by Andrew Lane
He stared upward. Silhouetted on top of the V-shaped cliff into the bottom of which the cottage was set he could see men holding cross-shaped objects in their hands. They were aiming at Sherlock the way they might aim a rifle.
They were crossbows. Sherlock hadn’t seen one before, but he’d seen pictures. It was like a small bow, but on its side, and made of metal rather than wood. It could fire bolts – like small arrows – very fast, and with enough power to punch through metal armour.
‘Get out of the way!’ Matty yelled, pulling him back towards the cottage.
‘He’s not trying to shoot us – he’s trying to spook us into running!’ Sherlock shouted, pulling away from Matty and rugby-tackling the stone with all his weight. ‘They don’t want us dead, remember!’ The stone shifted again, pivoting forward, teetering on the point of rolling down the hill.
Which was exactly what Sherlock wanted.
More crossbow bolts hit the ground around him, but he ignored them. He gave the boulder one last push, using all his weight and all his strength. It rolled over on to the grass – and kept on rolling down the slope, gathering speed as it did so, bouncing slightly as it hit bumps in the ground. Amyus Crowe got his rock moving as well – a bigger one that rolled heavily rather than bounced, creating a furrow of grass and earth as it moved. But it did move – faster and faster.
Rufus Stone’s boulder started to move, but instead of following the other two down the widening slope it veered sideways, towards the rocky walls of the V-shaped canyon. For a moment Sherlock thought it was going to stop dead, but it hit the wall and rebounded, catching two smaller stones on the way and dislodging them from where they sat.
The boulders, rocks and stones vanished over the edge of the slope. Seconds passed with no response – and then he heard a flurry of shouts and screams from below. Sherlock imagined the boulders smashing into a line of Bryce Scobell’s men like a bowling ball hitting skittles, breaking legs and smashing people aside. He smiled grimly.
‘More!’ he shouted, and immediately got both hands beneath another rock and levered it out of the ground. It came out easily. He hoisted it up to his shoulder and threw it like a shot-putter. It hit the ground and bounced away downhill until it was out of sight. Matty and Virginia sent smaller stones the same way, while Amyus Crowe and Rufus managed to dislodge two more huge boulders.
Two more bolts struck the ground around them, splattering earth everywhere, but the shooters had realized that their distractions weren’t working. For a moment Sherlock worried that they might start shooting at the four of them, rather than around them, but that didn’t seem to be part of their orders. The shooting continued sporadically, but no longer felt dangerous.
The shouting and screaming from below was reaching banshee proportions now. Sherlock didn’t know how many men Scobell had down there, but it sounded like they were all either incapacitated or otherwise distracted. They would have been expecting a handful of desperate runners whom they could easily subdue, but instead they’d got an avalanche of rocks.
‘Come on!’ he yelled.
With Crowe, Virginia, Matty and Rufus behind him, he piled down the slope after the rocks. The gradient seemed steeper than it had on the way up, and he could feel himself accelerating out of control. He nearly slipped in the wet grass. He tried to slow himself down, but Amyus Crowe careered into his back, pushing him onward.
As they scrambled down the ridge, he saw the remnants of Bryce Scobell’s ambush. There were five men located in a dip in the ground. Four of them were cut and bleeding. It was impossible to tell how badly hurt they were, but two of those four were trapped beneath the boulders that Crowe and Stone had sent hurtling down the slope. The fifth was trying to help his companions, but he didn’t seem to know which way to turn. Crossbows lay scattered around them.
Sherlock ran right through the ambush before they were even aware that he was there. He looked back over his shoulder to see Crowe and Rufus slow down, shepherding Matty and Virginia past them, before they speeded up again, taking up the rear. One of Scobell’s men blindly groped for a crossbow, but Crowe kicked it out of his reach as he passed.
They raced on, leaving the ambush behind them.
The occasional bolt still pocked the ground or pinged off the rocks, fired from the cliffs above, but the range was too great and the angle was wrong and Sherlock knew, just knew, that they weren’t a threat.
He felt exhilarated as he ran. He had rescued Amyus Crowe!
‘Ginnie! Sherlock! Here!’
Without stopping, he looked over his shoulder. Amyus Crowe was standing at the bottom of a barely discernible set of steps in the cliff face fifty yards behind him. Sherlock had completely missed it as he had run past, and so had Virginia, but Rufus Stone and Matty were already scrambling up it. This must be the hidden path that Crowe had mentioned! Sherlock skidded to a halt at the same time as Virginia, ready to turn and go back to where Crowe was standing, but just as he was about to move three of Scobell’s men came running down the rocky slope behind Crowe. There was blood on their clothes and their faces – they were the remnants of the ambush team – and they looked ready to kill, despite what orders they might have been given by Scobell. They wanted revenge for the rock attack.
Crowe saw the way Sherlock was looking past himand turned round. Sherlock saw the immediate tension in his shoulders. His head snapped back towards Sherlock and Virginia, and his eyes were wide with a mixture of fury and terror. He had obviously done the same mental calculation as Sherlock. The men were running downhill. If Sherlock and Virginia ran back to where Crowe was standing, they would be running uphill. There was no way they could get to Crowe before Scobell’s men did. Despite Sherlock’s admiration for and trust in his friend and mentor, he didn’t think that Crowe could take three furious men by himself. Especially if they were armed.
‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘Look after Rufus and Matty! I’ll take care of Virginia!’
‘I can’t!’ Crowe yelled. His face was white with shock.
‘You have to!’ Sherlock yelled back. He turned to Virginia, who was looking back and forth between Sherlock and her father. ‘Trust me – we have to keep going down.’
She looked at Amyus Crowe. His face was despairing. Eventually, after a time that felt like hours but must have been less than a second, he nodded.
Virginia turned and ran towards Sherlock. Crowe scrambled up the hidden path, surprisingly fast for a man of his bulk.
Virginia grabbed Sherlock’s hand and ran with him, flying down the slope, pulling away from their pursuers.
Sherlock looked back, once, over his shoulder as they ran. Amyus Crowe, along with Rufus and Matty, was out of sight, hidden by the rocks. The pursuers had seen Crowe climbing. Two of them followed, while the other kept on going.
The slope began to level out ahead of them. To his left, Sherlock caught sight of the chapel that he’d seen on the way up. They would soon be back in the town. Could they evade their pursuers there, or were Scobell’s men already waiting?
Still clutching Sherlock’s hand, Virginia pulled him towards the chapel. ‘Maybe we could hide there,’ she panted.
They scurried behind a moss-covered gravestone that was leaning at a perilous angle. There was barely room for them both. Sherlock had to move close to Virginia so they could fit without being seen. He could feel her breath on his neck: warm and fast.
Boots clattered on the rocks, then disappeared.
‘What now?’ Sherlock asked after they had heard nothing for a few minutes.
‘I think we need to meet up with my father and Rufus and Matty. Somehow.’
Sherlock nodded. ‘All right.’
He turned his head. Her eyes were only an inch away from his.
He wanted to kiss her, but instead he just said, ‘Let’s go.’
The gorse and the heather were rough underfoot. The stems kept catching on Sherlock’s shoes as they trudged across the moorland. Virginia’s shoes were a lot more practical than hi
s and he had to struggle to keep up.
They both looked around as they walked, checking the buildings behind them and the low wall they were slowly approaching in case anyone had seen them, but they were alone. The whole landscape seemed strangely deserted. Sherlock worried that a figure would spring up from somewhere, point at them and shout, but nothing happened.
The setting sun cast their shadows across the heather, purple on purple. The air was cold, and it smelled of flowers. Despite the lateness of the year a handful of bees buzzed slowly around, moving from bloom to bloom in search of pollen.
‘What are you thinking?’
He turned his head. Virginia was looking at him questioningly. She had noticed his preoccupation.
‘I was just thinking about bees,’ he explained.
‘Bees?’ She shook her head disbelievingly. ‘We’re separated from our friends, we’re on the run from a gang of murderers and you’re thinking about bees? I don’t get it.’
He shrugged, suddenly defensive. ‘I understand bees,’ he said. ‘They aren’t complicated. They do whatever they do for obvious reasons. They’re like little clockwork machines. They make sense.’
‘And you don’t understand people?’
He kept walking, not answering for a moment. ‘Why is any of this happening?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Because Bryce Scobell decided that he didn’t like the American Indians and decided to wipe them out instead of just moving somewhere there weren’t any Indians? Because your father was sent to catch him and became obsessed with finding him no matter how many people he lost along the way? Because Scobell became obsessed in turn with taking revenge on your father and followed him to England instead of hiding peacefully somewhere else in the world? I don’t understand any of it! If people just acted logically, then none of this would be happening now!’
‘Scobell is mad, according to my father,’ Virginia said quietly. ‘He doesn’t have any morals, any scruples. He does whatever he needs to in order to get what he wants.’
‘The madness aside,’ Sherlock said quietly, thinking about his own father, ‘that’s the only thing about this whole business I do understand. It’s a very logical attitude.’
‘It’s only logical if you’re the only person who acts that way,’ she pointed out quietly. ‘If everyone in the world acts that logically, then everyone fights everyone else, civilization falls apart, chaos ensues and only the strong survive.’
They walked on in silence for a while. Sherlock could feel Virginia staring at him, but he didn’t have anything to say.
A sudden movement and a burst of noise startled them both, but it was just a bird launching itself from cover and flying away.
By now they were nearly at the stone wall that they had seen earlier. Sherlock looked over his shoulder once more, expecting to see the same empty landscape he had seen every other time, but there were people moving down by the chapel. At that distance he couldn’t tell whether they were locals or Scobell’s men, but he wasn’t willing to take a chance. Before he could do anything, Virginia grabbed him by the arm and pulled him towards the wall. It was only waist high, and she jumped over it lithely and vanished from sight. He vaulted the wall and dropped down beside her.
Sherlock got to his knees and peered over the top of the wall, looking down the slope. There were still people around the chapel.
‘Come on,’ Virginia urged. ‘We need to keep moving. We need to get to my pa.’
‘All right,’ he said, ‘but carefully. Stay out of sight.’
Together they scurried along in the wall’s shadow, keeping low so that the stones shielded them from anyone looking in their direction.
Sherlock peered ahead. In the distance, across an undulating stretch of ground, was a wooded area.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We need to get to cover before nightfall.’
Despite being rife with tension the walk towards the trees was quiet and even boring. Sherlock was exhausted after all that he’d suffered that day, and he found that just putting one foot in front of the other, over and over again, was one of the most tedious things he’d ever had to do. Every now and then he would stumble over a stone, or put his foot in a pothole, and he would nearly fall over – much to Virginia’s amusement.
He kept alert for movement that might mean they had been spotted, but apart from the birds that circled in the sky and the occasional rabbit the only thing that Sherlock saw was a majestic stag standing on a rise in the ground. Its antlers spread like small trees stripped of their leaves. It stared impassively at them, head turned to one side. When it was certain they were not a threat it lowered its head to the ground and began to eat the heather.
The sky dimmed from blue to indigo and from indigo to black as they walked. Stars began to twinkle: first one or two, and then, within a few minutes, too many to count.
Remembering the stag, and how it had casually dismissed them from its mind to chomp at the vegetation, Sherlock realized that he was hungry. No, he was starving. Apart from the oatcakes at Amyus Crowe’s cottage, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
Virginia was biting her lip. She looked hungry too.
What were his options? Try to chase a rabbit down the next time one broke from cover? Unlikely that he would succeed. Throw Matty’s knife – which was still in his pocket – and hope to hit a rabbit? He didn’t know much about throwing knives, although he’d seen it done at fairgrounds, but he suspected that the knives had to be carefully balanced so that they spun smoothly, end over end. Matty’s knife had a handle that was much bulkier than the blade. He wouldn’t be able to aim it properly.
He remembered the first ever lesson that Amyus Crowe had given him, back in Hampshire in the woods that surrounded Holmes Manor. Crowe had taught Sherlock which fungi were safe to eat and which were poisonous. If he could find some mushrooms, then they could eat. He glanced around. There wasn’t much chance of finding them in open moorland, but perhaps when they got into the trees he could find some growing on rotten logs in piles of leaf mould.
He looked up to see how far they were from the wood. The treeline was probably half a mile away.
‘Look,’ Virginia said. ‘We can sleep there for the night.’
Sherlock followed the direction in which she was pointing. At first he saw nothing, but then he spotted a small stone building in the shadow of the trees. For a second he thought it was someone’s house, but after a moment he noticed how small it was, the absence of glass, and the door-less entrance. It was a hut, built to shelter shepherds from storms.
‘Well spotted,’ he said.
‘Any chance of some food?’ Virginia asked. ‘I’m starved after all that walking.’
Sherlock thought for a moment. He supposed he could safely leave Virginia for a bit while he scouted for mushrooms.
He told her so. She looked sceptically at him. ‘Mushrooms? You tryin’ to poison me?’
‘Trust me – your dad is a good teacher.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘He may be a good teacher, but are you sure he knows what he’s talkin’ about?’
‘Only one way to find out.’
‘Look, why don’t I collect some wood and get a fire going while you get the mushrooms? It’ll save time.’
‘Are you sure you’ll be all right? There are people after us.’
She stared at him, an eyebrow raised. ‘I can look after myself.’
They checked inside the stone shelter. Just one room, and leaves had drifted into the corners, but it seemed secure enough. There was even a small wood-burning brazier, along with a couple of battered saucepans and some metal plates.
‘Are you goin’ to be long?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘As long as it takes. You want dinner, don’t you?’
She smiled. ‘I’ve never had a man actually go an’ gather dinner for me before, ’part from my dad. I kinda like it.’
He couldn’t help himself. ‘What about buy you dinner? Has anyone ever done that? Apart from Mr Crowe, I mean?’
‘Or cook you dinner?’
‘Nope.’
He smiled. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
The trees closed in around him within moments: trunks as thick as his body that erupted from tangles of roots and reached up towards the sky, forming a lacy ceiling with their branches. The thin light of the moon filtered down from above as he walked. Twigs seemed to grope for his face. Trailing strands of moss – or perhaps fine spider webs – brushed his cheeks and forehead, and he kept having to push them away. An owl hooted, and he could dimly make out the occasional sound of something larger – badgers, ferrets, maybe the odd deer – pushing its way through the undergrowth.
Somewhere off in the distance, a twig snapped as if it had been stepped on. Leaves rustled. Was it the wind, or a person?
He tensed, fearing that Scobell’s men had tracked them down, but a moment’s thought convinced him otherwise. He could still hear the owls and the passing animals. If Scobell’s men were around, the wildlife would have been more cautious.
Remembering the Edinburgh tenement, and the faces of dead men that had been staring out at him from the darkened doorways, he began to feel a flutter of panic in his chest. Were there dead men stalking him through the forest? Were they even now clustering around the door of the shepherds’ shelter, ready to burst in and attack Virginia? His heart started to race. He began to turn around, ready to race back to save her, but he stopped and took a deep breath. This was stupid. He put a firm mental hand on the panic in his chest and pushed downward. Dead men did not walk. There were no such things as ghosts. They weren’t logical. They were just superstition. Amyus Crowe had taught Sherlock a lot over the past year, but whatever Sherlock had learned had been built on top of a basic scepticism that was part of his character. There had to be a reason for things happening. There had to be a cause. Things that were dead were dead – they didn’t keep moving. Death was the absence of life. Whatever he had seen back in the tenement, whatever he and Matty had seen in Edinburgh, it wasn’t dead men.