“The White Horse wouldn’t take the trouble to trample its victims to death one hoof at a time,” I said.
“So it’s not the Horse that’s been killing people,” said Molly.
“No,” I said. “Whatever else is going on with the White Horse, I don’t think it gives a damn about the next generation of the White Horse Faction. I think . . . we have ourselves a very human murderer, in Monkton Manse. And unless someone else has been hiding here all along, which doesn’t seem likely . . . we know who the killer is.”
“Hadrian Coll was my parents’ best friend,” said Molly. “It can’t be him. He taught me how to be a free agent!”
“He was a double agent, working for my family,” I said. “He betrayed people to the Droods, over and over again. He never was who you thought he was.”
“That was the job, all right,” said Coll.
We looked quickly round, and there he was, standing in a doorway, half hidden in shadows, smiling at us. I had no idea how long he’d been there. He looked entirely relaxed, even calm. Didn’t even glance at Troy’s body. He nodded to me. “I should have known you’d be the one to find me out, Drood.”
“How long have you known?” I said.
“From the moment I met you. Your torc is well hidden, but I am half Drood, after all. I inherited the Sight from your uncle James, the legendary Grey Fox. Who was always quick enough to father a child, but never wanted to hang around to see how they turned out. I take it you are his nephew, the equally legendary Eddie Drood? Molly’s fellow. What happened to the real Shaman Bond?”
“I took his place,” I said smoothly. “He doesn’t even know I’m here, using his name. But even with the Sight, you shouldn’t . . .”
Coll shrugged, almost angrily. “You can’t spend as long on the run as I have, with learning to See all kinds of things that you’re not supposed to be able to.” He looked at Molly. “You, with a Drood. Never thought I’d see the day. . . .”
“You don’t know me,” said Molly. “You don’t know anything about me. How could you, when you kept so much from me? How could you do this, Hadrian? How could you just murder these people, after they went to all the trouble of tracking you down, to give you a second chance?”
“It’s all about survival,” said Coll, entirely unmoved. “I never asked for their help, or their second chance. And I certainly never wanted to be found. Bloody fools. Survival always comes first, Molly. I taught you that.”
He stepped forward, out of the shadows of the doorway, into the light. Like the Regent had, so many years before. Coll carried a huge wooden club, with a steel hoof attached to the heavy end. The hoof, and much of the club, was soaked with blood and hair and gore. Thick crimson drops fell steadily from the club’s end to the carpet. A terrible, brutal weapon.
“I arrived on the Island first,” said Coll, smugly. “Long before you two, never mind the Faction. I watched you from the Manse, while I decided how to play this. It gave me quite a turn to see you, Molly, all grown up. I almost gave it up then . . . almost. Survival has no room in it for sentiment, or pity. I’d brought this nasty little toy with me, carefully designed to confuse the issue. I hid it here, in the house. I still hoped I wouldn’t have to use it . . . if the White Horse didn’t show up. But it did. I knew it would. The new Faction leaders had to die, in a sufficiently brutal manner that no one would even try to reassemble the White Horse Faction again.”
“But . . . why?” said Molly. “Why did they have to die? What did they do that was so much of a threat to you, that you had to bludgeon them to death?”
“They found me,” said Coll. “And I didn’t want to be found. Couldn’t afford to be found. It’s the Horse, you see. It’s been chasing me, all these years. Because I’m the last survivor of the Working that called the White Horse forth, and then tried to control it. Because I’m the only one who might be able to put it down, and put it back under its barrow mound again. That’s why I disappeared so thoroughly, ten years ago. Why I’ve been on the run ever since. Always on the run, never able to stop and rest for long, running from one bolt-hole to another, so it could never find me. Until those three young fools tracked me down.
“I still don’t know how they managed it. Someone must have talked. Someone always talks, eventually. But Troy and Adams and Morrison found me, and knocked on my door . . . when even the Droods didn’t know where I was.”
“My family stopped looking for you years ago,” I said. “You were never that important to us.”
Coll flinched, and then laughed. Briefly, and perhaps a little bitterly. “Oh, but I was important. . . . When the White Horse finally finds me, and has its revenge upon me, it will turn its hatred on all Humanity. For burying it under that mound for centuries. For the sin of not worshipping it any more. I’ve kept the world alive, all these years, by keeping the Horse’s attention fixed on me!”
“You do fancy yourself, don’t you?” I said. “It’s just a horse! My family will deal with it. We’ve dealt with worse.”
Coll laughed again, and shook his head stubbornly. He’d been the hero of his own story far too long to give it up now. Even with a murder weapon in his hand, dripping blood and brains from people who had wanted so badly to be his friend.
“I had to kill them,” he said, patiently. “Because if they could find me, then the White Horse could use them to find me. It wasn’t difficult. All I had to do was wait for one to go off on their own, and then just pick them off, one at a time. They never saw it coming. . . . Now I can just disappear again. Escape to somewhere else, become someone else . . . after I’ve killed you two. Sorry, Molly. I don’t have any choice. No witnesses left behind . . . so no one will ever know what happened here. Just a few more dead bodies, in a house with a bad reputation. One more mystery, in mad old Monkton Manse.”
“You’d kill me, Hadrian?” said Molly stepping forward. “You’d really kill me?”
“That’s close enough, Molly,” said Hadrian. “Glad to see you haven’t forgotten what I taught you. I am still fond of you, and very proud of what you’ve made of yourself. You’re . . . important to me; but not more important than me. It’s always all about survival.”
“You betrayed my parents to the Droods,” said Molly, and her voice was cold, so cold. “They were your friends!”
“I’ve had many friends, in many groups,” said Coll. “And left them all behind when I moved on. That was the job. I was only ever in it for the money. After all, you can’t hope to survive, and protect yourself properly, without money. So that always has to come first.” He turned his empty eyes on me. “The Droods promised me they’d take me in. Make me one of them, part of the family. I’d have been safe, as one of the family. Like my father. But they kept putting me off, saying, ‘just one more mission’ . . . until I finally realised they never had any intention of making good on their promises. Not while I could still be useful to them. So really, this is all your fault, Drood.”
“You actually think you can take me, Hadrian?” I said. “Your club with a bit of metal on it, against my strange-matter armour?”
“Oh, this is so much more than just a club,” Coll said earnestly. “I’ve invested a lot of really nasty magics in this old wood, soaked it in vicious aptitudes and powerful qualities, down the long years. . . .”
“Powerful enough to stand against my magics?” said Molly. And just like that, she no longer sounded like the girl who idealised her old tutor. She sounded calm and cold and very dangerous. Her old self again.
Coll didn’t look impressed. He held the club out before him. “You have no idea of what you’re dealing with.”
“Right,” I said.
I stepped forward to distract him, and when he turned the club in my direction, Molly stepped briskly forward and kicked Coll square in the groin. His face squeezed up, and all the breath went out of him. I hit him hard in the arm muscle with my fist, and his hand leapt open, dropping the club. Game over.
And that was when we all stopped abruptly, and turned our heads, to look around. Suddenly, we were back in the entrance hallway again. Even though we’d left it far behind, ages ago. We were half-way across the house, standing before the closed front door. Because something had called us there. And once again, we heard the sound of hooves approaching, outside. Coll forced his eyes open, past the tears streaming down his cheeks. He stared at the door with horrid fascination.
“No . . .” he said, almost pleadingly, like a child. “It can’t do that . . . it can’t!”
“It’s found you,” I said. “It’s not too late, Hadrian. I suppose my family does owe you a debt. Come with me, agree to accept what punishment and penance my family decides on . . . and I’ll stand between you and the Horse. Because I think there are still some things you’re hiding from Molly that she needs to know.”
But he wasn’t listening to me. All his attention was fixed on the closed front door, and the terrible purposeful sounds outside. Drawing steadily closer. The noises were very loud, very heavy, very close now.
“You can’t take me!” Coll screamed defiantly at the door. “You’ll never have me!”
“I told you it was here,” I said. “Molly and I heard it, down on the beach. Funny that it didn’t try to attack us . . .”
“It’s found me again,” said Coll. His eyes were bright, almost fey. “It always finds me. . . .”
“You’re not the man I knew,” said Molly.
Coll turned abruptly to face me. “You’ve got a deal, Drood. Everything I know, every dirty deal and trick I’ve been involved with, everything I know about the Regent of Shadows, and everything I haven’t told you about Molly’s parents. Just—protect me! That’s your job, isn’t it, Drood?”
I looked at Molly. “He’s right. It is. But this isn’t about me. It’s about you. What do you need, Molly? You tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it for you.”
“Oh, hell,” said Molly. “Let him live. He’s too pathetic to kill, now. And just maybe . . . he might know things that I still want to know.”
“Stand back,” I said to Coll. “Give me room to work.”
I summoned up my armour, and it slipped around me in a moment. I felt faster, stronger, sharper; more than enough to deal with a living Horse god. I moved forward, to stand facing the closed front door. The sound of hooves was very clear, very close. The sound of a massive, gigantic Horse. Its every step shook the floor. The sounds approached the door, came right up to it, and then walked right through solid wood without even pausing. The hoof sounds were right there in the hallway with us, advancing steadily, and still I couldn’t see the White Horse, even with the augmented Sight my armour gave me. Heavy steps filled the hall, shaking the floor and the walls. I looked back.
Coll hadn’t moved. He just stood there and stared at the sounds, his face deathly pale, his eyes wide. I think perhaps he saw what I couldn’t. I stood between him and the sounds of the advancing Horse. My hands clenched into golden fists, spikes protruding from the knuckles. Molly came forward to stand beside me, stray magics sparking and spitting on the air around her.
“You can’t have him,” she said, raising her voice. “He’s a thug and a coward and a murderer, but vengeance is mine, not yours.”
The horse sounds just kept coming; so loud now they hurt my ears, even inside my armour. The floor shook, and the portraits on the walls swung back and forth, slamming into each other. The White Horse had to be right in front of me now. I braced myself, ready to throw a punch the moment anything touched me. Molly raised her glowing hands. And the Horse went right through us, invisible, and intangible as a thought. The sounds were behind us. I spun round, just in time to see Hadrian Coll throw up his hands to ward off something only he could see. And then the light went out of his eyes, and he fell to the floor, and didn’t move again.
The sounds stopped. No more sense of something else, so much more than human, in the hallway. Silence. I checked Coll’s body. He was quite dead. Not a mark on him, anywhere, apart from the look of sheer horror on his face. The Horse had trampled his soul.
“It is a terrible thing, to look into the face of a living god,” murmured Molly.
“Coll isn’t the problem any more,” I said, getting up. “The White Horse is the problem now. We can’t let it run free. How do we stop something like that?”
Molly looked at the body of the man who had been her friend and her tutor, and there was nothing in her face. Nothing at all. She turned away.
“Do we really have to stop it?” she said, her voice entirely calm. “I mean, it’s just a horse. Let it run free. Like a wild thing should.”
“It didn’t end up under that barrow by choice,” I said. “Its own priests put it there. Like you said, we have to consider its state of mind. Imprisoned for centuries, then released by people who only wanted to control and use it. If it really has been building up its power, all these centuries, now it no longer has Coll to pursue. . . . It could trample the whole world under its hooves.”
• • •
We left Monkton Manse and went outside. We could hear the White Horse running down on the beach below. I led the way to the edge of the cliff, and we looked up and down the beach; but there was no sign of the Horse anywhere.
“I thought you could See anything through your mask?” said Molly.
“So did I,” I said. “I thought you could See anything with your witchy Sight?”
Molly frowned, thought for a moment, and then carefully pronounced a very old and powerful Word, not meant for human vocal chords. And just like that, the White Horse was there. Impossibly huge, bigger than Monkton Manse, running not on the beach itself, but several feet above it. Dazzlingly white, brighter than the moon, running wild in the night, its unnatural brilliance reflected across the dark waters of the heaving sea. Running for the sheer joy of running; beauty and grace blazing in its every movement. Just to look at such a thing seized my heart. A living idea, too pure and too perfect for this small and grubby world.
“All right,” said Molly. “Now we can see it. What are we going to do?”
I armoured up, covering myself from head to toe in gleaming gold. “We go down to the beach,” I said.
I led the way down the steps cut into the cliff face. Molly stuck close behind me, stray magics sputtering on the air around her. When we reached the bottom and moved off along the pebbled beach, the White Horse was still cantering along, ignoring us. It looked even bigger, up close. Wild and majestic, and utterly untamed.