The Londum Omnibus Volume One (The Londum Series Book 4)

by Tony Rattigan

  ‘And what will he do with it?’

  ‘Well, he said that the government would give it to the old duke’s heir and help her take the throne away from Luga.’

  ‘But supposing that they change their minds and decide to give it to another Pils-Holstein noble so they can install them as their puppet. How fair would that be on Yuli? Is that what we risked our lives for?’

  ‘So what are you suggesting?’ asked Cobb.

  ‘Well, why don’t we bypass the government and keep the Seal in this country? That way we can be sure that the right person gets on the throne.’

  ‘That’s not the plan!’ said Cobb firmly.

  ‘But as Thornton Wells said, “Situations change, game plans have to adapt accordingly,” replied Jim.

  ‘And how do you suggest that we get it to the right person?’ asked Cobb. ‘Leave it pinned to the castle gate with a note and hope they get here and find it before it gets nicked?’

  ‘Well, no. Actually, I think it’s going to be a little easier than that.’ Jim nodded into the crowd, over Cobb’s shoulder. Cobb turned and looked.

  At that moment Zelda approached them through the crowd accompanied by the two women who had been with Zelda at the mayor’s house. They were still wearing their cloaks and had their hoods up concealing their faces. They had come to join them when they saw Jim holding the Great Seal in the air.

  ‘We’d better give it back to the rightful owner.’ He knelt before one of the hooded ladies and held out the Seal for her to take. She threw back her hood and took the Seal from him.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Cobb asked Adele.

  ‘Just watch,’ she replied. ‘This will be interesting’.

  Jim stood and proudly announced, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present Yuli von Pils-Holstein, daughter of Grand Duke Henried … the new Grand Duchess!’

  Adele translated for Cobb as a ragged cheer went through the crowd as Duchess Yuli lifted the Seal high above her head as Jim had done a moment before. The other cloaked mystery woman threw back her hood and ran to Jim. She hugged him tightly and kissed him long and hard on the lips.

  Cobb and Adele looked at each other with raised eyebrows, and then Adele looked at Zelda. Zelda muttered something in Pils-Holstein and Adele translated it for Cobb. ‘That is Countess Mira, the new duchess’s auntie and she’s obviously very familiar with Jim.’

  Oblivious to all the shouting and noise that was going on around them, Jim and Mira were taking great pains to say hello to each other.

  Then the penny dropped for Cobb. The attractive woman hugging Jim Darby was none other than the one he had seen arriving at Jim’s house after Cobb had recovered the Seal from him. His jaw dropped as he realised how stupid he had been and how he had misjudged Jim.

  He walked over to Jim and tapped him on the shoulder. Jim disentangled himself from Mira, ‘Cobb, meet Countess Mira, Mira this is my good friend Cobb, although he doesn’t acknowledge it.’

  After an exchange of greetings with Mira, Cobb turned to Jim, ‘Jim … I owe you an apology. I’ve just realised what’s been going on all this time. Back in Londum … I thought you had stolen the Seal to make money out of it somehow, that’s why I was so angry with you. How could I have been so stupid? You stole it for them didn’t you, so they could reclaim their throne?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Jim grinned at him. ‘I met Mira at a society ball a few years ago and we became friends, close enough friends that she knew about my extra-curricular activities. So when Luga’s visit to Londum was announced, Mira came to me and asked me if I would steal back the Seal for her. I knew that Luga was a nasty piece of work so I agreed, for Mira and for the sake of her country. Then of course you made me give it back.

  ‘I was planning to come out to Pils-Holstein on my own and steal the Seal back again when you and Thornton Wells came to see me. So I allowed you to persuade me to accompany you. It made everything easier. Thanks for the help by the way, I couldn’t have done it without you.’

  ‘Jim, will you accept my apology for misjudging you?’

  ‘Of course I will Cobb … that’s what friends do. You may have given up on me as a friend but I never stopped considering you as one.’ He held his hand out to Cobb who took it gratefully.

  Zelda took Yuli by the arm and ushered her towards the castle. Jim, Mira, Adele, Cobb and Won Lungh all followed them up the stairs to the main castle door. Suddenly a cry went up and everyone put down their bottles and grabbed their guns.

  Cobb and Jim pushed their way through the crowd. Standing in the gateway of the castle was a solitary wolf, with one white paw. It just stood there scanning the crowd as it looking for someone in particular. Several men cocked their weapons nervously but before anyone could fire Zelda came forward and cried out, ‘WAIT! Nobody fire, he’s friendly … he’s come to see me.’

  She went forward and knelt down beside him and she listened to him. Jim and Cobb and the rest of the crowd looked on curiously as the dog growled softly with the occasional soft bark. Zelda seemed to understand what he was saying as she nodded occasionally.

  After a few moments she stood up and dusted off the front of her dress. ‘Listen to me,’ she addressed the crowd. ‘Luga and his sister have been spotted in the forest, he appears to be wounded. This wolf can lead us to him. He and his pack have lived in fear of Luga all their lives but if we are willing to kill Luga now, they will help us. They can’t do it on their own. We should go now before he escapes. Who’s with me?’

  Jim translated all this for Cobb. While he was doing this, the crowd looked around sheepishly at each other; they had just survived a battle and were not anxious to rush into danger again. Jim stepped forward. ‘If we let Luga live, rest assured he will be back. He will take his revenge and you will pay one by one. Now is the time to put an end to this terror. Let’s end this now … for your families … for Pils-Holstein!’

  ‘For Pils-Holstein!!’ roared the crowd, roused by the stirring speech and fuelled by the alcohol.

  ‘Right you lot,’ Jim waved to half of the crowd, ‘go to the stables and saddle up all the horses. The rest of you gather up all the arms and ammunition, make sure every man has a rifle and a pistol.’ Nobody questioned his orders; they seemed to accept his authority naturally. Must be his Army training, shout loud and be confident, thought Cobb, that is all it takes.

  While the horses were being saddled, Cobb went to Adele and the new duchess and explained what was happening. ‘Please be careful,’ Adele begged him.

  ‘I go with him to protect him,’ said Won Lungh.

  ‘No, I want you to stay and protect Adele and Duchess Yuli in case they evade us and head back to the castle,’ replied Cobb. He kissed Adele and then climbed on to the horse that Jim had brought over to him.

  ‘Are you sure you can handle that thing, city boy?’ Jim asked him.

  ‘Sure, I spent some time in the mounted police,’ replied Cobb. ‘Just don’t expect me to go steeple chasing.’ He noticed that Jim had armed himself. ‘Do I get a gun?’ Cobb asked him. ‘If we hit trouble I’ve not even got penknife on me.’

  Jim looked around them and spotted a man who was staying behind and not joining the mounted group. He ordered him to hand over his weapons to Cobb who accepted them gratefully.

  They rode down to the front of the castle where the others were waiting on horseback, including Zelda.

  ‘You’re not coming with us are you?’ Jim asked her.

  ‘Does anybody else here speak wolf?’ she asked sarcastically and looked around the crowd. Nobody answered. ‘Right, if there are no more stupid questions, we shall go. And remember, there will be other wolves around but they are not to be fired upon, they are there to help us. Is that clear?’

  Everyone agreed that they understood. Zelda waved to One With The White Paw and he ran off through the gate, followed by the hunting party.

  They rode for many miles at a steady trot; along the way they gathered company. As they rode they could see in the wood
s around them wolves appearing on either side of them, they kept their distance from the party but kept pace with them as they rode.

  Some of the horsemen began muttering nervously and the horses became a little skittish but a few words from Zelda shut them up.

  Several times The One With The White Paw veered off to run alongside his fellow wolves as he spoke with them then rejoined the horsemen to lead them in a new direction.

  They stopped to rest the horses and have a drink of water. Zelda spoke to The One With The White Paw and then came back to the group. ‘He says it isn’t far, we should walk the horses from now on and be ready with our guns.’

  They remounted their horses and flanked by the wolf pack they walked forward for quarter of a mile or so until The One With The White Paw stopped and looked at Zelda. She motioned for everyone to dismount and they readied their weapons as they walked forward cautiously, leaving a couple of men behind to tend to the horses.

  Within a few hundred yards they reached a small clearing and they all stopped within the tree line. They could see Kayla who had transformed into a werewolf, she was holding up Luga who for some reason was still in human form. He looked to be in a bad way, with his head and free arm hanging down. She sat him down on a fallen tree trunk and pawed at his chest.

  Jim had managed to scrounge up a pair of binoculars from somewhere before they left the castle, and he put them up to his eyes. Why hadn’t Luga transformed himself? If he were injured then all he had to do was simply transform himself and the process would heal his wounds. Werewolves were supposed to have terrific regenerative powers; they could take any amount of injury and could heal themselves within minutes. That’s why they were so damned hard to kill, unless you used silver of course.

  ‘Why isn’t he changing form?’ asked Cobb.

  ‘I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense,’ replied Jim. ‘Wait a minute … I can see something …’ As Kayla lowered Luga to the floor in a kneeling position facing them, Jim saw something in the middle of Luga’s chest. A large bloodstain in the centre of which, was the shaft of a broken sword! So they hadn’t been able to remove it. It must have broken inside Luga and caught on his ribs or his spine, when Jim had snapped it off inside him. That must be it; he was so badly wounded in his human form that he didn’t have the strength to transform.

  Jim quickly explained this to Cobb and then again in Deutschen to Zelda and the others. ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Cobb.

  Jim un-slung his rifle from his shoulder and replied grimly, ‘We kill him … while we have the chance.’

  He turned to Zelda, ‘Tell everyone to spread out in a line, on my command open fire and keep firing until I tell them to stop. Then we send the wolves in to attack. If he’s still moving after that then we give him another volley. Got it?’

  She got and it and quickly explained it all to the men and The One With The White Paw, who ran off to speak to the other wolves.

  As everyone got into position, Jim watched Kayla as she tried to pluck the broken sword blade from Luga’s chest but it was broken off too close to the skin to get a proper grip on it and remove it, as deeply embedded as it was. She was so preoccupied with tending her wounded husband that she wasn’t paying attention to her animal senses. She was unaware of the impending attack until Jim stood up and shouted, ‘Fire!!’ and let loose with his rifle.

  A volley of rifle fire split the air and the bullets thudded into Kayla and Luga. Unhindered by the injuries she rose on her hind legs and screamed at them. Luga was not so lucky; each bullet hit erupted in a spout of blood.

  He gripped Kayla’s arm and pulled himself to his feet and pushed her away in the direction of the wood behind them. She refused to go. There was a lull in the firing as the men reloaded and Luga shouted a hoarse command at her and reluctantly she dropped to all fours and bounded off into the forest.

  Zelda shouted something to the wolf pack and a group of them took off in pursuit of her. Meanwhile Luga jumped onto the fallen tree trunk and began to transform himself. It obviously took him a great effort to do this; the sword must have been cutting him up inside as his body remoulded itself. The man …er … thing was certainly no coward, thought, Cobb, whatever else he was.

  Luga roared defiance at them as his body began to grow in size and cover itself with hair.

  ‘Hit him again!’ yelled Jim and a fresh volley thundered across the clearing. They had to stop him before he completed his transformation! ‘Cease fire!!’ he yelled, followed by ‘Reload!’ As the rifle fire died away he yelled to Zelda, ‘Send in the wolves!’

  At a shouted command from her that was intelligible to any of the humans there, the wolves swept out from the tree line and launched themselves at Luga who was still half-human. Their combined assault knocked him backwards off the fallen tree trunk and forced him to the ground.

  They were a whirlwind of slashing claws and snapping teeth and the Gods help anyone that gets caught up in that, thought Cobb.

  He said to Jim, ‘I almost feel sorry for him.’

  Jim looked at him dubiously.

  ‘Almost,’ Cobb repeated.

  After several minutes, when they had finished their deadly work, the wolves backed away, bloody and victorious. Zelda shouted to them and they melted back into the woods, watching to see what happened next.

  The gathered men began to move slowly forwards. One of the men produced an axe and said, ‘We should take the head and burn the body to be sure.’

  Jim halted them and told them to wait. He walked forward alone until he was standing on the fallen tree trunk, looking down at Luga’s mutilated corpse. His dead body had reverted to his human form.

  He stared into Luga’s face, which was barely recognisable and said, ‘Remember Pils-Holstein rules, the first one that dies … loses. That’s what you get when you come to Londum and mess with my people!’

  Jim leapt to the ground and waved the rest of the hunting party forward. When they gathered around him he gave them their orders. The one with the axe did the grisly task while the others gathered wood and piled it onto the headless corpse.

  Jim got a bottle of alcohol from one of the men and smashed it over the wood to give the fire a good start then he lit a branch and threw it on the pyre. They all stood around the blaze and smoked and shared a bottle as the fire did the last of the work for them. While they waited for it to die down, the wolves that had chased Kayla away returned. She had managed to elude them, Zelda explained.

  The wolf pack stayed in the depths of the forest until the fire died down and the ashes were scattered across the clearing. As dusk was falling, they melted away into the gloom. The men and Zelda mounted their horses and headed back for the castle.

  The Man With the Silver Eyes

  The whole town’s inhabitants and all the gypsies had turned out for the “Ceremony of Proclamation” as it was known. This was where the possessor of the Great Seal publicly declared their right to rule the Grand Duchy of Pils-Holstein. As long as they held the Seal and were of Pils-Holstein noble blood, then by ancient law they could claim the throne and they were crowned.

  Now at last, the person who everyone believed was the rightful heir to the throne had returned to claim it from the usurper, Luga. Chairs had been placed either side of the Great Hall of the castle leaving a central aisle between the main doors and a raised platform at the other end of the hall. The hall couldn’t contain all the people that were there to witness the ceremony and the overflow had spilled out into the courtyard.

  Yuli sat on a throne on the raised platform at the end of the hall, flanked by her aunt Mira, the local Magistrate and Mayor Hunster. Cobb, Adele, Jim, Won Lungh, and Zelda were in the first row of the crowd. When the guards at the door (hastily conscripted townsfolk) indicated that the room was full, the mayor coughed discreetly to Yuli.

  She rose to her feet and turned to the Magistrate. He unwrapped the velvet cloth, exposing the Great Seal and offered it to Yuli. She took it from him and held it above her head,
facing the crowd.

  ‘I, Yuli von Pils-Holstein, daughter of Grand Duke Henried von Pils-Holstein, do hereby claim the throne of Pils-Holstein by virtue of my right of descent, nobility of blood and possession of the Great Seal of Pils-Holstein. It is my right under ancient law and custom and before the Gods I do call upon all those here present to bear witness to this claim.’ She lowered the Seal and handed it back to the Magistrate.

  The mayor stepped forward and said, ‘I do hereby declare that you have fulfilled the requirements of the ancient laws of Pils-Holstein to claim the throne. I call on all here to bear …’ his voice tailed off and he was no longer looking at Yuli but staring down the centre aisle of the hall. Everyone in the hall turned to follow his gaze.

  Kayla walked slowly down the aisle towards Yuli. She wore a tattered old dress that she had obviously stolen from somewhere, to cover her nakedness when she had transformed back into human form. Her bare feet poked out from beneath the dress as she took each deliberate step towards the front of the room.

  She stopped when she reached the centre of the room. Ignoring everyone else, she spoke directly to Yuli. ‘So, you take away my throne and murder my family and now you celebrate your victory. I will not allow this.’

  ‘Luga murdered my father,’ replied Yuli calmly, ‘he was-’

  ‘HE WAS MY BROTHER! And you will pay for his death,’ retorted Kayla, angrily.

  ‘You mean he was your husband,’ said Yuli.

  He was my brother and my husband.’

  Adele gasped and put her hand to her mouth. Zelda said nothing but amongst the crowd a few siblings looked uncomfortably at each other. (You know what it’s like in these isolated communities. A couple of harsh winters where everyone gets snowed in and the whole town can play “Duelling Banjos”, if you know what I mean.)