The Pack (10 page)

“‘Keeper,' says the master, ‘perhaps you'd be good enough to cut the pack for us.' Which I do. Then they each cut for who should deal. Vince draws an eight of spades, the master a jack of diamonds. Neither takes this first blood as a good or as a bad omen. The master still smiles; Vince's hands can't wait to get hold of the cards he is dealt.

“Two face up. Three down. Vince grabs at his first. I see his jaw clench, a line of sweat on his upper lip, but the master's expression doesn't change as he runs his thumb over the corners of his cards.

“Two aces lie face up before the master. Two queens before Vince. The master asks Vince if he would like any other cards, as if he was offering a second cup of tea. Vince asks for one and clutches for it before it hits the table.

“‘Happy?' the master asks.

“‘Happy,' says Vince.

“‘And I'll change these two,' says the master. ‘And that's me too.'

“So they're about to show their cards, when the mistress gets up, complaining about the draught. But instead of securing the window, she somehow or other manages to spring it open. The curtains billow into the room across the table and the master brings his hands down on his cards, but not before a couple have been brushed off the table.

“‘Keeper, help me with the window,' she says and, as I close it, looking hard for what the fault may have been, I'm aware of the mistress on the floor, picking up the master's cards.

“‘What a business,' she is saying, ‘and to come at such a time.'

“She lays the cards before the master, who has stayed still throughout, his hands spread over his remaining cards, which include the two aces.

“‘Ready to show?' says Vince.

“‘Madness,' trills the mistress for the last time.

“‘Ready,' says the master.

“‘I'll go first,” says Vince and he turns over one more queen and a pair of jacks.

“‘Oh,' says the mistress. ‘Three queens and a pair of jacks.”

“‘Good, Vince,' says the master, ‘but not quite good enough.' And he pushes forward his two aces and turns over two tens and a nine. He turns them over slowly, as if the cards can speak for themselves, but the cards aren't saying what he wants them to say.

“‘I think,' says Vince, ‘you're mistaken, brother,' and his voice is charged and coarse. ‘A pair—even aces—never beats three of a kind.'

“‘A pair? A pair?' The master grabs his cards and feverishly rubs and rubs at the corners of each, but nothing he finds there can add another ace to the two he has shown and our eyes have already told us he has lost.”

“My God,” says Margaret.

“Aye,” says the gamekeeper, “that's what he said too: ‘My God.'

“‘Oh, my love,' the mistress says. Oh my love,” says the gamekeeper in an ironic echo.

“How so?” asks Margaret.

“How so? Because there was something fishy in that game from the beginning. Something rotten and I smelled it and did nothing about it. But do you know what? I think the master thought so too—only he was too proud to get out of it; or more strangely, it added to the excitement somehow.”

“Aye, he never ever feared Vince.”

“His mistake was in thinking it was only Vince he was facing.”

“Dangerous talk, keeper,” says Margaret.

“Which is why I'm for leaving,” says the gamekeeper. “It was only the master's inventiveness that kept this estate together. Without it, mark my words, it'll be in ruins in no time at all.”

“Aye, ashes and dust,” says Margaret, “ashes and dust. And the estate meant everything to the master. Everything.”

“I know it too,” says the gamekeeper, “but you know
all I heard
was that ‘My God'.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, I don't know what. But after he said it, he tipped his head back and opened his mouth and, though no sound came out that I could hear, there came from the depth of the forest, through the wind and the rain, a howl so deep and so pained, it seemed to fill that room. The master then brought his head down and he rose from the table with that slight smile back on his face, no sign that his heart had been broken. He still had the business, of course, but that accident on the ice … Well, put it this way, those who say it was an accident don't know my story.”

There is a silence before Margaret says, “Keeper, we'll talk further, but in the meantime—”

“I must go,” says the gamekeeper.

As he takes the steps up, Margaret opens the door of the larder. Bradley turns from the sudden light and notices, on a table at the back of the pantry, the tiered wedding cake, topped with the initials of his mother and his uncle Vince.

10

THE HOUND OF HELL

Once sunlight filtered through the high, broken windows, it became a light of dust and ashes. But it was enough to wake Bradley. He sat up and pushed himself back against the bars of the cage. He rubbed the stiffness from a shoulder; lifted his trousers from the grazes on his knees.

Hunger raised and lowered an eyelid. His eyes were dull, as if their flames had been extinguished. Victor was still buried in his heap of blanket bits. Skreech, his head against the window and his mouth in a perfect O, slept on. His small hands cradled his stick.

Bradley rubbed his eyes. He had had such dreams before. Generally, he shook them from him, the way he did the Old Woman's stories. You had to come back into the world in which you were forced to live, and living needed all your concentration. And the stories, well, the Old Woman always said he carried them somewhere inside himself. Some seemed like warnings not to go back; others not to go forward. Fine, he would nod, that way they needn't interfere with his here and now.

But this morning it was different. He shook his head and, though he found the details of the story scattered like water shaken from a dog's back, the dream's shape seemed to fill him and all day he could not shift the sense of loss he felt.

Skreech's head tipped forward and he rubbed his neck and circled his head. He looked across at Bradley and at Victor. Both of them stared into the space before them; whether at the bars of their cages, at the walls beyond, or through them both, he could not tell.

Along with the light—thin though it was—time had entered the room. Bradley had never experienced it in such a raw form as he had in the last days. Like black syrup, it coursed through him, making him heavy, filling him with despair. When your whole life was concerned with survival, what did you do, when you didn't know what there was to be done?

He saw in Victor's eyes a despair that matched his own. And, as the day wore on, he noticed more and more that Skreech displayed the same listlessness, the same sighing emptiness he himself felt. Bradley showed nothing, but the recognition confirmed for him what he had suspected: that Skreech was their best chance of getting out of there.

*   *   *

As the gray light thickened with evening, a boy soldier brought Skreech a large bowl of clean water and a plate of meaty slops for Red Dog's champion—and a plate of thin porridge for Bradley and Victor. The weasel unlocked the door of the cages and Skreech placed them inside.

“Watch that dog—it's a killer,” said the weasel, but Bradley could see that Skreech wasn't scared of Hunger.

Once the weasel had left, Bradley called across, “You like this dog, don't you?”

Skreech said nothing, but Bradley saw his bruised jaw-line harden. He would give nothing away.

“Makes no difference,” Skreech muttered from his corner, as Hunger licked out his food dish and slurped up the water.

“What?” said Bradley.

“He's going to die anyway.”

“Maybe not.”

“Red Dog's champions never last long. You saw that.”

“Yes, but Hunger's got a fighting chance.”

“For a while.”

“And you?”

“What about me?”

“For how long have you got a fighting chance?”

“Long enough.”

“Oh, come on, look at it. You said it yourself—who knows when Red Dog's going to see some tiny thing in you that displeases him? This week? Next week? Next month? Next year? It's going to happen.”

“I take my chances.”

“Yeah, but reckon your chances. There are—what?—forty of you—that makes it forty-to-one in my book. These are running-out odds.” The Old Woman had taught him that too.

“Yours any better?”

“Yeah, they are. Risky but not impossible. You join us and—”

“You nuts?”

“No, desperate.” Bradley thought he saw the flicker of a smile pass over Skreech's face too. It was time to let him start running the conversation.

Bradley stroked Hunger's head as he settled. Hunger sighed heavily twice, as if to rid himself of the day's boredom.

Bradley waited.

“Huh, what would I get out of it?” Skreech made it sound like a question that didn't deserve an answer.

“You get to take your chances with us.”

“Like, why on earth—?”

“Victor, Floris, Hunger and me, we're a…” Bradley had never thought what they were beyond some version of a dog pack. Yet how was he to explain what that meant—that it meant more than what bound all Red Dog's boy soldiers together?

“We look out for each other. And if you helped us, we'd look out for you.”

“Friendship—pah. I told you, I don't believe in any of that stuff.”

“Here, sure, I can see why you don't. But outside it's different, it can work.”

“This is stupid, talking about this. Stupid. Anyway, it's impossible.” But Bradley heard, in Skreech's dismissal, the hesitant desire for it not to be so.

“That door over there, back of the room, where does it lead to?”

“Nowhere.”

“Nowhere?”

“It used to lead into another block of apartments, but they were torched in the Dead Time and torn down. There's just the stairs now down to the street. It's how the cages were brought up. But the door's always locked.”

“Who's got the key?”

“The lieutenant keeps it. He likes keys.”

“Yeah, I've seen that. Is the door used much?”

“No.”

“Then he wouldn't miss the key. Look—sometime, could you make an excuse to get the whole bunch and to slip that one off—maybe when the cage needs to be opened?”

“Maybe.”

“That would be the first stage, then we need to see how things develop. The next fight will be here, right?”

“Yes, Red Dog always has home advantage.”

“Good. Look, we're all going to get out of here.” The boy sniffed. “With your help,” Bradley added.

“Sure,” Skreech said. “Sure.” But it did not sound as if he believed it for a moment.

*   *   *

The rest of that day, Skreech turned his back on Bradley's cage. He drew and rubbed and drew again on the dusty window. Whenever Bradley called to him, Skreech told him to “Shut it, will ya.” Bradley felt his whole body go limp as he waited to be betrayed.

The next time the boy soldier came in with food—the usual slops and gruel—the weasel opened Bradley and Hunger's cage for him. But the boy only had scraps for Victor. He flung these through the bars. Victor was especially agitated.

“Oh, Lieutenant,” said Skreech, rousing himself, “look at him. He just hates the sound of these keys. Watch!” He took the keys from the weasel and rattled them up and down Victor's cage. Victor went crazy, jumping at the bars, snarling and spitting.

The weasel bared his teeth with delight. “Oh, perhaps there's a little bit more fun left in you after all.”

That's when Hunger and Bradley went wild. Bradley took up the tin bowl and hammered it against the bars, as Hunger whooped and howled.

“Hey, this is a circus. It's going to be some Christmas party tomorrow.”

When Bradley and Hunger had calmed down, the boy was standing before the weasel with his keys. The weasel took them and clipped them back onto his belt.

“I can't wait,” he chortled as he left.

Bradley and Skreech sat silently for a while, waiting for their breathing to even out. Hunger panted in bursts and Victor could be heard moving around his cage, muttering to himself.

Skreech came over and slipped the heavy skeleton key through the bars and Bradley hid it under the rags. If it were noticed missing, no one would think to look for it there.

Skreech sat back down, blinking, unnerved by what he'd done.

“That was a brave thing.”

“Shut it,” Skreech said. “It's done.”

“What will happen tomorrow?”

“Sometime, you never know when, Black Fist will arrive with his soldiers and his champion. We'll all cram in here. Bets will be placed. The fight will begin.”

“That's all you know?”

“That's it.”

“Right, listen to me. You must—tonight—unlock that door and place the key on the outside. We'll hope no one needs to use it. The fight will be noisy. At its end, the cage will be opened to pull one of the dogs out. That will be the time of the greatest commotion, yes?”

“Yes.”

“OK, now whichever dog wins … whichever dog, there needs to be some distraction.” Bradley was thinking back to every ruse the Old Woman had ever used, but he couldn't as yet find something which he thought might work. He would not sleep that night until he did. “In the distraction, Victor, Hunger and I will escape.”

Oh, let it be you, Hunger,
thought Bradley,
let it be you.

Hunger had his eyes fixed on Bradley:
While there is breath in me, I will fight.

“Oh, so easy, eh?” Skreech said bitterly. “Like, Victor's locked up—or haven't you noticed?”

“That's something I need to work on.”

“I should give up on this now.”