“They may have tried,” I said out loud. “The thing is, though, they weren’t Harry Stubbs, were they?”
Where had that come from? Some deep recess of my subconscious mind, I suppose.
I am the celebrated Harry Stubbs, the Norwood Titan, heavyweight champion of South London. “The last man standing,” as Ryan had called me, and he was right. I had fought beings that no other man ever faced, and I beat them, too. I was not going to give up over a bed.
But I needed some help. I needed to draw on my inner resources. I was not going to beat the bed by boxing it now. It was more like a wrestling match, one conducted across the span of years. It was me against the workman who fastened the bed down in place all those years ago.
How would a cleverer man than me tackle the problem? Hoade must have known all sorts of tricks involving leverage, metallurgy, and other technical approaches, and he could look something up in a jiffy. Arthur would do it by influence; he would make deals, form allies among the inmates, and find a way of getting the attendants on his side until he was running the place. Yang… what would he do?
I braced my feet against the bed again and pushed. But instead of straining, I listened, applying a steady force. I thought of the waves of the sea, breaking against a cliff. Water is weak and soft compared to stone, but waves will make a cliff crumble in time. I thought of tree roots snaking down into fissures in rock, then growing, slowly, year after year until the fissure widened and the rock split apart.
With a sound like an iron cork being torn from an iron bottle, the bolt wrenched loose, and the bed lurched upwards four inches. It was still held in place by the other three bolts, but that was not going to stop me. With the first bolt gone, I would be able to get a good leverage on the second. That turned the bed into a hinge, and by working it up and down I would be able to get enough play to pull the remaining bolts loose or break off the brackets that held them.
It was a fair amount of noise, but no attendants came. I had a feeling they were all otherwise occupied this evening.
One small victory for the Norwood Titan, I thought. And thank you, Mr Yang.
It’s amazing how doing something—anything, in fact—can lift your mood when you are low. I was still a certified madman, locked in solitary confinement with death imminent. But now I was making progress, the outlook seemed to change. When you’re stuck, you know you are going nowhere, however much time passes. Once you start moving, progress is just a matter of time and persistence.
My success was, I admit, a partial one. The bed could indeed be worked loose on all four legs, but it turned out to be more robust than I expected. The joints connecting the legs to the frame were as solid as rocks, without the hint of any looseness. Even when I stood the bed on end and hung on to a leg with both hands, lifted myself off the ground, and bounced up and down, I could do no more than bend it a little.
The bed was determined to stay in one piece, but at least it was no longer blocking one side of the room. I could move it around to my advantage, use it as a barrier. I could shape the battlefield, as our instructors said, though they were talking about barbed wire and minefields rather than a bed and three cushions.
Standing on its end, the bed reminded me of a gallows, and I hastily put the bed back on its four feet. I had a feeling that unlikely accidents might happen whenever it was a convenience to Dr Nye, and it would be unfortunate if I was lured into accidentally hanging myself.
If the cell door had opened outwards I might have tried using the bed as a battering ram. However, knowing the strength of the door frame, I doubted that any amount of battering was going to do any good. Besides, my destiny would catch up with me wherever I was. Better to get ready to meet it.
The mood had taken me. I carefully tore strips from the coarse linen sheet, which, doubled over, did duty as a pair of sheets, so I could wrap them around my hands as extra padding under the knuckledusters. I had one long strip left over, which, on a whim, I tied around my forehead as a bandana. It would keep the sweat out of my eyes and afford some slight protection against cuts and grazes.
The three biscuits, the hard cushions which made up the mattress, I piled in the corner, thinking of ways that they could be tactically employed.
I lay on the bed, looking at the ceiling and feeling both exhilarated by the exercise but also curiously peaceful.
I had an idea of what was coming, but I wanted it to come. The worst thing would be if nothing happened. That would mean I really was deluded.
Has there ever been another situation where a man actually wished for someone to come and try to kill him? Hard to imagine that there was, but I wanted them to come. It felt like hoping that a fight could be arranged—a match that gave me a shot at a title.
Previous occupants of the cell might have been drained, wasted, or despairing, as I had been a few days ago. But I had become another man. Harry Stubbs, the celebrated pugilist, master of the art, invites and exhorts all comers to step up and try their luck. No offers to fight refused. Apply to cell six. I imagined a packed crowd all around, with Sally in the front row, cheering me on, excited by the prospect of seeing their champion in action, already laying bets before the opposition had even been announced.
There was more noise than usual, enough to suggest that the place was in a state of disorder. They were shouting and yodelling, making animal noises or shrieking, the way they do at times of high excitement. The attendants should have been putting the lid on it and preventing things from getting out of hand, but they did not. Perhaps they could not.
Night fell, and my room was illuminated by the electric light outside the high windows.
I had no clock, but I could feel the minutes and the hours trickling past. I was not impatient. Maybe I even drowsed at times, but I was always within a hair’s breadth of full awareness.
They were coming to kill me, as they came to kill the others. Unlike the others, I was going to give them a fight they would remember.
A door opened silently in the wall. A door where there was no door. Soft radiance from the other side silhouetted the two of them as they came through. Just as I had seen in the storm glass.
They were executioners. They had the build and the bearing—the calm, unhurried determination—of men who had come to kill. Their faces were absolute masks, like the faces of statues, and that made them more inhuman than if they had looked like monsters. They were perfectly identical. I suspected there was only one of them, though it happened to occupy two bodies.
They stood on two legs, so tall that we were eye to eye. I had wondered how big they might be. The Sphinx at Giza is sixty feet high, and he’s lying down. The sphinxes at Crystal Palace are a good deal smaller, but still too massive to squeeze into my cell.
In mythology and art, the sphinx is a blend of man and lion, with a human head atop a leonine body, with the tail of a serpent. Seeing the real thing, you can tell there has been some poetic licence in the depiction. No lion on earth ever looked like that; they certainly had massive paws and clawed digits to match any lion, but it was not merely the tail that was snake-like. The body was more than a little reptilian, and shaped so that they could go on two legs or four with equal facility. Their wings, which they kept folded, were more like dragon wings than the eagle wings you see in classical art.
In another age, the sphinxes were the supernatural assassins of the Pharaohs and the High Priests. They were constructs, artificial things built or assembled to carry out their master’s deadly will. They were living images of their master, fleshy automata produced by a lost art, their faces like a man’s but somehow lifeless, or at least soulless.
Gillespy and Hooper and Beltov must have been astonished by the intruders appearing in their rooms. I was ready with my knuckledusters wrapped round my fists. This time I was the one with the advantage of surprise, striking the first before the second one was even fully in the room.
I doubted whether anyone had punched a sphinx in the last forty centuries, and I hoped the sh
ock would be severe.
They might have been as insubstantial as mist or as hard as iron. I was hoping for something towards the softer end of the scale, and I was not disappointed. In any case, his head snapped back as he took the force of the punch, and he staggered back two steps into the wall. If you are not in a proper stance and your centre of gravity is too high, that’s what happens.
It was not the hardest thing I ever punched, and perhaps no harder than punching a normal person, but it certainly felt different. Just as it wore a mask rather than a face, the resemblance was superficial something assembled or moulded into human shape.
“Get out of my room,” I said, punching the second one in his midsection, guessing that maybe he would be vulnerable there. Lions and other cats are not meant to stand on their hind legs, as it exposes a broad stretch of belly. Their ribcage is higher than a human, and while a boxer is well muscled and so well protected about his middle, this thing did not seem to be either.
My punches landed well enough. Again, the texture was peculiar, as though it was stuffed with bowling balls rather than fleshy organs. I know nothing of the anatomy of lions, but I hoped I could give him a pain in his gut. A kidney punch is a deadly thing for a human. Maybe whatever they had inside could be broken too.
My onslaught did not delay them for long. As ever, when fighting one against two, I had to watch out for the first one, who shook his head and recovered then came for me. He had a longer reach than I expected—his arms or forelegs seemed to stretch like elastic. If my reflexes had not saved me by causing me to twitch my head to the side, the fight might have ended there. As it was, four giant claws sliced the air an inch from my nose. They seemed to leave trails in the air, as though they scored the fabric of the atmosphere.
My counterpunch was low, and he exhaled sharply, the first noise I heard one of them make. It wasn’t so much a grunt as air knocked out of a bag. It gave me an indication that they breathed, and that the faces were not simply ornamentation like the face of a puppet. Before he could recover, I gave him an uppercut with my left.
The results were unsatisfactory. Hit a human like that, with the added impact force and hardness of a knuckleduster, and there should be blood all over the place, sometimes a spray of it on the walls. As I had half-suspected, their skin was as impervious as that of the Nemean lion. If they had battled warriors with swords and spears in antiquity, they must be armoured and impenetrable. Perhaps, like Hercules, I would be reduced to strangling them, a difficult enough task with one but barely conceivable when there were two of them to tackle.
At least with the knuckledusters, I could hold my own for as long as I boxed cleverly. Without them, I would not have had a chance. And, unlike the warriors of old, I was accustomed to fights where an opponent could not be felled at once, and where ducking and dodging and blocking were vital skills, which I used freely.
The first one swiped at me with that elasticated reach of his, as though his joints had some looseness in them. I blocked with my left against his wrist and threw out a quick jab—only just quickly enough, because his other paw moved with lightning speed. I felt my arm brushed. His claws were like razor blades, so sharp that there was no immediate pain, but I felt wetness trickling down my sleeve.
I ducked back, stepped sideways, and snatched up one of the heavy cushions in my left hand. It was awkward, but it was the only shield I possessed. Maybe the creatures’ claws would snag in the dense stuffing.
Two seconds later, the cushion had been eviscerated, and the heavy coconut matting tumbled out. I tossed the useless remnant at the nearest one, and he swatted it out of the air as if he was a kitten with a ball of paper.
What was happening could not be happening—and maybe it wasn’t. It was far more plausible that I was lying on my bunk in a mad delirium, with Miller or one of the others despairing of my ever coming back to the real world. But it was the world I was faced with, and I would treat it in good faith, and fight this nightmare bout as though it was a normal match.
I fell back a step and a half, sensing the surrounding room. The fight was just beginning, and Harry Stubbs was landing some good blows and getting well ahead on points, but this thing was not going to be decided on points. It would be a knockout. Or death.
They moved forward to be side by side and fight two against one. It was foolish. Their fighting style meant they did not punch straight but swung round, so they needed clearance. I could punch them freely, bobbing from side to side while they jostled and swiped ineffectually, but I could not stay in one place long.
I grabbed the bed in one hand and dragged it, tearing up linoleum, so it was between. They would have to squeeze around or clamber over to get at me.
I dodged wrong, and a blow caught me on the side of the head. I rolled with it, but for a moment I thought I was done for, like a cartoon character who is sliced through but stays in one piece for a second before falling to the floor in pieces. The blow had not been well judged. Though it was as hefty as what many boxers could deliver, it did no great damage. It was not the neck-breaking blow of the tiger that Ryan had described, though wild animals probably have less skill at riding punches than I did.
They tried to reach me several times over the bed before finally realising it was no good and that I was dodging back every single time. They were fearsome enough, but my respect for them was diminishing. “Your reputation for wisdom has been greatly overstated,” I panted.
I have never been one for trying to rile opponents in a fight, but I was seeking any advantage. If they could not or would not talk, then being mocked by a mortal might irk them even more. And an angry opponent is a careless opponent.
Acting in perfect synchrony, the two leapt onto the bed at the same moment. There was no room to back away, and I did not want to get into close quarters with them; a clinch with those claws would be like falling into a sausage grinder. There was one avenue open to me. Even as they moved, I was dropping flat and rolling under the bed. For an unrehearsed move, it was polished, and I rose before they turned. They had fast enough reflexes, but they were slow thinkers.
“You’re supposed to ask me a riddle!” I taunted, and I turned the bed over on its side to make a higher obstacle, then delivered a cheeky left jab to the midriff of the nearer of the two before stepping back. Claws cut the air in front of me, but I had their reach and timing by then. There was little variety in their moves.
They seemed to pause and think. I was not going to give them time to do that, so I picked up the bed by the frame and swung it.
I had considered the bed as a possible weapon during my tactical planning cogitation, but it had seemed much too heavy to be practical. Now it seemed lighter, more like wood rather than iron. The legs were facing away from me, and I used them to jab at my attackers as a lion-tamer keeps his beasts at bay. It was more like Buster Keaton than boxing, but satisfying.
I half felt and half saw blows directed at the bed legs. That did not impress me, either—it was like a dog who tries to bite the stick rather than the man wielding it. Then, the shock of impact pushed me back and took a leg clean off. It clanged on the floor. If I had a second, I might be able to grab it and use it as a club.
I raised the bed chest-high, swung it this way and that, almost knocking one off balance. The other raised a hind leg, trying to claw at my shins. I dropped the bed on his foot, and as it fell, I stepped in to deliver a long right into the face of the other, planting my fist squarely on his nose. I did not have time to judge the effect of either, but hoisted the bed again.
One of them struck at my fingers; he missed me more by luck than any skill of mine. The blow left deep gouges in the iron frame. Through the metal slats, I saw a raking blow raise a shower of sparks. It might have knocked me over had I been less well balanced.
Claws hooked through the slats as one of them took hold of the bed and tried to pull it away from me. I thrust the bed forward then turned it like a windmill, marvelling at how easy it had become. It had begun to fe
el not like a normal wooden bed, but one made of featherweight balsa. I hoped to get his arm twisted or, best of all, to break loose one of those curved claws. I had a hunch that if there was one thing that could harm them, it would be one of their own claws.
I spun the bed and thrust it forward, letting go suddenly. It went down with a great clang, with one of them under it.
“Riddle me that!” I yelled.
The second one advanced on me, his face blank and his eyes as expressionless as glass beads. There was no blood and no bruising, for all the battering he had taken. He rushed in for the grapple, opening his arms. It gave me a free shot at his chin, which I took with jaw-breaking force.
I realised my mistake as soon as the arms wrapped round me. If he had been more alert, he could have gutted me like a rabbit, but perhaps I had stunned him, because he delayed for some fraction of a second—long enough for me to grab his wrists and force them upwards.
The claws extended, silver-white knives longer than my fingers, and he tried to bring them to bear. That should have been hopeless, given the leverage that I had, but his strength was a phenomenon. It was all I could do to hold him at a distance.
From a few inches away, I felt metallic breath on my face. There was no trace of sweat on his skin, though I was bathed in it. A depression like a thumbprint in wax marred his forehead: he was getting a battering. It seemed their bones were not brittle like ours, and more like soft bronze. Maybe a hard-enough pounding would suffice. If only I could get that bed leg.
I kneed him with all my force where his groin should have been. The blow almost lifted him off his feet, and I surged forward, still holding his wrists in mine. He was fully off balance by then, and after two steps, his back struck the wall, and his head whipped back into the brickwork with a hefty thud. “Take that,” I shouted.
Master of Chaos (The Harry Stubbs Adventures Book 4) Page 22