“I thought he might wind up withdrawing that offer.”
“Hm. He asked me to tell you that he will not be very much damaged by this little incident. Certainly he would not have wished this, but he has many irons in the fire.” Sirki inspected the brutal edge of his blade. “He is sorrowful for you, though. That you chose to hurt him out of your…how did he put it?…your blind stupidity. Ah, Matthew!” He advanced a few steps nearer, and again Matthew retreated. The hideous weapon gleamed with reflected torchlight. “To have come so far and be on the verge of such greatness…and then to fall back again, as dirty as the swamp.”
“The swamp,” Matthew said, “is cleaner than the professor’s soul.”
“He wishes me to cut off some part of you and bring it to him to demonstrate that you are dead,” said the giant. “What would you suggest, young sir?” To the silence that followed, Sirki smiled and said, “Let me decide.”
He strode forward, demonic in the torchlight. The sawtoothed blade was upraised, capable of horrendous injury with one swing. Matthew backed away, his heart hammering. He thrust the torch forward to keep the beast at bay.
“No use in that,” Sirki said almost gently. “I shall put that down your throat if I please.”
And Matthew knew he could. Therefore Matthew chose the better part of valor. He turned and ran for his life.
Sirki came after him, taking tremendous strides. The branch in the corridor was ahead. Matthew took the untrodden way, running as fast as he could. Sirki was right behind him, the white robes billowing like the wings of a deadly angel.
The corridor suddenly widened into a space where there sat two simple chairs with dark stains of what might have been blood upon and beneath them. Gory chains still lay about the chairs, but there were no bodies. Smythe and Wilson had already gone to the tearing beak and eight arms of Agonistes. Matthew’s light displayed three cells. He was in the dungeon under the dining hall, probably used to confine pirates and other criminals of note. In the center cell stood Zed, bald and bearded and wearing his ragged clothing. Zed had his hands gripped around the bars, and when he saw Matthew the mouth in the tribal-tattooed face gave a mangled roar of recognition.
Matthew heard Sirki coming. He saw a ring bearing three keys hanging on the wall. Sirki was almost into the chamber. Matthew dropped the torch to the floor and picked up one of the chairs. He threw it at Sirki’s legs as the giant came through the corridor, and Sirki crashed down upon the stones.
Matthew plucked the keys off the wall and ran to Zed’s cell. The first key did not fit. He looked back and saw Sirki up on his feet, lumbering toward him. The wicked blade flashed at Matthew’s head, but he had already ducked. Sparks flew up from the meeting of sawteeth and iron bars. Matthew threw the ring of keys between the bars into Zed’s cage, and then he got hold of the fallen torch and backed warily away as Sirki advanced upon him.
“This can go more easily for you,” Sirki promised. “I’ve grown to respect you. I can make your death very quick.”
“I’d rather stretch my life out a bit longer.”
“I’m sorry, but that will be im—”
Sirki was interrupted by the noise of the cell door banging open. When the giant looked in that direction to see Zed emerging from the cage Matthew stepped in and struck the torch at the side of his head, but Sirki had already recovered and deflected the torch with his own. Then he whirled to meet Zed with his blade…an instant too late, for Zed’s fist met Sirki’s mouth in a jarring smack of flesh and bone and though the knife swung viciously at Zed’s chest the Ga had darted away with admirable agility.
Sirki was caught between Matthew with his torch and Zed with his fists. He slashed first at one and then the other, and both kept their distance. Then Zed plucked up one of the lengths of chain from a chair. Sirki grinned in the flaring light. Blood was on his mouth, and he was minus a diamond as well as a front tooth.
“Ah!” he said. “I do get to kill you, after all.”
Matthew lunged at him with the torch from the right side, aiming at the knife hand. Zed swung the chain and struck Sirki a blow across the left shoulder. Sirki spun toward Matthew and rushed him in an attempt to cancel the weaker threat, but Matthew swept the torch past Sirki’s face to keep him away. Then the chain whipped out again across Sirki’s back, and now the giant in an instant of what might have been panic threw his torch at Zed and followed it with his own huge body and the deadly blade upraised.
Matthew had already seen, in the Cock’a’tail tavern in New York the October before, what Zed could do with a chain. Now Zed stood his ground and lashed the chain out; it curled around the forearm of Sirki’s knife hand, and just that fast Zed used the momentum to swing the giant crashing against the bars of the nearest cage. Sirki did not give up the knife, and grasping the chain with his free hand he hauled Zed toward himself like reeling in a hooked fish.
Zed’s feet slid along the stones. He tried to right himself but the giant’s pull was too strong. The knife waited with what seemed to be eager anticipation.
Then Matthew struck Sirki across the left side of the head with a second chain he’d picked up. The killer’s turban unravelled from the blow. Sirki’s eyes glazed for perhaps two seconds, his knife wavered and in this space of time Zed was upon him.
They grappled for the blade. It was the battle of the giants, brute against brute. Zed smashed Sirki in the face again with a heavy fist. Sirki grasped hold of Zed’s throat with his free hand, an enormous implement of murder, and squeezed hard enough to make the cords stand out. They whirled toward Matthew in their fight and hit him with their shoulders, picking him up off his feet, throwing him to the floor and leaving him breathless in the winds of violence. He was amazed to see Sirki actually lift Zed off the floor with the hand at his throat. Zed hammered at Sirki’s face and head while grasping the knife hand to keep those sawteeth from flesh. They slammed against the opposite wall so hard Matthew thought it would complete the destruction of the castle that the earthquake had begun. From above pieces of stone fell, and drifts of dust. Still the two fought on, Sirki’s fingers digging into Zed’s throat and Zed reshaping the giant’s features with the mallet of his fist.
Zed began to make a gasping, gagging sound, and Matthew saw his blows weakening. Sirki was about to defeat the Ga, an unthinkable proposition. Matthew’s torch had spun away in the collision and lay beyond the fighters. He had to decide what to do, and quickly. Though he was afraid out of his wits he took a running start and leaped upon the giant’s back, at the same time looping the chain around Sirki’s neck and squeezing as if his life depended upon it.
Sirki thrashed wildly but Matthew hung on. He was a rider of a different nature this time, and damned if he’d be thrown. The giant’s hand left Zed’s throat to reach back for Matthew’s hair, but suddenly there was a crunching noise and Zed had attacked the knife hand with ten fingers. He succeeded here where he had failed in their battle on Oyster Island, for Sirki’s knuckles sounded like walnuts being stomped under rough boots. The knife clattered to the stones, but just as quickly Sirki kicked it out of Zed’s reach. Matthew still hung on, as the wounded giant pitched and bucked. Zed hit Sirki so hard in the jaw that the man careened back and nearly broke Matthew’s spine against the wall. Then Matthew slithered off, his breath and strength gone, and through a red haze he saw Zed take his place by leaping upon Sirki’s back. The Ga grasped the chain and began to strangle the giant, the muscles in his forearms strained and quivering. Sirki fought back by slamming Zed continually against the wall with blows that Matthew thought must be near breaking bones, yet Zed would not be thrown off nor denied his moment of revenge.
The chain sunk into the flesh of Sirki’s throat. The giant’s eyes bulged and blood streamed from his nostrils. His mouth opened in a hideous gasp, and Matthew saw that the second diamond-studded tooth had been knocked out.
Still Sirki fought. Still Zed clung to his back and choked him with the chain, which had now nearly disappeared. Matthew
thought with horror that in another moment Sirki’s head was going to be cleaved off by the chain. Sweat stood out in beads on the faces of both men, and then Sirki’s eyes began to bleed.
Still Sirki crashed Zed against the wall, though the fury was weaker. Still the muscles of the Ga’s arms worked. Sirki began to emit a high keening sound, an eerie gasping for departing life itself. His eyes were wide and wild and as red as the sun going down.
Then Sirki’s legs buckled and he fell to his knees. Suddenly he was not so gigantic. Zed stayed astride him. The Ga’s teeth were gritted, his huge shoulders thrust forward, his body trembling with the effort of delivering death to one who would not accept it. Sirki made an effort to stand. He got one foot planted and, incredibly, began to lift himself and Zed off the floor. But the pressure from Zed’s hands and the chain never faltered, and suddenly Sirki’s face took on a waxen appearance, the eyes pools of blood, and from his gasping mouth a dark and swollen tongue emerged. It quivered rapidly, like the tail of a rattlesnake.
Something crunched inside Sirki’s neck. The head hung at an angle, as Gentry’s had upon being sawed off at the dinner table. The giant’s body shivered, as if feeling the chill of the grave. Matthew saw that the hideous eyes were sightless. At last Sirki’s spirit seemed to flee the body, for the keening gasp ceased on a broken note to go along with the broken neck.
Zed let go of the chain, which was buried somewhere in there. He climbed off Sirki’s back. For a moment the giant remained on his knees, obstinant far beyond the end. Then the corpse pitched forward and the stone floor added a cruel smashing to the twisted face.
Zed crumpled to his own knees and released a shuddered moan. He was all used up.
But the stone dust was falling now in greater volume. Matthew heard a dozen cracking noises from above. Suddenly a piece of stone the size of Sirki’s dead body crashed down on the other side of the dungeon, followed by smaller bits of rubble.
“We have to get out!” Matthew shouted, and standing up he grasped hold of one of the Ga’s arms to pull him to his feet, a task he could accomplish only in his most boastful dreams.
Language barrier or not, Zed fully understood. He nodded. Something on the floor nearby caught his attention and he scooped it up before Matthew could see what it was. Then, getting up on his own power, he took Matthew by the back of his collar and pulled him into another corridor at the far right of the room. It was dark in here and Matthew could see nothing. In a few seconds Zed stopped. There was the noise of a bolt slamming back. Zed pushed forward. A heavy door opened into gray morning light. The garden lay before them, and a pathway toward the front of the castle. Now Matthew took the lead, urging Zed to follow.
Matthew fully expected Minx to be gone, but she was still waiting at the wagon and tending her wounds with the bloody cloth. “Did you enjoy your wanderings?” she snapped at him, though there was some relief in her voice. “You damned fool!” she added, and then she took stock of the Ga. “Who is this?”
“My new bodyguard,” said Matthew.
Minx used the whip to spur the team into motion. As they took off at a gallop along the road to the harbor, there came a noise like the discordant shrieking of a chorus of demons. Matthew and Zed looked back to see a shimmer of dust rising up around Castle Fell. Suddenly part of the cliff itself broke away, and the entire castle tilted toward the sea. The cobra head of one turret toppled, then a second and a third. Pieces of red slate flew like gulls. Every arched window that had not already broken shattered in an instant. With a tremendous, ungodly grinding of catastrophic forces fully half the castle tore away from its own tortured stones and pitched downward into the waves, leaving furniture hanging from rooms and splintered stairways leading to no destination but the somber sky.
“My God,” Matthew whispered.
Zed gave a rough grunt that might have been accord.
Minx Cutter had never looked back. “To Hell with all of ’em,” she said, and she lashed the team for greater speed.
Thirty-Two
MATTHEW realized that miracles did happen. The Nightflyer, as beautiful a ship as he had ever seen, was still docked. Minx drove the wagon nearly up to the gangplank. Any harbormaster either had not arrived here today or had left to see to his family.
“Damn if you people aren’t prompt,” Falco sneered from the deck, his voice as booming as any cannon and his twisted cane propped against his right shoulder. “Did you stop to eat your corncakes?”
Minx went up the plank first, followed by the Ga and then Matthew. There were a few men hauling lines and working on deck, but not nearly the crew that had brought them over. “I rounded up twenty-six men,” Falco told Matthew, as he lit his clay pipe with a small taper. “Four of those haven’t arrived, and three others decided they weren’t going to leave their wives and children after that damn tremble started. I said to bring them all along, but they couldn’t get their belongings together fast enough to suit me. They may show up yet, but so far we’ve got a crew of nineteen men on a ship that operates with forty. That means you, the Ga, and the bleeding lady will have to work.” He frowned at Minx through a pall of smoke. “What the hell did you get into? A knife fight?”
Minx just laughed as if this were the funniest thing she’d ever heard, and her laughter rang out across the ship like church bells. Then she winced and gave a very unladylike curse, because her face hurt like hell.
“I do have someone on board who can sew stitches,” said the captain. “Myself.”
“Matthew!”
He recognized that voice, all right.
Berry had emerged from the doorway that led below. She was wearing a gray cloak over the crab-stained sleeping gown. Her feet were bare and dirty. Her hair was tangled, her eyes swollen from sleepless worry. She looked a mess. She crossed the deck toward the new arrivals, and she looked hopefully and expectantly at Matthew. She started to reach for him, but something about his posture and attitude stopped the gesture.
“You can thank Miss Grigsby,” said Falco, “for our still being docked. She said you would come, no matter what. She believes in you, Mr. Corbett. More than I do, it seems, because as you can see we have two longboats tied up ready to row us out of the harbor. Lucky for you, she’s very persuasive.”
“Yes,” Matthew said. “Lucky for me.”
He smiled at her then, for he felt his heart open and the sunlight pour into it, and Berry poured herself into his arms.
He felt her heart beating, hard and fast. He crushed her to himself. Their shadows became one on the deck’s plankings. They had shared so much already, for better and for worse. Even though Berry was dirty and wretched in her current state, Matthew couldn’t help but think she was so very beautiful, and that she always to him smelled of the grass of summer, of cinnamon and the perfume of a wildflower meadow, and…
Life.
Then he caught himself, short of falling.
“Listen to me,” he said, and he saw his tone of voice make her blue eyes blaze. “You’ve caused me no end of trouble! Why you left that inn, I have no idea! And traipsing about at night? Do you know what might’ve happened to you? My God, girl! I ought to put you over my knee like the child you are and give you a good—”
A hand with fearsome strength closed upon the back of his neck, and suddenly he was looking into a pair of deepset black eyes in a solemn, bearded African face decorated with tribal scars that appeared to spell out a Z, an E and a D.
“Mr. Corbett,” Berry said frostily, “I think you should mind your manner of speech while on this voyage. And please correct your lack of respect, starting this instant.”
He might have answered, if his throat had been in working order. It seemed his new bodyguard had his own ideas about who commanded his loyalty.
“Quarrels must wait for the open sea,” the captain said, with a puff of smoke that drifted into Matthew’s face. “Right now we’ve got to get this ship out of here. I don’t want to think what might be coming down that road at any moment.
So…my new additions to the crew…you will join the men already in those longboats. You will take orders from Mr. Spedder, my first mate. I expect you to pull hard and steady. With just the two boats, we’ll be lucky to get out of this cove in another hour.” He spoke to Zed in their common tongue. At once Zed released Matthew and was first down the gangplank.
“Ladies,” said Falco, “I mean you as well. Get to it!”
As Matthew walked between Berry and Minx on their way to the longboats tied up at the bow, he realized that before they reached New York—if, pray to God, they ever did—they were going to know every inch of the Nightflyer, have worked their fingers to the bone and have an affair of both love and hate with every sail and every mast. Their affairs of love and hate were about to begin, commencing with the longboat’s oars and the first mate’s roar of “Row! Row! Row!” amplified through a tin voice-horn.
The captain was correct in his judgement of how much time the two longboats and their crews would need to row the Nightflyer out of the cove into tide and wind. It took a little over one hour, after which Matthew thought his shoulders were near falling off and Berry would have cried if that might have done any good, but tears would not move sailing ships. They returned to the Nightflyer by means of rope ladders lowered over the side, and the longboats were cast off to drift. Matthew, Berry, Minx and Zed were instantly put to work on tasks involving the hoisting of sails and the tying down of ropes, of which there seemed to be hundreds aboard ship and all excess to be coiled neatly and out of the way.
It was going to be pure hell, Matthew realized, and no one this trip would be a passenger save perhaps Saffron, her child, two other women of middle age, an elderly woman and three more children who were aboard.