Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02 (16 page)

 
          
“There,”
she said, “we point our spell to where he lies. And the
midnight
hour comes when his fate will close on
him.”

 
          
She
faced the gathering and lifted the spear to the full length of her arm. She
chanted
,
naming names Thunstone knew from the past:

 
          
“Haade
. . . Mikaded . . . Rakeben . . . Rika . . . Ritalica . . . Taarith . . .
Modeca . . . Rabert . . . Tuth . . . Tumeh . . .”

 
          
And
high over her head she flourished the spear. Its copper point shimmered in the
lamplight. Her whole body waved like a flag.

 
          
“I
have made my wish before,” she intoned. “I make it now, and there never was a
day in which my wish was not granted.”

           
“No use in striking that dummy!”
Thunstone cried at the top of his voice.

 
          
Every
head turned toward him. He came out from where he hid in the drapery and strode
swiftly into view, his silver blade drawn.

 
          
“It’s
not going to work,” he shouted. “You haven’t pointed your curse to me in the
right place. Here I am, and I’m come to stop you.”

           
Thunstone had stunned them, every
one of them, by his sudden rushing appearance. They stood like uncouth statues,
flat-footed, with goggling eyes and wide-open mouths as he came charging across
the floor, across the gaudy pentagram. In his right hand he poised his
unsheathed silver blade with its prayer inscription, while in his left he
carried the sheath of the cane. Naked bodies, male and female, sagged out of
his way to the left and the right. Even the hairy giant who had played Hume
lurched clear of him. Perhaps they thought he was part of the ritual Thome and
Grizel Fian were creating.

 
          
At
a dead run he went among them and through them to where Thome sat staring in
his strange regalia, to the altar where the slack effigy lay limp, to where
Grizel Fian stood and shakily poised her copper-headed spear to strike
downward.

 
          
With
a powerful, whirling motion of his arm, Thunstone circled his silver point
around that crude dummy of himself. He felt a tingle in his right hand as he
did so; he heard a singing whine as of a plucked banjo string.

 
          
“Now
go ahead,” he grinned at Grizel Fian. “Stab at it.”

 
          
Her
eyes flamed at him. Her lips writhed apart to show him her clenched teeth. Her
naked body flexed itself quiveringly. With all the strength of her arms she
darted her point at the effigy.

 
          
A
frantic, quivering rattle of sound, and the spear’s shaft shattered in her hand
at midstroke. The copper head skipped and sparkled across the floor. Grizel
Fian stared at the splintered end of the shaft in her hand,
then
she hurled it at Thunstone with deadly intent. He batted it away with the shank
of the cane in his left hand. It flew clear of him, to clap and clatter on the
pale paving.

 
          
“Too
bad,” he mocked her at the top of his voice. “Too bad, isn’t it?” he threw at
Rowley Thorne, who still had not moved from where he sat and stared mutely.
“Things aren’t turning out the way you planned, are they? You have to have
helpless targets. Let’s see what I can do here for a change. I’m not helpless
at all.”

 
          
He
made a sudden slash at the grotesque dummy of himself. The cloth of its dark
jacket ripped and some sort of cottony stuffing leaped out of the pillow
inside. The shape stirred where it slumped. Thunstone shoved at the stone slab
with his elbow, shoved powerfully. The slab tipped off the trestles and spilled
the dummy to the floor. It fell in an awkward heap. He laughed aloud at
everyone in the chamber.

 
          
“No
harm to me, you see?” he mocked. “No harm whatever. You were pointing to find
me and strike me at a place where I didn’t happen to be waiting to be found and
stricken. Pick up that other spear, somebody. Try again.”

 
          
Thome
found his voice at last. “What are you doing, standing there like fools?” he
blared at the frozen onlookers. “Come on, capture him. We’ll deal with him,
here and now!”

 
          
There
was a stir in the naked assembly, but not a bold one. Thunstone stepped clear
of the overturned altar and the dummy. He whipped his blade around him in a whistling
circle, pivoting on his feet as he did so. He knew that he postured, even as
Grizel Fian had postured.

 
          
“Didn’t
you hear what your master said?” he called out derisively. “Come on and try to
cross that line I drew—any of you, all of you.” Again he turned to face toward
Thome and Grizel Fian. He smiled bitterly at them.

           
“Your mumbo jumbo has gone flat,
hasn’t it?” he jeered. “Somebody or other isn’t listening to you, not very
closely. I’m afraid that I’ve embarrassed you, breaking in on you like this,
all uninvited. Shouldn’t I remove myself, wouldn’t my room be better here than
my company?”

 
          
“You
stay right where you are,” shrilled Grizel Fian.

 
          
She
bent and snatched up the other spear, the one she had positioned on the floor
to point toward the
Inn
, where she had expected Thunstone to be a
target for attack. She poised it above her head as though either to thrust or
to throw.

 
          
Thunstone
made a long, smooth stride toward her with his right foot. He slashed
powerfully with his blade, and heard it sing in the air. The head of the spear
went in a jangling somersault across the floor.

 
          
“And
now what?” he challenged her. “Shouldn’t I just get out of here, I say, and
leave you to your jabberings?”

 
          
“Capture
him, I told you!” Thome howled, surging to his feet.

 
          
Thunstone
moved swiftly to make his way around the throne and toward the dim stairs. The
musicians had fled to huddle in a comer. For a brief moment Grizel Fian stood
to oppose him, her mouth open and trembling, her eyes staring, her bare body
drawn up. Thunstone extended his arm. The keen point of his blade almost
touched her between her stirring breasts.

 
          
“I’d
really hate to,” he said to her, “but I will if I have to.”

 
          
Her
cheeks went pale as milk and she cowered aside. Thunstone darted behind the
throne in the same instant. He made out those darkened stairs, wide, thick
slabs of old brown wood. They must lead somewhere upward to ground level. He
sprang upon them and went racing up, two steps at a time.

           
“I said, bring him back!” Thome’s
voice came roaring. “I give you the power to do that!”

 
          
Thunstone
heard the sudden stamp of pursuing feet.

 
          
The
stairway was dark, but at the top of it showed cracks of light around a closed
door. Thunstone got to that door even as those feet mounted the stairs below
him. He groped for a knob, turned it, and ran into a lighted room with high
shelves of dark-bound books and a table on which stood a crystal globe the size
of a small melon. On the far side was another door, of sooty-black wood with
metal clamps. Thunstone rushed at that, dragged it open, and sprang out upon
flagstones in the white light of the great soaring moon.

 
          
Before
him stretched a shadowed expanse of clumps and shrubs, a garden of what plants
he could not
see,
could not wait to see. At the far
side of it
rose
a tall, shaggy hedge. Thunstone made
for that, hoping that there would be no rails or wire fencing to stop him, and
he drove through a twining of thorny branches, his strong body smashing its
way. Then he was out in the cemetery again, with its tombstones and trees. He
heard the chirping voices of tree frogs, of night insects. He ran on into the
open, and behind him sounded the rattling struggle of his pursuers as they came
through the hedge after him.

 
          
He
snatched a backward look as he dodged between bone-pale gravestones with
rounded tops. Three shapes followed him there, their naked skins shiny in the
moonlight. One was the huge, hairy man who had played Hume. He dwarfed his
companions. For a moment the three halted, close together, as though they
peered and searched. Then one cried out hoarsely and pointed to where Thunstone
went. Again they followed. He could hear the fall of then- feet.

 
          
He
had always hated to run from anything. He ducked into a clump of leafy laurel
and waited there, catching his breath. He could hear them talking.

 
          
“Here's
where to settle him,’' said the booming voice of the big man. “Right here in
this cemetery, where it’s convenient,
Let
the police
come looking for him and find him here. Let them wonder why he died here.”

 
          
“He’s
hiding somewhere,” said another of the three, nasal-voiced.

 
          
“He
can’t hide from us,” blustered the giant. “He can run but he can’t hide. We’ll
dig him out and leave him for them to dig under. It’ll be a pleasure.”

 
          
Thunstone
felt fury swell within
himself
and strove to master
it. Now, if ever in all his life, he needed a clear, cool head. But he was
through with scurrying and skulking like a hunted animal; he had never done
those things well. He stepped out into the open and let the moon shine on him.
The frogs and the insects had fallen silent,

 
          
“But
how now, Sir John Hume!” he said, quoting a line of Shakespeare. “Seal up your
lips, and give no words but mum.”

 
          
The
huge bearded face lifted. Its eyes blinked in the light. “It’s you, huh?”

 
          
“Who else?”
Thunstone flung back at him. “Didn’t you come
out here looking for me? All right, here I am.”

 
          
“Quoting
from that play, are you?”

 
          
“It
seemed appropriate,” said Thunstone. “The way you feel that this graveyard is
an appropriate setting for what we might do here,”

 
          
He
fell on guard with his blade. A moonbeam flickered on it.

 
          
The
big fellow swayed forward a heavy pace and then another, like an elephant. He
looked immense in the moon-
glow,
His shoulders were
like great ledges. The matted hair crawled on his broad chest, his thick arms,
as he flexed his muscles. His body seemed to spread, like the hood of a cobra.
The whites of his staring eyes glittered.

 
          
“You
think you’ve got some kind of charm in that trick stabber of yours,” he said.
“It just so happens I’ve got a charm or
two myself
.
Come
on,
let’s see how quick and easy I can take it
away from you.”

 
          
“Let’s
see you try,” Thunstone invited.

 
          
The
bulky shape moved forward another ponderous step,
The
two smaller men advanced from either side, as though to close in on Thunstone’s
right and left,

 
          
“Kamban-wa
,
”
came a clear, good-humored voice
from somewhere apart from them all. “Good evening.”

 
          
A
small, dark-clad figure stepped delicately into the moonlight to stand at
Thunstone’s left,
A
toothy smile and a pair of
spectacles sparkled.

 
          
“Who
in hell is that?” roared the giant.

 
          
“Kudashi
,
”
said the newcomer silkily, and
his voice was the voice of Tashiro Shimada. “Please, Mr. Thunstone, let me
attend to this matter.”

 
          
The
great hairy figure edged forward again, and Shimada seemed to flash to close
quarters. There was a scrambling blur of limbs. Thunstone heard a wild yell as
of pain. He saw the great hulk of the giant body whirl up against the stars of
night, then fall clumsily and heavily. Tashiro Shimada stepped over the man he
had felled and faced the one beyond.

 
          
“You,
too?” he inquired, as though offering hospitality. That man exclaimed as he
turned and ran crazily, off into shadows toward the hedge. The other faced
Thunstone for a moment. Thunstone slid into a lunge and flicked out his point
horizontally, then shifted and brought it down vertically. The moonlight showed
a slashed cross on the man’s cheek. A wordless cry and that man, too, whirled
and fled away. Only the Hume giant lay where he had been thrown, writhing and
whimpering on the grass, Shimada stooped and studied him, then straightened
again.

 
          
“He’s
not badly injured,” he reported casually, “though he will be very sore and
repentant tomorrow,”

 
          
“How—”
began Thunstone as he brought out a handkerchief to wipe the point of his
blade.

 
          
“Only
judo,” said Shimada, coming back toward him.
“Our ancient
Japanese system of self-defense, in these days rather supplemented by karate.
I have always been fairly good at it, though never one of the black belt
masters. But this big overgrown man will ache all over when he comes to
himself. Come, Mr. Thunstone, let’s be tactful and go away.”