Once Upon a Time in the North by Philip Pullman Page A

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 behavior 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.
    Lee looked up to make sure the gunman at the window was still out of sight, checked back along the quay to see the crowd hanging back still, unwilling to come closer just yet, checked with the Captain that the men were ready.
    "Right," he said. "Now this is what we'll do. York Byrnison and I will open the door, and I'll go in first. There's a gunman in there—maybe more than one— and I want to make sure they're not intending any unpleasantness. If you take my advice, Mr. Mate, you and your crew will wait on board and out of sight till you hear from me or York Byrnison that the place is safe."
    'You expecting more trouble?"
    "Oh, I always expect trouble. York Byrnison, you ready?"
    "Ready."
    "Here goes."
    He lifted the rifle, took aim at the X on the door, and fired. A neat hole appeared in the steel sheet, and that was all; but then Iorek Byrnison reached out a paw and pushed gently, and the entire door fell inwards with a deafening crash.
    At once Lee leapt past Iorek and ran into the warehouse, making for the open staircase he could dimly see straight ahead.
    And at the same moment a shot blazed out from dead ahead, somewhere in the ranks and rows of stinking bundles. The bullet clipped the shoulder of Lee's coat, feeling like the clutch of a ghost, and then came a cry and a crash from the ship outside. Lee stopped and took cover behind a row of bales. Stupid to rush in like that, he thought: after the bright sun on the quayside, this was almost like night, and his opponent's eyes were already well adjusted.
    "Where is he?" came the bear's voice from behind him.
    "He fired from dead ahead," said Lee quietly. "But there's at least one other man upstairs. If you take this one, I'll go on up and deal with him."
    As he said that, he heard another shot, and another, from above, and a cry of distress and alarm from the ship. Lee and Iorek ran at the same moment—Lee lightly for the stairs, with Hester bounding ahead, and Iorek slow and ponderous for the first two or three steps as he drove against the inertia of his great bulk, but once moving he was unstoppable. Lee, halfway up the open iron staircase, saw bales of fur and skins hurled aside like thistledown, and then came two or three quick shots and a scream of fear, suddenly cut short in a hideous grunt.
    More shots from high up. Lee leapt up to the next floor, which was largely empty, with just a few wooden cases resting on pallets near the back wall; but it was much lighter here, with sunlight pouring in through the long line of windows.
    And there was no one in sight.
    Lee doubled back and made for the next flight of stairs. He couldn't run silently on these bare floors, and he knew that the man up there would hear him coming and have plenty of time to line up a shot towards the top of the stairs. He stopped just below the level of the upper floor, and raised his hat high on the rifle barrel, and at once a shot spun it round and round—a good shot, instant and accurate.

    But it told him where the man was shooting from: the far corner, on the right as you looked at the warehouse from the quay. Lee stopped and considered.
    What he didn't know was how clear the floor was, whether there were