Evolution Expects
Page 27
She dared a glance behind her and saw the redcoat captain galloping towards her, rapier in hand, ready to cut her down in an instant. Behind him, the rest of the troop stayed with the fleeing carriage.
Re-doubling her efforts she quickened her pace, as concerned now with escaping the Dragoon captain as she was with catching up with the parasite, already fearing that she didn’t have a hope of evading the captain’s ruthless blade. Her best bet was to see if she could make it to the river.
She was suddenly aware of another frantic drumming rhythm, as another horse charged towards them. Then she heard a shout of “Yaah!” and her heart leapt.
Sliding to a halt in the dew-wet grass, her feet slipping out from under her, coming down on her rump, Cassandra threw another glance behind her.
A figure of horseback, clad in a suit of spiked armour, was careering towards the Dragoon captain. The rider clasped his steed’s reins in one hand whilst wielding a flintlock pistol in the other. Cassandra knew it could only be Galloping Dick Runyan.
Without giving a word of warning, her curious knight in shining armour took aim and fired. Drysdale’s startled expression became one of utter disbelief as the shot punched him clean out of the saddle.
As the captain’s mount galloped away in panic, back towards the road, those Dragoons accompanying Sir William’s racing coach steered their horses off the road and after the highwayman, their own pistols raised. A series of sharp retorts broke the morning stillness.
The staccato cracks were followed by a series of deadened metal pangs, as Sir John Lambton’s legendary armour stopped the shots dead.
Her heart leaping at the highwayman’s gallant rescue, Cassandra had barely slid to a halt before she was up on her feet again in pursuit of the worm.
She heard the splash as the parasite dropped into the river. Four more strides took her to the water’s edge. Swinging her arms out in front of her, Cassandra dived into the river.
It only took a moment for the tumbling torrent to eradicate all traces of her entry into its tumultuous depths. A second passed. Two. Three. Four.
In an eruption of dark water, Cassandra burst from the river, the monstrous worm-spawn clasped in her hands, the creature writhing in torment as her needle-claws burrowed deep inside its hateful flesh.
The worm screamed at the burning acid touch of the silvered talons and, in its agonised death-throes, it tried to trap Cassandra within its constricting coils. Worm and woman fell back into the water, but Cassandra clung on.
Where the living star-metal struck, the worm’s flesh withered, blackened and liquefied.
Possessed of a fury the like of which she had never known, Cassandra fought on, even when the worm managed to twist itself around her neck and tore at the exposed flesh of her arms with its jaws.
But still she clung on and slowly, piece by piece, the flesh of the unnatural worm dissolved into a tarry slime. Then all that remained was its eyeless head, screaming silently at her as she held it in her hands, then that too shrivelled and the last piece of the parasite’s vile body was washed away downstream by the treacherous waters of the Wear.
X
Silver Nemesis
AS THE SUN continued to climb across the crisp blue sky, shining like a sovereign, chasing away the last of the rainclouds along with the night, it painted the landscape with its warm autumnal palette, limning the bodies of the fallen Dragoons in white gold. The others – Sir William and the rest of the Disciples of Dionin – had fled with the coming of the dawn.
Cassandra looked from the bodies of the fallen soldiers to where their killer stood, helmet in hand, patting the flanks of the horse he had ridden to her rescue, a horse with a white flash on its muzzle.
“You came back for me,” Cassandra said. “Why?”
“Oh, you know how it is. You said it yourself. You saved my life, so I saved yours. I was in your debt.”
“Oh, I see,” Cassandra said, smiling coyly. “And that was the only reason was it?”
“Well, I never could resist a damsel in distress.”
“Oh, so I’m a damsel in distress, am I?” Cassandra challenged, studying her hands again, seeing the molten silver coursing through her veins once more now that the claws had retracted back into her body.
“No, milady, you are... I don’t rightly know what you are, but you’re not that. You’re something else entirely.”
“They got away, Dick,” Cassandra said, gazing down the road in the direction the cultists had fled. “Sir William, Sackville and the rest. Although, admittedly, Lord Lambton will be in a pretty poor state now.”
An anxious expression clouded Dick’s face. “But we’re quits now, right? I am no longer in your debt.”
“The cult was not the be all and end all. Sir William was working to some greater plan, and that plan could still be put into action. It’s my destiny to find them, hunt them down and stop them; I see that now.
“I could use a man like you, to help me in my quest, though.” She smiled. “My very own knight in shining armour.”
“God’s bones, woman! I told you before, I’m only interested in looking after number one. Having a partner’s not my scene.”
“What about... Abershawe, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, exactly; and look what happened to him. Look, like you said, the rest got away, and they’ll be sending reinforcements back soon, you can count on it. And I don’t plan on being here when they arrive. And if you’ve got any sense, milady, you’ll do the same. So I bid you adieu!”
And with that, Galloping Dick Runyan put one foot in the stirrups, mounted his horse and with a shout of “Quicksilver, away!” he cantered along the road, leaving Cassandra alone with the bodies of the fallen.
SHAKING, THE KING picked himself up off the floor of the audience chamber and collapsed back into his chair.
He stared in open-mouthed horror at the bloated body of the peer lying face-down on the tiled floor, and at the grotesque white worm-like creature projecting from the man’s mouth. The thing was rapidly necrotising before his eyes, becoming nothing more than a bubbling black sludge.
He looked from the cooling corpse and the dissolving slug-worm to the woman standing between them, decked out in all the finery of the court, although her extravagant clothes were now spotted with blood – both hers and that of the traitor, lying dead at her feet. She had lost her pearl-bedecked wig in her tussle with the king’s attacker also.
The king was aware of one more person present with them in the room, watching them from the shadows, a man dressed all in black, with a face like a knife.
He looked from her the steely expression on her face to the lethal silver claws that were withdrawing into the bunched fists of her hands.
“Wh-What are you?” he gasped.
“My name is Cassandra Tyrell, your majesty.”
“The Tyrrells?”
“Yes, those Tyrrells. And have no fear, your majesty, I’m on your side, unlike our mutual acquaintance, Sir George Sackville.”
“Astonishing. Then I owe you my heartfelt thanks. My life, in fact. I cannot thank you enough. There’ll be a ladyship in this for you, at the very least,” he said, unable to stop his gaze returning to her hands. “Lady...”
He broke off, struck dumb by what he was witnessing, as the silvered points of ten, wire-thin stiletto blades disappeared back into her hands, flowing like mercury into the pin-holes in her fingertips.
“My Lady Quicksilver.”
Lo! ’tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly—
Mere puppets they, who come and go
> At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!
That motley drama!—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out—out are the lights—out all!
And over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
from Ligeia, by Edgar Allen Poe
The End
About the Author
JONATHAN GREEN is a writer of speculative fiction, with more than forty books to his name. He is the creator of Abaddon Books’ Pax Britannia steampunk universe.
He has written for such diverse properties as Doctor Who, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Sonic the Hedgehog, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Moshi Monsters, but – outside of the steampunk milieu – he is probably best known for his contributions to the Fighting Fantasy range of adventure gamebooks and numerous Black Library publications, which draw inspiration from the table top war-gaming systems of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000.
He currently divides his time between West London and rural Wiltshire. To find out more about his latest projects visit www.JonathanGreenAuthor.com.
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