Philip Pullman: Once Upong a time in the North

And the bear turned and ran silently into the alley.

'Captain, the rifle, if you please,' said Lee. 'Right now.'

'Oh ja. Ja. Mr Mate!' the Captain bellowed, and a voice from the rail called:

'Aye, skipper!'

'Mr Johnsen, would you go and bring my rifle and the box of ammunition from the lazaret, if you please. Look lively.'

Further down the quay, the gun had stopped. The crowd was backing away to give it room. A man in maroon stood beside it, and shouted something through a megaphone which was utterly incomprehensible. Lee spread his hands wide.

The man shouted again, and again it was impossible to understand him. Lee shook his head.

Someone ran down the gangplank behind him, and hurried up to the Captain. A moment later, van Breda handed the rifle to Lee.

'Oh, thank you, Captain. Well, my sweet Aunt Betsy! A Winchester! How about that?'

'You know this rifle?'

'Best there is. And in good order, too.'

He swiftly filled the magazine, cursing his

carelessness over the pistol, and enjoying the feel of a well-balanced and well-oiled piece of machinery. He felt much better having it in his hands.

'Captain,' he said, 'this is the warehouse, this one • right here?'

'It is.'

'Do you know exactly where your cargo is stowed?'

'Yes. All we need to do is open the door.'

Lee took a handful of cartridges from the box and dropped them into his pocket, then turned to look back along the quay.

For the gas-gun had resumed its grinding forward movement, and Lee could see now how it was crewed: it looked like one man to drive it, two to fire and reload. The long barrel rose and swung from left to right and back again, before settling on the stern of the schooner.

It was a thing to smash down buildings with, a thing to sink a ship, and Lee thought that if they fired it just once it would be the end of this adventure, and the end of him, too.

It came closer, and Lee lifted the rifle to his shoulder. It was nearly at the end of the middle warehouse, just opposite the alley between that and the next to last, and Lee's finger tightened on the trigger -

But before anything else happened, there came a thunder of feet and a roar such as Lee had never heard, and out of the alley burst Iorek Byrnison, to hurl the huge weight of himself against the bulk of the gun.

Lee gave a cry of surprise - he couldn't help it.

The gunners cried out in alarm as the wheels and the track skidded and scraped on the stone. Iorek's first smash had swung the front of the gun round so that the barrel was pointing out over the harbour, and the driver desperately hauled at the brake; but then Iorek set his shoulder to the side of the carriage, and heaved and shoved until the two front wheels had rolled over the edge, and the whole gun tilted forwards. The gunners were shouting with alarm and struggling to swing the barrel back round, and then Iorek shoved again and the gun went off with a flash of fire and smoke and a deafening bang, sending a shell skipping across the water, right into the side of the quay beside the coal tanker. It exploded with a plume of water, and rock hurled high into the air, scattering the ship's crew and the crane driver. But few noticed them, because the blast of the gun had infuriated Iorek, and now he had his claws under the rear of the carriage, and while the engine roared and the caterpillar tracks screamed on the stone, the bear straightened his back with an immense effort and heaved the whole weapon and its ihree-man crew into the water with a huge splash. One of the men jumped clear; the other two disappeared with the gun.

Cheers from the ship's crew, a yell of delight from Lee.

The bear dropped to all fours again and sauntered along to join Lee at the schooner.

'Well, I'd hate to see you get angry, York Byrnison,' said Lee.

Across the water, the crew of the coal tanker were cautiously inspecting the damage to the wharf. The crane driver was shaking his head at the bosun, who was yelling at him to get back to work, and the driver in charge of the rail trucks was running back from the engine to see what had happened. Even the dredger had stopped work for a minute, but presently the steady chugging resumed.

For the moment, no one was moving among the crowd further down the quay. Lee looked around more carefully. To his right as he faced towards the town loomed the bulk of the warehouse: a three-storey building in grey stone, with a row of windows on the top and middle floors. The massive doors were of steel, and opened inwards. Projecting from the centre of the wall above the top floor, just under the eaves, was a beam and tackle for lifting goods directly up. The sun was bright now, for the clouds had blown away, and it shone full on the warehouse front from over Lee's left shoulder when he faced down the quay.

Behind him, the Captain was shouting orders, and Lee heard a muffled bang from below decks, followed by a coughing throb, which told of the detonator starting the heavy-oil engine. On the foredeck, two sailors were busily removing the cover from the forward hatch, while another man was checking the tackle on a derrick that had been rigged over it on the foremast.

Suddenly Hester said, 'Top floor right, Lee.'

He swung the rifle up towards the warehouse and saw what she'd seen: a flicker of movement behind the third window in from the end. He kept the rifle trained directly on it, but saw no more movement.

Iorek Byrnison stood beside Lee, glaring down the length of the quay towards the crowd. The Captain and the mate came down to join them.

'Now, Mr Mate,' said Lee, 'how you going to move that cargo of yours?'

'It's on trucks,' the mate said. 'We set it all up ready before they locked us out. It won't take half an hour.'

'Right. Captain, tell me this: what's the layout in the warehouse? What do we see when we open the door?'

'The space is fully open. There are columns, I don't know how many, stone columns supporting the floors above. On the ground floor at present there are mostly bundles of furs and skins. My cargo is near the far wall on the left-hand side, stacked ready on trucks.'

'These bundles of skins - how high are they stacked? Can I look right across the whole space in there, or are they too high to see over?'

'Too high, I think.'

'And what about stairs?'

'In the centre at the back.'

'And the upper floors?'

'I don't know what -'

'Lee! Top left!' said Hester, and in the same moment Lee caught a flash of sunlight as a window opened.

He swung the rifle up, and that must have put the sharp-shooter off, because the one snatched pistol shot went past him and thudded into the deck of the schooner. Lee fired back at once. The window shattered, scattering broken glass down three floors to the ground, but there was no sign of the gunman.

Iorek Byrnison looked up briefly, and then said, 'I open the door.'

Lee half expected to see him charge and flatten it in one rush, but the bear's behaviour was quite different: he touched the steel door several times in different places with a claw, tapping, pressing, touching with the utmost delicacy. He seemed to be listening to the sound it made, or feeling for some quality in the resistance it offered.

Lee and Hester were standing back from the building, at the edge of the quay, from which point he could see all the windows.

'Lee,' said Hester quietly, 'if that's McConville in there -'

'Ain't no if, Hester. I've known he was in there from the first.'

'Mr Scarsby,' said the bear, 'shoot a bullet at this spot.' He scratched an X at a point near the upper hinge of the right-hand door.