The house trembled as the giant boar thundered past, shaking their walls with his mighty blunderings.
‘Oh, will you stay with us, Father?’ begged Lizzie, who loved her father dearly and would not see him outdoors with these creatures, though in her heart she feared the Witchfinder more than the beasts from hell.
Woulfe pulled away from his wife gently. ‘Lock the door,’ he said. ‘Admit no one but me.’ He paused to make sure he was understood. ‘No one. Church nor state. For I believe everything is not what it seems on this weird night.’
And with that Woulfe was gone into Mandrake’s thoroughfare, firmly pulling the door behind him. His wife and daughter wept bitter tears at the idea that never again would they feel his loving embrace, for surely no mere man could survive the madness of the open air.
Albert Garrick snarled at Olaf in response to the boar’s own snarl; Garrick planted his boots solidly in the earth, all the better to meet the creature’s charge. The thoroughfare vibrated with each drumroll of his enormous hooves. Garrick was possibly the only man alive who would not quake with fear at being run down by such a creature.
Truth be told, he felt a little giddy at the prospect of the coming tussle. In the case of the giant squid there had been little time for preparations or decisions, but now he had several moments before impact and really he didn’t have time for these shenanigans. His place was by the silversmith, who would doubtless bolt given half the chance.
As it happened, what seemed inevitable turned out to be avoidable, as another shape fell howling from the sky, landing square on the Viking boar, the impact instantaneously excavating a crater in Mandrake’s main thoroughfare. Mud and shale flew in great jetting plumes into the sky.
Both are dead surely, thought Garrick, even as all around him wailed and shrieked.
He stepped forward and peeked into the pit. The boar was dazed but recovering, and there was also a humanoid figure of massive proportions, clad only in a loincloth and a strange crystal helmet, laying about the boar with a short sword made of the same transparent crystal.
Garrick stared at the man, using his gift of rift sight to divine what class of creature this thing was. He discovered, to his shock, that the giant man had come through the wormhole unchanged from some other reality.
One such as him could challenge my reign, he realized, and resolved on the spot to put his own plan into motion there and then.
No more time for dallying.
Garrick turned from the otherworldly conflict to the men of the watch on the walls. ‘Cannon!’ he roared. ‘Destroy these abominations.’
Here now was something the men understood in this day of confusions. Unprecedented it might be to fire shot into the town, and yet it seemed the sensible, even prudent, option to pursue.
Only two of the guns, the north and the south, had lines of sight along the main street, the east and west guns being obscured by the remains of the chapel and a row of dwellings. But north and south were primed on well-greased carriages and it took a matter of seconds for the small crews to swivel their guns, captains shouting encouragement, but even then they looked once more to the Witchfinder for confirmation of his command.
‘Fire, damn your eyes,’ said Garrick, running down the thoroughfare towards the town square. ‘Fire.’
The chief gunners made their final adjustments, then ordered their sparks to set embers to the touch holes, and seconds later the smooth-bore cannons spewed forth dragon’s breath and their deadly projectiles, which could hardly fail to miss their targets at such short range, unless the bombardiers be total duffers, which they were not, both having served with the Parliament forces in the civil war. The recoil, however, proved more powerful than anticipated and the north cannon reversed off the wall entirely into the fens, while the south crushed the life from an unfortunate powder monkey who had forgotten to step aside.
The cannonballs sped faster than eyes could follow and threw up a further spume of mud from the crater, but on this occasion there was blood and bone in the spume, and crystal too. The dust and smoke dissipated with the echoes of cannon fire, but the particles did not. They hung suspended in the air: large sections of trunk and limb, mingled with eyeballs and rows of teeth – all that was left of the decimated combatants. And the people of Mandrake watched, for how could they not, so horrible and unprecedented was the sight?
Even Albert Garrick could not help but raise an eyebrow, but his bemusement turned to resolve once the lumps of bone and gristle ceased hovering and instead sped to the mouth of the rift, which loomed large now, fiery lips crackling. Garrick felt his own person rise so that his heels barely scuffed the earth as he ran.
She would have me now if not for the silver.
The moment had come for his ploy.
Mandrake was spared more attacks by the wormhole’s inhalation of those creatures, but the residents were more than willing to do whatever Garrick ordered at this point, for was it not clear that their town was under attack from hell itself? And all because of this witch.
Garrick mounted the stone dais in the town square, keeping towards the edge and away from Chevie in case her Timekey activated and sucked him to his doom. Already he could see its electronic lights twinkling and he knew that she must drink the molten silver now before the wormhole ripped her right out of the chains.
‘Silversmith!’ he roared, beckoning with his crab-leg fingers. ‘Now is your moment. Bring the Devil’s Brew!’
The silversmith, Master Baldwin Sherry, felt his stomach churn with even more acidic violence than it had when the creatures fell from the sky. He had always believed his trade an honourable one and occasionally sacred. Now, though the Witchfinder had told him what he must do, and though he believed the rightness of it, he hated this perversion of his art and wished cravenly that the blacksmith could have taken his place at the smelter. But silver was a delicate metal and must be handled properly, and Mandrake’s blacksmith could barely nail on a horseshoe without hobbling the poor beast, so it was Baldwin Sherry’s duty to God and county to force down his misgivings and prepare the so-named Devil’s Brew as commanded. He swabbed his glistening scalp with a work rag and tilted the smelter on its trundle to check the viscosity.
The crucible sat atop a small furnace, which had been moved in its entirety from Sherry’s workshop, and the fire burned bright – or merrily, as the silversmith generally thought of it. But not today. He imagined that after today he might never think of the furnace flames as merry ever again. In fact, he might even go so far as to seek out a new profession. It occurred to him that as a thatcher or the like he might have less occasion to be called upon to execute witches.
All that remained was for Sherry to carry the heated crucible, using long-handled tongs of his own construction, and pour the molten silver down the witch’s throat. The crucible was in the shape of a squat vase but would serve perfectly to pour silver into the girl’s mouth, as though made for the job. Baldwin Sherry had heard that once upon a time there were moulds made specifically for this job. Not moulds really, but containers, as it were, but he had never foreseen the need for one.
The silversmith peered again into the crucible and saw a shining bubble pop. Previously that sight had never failed to cheer him and remind him of his good fortune in these harsh times; now, however, all he saw in the pot was hissing death.
Sherry felt almost stupefied by the gleaming molten silver.
Could he do this deed?
Should he?
Sherry felt his forearms break out in goose pimples in spite of the long leather gloves that covered them, and he turned to find Master Garrick’s eyes upon him, the Witchfinder’s veins clear in his milk-white face.
‘Bring the silver,’ said Garrick in a voice of cold thunder that would not stand for hesitation, never mind defiance. ‘This witch has a mighty thirst.’
Heaven help me, thought Sherry, and said, ‘It is almost there, Master Witchfinder. One minute more and the brew will be ready for pouring.’
Albert Garrick had orchestrated some feats in his days as the Great Lombardi. And though most tricks were simple when you stripped back the layers and got right down to the nub, as it were, some required delicate timing or wires, pulleys, smoke and mirrors, contortion, escapism and showmanship to sell them successfully to Johnny Punter. But, no matter how well thought out his plans, there was often the blasted unexpected intrusion, which Garrick referred to as earthly intervention, which could set his stratagems toppling like dominoes. A sharp-eyed punter perhaps, or a competitor catcalling in the stalls, or some other interference that could set the trick on its ear.
And here he was smack bang in the middle of the most complicated illusion he had ever attempted. He’d set himself up as some fashion of holy man and convinced good people to murder a mere girl and all the while cobbled together a plot to save himself from the wormhole, which he had sold to the bumpkins as the gates of hell.
It was a pity that Riley was not here to witness this latest and final trick, a great pity indeed, but very soon there would be nowhere on earth for Riley to survive. If indeed he survived at all, which Garrick fervently hoped he would, due to the quantum foam in his bones.
Perhaps he will live on as some form of twisted ghoul, Garrick thought maliciously. Then I may keep him on a leash as a pet. He can be my familiar.
This notion almost made him laugh aloud, but that would be unseemly at this moment, and he would not allow any unprofessionalism in his performance.
After all, what does a man have if not his art?
He glanced up and saw the rift loom overhead, casting its crimson light laced with orange sparks like dancing fairies. And he could feel the same sparks dancing in his own self and knew that, silver or not, the wormhole would have him at any moment.
It wants me too, thought Garrick. I can feel it. But you shall not have Albert Garrick, you damned creature. Albert Garrick shall put an end to you. Whatever the cost to mankind.