Rebel Fire (10 page)

Sherlock, Crowe, and Virginia took the curve as well, their horses leaning sideways so that their hoofs could get a purchase on the road. Ahead of them, as they straightened out, Sherlock suddenly caught sight of a cart heading towards the careering carriage, loaded with bundles of freshly cut hay. The driver was frantically gesturing to the carriage to get out of the way, but he must have known that it was too late, because he swerved his cart off the road and into a ditch. The carriage thundered past, missing the back end of the cart by a few inches. Moments later, Sherlock, Crowe, and Virginia galloped past as well. Sherlock glanced sideways, to check that the driver was all right. He was standing up in the front of the cart, gesturing at them in rage. And then they were past and he was receding into the distance behind them like a fragment of memory.

Movement at the side of the carriage caught Sherlock's attention. A man was leaning out, holding a stick of some kind. Sherlock thought it was one of the men from the house in Godalming but he couldn't be sure. The man pointed the stick backwards along the road, towards the three riders, and flame suddenly blossomed at the end of it. He was holding a rifle!

Sherlock couldn't tell where the bullet went. The carriage was bouncing so much as it tore through the evening that the gunman could have no way of accurately aiming the rifle, but that didn't mean he couldn't hit one of them, or one of the horses, at random.

The man fired again, and this time Sherlock thought he could hear the sound of the bullet as it passed him by: a furious buzzing sound, like an angry wasp.

Crowe urged his horse to greater efforts, and for a moment he seemed to draw closer to the carriage. He was gripping the reins with one hand while the other was pulling at his belt. He withdrew a pistol, which he pointed at the man leaning out of the carriage. He fired, the recoil knocking his hand back and twisting his body in the saddle. The man with the rifle pulled himself back inside the carriage. Sherlock couldn't tell whether he was injured or just cautious.

They were racing along the side of a river now. Silvery light reflected from the surface of the water.

The man with the rifle appeared again, leaning out of the same side that he had before, but this time he was facing forward. He pointed the rifle ahead, and pulled the trigger. Again, flame burst like an exotic flower in the dusk. For a confused moment Sherlock thought he was shooting at the horses that were pulling the carriage, but he was firing over their heads! Sherlock realized immediately that he was trying to terrify them into galloping even faster than they already were, and it seemed to work. The gap between the carriage and the pursuing horses quickly widened as the carriage raced ahead. They couldn't keep that speed up for long—the horses would quickly exhaust themselves—but he obviously had something else in mind.

The gunman disappeared inside the carriage again, but only for a moment. The door suddenly sprang open and the man dived out. He'd timed his dive perfectly, and hit the mass of reeds and vegetation that lined the riverbank. He vanished from sight, but Sherlock could track his path by the long ripped gap that appeared in the reeds as they slowed his progress.

Crowe slowed his horse for a moment, uncertain what to do, then urged it on, heading after the carriage rather than for the man, but Sherlock watched as the man emerged from the reeds. He was soaking wet, and there were gashes across his face from where the reeds had cut his skin.

He held a rifle in his hands. He raised it as Crowe raced ahead, took careful aim along the long barrel, and fired.

At the same moment the fire blossomed out of the barrel, Crowe threw his arms up to his face and fell backwards, out of the saddle. He hit the road, right shoulder first, and rolled over and over in the dirt until he lay still, like a dusty log. His horse rode on, but without Crowe urging it on it slowed to a canter, then to a trot, then to a halt. It stood there, apparently watching the carriage as it receded into the distance and wondering what all the rush had been about.

Virginia screamed, “Father!” as she pulled her horse to a skidding halt and threw herself out of the saddle. She pelted along the road towards him, regardless of the man with the rifle who was watching her approach.

And raising his rifle.

All this had happened within the space of a scattered handful of seconds. Sherlock dug his heels into his horse's flanks. The horse surged forward.

“Down!” he shouted.

Virginia glanced back over her shoulder, saw him bearing down on her, and dived. As she rolled over, Sherlock pulled up on the reins. His horse jumped over her, seeming to sail through the air regardless of gravity.

The horse's front hoofs hit the ground hard, and it stumbled, just as the gunman fired again. Sherlock didn't even hear the shot. He was flung from the saddle and over the horse's head. His mind was filled with the enormity of the ground as it rose up towards him. Time seemed to stretch out, and he found that he was wondering whether he would crack his skull or break both legs first. Something made him curl into a ball, tucking his head onto his chest and wrapping his arms around it while bringing his knees up to his stomach. He hit the ground and rolled, feeling stones bite into his flesh beneath his ribs, back, and legs. The world flashed around him, over and over; dark, light, dark. He lost track of where he was.

After an eternity he came to a stop. Raising his head cautiously, he tried to work out where he had ended up. Everything was blurred, and he felt like part of him was still rolling over and over even though the feel of the stones beneath his hands and knees told him that he was stationary. His stomach clenched, and he had to stop himself throwing up. He could feel the rough burn of scratches across his whole body.

In the distance, the carriage in which Matty was being held prisoner was vanishing into a cloud of dust.

A shadow fell across Sherlock. He looked up. The man with the rifle was standing over him. He wasn't sure, but it looked like it might have been the man who'd been knocked out by the lunatic, John Wilkes Booth. The other men had called him Gilfillan. His head was bandaged, and his eyes were full of vicious hatred.

“What is it with you kids?” he asked, raising the rifle. “I swear we've had more trouble from you in the past day than from the whole Union Army since the end of the war!”

“Give my friend back,” Sherlock snarled, climbing to his feet.

“Tough talk from someone who ain't goin' to be alive in a minute's time,” the man said, smiling grimly. “We took the kid to stop you an' that guy in the white hat from comin' after us, but ah guess that didn't work out the way we expected. So I'll just kill you all now, and cable ahead to tell Ives to kill him, 'cause we don't need him anymore.” He took his finger off the trigger and showed the back of the hand to Sherlock. There was blood on it, and what looked like a set of teeth marks in the soft flesh between the base of the thumb and the first finger. “That girl bit me!” he protested disbelievingly.

“Yeh,” Sherlock said, “I imagine you hear that a lot,” and he whipped his hand around from behind his back, releasing the stones that he'd picked up from the ground. They flew through the air in blurs, hitting Gilfillan on his cheek, his forehead, and his left eye. He threw up his hands to his face, dropping the rifle. It bounced once, twice on the ground. Sherlock rushed forward to grab it, but the man kicked it out of the way. His hand caught in Sherlock's hair and he twisted. Sherlock cried out in a mixture of anger and pain, and lashed out with his foot. His boot connected with Gilfillan's shin, and the grip on his hair suddenly released. Sherlock sprang back, looking for the rifle. He caught sight of it at the same time as the American, and they both dived for it. Sherlock got there first, fingers clutching at the stock and body rolling out of the way as the man cursed.

They both stood there for a moment, breathing heavily. The man wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

“You ain't got the gumption,” he said. “I'm goin' to come for that gun an' I'm goin' to wrap it around your throat an' choke the life from your scrawny body!”

He moved forward, and Sherlock raised the rifle menacingly.

“Don't…” he said.

The man kept coming, a grimace stretching across his face and his dirty hands reaching forward for Sherlock.

 

S
IX

Knowing that he had no choice, Sherlock pointed the rifle at the man's chest and pulled the trigger, bracing himself for the resulting recoil.

Nothing happened. The rifle failed to fire.

Gilfillan grinned triumphantly. “Grit in the mechanism,” he said. “Got to treat them old rifles right. Smallest thing can stop 'em from firin'.” He reached into a trouser pocket and pulled out something small and dark. He flicked his hand, and suddenly there was a blade in it, a wickedly curved blade. “Not like a knife. Knives work under most circumstances, I find. Slower than a rifle, but a lot more fun.”

He stepped forward and slashed the knife sideways, aiming for Sherlock's eyes. The boy stumbled back, feeling the cold breeze following in the wake of the blade as it brushed his eyelashes. The low rays of the sun, reflected from the sharp point at the end of the blade, traced a red line across Sherlock's vision that persisted even when the knife had gone.

Gilfillan stepped forward, jerking the knife upward, trying to get it into Sherlock's stomach, but Sherlock blocked it with the stock of the rifle. The impact knocked him backwards, but Gilfillan held his wrist and swore.

“That's it,” he snarled. “I ain't goin' to treat you like an equal anymore. I'm goin' to slaughter you like cattle.”

He reached out and grabbed Sherlock by the ear before the boy could get away, pulling him closer even as he raised the knife towards Sherlock's throat. Instinctively, Sherlock brought the rifle up between them, trying to block the blade, but as the barrel passed his face he had a sudden inspiration and he jabbed it straight upward into Gilfillan's right eye.

The American screamed and staggered backwards, clutching at his face. Blood streamed from between his fingers. Sherlock expected him to fall to the ground, incapacitated, but his intact eye fixed on Sherlock and he screamed again, a sound of pure rage that echoed through the woods and sent pigeons flying from the trees. Lurching forward, he held the knife extended, reaching out for Sherlock. Still holding the rifle, Sherlock swung it at the American's head. It connected with the bandage, an impact that echoed all the way down the stock, through Sherlock's hands, and up into his shoulders. The American fell like a carelessly thrown sack of corn, gracelessly and shapelessly to the ground.

Sherlock watched him for a few moments, half expecting him to climb back to his feet and try again, but he just lay there, unmoving apart from the laboured rise and fall of his chest. His right eye, from what Sherlock could see of it, was a crater of red flesh, while blood seeped through the bandage on his head, which was rising up as the flesh beneath it swelled even as Sherlock watched.

The man was like some supernatural force, impervious to pain and injuries that would fell a normal man. Sherlock felt his breath burning in his chest as he waited for Gilfillan to struggle to his feet again. Were all Americans like this? he wondered. Something to do with that frontier spirit that he had heard about? Part of him wanted to step forward and bring the rifle down several more times on the man's head, making certain that he would never move again, but Sherlock wasn't entirely sure whether that part of his brain was worried about Gilfillan regaining consciousness or whether he just wanted revenge for what the man had done to Amyus Crowe and tried to do to him. After a while he lowered the rifle. He wasn't a murderer. Not a deliberate murderer, anyway.

When he was quite sure that Gilfillan wasn't going to move for a while, he backed away, still watching, until he could hear Amyus Crowe's horse whickering behind him. He turned.

Amyus Crowe lay in the dusty road. In the reddish light of evening, the blood on his forehead seemed almost to glow with a demonic intensity.

“Is he—?” Sherlock started to ask, but he couldn't bring himself to finish the question.

“He's still breathin',” Virginia answered in a rush. Her accent had become more obvious.

She reached into a pocket and removed a scrap of linen—a handkerchief, Sherlock supposed. She was about to use it to wipe her father's head, but Sherlock took it from her.

“I'll wet it in the river,” he said.

She nodded gratefully.

He dashed across to the point where the diving American gunman had cut a swathe through the rushes with his body before emerging and shooting Amyus Crowe. Getting as close to the river as he could without falling in, Sherlock moistened the handkerchief, then returned to where Amyus Crowe lay. Virginia had straightened out his arms and legs so that he was lying more normally, not twisted up in the way he had landed. As Sherlock bent to join her, he noticed that Crowe's chest was moving up and down and his eyelids were fluttering. It seemed like ages since Crowe had fallen from his horse, but Sherlock realized that it could only have been a couple of minutes at most. The fight with Gilfillan hadn't been long, but it had been intense, and that had made it
seem
long.

Virginia was running her hands up and down her father's arms and legs. “No broken bones, far as I can tell,” she said. “Don't know about his ribs, although I'd be surprised if he hadn't cracked a couple. He's got a whole load of cuts and grazes, mind.”

“He was lucky,” Sherlock pointed out. “This close to the river, the ground is soft and muddy. If he'd come off the horse earlier, where the ground was baked hard, he might be dead by now.”

Virginia took the handkerchief from him and ran it across Crowe's forehead. It came away bloody, revealing a long scratch that immediately began to bleed again.