by Tim Powers
“Longwell, Tyson,” Burghard said quietly, “around these houses, fast, and stop up the other end of the alley.” There was a clatter and jingling as the two obediently hurried away.
Romany had turned and strode back, and now shouldered his way between two of his wolfish attendants and confronted his attackers. His lean face, weirdly underlit by the lantern, was contorted with rage as he opened his mouth and began to pronounce syllables that warped and shrivelled the very air that carried them—Doyle felt the chain around his ankle vibrate and grow warm—and then he noticed Doyle standing in the forefront with a bared and bloody sword in his hand, obviously immune to his magic and not even bothering to try to prevent it. The chant faltered and stopped, though Romany’s mouth stayed open in a dismayed gape.
Doyle crouched to pick up the lantern, then straightened, grinned at the wizard and pointed his sword at him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us, Doctor Romany,” he said.
The magician made a prodigious leap backward over the heads of the wolf men. He bounded away down the alley, and his creatures loped after him, cautiously followed by Doyle and Burghard and the others.
The loud bang of a pistol shot sounded from some point ahead of them, and an instant later a shrill howl echoed between the close stone walls, and as it died away into choked panting Doyle heard Longwell shout, “Halt, ye monsters—there be primed pistols enough here to send all of ye home.”
Doyle, running forward ahead of Burghard, raised the lantern just in time to glimpse a robed figure flying straight upward. “He’s jumped for the roof, get him quick!” he roared, and two more gunshots flared and banged ahead of him, the muzzle flashes angled upward, and then he was nearly deafened as Burghard’s pistol went off beside his ear.
“Them things is going up the walls like spiders!” yelled Longwell. “Shoot ‘em off!”
A window squeaked open somewhere overhead, and what could only be a chamber pot burst against the opposite wall, showering Doyle. “Begone from here, ye thieves and murderers!” shrieked a woman’s voice.
Shingles and bits of stone blown loose by the gunshots clattered back down onto the alley floor. “Don’t shoot!” called Burghard, his voice harsh with disappointment, “You’ll hit that damned woman.”
“They’re gone, chief,” said Longwell, hurrying up to where Doyle and Burghard and the others stood. “Fled over the roof fast as rats.”
“Back to Thames Street,” rasped Burghard. “We’ve lost Romany—he could go in any direction across the roofs.”
“Aye, let us go back to our dinner,” suggested Longwell fervently as they sheathed their swords, thrust away their pistols and picked their way back over the two hirsute corpses to the moonlit pavement of Thames Street.
“I know where he’s going,” said Doyle quietly. “He’s heading back to the place where I originally said he’d be—the place where his magic will work best—the gap field, that inn in Borough High Street.”
“I’m not delighted with the idea of crossing the ice, now that he knows we oppose him,” spoke up a gangly, curly-haired member. “If he was to turn on us out there… “
“It wouldn’t necessarily doom us,” said Burghard, leading the way forward. “Don’t let yourself rely so heavily on your armor. Right now we’ll reconnoiter and make no incautious moves.”
They hurried back down the cross lane to the stairs below Thames Street, and leaning out over the railing at the top step they stared out across the ice at the torches and tents of the frost fair.
“Too many people about to be knowing if any is them,” grumbled Longwell.
“Perhaps,” muttered Burghard, who had pulled out his telescope and was inching it by slow degrees across the scene. “I see them,” he whispered finally. “They’re just making a straight line across, not even bothering to avoid people—ho, you should see some of these people recoil!” He turned to the towering figure of Doyle. “How much more powerful will he be when he gets to that inn?”
“I don’t know the precise amps or anything,” Doyle said; “let’s just say vastly. He must have had something pretty urgent in mind to have left it before.”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to follow right on his heels then,” said Burghard reluctantly, starting down the stairs. “Come along smartly—we’ve got some catching up to do.”
* * *
Oriental clog shoes knocked on frost-split cobblestones as another company of furtive men rounded the corner from Gracechurch into Thames Street. The peculiarly shod leader scanned the empty street for a moment and then resumed his determined stride.
“Wait one moment, alchemist,” said one of his company. “I’ll go no farther without an explanation. That was gunfire we heard, was it not?”
“Aye,” said the leader impatiently. “But ‘twasn’t aimed at thee.”
“But what was it aimed at? I think that was no man that screamed.” The breeze blew the man’s long brown curls, unconfined by a wig, forward across his somewhat pudgy and petulant face. He pushed his hat down more firmly on his head. “I’m in command here, though without official sanction, as much as was my father in France. I say all we need is what you carry in yonder box—we need no advice from another damned sorcerer.”
Amenophis Fikee walked back to where the man stood and, able to look down at him by virtue of his stilted shoes, hissed, “Listen to me, you posturing clown. If your damned backside is ever to rest on the throne it will be because of my efforts, and in spite of yours. Or do you imagine that the idiot assassination attempt you and Russell and Sidney set up last year was intelligent? Hah! Fools, trying to reach through a pane of glass for a sweet! You need me, and magic, and a damn large spoonful of luck even to steer clear of the headsman’s block, far less become king! And the man who contacted me tonight, greeted me through the candle with the ancient passwords, has more raw power than I’ve seen in a sorcerer for—well, a long time. You were there, man—I didn’t even have to light the candle to receive him—it just burst into flame! Now he’s run afoul of something, very possibly James’ precious Antaeus Brotherhood, and he’s had to fall back to the spot on the Surrey side where there’s one of those inexplicable bubbles of indulgence I mentioned to you, in which sorcery is freer. Therefore we will meet him there. Or would you rather return to Holland to pursue the crown on your own, without my help?”
The Duke of Monmouth still looked sulky, so Fikee waved the little black box at him. “And without my indetectibly forged marriage certificate?”
Monmouth scowled, but shrugged. “Very well, wizard. But let’s get moving, before your damned frost freezes us solid.” The band moved forward again, toward the bridge.
The boat had been sailing close-hauled, its half-drunk sailors waving their flaring torches more or less in time to their singing, but now the man at the tiller had cut too close into the wind and the sail luffed and fluttered empty; the boat lost its speed, the grotesque faces painted on the great wooden wheels becoming distinguishable as the disks rolled more and more slowly on the wooden axles penetrating the framework that supported the craft, and finally the boat lurched to a stop on the ice, and after a moment began to roll indecisively backward as the sail billowed in reverse.
Burghard, who had been leading Doyle and the ten Antaeus Brotherhood members in a long, curving sprint across the ice behind the screen the wheeled boat provided, caught up with it now, leaped for the rail, caught it, and swung over the gun-wale and tumbled into the boat. The drunken mariners, already irate at having lost the wind, turned angrily on this unimposingly slim boarder, but lurched back in confusion when the burly figure of Doyle came vaulting lightly over the rail, all flying mane and beard and cape.
“We’re taking command of this vessel,” he cried in a voice tight with restrained laughter, for he realized that he’d read about this adventure only a few hours ago. “Burghard, how do you get this thing running again?”
“Stowell,” the leader called over the rail, “get the back wheels pushed all
the way over and then all of you get in. Everybody’s used to seeing this thing tacking around the river—our man won’t notice if it follows him.”
“It be my boat, though, mate,” objected a tubby man in the stern, who scrambled to his feet as the tiller moved slowly over.
Burghard handed him some coins. “Here. We’ll not mistreat her, and we’ll leave her on the south shore. Oh, and—” he counted out some more coins, “—this is yours too if we can have your masks and torches.”
The owner weighed the coins against the obvious determination of the boarders, then shrugged. “Abandon ship, lads,” he called to his companions. “And leave the masks and lights—we’ve got enough here for a whole butt of sack.”
The evicted sailors climbed over the gunwales and dropped to the ice cheerfully, and as the last of Burghard’s men swung aboard, the sail filled again and the boat began to rock forward.
Burghard, wearing some kind of blue and red toucan mask, worked the tiller and sheet carefully in order to follow but not overtake Romany, and they had got nearly all the way across, and were within thirty yards of the Jeter Lane stairs, when the bounding Romany glanced back for the third time, did a double take, and then skidded to a halt, aware at last that he was being followed. “He’s seen us!” Doyle yelled, but Burghard had already wrenched the tiller all the way over to the left, and the boat heeled, tilting dangerously to port as the two wooden wheels on that side kicked up sprays of shaved ice, then righted itself with a slam and cut sharply to starboard, no longer heading for the stairs but aiming straight at a long section of dock. Doyle stood up and drew his sword, and then instantly pitched it away, for it was not a sword at all, but a long silver snake looping back to bite him. A moment later his dagger began to squirm strongly out of its sheath, and it took both hands to hold it in. His clothes were undulating in an insane peristalsis, his mask was flapping wildly on his face, and the very hull under his feet was heaving up and down like the ribs of a big, panting animal. Realizing through his panic that he was in the midst of some awful sorcerous focus, he used the hull’s next heave as a springboard and catapulted right over the side of the rushing, wriggling boat; he landed on his outstretched hands and curled into a tumble. He rolled several yards and then slid to a stop a second or two after the wheeled boat plowed into the dock, loudly shattering the hull and the mast and pitching members of the Antaeus Brotherhood in all directions like bowling pins,
Doyle sat up, wrenched off his palpitating cat mask and flung it as far as he could, and then he noticed his dagger, which had fallen out of its sheath, crawling toward him like a big inchworm; he kicked it away—and instantly felt an almost crippling disorientation engulf him, for though it bounced away as limber as a length of rubber hose, it clinked each time it hit the ice.
Burghard was up on his feet again only a moment after he hit the ice, and though his face was a grimace of pain he managed to croak, “Up onto the land!” as he forced himself to limp forward. Flames had begun to lick up brightly here and there from the shattered hull. One of the boat’s wheels, wrenched loose from its axle, was rolling slowly around on the ice, its painted mouth opening and closing spasmodically and its painted eyes darting about with malign will; and as the flames found and streaked ravenously up the margins of the sail, the face painted on it rolled its eyes and crumpled its canvas furiously as it mouthed unreadable words.
Stowell, his face red as he struggled to stop his scarf from strangling him, bumped into Doyle on his way to the dock, and Doyle shook himself, took a deep breath and followed him. Something had begun to go wrong with the air—it tasted bad, and burned in Doyle’s eyes and nose and lungs, and he could feel the strength draining out of him.
A litter of wriggling and dancing pieces of broken wood had congregated in front of the nearest dock ladder, lashing out at the knees and rolling under the boots of anyone who tried to get near it—one man had fallen and almost been pounded to death before Burghard dragged him clear—and so Doyle simply picked the lurching Stowell up by his belt and collar and, after two swings to get momentum, used very bit of his remaining strength to fling the man powerfully upward; then Doyle fell to his knees and with dimming sight watched the man hurtle up, his arms and legs waving, and plop lightly onto the surface of the dock.
The air was astringent now with fumes like sulphur and chlorine, and Doyle knew that even if the jumping boards moved aside he wouldn’t have the strength to crawl over to the ladder and climb it. He pitched over on his side and rolled onto his back, and with no interest he watched Stowell lean over the edge of the dock, his face lit by the mounting flames, and reach downward with his sword. Doyle was faintly jealous that Stowell’s sword was straight and solid, while his own had turned into a leaping eel. Then he stopped thinking about that and every other thing.
Burghard, still somehow on his feet, staggered into the middle of the crowd of sticks, and as they cracked viciously at his knees and cartwheeled up to slam into his crotch and belly, and as he started to fall he snatched desperately upward and grabbed the razor-edged foible of the downward extended sword.
Instantly the sticks backed away from him, making a frustrated racket of knocking.
Burghard got his feet back under himself to take the weight off his mangled hand, and he inhaled shudderingly. “To me, Antei.’” he fairly screamed. Longwell crawled forward, one arm covering his head against the savage pounding of the wood pieces, and reached out and grabbed the chain that trailed from Burghard’s boot.
The sticks and boards spun away from him.
One by one three other men dragged themselves over to join the chain. The thwarted pieces of lumber—reinforced every moment by new boards, some of them afire, springing away from the burning hulk—skated and whirled toward the still unconnected Doyle. The smaller pieces moved faster, and as they found him and began to rap at his face, Burghard yelled,
“Reach him, one of you, quick!”
The man on the end of the chain strained, but couldn’t reach Doyle. The man glanced back and saw that the big, skull smasher sized boards were only a few yards away and closing in fast, and so with a hoarse curse he undid the leather restraining loop, drew his dagger, reached out and used the tip to pull Doyle’s foot close enough so that he could stab it right through and moor the point firmly in the ice underneath.
Heat spread from Doyle’s foot, relaxing his nearly petrified muscles, and finally reached his head, driving out of it the visions of huge, multiplying crystals that had been holding what minimal attention he was still capable of. He sat up on the ice, and as alertness washed hotly through him he became aware of the dagger transfixing his foot and the litter of lumber scuttling away from him to batter a couple of motionless human forms sprawled too far out to have been reached by the Antaeus chain.
“You!” Burghard was yelling. “With the beard! Don’t pull your foot free until you’ve got hold of Friedeman’s hand!”
Doyle nodded and inched his way back toward the man with the dagger. “Don’t worry,” he called to Burghard. “I’m not going to break the connection.” He reached Friedeman’s free hand and clasped it, and then the man levered the dagger blade loose and drew it out of Doyle’s foot. He sheathed it and reached behind himself to join hands with the man who had been gripping his boot chain. When Burghard said, “Up,” the five men rose shakily.
Doyle’s foot felt like the knife blade was still in it, and when the string of men began shuffling and limping carefully along the foot of the dock toward the ladder he looked back and saw that he was leaving steaming dark stains on the ice and that where his foot had originally been nailed down there was a large irregular dark blot, already iced over.
“Hang onto the man above you, and just use your feet on the ladder,” called Burghard, who now stood on the dock, his face visibly pale even in the orange firelight. “We’ll pull you up.”
In a couple of minutes Doyle and five members of the Antaeus Brotherhood sat or stood swaying unsteadily on the dock, cat
ching their breath, basking in the heat from the burning boat and letting the healing strength spread upward through their boot chains like restoring slugs of brandy.
“He’s… moved on after swatting us,” Burghard panted as he knotted a handkerchief around his cut hand. “We’re lucky that he … underestimated the amount of time he had, and just shot the quick spell of Malign Animation at us. If he’d taken the time to chant the Deadly Air spell right away… “
A man was dashing across the ice toward them. “Ye sons of bitches!” screamed the portly owner of the destroyed boat. He gestured expressively at his unfortunate craft. “I’ll have ye all dragged before the magistrates!”
Burghard fumbled awkwardly in a pocket with his good but wrong side hand, yanked out a purse and tossed it. “Our apologies,” he shouted as the man caught it. “There is enough there for a new boat and to pay for your time while you find one.”
He turned to Doyle and the others. “We lost six men here,” he said quietly. “And some of you have sustained injuries that need immediate attention—your foot, sir, is a case in point—and our second greatest armor—ready cash—is gone. It would not be cowardly at this point to fall back to our rooms and… patch ourselves up, get some food and sleep, and pursue this matter on the morrow.”
Doyle, who had taken off his boot and knotted a section of his scarf around his foot and soaked it in brandy, pulled the boot back on, gritting his teeth against the pain, and then looked up at Burghard. “I’ve got to go on,” he said hoarsely, “if I’m ever to get home. But you’re right. You people have done… far more than I ever had a right to ask. And I’m terribly sorry about your six men.”
He stood up, glad now of the intense cold, for it acted as an anesthetic on his foot.
Longwell shook his head unhappily. “No,” he said. “On the north side of the river I’d have been most willing to forego the chase and return to our dinner. But now that McHugh and Kickham and the others are killed—I couldn’t savor the port, knowing that their slayer was at liberty… and probably boasting of his deed.”
