Bartholomew’s chomping dentures went to make the hole grow larger, but Hannibal placed a paw on his head and stopped him.
– Beaver, stop. Chisel away at all the door. Leave it paper thin.
– Do I look like a wolf grandmother sucking eggs; or whatever it is wolf grandmothers do?! Who are you to tell a beaver woodsmith his trade? Shall I instruct you how to hunt and kill?!
– Question him not, guilded carpenter. – I said to Bartholomew, before his loose tongue cost him his life – Our great commander knows that behind this table there lies an army of fiendish Soviet woodlice; many-toothed mutants grim; and all too eager, to chop off the head of a beaver.
– Pah! But what use will this wood be if it lies in shivers and slivers? What can you build with such matchsticks?
– We do not build, peasant labourer. We are wolves. And we will not even build a coffin for your family, if the need arises. Do I make myself clear, beaver?
– As crystal as the undammed wild water from the savage age before the beaver … I shall obey. – Bartholomew said finally.
He fought back his desire to fashion the wood into usable chunks and instead turned formed table into formless splinters. But instinct overcame him at one point; and he returned to the tiny hole he had first created; recognizing it as the weakest point in the wood’s defenses. Within less a handful of bites from his mighty buck teeth, it reached the size of his own head, but then his industriousness suddenly ceased and his body grew limp as the stillborn; plucked unready from infected honey womb. Before we had time to react, he fell to the floor; and the blood that issued from his throat, an unchecked lake choked with wooden clots, told us that his part in the war was over. A Soviet stalwart, no doubt, had been waiting on the other side for the hole to reach the dimensions of a wolf’s lower jaw, and once this rupture was reached, the enmity flooded back to drown the master of wood and maker of dams. He died with wood in his mouth, which is how all beavers wish to die.
I would like to write, sentimental cousin, of the deep sense of loss I felt; I would like to bring tears to both our eyes with fine words of fealty to fallen comrades; I would like to call to the sky with fearsome invocations to heaven for divine justice. All these things I would like to do, but only to impress you; and to remind you of the forest fox I once was, and hide the Ministry fox I have become. In truth, I felt nothing of the kind. I did promise and warn you, loyal reader, that from the first letter to the last, I would to you alone be true and recount faithful; and hope that this grain of truth, hidden within these stained confessional sheets, would at some later date germinate and allow truth to grow within my other thoughts and actions. All hope for me lies in you and the lies I do not tell you.
I would like to speak of the heavy guilt I experienced in bringing the honest forest creature to such a grizzly end; since my own paw print is stamped on his death certificate as surely as the wolf assassin’s. It was I who pointed the wolf in his direction; and in that selection, I doomed him. So where was the remorse that walks hand-in-hand with guilt? She was absent from the playground of my psyche; off on some field trip with my truant conscience, perhaps. Without these worthy companions to guide my heart and soul, the corpse on the floor was just one more dead body; a carcass among many; and so accustomed have I become to death and animate animals turned pieces of flesh that one more lifeless sack of blood of bones on the carpet moved me heart no more than a fallen leaf on the forest floor. What monster have I become? There is only enough of me left to ask your forgiveness; but can one be forgiven for a guilt one does not feel? Can there be repentance without remorse?
And yet, here at last, I begin to feel something. In seeing your judgmental face wince and your sorrowful head shake, the embers of conscience, blown by this epistolary confession, redden and glow; and this weak nascent sense of guilt tells me that there is at least a shadow of my former self alive. He is hidden deep, I tell you, under many layers of Ministry fat; but he is there nonetheless, and I still exist.
And the battle within myself complete, I return at last to the battle for the heart of the Ministry. Field Marshall Hannibal pointed at the weakened door and shouted to his troops:
– Break down the bridge! Inherit the kingdom! This broken fortress will be ours!
And with these words, three of the largest wolves jumped at the table and the weakened wood creaked and began to split, but held steady.
– Again, ramrods. Again! Smash this table to smithereens! There are wolves beyond with throats waiting to be gashed. Charge!
Once more the same three wolves ran and jumped at the crumbling barrier; and I can see them now, in memory: three mighty blooded wolves suspended in mid air, like ghost riders; their synchrony timed to land at the vertical table in unison; crashing into it with sublime control; bringing maximum force to bear on the dying barricade. Their companions also shook, in agitation; panting to commence the carnage; their frothing lips soapy in bloodlust.
This time, the door gave way, and collapsed backwards under the weight of the assault. The toppled table had not even fallen when Field Marshall Hannibal turned quickly and barked a quintet as an order for his rear guard troops to leave their lonely posts and make their way to the front line. Turning back quickly, he saw the wolves on the other side adopt a defensive position; and a line of five wolves with a second line of three behind, stood in wait to repel our advance. I looked behind these hardened soldiers and saw a second battalion of Soviet wolves at the other side of the fourth floor hall; and behind them, rabid wolves of the Prophet snarled. It was no time for mathematics, but I would say that both sides were almost equally matched.
In the very centre of the rectangular arena, Alpha Wolf sat; his body rock-like and only his head moving from left to right to survey the two fronts of his last stand. Beta Wolf was nowhere to be seen, but I did not notice her absence until later. I stood apart, at the edge; beyond the flak and cannon shot; unseen by all but watching everyone.
The armies of hellish Heaven and ignoble science stood ready to cancel each other out; and I stood behind them, waiting.
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