Death and the Dreadnought

by Robert Wilton

  My whole body felt alive and alert. Surely there was significance here. More immediately, how was I to track two men?

  Von Hahn didn’t seem to be moving. Another who couldn’t do without a cigarette? Stopped to get his bearings, or have a piss? Automatically, my eyes were moving to and fro Hertenstein as well. But Hertenstein was walking on now, and even away from this parallel track.

  With one finger of my raised hand, I beckoned Quinn forwards. I didn’t hear him, not a foot-fall among the leaves, but then I felt his breath over my shoulder.

  I turned my head over my shoulder until I was whispering almost directly into his ear. ‘Another of the mourners at my funeral. I stick with Hertenstein. Once we’re clear, give it a couple of minutes and then approach the big hun. Tell him I urgently want to meet him. Remember that oak we passed, at the fork in the path three hundred yards back? There; send him there. Don’t go with him, but track him.’

  Silence. Quinn didn’t like it. I didn’t blame him. But he knew better than to chit-chat in these circumstances. ‘Aye sir,’ he murmured eventually, the seaman’s acknowledgement the Army had never managed to train out of him.

  I began to shift to the right, off the path and through bracken, to where Hertenstein had been. Von Hahn I would leave to Quinn. I didn’t know if they were linked – it seemed madness. But I had to split them. Quinn would make sure Von Hahn went to that oak. If he wasn’t the bad man Bliss thought, my absence could easily be explained as miscommunication. If he was, then I didn’t care so much about inconveniencing him.

  I reached the path Hertenstein was on, saw his figure through the leaves ahead, and set off after him.

  We were heading roughly north through the woodland, the ground rising gently. I knew the slope through my feet, and my leg muscles, and the changing play of light through trees.

  Occasionally Hertenstein hesitated, or stopped, or looked around him at the warm beauty of the woods. I know that he never saw me.

  Half a mile later, he stopped again. This time he leaned against a tree, his back towards me, and from the movement of his arm I could tell he was smoking again.

  I lowered myself to my haunches: even less chance of discovery; ease the pressure on legs and feet. In the pause, consciousness returned, the active part of my brain ticking over while my unconscious took a breather from its dialogue with the terrain.

  I’ve never been to India, but in East Africa I met an Indian chappie who’d hunted at home and come to try his luck against a different menu. He told me that when you’re hunting a tiger, the great trick is to see things from the tiger’s point of view. The land; the movement of wind and water and smell; the priorities. I’ve found it a useful habit on all sorts of occasion.

  It still didn’t tell me where on earth Hertenstein was going. I refused to believe that he’d got himself invited her for a solitary ramble. He had something to do, or someone to meet. But he was going a damned long roundabout way, if so. If he wanted a discreet conversation with anyone, there were better ways and places, surely. And what could he be doing, so far from anyone else?

  I realized I was speculating, and uselessly. I would follow him, and–

  The tiger’s point of view. You damned fool, Delamere… I felt my face clenching in anger, at myself. Was the tiger being followed, or was the tiger leading?

  47.

  So far from anyone else…

  I scanned the ground around me. Still ducking low among the bracken, I stuffed the butt of my gun into a rabbit hole, so the barrel stood more or less upright. I perched my hat on the end of the barrel. Then I dropped, and on my belly began to wriggle through the bracken to one side. The ground was falling away in this direction, and a slight channel worn by a trickle of water gave me a path. I went dead slow. I was trying to avoid disturbing the bracken too much. A track of waving undergrowth is the surest sign of the fugitive animal. And if my hypothetical hunter was anything better than an imbecile, my hat-on-a-stick gag wouldn’t hold him for long.

  I made ten yards this way, the earth rich in my nostrils and smeared all over my kit. With my slow, rhythmic progress, hopefully the ruffling of the bracken would look like the wind. I was at the top of a kind of gully: at the moment I was just a few feet lower than the ground either side, but in front of me the gully widened and dropped away deeper than I could see through the undergrowth.

  Now I turned to my right, and scrambled slowly up one side of the gully. When I stretched my head up over its lip, I had a bit of a view through the bracken back the way I’d come earlier. If I turned my head to one side, I could see part of my hat, on its perch just protruding above the leaves. And if I rolled onto my back, even though I couldn’t see Hertenstein as he was, I had a chance of spotting him if he moved off.

  I stayed there a full quarter hour. Watching the ground ahead, through the bracken stalks and fronds. Periodically rolling my head around to scan as much of the ground to my side and behind as I could, without disturbing the leaves above me.

  If you stay in that kind of situation long enough, your mind starts to play tricks.

  And if you stay even longer, your mind has time to consider and discard the tricks and know the truth.

  In this way, after that quarter hour, I knew that there was a boot twenty yards away from me.

  Not a rock, a dead animal, or a trick of light on earth and stalk. A boot, gents’ outdoor, usual arrangement of laces and so on.

  Thanks to the bracken – a vast jungle from my ant’s perspective – I couldn’t see the toe or the heel of the boot, and I couldn’t see any leg and body above it.

  It was possible that it was just a boot – lost, abandoned, or fallen from heaven. But that didn’t seem very likely.

  As I watched, I thought I saw it wriggle slightly.

  Then a gust of wind rose slowly and shivered the bracken, and I stared hard. Now I caught a glimpse of leg, close over the boot. He was crouched on his haunches, whoever he was, facing towards where I’d left my gun and hat. From a glimpse of elbow, cocked low against knee, I deduced that he had a long-barrelled weapon held ready.

  My priority had to be survival, now. Escape.

  The boot shifted again. In that second he’d moved more than he had in a quarter hour. Something had changed; something had caught his attention.

  The question for me was whether my gun was part of my survival and escape.

  I turned my head, towards my little decoy. I could see the barrel of my gun clearly, perhaps fifteen yards off.

  Which was a shame, because last time I’d looked it had been covered by hat. That last gust of wind had caught the hat. My cover was, rather literally, blown.

  I turned back to my hunter, and now the legs were moving. He was rising from the crouch. He’d seen what I’d seen, and he knew what I’d done, and he wasn’t hesitating.

  A man with the instinct and skill to wait as long as he had waited, utterly still, would easily follow the track of my crawl through the undergrowth. Inside twenty seconds he would know my direction of travel. And he’d have my gun, and he’d know me unarmed.

  I launched myself up from the gully, crouching low and running hard. I didn’t want to give him an easy shot, but I made no attempt to hide. Somewhere to my side there was movement but I was focused only on my pumping legs and my scrambling hands and then I dived forwards through the bracken and if he’d had the chance of a shot the moment had gone. I wrenched my gun out its rabbit hole, and rolled onto my back and round and the gun came up to my shoulder and I was ready to fire.

  For an instant I’d had a glimpse of hat and perhaps head beneath it, but I still wasn’t sure I wanted to shoot, and it would have been a risky shot at best. As soon as he’d seen that he wasn’t going to win the race to my gun, he’d stopped, and then pulled back and ducked.

  So there we waited, each crouched low, knowing that another armed man was just a few yards off and waiting for movement.

  The bracken fronds shivered in the breeze. I could see the individual
drops of moisture on them. As if they too were sweating. I could hear every roaring detail of the silence of the woods.

  My treacherous hat was lying beside me, where it had fallen from the gun. I put it over my right hand, and raised it slowly until it was just over the bracken again.

  Smart chap I was up against. He wouldn’t fall for this one again. So he wouldn’t blow my arm off. That was my plan, anyway.

  The hat still poking out of the undergrowth, with my left hand I gripped my gun by the butt end. With the barrel, I jostled a bracken stalk beside me. Then another stalk a foot or so away. And so on, until my arm was straining to hold the gun at its farthest possible reach, and one final spasm of the barrel set the leaves rustling a couple of yards away.

  Slowly, slowly, I pulled the gun back in again, avoiding every single bracken stalk as it came. I regathered my muscles under me. Then I counted to ten.

  Too soon, and he’d still be looking in this direction. Too late, and he’d be having second thoughts about my apparent crawl and looking in this direction again.

  I rose up out of the bracken like a jack-in-the-box, gun up and striding forwards through the undergrowth. He was good, and he was fast. He’d shifted himself a bit and when he sensed my first movement he’d jumped to one side and rolled. ‘Don’t!’ I said. I was faster still. Speed and height meant I saw him and had time to adjust my aim, and he was only half-turned when he knew that I had the killing shot and he had no chance.

  He stopped instantly, lifted his hands slowly, gun to the sky. A real professional, this. It only made me more watchful.

  Slowly, he turned towards me. ‘Drop it,’ I said. He rested the butt of his gun on the ground, and let the barrel fall away into the bracken. Minimum chance of earth getting into the breech or barrel. The gun was still in play.

  I glanced up to his face. Well-built chap. I’d have recognized him from build alone. One of Hertenstein’s two mastiffs, whom he’d introduced the previous day. ‘Very impressive, Mein Herr,’ he started saying. ‘I did not–’

  I wasn’t listening. Professionals don’t talk; so why was this professional talking? My eyes, and above all my ears, were open to the woods around me and ignoring the chatter.

  Perhaps I heard something. Or perhaps I only thought I did, confirming what I knew had to be true.

  With my gun still pointing ahead, and making no sudden movement, I shifted a couple of paces to the side and looked over my shoulder.

  The second mastiff was standing twenty yards behind me, gun up and ready.

  Killing shot.

  48.

  ‘Well that’s hardly fair, is it?’ I said. Gun held vertical and in left hand only, I spread my arms slowly. I can act the professional too; sometimes. I glanced at Number One. ‘Might as well pick yours up again now.’

  He nodded, and did so. No smile, no elegant wit. These men did killing, and nothing more, and they were very good at it. I wondered if one of them had stabbed Sinclair, or Merridew, or the night watchman Tulliver. The second man was only ten yards away now.

  As they advanced from either side, I took a step forward and turned slightly, so that I was directly between them and presenting as thin a target as I could. Negligible advantages against two killers with shotguns. But every little helps.

  I was standing in that position, glancing side to side between them, when I saw a third figure rising over the crest of the slope twenty yards in front of me.

  ‘Why, Sir Harry,’ Hertenstein said. ‘Have you perhaps miscalculated the risks of a rabbit shoot?’ His voice was oily, breathing triumph.

  Life has given me fair opportunity to reflect on how my end might come. Instant fatal heart attack while enjoying the embraces of a dusky lady would obviously be ideal. Anything relatively quick and sporting – preferably far from England, doctors, sick-rooms and hordes of gawpers – would be acceptable. Getting knocked off in my prime by a couple of professional hunters, while I was trying to do some good, would be neither unlikely nor too bad a way to go.

  ‘We see you at last, as I have promised.’

  But damned if was going to turn up my toes in front of this leering assassin.

  Anger makes you do unpredictable and unwise things, and in this case it might have saved my life. Faced with two armed men and one unarmed, with one shot left to you, whom do you aim for? All I could think of was not giving this bounder an easy triumph, and perhaps throwing a spanner in his works. I pulled my gun in to me and dropped to one knee and the barrel came up and I cheerfully spent what I assumed might be my last breath taking a snap-shot at Hertenstein.

  I got him in the arm, and he looked shocked as much as hurt. Turning, dropping, and armed with little better than a drainpipe, I consider it one of my better shots. Hertenstein gasped, and swore, and clutched his wound – shotgun’ll make a bit of a mess at twenty yards; the revolutionary band would be short one violinist, at least. Then he turned, and hurried away. His plans surely called for him to be well away from my death, and now he had some running repairs to make too. His final glance at me, as he ran cradling his arm, was pure hate. See you soon, old chap, I was thinking; his sort and mine are always on converging paths.

  As an unexpected bonus, I’d bought myself an extra second with the two killers. They couldn’t believe I’d gone for the unarmed man, they weren’t sure what to do about their wounded boss, and I was still standing between them. I launched myself at the nearer, my empty gun held at my waist. I jabbed it towards him, and he flinched, and he was adjusting his aim and making to pull the trigger when my barrel whirled round his and knocked it aside. Professional killers they might be, but they’d not gone through British Army bayonet drill. The shot roared past my ear.

  I followed up with the butt of my gun, swinging it round into his jaw and sending him stumbling away. I took three racing steps to the side and as the other man’s shot exploded over the bracken I dived headlong into my gully. I scrambled forwards, and threw myself into a roll. Rolling and scrambling would carry me fast down the gully and away before they had a clear shot.

  I made all of about three yards before I tumbled into the trunk of a dead tree, hidden under the bracken and blocking the gully. For a moment I lay dazed and tangled in my arms and legs, and when I worked out where up was, I found it occupied by two armed killers. Their guns were up and ready and pointing at me.

  Still they didn’t speak, and they didn’t smile.

  ‘Persistent bastards, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘Right ho. Fun while it lasted.’

  I heard the shot and I flinched instinctively. Part of my brain was bracing for pain, and part of it was already making its first shocked steps to the afterlife, when some more useful part worked out that I hadn’t actually been hit.

  Above me, the nearest gunman went pale, and spun, and toppled into the gully at my feet. He’d been shot in the heart.

  The other gunman was as surprised as I was. He still had me at disadvantage, but now he was gaping around the woodland and wondering where the shot had come from. He glanced down at his dead comrade, and I knew he was trying to gauge direction from the wound. He took a couple of steps forwards, swinging his gaze and his barrel side to side.

  The second shot tore his chest away and threw him backwards into the bracken. He never saw where that one came from, either.

  I stepped out of the gully, and watched as a figure emerged from the undergrowth with shotgun held ready.

  This I had not expected.

  It was Magnus, Lord Aysgarth.

  He stomped towards me, and past me, and stared down at the two bodies. Then he turned and glared. Even by his usual standards, it was ferocious.

  People react in strange ways to killing someone. Aysgarth was angry and, I suspect, a little shocked. Either way, his face was purple and clenched.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ And dear God I meant it. ‘That – that first – that was one hell of a shot.’

  It didn’t seem possible, but his face got more purple and more angry. He made to say
something, but couldn’t even manage that.

  Then I saw; then I understood. And I gasped at… at what I had brought to his family.

  ‘Yes, that’s right, damn you,’ he growled.

  That first kill would have been something special even for an excellent shot. Aysgarth was a good shot, but he wasn’t excellent, not with the havoc wrought on his eyes and muscles and nerves by umpteen decades of idleness and English dinners. The second shot had been his. But the first, as I saw it again on the dead man’s chest, wasn’t even from a shotgun.

  It was the clean precise wound caused by a rifle, and even for a rifle it had been something special. There was only one person using a rifle today; one person with the skill for such a shot.

  I closed my eyes a moment. I should have protected her from this.

  ‘It didn’t happen,’ I said eventually. ‘She was not involved.’ Then: ‘I can’t ask you to like it, sir. And I won’t waste breath trying to thank you more. Please believe that this is about more than me.’

  He glared at me some more. He didn’t like it, but he knew. He was still damned angry – at me, at the whole madness. ‘And them?’ he managed eventually, a growl. He nodded curtly at the two bodies.

  I saw his point. Dead foreigners lying around the place lower the tone; and shooting one’s guests is bad form, even for the Aysgarths. I nodded. I was thinking hard. ‘Go. Leave them to me. I’ll… arrange things.’

  He growled some more, and turned to go.

  ‘She’s the best of you, Lord Aysgarth.’ He turned back. ‘I know what you think of me, and you know what I think of you. But through her I know what’s good in you. And, for what it’s worth, you were right that I’m not good enough for her.’

  ‘Go to hell, Delamere.’

  ‘Very much on my way, I think.’

  49.

  Half an hour later I stepped out of the undergrowth onto the back lawn of Shulstoke, where the guests were starting to mill around a cold lunch laid on tables. I walked up to my host.