree to his right.
He ran.
It had worked; he didn't look back. But he'd only gone a few metres when he glimpsed movement on the periphery of his vision. The hunter was relentless; how could he have struggled through the thicket so quickly?
Mallory drove himself on, detoured to his left. The sound of crunching snow was loud enough to tell him that the hunter was keeping pace. Breathless, he paused behind another tree. Perhaps he could catch the hunter unawares, disarm him.
He set off again. The figure was slower, but still stalking efficiently, however fast Mallory ran. The hunter had clearly adopted new tactics, weaving amongst the trees, letting the trunks obscure him so that Mallory couldn't really tell where he was until he caught the most fleeting glimpse.
Steeling himself, Mallory hid behind the largest tree he could find and waited. Every fibre of his body was rigid. The constant drip-drip of water was disorienting; he strained to listen past it.
Finally, he had it: the familiar crunch of footsteps, slow, regular, coming nearer. Mallory drew his sword so carefully there was not even the familiar
zing
of the metal escaping the sheath.
Closer, and closer still. Mallory kept calm, though his chest was as taut as a piano wire. Only a few feet away; Mallory told himself to hold on until the hunter was right beside the tree.
Don't kill him
, he had to tell himself.
At the last moment, Mallory lurched out, swinging his sword in front of him. Only it wasn't the hunter.
A black shape lay before him, huge and threatening, like death itself. Blood-red eyes seared intensely, a snort of hot breath like escaping steam rising in a cloud in the cool air. The sight was so terrifying that Mallory turned cold at the sight of a demon with the form of a dog, as big as a small pony, its sable coat sucking all light from die surrounding area.
It was the eyes that affected him the most, not dull and stupid like an animal's, but a man's eyes, crackling with an otherworldly intelligence that spoke of horror and threat and dread beyond his imagining.
For the briefest time, the tableau froze: there was just Mallory and the dog in a world of white. Then a deep bass rumble escaped from its throat and a gobbet of saliva oozed from its mouth, which opened slowly to reveal a monster's yellowing fangs.
Mallory was already moving as he saw tensing muscles ripple across its black fur. It erupted from the spot with the speed and mass of a car. Despite his advantage, Mallory only just got out of the way; the dog clipped his sword, sending it spinning across the ground. Its head turned as it passed and a ferocious snap of its enormous jaws only just missed taking off his face. He yelled out as some of its saliva splashed on his wrist, where the skin sizzled and smoked.
The dog was around in an instant, relentless, driving forwards. The ground shook beneath its thundering paws. Mallory tried to dodge; it smashed into his leg so hard it felt as if the bones were splintering. He spun, slammed into a tree, saw stars.
By the time his fumbling consciousness had returned, it was too late: the dog stood a few feet away, teeth bared, ready to tear him apart whichever way he tried to escape. But he couldn't have moved anyway; those red eyes held him fast. Something emanated from them, drilling into his skull above the bridge of his nose, into his brain, where it scurried and wriggled. In his mind, words that were not words echoed; images and impressions burst like fireworks in the night, so sickeningly alien he thought his consciousness was going to shut down at the contact.
Its muscles tensed again; the bass rumble began.
The blast shocked Mallory out of his mesmerised state. Shot smashed into the creature's skull - he saw the skin flow like liquid - but it made no impression; it kept its gaze on Mallory. Through fractured vision, Mallory made out the hunter lurching in the background, waving his gun, ranting incomprehensibly.
Mallory thought,
Here it comes.
But the attack never came. Slowly the pinpricks of black at the centre of the fiery red eyes moved to the side. Its head began to follow suit, cranking around until it was staring directly at the hunter. What Mallory's pursuer saw in the beast drained the blood from his face. His eyes widened in terror, and briefly the banal madness that had gripped him was replaced by a startling clarity. Mallory saw how unpleasant true dread looks in a man's face: it stripped away everything that made him civilised, everything that made him human.
He had time to fire one final, useless blast before the thing crashed against him, smashing him to the ground. Mallory saw both of the hunter's shins snap in two on impact, but then Old Shuck's rending head was moving in a blur.