He fired and the bullet pierced the mould, but, given that the crucible could withstand molten silver, it did not shatter as an ordinary urn might; instead it merely sprung a leak, forcing Cryer to hold the jar at arm’s length but still the constable continued towards Chevie.
Riley cursed the man and vowed to tear the crucible from his hands, but he had ground to cover and Garrick was rousing from his stupor and taking stock of the recent happenings.
Garrick’s first glance was towards the sky and he saw that the rift had disappeared, which pleased him greatly, for with it had disappeared the wormhole’s attraction for his person.
I am safe, he thought. Albert Garrick has survived yet another dastardly attempt to destroy him.
Garrick’s second glance was at Riley. The boy was mounting an offensive, as he might have said in his army days in far-off Afghanistan. And he’d be damned if the boy was not charging his way.
A third glance, over his shoulder, confirmed to Albert Garrick what he had instantly suspected. Chevron Savano yet drew breath and here came her horseless cavalry riding in to save her.
If Garrick’s first objective had been to banish the wormhole, which had somehow been achieved, had not his second been to murder the maid in front of her dearest friend?
And beloved now, if I am not mistaken. How much the sweeter?
Riley almost made it past Garrick to the pyre itself. He was a hair’s breadth from success and probably would have succeeded had he been a shade lighter on his feet, which he would have been were it not for the heavy breastplate weighing him down. But, as it was, he was a shade heavier and that gave Garrick the second he needed to lunge sideways and snag Riley’s boot heel with his fingers. It was not the firmest of touches but it was plenty to send the lad flailing on to the dais, with only the faceplate of his helmet saving his nose from flattening. Down he went with an oof and Garrick was after him, not yet the full shilling but recovering fast. He staggered to his feet just long enough to take two steps and fall on top of Riley, pinning the lad with his full weight.
‘Do not trouble yourself with trickiness,’ he said into the boy’s ear. ‘For was it not Albert Garrick who drummed those tricks into your noggin, son?’
Riley beat the stone dais with his fists. He was so close: the pyre was within reach. Could the fates be so cruel as to allow him this far and no further?
‘Do your duty, Constable!’ Garrick called to Cryer. ‘Pour the Devil’s Brew.’
Cryer did not require the telling. He was climbing the wooden steps to the top of the pyre, bringing himself level with Chevie’s head. On any other day a match between these two would barely have been any competition at all, but now Chevie was bound from chest to toe, with none of her martial arts training at her disposal.
However, in spite of the direness of her straits and the whirlwind of worldly and, indeed, otherworldly events that had battered her emotions, Chevie felt a sudden resurgence in her natural energy. For the first time since exiting the wormhole near this very spot, the fugue and nausea that had dogged her suddenly evaporated and she found herself focused and motivated.
Riley was down. He needed help. And looky-looky who was coming at her with a jug of molten metal.
I guess if I can’t play by the Queensberry Rules then I’ll have to fight dirty, she thought. In the pause when Godfrey Cryer was considering how he would accomplish a two-man job on his lonesome, Chevie used every inch of the wiggle room she had struggled so hard for and every pound of force she could muster to headbutt Cryer on the bridge of his nose, snapping the bone and sending the constable stumbling backwards down to the dais, where he bashed his crown on the flagstones. So, two injuries – neither critical – but the crucible took a series of unfortunate bounces and dumped its remaining contents on the constable’s face. And Cryer might have survived even that injury had not his mouth been gaping to cry out in pain.
Chevie winced and turned her face away as the silver melted the constable’s flesh. His cry never made it past his throat, for the silver forced it back down. Godfrey Cryer expired without making a sound, apart from the hiss of steam jetting from his nostrils and ears.
Garrick watched this turn of events with a sense of disbelief and a twinge of amusement.
‘Your young lady don’t go easy,’ he said to Riley, who struggled vainly underneath him. ‘I’ll say that for her. But nevertheless I have publicly proclaimed she is a witch and at the very least she must burn. At the very least, says I.’
Fairbrother Isles was used to being restrained and the men of the militia were more than accustomed to restraining him, for was not this the same Fairbrother Isles who threw a drunken fit once every full moon or so and built up a rage against the entire world such that nothing would calm him but a night in the stocks? Was this not that same individual who had been wrestled and booted and knocked about like a true dunderhead?
Yes, it was.
But then, also, it was not.
That Fairbrother Isles had been trying to drink his way out of depression born of centuries’ worth of displacement, and in reality had never put up much resistance when the militiamen manhandled him into the jail or the stocks, unless they got a little free with their clubs and then Isles would throw in a jab to the kidneys or an elbow to the groin that seemed at the time like a lucky connection, but which were actually signs that his combat training was still lurking below the fuzzy, drunken surface.
This Fairbrother Isles, on the other hand, had full access to his combat training and his mind was crystal clear and focused. His primary mission had been achieved, i.e. to get the professor close enough to do his science thing. That being accomplished, Isles saw no earthly reason that he should lie placidly beneath these militia guys like some kind of bearskin rug, and so he gathered his arms and legs underneath him and exploded upward, scattering militiamen like bowling pins.
Secondary mission: locate and secure the release of FBI comrade Chevron Savano, currently being restrained by chains to a stake, having been accused of witchcraft.
I swear, thought Fairbrother, there surely never was a time zone crazier than this one.
Chevie was at his two o’clock, and Isles looked that way just in time to see her deliver the mother of all headbutts to that creep Cryer.
Ouch, he thought, and then he spotted some movement in his peripherals that told him he had better get his focus back on his own fight, for the militiamen had apparently not learned their lesson and were back for more.
‘How now, good Master Isles,’ said their captain, a potato-headed farmhand with the teeth of a man who liked a punch-up but let his guard down often. ‘Know your place now, man. It’s only home you’re going, to the stocks for the night. Think yourself fortunate I don’t throw in a flogging.’
Isles did not engage in conversation, nor did he vow dramatically that he would never be flogged again. He simply took the militiamen apart as a mechanic might take apart an old engine.
Isles wasn’t as quick as he might have been a decade ago, but he knew more about incapacitating a human than almost anyone alive. The militiamen quickly realized that Isles was possessed by some kind of demon and the smartest thing to do would be to shoot him or run away. Since virtually every man jack in Mandrake’s militia and watch had shot their musket balls into the giant boar, they were only left with pikes and swords and, as they quickly discovered, jabbing a blade towards Fairbrother Isles was tantamount to offering him the weapon on a velvet cushion, for no sooner was the pike or sword thrust forward than it was spun round and making the journey back. Isles did not kill anyone, but he striped a few shoulders and pierced a few buttocks, which was all it took to scatter the militia.
There were two likely lads with primed weapons who stood their ground, twin sons of Bartleby Primly, the richest merchant in Mandrake, who’d wanted his boys toughened up by serving with the militia but who’d also decided to flaunt his wealth a little by doubling up on their weapons. So, whereas your average militia member was lucky
to have a musket younger than his own self, the Primly boys were armed not just with long-barrelled muskets but with French screw-barrel pistols, which their father had purchased in London at immense expense. These extraordinary pistols had three revolving chambers, each fitted with its own striker and sprint, or simply put: three shots per load.
Randall Primly had discharged his musket at the boar creature but had completely forgotten the screw-barrel, as had his brother Henry. Randall, though, now he remembered and called urgently to his twin: ‘The Frenchies!’
‘Egad, yes!’ said Henry, and both boys drew their triple-shot weapons.
At this particular point, Isles was beating a militiaman with the flat of his own blade and knew nothing about the screw-barrel pistols until the first shot took him in the stomach and the second in the upper chest. He grunted twice but did not bleed, for he wore his FBI Kevlar, which had no trouble with seventeenth-century weapons of that calibre, but he still felt each strike like a hammer blow and was sent staggering backwards, his vision blurred and his legs turned to rubber.
Encouraged, the Primly boys advanced, firing again. One slug would have pierced Isles’s kidney, and a second succeeded in worming its way between a strap and armhole, giving him a nasty flesh wound along his fifth rib. Big as he was, Isles went down as though struck by cannon-shot and lay winded on the thoroughfare, flailing helplessly.
Henry’s third shot went wide of Isles’s head, but Randall hesitated to fire his final lead ball.
‘See here, brother. Hardly a drop of blood. His clothing is armoured perhaps.’
Henry discarded his own pistol, which had grown hot. ‘Perhaps,’ he agreed. ‘But his head is not armoured.’
‘No, indeed, brother,’ said Randall, taking careful aim.
Just in the split second that the trigger was pulled, a brown blur streaked from the shadows and threw itself between Isles and the bullet. Pointer – for of course it was Isles’s partner come in the nick of time to save his old friend – took a nasty graze to the ridge of bone above his left eye and spun away, whining in pain. The dog came to rest beside Fairbrother Isles, blood running back over his ears.
Isles turned himself over with some gargantuan effort and held his partner’s head.
‘Donnie, Donnie. What did you do, man? You took a bullet for me.’
Pointer’s brown eyes focused on Isles with some effort. ‘Well, you know. We’re partners, buddy. It wasn’t like I had a choice.’
Then the dog whined and the tension drained out of him, which was a sensation Isles had felt too often from wounded men he’d held in his arms over the years.
‘Don’t die, you stupid dog,’ he said desperately, pulling Pointer close. ‘You’re all I got left. Don’t die.’
Pointer licked Isles’s face. ‘I ain’t dying, moron. It’s a flesh wound. Concussion at worst. So I ain’t dying but …’ The hound’s eyes lost their focus. ‘But I think I’m going.’
And then those doggy eyes closed, and Isles was left wondering what his friend had meant by that final statement. He would find out soon enough, but first he needed to have a little heart-to-heart with the Primly twins.