Serafina and the Twisted Staff. Robert Beatty

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СКАЧАТЬ boy were gaining the advantage and might actually be able to escape, one of the dogs came leaping out of darkness, slammed into the boy’s chest and knocked him off his feet. The boy and the dog rolled to the ground in a somersault of snarling, biting ferocity.

      The next dog lunged at Serafina. She dodged it, but another dog came at her from the other side.

      ‘You can’t outrun these things for long,’ the boy shouted. ‘You’ve got to get to cover!’

      She dodged a lunging bite, and then a second and a third, but the snapping mouths kept coming at her. She slammed a dog in the head and punched one in the shoulder, but the dogs just kept biting, biting, biting.

      She ran backwards, defending herself from the incoming bites, but then she crashed into a face of sheer rock wall, and could retreat no further. She crouched into an attack position, hissing like an animal caught in a trap.

      Just as a dog leapt at her, the boy tackled it to the ground.

      ‘Now!’ he shouted. ‘Climb!’

      Serafina turned and tried to scramble up the craggy rock face, but the rock was dripping with water and too slippery to climb. Emboldened by her attempt to escape, two of the dogs immediately charged. She kicked their heads away repeatedly with her feet. She swatted and punched with her fists.

      ‘Don’t fight, you fool! Climb!’ the boy shouted. ‘You’ve got to run!’

      Just as she turned to climb, another dog lunged at her, but the boy leapt onto its back, biting and scratching like a wild animal. The hound howled in vicious indignation and twisted around, snapping furiously at the boy. They went tumbling onto the ground in a fierce ball of battle. Two more dogs dived fang-first into the melee.

      Seeing her chance, she jumped up and grabbed the branch of a rhododendron, then hoisted herself up the face of the rock. She quickly found a foothold and another branch. Using the rhododendron bushes as a ladder, she climbed as fast as she could up the cliff. Try that, you handless mutts!

      When she had climbed out of reach of the dogs, she looked back. Two of them ran back and forth at the base of the cliff, growling as they tried to find a way up. The braver and stupider of the two tried repeatedly to run up the sheer wall, only to fall back down again.

      ‘Go on back to your master, you nasty dogs!’ she spat at them, remembering the dark and shadowy figure.

      But as she looked out across the woods it wasn’t their master she was looking for. She couldn’t see the other three dogs or the boy. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been consumed in a terrible battle. She hadn’t been able to tell who was winning and who was losing, but it seemed impossible that he could fight off all three of them at once.

      She waited and listened out into the forest, but there was nothing. The two dogs that had been on her had disappeared. They were running along the base of the cliff. Those mongrels are looking for another way up, she thought.

      She had to keep moving before it was too late. She climbed another fifteen feet until she reached the top edge of the cliff.

      Panting and exhausted, and bleeding from her head, arms and calves, she crumpled to the ground. She scanned the trees below her, searching for the boy.

      She looked and looked, but there was nothing moving out there, nothing making a sound. How had they moved away from her so quickly? Was the boy all right? Did he get away? Or was he hurt?

      She’d never laid eyes on the boy before, never seen anything like him, the way he moved and fought. He had brownish skin, a lithe, muscled body, and long, shaggy, dark brown hair, but it was his speed and his ferocity that had struck her most. She reckoned he must be one of the local mountain folk, like her pa, who were well known for being tough as nails and twice as sharp, but the boy had fought as hard as a rabid bobcat. There was something almost feral about him, like he’d lived in these woods all his life.

      She stood and scanned the terrain behind her – flat, rocky ground and a thicket of shrub-like vegetation leading down into a larger ravine. She was pretty sure she knew where she was and how to get home, but she turned and looked out over the cliff again. The feral boy had saved her life. How could she just leave him?

      The pain of the bites and scratches she’d suffered in the battle burned something fierce, like sharp, twisting barbed wire puncturing her flesh. Blood dripped down into her eyes from the wound to her head. She needed to get home.

      She stared out across the tops of the trees in the direction she had last seen the boy. She waited and listened, thinking she’d hear signs of battle or maybe see him looking up at her. Or, God forbid, she would see his bloody, torn body lying lifeless on the ground.

      Don’t fight, you fool! Climb! His words came ringing in her ears like he was still there. Run! he’d shouted.

      Should she flee like he’d told her to, or should she look for him like she wanted to?

      She hated making noise, making herself known to whatever lurked in the forest around her, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do: she cupped her hands round her mouth and whispered, ‘Hello! Can you hear me?’ over the tops of the trees.

      And then she waited.

      There was nothing but the crickets and frogs and the other sounds of the night forest.

      She could feel the battle-pound of her heart slowing down, her breaths getting weaker, and her arms and legs getting heavier. If she was going to make it home, she had to go soon.

      She didn’t want to just leave him out there fighting on his own. She wasn’t the leaving kind – or the forgetting kind, either.

      She wanted to talk to him, find out his name and where he lived, or at least know he was safe. Who was he? Why was he in the forest in the middle of the night? And why was he willing to leap into a pack of vicious dogs to defend her?

      She whispered once more into the trees, ‘Are you out there?’

      

      Serafina knew she’d waited for the feral boy too long when she heard the two wolfhounds coming towards her from the north. They had found a way up to the high ground.

      She looked around her. She glanced up at a tree, wondering if she could climb high enough. Then she thought about scaling back down the cliff again to confuse them, but she knew she couldn’t survive here all night on her own. Get out of here! the feral boy had told her.

      Finally, she gathered herself up.

      Whoever the boy was, she hoped he’d be all right. Stay strong, my friend.

      She ducked into a dense boscage of spruce and fir, the evergreens packed so tightly together that it was like swimming in an ocean of green foliage. As she pushed her way through the thicket, she found her strength giving way to confusion. Her knees kept buckling beneath her, and she couldn’t focus on the terrain in front of her. She raised her hand to her head and realised that she was bleeding badly from a tear in her scalp. The blood was dripping down her forehead and into her eyes.

      She СКАЧАТЬ