The Wrath of the Lizard Lord

by Jon Mayhew

  The tunnel had widened at this point and there was a small table and a seat for whoever guarded the cells. Another studded door faced the one that awaited Dakkar and Oginski.

  ‘If you could empty your pockets, gentlemen,’ Alfonse said, and gestured to the table.

  Dakkar glanced over at Oginski, who, after a jab with a rifle, disgorged a small pistol, some gold coin and a snuffbox from his coat and slammed them on the table.

  ‘And you, young man,’ Alfonse said with a nod at Dakkar.

  Dakkar pulled out string, old cogs from a broken clock, some nails and a metal object shaped rather like a toy dog. A key poked from its side.

  ‘What is this?’ Alfonse sneered, picking up the toy dog. ‘You are a little old for wind-up toys, are you not?’

  ‘Please, monsieur, be careful with that,’ Dakkar said, reaching out. ‘It is . . . fragile. If you overwind it, the spring might break.’

  ‘Pah!’ Alfonse said, giving the toy’s key a few savage twists. ‘A grown boy playing with mechanical animals!’

  He turned to his comrades and placed the toy dog on the table. They gathered round as the dog began to totter towards the edge of the table top, the sound of the spring whirring. One of the men poked it just as it teetered on the brink of the table, sending it marching back towards Alfonse.

  ‘Six, five, four . . .’ Dakkar muttered under his breath.

  ‘Why are you count–’ Alfonse started.

  Before he could finish his question, Dakkar shoulder-charged Oginski, sending him tumbling into the cell. The tunnel erupted in a storm of fire and smoke and Dakkar barely had time to dive inside. Oginski threw himself against the iron door and heaved his back against the blast that tried to ram it open again.

  Dakkar’s ears rang and his head thumped. The echo of the blast rumbled through the tunnel, fading into silence. Oginski swayed in front of Dakkar for a moment and then staggered. Dakkar leapt up to grab him.

  ‘Clockwork explosives?’ Oginski croaked, peering at Dakkar as if he were far off. ‘When did you think that one up?’

  ‘Just something I’ve been playing about with.’ Dakkar gave a grin and held Oginski upright as the man slumped against him. ‘Oginski, we must hurry,’ he said, shaking the heavy man’s shoulders.

  Outside, Alfonse and the men groaned, their faces blackened with gunpowder. Dakkar could see their belongings scattered across the tunnel.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ Dakkar said, his voice barely a whisper. ‘The blast wasn’t enough to kill – it just stunned them.’

  ‘Good lad,’ Oginski said, leaning awkwardly against the tunnel wall.

  Dakkar stooped down to rescue Oginski’s pistol and snuffbox, which lay among the debris. They hurried down the tunnel, clutching a guttering torch that had stayed alight somehow. Dakkar glanced over his shoulder at Oginski’s pale face.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Dakkar called back.

  ‘Yes,’ Oginski said, stumbling against the passage walls. ‘Keep going!’

  Behind them distant voices barked commands and shouts of alarm grew louder. Dakkar scurried back to Oginski as the big man tripped and fell heavily.

  ‘Not far now,’ Dakkar panted, heaving him to his feet.

  ‘I can’t,’ Oginski panted. ‘Leave me. Get the Nautilus away from here . . . You need to warn the world about Bonaparte . . .’

  ‘You can do that yourself.’ Dakkar grunted and slung Oginski’s arm over his shoulder, half dragging him along the passage. ‘I’m not leaving you.’

  The voices were close now. Oginski stopped again and leaned against the wall of the tunnel.

  ‘Snuffbox,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘What?’ Dakkar snapped. ‘Oginski, this is no time –’

  ‘Snuffbox,’ Oginski repeated, extending a shaking hand. ‘You’re not the only one with a trick up his sleeve.’

  Dakkar pulled the snuffbox from his pocket and handed it over. Shadows wobbled in the torchlight as the pur­suers grew nearer.

  ‘Just something . . . I’ve been playing . . . about with,’ Oginski said, giving Dakkar a feeble grin. He flicked a lever from the side of the box and hurled it down the tunnel, stumbling back as he did.

  The box hit the ground with a metallic clank and the tunnel behind them began to fill with a thick brown smoke. Dakkar grinned at the shouts of consternation, and even a gunshot that split the air, as the guards stumbled to a halt.

  He turned to see Oginski almost falling forward down the passage. Hurrying after, Dakkar grabbed his arm once more and began scanning the sides of the tunnel, which were becoming rougher and rockier as they descended into the labyrinth that lay beneath the cellars and passageways. But the cries of the guards grew louder once more. In a few minutes, they would be upon Dakkar.

  A musket ball buzzed past Dakkar’s ear and ricocheted off the tunnel wall. Dakkar groped along the wall, his heart hammering. It has to be here. Surely this is where we broke into the tunnel.

  Finally, he found a narrow crevice. Grabbing Oginski, Dakkar pushed him into the gap, gripping his upper arm tightly. Another shot rang against the wall close by, sending splinters of stone showering on to them. For a moment, rock scraped Oginski’s shoulders and Dakkar feared he would be stuck. Then the big man slipped through and vanished. Dakkar winced at the heavy thud that followed and even managed a grin at Oginski’s muffled oath.

  Footsteps clattered down the passage and Dakkar pushed himself through the gap, briefly relishing the cool rock against his skin.

  The slap and gurgle of waves against rock echoed around Dakkar’s aching ears. Nearby, the Nautilus bobbed in the water. Grey light filtering in from the mouth of the cave glimmered on her polished planks and the bands of brass that held them tight. A long tube of burnished wood with a short stubby tower halfway along, she made Dakkar think of a wooden whale waiting impatiently for their return. She looked like no other boat on earth. This was Oginski’s submarine, an incredible craft that could submerge underwater and take them to places mankind had never seen before.

  Revived by the cool air, Oginski crawled on all fours across the rough rock towards the moored submarine. A rattle of metal warned Dakkar that the guards were uncomfortably close. He glanced back to see a gun barrel poking through the crevice, then another and another.

  As he sprinted to the submarine, Dakkar bent down and dragged Oginski to his feet. Together they slipped and slithered up the ladder to the top of the tower.

  The sea cavern exploded in a blaze of gunfire and musket balls buzzed around his ears. A bullet nicked the rim of Dakkar’s ear and smacked into Oginski’s shoulder. Blood speckled Dakkar’s face and stung his eyes.

  ‘Oginski!’ Dakkar yelled, and pushed his mentor into the hatch at the top, rolling in after him.

  With a cry, Dakkar tumbled headlong into the stuffy closeness of the Nautilus’s tower and landed with a thump on top of Oginski. Peering through the porthole in the tower, Dakkar could see the guards squirming to get through the crevice. Fortunately, in their eagerness to capture Dakkar and Oginski, three of them had tried to get through at once, becoming wedged.

  Clambering up the interior ladder, Dakkar slammed the hatch shut and then hurried back down to Oginski. He lay groaning, blood staining his shoulder.

  ‘Are you badly hurt?’ Dakkar asked, kneeling beside Oginski.

  ‘No time,’ Oginski groaned. ‘Get the Nautilus . . . away.’

  Oginski was right. The men would disentangle themselves and clamber on to the sub at any moment.

  Dakkar rushed over to the controls and the captain’s seat that sat at the base of the tower. He grabbed the craft’s wheel and turned the disc in the centre. Behind him the engine began to hum. This was the Voltalith coming to life, a fragment of the Eye of Neptune, a supercharged electric rock that powered the craft. Dakkar had been forced to retrieve it from the ocean bed by the last Count Cryptos.

  Something cracked above Dakkar’s head. A musket ball lodged itself in the planks of the tower. D
akkar prayed that it hadn’t broken the watertight seal. He slammed the craft’s drive lever into Backwater and slowly the Nautilus began to reverse away from the rocky shore of the cave and into the sea pool. Dakkar knew that the cave exit, and the open sea, lay behind him. He began to turn the craft round, when something heavy thudded on to the back of the submersible. Then another weight followed, and another.

  Now someone was clambering along the craft’s deck and trying to get inside the tower. Dakkar pushed the lever to Full Ahead. For a second the craft eased sluggishly towards the cave exit, but its speed gathered and Dakkar was rewarded with the sound of someone slipping over and falling heavily on to the rear deck.

  Daylight shone across the Nautilus’s front deck.

  ‘We’ve reached open sea, Oginski,’ Dakkar said, preparing to submerge and shake off his unwelcome passengers.

  As he reached for the submerging handle, a rather damp and dishevelled guard landed with a thump in front of the tower’s window. His musket was trained directly at Dakkar’s face and he yelled something that Dakkar couldn’t hear. The man’s meaning, however, was crystal clear. If Dakkar didn’t stop, the guard would fire, drowning Dakkar in a storm of glass and shot.

  Chapter Four

  Too Many Sharks

  For a moment, Dakkar sat motionless in the captain’s chair. The thick glass of the porthole muffled the guard’s shouts but Dakkar didn’t need to hear him to know what he wanted.

  The powder in his gun is very likely wet, Dakkar thought, raising his hands to indicate that he wasn’t going to try anything, but is that a gamble I’m willing to take?

  The sound of more feet scrabbling above his head told Dakkar that guards had clambered back on to the tower of the Nautilus. His heart thumped. I can’t let them get the sub, he thought.

  Suddenly Dakkar heard faint yells from above and the guard on the front deck glanced back and forth, scanning the water for something. A scream replaced the shouts and the Nautilus rolled, tipping Dakkar from his seat. Dakkar caught a glimpse of the guard at the window as he slid from the deck of the Nautilus.

  ‘What was that?’ Oginski groaned, dragging himself into the captain’s place. He looked terrible, his pale skin accentuating the bruise that bloomed on his forehead. Blood stained the shoulder of his white shirt, and his breath rattled as he sat slumped in the seat.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dakkar said, peering out of the window. The guard had vanished from the front deck and the hammering at the tower hatch had ceased.

  ‘We should submerge,’ Oginski said as he turned the brass ballast wheel handle to fill the sub’s hollow hull with water. Dakkar hurried to help him but Oginski shook him off, wincing with each turn.

  Slowly, the water rose above the portholes of the Nautilus and Dakkar caught his breath. They sank through a mist of red blood. Whatever had rolled the submarine had ditched the other guards into the open sea. Dakkar could see three of them lashing at the water as their heavy uniforms weighed them down. They floated a few feet below the surface.

  ‘Oginski, we must save them!’ Dakkar said, pressing his face against the glass. A shadow fell across the porthole, making Dakkar pull back. Something huge had passed above them.

  ‘What is it?’ Oginski asked, leaning heavily on the wheel and peering into the murky waters.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Dakkar whispered. ‘A fish but it was big! Or maybe even a whale.’

  The men outside had seen it too and were thrashing about in the water even more desperately.

  The Nautilus pitched again as something grazed along her hull. Dakkar gasped as the nose and then the fin and then the tail of an enormous shark glided past the porthole towards the men.

  ‘That’s no ordinary shark,’ Dakkar gasped. ‘It’s massive! It must be at least fifty feet long.’

  ‘Too big for . . . a white shark . . .’ Oginski said, gritting his teeth. The stain on his shirt had spread. ‘We must leave.’

  ‘But those men . . .’ Dakkar began.

  As he glanced back, he saw the shark open its enormous jaws. Two men could have stood, one on the other’s shoulders, and still not spanned the creature’s mouth. It swept a poor guard up in one bite, leaving a faint, crimson trail.

  Dakkar craned his neck to see the other two men and his eyes widened. Another shark, as big as the first, cruised lazily through the smoky haze of blood that filled the water. Dakkar screwed his eyes shut for a moment. There was nothing we could do to save them, he thought, but a pang of regret still nagged at him. He opened his eyes again. The shark had angled slightly and was now heading straight for the Nautilus.

  ‘It’s coming this way,’ Dakkar yelled as the huge jaw opened and the fish hurtled towards them. ‘Keep our course!’

  Dakkar hurried from the tower down to the front of the Nautilus. He scrabbled at the boxes that lay in the front of the submarine and pulled out what looked like a long spear with flights at one end and a ball at the other. A Sea Arrow, an explosive missile invented by Fulton. Dakkar slipped it into the chamber in the wall of the craft and then pulled back the handle, loading the spring that fired the bomb.

  ‘Oginski, should I fire?’ he shouted.

  No reply came back.

  Cursing, Dakkar bit his lip. There was no time to lose; the shark would hit the Nautilus at any moment. He stabbed the firing button with his thumb and was rewarded with a comic boing sound as the missile flew from the sub.

  Scrambling back to the tower, Dakkar just saw the arrow disappear into the creature’s gullet. Its red maw closed on the arrow and then the sea boiled with the explosion. A blood-red fog filled the water and chunks of shark thumped heavily against the Nautilus as she rolled and bucked, throwing Dakkar around the tower room like a drunkard in a storm. Oginski slid from his seat and, too weak to hold on, rolled at Dakkar’s feet.

  Dakkar scrabbled over Oginski into the seat as the Nautilus plummeted down into the darkness of the sea, spiralling like a bird diving for a fish. Her planks groaned as Dakkar wrestled with the wheel.

  Something banged against the rear of the craft and the world spun around as the Nautilus whirled nose over tail. Dakkar clung to the wheel, and Oginski’s limp body thumped against the walls, floor and ceiling as each took the place of the other. Maps, spanners, rope and anything that wasn’t tied down flew around the cabin, bouncing off Dakkar’s head. Then, in the distance, he saw the ominous outline of a shark growing ever larger.

  With a yell, Dakkar wrenched the ballast wheel and blew the ballast tanks, sending water bubbling around them. His head pounded as the Nautilus rose upward, righting herself as she went. The shark tracked the sub­marine’s path with ease. Its red mouth, lined with dagger teeth, widened as it scraped past the sub’s hull, sending her juddering to port.

  ‘See how you like this,’ Dakkar hissed. He reached up to the wall and turned a crank handle rapidly clockwise, panting as he did so. ‘Eighteen, nineteen, twenty . . .’

  The shark circled back round and Dakkar realised that it was trying to get behind the sub to bite into the rudders of the Nautilus. If that happens, we’ll be set adrift, helpless, he thought, wheeling the craft round to face the oncoming creature once more.

  The Nautilus shook again and Dakkar shuddered at the sight of the raw gums, serrated teeth and the cold, black button eyes of the shark. He pushed the red button next to the crank handle.

  Thousands of volts of electricity pulsed blue around the sub and Dakkar watched as the shark thrashed and writhed in the storm he’d created. The charge died and, still twitching, the shark drifted to the depths below. Dakkar pressed his head against the glass and watched it vanish into the darkness.

  ‘Oginski!’ Dakkar yelled, spinning round and dropping down to the prone figure of his mentor on the floor.

  Blood pooled from the count’s shoulder and he looked paler than before, if that were possible. Dakkar lifted Oginski’s shoulders up but his head lolled back. He’d stopped breathing. Dakkar shook Oginski but the big man appeared
lifeless. He patted Oginski’s face, struggling to remember what he’d been taught about resuscitating those who had stopped breathing. Oginski had taught him a lot as they sat by the sea after their swimming sessions back home in Cornwall. In fact, Dakkar recalled one day when Oginski had timed how long Dakkar could stay underwater – Dakkar had nearly drowned. Remembering what Oginski had done then, Dakkar pulled his mentor’s arms up above his head and brought them down again rapidly.

  Again, he pumped Oginski’s arms. Nothing.

  He pressed an ear to Oginski’s chest, not noticing the blood that smeared his own cheek. No heartbeat!

  Dakkar felt numb. Oginski was dead.

  Chapter Five

  Life or Death?

  Dakkar stared at the lifeless form of his mentor. Tears stung his eyes and he stifled a sob. How can he be dead? Dakkar thought. It can’t happen.

  ‘I won’t let it happen,’ Dakkar snarled, grabbing Oginski’s body and dragging it down to the lower cabin of the Nautilus.

  The man weighed heavy in Dakkar’s arms and exhaustion made Dakkar weak. He winced every time Oginski’s head accidentally bumped against the walls of the sub or on a step. As he struggled, he remembered an experiment Oginski had once shown him. An experiment first carried out by an Italian called Galvani. He had made a frog’s leg twitch with life by passing an electric current through it.

  ‘Galvani believed that animals’ muscles have electri­city coursing through them,’ Oginski had said. ‘He may be right. I have conducted many experiments on animal tissue. I even set a pig’s heart beating for the briefest amount of time. If it’s true then, with a strong enough charge, could we not start a dead man’s heart?’

  ‘Oginski, that is monstrous,’ Dakkar had objected. ‘One must respect the dead. Experiment with human bodies? It doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘Don’t worry, my prince.’ Oginski had laughed. ‘I’m not about to go skulking around graveyards at night, looking for fresh corpses. It’s just a theory . . .’