The Truth

that had happened. It was imminent pain that occupied all his future. The face of the creature was inches away, eyes wide and staring through him at something horrible, but his hands tight around William’s neck.
    William would never have dreamed of using a cliché as tired as “viselike grip” but, as consciousness became a red-walled tunnel, the editor inside him said, yes, that’s what it would be like, the sheer mechanical pressures that…
    The eyes crossed. The scream stopped. The man staggered sideways, half crouched.
    As William raised his head he saw Sacharissa stepping backwards.
    The editor chittered away in his head, watching him watching her. She’d kicked the man in the…Er, You Know! It had to be the influence of those humorous vegetables. It had to be.
    And he had to get the Story.
    William got to his feet and waved frantically at the dwarfs, who were advancing with their axes at the ready.
    “Wait! Wait! Look…you…er…Brother Pin…” He winced at the pain in his arm, looked down and saw, with horror, the evil length of the spike poking through the cloth of his jacket.
    Mr. Pin tried to focus on the boy grappling with his own arm, but the shadows wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t certain, now, that he was still alive. Yes! That was it! He must be dead! All this smoke, people shouting, all the voices whispering in his ear, this was some kind of hell but, aha, he had a return ticket…
    He managed to straighten up. He fished the potato of the late Mr. Tulip out of his shirt. He held it aloft.
    “G’t m’ ’tato,” he said, proudly. “All right, okay?”
    William stared at the smoke-stained, red-eyed face, with its horrible expression of triumph, and then at the shrunken vegetable on the end of its string. His grip of reality was at the moment almost as slippery as Mr. Pin’s, and people showing him a potato seemed to mean only one thing.
    “Er…it’s not a very funny one, is it?” he said, wincing as he tugged at the spike.
    Mr. Pin’s last train of thought jumped the rails. He let go of the potato and with a movement that owed nothing to thought and everything to instinct pulled a long dagger from inside his jacket. The figure before him was fading into just another shadow among many now, and he lunged madly.
    William pulled the metal free, and his hand flew out in front of him—
    And that, for the moment, was everything that Mr. Pin ever knew.
    The sleet hissed on a few remaining embers.
    William stared into the puzzled face as the light in the eyes went out and the attacker sagged slowly to the ground, one hand fiercely hanging onto the potato.
    “Oh,” said Sacharissa distantly. “You spiked him…”
    Blood dripped down William’s sleeve.
    “I…er…I think I could do with a bandage,” he said. Ice shouldn’t be hot, he knew, but shock was filling his veins with a burning chill. He was sweating ice.
    Sacharissa ran forward, tearing at the sleeve of her blouse.
    “I don’t think it’s bad, ” said William, trying to back away. “I just think it’s one of those…enthusiastic wounds.”
    “Vot has been happening here?”
    William looked at the blood on his hand, and then at Otto, standing on top of a pile of rubble with an amazed look on his face and a couple of packages in his hands.
    “I just go avay for five minutes to buy some more acids and suddenly zer whole place…oh dear…oh dear…”
    Goodmountain pulled a tuning fork out of his pocket and twanged it on his helmet.
    “ Quick, lads!” He waved the fork in the air. “‘Oh will you come to the mission—’”
    Otto waved his hand gently as the dwarfs began to sing.
    “No, I am vell on top of it, thank you all the same,” he said. “Ve know vot all this is about, don’t ve. It vas a mob, yes? Zere is alvays a mob, sooner or later. Zey got my friend Boris. He showed them zer black ribbon but zey just laughed and—”
    “I think they were after all of us,” said William. “I wish I’d had a chance to ask him a few questions, even so…”
    “You mean like ‘Is this the first time you’ve strangled anyone?’” said Boddony. “Or ‘How old are you, Mr. Killer?’”
    Something started to cough.
    It seemed to be the pocket of the man’s jacket.
    William looked around at the stunned dwarfs to see if anyone else had a clue about what he should do next. Then he reluctantly patted the greasy suit with extreme carefulness and pulled out a slim, polished box.
    He opened it. A small green imp