Rebel Fire

by Andrew Lane

  The cord bit into the fingers of his right hand. He could feel the bow trembling under the tension. The glowing material caused a bright spot in his vision that almost blanked out everything else.

  Was he doing the right thing?

  Too late to wonder about that now.

  He released the cord. The arrow arced high in the air, reaching a peak and seeming to hang there for a moment before falling like a tiny meteor straight down onto the top surface of the balloon.

  Nothing happened for several heartbeats; long enough that Sherlock was convinced that the burning material had somehow extinguished itself, or the arrowhead had failed to connect with the varnished silk, or that the gas in the balloon wasn’t hydrogen at all but something else, something non-flammable, but then the material around the top of the balloon seemed to peel back like the petals of a flower, and Sherlock’s vision was blinded by a ball of flame that leaped up from the balloon and reached towards the sky.

  A tremendous shout welled up from the area of the camp. People were running around, throwing buckets of water and trying to douse whatever burning material was raining down on them, but the inferno was rising up, not falling down. Hydrogen was lighter than air, after all.

  Sherlock grabbed another arrow and lit it, then quickly aimed at another balloon and fired. The tiny spark of the flaming arrowhead described a glowing line in the air as it flew, first up into the darkness and then down onto the sloping side of the second balloon.

  This time he couldn’t see the material peel back, but the resulting fireball was equally as impressive as the first.

  As chaos reigned in the camp below, Sherlock fired arrow after arrow at the remaining balloons. By the time he had run out, the air was filled with smoke and the ground was littered with the smouldering remnants of the varnished silk. And nobody had been hurt! He marvelled at the thought, but he couldn’t see a single person injured. Frantic and frightened, yes, but not hurt. The incandescent hydrogen had risen into the air, and whatever burning fragments of material had fallen to earth had been easily avoided.

  He took a deep breath. The balloons would not be flying tonight, and it would take days, perhaps weeks, to get more balloons to the area. By that time, Balthassar’s army would either have dispersed or marched on Canada and been intercepted by the Unionist army. He had succeeded.

  Part of him wanted to do something about the pile of explosive devices that sat at one side of the camp. They had survived unscathed. Sherlock had been worried that scraps of burning material might have fallen on them, setting them off and causing general carnage, but either they were more difficult to ignite than he thought or they were sufficiently far way from any falling sparks or flaming cloth. He supposed he could creep back down and pull their fuses out, or something, but what would be the point? They were useless, now there was no means of delivering them.

  A shout went up from below. He glanced down, towards the camp. A man was pointing at him. The light from the burning hydrogen had revealed his presence. More people stared up at him. Some of them started running towards the slope that led up to his hiding place. Most of them were holding guns.

  Ah. He was holding the bow.

  Time to leave.

  He turned and ran across to where his horse was tethered. It was nervous and skittish—the reins to its bridle were pulled tight as it had tried to back away—but it wasn’t panicking yet. Quickly he retrieved the ends of the reins from underneath the rock that held them and pulled himself up into the saddle.

  With luck, he could get back to town and pretend that he’d been there all the time. Nobody need know what he’d done.

  He pulled the horse’s head around and headed away.

  The journey down out of the hills was easier than the way up. The horse seemed more sure-footed now, and it was glad to be getting away from the fire and the smoke.

  The horse could see its way by the light of the stars, now the sun had set, and Sherlock let it choose its own path down. Once they got to the flat grasslands he could work out a course back to town.

  As the horse picked its way through the rock-strewn landscape of the foothills, Sherlock found that the gentle rocking motion was causing him to nod off. The tension was draining away from him, leaving him empty and melancholic. He wasn’t looking forward to the long trek back to Perseverance.

  Doubts began to set in as he rode. What if the Unionist army failed to intercept the Confederate invasion force? What if the invasion went ahead and he’d facilitated it?

  No, Amyus Crowe had told him that the Unionist forces were already preparing to stop the Confederates if they advanced, but that Secretary of War Stanton had personally decided that he wanted the Confederates slaughtered. Unless something went badly wrong, Sherlock’s actions had only saved lives. They wouldn’t lead to a diplomatic incident.

  Somewhere in the darkness an animal screamed. The sound startled him. It sounded too much like a person screaming. It didn’t sound like a coyote. More like a big cat of some kind.

  The horse was picking its way along the bottom of a gully between two steep slopes now. Sherlock thought they were close to the bottom of the hills, nearly ready to make their way across the open grasslands towards the town. The sides of the gully were just black shapes, with only the stars shining in the sky above marking where their jagged edges cut the night sky.

  One of the jagged edges moved.

  Sherlock jerked awake. Part of what he’d thought was the top of the gully had suddenly shifted sideways and pulled back.

  Something was up there. Something was tracking him.

  Nerves stretched and quivering, Sherlock looked around. Nothing. Just darkness, thrown into sharp relief by the starlight filtering down from above.

  A pebble skittered down the steep slope, bouncing off the floor of the gully.

  Sherlock’s horse was looking around now. It knew there was something else out there. Its ears were pricked up, and Sherlock could feel its muscles quivering beneath his legs.

  The gully began to broaden out ahead of them, opening onto a flat section of rock with a sheer drop down to the grasslands at the far side. In the light from the low moon that cut across from one side like a spotlight, Sherlock recognized where they were. Despite the appearance of a sheer drop straight ahead, he remembered there was a path off to one side, sloping down to the grasslands, that he and the horse had come up earlier.

  Another pebble fell, bouncing from rock to rock. Sherlock’s horse edged sideways and sped up. It wanted to be out on the plains as badly as he did.

  Something above Sherlock’s head screamed and leaped down on them from the blackness.

  SEVENTEEN

  The horse leaped sideways in shock, saving both of them. Whatever it was that had jumped towards them fell past and hit the ground off balance in a flash of slashing claws, stumbling to one side but immediately springing back up to its feet. Sherlock had a momentary confused impression of eyes reflecting moonlight and pointed fangs wet with saliva gleaming in a slavering mouth.

  He ripped the knife from his belt and held it out. It wasn’t much consolation, but it was all he had.

  A voice from up ahead said something guttural in a language Sherlock didn’t recognize, and the animal retreated towards it, hissing in frustration at Sherlock and the horse.

  He recognized it now. It was one of Duke Balthassar’s cougars. That meant the other one was probably out there somewhere. And that meant Duke Balthassar was out there too.

  His horse was paralysed with shock: eyes wide and lips pulled back over exposed teeth. It wasn’t going anywhere; not with the cougars around. Sherlock slipped from the saddle, heart pounding in his chest. He was tired, he was hungry, and he was thirsty. He didn’t want this. Not now. Not here.

  But he didn’t think he had a choice.

  He walked forward, into the moonlight at the mouth of the rocky gully.

  Duke Balthassar stood a few feet to one side. He was still wearing his white suit, white hat, and whit
e porcelain mask, but he had a revolver strapped to his thigh. Behind his right ear Sherlock could see the red leech gleaming wetly in the moonlight, the only spot of colour in the entire scene. It seemed to pulse slightly as Sherlock watched.

  The cougar that had leaped for Sherlock and his horse was by Balthassar’s side, tail flicking restlessly. Sherlock noticed how it kept casting glances up at the red leech. It seemed nervous, frightened even. The other cougar wasn’t in sight.

  “Sherlock Scott Holmes,” Balthassar said, his voice barely perceptible over the sound of the wind. “I fear we are fated to keep meeting, like Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers.”

  “What are you doing here?” Sherlock asked simply.

  “I was looking for you,” Balthassar replied. “When I found my dear reptiles still hungry and my observation gallery flooded, I could only assume you and your plucky friends had escaped. You know too much: I had to track you down and deal with you. My cougars picked up your scent just outside the town and we followed you here, to the hills.” He paused, head cocked to one side. “I must admit, I had expected you to go into the town, but instead you came out here. Why?”

  Sherlock thought for a moment. Balthassar must have confused two different trails: the one that Sherlock, Matty, and Virginia had left as they went towards Perseverance and the one Sherlock and his horse had left as they went away from the town. That meant Balthassar didn’t yet know that his plans had been exposed. Should Sherlock tell him?

  If Balthassar knew that it was too late, that his army had already been discovered, then he would have no reason for killing Sherlock. In theory, at least.

  “The Union Army already know about the invasion of Canada,” Sherlock told him. “There’s no point in going ahead now. Just call it off, Balthassar. You can save a lot of lives.”

  Silence, as Balthassar considered what Sherlock had said. It wasn’t possible to tell what he was thinking behind the white mask.

  “How long have they known for?” he asked eventually.

  “Long enough that there’s no chance your army will ever get to the border.”

  “In that case, what are you doing out here?” Balthassar asked.

  “The Unionists were preparing to drop explosives on your men. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to stop it.”

  “I presume that was due to some form of misguided nobility, rather than agreement with the Confederate way of life?”

  “I just don’t want to see any more people die,” Sherlock replied wearily.

  Balthassar shook his head. “Do you expect me to be grateful?” he asked, and suddenly there was a grating tone of anger in his voice.

  Sherlock felt tiredness weighing him down like a lead weight on his shoulders. “I don’t expect anything,” he said. “I’m not doing this for you, or for anyone else. I’m doing it for me. For what I believe.”

  “Then you’ve wasted your time,” Balthassar snapped. “The invasion goes ahead, despite everything you have told me.”

  “Then your people will be rounded up, and if they choose to fight there will be a battle.”

  “And people will die anyway,” Balthassar snarled. “So you have failed.”

  “I can’t control the world,” Sherlock pointed out. “Just the bits I can reach. At least I’ve done what I can to stop a massacre. The rest is up to you, and Amyus Crowe, and the government.”

  “Your problem,” Balthassar said, porcelain face impassive and glowing in the moonlight, but voice bitter, “is that you let your emotions get in the way of logic. If I had any advice to offer you, it would be for you to suppress your emotions. Keep them in check. They can only lead you astray. They can only hurt you.”

  Sherlock’s mind flashed with memories of his mother and his sister, and the memories were coloured with emotions, and those emotions hurt. But then there were memories of Virginia too, and those memories didn’t hurt. They made him happy.

  “I appreciate the advice,” he said, “but I think I’ll hang on to my emotions, if you don’t mind. I like them, for better or for worse.”

  “I would say you’ll live to regret it,” Balthassar said, “but you won’t.” He snapped his fingers. The cougar at his side advanced towards Sherlock, teeth exposed and eyes narrowed.

  Sherlock brought his hand around in front of him. The blade of the knife caught the moonlight in a liquid gleam.

  The cougar didn’t even hesitate. It just kept on coming.

  Feet padded on rock behind him. Sherlock turned his head, slowly.

  The second cougar was behind him.

  His thoughts raced through possibilities, none of which helped. How could he fight two wild animals with only a knife?

  But they weren’t wild, were they? They were partially tamed—or, at least, they obeyed Balthassar. They feared him, and that gave Sherlock a chance.

  A sudden acceleration in the padding of feet behind him made him drop to the ground and roll sideways. Something dark flashed over his head. He jumped to his feet, but the cougars were quicker. They were side by side now, snarling at him.

  Cats could climb trees, but they couldn’t climb rock.

  As fast as he could, Sherlock scrambled up the sheer side of the gully; fingers scrabbling for gaps in the rock, feet trying to find small ridges and shelves that would take his weight without crumbling.

  Below him, the cougars leaped.

  His fingers closed over a flat area of rock and he hauled himself up desperately, just as a clawed paw caught at his boot and pulled him backwards. He put all of his strength into one tremendous heave, and pulled himself to safety on a ledge that ran along the side of the gully, heading upward in one direction and downward in the other.

  He looked down, checking that his feet had survived unscathed. The heel of his boot had been pulled off by the big cat, but other than that he was intact.

  From below, the gleam of the cougars’ eyes vanished as they headed off in different directions, looking for a way up to him. And this was their territory, not his. They would find a way.

  “Entertaining as this is,” Balthassar’s voice called, “you are merely postponing the inevitable. That isn’t a logical course of action. Just give in; it’ll be easier and less painful.”

  “You promised me that before,” Sherlock panted, “and you lied.”

  The ledge was barely wider than his body, and he sprinted along it trying to get to somewhere relatively safe. He could hear the click of claws on stone from somewhere off to one side, and the deep rasping of breath echoing throughout the gully.

  If he didn’t do something soon, he was dead.

  Pressed against the side of the gully, he glanced downward. He could just make out Balthassar’s white hat below.

  With a fleeting prayer that his deduction about the cougars and their relationship with Balthassar was correct, he jumped.

  He crashed down onto Balthassar, knocking the man to the ground and sending his revolver skittering away into the darkness. Sherlock’s left shoulder hit the rock of the gully floor as he tried to roll away, sending a spike of red-hot agony through his body. By the time he climbed to his feet, Balthassar was already standing. He was cradling his left arm with his right. It looked malformed, as if his thin bones had snapped in the fall.

  His porcelain mask had been knocked off. It lay on the ground a few feet away, broken into three pieces. His face, bereft of the mask, was twisted into an expression of pure hatred.

  “Southern courtesy aside,” Balthassar snarled, “I will see my pets strip the flesh from your bones while you are still alive and screaming.” The smaller, black leeches on his face looked like holes through to the darkness of the night sky behind him. Balthassar looked past Sherlock. “And here they are,” he said, and barked three words in the guttural language that he used to communicate with the animals.

  Expecting at any moment to feel the weight of a cougar on his back and the agony of its claws ripping through his flesh, Sherlock stepped forward, towards Balthassar.

&
nbsp; The thin man wasn’t expecting that. He flinched backwards, still cradling his left arm, but Sherlock reached out with his throbbing left hand and ripped the red leech from behind Balthassar’s ear. It tore free with some resistance. Blood spattered on the shoulder of Balthassar’s white suit, black in the moonlight.

  Balthassar screamed: a high, thin noise of distilled rage and shock.

  The giant red leech was squishy and wet in Sherlock’s hand. Before Balthassar could do anything, before the cougars could spring, Sherlock brought his knife up and sliced it in half. It writhed and twisted, leaking Balthassar’s blood into his palm. He turned, each hand holding a part of the leech, and threw them at the two cougars that were advancing towards him.

  Given their reaction earlier on Balthassar’s veranda, he had thought they might turn and run in terror, but they surprised him. The cougars snapped the halves of the leech out of the air as if they were tidbits thrown as treats and swallowed them whole.

  They continued to advance on him.

  No, not on him. Their eyes were fixed on Balthassar.

  Sherlock moved slowly to one side. The cougars ignored him and continued moving towards Balthassar.

  It made a strange kind of sense. The man who had dominated them was injured, weakened, and the leech that they feared was gone. Whatever power Balthassar had over them appeared to have been broken. They had the power now. He couldn’t hurt them.

  Balthassar backed away. The rocky edge was behind him. He said something in the language he used to control the cats, but they ignored it.

  Sherlock watched, his mouth dry and his heart pounding. Balthassar took another step back, hands raised to ward off the cougars, but his right foot ended up past the edge of the rocky overhang, over empty air, and he fell, screaming, into the darkness.

  The cougars stood there for a moment, looking over the edge, and then, without looking at each other or at Sherlock, they padded away, into the hills.

  Sherlock stood there for a while, getting his breath back and letting the pain in his shoulder subside. It didn’t seem broken. At least that was something.