‘Just thought I’d mention it. Bye for now, then.’

Before he could escape, Sis grabbed his collar and pulled. ‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said. ‘You’re going to stay here and talk to them. They’re your kind, not mine.’

A door opened. No need to look to know who it was. ‘Igor!’ he was shouting. ‘Call the guards!’

‘My kind? I didn’t send for them!’

This time, Sis realised, there was something subtly different, even though everything was apparently the same. Something that hadn’t been there before. What could it be? Ah yes, the guards, with their body armour and machine pistols. That was what was different.

‘That was always your trouble,’ she hissed to her brother, who was standing as still as a rock and gazing at the troopers as if they’d just appeared from out of his own nose. ‘No imagination.’

‘I didn’t send for them,’ Carl said. ‘I thought it was you.’

‘Me? What would I want with…?’

‘This is silly,’ Carl said loudly. ‘Delete guards, enter!’ Nothing happened. ‘Control, delete guards, enter!’ More nothing. ‘Control, Alt, Delete!’ he barked shrilly. ‘Oh come on, you useless thing, stop mucking about and do as you’re bloody well told!’

Somehow, that didn’t inspire Sis with a great deal of confidence, since she’d heard him shouting more or less the same words up in his bedroom on the not-too-infrequent occasions when he’d contrived to crash his computer. And Carl’s computers, she recalled with a heavy feeling, tended to crash about as often as a blind rally driver.

‘I don’t think they can hear you,’ she said softly. ‘Or they aren’t particularly interested.’

Nor, on the other hand, were they getting there all that fast; like Igor a few minutes ago, they seemed to be running on the spot. ‘Restart,’ Carl howled. ‘Return to DOS. Mummy! Help!’

Whoever or whatever it was that Carl was yelling at didn’t seem to be taking the slightest notice; which was, of course, completely normal. All computers expect to be yelled at. There’s not a single computer in the whole world that hasn’t been sworn at. Even the discreet little VDU with the crossed keys monogram on the keyboard that sits on the Pope’s desk in his office in the Vatican has in its time heard language that’d make a Marine blush.

‘I don’t understand,’ Carl confessed, as the guards continued their racing-stalagmite rush towards them. ‘It shouldn’t be doing this. I think someone’s been playing with it, and it’s gone haywire.’

‘I have an idea,’ Sis said. ‘Let’s run away.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Carl replied contemptuously. ‘It’s just software, it can’t—’

One of the guards racked back the slide of his machine gun. He made a pantomime of it, and the sound effects were both overdone and unrealistic. And when he fired, the row of bullet holes in the wall above their heads was far too straight and unwavering.

However…

They ran.

‘I dunno,’ sighed the elf, gracefully sidestepping a falling roof-beam. ‘Before I got mixed up with you, I used to go days at a time without having houses fall on me. But now…’

‘Shut up.’ Fang grabbed a chair and threw it through a window. ‘After you.’

‘You’re too kind.’

‘I want to see if they’re still shooting at us.’

As it turned out, they were; but both arrows missed by at least an eighth of an inch. The elf made a peculiar noise, two parts rage to three parts terror with a pinch of cayenne pepper and a cocktail olive, and darted away in the direction of the nearest bush. A couple more arrows narrowly missed her, persuading Fang to jump back out of the way of the window. Then he jumped forward again to avoid a manhole-cover-sized chunk of falling plaster.

‘Hey, you,’ he yelled at Julian, ‘you know about this sort of thing. What should we do?’

Julian, sensibly crouched under a stout oak table with a paper bag over his head (he’d picked up that tip from a government leaflet), beckoned with his front right trotter. ‘Under here,’ he said. ‘It’s what I usually do, and it hasn’t let me down yet.’

Fang joined him, just as a rafter landed right where he’d been standing. Not long afterwards, what was left of upstairs and a representative sample of the walls followed suit. Despite several direct hits, the table stayed in one piece.

‘Thanks,’ Fang muttered, when the bombardment was over. ‘I reckon I owe you one.’

Julian took off his paper bag. ‘Just who are you?’ he said. ‘I’ll swear the voice is familiar.’

‘Ah.’ Fang thought quickly. There were the three little pigs. There were the dwarves. There were also, apparently, the samurai, though what harm he’d ever done them he hadn’t a clue. Virtually everybody he could think of at the moment was fairly radically anti-wolf.

On the other hand, Wolfpack’s fundamental and highly cherished Prime Directive demanded that its officers tell the truth at all times, regardless of the consequences. Along with justice and the Fairyland Way, truth was what the Pack stood for. It was what made them a force for good in the world.

‘I’m a handsome prince,’ Fang replied. ‘What does it look like?’

Julian shrugged. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘Now let’s get out of here quick, before those nutcase brothers of mine come looking for me.’

Having shifted sundry bits of dead architecture out of the way, Fang and Julian crawled out from under the table and looked round. The dense clouds of dust were just beginning to settle, and in the distance there were shouts of ‘There he is!’, followed by the twang of bowstrings.

‘Which way?’ Fang shouted.

‘No idea. Hang on, though, what about that castle over there? Good strong walls, high towers, moat, portcullis; you never know your luck. Come on.’

As they ran, Fang could have pointed out that in his quite extensive experience, the average castle could be razed to the ground with less puff than it takes to blow up a party balloon; but his burgeoning diplomatic instincts prevented him. They made it to the gatehouse in remarkably good time.

‘Here,’ Julian called out, ‘let us in, quick!’

A small sally-port in the main gate creaked open, and a long, thin nose appeared in the opening. ‘Why should I?’ squeaked a high, thin voice. ‘Get lost.’

‘We’re in mortal danger, that’s why,’ Julian replied urgently. ‘Haven’t you people got any respect for the concept of sanctuary?’

‘No.’ The nose withdrew, and the door started to close.

‘Stop,’ Fang barked out. ‘Wait. Don’t listen to my friend, he’s just kidding. What we are in fact is, we’re double glazing salesmen.’

The door didn’t open, but it stopped closing. ‘Double glazing salesmen?’

‘That’s right,’ Fang panted. ‘We also sell brushes, useful gadgets for the kitchen and complete sets of the Encyclopaedia Gigantica.’

‘That’s more like it,’ the voice behind the nose grumbled. ‘Still…’

‘Also,’ Fang added desperately, ‘we’re fully accredited evangelists of the Church of the Divine Revelation, and if you’d care to spare us a moment, we could show you some really interesting pamphlets.’

‘Pamphlets,’ the unseen doorkeeper repeated, with barely contained excitement. ‘Tracts? You got tracts?’

‘We got more tracts than you could possibly imagine. Not just religious ones, either. For discerning people like yourself, we also have a wide selection of canvassing leaflets to help you decide who to vote for in local elections.’

The door swung open. ‘You’d better come in,’ said the doorkeeper. ‘Got any Referendum Party videos? I love Referendum Party videos.’

Once inside, Fang and Julian quickly knocked the doorkeeper out and tied him up with a piece of rope they found hanging on a hook near the gate; it was just the right length, and presumably kept there for the purpose. ‘Now,’ Fang muttered, ‘we need a couple of guards. Ah, here they are.’ He reached for a thick billet of wood that was lying conveniently close; then he frowned. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘Talk about inefficient. Here, you.’