The two of them circled one another around the saloon table. Pechorin wondered why Burgess did not cry out for help; and then he saw the wolfish grin on the carpenter’s face, and realised he was enjoying this.
The carpenter lunged, stabbing the chisel at Pechorin’s eyes. The count jerked his head back, and caught Burgess by the wrist with his left hand, slashing him across the throat with the shard in his right. Blood spilled over Burgess’ collar, but the shard had not gone deep enough to sever an artery. The carpenter continued trying to push the chisel’s blade into the count’s eyes.
Pechorin hooked a booted foot behind one of Burgess’ ankles. The carpenter went over backwards and landed on his back, Pechorin on top of him, pinning his arm to the rug. Burgess drove his left fist into Pechorin’s side. The Russian gasped in agony, and stabbed with the shard of glass, burying it deep in the carpenter’s neck. The death rattle sounded in Burgess’ throat as blood gouted from the awful wound.
Pechorin picked himself up, pressing one hand to his side where Burgess had hit him, and glanced down to where the carpenter bled the last drops of his life away, all over Lord Bullivant’s fine Persian rug.
The door opened. Pechorin whirled to see Charlton standing there. ‘Is everything all ri—’ he began, and stared in astonishment when he saw the prisoner standing over Burgess’ still-quivering corpse.
Pechorin grabbed the first thing that came to hand – Burgess’ sack of tools – and slung it at Charlton’s head. The assistant surgeon stumbled back against the bulkhead and sank to the deck with a livid bruise weeping blood on his temple. Pechorin crouched over him and, finding a pulse in his neck, he tore down some of the curtain ropes and used them to bind Charlton’s hands and feet, before gagging him with a napkin. Killing a man in hand-to-hand combat was one thing, but he could not bring himself to murder a man in cold blood.
He searched about for a weapon and took the carving knife Molineaux had admired earlier from the cutlery drawer. Slipping out of the saloon, he listened at the first door on his right – Bullivant’s stateroom, presumably – and heard someone snoring. He tried the handle, but the door was locked. He tried the door on the other side of the passage: it opened to reveal a woman’s stateroom, to judge from all the frills and fripperies that furbished the space, except that the person lying in the bed was a man in his late twenties, the hands above the covers swathed in blood-soaked bandages. He was not snoring, and looked so pale he might be dead. Pechorin felt for a pulse in his neck, and found a strong one. Holding the carving knife to his throat in case he woke up, Pechorin prised back an eyelid to reveal a dilated pupil; the bottle of laudanum resting on the dresser told its own story.
He heard more snores coming from the next stateroom along, and eased open the door to find Lady Bullivant asleep in the chair, a Bible open on her lap. A sailor lay on the bunk, a bloody bandage wrapped around his stomach. Pechorin slipped out, easing the door shut behind him. A companion ladder led up to the upper deck; beyond, the passage continued to the forecastle, with more doors opening off on either side.
He did not have time to search the whole ship: he climbed the companion ladder, taking care to avoid the two broken steps, and peered cautiously over the coaming of the after hatch.
There was no one on deck.
He climbed up through the hatch, looking around. No one in sight. He crept to the bows and peered over the bulwark to see the gig at the far end of a cable, laboriously towing the schooner towards the open water beyond the mouth of the channel. It was tempting to let the cable slip, but that would only bring the men in the gig back on board to investigate. The men in the boat still had three hundred feet to go, and were making slow progress. Better to leave them where they were, for now. He had the Milenion more or less to himself.
But how to stop it? Set fire to it, perhaps? But there were women and wounded men on board. Similarly, he could not hack a hole in the keel and sink her: if the channel was too deep, those still on board might drown.
Sometimes, he reflected, being an honourable man could be a pain in the neck. He did not doubt that, had Nekrasoff been in his shoes, he would have done whatever he could to destroy the yacht, and the devil take anyone on board. But Pechorin had no desire to be like Nekrasoff.
The question was, how long until Lazarenko could repair the Atalanta and get here? Not before the men in the gig had towed the yacht clear of the channel, he was willing to lay odds. But even a dunderhead like Lazarenko must know that the Milenion could not sail out of the mouth of the channel with the wind blowing from the south-west. The Atalanta was only half a mile away. Surely even the first lieutenant would think to send some men overland; in which case, Pechorin had only to keep the yacht here long enough for them to arrive.
But how?
He was still pondering this dilemma when he heard someone moving about in the galley below. He crept down the fore hatch, missed his footing on a missing rung and fell to the deck with a thump.
‘Who’s there?’ Miss Maltravers called from the galley.
He picked up the carving knife he had dropped in his fall and crept cat-footed to the door to the galley, pressing himself up against the bulkhead beside it.
‘Hello?’ she called.
He saw her shadow fall across the threshold, and reached through the door to grab her, throwing her against the opposite bulkhead. At first, she was too surprised to cry out: then he had pinned her there, one hand over her mouth, the other holding the carving knife to her throat.
‘Please don’t make a sound, Miss Maltravers,’ he said pleasantly. ‘It would grieve me to have to kill a woman, hm?’
Chapter 14
The Skärlandet Channel
1.30 a.m.–2.10 a.m., Friday 18 August
Wide-eyed and white with fright, Miss Maltravers nodded her acquiescence. Pechorin took away his hand.
She did not scream. Instead, she said: ‘Not as much as it would grieve me to be killed, I’m sure! I thought you were tied up in the saloon?’
‘I felt a sudden urge to stretch my legs.’
‘Let her go!’ a voice commanded imperiously behind him. He looked around to see Lady Bullivant aiming a double-barrelled shotgun through the hole in the door.
Pechorin quickly spun Miss Maltravers round so that she shielded him, still holding the knife to her throat. ‘Drop the gun, ma’am, or I’ll kill your daughter.’
Lady Bullivant shook her head. ‘I hardly think so. You’re not the sort who’d murder a defenceless woman in cold blood. Let her go, Count.’
Pechorin felt foolish – being held at gunpoint by a middle-aged woman! – and yet as he looked down those twin muzzles it was like gazing down the maw of Hell. If only there was some way he could disarm the silly old bat…
‘Don’t you think you should take the safety catches off?’ he suggested, bracing himself to tackle her the moment she glanced down.
Her gaze did not waver. ‘The safety catches are off, Count. I’m not a complete fool.’
He shrugged. ‘You can hardly blame me for trying.’
‘No, indeed! Now, please have the decency to let my daughter go. Don’t think I don’t know how to use this thing: many’s the time I’ve accompanied my husband grouse shooting in the Highlands.’
Pechorin smiled. ‘Then you’ll know that if you try to shoot me with that, you’ll do as much harm to your daughter as you will to me.’
‘I know. Why do you think I haven’t pulled the trigger already?’
‘Because I don’t believe you could kill a man any more than I could kill a woman.’
Lady Bullivant arched an eyebrow. ‘Indeed, Count? Then may I suggest you put your theory to the test, and release my daughter?’ Pechorin looked into those cold, grey eyes of hers, and decided against it.
Lady Bullivant smiled. ‘It seems we have reached an impasse.’
‘It does indeed.’
‘Except the advantage is on my side.’
‘And just how do you come to that conclusi
on?’
‘Time is on my side, Count Pechorin. All we have to do is wait, and the others will return on board in due course.’
‘Before or after the men my first lieutenant is doubtless sending overland from the Atalanta get here?’
‘Touché, Count.’
A couple of shots sounded in the distance outside. Pechorin glanced up at the deck head. ‘What’s that…?’
Miss Maltravers grabbed him by the arm and pulled the carving knife away from her throat, sinking her teeth into his wrist. He screamed in agony and dropped the knife. She broke free, throwing herself across the room. Suddenly nothing stood between Pechorin and Lady Bullivant’s shotgun.
He grinned. ‘You wouldn’t shoot an unarmed man, would you?’ Her knuckle whitened on one of the triggers.
He turned and dived for cover behind a couple of seamen’s chests as the shotgun exploded, lighting the compartment up with a bright flash and sending red-hot needles of agony searing through his left leg. Crouching on the deck behind the chests, he examined his calf, which was peppered with shot.
‘You shot me!’ he moaned. ‘I don’t believe it! You actually shot me!’
‘Stick your head up and I’ll prove it was not an accident!’
Pechorin twisted and drew his legs up beneath him, tensed to make a dash for the door of the galley. Grabbing a fistful of small change from his pocket, he flung it in the opposite direction to distract her attention, and launched himself from behind the chests. The coins fooled Lady Bullivant, but only for an instant, and her next shot narrowly missed him as he made his wild dash.
Reaching the temporary haven of the galley, he limped across the deck to the far door that opened out into the corridor behind her. Even if she had thought to bring some spare ammunition with her, it would take her precious seconds to reload. He stumbled out into the corridor, and took the full force of the shotgun’s stock in the face.
If she had been a big, strong man instead of a middle-aged woman, the blow would have broken both his jaw and his neck. As it was, it split the skin of his cheek and hurt – a lot. He fell to the deck, sprawled across the threshold of the galley, and looked up to see her swinging back the shotgun to club him again. Rolling on his stomach, he crawled away down the corridor while she followed him, belabouring his back with the stock of the shotgun.
‘Brute! Coward! Beastly Russian swine! I’ll teach you not to hide behind the petticoats of a defenceless young woman!’
Defenceless my eye, Pechorin thought sourly, his wrist beginning to throb where Miss Maltravers had bitten him. At last he managed to haul himself up by one of the brass handrails and stumbled to the companion ladder leading up to the after hatch. As he was about to climb up, he glimpsed Lady Bullivant between the broken rungs, taking two cartridges from the pockets of her skirts and inserting them in the breech of the shotgun. As she snapped the breech shut, he scrambled up the ladder on to the deck, dashed across to the side, and dived over the port bulwark.
The water was icy cold; yet pleasantly soothing for his stinging leg. He had taken a deep breath as he went over the side, and he swam down, down into the inky depths, until his searching hands found the slimy rocks at the bottom of the channel. He pulled himself along the bottom, moving more by instinct than any certain knowledge of where he was going, until he could hold his breath no more.
His head broke the surface – how warm the cold night air felt after his immersion in the colder Baltic waters! – and gulped great lungfuls of air down his throat. He twisted in the water, saw the Milenion perhaps fifty feet behind him, the men in the gig rowing back to find out what was going on. Lady Bullivant stood at the side, levelling the shotgun over the bulwark at him. He swore, and ducked back beneath the surface as the gun boomed in her hands.
When he broke the surface again, only a few seconds later, he was but a few yards from the rocky shore. He staggered up out of the water and squelched into the trees, sobbing for breath. Lady Bullivant had reloaded again and fired after him, twice, but by then he had been swallowed up by the darkness, and both shots went wide.
* * *
Chernyovsky did not mind the dark beneath the forest’s boughs where the moon’s beams could not penetrate, but he hated the trees. Like his men, he came from the Steppes, a wide-open country where a man could see as far as his eyesight and the earth’s curvature would allow. The trees pressing in around him made him feel claustrophobic, as if they were closing in on him. There was no room for a horseman to break into a gallop, even if he could have seen in the darkness.
The starshina led the way, a flambeau held aloft in one hand guttering in the breeze, the other holding his carbine, the pony’s reins loose across its neck as he guided it with his knees. His eyes darted left and right as he kept a sharp lookout for trouble. He was not expecting any – they were still a good five hundred yards from the mouth of the Odensö Channel, and if the Milenion were still there, it was effectively screened by the trees up ahead – but a lifetime of keeping order in the more troubled provinces of the Tsar’s empire (read: brutally oppressing Poles, Jews and Chechens) had taught him that trouble could come anywhere, at any time; usually when he least expected it. The rest of the men he had brought with him rode in single file out of force of habit; there was nothing to fear from anyone following their tracks here. A dozen of them would be more than enough to deal with the fugitive English sailors. After all, it had been these men who had captured Killigrew and his men earlier the previous day, and the Englishmen had not had three women to slow them down then.
Chernyovsky was glad the Atalanta had failed to capture the Milenion at the bridge. Quite aside from the fact that the black petty officer with Killigrew had killed one of his men, the starshina’s nose had swollen into one mass of tender, bruised meat, so that he was constantly aware of it. It seemed to fill his vision, and his fingers were drawn to it as if by magnetism. He raised a hand to feel if the swelling had gone down at all, only to be painfully reminded of just how tender it was. Yes, there was definitely a score to be settled there…
‘Yaahhh!’
Even if Chernyovsky was on the lookout for trouble, nothing could have prepared his pony for the spectacle of Killigrew suddenly leaping up from the ferns immediately in its path, right under its hoofs, almost. The beast reared up with a whinny. Chernyovsky was unable to do more than stay in the saddle, giving Killigrew time to level his musket at the man immediately behind the starshina. The blast of flame and smoke from the muzzle, accompanied by the musket’s crack right next to its head, startled the beast. It reared up again, even more wildly this time, and Chernyovsky – still trying to grip the flambeau in his left hand while he raised the carbine to his shoulder with his right – slipped from the saddle. He managed to land on his feet, however, but was blinded by the muzzle flash in the darkness, and the first thing he knew about Killigrew swinging the musket like a club was when the stock connected with his nose. More lights flashed in the darkness, but this time they were behind his eyes, so that when another musket boomed off to the left he was not sure if the flash was real or a figment of his dazed imagination.
He landed on his backside amongst the bracken and fired his carbine instinctively at the spot where Killigrew had been standing. The muzzle flash revealed only the surrounding tree trunks.
Realising the flambeau only made him a target, he flung it away and slung the carbine across his shoulder. He drew a pistol from his sash and crouched amongst the ferns, his eyes searching the surrounding darkness, ears straining to hear a sound that would betray Killigrew’s position. Behind him, he could hear the whinnies of ponies and men shouting in alarm as they blundered about in the darkness.
A couple of shots, muffled, sounded in the distance.
‘Close up and shut up!’ snarled Chernyovsky, and whirled as footsteps crunching on dried twigs sounded immediately behind him. He thrust the muzzle of his pistol into the face of one of his men, barely recognising him before he pulled the trigger.
&nbs
p; ‘Vasilieff! ’
Returning the pistol to his sash, he unslung his carbine once more and pulled a cartridge from one of the pouches sewn on the front of his tunic, taking advantage of the lull to reload. The two of them were joined by Cossack Fedyushin.
‘Where are the others?’ demanded Chernyovsky.
‘Um… over there, I think, sir. Matiashvili and Shcharbako are down…’
Another Cossack was still standing about twenty yards away, holding his flambeau aloft as he turned about in search of his comrades. ‘Get down, Iltchenko!’ hissed Chernyovsky.
‘Sir?’ responded the Cossack, turning in the wrong direction. Another musket boomed, and Iltchenko spun around to face Chernyovsky, the flambeau falling from his hand to illuminate the dark trickle of blood running down his face from the hole that had been drilled through his forehead.
But in the muzzle flash, Chernyovsky had caught sight of another figure in the darkness: the black petty officer, standing not thirty yards away. He levelled his carbine where the black had been standing and fired, only for the muzzle flash to reveal one of his own men in the sights. There was a wail, and the sound of a body crashing down amongst the ferns in the darkness.
‘Ekomoff?’ Chernyovsky called to him. ‘Are you all right?’
There was no reply. The woods had fallen eerily silent.
Then a voice barked out into the darkness, in English: ‘You there, Molineaux?’
‘Right here, sir!’ another voice responded, closer to.
Chernyovsky smiled: these English weren’t so bright, giving away their positions by calling out to one another. ‘You know where he is?’ he asked Fedyushin in a whisper.
The Cossack grinned through his beard in the faint light from a dropped flambeau that had fallen from someone’s hand. ‘Right there, sir. Want me to deal with him?’
‘Make sure he dies slowly,’ Chernyovsky told him, wincing as he fingered his swollen nose.
Killigrew’s Run Page 28