by John Booth
Tom succeeded in his task and Laura coiled the rope around her hands to create the impression that her hands were still tied. She stood still, looking shocked, when Lord McBride scanned his eyes over her a few seconds later.
Rhona fell forward, her head and hands resting on her Laird’s boots. Lord McBride kicked at her body impatiently, rolling it away.
Rhona’s sightless eyes stared up towards the roof; her tongue bloated and black sticking out of her mouth. Cam fell back behind the walkway wall with tears in her eyes. Arnold continued to watch, though Daisy saw him gulp repeatedly as though trying to avoid being sick.
“I am truly sorry, Laird,” a voice said reproachfully in the room below.
51. Honor
“Go away, I am trying to sleep,” Glyn Thomas yelled from his room.
“This is Gordon,” Kemp shouted back, “And this matter will not wait until morning.”
There was quite a crowd standing outside Glyn’s door, and when he finally opened the door and found six children as well as Summers and Kemp standing there, he took a step back in surprise. Glyn was wearing a long night garment complete with bobble hat and the girls giggled in delight at the sight of it.
“Is this some kind of deputation?” Glyn asked as everybody followed him into his room.
“We have to talk,” Kemp said sitting down on Glyn’s bed. “We believe that Lord McBride has constructed a new kind of bomb using the dantium Giles and I extracted. That was what caused the explosion last night.”
“If you are worried about it, contact the authorities in the morning,” Glyn said dismissively. “Bombs are nothing to do with me, I investigate anomalous magic.”
“Usin’ kidnapped girls against their wills,” Tricky put in.
“Who is this boy and how dare he make such a grossly unfounded accusation?” Glyn asked angrily.
“That one,” Giles said as he pointed at Ebb rather than Tricky, “Is the boy you were waiting for, the one with the ability to see five seconds ahead. Only he came here with some MM3 agents instead of with Lord McBride. The other Farsee’s short distances.”
“They were waitin’ to be sold as slaves at auction with me,” Alice stated, “But they escaped without us, the ungrateful bastards.”
Glyn gave the others a guilty look. He had long believed that his subjects had not been brought to the castle legitimately, but had chosen to look the other way.
“I worked for Lord McBride in good faith. No court would convict me for disbelieving the word of children.”
“If McBride sets off a bomb that destroys London, they will hang us for simply being in Glen Russell,” Kemp pointed out.
“You helped him with this device, you said so yourself. All I have done is run tests on a few girls. Besides which, such a bomb flies in the face of natural science. No such device can possibly exist.”
Tricky was already tired of the conversation. Adults always needed to deny responsibility for hours first, before they actually did something.
“We ‘as to go an’ ‘elp the others. They might need me ability to open locks. Cam is ‘opeless at it.”
“Help who?” Glyn asked feeling more than slightly confused.
“We shall tell you the whole story,” Kemp replied.
Tricky was horrified as Kemp began to retell the story as he had heard it from Alice and Tricky earlier. ‘This is going take hours’, he thought despairingly.
Giles Summers stood with his back against the bedroom door so there was no way he and Ebb could get out. Tricky resigned himself to having to wait for the adults to come to their senses and looked around for Ebb. He spotted him sitting down on the floor next to Lucy. The two were surreptitiously holding hands.
Annelise Shultz looked at her team and assessed them against the tasks she needed to accomplish. Bruno was a assassin and sniper and she decided to use him in those roles. Karl was an explosives expert. She did not know the other three men that well, in her view they were little more than muscle. Last of the team was Michael Jenkins, the MM1 traitor. Annelise did not trust traitors; treachery became a habit in such people and next time she might be on the receiving end of it. She reached a decision and leaned forward to explain it to her men.
“This mission has gone to hell. There are far more troops on this train than I imagined the British could muster in such a short time and ve vill reach Glen Russell much earlier than I expected. McBride is defeated and vee must accept it.”
“What do we do then?” Bruno asked impatiently. They would reach Glen Russell sometime in the next half hour and he was feeling a little vulnerable being on the train with so many enemy troops.
“Vee tidy up. The British must not find out how to make the dantium bomb. The only person who knows how to make them is Hans Clerkes and therefore vee must kill him before he can talk.”
“He would be useful to the homeland,” Bruno objected.
Annelise shook her head
“That option is too risky, the British vill not let him escape Glen Russell by train and I do not think that vee can valk him out of this foul country in this veather. Therefore, he must die and his bombs must be destroyed.”
“I can lead a team to destroy the bombs, but we will need access to explosives,” Karl offered.
“Vee are on a train full of soldiers with their assault equipment. I think there vill be plenty of explosives,” Annelise pointed out. “You are supposed to be MM1 agents. Order the soldiers to give them to you.”
Karl nodded as he accepted Annelise’s logic. Apart from Bruno and himself, the other men spoke English with an obvious Austrian accent, but they sounded like Englishman and would not have any trouble.
“And lastly vee must kill the Spellbinder girl. You all know vot she looks like and Bruno has met her several times. Bruno, this vill be your special task. Vait hidden from sight at the railway station. She is bound to be brought there sooner or later. Ven you see her, shoot her vith your rifle.”
Bruno nodded. He had brought his sniper rifle with him, though he doubted he would need either the range or the accuracy it offered. In the close confines of a railway station, he would be able to decide with absolute certainty, which of the girl’s eyes his bullet would penetrate. Given the things she had done to him, it would be a pleasure.
“I vill go into the factory and kill Hans Clerkes,” Annelise continued, “And the Spellbinder, if I get the chance.”
“What should I do?” Michael asked. He was eager to be part of this operation and kill some of the enemy.
“You vill go and find Trelawney ven vee get off the train and you vill stick to him like glue. You are our backup agent and you must kill the Spellbinder and Clerkes if vee should fail. The British must not have the Spellbinder or the bomb, votever happens.”
“I thought you paid a lot of money to buy the girl.”
“Bertram Smee and all of his people suffered a very bad case of food poisoning. I added the poison myself. I do not think he vill be in a position to collect the money.”
Annelise smiled, mainly at the memory of the butcher’s family’s last moments when she slid her knife across their throats. She liked to keep her murders personal when she got the opportunity.
“I am truly sorry, Laird,” Blane said as he pulled a small twin barreled pistol from his pocket and pointed it in the direction of Lord McBride and Hans Clerkes. “Would you gentlemen be so good as to put up your hands?”
Lord McBride stared at Blane in astonishment.
“Do you mean to shoot me, Blane? Put that gun away at once. Whatever you do right now, you will face the scaffold if we are caught.”
“I find it strange, Laird. I always have believed myself to be a cynical man who could do anything without a backward glance. I do not mourn those MM3 men MacTavish has just drowned. Nor do I regret kidnapping young girls or even buying the redoubtable Miss Young and Mister Carter. I did feel sick when I found out so many noblemen of Scotland would die in our explosion, but that was something I was sure I coul
d live with.”
“Even the millions of innocent women and children who would die in our explosion did not bother me overmuch; they were unknown to me English after all.”
Blane’s expression changed slowly to one of outrage.
“However, the way you killed poor Rhona, who has served and worshipped you since she was a bairn, that I discover I cannot tolerate. You are not fit to rule Scotland or an Empire. In truth, you have proved that you are not fit to rule Glen Russell.”
While Blane and the other men were occupied, Laura turned away from them and pulled up the front of her skirt to retrieve the paper in her underwear. Three sheets were stuck together as one and she did not have the time to try to part them. She wore her hair in a bun which was held by the pen that Arnold had given her. Ink was a problem to which she had determined a simple answer; she intended to use her own blood.
Tom moved to place his body between the men and Laura while she worked. Unfortunately he wasn’t that big and Lord McBride could still see what she was doing.
Clerkes had not yet raised his hands as Blane had ordered. He intended to fire his trick pistol at Blane, but he needed some kind of distraction to allow him get off the first shot.
Laura stabbed the point of the pen nib into her left thumb and winced as the. blood started to well. She dipped the nib in it and started to write. Blood was not as good a medium as ink, but it did work, especially when the blood was the Spellbinder’s own.
“I do not think that you can shoot me, Blane,” Lord McBride said as he stepped a little to one side to get a better view of what Laura was up to. He was shocked to see her creating a bind. Lord McBride looked over at his bomb and saw its wheels sink into the softening concrete floor.
Ignoring Blane, Lord McBride leapt to his bomb’s defense, as if he might be able to stop it sinking into the ground simply by holding onto it. He grabbed it by its middle where the timer box was and hit the switch to the on position in the process.
Blane and Clerkes watched Lord McBride in bemusement. Clerkes flinched as he saw the switch thrown before remembering that the timer was set at two hours. He could easily switch it off before the two hours were up.
Laura completed the bind, unaware that Lord McBride was holding onto the bomb. All her concentration was on the bind itself. Then it happened.
The concrete floor below the bomb turned to water and the bomb and Lord McBride dropped into the well she had created, dropping like lead weights.
Blane and Clerkes watched in astonishment as the bomb and Lord McBride dropped into the well, causing water to splash across the floor. Clerkes recovered from the surprise first, lifted his arm, and shot Blane in the heart. Blane felt the blow and saw blood spurt from his chest. He turned his gun and fired both barrels at Clerkes as he fell. Blane was dead before he hit the floor.
One of the bullets caught Clerkes low in the shoulder and he cried out in pain, dropping his gun.
Dougal and Arnold burst into the room and ran at Clerkes. They had been watching the action from the partially open door. Dougal faltered halfway as he stared at the well that had consumed his father. Arnold carried on and easily subdued the whimpering Clerkes.
“What happened?” Laura asked in surprise. Tom had blocked her view of Blane and Clerkes and when she looked at where the bomb had been, all she saw was rippling water.
Cam and Daisy ran into the room. They had watched the events from the walkway and it took them a few seconds to get down the stairs.
“Blane and Clerkes shot each other and Lord McBride was holding onto the bomb when your bind changed the ground to water,” Daisy explained succinctly as she moved to Dougal’s side and gripped his hand.
“Just like a captain going down with his ship,” Cam added as she began to untie Tom’s hands.
“I can’t believe he is gone,” Dougal said in a whisper as he stared into the pool of water.
The water roiled and bubbled as Lord McBride shot almost completely out of the water before dropping again. He managed to grab hold of the side of the pool and started to lever himself out of it.
The bind in Laura’s hand burst into flames and Laura dropped it before it could burn her. Everyone turned towards her at the sudden flash of light. When they looked back to the pool, they saw a concrete covered Lord McBride, frozen in position. His body from the waist embedded in the concrete factory floor.
Even Hans Clerkes stopped whimpering as he stared at McBride.
“Is he…?” Dougal started to ask when the statue shook as Lord McBride struggled to remove the thin layer of concrete around him that had been water moments before.
The layer over his upper torso broke into pieces as McBride roared like a wounded animal. H shook his body again in an attempt to free himself, but his lower body was firmly encased in the concrete, as were his hands.
“Heal me, Healer,” Clerkes pleaded with Tom, “Before I bleed to death.”
Tom had gone to first to Rhona finding her beyond his skills and then to Blane to check that he was dead. He ignored Clerkes’ pleading as he looked down at the man who had saved their lives.
“He did the right thing in the end,” Laura said as she took Tom’s hand. “He said he wanted to die with honor and I believe he has been granted his wish.”
“If you do not heal me, you are all going to die,” Clerkes shouted in anguish.
“Shut up ,Clerkes,” Lord McBride shouted as he continued to struggle to free himself. “Tell them nothing.”
“What do you have to tell us?” Cam asked belligerently. Arnold held Clerkes kneeling on the floor and Cam looked like she was about to kick him.
“Heal me first,” Clerkes demanded.
“It does not work like that,” Cam told him emotionlessly. She looked up at Arnold. “Tie him up and leave him here. If he bleeds to death, it will be no great loss.”
“Do not tell them,” Lord McBride repeated, spitting in his anger. “Dougal, come here and help me to get free of this infernal concrete.”
Tom threw Arnold the rope he had been bound with and Arnold started to tie up Clerkes. Dougal began to walk towards his father, still holding onto Daisy’s hand. She stayed where she was and he stopped when their arms stretched tight.
“He triggered the bomb,” Clerkes shouted. “It will explode in two hours time.”
“I doubt the mechanism is still working now the water has returned to concrete, stone and earth,” Arnold suggested
“I designed it to work even when immersed in water. It will work just as well buried in the earth. The Spellbinder must retrieve the bomb so we can switch it off.”
The team turned towards Laura who shook her head.
“I would need to cast two binds using the very finest materials, one to turn the ground back to water the other to make the Bomb lighter than water. I do not believe the second bind is even possible, given the bomb is made mainly of iron and dantium. Who knows how deep the bomb is below us? I used a lot of desperation when I cast that bind.”
“Heal me, please,” Clerkes begged. He had lost a lot of blood while they had been talking and his face looked white. Tom looked at Cam expressionlessly and Cam nodded her approval with some reluctance. Tom walked over to Clerkes and put his hand upon the man’s forehead. A few seconds later Clerkes was healed, the wound had done little damage to him and Tom found the man miraculously free of the cellular damage that the dantium had done to Laura.
“Rescue my father,” Dougal said as he turned to Laura. “That is well within your powers.”
Lord McBride roared like a wounded animal. “I would rather die than be rescued by that bitch. I shall kill her just like Rhona as soon as I get out of here.”
“He does make it difficult for me to find the motivation,” Laura said to Dougal. “I regret that I have neither paper nor ink and I must admit that I am not inclined to search for either while his bomb continues to tick.”
“Ignoring the question of Lord McBride’s fate for just one moment,” Cam asked her team,
“What do we do now?”
52. Tic Toc
The train carrying the troops arrived into a silent Glen Russell station. Its lights were blazing and its air warm as neither cost Lord McBride anything to provide. The next train was not due until ten that morning and the station was deserted. Trelawney and his secretary stepped out onto the immaculate marble platform and looked at the glass and ironwork around them in wonder.
“He may be a traitor, but one is forced to admit he has a certain style,” Belinda said appreciatively. Their contemplation of the architecture was cut short as soldiers swarmed out of the carriages and began lowering field cannons onto the platform. Sergeants yelled instructions and their commanding officer approached Trelawney.
“Permission to start the mission, sir?” he asked, saluting Trelawney.
“If you would be so kind, Captain Pierson.”
“I am leaving eight men with you under Sergeant Taggart. Will that be sufficient?”
“More than enough, Captain. We are going to enter the factory directly from the station, following the line. I suggest that your team enters by the front gate.”
“Perhaps my team should go with you, sir?” Captain Pierson asked. He was well aware how his commanding officer would react if he got the Director of MM3 killed.
“We will be fine and your men will draw off any hotheads who might want to make a fight of it,” Trelawney explained patiently.
“Sir, I should stay with you,” Michael Jenkins said as he pushed his way through the soldiers.
“Ah, Jenkins isn’t it?” Trelawney replied. “You do not plan to lead an MM1 team?”
Michael turned to look at the MM1 men mingling with the soldiers. Their orders had been to protect Trelawney until the soldiers took over. They had brought maps of Glen Russell and seemed to be sharing them with the soldiers. At the rear of the train, he glimpsed Annelise and her team slip out of the station along the rails, they had their missions too.
