Christopher Brookmyre - Parlabane 04 (34 page)

'God almighty,' gasped Liz.

'There can be only one,' Rory added.

'Eh?'

205

'Nothing.'

Someone who did have time to focus was the second swordsman, who watched his comrade's head bounce and roll to the lower landing like it was on the end of a hypnotist's chain. He stopped in his tracks, frozen a couple of steps down from the landing, until he caught sight of whatever was in Joanna's eyes, at which point he uttered 'fuck this', turned on one heel and took off.

Rory looked to Liz, as much surprise as horror reflected in her face, which meant she was thinking the same as him.

'These guys are shite,' Rory exclaimed.

The erstwhile force of vengeance stood, trembling, her knuckles white and every sinew stretched as she gripped the sword. Kathy put an arm out slowly and gently to touch her, the sound of several footsteps thumping along the corridor outside the fire door. Joanna almost jumped at Kathy's contact, suddenly shaken from her trance. She stared at what lay before her then at Rory, as if asking him how it happened. The rage that had seized her was exhausted, leaving her merely its spent and bewildered vessel. She dropped the rapier and burst into sobs as Kathy led her away.

Rory helped Liz over the bookcase, noticing with concern that she had a patch of blood on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

'You're cut,' he said.

'Barely broke the skin,' she said. 'Bigger bruise than a cut, the point was so dull. Get after the bastard.'

Rory lifted the rapier and began climbing the stairs as Parlabane and Vale arrived at the fire-door, further footsteps behind them announcing more tardy reinforcements.

'Jeez,' Parlabane remarked. 'Store janitor to the ketchup aisle,'

'They were already inside, upstairs,' Liz said. 'Two of them. There could be more.'

'Finish the barriers, both of them,' Rory heard Vale order, his voice cut off as the upper-level fire-door swung shut behind him. He thought he heard screaming too, but it might just have been Kathy's echo inside his head. Emily recognised Kathy's scream instantly. She'd heard it a hundred times, usually at around eleven o'clock on a busy Monday when her mid-morning caffeine hit coincided with the second post or when Carol the secretary told her their accountant was on the other line. This was louder, even from the other end of the building, and didn't descend into self conscious giggling at the end.

'That's Kathy,' she informed the others, all of whom had reacted to the sound.

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Max and Toby immediately let go their end of the mattress they'd just lifted and went haring down the corridor in response. Emily was inside the stairwell, standing on the bureau, her role more about guidance than muscle, which meant the loss of their hands left her stranded for a moment as she prevented the mattress from toppling down the flight below. She stretched a hand out to Sir Lachlan, seeking assistance in getting down so that she could follow the others, but instead he stepped around the desk and shouldered the burden they'd just abandoned.

'Stick to your task,' he said, in a tone that told her this was not a suggestion.

'Whatever's going on up there, it's out of your hands. We need to get this barricade up.'

Emily bit her lip and nodded. She didn't like it, but she understood. Not knowing was the hardest part of fear. So far there had been several horrible developments, but they had come in the form of reports and revelations. This was the first time there was something going on live that she was aware of, something she had an invaluable stake in, and yet she just had to ignore it, do her job and wait for news.

They had lodged a mattress beneath the front legs of the bureau, pinning one end of it at the top of the flight so that intruders would have to walk up it, rather than the more conducively tractable stairs, in order to approach the barrier. The second mattress, they were planning to wedge upright between the desk and the corner of the banister, presenting a six-foot vertical obstacle in front of the bureau. The weak point was that it could only be pinned in place on one side, creating a hinge effect allowing the enemy to pull it open like a door. However, the weight securing the pinned end would mean it wouldn't be a very easy door to open, and after they squeezed through it, they'd still have to get over the bureau, all the time vulnerable to defenders'

blades.

Between them, Emily and Sir Lachlan edged the mattress over the bureau and into the waiting slot, then she stepped back to the floor. They both crouched down to put their shoulders against the desk in readiness to pin the second mattress in place.

'After three,' said Sir Lachlan. 'One--'

'Wait,' warned Emily, sure she could hear heavy footfalls on the stairs above. She and Sir Lachlan got to their feet in time to see two men, one with a broadsword, the other with a machete, come charging down the upper flight towards them. Sir Lachlan grabbed a fistful of Emily's dress with one hand and his rapier from the floor with the other, pushing her towards the door as he lunged forward on to the stairs to meet them. She screamed and heard a clash of metal as she pulled the handle, the door only swinging in a few feet before jamming against one end of the bureau. On the stairs, Sir Lachlan 207

was parrying the broadsword to force back one opponent, but the other was shaping to launch himself through the gap between them and the wall. Sir Lachlan spotted this intention and called to Emily to run as he launched a kick into the second attacker's path. She saw his right leg buckle as the left made contact, the assault on the second man disrupting his balance in fending off the first, and she had to dive through the narrow gap between door and frame before the three toppling bodies came down on top of her. She heard thumps and cries as she rolled into the corridor, then the sound of the fire-door swinging open and once again finding resistance. Emily looked back. The man with the machete emerged through the gap, his face blacked out with camouflage paint but his eyes burning with eminently readable intent. There was movement behind him, a thrust-out leg slamming the door closed while he was halfway through it. The impact whacked his head against the frame, but he merely shrugged it off as the door rebounded from his burly figure. He raised the machete and began moving forward. Emily turned and scrambled to her feet, finding herself facing down a long corridor, at the end of which Alison was locking a door, Ger standing over her protectively with a knife.

'Get down,' Ger called, but Emily could feel, not just hear, the heavy paces behind her, and her legs refused to cease taking her away from the imagined down-swing of that machete.

'I SAID GET FUCKIN' DOWN,' Ger shouted, stepping across her path and altering his grip on the enormous knife he was carrying. Emily heard something whip just over her head as she hit the deck, turning on to her back instinctively to face her pursuer.

He was no longer pursuing, knocked clean off his feet like he'd run into an overhanging branch. Emily heard a truly revolting thud as his head hit the thinly carpeted wooden floor, but any neurological damage was rendered moot by the fact that Ger's knife had already diverted his brain's blood supply on to the walls and carpet.

'Sir Lachlan,' she remembered. 'There's another one in there with him.'

Ger walked past her and knelt down to remove the knife from the intruder's neck, also prising the machete from his grip

As he stood up, the fire-door swung open and a claymore was tossed through it, landing on the lacquered wood that flanked the carpet with a ringing clang. Sir Lachlan stepped awkwardly through the gap, wincing as he did so. There was blood seeping from his right thigh and his left hand, his fingers clenched over his palm.

'Bugger got away. Took a dive into the mattress and disappeared through the gap.'

'What happened to you?'

208

'Oh, the bastard with the machete had a swipe at me on his way past to get to you. And I got this on my hand from my own bloody sword. I whipped his claymore - I should say
my
claymore - from his grip and he let it go more easily than I was expecting. He was more interested in getting out of there than standing up for a fight. I could see it in his eyes. Who the hell are these people?'

'Not exactly the musketeers, are they?' observed Ger.

Sir Lachlan surveyed the mess on the floor of the corridor.

'Not exactly, no. Mr Vale wanted a prisoner to interrogate. D'Artagnan here isn't going to tell him much, is he?'

'I hope I'm wrong, but I expect there'll be others.'

'Me too. There's no way the clowns we've just seen off were running the show.'

Rory charged after the sound of footsteps, urged on by an adrenaline surge that he hoped would continue to provide such an imperative drive if and when he caught up with his quarry. He could see no-one in the first-floor corridor, but estimated the fugitive to be only a few yards ahead. Once around the S-bend, the bastard came into his view, pounding towards the next fire-door, through which lay the gallery overlooking the grand staircase and reception hall.

'Come back and fight, you useless fucking shitebag,' Rory called after him, hardly a compelling invitation, he'd have to admit. That said, it felt good to watch him run, felt like the tide had turned after the hopeless, numbing dread that had descended since Grieg came crashing through the window sans under-used head. He braced his shoulder for impact and powered through the fire-door as the escapee kept going headlong, not even checking over the banister to the lower floor as he passed. The guy wasn't looking for options: he knew exactly where he was headed.

'We've four people on the far stairway,' Rory shouted, 'and they've all got swords as sharp as the one that cut your pal's visit short.'

The logic seemed impeccable at the time, until the runner did the arithmetic and came to the conclusion Rory intended, at which point it didn't seem such bright thinking. He stopped short of the next fire-door as though Rory's words had locked it, and turned to face what was now the only obstacle between him and, if not escape, then at least temporarily keeping his options open. Rory now realised he hadn't exactly been expecting the guy to lay down his weapon and say 'it's a fair cop'; in truth, he hadn't been expecting
anything
in particular, as he hadn't been thinking any further ahead than getting the bugger to stop running.

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He had a desperate look in his eyes, as much fear and horror as Rory himself had been feeling before, mixed with the same leavening of sheer survival instinct. Doubling his grip on the claymore, he charged towards Rory, shouting a wordless, inarticulate war cry as he did so.

The world slowed, like Rory was in bullet-time, or, more accurately, claymore time. Shit. He was four yards away.

Okay, moment of truth. Own up: how many fencing classes did he go to?

Quite a few back at school, all of twenty years ago, then a few in early student days before the pursuit of a different swordcraft laid claim to his enthusiasms. You scuttled back and forth along a line, dressed like an anorexic bee-keeper, facing a similarly prancing tit with his similarly pathetic-looking foil, and you got points for touching.
Touching, for fuck's sake.
'Stand back lest I touch you, ye filthy blackguard.'

Nope, touching wasn't going to do it, and even if he had his face-mask, he couldn't quite picture the claymore reverberating off it and giving the guy pins and needles in his finger.

Three yards away, the claymore held to one side, ready to be swung in towards him.

So, to recap, touching and white outfits. Those were the main memories. Any principles still lingering in there, dormant, ready to be awakened by something like, ooh, let's see, a crazed and desperate assassin now two yards from cutting him in half?

Rory's head still drew a blank, but his legs had total recall. Balance and timing, they reminded him, as his knees bent automatically and his feet took him a short half-yard to the left, outside the path of the unstoppably swinging claymore. His torso turned as if on ballbearings, affording him a view of his attacker stumbling against the banister, his feet unable to compensate for the absence of impact as he swung the heavy sword at a target who was no longer there. The war cry spent and a dollop of doubt diluting the blind confidence of his desperate purpose, he righted himself and lunged again. This time, Rory's arms got in on the act too, bringing the rapier up with no great power, but more than enough to deflect the attack as his feet had already angled him away from its focus. He wouldn't exactly say it was all coming back now, but clearly what basics his body had retained were more than this chump ever had the benefit of. The guy was sapping his own strength, allowing Rory to use his momentum against him with minimum effort on his part. On the third lunge, Rory dropped his centre of gravity and moved in before the attack could advance, bringing his rapier up so that his opponent stepped forward on to its point. Rory stopped the blade at the man's sternum, the tip already through a layer of camouflaged material.

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'Drop it,' Rory said.

He did.

Rory kicked the sword away and stepped back, still levelling the rapier at his opponent's chest, as Vale emerged from the fire-door bearing a claymore of his own.

'Your prisoner, Mr Vale.'

'Sterling stuff, Mr Glen. Now you'd better get downstairs and have that looked at.'

'Have what looked at?' Rory asked, glancing down at himself like someone had told him his fly was open. There was a damp red patch visible on his shirt where his jacket flapped open. He put his hand to it instinctively and felt the sting that adrenaline had been suppressing since he'd been slashed across his chest on the stairwell. It felt like getting a speeding ticket through the post.

'Bollocks,' he said.

'It looks superficial, but it's going to need some antiseptic and dressing,'

Vale advised. 'Go get yourself a seat. Donald and I will handle our new guest.'

'I'll tell you nothing,' the man said, sounding more scared than defiant.

'Want to bet?'

'You can't threaten me because I'm dead anyway. They'll kill me if I talk.'