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Back Down Station Save as PDF
Chapters (35)
  1. Contents
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. 8
  10. 9
  11. 10
  12. 11
  13. 12
  14. 13
  15. 14
  16. 15
  17. 16
  18. 17
  19. 18
  20. 19
  21. 20
  22. 21
  23. 22
  24. 23
  25. 24
  26. 25
  27. 26
  28. 27
  29. 28
  30. 29
  31. 30
  32. 31
  33. 32
  34. 33
  35. Copyright

They’d had enough of his nonsense, clearly. The other two laid into him with no finesse. A fist to the gut, a blow to the side of his head, and he was reeling. He couldn’t see straight. He lashed out, hit something, and his hand felt like he’d struck solid wood.

Then he was down, and the blows didn’t stop falling. His back, his legs, his head. His turban saved him: that, and a clear command stopped the beating before he was crippled.

‘Hello, little darkie. You must think you’ve very clever to have worked it all out. Better you hadn’t shouted it out so all the world could hear, though.’

Dalip forced one eye open. Everything hurt so much, it didn’t matter which bit of him was damaged.

‘Hello, wolfman,’ he said. His lip had split open. He may have lost a tooth, he couldn’t tell.

The wolfman crouched down and plucked the kirpan from Dalip’s fist. He waggled it like a finger. ‘You weren’t going to do much with this.’

‘I had to try.’

‘Of course you did. Now where’s your little darkie friend?’

Dalip spat out blood on the ground.

‘Cat got your tongue? She can’t have gone far. Go,’ he said to the other men, ‘bring her back.’

Dalip couldn’t breathe through his nose, so he lay there, curled up, mouth open, panting. The wolfman was missing something.

‘Where,’ he managed, ‘where are your wolves?’

‘My wolves?’ He rubbed the end of his nose, and gave a sly smile. ‘Is that what you’re worried about?’

The wolfman dropped the kirpan and held his hands out in front of him, curling his fingers around imagined chains. He clenched his jaw, and his eyelid twitched.

His hands did hold chains. Those chains looped around the necks of wolves. The wolves sniffed at Dalip, smelling his blood and his defeat.

‘These wolves, you mean? They’re right here.’

11

11

Mary stayed very still, even though the water was cold and the current pulled at her boilersuit. The voices were right above her, above where she crouched amongst the roots and the weeds, with only a thin overhang of soil hiding her. Her chin was in the river, and she was prepared, no matter how much she’d hate it, to take a deep breath and submerge completely. Anything, just so long as she wasn’t discovered.

She could hear the men beating Dalip, the steady grunts of effort as their fists rose and fell. She could hear the wolfman’s taunts. Then she heard him call for her to be found.