Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
Duncan crossed the space between them faster than the other man’s thought. Whipped the butt of the Webley hard into the colonel’s temple, floored him. Hardy went to his hands and knees, dripping blood from the wound. Duncan swung his arm like a weathervane, pointed the gun at Bainbridge and Rachel.
“I’d sit this one out if I were you.”
He grabbed Hardy by the collar, dragged him more or less back to his feet. The colonel was groggy from the blow to the head, offered little resistance. Blood down his forehead and face, probably in his eyes.
“Colonel Hardy and I are going for a walk in the woods. You or anyone else comes after us, you will be shot dead. Hardy here doesn’t have the monopoly on snipers.”
“Mr. Silver, this won’t—”
“Think yourself lucky, Bainbridge.” Duncan already backing out, dragging Hardy with him, grinning hard. “I don’t have the time to deal with you too right n—”
The drawing room door burst open, banged back on its hinges. Bulky figures, a raised weapon. A lick of witch’s luck blew Duncan’s way; the door slammed the wall, bounced back again, caught the aiming arm. A shot went wide. Duncan shot back, twice, saw his target stagger—
Bainbridge crashed into him from the side, fists and tangling legs. A real handful despite his age and build and airy archmage demeanor, who’d have thought it, treacherous, mannered piece of shite didn’t look like he had it in him…
Duncan rode the first blow, hooked a vicious elbow into the other man’s head, knocked him aside.
Hardy summoned some trench thuggery, clawed at his face.
Someone else came through the door. Duncan barged Hardy aside, swung and shot—saw a head snapped back—swung back again toward Bainbridge, fired twice, blind.
High cry—Bainbridge went over, but it wasn’t his voice.
Bolt upright in the chair, Rachel stared back at him out of shocked dark eyes.
Time slowed; his vision went acid clear.
Blood drenching her blouse down at the waistline.
Perhaps she saw him stare—she looked down, saw the blood, too, whimpered and pressed both hands to the damage.
The blood welled up over her clutching fingers, sluggish pulse.
Bainbridge, struggling to rise, clutching at his thigh—
One shot left in the Webley. Shuddering sense of things falling apart…
You will not heal this way—fucking Meb’s voice, of all things, jumping into his head when he least fucking needed it.
Club Hardy in the head again for good measure—
The door hinged back open. Duncan yelled, wordless, pointed the Webley, and whoever it was quailed aside, arms flung up vainly for protection. He held his fire. Later, he thought it might have been Ewart…
Bainbridge stumbling, slipping over in his own blood on the boards…
Rachel, whimpering, bleeding—
Snag fucking Hardy by the collar again, haul him grunting and flailing weakly to the shattered French windows. Webley trained on the doorway in case someone else fancied their chances. Summon your voice—bellow it out for all of them to hear—
“Do not follow us outside!” It came out a hoarse and grinding roar, someone else speaking for him surely, the voice of a murderous bastard if there ever was one. “You will be shot dead if you do!”
You will not heal this way.
He got Hardy through the shattered portal, dragged him out into the wet and the dark.
—
The French windows cast warm lamplight in angled blocks onto the darkened lawn.
He hauled Hardy left and out of their reach.
Odd sense of relief creeping in his nerves with the shift to shadow.
Through the grip he had with his hand, he thought he felt the other man’s resistance rising again—tough bastard, you had to give him that.
He jammed the Webley barrel hard into the base of Hardy’s spine. Snarled in his ear.
“Don’t test me, Colonel!”
“You won’t…” Slurring, panting. “You can’t…”
“I just fucking did, so stow your shite.”
He made the tree line, pulled Hardy unceremoniously through the tangle of bushes, crashed him face-first flat to the ground.
He put his own weight on top, jabbed the revolver into the man’s lower back again.
Put his mouth to Hardy’s ear again, hissed through gritted teeth.
“I’ve seen men shot through the spine before, Colonel Hardy.
They can live long lives in wheelchairs and nappies, unless they get up the courage to end it themselves.
I need you alive, but that’s about it, so don’t fucking test me! ”
Flat whip-crack report of Arthur’s carbine, off to the left.
Duncan got to his knees, hauled Hardy up in front of him. They crabbed through the undergrowth, lurched between the trees, working a wide, careful arc back to where Arthur and the witch waited.
Two more reports from the carbine.
“All right?” he asked as he collapsed Hardy again beside them.
“Yeah, they’ve got the idea.” Arthur, laconic, not lifting his eye from the rear sight. “Might try to circle round from the front of the house, but unless they do it from both corners at once, I can hold them as long as I’ve got bullets.”
“Good man.” Duncan clapped him on the shoulder. “Won’t need to do that, though. Just hold here about five minutes, then fall back, follow us out.”
“Sweet.”
“Duncan, what in Hecate’s fuckworthy name do you think—”
Duncan cut across her protestations. “He knows where Mimi and her mother are being held. He’s going to tell me. Now come on, let’s get out of here.”
The witch muttered something under her breath, but she got up, stowed the Kilner jar back in its satchel, slung it nonchalantly over her shoulder.
“I’ll carry it,” she said. “You’ve got your hands full.”
They skulked away from the house, lost its lights rapidly in the trees and murk behind them as they straightened up and moved faster.
Hard to tell under the canopies, but the rain seemed to be tuning up, from drizzle to something more driven—ought to make pursuit even more of a nightmare for anyone who might come after them.
Duncan forced the pace as much as he dared in the low light and the uneven ground underfoot.
He drove Hardy ahead of him with cuffs across the head from his free hand, prods with the barrel of the Webley in his back.
A few minutes on, Duncan heard the carbine again, a single shot, then more silence.
Another two minutes, another report. No answering fire.
It didn’t look as if Adept House contained men with the weapons or stomach to rush Arthur in his sniper’s hide.
When they reached the thinning fringes of woodland at the edge of the munitions plant, he grabbed Hardy to a halt, raised a hand to Nimble Shanks Annie.
“We wait here for Arthur.”
“Gets my vote,” panted the witch. She’d been struggling to keep up. She unslung the satchel, dumped it on the ground with evident relief, braced hands on her widespread knees and bent over, working at getting her breath back under control. “That’s about enough—soldiering—for one night.”
Duncan surveyed the darkened loom of the abandoned factory buildings ahead, the low brush and the scattered copses that grew between, the open ground.
Beyond the tree that sheltered them, the rain slashed down with increasing vigor, murking the view.
“You want to try scrying the way through again, make sure we’ve got no nasty surprises waiting for us? ”
Still bent over, she gave him a sour look. “You want to give me a fucking minute?”
“You bloody fools,” spat Hardy meanwhile, glowering, clutching at his head. “You’ll hang for this! Both of you! Your sniper friend, too!”
“Shut up, Hardy,” Duncan told him tiredly. “You’re in no position to be making threats. And, since you failed pretty fucking dismally to kill me with a sneak sniper bullet yourself, you’ll forgive me if I’m not too impressed with promises of due process.”
“I don’t…” Maybe there was something in his face, because Hardy turned away, looked to the witch. “Perhaps you can make him understand, madame? You are interfering with matters of state, matters you cannot possibly—”
Duncan stepped in, stomped him behind the knee, dropped him face-first in the dirt at her feet. A thin, rising fury like a scream, seething in his inner ear…
“Madame?” The witch wiped sweat and rain off her face, straggled back her hair. “I like that.”
Duncan kicked his tumbled prisoner savagely in the belly—trying to drive out harsh visions of Rachel’s bloodied, frantically clutching hands, the stealthy welling-up pulse of her lifeblood running out…
You’re ill luck, Duncan. You know that.
Aye, well. Hold it together.
He crouched at the other man’s side, snarled in his face.
“You think four scrape-the-barrel scum coppers killed is a big fucking deal, Hardy? I’m just getting started.
You have no fucking idea what I’ll do to anyone who gets between me and Mimi Rush now.
I’ll gut Sir Michael fucking Endershall himself, balls to breastbone, if he stands in my way. And you, you faithless cunt—”
“I won’t talk, you know.” Breathy voice and a defiant bared-teeth grin raised toward him. “You think you can make me?”
“I know I can.” Duncan tossed the Webley aside, grabbed Hardy’s head in both hands, twisted it roughly.
“You see where we are? This is off the fucking map for you, Hardy. But for me, it’s close to home.
You tell me where Mimi and her mother are, or I’m going to take you into the deep Forest and introduce you to some of the things that live there. ”
Hardy spat at him, thick, bloodied spittle that barely made it past his lips, then hung slick and drooling from the corner of his broken mouth.
But Duncan saw the terror awake in his eyes, and something in him sang at the sight, sticky black joy through his veins.
“Sweet, you waited!” Arthur hurried up, out of breath, carbine still unslung. “Wasn’t looking forward to crossing all that open ground alone.”
“Aye, we’ll get Annie here to scry it again in a minute. Get your breath. Like the man says, more haste, less speed. You have to shoot anyone?”
“Not yet. Warning shots only.”
“You! Listen to me!” Hardy, trying again with the new arrival. “You’ve served your country, that’s clear enough. You cannot permit this! You have a duty to king and country to stop these people.”
Arthur spared him a glance. “You’re joking, right?”
“Duncan.” The witch, straightened up now, frowning, some urgency creeping into her tone. “There’s some—”
And blood erupted from her throat.