by John Booth
Ebb had saved Laura’s life. If dying to save him was to be the cost, then Tom resolved to die. It was only fair because protecting Laura was Tom’s job and he had failed in his mission.
Tom passed out, falling over Ebb.
55. The End
Annelise Shultz watched the huddle of people around Laura from where she sat. She was back on the train she had arrived on, pretending to be a refugee from the village. Watching Laura was not particularly easy task as a fat man stood between the seats blocking her view with his large and smelly posterior.
It had taken Annelise little effort to get to the front of the queue for evacuation, nor to persuade the person originally sitting in the seat that he would much prefer to stand. However, the train was now so tightly packed with people that she could not get the fat man to move his backside, because there was nowhere for him to move it to.
The train jerked as the engine started to push the carriages out of the station. They would turn the train around using a siding just beyond the station. Annelise craned her neck and pressed her face against the glass to try to see what was going on. Then she got a glimpse of Laura kneeling between the people surrounding her. She was covered in blood and looked distressed, but was obviously very much alive.
Annelise fell back into her seat and cursed silently to herself. The Spellbinder still lived. Bruno had failed her and there was now no way on Earth she could get back to the station to finish the job. The only hope she had left was that Michael Jenkins would fulfill his twisted destiny and do the job for her. She did not plan to hold her breath waiting on that remote possibility. Her commander in Hungary was going to be most displeased with her.
The soldiers and the remaining people of Glen Russell swarmed onto the Laird’s special train. On Trelawney’s instructions, the soldiers had thrown its elegant tables and fittings out onto the platform to make as much room as possible.
Captain Pierson returned to the huddle surrounding Laura and addressed Trelawney.
“The roof is clear of assassins, though we should continue to cover Miss Young until she is onboard the train. I have found engine drivers from the village who are experienced on this route, so they can take over from your man. I have also arranged a compartment for you and your party in the last carriage, though it may prove to be a bit of a squeeze.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Trelawney replied. “Wait here while I check on my charges.”
Trelawney turned so he could see what had happened within the circle. Laura was on her knees cradling Tom’s head. He was awake and looked strangely thin to Trelawney, as if he had not eaten for several weeks. To Trelawney’s astonishment, the boy Ebenezer was whole again, though his clothes were covered in blood and gore. Ebenezer and the Tricky were talking quietly to each other.
“We have to board the train, Laura. Do you need any assistance for Tom?”
“I can walk, I think,” Tom told him weakly before Laura could say anything. “Do we have any food lying around? For some reason I am feeling absolutely famished.”
“Soldiers always carry food with them. I will make sure you get something once we are onboard the train and away from here.”
“Have Cam and Arnold arrived back yet?” Laura asked anxiously. “We cannot leave without them.”
“I have not seen them, but Camilla has proved herself to be most resourceful and I’m sure she will turn up before we leave.”
Captain Pierson led the group back to the last carriage where a compartment awaited them. Many other passengers were crowded into the carriage and were being kept out of the reserved compartment by soldiers with bayonets on their rifles.
“There are thirteen of us,” Edith noted. She had been counting heads. “I hope the others arrive before we leave. Thirteen is such an unlucky number.”
“We could leave you behind to makes it a nice even twelve,” Alice suggested. Edith looked shocked before she saw Alice break into a grin. She smiled back when she discovered Alice was joking.
Trelawney’s group were the last people to get on the train. The soldiers had fitted the entire population of Glen Russell onto the two trains, though it was a tight squeeze. Daisy was last person to get into the carriage. She was holding back, looking anxiously down the platform for Cam and Arnold. She knew that as soon as she closed the door, the train would pull out of the station.
“There they are!” she shouted in profound relief as Cam and Arnold appeared at the end of the platform and sprinted towards the train. Laura clapped her hands in delight and Tom gave a weak cheer.
“You were not going to leave without us, were you?” Cam asked breathlessly as she and Arnold clambered into the crowded compartment. They had to sit on the floor as all the seats were filled. The floor was crowded too.
Cam saw the blood on Laura and Tom and ran her eyes over them looking for wounds. She breathed a sigh of relief that both of them appeared to be uninjured, though Tom looked strangely gaunt to her.
Then she saw a blood covered Ebb on the floor sitting between Lucy and Tricky.
“What on Earth happened to you?” she asked in shock.
“He saved my life using his body as a shield,” Laura answered. “I have not thanked you yet, Ebb It was an incredibly brave thing to do.”
“Foolish, if you were to ask me,” Tricky replied on Ebb’s behalf. Lucy put an arm around Ebb’s shoulder and squeezed him tight.
“There was a big hole in your chest,” Tricky said quietly. “I weren’t goin’ to let that ‘appen.”
The train clattered down the track picking up speed. Trelawney glanced at his pocket watch, which told him the time was quarter to four. Not enough time to get away, he thought grimly.
Michael Jenkins put his hand inside his jacket and felt his pistol. He was frightened because he knew that once he killed Laura he would certainly die. There was no way he could escape this carriage.
He thought about ignoring his orders, but decided he could not. Michael had defined who he was in betraying the British Empire to the Hungarians and he needed to follow through, whatever the personal cost.
“What happened to Hans Clerkes?” Dougal asked from the other side of the compartment.
Lord McBride pulled his feet out of the compacted ground with considerable difficulty. He felt his ankles were going to break, but he knew he had no time to worry about such niceties. Luckily, his large boots provided him some maneuvering room though the boots stayed firmly planted in the ground when he pulled himself out. McBride knew that the time must be close to four o’clock.
The lights in the factory had stayed on despite the explosion. The reactatron in the castle provided a steady stream of electricity. No one fleeing the castle had wasted time trying to shut it down.
It was painful walking across the rubble in his bare feet. Lord McBride knew he had no time to look for boots if he was to survive. He felt cuts and grazes form on his feet as he ran for the door and the possibility of survival.
The door to the room had been blown off its hinges by the explosions. The factory beyond was silent and empty. McBride ran towards the railway station, his only hope was if a train was still there.
He felt the cold biting into his toes as he ran through the open passageway to the back of the station. He saw the station lights blazing in the distance and this spurred him on. There was still hope.
McBride ran over the door the soldiers had broken earlier in the evening and out onto the platform. His special train was waiting for him. Then, as he stepped forward the train began to pull away. Lord McBride ran as fast as his legs would carry him. All he had to do was jump onto the back of the last carriage and he would be safe. He got closer to the carriage, running faster than the train. Desperation gave his legs extra speed. He was only a yard away…; he could almost touch the back carriage.
Then the train picked up speed and the back of the carriage was two yards away, then three and then many. He slumped onto the platform, exhausted and defeated as the train sped out of the station an
d out into the night.
Lord McBride looked up at the clock on the station wall and saw it was quarter to four. He began to walk down the platform following the train. When the platform ended, he jumped down onto the tracks, ignoring the pain in his feet as the gravel cut into them. He continued to walk along the tracks as fast as he could, following the train.
“If it was not impossible, I would have said that Annelise Shultz was your assassin,” Belinda said when Cam finished her description of how Hans Clerkes had met his end. “Most assassins go for a shot to the heart rather than the head, especially if they are using a pistol. Accuracy using a pistol is notoriously poor. She uses a special pistol with a long barrel and is fond of aiming for the head.”
“How could she have got here?” Trelawney asked skeptically. “She would have had to come on the train with us.”
“How much time do we have until the bomb goes off, sir?” Michael asked, desperate to change the subject.
“Five minutes,” Trelawney said without looking down at his watch. He had been keeping close track of the time.
“We are going to die in the blast,” Lucy told them in a frightened voice. “I can see it over and over in my head.”
“It is a pity that you cannot bind the air,” Tom told Laura. “If you could harden it like glass, you could deflect the blast upwards and away from us.”
Trelawney laughed in a good-natured way. “Even a Class A Spellbinder is not God, Tom.”
“I could try, if I had the materials,” Laura said hesitantly.
“Like these, you mean?” Belinda asked. She opened the carpetbag she carried with her and withdrew the finest quality spellbinding paper, a pen and a bottle of copper ink.
“Well, I knew we were coming to rescue Laura, did I not?” Belinda said in response to Trelawney’s raised eyebrows. “This is the best paper and ink Military Magic has developed; the first samples of the latest designs. They include a conducting layer of gold set inside the paper, I believe.”
“Do the bind as a drawing,” Tom suggested as Laura took the paper and placed it on her lap.
Trelawney smiled at the way that Laura and Tom worked together. If they were going to die on this train, he was glad it would be trying to accomplish the impossible.
Laura sketched out the castle and factory with an economy of strokes and astonishing accuracy. Tom already knew how skilled she was as an artist, but even he felt awe as he watched her add a shimmering layer of hardened air to the drawing. The barrier was shaped like a saucer, encompassing the castle and the factory.
Laura completed the final strokes of the bind and felt exhausted. She was not sure what she had done, but knew she had done all that she could.
“It is going to work. I can see it in my mind,” Lucy said excitedly.
Daisy whispered into Belinda’s ear and Belinda passed her something from her bag. Daisy had always known they would survive, though not how, just as she had felt no fear for Daisy or Ebb when the assassin struck at them. Lucy’s were more direct Precog visions than Daisy’s, but Daisy’s were more accurate in the places where it mattered.
Back in the castle, Madam Hulot woke with a start and felt the sudden urge to get out of bed. She opened her curtains and looked out at the factory and station below. Both were lit by electric lights and shone reassuringly. The grandfather clock in the room showed her it was three minutes past four, though she knew it tended to run a little fast. She could see no one at the station, which told her she had been right to ignore Giles Summers. The idea of a bomb destroying Glen Russell was fantastical.
She was still thinking those happy thoughts when she was vaporized by the explosion. She never felt it as there was not the time for thought.
Lord McBride sat on a rail looking back at the castle. He had stopped when he could no longer walk. He was far enough away to register the initial flash and to know he was dead. Travelling at over twice the speed of sound the shock wave flung him high in the air before it burnt his body to a crisp.
There were screams on the train as the sky turned bright as day for over a second. Tom held tight as they awaited the blast wave. The rails rocked as the ground wave hit them but the train stayed on its tracks. The sky shone bright red as the blast ionized he air, but apart from a little buffeting from minor blasts of wind, the train continued on unaffected.
Tom hugged Laura tightly. On the other side of the carriage, Michael Jenkins pulled his pistol from his inside pocket and pointed it at Laura. A single shot rang out and gun-smoke filled the carriage.
When the smoke began to clear, Tom saw Michael Jenkins had a serene smile on his face. The smoke cleared a little more and he saw the small round hole in the man’s forehead. A dribble of blood ran from it towards his nose. His eyes had the glazed quality of death.
“He was going to kill Laura,” Daisy said quietly as she lowered the smoking gun in her hand.
“You did very well, my dear,” Belinda said as she retrieved her pistol from Daisy’s unresisting hand. “Have you ever considered entering a rifle shooting contest?”
The End
Tom & Laura will return in Revenge of the Brotherhood