Julian offered the coin with no comment, and Autrey handed it to Greta with the flourish of a triumphant businessman and went to the back to fetch the cord. Firebaugh was left securing his baggy breeches with both hands, causing Elizabeth to laugh at the sorry spectacle.
Matthew wandered over to one of the windows and moved the curtain aside.
“What is it?” Julian asked sharply, coming over beside him.
“Nothing. But you’re right, we ought to be going.” The tension in his voice surprised him and also worried him; had he seen something—or someone—out there, or not?
“We should’ve gotten out of here already. Autrey!” Julian called. “Hurry up, will you?” He too peered out the window, but the dark and the snow obscured vision beyond a very few yards.
Autrey returned with a length of cord and a small knife. As Julian stood guard to watch Firebaugh in case the knife intrigued him as much as had the musket, Autrey cut several holes in the waist of the offending breeches and threaded the cord through them to create a makeshift belt. “Cinch that in and give it a knot,” he directed, and when the doctor did as ordered and the breeches stayed up Autrey nodded with the satisfaction of a job well done. “There you go,” he said. “Handsome as a stag’s skin on a beaver’s butt.”
As Firebaugh was getting into the banyan robe again for extra warmth, Autrey suddenly stopped still in the middle of the room. “Hear that?” he asked.
Matthew only heard the whine of the wind and the noise of wood crackling in the hearth.
“There! Again! A horse screamin’!” Autrey strode past Matthew and Julian to a window, as obviously his hearing on such matters was acute from eight years of minding the coach teams.
He drew aside the curtain, and as he did an orange flicker of light licked his face.
“Oh my Christ!” he said, his eyes wide and his voice strained with true horror. “The barn’s on fire!”
twenty-eight.
Both Matthew and Julian were instantly at Autrey’s side to peer through the glass, while Greta rushed to the second window. Matthew could see firelight leaping between chinks in the barn’s boards, and now he thought he did catch the high terrified scream of a horse carried by the moaning wind.
“Ha,” Firebaugh said tonelessly. “The cats have caught the squirrels.”
Without a word, Julian turned from the window, took two paces toward Firebaugh and laid the doctor out upon the floor with a right fist to the jaw.
“I have to go out!” Autrey was going for the door.
“Don’t!” Julian said, and the urgency of his voice stopped the other man. “They’re waiting for whoever comes out!”
“I…I have to,” said Autrey, all the blood seemingly drained from his face and his lips a waxy gray. “The horses! They’ll burn alive!”
The moment hung.
Matthew swallowed the gritty taste of his own fear. It had to be done. “I’ll go with you,” he said, reaching into the polar bear coat and his jacket to pull out the pistol.
Autrey’s eyes widened further. Elizabeth said, “Let me go out to him, Matthew. I can—”
“Yes, let her go out!” Firebaugh taunted from the floor. “Once I tell him what a traitor she is, he’ll—”
Julian put a boot upon his throat, which turned the doctor’s voice into a strangled gurgle.
“I never heard a chamberpot talking before, and I don’t like it,” he said.
“I’m going!” Autrey opened the door, and Matthew cocked his pistol and followed him. Julian shouted for Matthew to stop and there was real fear in the shout, but then Matthew and Autrey were out in the snow and both were running toward the barn, where the firelight glowed orange between the boards and tendrils of smoke were being whipped back and forth by the wind.
They had gotten about twenty feet from the cottage when Matthew saw the white flash of a gunshot from the woods across the road and a heartbeat later heard the crack of the blast. At his side, Autrey gave a shout of pain, clutched at his right thigh and then he staggered and went down. Matthew instantly fell to his knees beside the man, who grasped at Matthew’s coat with a bloodied hand and cried out, “The horses! Don’t let ’em burn!”
There was no time for weighing life and death. There was no time to decide if the next bullet would be better aimed than the first.
There was no time.
Matthew leaped up and, crouching low, ran for the barn. He expected another shot but it did not come. Whoever had fired it was getting into a better position, or crossing the road, or whatever. Odds are Lash had brought others with him, and maybe the entire gathering. If so, the odds against himself and Julian were very bad indeed.
When he reached the barn and threw the heavy locking board off its latch, the second shot sizzled past his right ear and thunked into the wood. Whoever was firing could indeed hit a barn, though this was not its broader side. He didn’t wish to pause for a third attempt; he pulled the door open and the heat and noise of the flames growled out at him and he realized he was silhouetted by the light and made to be a better target, so into the fire he ran.
The place was not yet an inferno, but a large pile of hay was burning fiercely and the flames were beginning to lick up the wall on that side. Matthew caught the smell of whale oil over the odors of burning hay and wood. One of the big horses had already pulled free of its tether and it nearly trampled Matthew as he jumped aside in its swift passage out the door. Another smaller horse that must’ve belonged to the Autreys also ran wildly past Matthew and out. Not only were the remaining three horses of their coach pulling at their tethers and screaming in distress, but one other smaller steed was trapped by a second pile of burning hay toward the rear of the barn and it was screaming, spinning around and kicking at the walls.
Matthew had to untie the horses but he was in triple danger: from the unknown gunner, the fire, and the hooves of those Viking monsters. Again, there was no time. He saw a shovel leaning against the wall near the door. He pushed his gun into his waistband, got the shovel and ran to free the Autreys’ horse at the far side of the barn, using the shovel to push aside enough of the mass of burning hay so that the animal could recognize a way out. And indeed it did, rushing past him and gone. Then Matthew turned his attention toward freeing the other three, and that was when the figure came walking toward him through the swirling smoke.
“Ah,” said Bertrand Montague. “The Baron Brux imposter, come here to die.” He lifted his pistol, which Matthew no doubt knew had been reloaded and ready for murder.
Before Montague’s finger could pull the trigger, another shot rang out and the man lurched forward and spun around as if dancing a strange minuet. The pistol in his hand went off with a loud report and the bullet went into the burning hay.
Montague fell to his knees and then onto his face, and Matthew could see the blood rising on his coat from the wound at the center of his spine.
“Any man who shoots my husband and tries to burn horses,” said Greta Autrey as she held the smoking musket at her side, “is not fit to live.” She blinked, perhaps stunned at what she had just done. Then she added, “No questions asked.”
“Help me,” Matthew said.
Together they braved the terrified animals and the flashing hooves. They got two out but the third huge horse was thrashing and jumping so hard neither Matthew nor Greta could get in close enough to release the tether. The fire was getting hotter as more hay caught, and smoke was filling the place. Matthew kept looking toward the open barn door, expecting at any second for another shot to come at him. He and Greta were about to try the task again when the third beast pulled not the tether free but the wooden bar that the lines were tied around, and off the horse galloped, dragging the bar behind it and missing trampling its would-be saviors by mere inches.
The fire would either have to burn itself out or take the barn down in flames. They had to get
back thirty yards to the cottage. Matthew figured any gunner out there was in a good firing position and aiming at the opening. Where might a gunner be? Across the road in the woods? No, probably closer by now. Where, then? In cover behind the coach?
He heard a voice outside call for Montague. He recognized Sandor Krakowski’s accent. Had Lash brought the whole group with him? Cardinal Black and the Owl as well? He remembered how many weapons were in that basket he’d dumped into the hedges; if they’d brought all those, this was going to be like battling a small army. He realized he’d left Bogen’s powderhorn in the coach though he still had the fringed pouch of flints and ammunition in his jacket. Was it worth trying to get the powder? He would have to, because Julian didn’t have any.
All these things spun through his mind in a matter of seconds. He was going to have to go for the coach. He had one shot in his pistol, which he drew from beneath his jacket and cocked. Greta was peering out, the musket at her side and smoke whirling past her. “Greta!” he said, coming up behind her. “Any more bullets for the musket?”
“A box,” she said, still warily looking toward the sinister line of forest across the road.
“Gunpowder?”
“A pouch about half full.”
“Good.” Matthew was relieved he wouldn’t have to run for the coach after all, as that was surely tempting a mortal wound. He looked past Greta’s shoulder and saw that Oliver was crawling toward the cottage. “I’m going to step out in front of you and fire,” he told her. “I want you to run when I pull the trigger. Are you ready?”
She nodded.
Matthew took a breath, almost choking on the billowing smoke that was blowing past him, and stepped outside. He chose to fire his single shot in the direction of the coach—an ear-shattering blast—and Greta ran. Almost at once Matthew realized a figure was on its stomach under the coach, and as he turned to follow Greta the next gunshot flashed and boomed. Matthew felt a heavy tug at the left sleeve of his coat just above the elbow. Someone else fired from the woods: a sputter of sparks and a hiss, a misfire from wet powder. Then Greta had reached her husband and helped him up, and together they made for the cottage door, which Julian opened for both them and the shivering young man who threw himself into the cottage at their heels, knowing how close he’d come to being the recipient of two pistol balls.
Julian slammed the door shut. Elizabeth was standing back against the far wall and Firebaugh had not moved from his position on the floor. Even with his newly-split lower lip, he was grinning like a fool and daring another visit of violence from Julian.
Greta eased Oliver down to the floor. “Damn!” the man said, breathing hard and obviously in severe pain, as the ball had likely cracked his thighbone. “Took a good gooser that one, lady! Busted somethin’, I can tell!”
She looked up at Julian, who had produced his own pistol and had drawn the curtains aside from a window. “Who are they?” she asked.
“Bad men,” said the bad man.
“Horses are gone,” Matthew said, examining the two burn-edged holes in the left sleeve of the polar bear coat where the ball had torn through.
“I saw.”
“Montague came in,” said Matthew. “Greta shot him, and thank God for that.”
“Montague,” Julian repeated. His eyes were narrowed as he scanned the snowy dark. “Lash has brought the others, then.”
“Let me go talk to him!” Elizabeth insisted. “Please, Matthew!”
“And say what?” Julian asked; in this moment of extreme stress his voice was calm and even, as if conversing quietly over social affairs in the lobby of the Mayfair Arms. “Bargain with him? To what end? We need the book and we need the doctor and by God we’re not giving either of them—”
A pistol shot flashed out, again from beneath the coach. The window beside Julian’s face suddenly grew a hole and a spiderwebbing of cracks and there was a whine as the ball hit the stones of the hearth and ricocheted off.
“—up,” Julian finished, speaking calmly again. “Lash intends to kill us anyway, even if we were to give him the book, the doctor and yourself, so what might be the point of that conversation?”
“I would ask him to deliver quick deaths instead of slow,” Elizabeth answered. “You know you’re outnumbered, and by now he’s got this place surrounded.”
“What have you people brought upon us?” Greta asked as tears reddened her eyes. “Mein Gott, are we to die here?”
“Everyone dies, madam,” Julian replied without looking at her. “It is unfortunately a fact of life that most times we cannot choose our fate in that regard. I will say that if my last meal was your very fine chicken soup, I will not go wishing for better food.” At last he gazed down upon her and perhaps only Matthew saw the fleeting expression of sorrow that passed across his face. “My regrets,” he said. “But we’re not dead yet. Please reload that musket and afford me some gunpowder and bullets if you have a supply. Things may get hot here very soon.”
“I have bullets and extra flints.” Matthew took from his jacket the fringed pouch that had belonged to Bogen.
“I saw you fire your shot. You reload first and go man the back door. Madam, the musket and the powder?”
Greta hesitated, the shade of doom still upon her face, until Oliver urged her to go on and to hurry. She left the room. Matthew reloaded his pistol using a ball and a bit of cotton wadding from the pouch, then when Greta returned with the powder he applied the necessary amount for ignition and tamped everything down with the small ramrod that fit in a groove under the barrel.
He started for the back of the house when a voice came, eerily whipped up and down in volume by the whirlwind beyond the broken window.
“Your position,” Lash called, standing in the shelter of the coach, “is untenable! Shall we call an end to this nonsense?”
Firebaugh scrambled up from the floor and shouted, “Lash! Get me out of here!”
“Go to the back, Matthew,” Julian said quietly. “Be ready to reload.”
“Lash!” Firebaugh pushed his face toward the second window. “Help me!”
“Patience, Doctor!” the vice admiral answered. “All in good time.”
“They’re sending Corbett to the—”
Before Firebaugh could get that out, Julian was upon him. As Matthew was heading to the back, he saw Julian catch hold of the doctor’s banyan robe and swing him around with such violence that Firebaugh almost went into the flames of the hearth.
Matthew felt the chill of the wind blowing through the hallway, and he realized he was two steps and a moment too late.
Sandor Krakowski, wearing a brown corduroy coat and a woolen cap on his bald head, had just crept in through the back door. They saw each other at the same time, and at the same time swung their guns up and fired at a distance of twelve feet while they both twisted their bodies to avoid the bullets.
In the roar of gunfire and the explosion of blue smoke, Matthew felt a hot sting across his right cheek and the force of the shot staggered him back along the hallway. He had stars and pinwheels in his eyes, and for an instant everything turned blood red and the hallway itself seemed to pulse like a labored heart. He knew he’d been hit, but had he hit Krakowski?
The answer came at him like a maddened bull.
Krakowski struck out with the empty pistol, caught Matthew on the left shoulder and drove him down. Matthew lost his own gun in the impact but had the sense to roll away from a steel-tipped boot that kicked at his skull. He was not dazed enough to miss the fact that he was fighting for his life, and Julian could not help because as soon as Firebaugh got out the door the rest of Lash’s group would charge in. Matthew felt the blood running down the side of his face from the bullet that had creased him, and in desperation he pulled the ivory-handled dagger of Albion out from his waistband and stabbed at the smoke-stained air where Krakowski had been a second before but
now was not.
A pistol swung, a knee came up, a fist chopped down and Matthew was flattened. The dagger went spinning from his nerveless fingers. He tried to scramble away but a hand caught the back of his coat and then an arm went around his throat and the immediate pressure caused his eyes to bulge from their sockets.
He was facing the front of the house as he was being choked to death. And through the smoke that blew past him he saw her pick up the dagger.
And he saw her look at the blade, and he saw her change.
She was bringing up RakeHell Lizzie from the depths. She was doing it to save a brother Broodie, and even so close to passing out Matthew thought that Sandor Krakowski did not realize who had just entered the hallway. If so, he might have let Matthew go and run for his life.
But it was too late.
Elizabeth’s face had become a waxy mask. It was as if the creature underneath it had in an instant manufactured its own disguise. Her eyes, so warm and brown, took on a cold, hard black shine. Her mouth crimped, as if thirsty for murder. Her entire body tensed like a spring about to uncoil, and with it a need beyond anything Matthew could ever begin to fathom that would only be sated by blood.
She came at Krakowski like a silent spirit drifting through the gunsmoke, her eyes ashine, her mouth twisted slightly to one side, the dagger upraised.
She struck, fast as a blur.
Matthew couldn’t see where she cut him, but he howled and suddenly Matthew was gasping on the floor. Krakowski stumbled over Matthew and fell, and then Matthew saw that RakeHell Lizzie had slashed him across the right side of his face and turned that eye into a white, oozing ruin. Krakowski made an animalish noise that was a combination of fear and rage and then he came up off the floor with nearly superhuman strength. As he did, Matthew saw he had scrabbled into his coat and upon his right hand was the ugly nail-studded knuckle-duster Matthew had seen in the weapons basket at Lash’s mansion.
Cardinal Black Page 33
