Brimstone

by Skinner, Alan

  Ewan located the two crevices that he was sure extended all the way to the cavern below. He instructed the soldiers to place two boxes next to each. The remaining three he put next to crevices he couldn’t be sure led down into the cave. Then, they opened the boxes. The coloured glass balls, snug in their hay and wool, looked like exotic bird’s eggs. The soldiers looked sceptically at them and shrugged. If Rayker said they were dangerous, then they were dangerous. He wasn’t known for his practical jokes.

  They would see soon enough. Across the river, Ewan saw Declan and his men. The forest ward turned and signalled Rayker and sent two of the soldiers to their post, concealed above the rear opening to the cave. When Declan crossed the river, it would begin.

  Declan looked at the two logs, side by side, spanning the river and swore.

  ‘Damn Swift!’ he said. ‘Calls that a bridge?’

  Though fast, the river was quite narrow. It was no more than six or seven metres across and it passed only two or three metres below the logs. But Declan hated heights, even modest ones. In fact, he didn’t think there was such a thing as a modest height. He’d wished he’d remembered that when Rayker asked him to lead the men, though he knew it wouldn’t have changed anything. He’d walk along the top of the high walls of Vale before he’d say no to Rayker.

  ‘Right, single file,’ he said quietly to his men. ‘You know what to do when you get across. I’ll go first. Make sure it’s safe.’ His men smiled. Going first meant there were men paying attention who could jump in and rescue him if he fell.

  They made it safely across, Declan still with his lunch in his stomach. He could make out the entrance to the brigands’ cave at the foot of the cliff. There were two outlaws on guard. What he didn’t like was the low palisade of rocks and saplings on either side of the entrance. Three or four outlaws, fair with a bow, taking position behind that could wipe out all his men before they went twenty paces. They would have to get as close to the cave as they could, quickly. He had to draw the outlaws’ attention without getting himself and his men killed. Making them panic might work. He signalled to one of his men.

  ‘Piper, you can hit a thing or two with that bow of yours, can’t you?’

  Piper nodded. ‘If it’s big enough. A sparrow or something, not a hummingbird. And I’d prefer it wasn’t flying.’

  ‘Well, you see that sparrow with the musket and wicked great pike on the left? He ain’t flyin’, so when we get the word to go, see if you can hit him,’ said Declan. ‘And I’ll take the hummingbird on the right.’

  Piper smiled and nodded. He and Declan nocked their arrows.

  From the clifftop, Ewan saw Declan and his men take their position. It was time. He raised his staff and waved it back and forth.

  ‘Right you are, boys!’ hissed Declan and in the same breath he drew his bow and loosed his arrow. It hit the outlaw on the right in the centre of his chest. The other guard hadn’t even heard the wind of the arrow that killed his comrade when he felt a blow in his chest. He looked down dumbly and saw Piper’s arrow sticking out of his jerkin. ‘Oh, bugger ...’ he managed, then died.

  Declan’s men yelled and charged out of the bushes. It took a few moments for the men inside the cave to investigate the noise. A single outlaw wandered out. He stared at the two dead guards and at the charging soldiers, then turned to run. He wasn’t quite quick enough. An arrow caught him in the shoulder and he fell back in the mouth of the cave and dragged himself inside. And Declan’s men came on.

  Inside the cave, the outlaws grabbed their weapons. They were rushing to defend the cave when they saw the wounded outlaw crawl towards them.

  ‘It’s soljers!’ the man croaked. ‘Lots o’ soljers!’

  ‘You two!’ barked one of them. ‘The brush! You!’ He pointed at another. ‘Help them! The rest of you, get your weapons and stay back and get ready.’

  Just inside the mouth of the cave were bundles of wood and dried brush. The three men started throwing them out of the cave. Declan watched as he ran, puzzled. Then he realised that the palisade had another purpose. The bundles of wood and brush gathered between the palisades. As soon as his men got close, the outlaws would set fire to it.

  They were halfway to the entrance. ‘Cover!’ cried Declan and the men scattered. ‘Right,’ he cried again. ‘Straight into the cave!’

  Each of his men put an arrow to his bow, drew and loosed. Each arrow flew into the black mouth of the cave. They heard a cry of pain from inside and a voice yelling.

  ‘Back, all of you! Back!’ yelled the outlaw who had taken command. ‘Just stay back or you’ll end up like Behan there with an arrow in your backside! They’re shooting blind. We’ll wait ’em out! They’ll soon be out of arrows!’

  Ewan could hear the shouting echoing up from the cracks and crevices. He could see Declan’s men firing their arrows. They’d run out soon and then they’d be easy marks for the outlaws. It was time to light Lucifer’s Candles. He knelt by one of the deep crevices and picked up a glass ball. The soldier with him knelt by another and did the same.

  ‘Straight down!’ yelled Ewan to the soldier. ‘Drop it, don’t throw it!’ Then he took a deep breath and dropped the sparkling red ball.

  The ball turned as it fell, a spinning ruby. It plummeted between the rocky walls and crashed on the stone floor below. The glass shattered into a thousand smaller gems. Instantly, the brilliant white of Lucifer’s Light filled the cave around it. Hundreds of tiny streaks flared from its centre and the very air hissed and crackled. Smoke – thick, dense and foul – ballooned from the light. And an awful, pungent smell of decay and rotten eggs made its way through the cave.

  The outlaws were grouped some ten metres away when the first Lucifer’s Candle ignited. They looked on in horror at the vicious burning light. One small streak found its way to the hand of one of them and he screamed in agony. The way the air seemed to feed the cloud was terrifying. Then, to their right, came another white explosion, and then another. More flaring streaks cartwheeled from the ball of light at the centre and every man flinched. They could hear the evil hissing of others above them as the Candles broke and exploded in the smaller crevices. Then Ewan dropped his second Candle, a sapphire orb, larger than the first, and its explosion, its hissing, spitting and crackling, filled the lawless men with dread.

  They couldn’t see each other through the thick smoke. It rolled towards them and enveloped them. It stung and burned. They panicked and sought corners and crannies to escape the smoke. And then the smell hit them and they choked and gagged on the foul odour.

  Fire and brimstone filled Brigand’s Cave.

  Outside, Declan heard the hissing and crackling, and the cries of the outlaws. Then the smoke rolled out of the cave. It formed pillars of white and drifted towards the sun.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he muttered.

  The dreadful stench filled Ewan’s nose. He turned and ran to the edge of the cliff face overlooking the rear entrance. His partner had beaten him to it.

  ‘Marsh gas!’ gurgled the soldier. ‘That stinks!’

  Rayker watched as the pillars of white issued from the roof of the cave. He was too far away to hear the noise of Lucifer’s Candles, or the cries of the outlaws, but the smoke alone looked like signals of death. He’d chased and hunted men for more years than he cared to remember but he had never deliberately sought the death of another man. Now, he wondered what they had done. He wondered whether a young girl, not even fifteen, knew what she had done.

  ‘I’m gettin’ outta ’ere!’ shouted an outlaw.

  ‘We’re all gettin’ out!’ cried another.

  ‘I’m gonna be sick!’ cried a third, and he was.

  They lurched through the cave, feeling their way in the smoke, holding their breath. One after another, they stumbled out, fleeing from the terror and smell behind them. The two soldiers above them let them go. They were joined by the third soldier and Ewan. The wood-ward looked anxiously as each man ran out but none was Antrobus. He stood with
the others and watched the outlaws disappear into the ravine.

  It was a short battle on the far side of the ravine. Rayker cried for the outlaws to surrender. The one who had rallied the men in the cave roared his anger. He held a musket and he brought it up and fired at Rayker. The ball zipped past harmlessly. Then the outlaw drew his sword and charged. Half of his mates joined him. But their fear in the cave had driven the courage out of the other half and they simply tried to run away. It took less than fifteen minutes for the men on the ravine and some of those with Rayker to round them up. One outlaw managed to evade the soldiers and made it to the clearing where the horses waited. He saw the two soldiers standing impassively, weapons ready, and the man fell to the ground and wept.

  Those who stood firm fought desperately. Before the echo of the musket had rolled away, they had charged the men of Vale, swords and knives drawn. They slashed and cut trying to get past but the soldiers held fast. Then the three soldiers who had been with Ewan came from their rear. One of them put an arrow into the back of an outlaw who was about to run Ben through. His death was the final straw for the outlaws. They threw down their weapons, except for the one man who had rallied them. His weapon already lay in the dirt where it had fallen when Rayker’s sword had ended his life.

  It was a better result than Rayker would have believed. As far as he could tell, only two of the outlaws had been killed (he did not yet know of the two Declan and Piper had shot) though he feared what he would find in the cave. Among his men there only a few cuts, a slashed forearm and a broken nose. He looked around.

  ‘Where’s Swift?’ he asked the soldier who had been with Ewan on the clifftop.

  The soldier jerked his head back towards the cave. ‘In there. He told us to come and help you, then went in. Hunting more goblins, I ’spect.’

  ‘Get these prisoners secured. Leave half the men to guard them, then join me in the cave with the rest,’ Rayker ordered.

  Under his breath he cursed Ewan. He knew the forester would be worried about Antrobus, but he shouldn’t have gone into the cave alone. There could be others who hadn’t come out.

  He found Ewan with Declan and his men in the large central chamber. Torches dotted the walls. The smoke had gone, but the awful smell, though lessened, was still in the air. An outlaw, his face still grey with fear, and an arrow in his buttock, lay against the wall. As Rayker made his way to Ewan, he felt something crunch underfoot. He bent down and picked up a small red shard of glass.

  ‘You should have waited,’ he said to Ewan. ‘You had no way of knowing who was still in here.’

  ‘Exactly why I didn’t wait,’ said Ewan. ‘There’s not as much to this place as I had imagined. This main chamber, and a couple of smaller ones. Antrobus isn’t in any of them. I don’t think he was ever here.’

  ‘We have to find Jack,’ said Rayker. ‘When we find him, we’ll find Richard.’

  Chapter 17

  The House on the Corner

  ‘Jenny, stop!’ Emily said. ‘You’re driving us crazy. You can’t keep pacing all afternoon.’

  Jenny scowled, more at herself than Emily, and threw herself down on the couch. She folded her hands in her lap and stared at them. After a few seconds she tutted with exasperation.

  ‘Do you think it’s ... it’s all over by now?’ she asked.

  Frida looked at the clock on the small table next to the couch. ‘It’s just after four o’clock. I should think it might be,’ she said encouragingly. Then she added, not quite as encouragingly, ‘Or maybe not. And if it is, we won’t know for at least a couple of hours.’

  Emily glared at her and mouthed ‘Thank you’ to Frida.

  They were in the boarders’ sitting room at Rumpkin’s. It was the first time Jenny had actually sat in the room. Since Frida’s defection from the gang of four, the other three boarders had avoided them. Frida’s attachment to Jenny and Emily also meant that the numbers were even, odds the other three clearly didn’t like. Where once they’d ruled the sitting room, they now spent less and less time there. So, after a few hours’ sleep and some lunch, the three friends had gone there to wait.

  Emily was embroidering a dress she had altered. Not just the sort of alteration where you take up the hem, or make it more snug on the hips, but quite a radical change which included a much lower bustline and that billowed at the hips. She thought women’s dresses were boring and plain, which she thought was illogical, because women were not boring or plain. She sketched and snipped and sewed whenever she could, determined to make women’s clothes exciting and colourful.

  Frida had coaxed Jenny into teaching her to play chess but it turned out disastrously. Jenny was rather a good player; both her parents played and she had learned when she was quite young. The attempt didn’t fare well; Jenny couldn’t concentrate; she constantly forgot to tell Frida what moves were permissible until after the older girl had moved; or that the knight could hop over other pieces; or that the king couldn’t glide from one end of the board to another. In the end, Frida abandoned the chess game and helped Emily sew, leaving Jenny to pace.

  ‘I’m going out,’ Jenny announced suddenly. ‘I’m going to Antrobus’s to look in on Tom.’

  Now, Emily knew that Jenny had no more than a professional interest in Tom. After all, she was a healer and Tom had been gravely wounded. And Jenny had helped save his life. And Emily knew equally well that Jenny’s decision to see Tom was prompted by boredom and frustration, and not in the slightest bit because of a desire to see him. Nonetheless, Emily had no intention of letting a very pretty young lady – even one who was her best friend – visit Tom. Especially when he was in a bed, and unable to wear even an undershirt.

  ‘We’ll all go,’ she said, packing up her sewing. ‘I don’t believe Frida has seen Antrobus’s house, anyway.’

  ‘A walk will do us all good,’ Frida declared. ‘And I’m sure Harcourt would like to stretch his legs.’

  They stopped by the kitchen and told Agnes that they would be home by seven for supper, then set off for Fenwick Square. This time they insisted that Harcourt walk alongside them rather than follow behind. They walked in twos, feeling the waning warmth of the late-afternoon sun.

  *

  Antrobus was sure he had been more careful keeping track of how much time had gone since he had given them the second sheaf of parchment. It had certainly been longer than the first time. They must believe it, thought Antrobus. Or at best, they are uncertain. Otherwise, they would have been back by now. Surely they have no need to harm Jenny.

  *

  Rayker and Ewan swung into their saddles. None of the outlaws’ horses were quality mounts and all the tack had seen better days but it would do; they wanted to get to Vale as quickly as possible. Rayker looked down at Declan.

  ‘Keep your eyes open on the way back. Jack’s still about and he probably has four of his band with him. I doubt they’d trouble you, but don’t take chances. You don’t outnumber your prisoners by much. Take the Old Road and you’ll be back in the city by sunset.’

  ‘Right you are, Rayker,’ said Declan. ‘We’ll get them there.’

  ‘I know you will,’ said Rayker. ‘You did a good job today. Those guards ... it’s a pity, but you did the right thing.’

  Declan grinned at the praise. ‘Thank you.’

  He watched them urge their horses to a gallop and head for Vale.

  *

  ‘I believe I owe you my life,’ said Tom. He sat up in bed, bare-chested except for the broad bandage round his middle. He was pale and weak, but those who are young and happy can be hard to kill, and he was very much alive.

  Jenny blushed and shook her head. ‘Dr Styche deserves your thanks. I would have gladly done more but I am not as skilled as he is.’

  Tom reached out and clasped Jenny’s hand. ‘Dr Styche has told me what happened. And you do deserve my thanks, Jenny.’

  Though barely over the first rush of red to her cheeks, Jenny blushed again. ‘In any case,’ she said, taking aw
ay her hand and stepping back, ‘anything that Dr Styche and I had done would have been for nothing if it hadn’t been for Emily’s constant care. I believe she would have willed you back to health.’

  Now it was Tom’s turn to blush. ‘I’m aware of the debt I owe Mistress Trickett. And I intend to prove my gratitude as soon as I’m able,’ he said, his eyes never leaving Emily.

  ‘And I believe him,’ said Frida with a straight face. ‘He was thanking her with his last breath when I entered the room.’

  Emily turned the colour of beet and Tom laughed with the others, though his wound protested.

  ‘Now, you must excuse me, Tom,’ said Jenny. ‘There are a few things I need to do downstairs. No, Frida, I think you should stay here. Emily’s affection for Tom made him well. Now we have to make sure that her affection doesn’t make him unwell.’

  Jenny’s decision to come to Fenwick Square had been nothing more than a whim born of boredom. Now, she was glad she had come. To hear her friends’ laughter and to see Tom come back to life lifted her gloom. She hadn’t realised how heavy the past ten or so days had been for her spirit to carry.

  She turned into the study and was brought up short by a man coming out.

  ‘Master Antrobus!’ she cried. ‘You startled me! I wasn’t expecting you.’

  ‘Hello, Jenny!’ John exclaimed. He looked anxious. ‘Any news of my father?’

  ‘No,’ she answered sadly.

  ‘Well, I’m glad your man Harcourt is still out front. I worry that you may be in danger, too,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I’m not important.’ Her face brightened. ‘But there may be some good news of your father shortly. Rayker thinks he knows the men who took him and he’s gone to flush them out of their cave. He hopes to find your father with them.’

  ‘A cave?’ said John, puzzled. ‘Where is this cave?’

  ‘In Queerwood,’ said Jenny.

  John looked surprised. ‘Rayker thinks outlaws took my father? But why?’