The Honours

by Tim Clare

  Lansley gathered up the wire and his deaf-aid battery, fastened it back into the holster. Between breaths he was swearing.

  Delphine stepped into the corridor. She looked both ways. Thuds and claps and shrieks came from far rooms. West was the long library. East led back to the Great Hall.

  ‘Ready,’ muttered Lansley, and it was unclear if he meant it as a question, if he had meant to say it out loud at all. Delphine spun the wheelchair to face east.

  A vesperi stepped from a doorway, threw a wiry forearm up over its muzzle. Propp shot. He missed. In the cramped corridor, the report was deafening. The creature recoiled. Propp fired again, hit it in the gut, blew a hole right through it.

  He shouted something, beckoned for her to follow. Her ears rang; she felt as if she were underwater. Propp and Lansley ran towards the Great Hall.

  She shoved at the wheelchair; after some resistance it started to move. The hardwood floor was slick with blood – she could smell it, loamy and clotting. Her bare toes skidded as she pushed the wheelchair and its passenger down the corridor, gathering momentum. Her throat was tight. Her legs felt floppy. Propp and Lansley had an exchange she couldn’t hear; her ears were ringing from the gunfire. She felt sure a vesperi must be right behind her. She braced for the cold thud of a javelin hitting her back. God, for a shotgun.

  Ahead, Lansley was shouting something – from his rhythm and intonation it sounded like a countdown as they approached the doorway to the landing. She saw the fluttering black shapes ahead. They were going to do this, they were going to charge into the storm, and Lansley was lifting his poker like a battle mace, and over the tone in her ears rose his guttural war cry, so pained and naked that it sliced through her anaesthetised dullness and her heart wanted to split down the middle and the only way she could stop terror from ripping her apart was to scream too.

  One of the wheels thumped over something, maybe a body. She didn’t stop.

  Out in front, Dr Lansley charged onto the landing, his tweed jacket stained bruise-black up to the elbows. He cocked his head and a javelin flashed over his shoulder; another struck the stone balustrade beside him and splintered. Propp followed him; as Delphine reached the end of the corridor Propp flattened himself against a wall and aimed his pistol at a vesperi coming in to land a few yards away.

  The beast’s wings rucked like a paper fan snapping shut and it hit the plush red carpet in a sprint. Propp fired; the revolver bucked and the shot went over the creature’s head. The vesperi whipped a dagger from its belt. Farther down the landing, two more vesperi landed. Lansley lashed at the air with his poker, driving back an assailant.

  If they tried to make a stand here, they would be dead within a minute.

  ‘Keep moving!’ she yelled.

  As she ploughed out onto the landing with the wheelchair, she was no longer a little girl pushing an old lady hidden beneath a pale blue rug, but a tank commander advancing beneath an almighty barrage, bulletproof, thunderous. A vesperi raised its hooked dagger to gut Propp. She blindsided it; the wheelchair knocked it sprawling. Propp shot it point-blank. The chair’s momentum carried her forwards; she could not bring it about in time and the left footrest whacked into the wall. From under the blanket, the old lady let out a yodelling howl. Delphine wheeled the chair back, twisted it to face the right way.

  She heard a noise like a flag in the wind then a vesperi was upon her. Wings wrapped round her head, trapping her with hot huffing breaths that stank of creosote.

  The pocket knife slipped from her grasp.

  She drove a fist through the gap between the creature’s wings and clutched at its back. Her fingers found the neck of its jacket. She tugged but its arms were locked round her head. Its fangs were a fraction of an inch from her eye; she pulled again at its jacket and the fangs snapped shut, peppering her face with spittle. She cried out and lurched forward, driving the vesperi back-first into the wheelchair handle. The vesperi croaked, unlocking its arms. She stepped back and it fell to the floor, winded.

  She looked at it, then at the pocket knife beside it. One stroke. She grabbed the knife. The skinwing was on its back, clutching its throat, making a retching noise. She had to finish the job, otherwise it would rise and kill her.

  Something slapped the base of her spine. She spun round, knife ready.

  It was Lansley.

  ‘Follow us or die.’

  He grabbed one of the wheelchair handles and helped her get it moving again. Propp appeared beside her, gasping, the armpits of his pinstripe shirt black with sweat. A smear of blood divided his forehead like a giant eyebrow.

  Ahead, at the top of the grand stairway, two more vesperi readied javelins. One had a weasel snout, the other a crush of folded cartilage. More vesperi circled beneath the white hollow of the hall’s domed ceiling, waiting to alight. In the air, they were cumbersome abominations. She saw they needed plenty of room to land and especially to take off again.

  The two vesperi lifted their weapons. Propp fired.

  ‘No!’ Lansley called out to him too late. The shot went wide; she saw the puff of dust as it ricocheted off the balustrade. The vesperi flung their javelins at the wheelchair. Delphine dropped flat, tipping the wheelchair onto its back. She skidded on the carpet; the chair rattled as something glanced off a caster.

  She scrambled to her feet and heaved the wheelchair upright, trying to ignore the old lady’s whimpering moans. Propp thrust his revolver at the now unarmed vesperi and moved as if to shoot. The creatures turned and fled.

  ‘I must reload,’ said Propp.

  More vesperi were clambering up the stairs, thumping their wings for extra lift. Delphine glanced back and saw even more emerging from the corridor she had just left. The two groups exchanged trills and pops.

  Down on the ground floor, there was no sign of Mrs Hagstrom or the Professor.

  ‘If wishes were horses, Ivan,’ said Lansley. ‘For Christ’s sake, come on!’ He roared and lunged upward, batting a vesperi out of the air; it fell like a smashed kite, clipping the balustrade and tumbling to the chequered floor below.

  She was less than halfway across the landing, not yet at the top of the stairs. The wheelchair was getting heavier and heavier. She could hear the old lady crying. Her legs wanted to crumple beneath her. Delphine dipped her head and dug her bare feet into the carpet. The wheelchair began to pick up speed. The faster it got, the harder it was to steer.

  Lansley was at the top of the stairs, cursing, thrashing at anything reckless enough to get in his way. A javelin sailed past him, hopelessly wide; he turned to see where it had come from and a second caught him a glancing blow across the throat. He staggered with the force of the strike; blood welled over his collar. He wiped a palm across the wound, grunted, looked at his soaking red glove.

  On the stairs, several vesperi stopped and aimed their javelins at the newly stationary target.

  ‘Look out!’ shouted Delphine. She spotted the earpiece of his deaf aid, swinging loose, cable caught in the crook of his elbow. ‘Look out!’

  He did not even look up.

  Propp hit him like an express train. Lansley’s eyes bulged as the two men collapsed and a volley of missiles swished over their heads. Some javelins hit the carpet and bounced, some lodged in the thick pile, quivering. One went long and hit the portrait of Lord Alderberen’s mother,* spearing her through the abdomen.

  Delphine clattered past them, wheelchair ploughing into the embedded javelin shafts, snapping them under its tyres. The Great Hall was wretched with monsters. Light flickered as splayed wings flashed past the portico windows, so that when she glanced directly at them it was like looking up at the projectionist’s booth at the pictures. When she looked back, Lansley and Propp were disentangling themselves and struggling to their feet. She slowed to wait for them, the wheelchair handles tugging at her arms as it tried to keep rolling.

  Lansley saw her stopping and his face exploded with fury.

  ‘Go!’ He shook the gore-spattered poker at t
he east corridor. ‘Run, damn your eyes!’ He threw an arm round Propp’s shoulders, helping the old man up. He looked at her again. ‘Are you deaf? Go!’

  Something on the ground floor caught his attention. He let go of Propp, who began hobbling away, and turned to face the front door. His expression went slack. Lansley held up his palm, stop, like a traffic policeman, then sidestepped in front of Propp. Delphine heard a thunderclap; Lansley looked up sharply.

  The Doctor stared at the alabaster frieze. Delphine almost let go of the wheelchair to run to him. A thick finger of wine lengthened from a spot on his brow. It coated his open eye, his trim moustache. With something like relief, Dr Titus Lansley dropped and rolled down the long, carpeted stairway, finally coming to rest at the boots of a scar-nosed beast in black riding coat and breeches, holding the walnut grip of a smoking flintlock duelling pistol.

  The thing was bat-like, but big as a man, muscled, too heavy to fly. Lowering the pistol, it glanced back at the open Great Hall doorway. There stood a tall figure in the broad-brimmed hat, heavy ankle-length overcoat and skull-white bird mask of a Venetian plague doctor. Coloured glass lenses flashed in the eye sockets as the white beak moved slowly up and down.

  The figure raised a leather-gauntleted hand and pointed directly at Delphine.

  Something brushed Delphine’s shoulder and she snapped back into reality. Propp was at her side.

  ‘Come.’

  She ran.

  A vesperi blocked the entrance to the east-wing corridor but she dipped her head behind the back of the chair and accelerated. The old lady cawed softly from beneath her blanket. A hiss, a flicker of movement then a badump-badump and the chair jumped as it ran the creature down. One of the vesperi’s wings caught in the spokes, dragging it several feet down the corridor before the leathery membrane split, leaving the thing a ragged bloody heap against the wall.

  She risked a glance back, saw Propp gasping and staggering, bronze-black vesperi heads gaining on him. Her palms were slick with blood and sweat. Her lungs ached. Several doors were open; ticking, bubbling and the sound of breaking glass came from inside. At every noise she braced herself for the dagger raking her throat, the puncturing blow, the close, pungent breath. The door to Lord Alderberen’s parlour was the last on the left. If she had to scrabble to fit the key in, they would be on her before she could turn it.

  As she approached the door, she saw it was ajar – which was worse. Vesperi were probably inside. She dug her heels into the carpet, shut her eyes and mouthed a prayer. As the chair slid to a halt she mule-kicked the door. It swung open and crashed against the wall.

  The room was empty.

  The red leather club chair lay upside-down, with the matador painting impaled on one of its legs. Fragments of something white, porcelain perhaps, shone against the royal blue rug. The door to the master bedroom was closed. She tilted the chair onto its back wheels and rolled it in after her. She was about to slam and lock the door when she remembered Propp.

  While she waited for him, she tried the door to the bedroom. It opened.

  She let it swing wide.

  The room was smaller than she had expected. She collapsed against the end of a four-poster bed that took up most of the floor. Alderberen Hall’s pervasive musk of stale smoke and sweat intensified as she tried to catch her breath. She scooped hair out of her stinging eyes. The bed was covered in a red silk quilt edged with tassels of dirty gold. On the bedside table lay a straight razor crusted with white stubble and shaving cream, a little oval mirror, a brown bottle containing Lord Alderberen’s tincture of silver, and an ivory rook from a chess set. A pine hatch was set into the wall. Above her head, a showy oriental lampshade hung like a colossal glowing spider. The plush carpet was the colour of tonsils.

  Her lungs burned. Beside the Chinese lampshade hung a second, darker lampshade. It shuddered and jawed open.

  She fell. Her legs were gone. The hanging vesperi dropped. It touched down, wings spread, with a soft whumph.

  When it rose, there was a grace to the motion, as if it had just been knighted. She scrambled onto her knees.

  Its muzzle was a lattice of pink frills that flexed in time with the creature’s breaths. A bloom of white pin mould brindled the corner of its mouth. From its belt swung a loop of black rope. It regarded her through sharp amber eyes, waving its hooked dagger side to side. Delphine watched the blade, remembering how the mother stoat had danced to lure the rabbit. She clasped her pocket knife.

  One stroke. Snick. Across the windpipe.

  The room was too bright. The vesperi stepped towards her. To pin the thing down and slice open its throat, as Lansley had told her, would be to accept it as real. And Lansley was dead. Oh God, he was dead – she had fantasised about it for so long and now it had happened. She tried to feel terror but none of it had any weight. She was riding pillion in her own body.

  The vesperi took another step. She felt a nauseous fascination. The thing was breathing, pulsing with life. She could see the stitching in its cut-off trousers, the silvery hairs twitching in its outsized ears. Worst of all, she could see it watching her, could feel the workings of mutual intelligence – it looking at her looking at it looking at her looking at it.

  What does a soldier most fear to see when he looks into his enemy’s eyes?

  She looked away. Under the great bed, tartan slippers sat next to a stoneware chamber pot decorated with elephants roaming the savannah.

  The knife wobbled in her grip. She inhaled through her nostrils and opened her mouth to cry out –

  The vesperi’s open hand swung for her throat. She swiped with the pocket knife but the hooked dagger caught it, easily flipping it from her slick grasp. Delphine snatched at air, desperate.

  The skinwing ducked under her guard, brought the hooked dagger to her throat and swung round behind her. Its thin fingers dug into her shoulder. A slow, wet breath condensed inside her right ear.

  From the adjacent parlour, she heard Propp’s voice: ‘Hello?’ He would see his sister in the wheelchair, alone, and the door, ajar. His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Hello?’

  She tried to inhale; the blade bit into her windpipe.

  One stroke. Snick.

  The vesperi hissed, ssss, ssss. The edges of her vision were closing in. This was it. The pocket knife lay on the puce carpet, just out of reach. She was going to die like Lansley. She drew a thin breath, gagging.

  She heard a floorboard croak in the next room. She tried not to flinch in case she panicked the creature into slitting her windpipe. She could hear Propp’s exhausted breaths beneath the closer, thinner breaths of the vesperi, and a metallic scraping, as of someone sorting pennies.

  He was reloading.

  The vesperi held its breath. A faint shadow appeared at the threshold. The door swung inwards.

  Propp stepped into the room. The grip on her shoulder tightened; the blade pressed into the soft flesh of her neck. He looked her up and down, blinked languidly. His hypnotic grey eyes glanced past her shoulder. Beneath his white moustache, his lips puckered.

  ‘Let her go,’ he said, with a slow nod.

  At her ear, the vesperi pop-chirruped a response. Propp plucked at a thread on his shirt sleeve. Dried blood had crusted in the wrinkles under his jaw. It streaked his face like war paint. He raised the revolver. She felt the vesperi duck behind her, using her as a shield.

  ‘It is me,’ Propp said. He touched a finger to his cheek. ‘It is Ivan. Let her go.’

  He was a dreadful shot. Surely he wasn’t planning to . . .

  He closed one eye.

  ‘No!’ she said. She felt the sting of the dagger breaking skin. Propp straightened his pistol arm. The room was receding.

  She threw her head to the left. The Webley punched. The dagger dropped to the carpet at her knees. She sunk forward, gasping, kneading her throat. Her hands came away wet, dark red blood picking out the creases of her fingers. The ringing in her ears was louder than ever, her nostrils full of salty, gam
mony fumes.

  She lifted her head. Propp lowered the pistol. His arm was shaking. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a thing of twitching gristle, a blackberry splatter painting the embossed cloverleaf wallpaper.

  He had risked it. He had taken the shot.

  Propp wheeled his sister in from the parlour, shut the door and, with difficulty, slotted the bolt home. Delphine stared at him. He smeared a fist across his moustache, snorted.

  ‘We have perhaps one minute.’

  Delphine could barely speak. ‘You could have killed me.’

  ‘I could have. I did not.’

  ‘Where are these things coming from?’

  ‘Through channel,’ Propp said. From next door came clattering, ticking. ‘Ah. They arrive. You . . . ’ Tenderly, he peeled the blanket from his sister. Her head hung to one side, fine white hair spilling over a shrivelled cheek. She chewed at the air. ‘Both of you must go now.’

  ‘And you’ll head for the gun room?’

  Propp shook his head.

  ‘What?’ Delphine got to her feet, steadying herself against the four-poster bed. ‘But you said . . . you have to!’

  ‘Come.’ He guided her towards the pine hatch beside the bed. He tugged the handle. The hatch slid up into a recess with a rumble of counterweights, revealing an empty shaft and a cable. Propp reached over the bedside table to a button panel. He pressed the top one. An electric motor began turning an axle that wound the cable. Mr Propp placed a hand on Delphine’s shoulder. ‘I never reach gun room alone.’

  ‘You’re not alone. I’m here.’

  Fists began pounding the door. Propp smiled.

  ‘You must take her.’

  ‘No.’

  Propp put the revolver to Delphine’s forehead. ‘You have no choice.’

  She swatted it away.

  ‘Don’t be so stupid! You’re not going to shoot me. Stop being such a coward. This is your fault. We need your help.’

  ‘I am trying. Please, take her. She cannot protect herself.’