The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [115]
Quire shot a glance up to the chimney of the farmhouse. No smoke. There would be someone here somewhere, though. He was sure of that. If it was Blegg or Ruthven, all he needed was to draw them close enough with the temptation of the false Durand at his side, and he would put a ball in their head. There would be no petty talk, no hesitation. If Dunbar was even still alive, Quire was all but he certain he would not have long remained so—none of them would—had the real Durand been handed over. This way, at least there was a chance. But only if he got the first kill in.
The cart creaked to a halt in the centre of the farmyard. A flock of pigeons that had been roosting on the roof of the barn burst into the air at the sound, clattering their way into the cloudy sky with flailing wings. They carried Quire’s gaze with them for a moment. He watched them coalesce into a flock and go sweeping down behind the building. And because he did that, he did not see the hounds straight away.
“God damn, Quire,” Spune said with feeling. “You never said anything about dogs.”
Quire snapped his head back. They were loping across the yard from the open door of the cowshed. Two of them, closing quickly. As filthy as he remembered, and with those same dead and lightless eyes.
“What’s happening?” Merry Andrew shouted, stirring beneath the canvas.
The horse reared in alarm, violently enough to shake the front end of the cart, but its harness dragged it back down. The leading dog came bounding up and sprang at the horse’s head. It seized hold of the animal’s nose and lips with its teeth, and tore away a strip of skin and flesh as the horse screamed and twisted and tried to raise its head.
“Jesus Christ,” Spune said, rising to his feet, sloughing the great cloak from his shoulders and whipping out his iron cudgel.
Quire dropped the reins and reached for the pistol to prevent it from sliding away as the cart slewed round, dragged by the distraught horse. The first dog was under the horse’s neck, snapping at it, tearing at it. The second lunged up at the side of the cart, close by Spune, trying to get a hold on his ankle. Spune leaned down and hit it hard on the side of the head with his truncheon. The beast fell back, rolled, and recovered its feet in an instant, coming bounding back towards the cart.
Quire had his pistol in hand now. He cocked the hammer. He might have tried a shot at one or other of the dogs, but the horse succumbed entirely to its terror then, and bolted. It pounded its attacker beneath its hoofs and swept the cart over the fallen hound, crashing off in directionless panic, trailing streamers of blood and mucus and spit from its mangled muzzle.
Merry Andrew and Mowdiewarp, flailing around in the back, trying to free themselves of the smothering canvas, were screaming abuse at the horse, at Quire, and the world in general.
The sudden, violent movement pitched Spune off the cart altogether, and flung Quire against the back of his seat. He tried to steady himself as best he could, one-handed, but would likely have been thrown clear had the horse not found itself under renewed assault. The very dog it had trampled just moments before came racing up to its rear leg, passing dangerously close to the spinning front wheel of the cart, and unhesitatingly leaped up and fixed its teeth into the horse’s hamstring. That was enough to slow it dramatically, and it limped desperately along on three legs as the hound put the whole weight of its body into a violent shaking, intended to tear out a mouthful of muscle.
Quire leaned forward and down from his seat and shot the dog in the head. The flare and roar of the gun startled the horse all over again, and it staggered sideways, but it was lapsing into that state of numb shock Quire had seen in its kind before when they were seriously injured. The pistol spat its ball into the dog’s skull just behind the eye, and blew a hole the size of a half-crown coin in the far side of the animal’s head, sending a portion of its skull and ear spinning away across the yard. The impact was enough to knock