The Eleventh Plague cq-2

by Darren Craske

'And I know you, my dear lady,' Sir George said, teasing his cracked lips with his tongue. 'And I would have thought that someone like you would be used to consorting with vile monsters…after all, you gave birth to one.' The old man watched the effect his words had upon Destine with keen interest. 'It was a real shame what happened to Antoine in London. You have my sympathies.'

  'You may keep them!' Destine said. 'I have long since given up shedding tears for him – he chose his life, and he deserved his death. He was nothing but a cold-blooded murderer.'

  'True…but one of the most gifted cold-blooded murderers I've ever met,' said Dray, flashing a glimpse of his yellowed teeth. 'No remorse, no conscience, and no limits to the lengths he would go to get the job done. The Hades Consortium can't take all the credit, of course. All we did was encourage his skills along a little. But your son is not why I am here, Madame. Like I said, I have a question about a mutual friend…the man responsible for your son's death…Cornelius Quaint.'

  'My son was responsible for his own death!' replied Destine forthrightly.

  Dray cackled. 'So you approved of Cornelius's actions, did you? Interesting. That takes rare strength of character, Madame. I doubt that I'd be so generous if someone did that to my son!'

  Lady Jocasta felt her blood chill.

  It was almost as if the old man was speaking one thing, but meaning something else, and something directed only at her. She tried to mask her shattered nerves, praying he could not sense her fear.

  'Cornelius acted with honour, as he always does, monsieur!' Destine said.

  'Maybe so. We shall soon see if he holds you in as much regard,' said Dray, as he leaned on his walking cane and pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. 'Our sentries tell us that Cornelius is camped on the outskirts of this very base. He is no doubt coming for you, but when he gets here he will have a very nasty surprise waiting for him.'

  Destine looked up. 'Which is?'

  Sir George Dray smiled a tight, crooked smile. 'Me.'

  CHAPTER LIV

  The Advance Guard

  CORNELIUS QUAINT AND Aksak Faroud held centre stage in front of the group of Clan Scarabs (plus Godfrey Joyce) gathered around the ashes of the campfire.

  'Right then, does everyone know their part?' Quaint asked. 'Faroud and I will be disguised as Consortium guards at the rear. Joyce is the vanguard, and Kulfar and Nehmet here will be masquerading as his prisoners – namely Faroud and myself respectively. Once we get close, the Consortium guards will be watching us like hawks so you'll have to keep your nerve – not to mention your wits.' He clasped his hands behind his back and looked out across the Scarabs' apprehensive faces. 'The rest of you are to be our second wave. After we enter the sanctorum, Faroud and I will be causing a commotion and drawing a lot of attention to ourselves. The Consortium will be running around like headless chickens. Wait for the signal before you join the fray. You'll know it when you see it. It will be up to you to back us up. We may be outnumbered and outgunned – but they won't be expecting us to bring the fight to them. Once we get a foot in the door, we'll bottleneck them within the confines of the tunnels, but whatever we do, we can't let them use numbers against us.' Quaint smiled effusively. 'Now, we've assembled an array of weaponry that you lot thoughtfully managed to procure from Bara Mephista before you left. I suggest everyone fills their pockets. Any questions? No? In that case…good luck to us all.'

  Just outside the city of Fantoma, the band split into two groups, with the conjuror's advance guard heading towards the ruins of the ancient city, whilst their backup team moved into position in the shadows of the imposing Mount Zahi. Cornelius Quaint rode steadily at Faroud's side whilst Kulfar and Nehmet rode ahead of them. Godfrey Joyce led the pack from the front in his horse-drawn cart. Faroud looked at Quaint as they cantered towards the high walls of Fantoma. Although the conjuror's hood obscured his features, the Scarab leader could see the look of disquiet upon his comrade's rough, lined face.

  'Joyce reeks of suspicion. We were wise to suspect a trap,' Faroud hissed.

  'Suspecting a trap is one thing…expecting one is something else,' Quaint replied.

  'I take it you have a backup plan?' asked Faroud.

  Quaint grinned unabashedly. 'Aksak, if there is one thing you should know about me by now, it's that I always have a backup plan.'

  The ancient site at Fantoma was just one of the glittering gems within Egypt's crown. Construction had begun as far back as the sixteenth century BC and, as a consequence, the ravages of both time and the weather had left their scars. Even so, just one look at the deserted city's many towering columns and walls – each one engraved with grand inscriptions by the phantoms of the past – was all it took to raise a lump in the back of Cornelius Quaint's throat.

  In his lifetime, he had visited many ancient cities and places of worship in the Orient, South America and India, but none had more of a vibrant connection with the ghosts of the past than Fantoma. Huge multistorey buildings, crumbling and fading more by the day, nestled next to ornate obelisks and columns of white stone that pricked the azure sky. A bleached white shroud of dust covered every building and every monument, as the centuries of harsh Egyptian weather eroded former works of art and colourful decorations. Now everything looked the same, as though a master artist had created the landscape but with just one colour to his palette. Skilfully detailed carvings, scriptures scored into stone, venerated deities etched into the rocks – proof that not all of Egypt's treasures were to be found buried under the sand.

  The small band traversed down a slender corridor between two huge edifices, no wider than ten yards, with high sandstone walls on either side. Godfrey Joyce looked over his shoulder, held up his hand, and pulled his cart to a stop. As Quaint and Faroud trotted towards him, he spoke:

  'This is the main entrance, next to this temple, chaps. The passageway descends underground from here, and grows very slender on the way so I doubt the horses will make it.'

  On foot through the high-walled passage, they entered a large building decorated with an array of mythical-looking beasts around its parapets. At its base at ground level, former artistic glories were only visible as etched scoring and flaky pockmarked artwork. Quaint wondered how magnificent the city must have been in its prime, but he could not allow Fantoma's grandeur to blind him to the dangers that lurked beneath the sand.

  They found themselves heading down a steep incline, into a darkened tunnel carved from the rocks beneath the foundations of the building above. This dim place was bereft of both light and air, and something sent a chill up Quaint's spine. In such a narrow place, were they to get trapped down there, they might never get out. Quaint had, indeed, filled his pockets with tools from the Scarabs' armoury, and out of Joyce's sight, he deposited several explosive sticks upon the ground where a breach in the rocks led to the outside.

  He mouthed the words 'Backup plan' to the Scarab leader, who greeted the sight with a roll of his dark-rimmed eyes.

  The small band ventured through the maze-like tunnels in silence. Eventually, at the end of one dimly lit by a succession of mounted torches on the walls, they reached the pair of carved stone doors that signalled entrance to the Hades Consortium's sanctorum.

  'We're here,' said Godfrey Joyce.

  Quaint readjusted the hood of his commandeered uniform.

  'This is it,' he whispered to his band of men. 'Play your parts…and wait until we're in deep before revealing yourselves.' Then he took a step towards Joyce. 'Just remember I'm right behind you. If you so much as think about double-crossing us, you'll feel my sword between your shoulder blades quicker than you can blink.'

  'You are quite the motivator, Mr Quaint,' sneered Joyce.

  'I hear that a lot,' muttered Quaint.

  Joyce pushed hard against the doors with both hands, and their hinges complained noisily against each other, announcing the group's arrival better than a doorbell. Joyce stood pensively in the doorway, expecting the guards at the entrance to announce themselves. To his a
pparent surprise, the other side of the vast stone doors was completely deserted.

  Quaint stepped forward gingerly, listening for any signs of habitation. There was nothing. No sound at all.

  'Where is everyone?' he asked his comrades in arms.

  Faroud shrugged. 'I do not know…but we should make the best of our luck!'

  The group were just about to move into the main cavernous lair, when their ears heard a trembling sound. It was difficult to pinpoint its exact location; it seemed to be echoing from every direction at once. Quaint's mind tried to evaluate the noise.

  It was footfalls, and lots of them.

  'I think our luck just ran out,' he said grimly.

  CHAPTER LV

  The Wedge

  LINES OF DARK red robed Hades Consortium troops marched towards them from the rear, brandishing long-poled spears in their hands, swords at their backs or pistols at their belts.

  Their retreat was blocked.

  'What do we do, Aksak?' asked Nehmet of Faroud.

  'We stand our ground, my brother Scarab!' Faroud bellowed, pulling the sword from his scabbard. 'Stand shoulder to shoulder. This brigade will not halt our progression!'

  'That is good to know,' said Kulfar, 'but what about that one?'

  On the other side of the vast stone doors, another troop of Hades Consortium guards appeared, blocking any advancement forwards. With the enclosed tunnels penning them in at each side there was nowhere to run. They were wedged between the two brigades.

  'It did not take them very long to mobilise,' said Faroud to Quaint.

  'Almost as if they knew we were coming, eh?' said Quaint to Faroud.

  Gone was their element of surprise, and if they wanted to salvage anything even remotely resembling the upper hand, they needed to act fast. The soldiers numbered over twenty in each platoon – so they were outnumbered at least eight to one. The guards were all garbed alike, wearing long, dark red robes from their hooded heads to their feet. Whereas the inner stratum functioned as the brains behind the Consortium's campaigns, they were not without a reliance on hands and eyes to perform their menial tasks, and should any interlopers stumble across one of their hideaways, it paid to have some lethal measures on hand to deal with the situation.

  Back to back with Quaint, Faroud called over his shoulder, 'What shall we do?'

  'There's only one course of action open to us if we want to live,' replied Quaint.

  'You mean surrender? Never! A Clan Scarab never surrenders!'

  Quaint spied the array of spears, knives, swords and guns trained at them.

  'Might I recommend a rethink of that policy?'

  Faroud grimaced, clenching his jaw tight. Quaint was right, infuriatingly so.

  'Stand down,' he said to his men. Kulfar and Nehmet exchanged quizzical expressions, first with each other and then with Faroud. 'That is an order!'

  The two Scarabs reluctantly complied and, eventually, Quaint's band was relieved of all their weaponry. It was at that moment that Godfrey Joyce showed his colours.

  He raised his hand, like a schoolchild begging his teacher's attention.

  'Um…excuse me!' he called, bobbing above the heads of the mass of guards. He took a step to the side in an attempt to distance himself from Quaint's group. 'I'm not with these people. My name is Godfrey Joyce. I'm one of you! Check with your superiors if you don't believe me. I work for Baron Remus!' One of the Consortium troops stepped forward and Joyce took him to be the man in charge. 'This is all some dreadful misunderstanding! If you would be so kind as to run along and tell the Baron of my arrival, we can sort this all out nice and peacefully, hmm?'

  The head guard pulled back his dark red hood. Tattoos swirled from the sides of his face, across his cheeks and up to his eyes where the patterns merged in a pit of black ink. His eyeballs were buried somewhere within the darkness. From the grim look of distemper on his face, this man was not one to suffer fools gladly. He took another step nearer to Joyce, looking all around his face in uneasy close-up detail, and then took a brief sniff of the man.

  'What is he doing?' asked Quaint, from the corner of his mouth.

  'He looks to be…smelling him,' replied Faroud.

  Quaint frowned. 'What the hell is he, a Labrador?'

  Just then, the head guard clapped his hands three times. At this cue, his men grabbed Joyce roughly by the arms and steered him back into Quaint's pack.

  'Didn't you hear what I just said? I'm not with them, I'm on your side!' he cried, as he was led roughly to stand next to Quaint and Faroud. 'This is intolerable. Do you know who I am?'

  The head guard cuffed Joyce roughly across the face.

  'I'd take that as a yes,' quipped Quaint.

  Faroud exhaled, pondering their predicament. He was a leader of men, and not such a bad strategist himself if he was being honest, but this situation was impossible to escape from. With over twenty men at the front and more than twenty at their rear, the odds were definitely against them. It was lucky for Faroud that he was partnered with Cornelius Quaint – a man that paid no heed to the odds.

  'Cover your ears,' said the conjuror.

  'Cover my ears?' asked Faroud, with a glower. 'Why?'

  'Because there's going to be a loud bang,' replied Quaint.

  He broke free from his guards' grasp, and before anyone had a clue what he was doing – let alone tried to stop him from doing it – he lunged for one of the wall-mounted torches. He tore it from its housing on the wall and threw it down onto the ground directly behind him. With a cloud of black smoke, the torch sparked into a furious wall of fire six feet high.

  All hell broke loose as the Consortium guards' tongueless mouths screamed silent cries of alarm. They pressed themselves against the tunnel's walls to avoid the ensuing inferno, watching mystified as the trail seemed to spring to life and sped off down the tunnel and into the distance.

  'What now?' Faroud yelled.

  'Now?' Quaint pulled out his timepiece and consulted it carefully. 'We duck.'

  The explosion that followed took everyone by surprise – especially the large group of Consortium guards that were crowded into the tight space behind Quaint. The force ripped through the brigade and the guards were thrown in all directions, crushed against the walls, slammed up into the ceiling. A large, violent crack formed itself in the tunnel roof and clouds of choking dust rained down.

  Using the confusion to his advantage, Quaint grabbed hold of Faroud's robes and wrenched him through the ensuing curtain of smoke, with the Aksak fumbling blindly for Kulfar and Nehmet. They stumbled forward, barging straight into Godfrey Joyce, who was standing dumbstruck watching the events unfold. The men tumbled into each other through the huge stone doors and into the main audience chamber. Once through, Quaint looked around and saw a huge wooden beam by the doors.

  'Help me!' he yelled, pushing the doors closed, containing the smoke-filled tunnel on the other side. Kulfar and Nehmet lifted the beam and fitted it in place, barring the doors.

  With the entire brigade of guards trapped on the other side, Quaint afforded himself a brief respite, and he slid his bulk down the wall onto his backside, coughing violently. Faroud and the rest were also panting heavily as they tried to empty their lungs of the acrid smoke. Their faces were covered in a thick layer of red, chalky dust. Through the heavy stone doors they heard the stomach-churning screams of men as the fire consumed them. With nowhere to run, they were helpless. If the fire did not speed their deaths, the acrid, choking smoke that swamped the tunnel surely would.

  'What in Ra's name was that?' demanded Faroud, wiping dust from his eyes.

  'Backup plan,' said Quaint, coughing a sticky brown mess into the palm of his hand. 'I thought there was a risk of the tunnel being used against us…so I left a trail of gunpowder as we entered…leading right back to a stack of explosive sticks that I'd stashed by the main entrance.'

  'Quaint, you lunatic!' squawked Godfrey Joyce, joining the fray. 'You almost brought the whole bloody city down on
our heads!'

  'Almost…but then I would've missed the pleasure of doing this.' Quaint punched Joyce hard in the face and a trickle of dust-clad blood seeped from the man's nose.

  Aksak Faroud glared at Quaint. 'Do you feel better now?'

  'Much,' grinned Quaint, blowing on his sore knuckles.

  'But he has a point,' said Faroud. 'You are a lunatic. By now the whole base will know we are here.'

  'Quite so,' agreed Quaint. 'But at least we're free to start some serious trouble.'

  An icy expression graced Aksak Faroud's face and he grasped at Quaint's robes.

  'I would not exactly class our situation as "free", my friend.'

  Quaint looked in the direction of Faroud's fixated eyes, and what he saw was not to his liking.

  Standing upon a large, stone plinth behind them, with a fresh brigade of at least fifty armed Consortium troops surrounding her, was Lady Jocasta.

  'I do hate it when guests turn up uninvited,' she said.

  CHAPTER LVI

  The Rekindled Flame

  FEELING THE SHOCKWAVE of the explosion at the opposite end of the sanctorum, Madame Destine stood swiftly from her bed and then smiled.

  'Cornelius,' she said.

  Since Sir George had left her quarters, she had spent her time contemplating her renewed gifts of clairvoyance, wondering what she was going to do now that all the pieces of herself were back together. Everything was so much clearer – none more so than her present predicament. How was she supposed to ensure that her task was complete if she were imprisoned?

  A mute Hades Consortium guard stood motionless at the doorway, although every now and again he would glare at her as if daring her to try to escape. She was a prisoner, unable to affect the winds that blew in her direction. She prayed that Cornelius would come for her, but the man was obviously busy causing his particular brand of trouble at that moment. He would sort everything out and restore order to the world. Cornelius always said that she could notice a single ray of sunshine in a rainstorm. Nevertheless, she looked over at the imposing figure of her guard, clad in his dark red robes, and surveyed her options: she could sit and wait for Cornelius to arrive, or she could grasp Fate with both hands and bend it to her will.