He waited until they were all assembled. “We go up and out, and with luck, there won’t be any cultists waiting, but be prepared—they might have thought of the roof.”
Logan turned and climbed the stairs. Linnet moved to follow, but Charles caught her shoulder and drew her back. “Ladies to the rear, this time.”
He pushed past her, and so did Deverell, before she could think of any reply. With a humph, she seized the moment to swing her cloak about her shoulders and tie it firmly at her throat, then she loosened her cutlass in its scabbard, and followed.
Logan opened the door at the top of the narrow flight, gently eased it wide, giving thanks to whoever had kept the hinges oiled. Silent as a wraith, keeping low, he slipped out, through the drifts of smoke scanned the roof. It was largely flat, with no protrusions of sufficient size to hide a cultist.
And it was empty.
“All clear,” he murmured, straightening as Charles joined him. The noise from what sounded like a pitched battle below would mask any sound they made.
Charles glanced back as Deverell, then Linnet emerged. He pointed to the side of the roof away from the river—the side beyond which the adjoining building lay.
Swiftly, they crossed to the waist-high stone parapet. The air was somewhat clearer, slightly fresher there, and now the thick smoke worked to their advantage, wafting up the hotel’s walls and screening them from watching eyes.
Deverell had been right. The neighboring building was, shorter than the hotel, its roof lower, but thankfully not too low. And that roof, too, was empty of cultists.
“They’ve positioned all their archers across the street,” Charles murmured.
“Luckily for us.” After one glance at the archers, Logan took advantage of a thicker gust of smoke to swing one leg over the parapet, then the other, then he dropped lightly down to the lower roof.
Charles and Deverell helped Linnet to do the same, then they followed.
Keeping low—they were now at a level where, if they stood upright too close to the edge, the archers on the roofs opposite might see them—they scouted, but could find no access to the building below. No way to get down.
Logan signaled. “Next one along.”
The next building’s roof was lower still, but this time by barely a step. Even more carefully, they spread out and searched its roof for some way to get inside, but neither it, nor the next two adjoining buildings, all of similar height, had any direct way to get into the buildings below.
Moving on, they looked down at the roof of the next building, which was smaller and lower, two storeys but with a many-gabled roof. From above, they studied it, searched, then Linnet pointed. “There—that covered porch.” A small, single-storey structure, it was built onto the back of the building. “We can go down that waterpipe from the roof, onto the porch roof, and then down into the little yard at the rear.”
The building beyond the one with the gabled roof was significantly higher; climbing up to its roof would be a problem. Logan glanced back. They were sufficiently far from the hotel to risk going down into the lane that ran along the rear of the buildings. More, the small square yard into which they would drop didn’t open directly to the rear lane, but was joined to it via an alley some ten yards long. Unless a cultist came to the alley’s mouth and looked in, their party wouldn’t be seen by the cultists watching in the lane.
And the longer they remained on the roofs, the more risk that they’d be seen. He nodded. “Let’s go.”
Although the smoke was still thickening about the hotel, it was much thinner, a bare veil, where they now were. The flares in the street were largely concentrated outside the hotel, but every now and then some townsman would run past with a brand, on their way to join the fracas outside the hotel, throwing light up onto the wall down which they had to climb.
They tried to pick their times, dropping down to the roof one after another, then making their way cautiously over the gables to the pipe that let them ease down to the porch roof.
Within ten minutes, they were within reach of the ground.
Daniel cursed. “Damned meddling gits! Why couldn’t they keep their noses out of things?”
None of the men at his back volunteered an answer.
Still cloaked in the alley’s shadows, they watched as the fight in the street swelled to an all-out brawl. More townsmen came charging up to join in; as the minutes ticked by, more of those arriving waved weapons—pitchforks, spades, whatever they could lay hands on.
He’d overlooked the fact that the common English were not the same as the run-of-the-mill Indian—that they were more likely to react with belligerence than cower. His fault, his mistake; he knew it.
The instant the gathering townsfolk and those flooding out of the hotel had comprehended that the source of the fires threatening the building was a group of foreigners, who were continuing to diligently feed the flames, they’d cursed, bellowed, and fallen on the cultists’ backs. For their part, the cultists expected anyone whose house they were burning down to cower; they’d struck back, expecting instant victory. Before Daniel could think of any way to intervene, battle had been joined.
There were enough cultists to keep the smoke billowing, and roiling up, but the ranks of the good townsfolk of Bedford were constantly increasing.
A shot rang out.
Daniel jerked his reins tight, caught his horse before it could bolt. Astride its back as it pranced, he cursed some more. The cultists hated guns—as fighters that was their one true weakness. Even the men at his back, far better trained, had flinched. Their edgy tension had ratcheted up several notches.
More shots sounded, more than likely fired over the crowd.
An instant later, three cultists fled past the alley mouth, heading away from the fight.
Daniel ground his teeth. “Where the devil is Monteith?” Despite all distractions, he’d kept his eyes on the hotel’s front door. He had men stationed all around the building, watching every exit. If Monteith had gone out any other way, he should have heard of it by now.
Should have been informed that the troublesome major had been seized. Heaven knew he’d assembled enough men to be sure of accomplishing that.
Could Monteith be thinking to hole up in the hotel? As soon as the smoke faded sufficiently, Daniel would send in his assassins to scour the place.
His mount stirred, as restless as he. Another local man came running down the street from the left, a flaming brand held high, a pitchfork in his hand; the light drew Daniel’s gaze.
Up above the street, the light from the brand fleetingly silhouetted an object—one that fell from one roof to the next. A man-sized object; a crouching man. Daniel stopped breathing, watched. The man didn’t come to the front of the roof. He must have gone …
“With me!” Daniel snapped out the order. Loosening his reins, digging in his heels, he plunged out of the alley. Wheeling left, away from the melee before the hotel, he thundered up the road.
His assassins running as a group just behind, Daniel could, almost taste success as he rounded the block, drew rein, drew his sword, and turned into the lane than ran along the rear of the buildings.
Logan dropped to the cobbles in the narrow yard. He swiftly scanned the cramped space. Stacked crates and empty barrels clogged the entrance to the alley leading to the rear lane. The yard was dark and relatively quiet, the high walls all around cutting off much of the sound and fury from the street. Even the smoke had barely penetrated there.
Straightening, he reached up and helped Linnet down. While she untied the ends of the cloak she’d knotted across her waist, he checked the scroll-holder, resettled it against his spine.
While Charles, then Deverell, joined them, Logan found the back door tucked inside the porch and tried it. Not only was it locked, it was also solidly bolted from inside. No access, no even temporary place to hide.
He looked back down the alley. The walls were plain brick, unadorned, and vertical all the way to the neighboring roofs, no doors or wind
ows. He glanced up and around. There was no other way out.
“At least the archers across the street can’t see us.” Catching the others’ eyes, he tipped his head down the alley. “We’ll have to go that way.”
They nodded, resettled their coats and weapons, then he led the way forward, Charles behind him, then Linnet, with Deverell bringing up the rear.
They’d barely cleared the stacked crates and stepped into the alley proper when a dense shadow loomed at its end. As one, they halted.
The shadow resolved into a horseman in a black coat, breeches, and riding boots, astride a black horse.
Men moved behind the horse, forming up two by two and following the rider as he walked his mount slowly, clop by clop, down the alley toward them.
The sound echoed eerily off the alley’s high brick walls, a portentious drumbeat.
As if responding to the drama, the moon sailed free high above; it beamed down into the alley from behind them, bathing the approaching figure and his retinue, highlighting every line in icy-cold silver light.
Silver light that glinted on multiple naked blades.
The rider wore a black scarf wound about his head, concealing nose and chin; his eyes coldly observed them from above its upper edge as he halted—just far enough away to be safe from any attack from Logan or Charles, now standing shoulder to shoulder across the entrance to the small yard. Both had drawn their sabers. Logan couldn’t remember doing so; the hilt had suddenly been in his palm, his fingers locked in the grip, the blade held down by his side.
His every sense, every instinct, remained locked on the rider, even when two of the cultists moved up to stand on either side of the black horse.
Both cultists, like their fellows behind them, held naked blades in both hands.
“Those,” Logan murmured, “are cult assassins.”
“Ah,” Charles replied, and uncharacteristically left it at that.
Linnet, behind Logan, heard the exchange. Looking over his shoulder, she finally comprehended just what had driven him and his friends to battle so hard, for so long, to face so many dangers to bring it down. To defeat it.
True evil.
It stared back at her, not from the cult assassins’ dark, unflinching eyes but from the shadowed eyes of the rider. He … somehow, he made the hair on her nape lift, made her skin pebble and crawl; when his gaze found her, and, as if intrigued, rested on her, she had to fight to quell a wholly instinctive shiver.
An instinctive reaction.
An instinctive fear.
He wore a black coat, he rode a black horse, he had black hair. Yet it was his soul that was blackest; she knew that to her bones.
Her cutlass was already in her hand; she tightened her grip on the hilt. Not a single thought—not even a fleeting one—of fleeing entered her head. She’d come to fight alongside Logan and she intended to do just that.
Yet the odds … were by any estimation hopeless. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be overcome. She counted twelve assassins, but the biggest threat was the mounted man. He carried an unsheathed sword, held lightly balanced across the front of his saddle.
If they could get rid of him …
The rider had shifted his gaze to Logan. After another long, studied silence, he said, “At last we meet, Major Monteith.”
His voice was educated, very English, his diction only lightly muffled by the scarf.
When Logan said nothing, the rider’s eyes smiled. “I believe you know what I want. Please don’t waste time by telling me you haven’t got it—that you aren’t carrying it on your person at this moment.”
Opportunity. Possibility … Leaning forward, Linnet whispered to Logan, loudly enough for the rider to hear, “Give it to him. It’s no use to us if we’re dead.”
She knew it was a decoy, no use to anyone anyway. But the rider didn’t know that, and if he could be fooled into taking it and leaving, they had a chance of surviving even this attack.
Logan shifted, frowned. Made every show of reluctance, grateful to Linnet for giving him that chance. Whoever this man was, he’d know immediately that the letter was a decoy if Logan simply offered it up.
He waited, hoping that the man would make some threat—preferably against Linnet—to further excuse his surrendering the document he’d fought to ferry over half the world.
But the rider’s gaze remained locked on him and didn’t, again shift to Linnet. Eventually, the rider arched a brow, as if growing bored.
Who the devil was he? He wasn’t Ferrar, yet from the color of his hands he’d been in India, and not long ago. He clearly commanded cult assassins, so he was, at the very least, a close associate of the cult leader. Coat, breeches, boots, and the horse were all of excellent quality, and the rider wore them, rode the horse, with the unthinking air of one long accustomed to such luxuries.
Logan allowed his frown to deepen. “Who are you?” He saw no reason not to ask.
The rider’s gaze took on an edge. “My name is not something you need to know. All you need to understand is that I am, in this moment, in this place, the Black Cobra.”
“The Black Cobra’s Ferrar.”
“Really?” The rider’s smile returned; he seemed genuinely amused. “I believe you’ll discover you’re mistaken. However”—his voice hardened, along with his gaze—”the one thing you should note is that I am here, Black Cobra or not, to retrieve the letter that inadvertently fell into your hands.” His gaze flicked to the others, then returned to Logan’s face. “And I’m willing to barter for it—your lives for the letter.” When Logan didn’t reply, the rider drawled, “Word of a gentleman.”
Logan managed not to scoff. Not to react at all. The offer was the best he could hope for, not that he believed it; he knew better than to trust the Black Cobra in whatever guise. Still … moving slowly, he withdrew the scroll-holder from the back of his belt, held it up for the rider to see.
The rider’s gaze turned superior. “Yes, but is there anything inside?”
Letting his saber hang from its lanyard, Logan slowly opened the holder, then tipped it so the man could see the parchment inside.
The rider sighed theatrically and beckoned. “Give me the letter itself—I’m not going to cede you your lives in exchange, for a plain sheet of paper. You can keep the scroll-holder as a souvenir.”
Inwardly, Logan sighed, too. He didn’t expect the rider to allow them to live, to call off his assassins—no one from the Black Cobra hierarchy would ever be so forgiving—but if the rider had taken the scroll-holder and ridden off, they might have had a fighting chance.
While reaching into the holder and drawing out the rolled parchment, he was planning, plotting, evaluating the closest assassins, imagining how a fight would commence; the opening minute would be crucial.
Drawing out the letter, he tossed it to the nearest assassin. The man caught it in his right hand and passed it up to his master.
Logan kept the empty scroll-holder, its brass end open and flapping, in his left hand, slid his right hand into the guard of his saber, gripped the hilt.
Beside him, he felt Charles shift slightly, also tensing for action.
The rider had, as Logan had feared he would, unrolled the parchment. He angled it to the moonlight; it was bright enough for him to confirm the letter was a copy.
The rider flipped the parchment over, confirming the absence of any telltale seal, and once again the skin at the corner of his eyes crinkled in a smile.
Logan blinked. A smile? It was a decoy copy. The rider, if he’d been the one directing the campaign to keep Logan from reaching Elveden, had lost countless men—and all for a copy? He should be furious.
If anything, the rider’s smile lines deepened as he folded the letter, tucked it into his inner coat pocket, then he looked up, inclined his head. “A pleasure doing business with you, Major.”
Raising his reins, the rider backed his horse. His men parted to let the beast through, but they didn’t fall back; they held their ground,
reforming as the horse retreated beyond them.
Once free of his men, the rider turned his horse; the alley was just wide enough to allow it. Then he walked the horse up the alley.
For one instant, Logan wondered … yet he still couldn’t believe it.
The rider halted in the mouth of the alley, looked back at them, over the heads of his men saluted them. Then what they could see of his face leached of all expression, and something coldly sinister took its place. “Kill them.”
The order was given in a flat, even tone.
Instinct prodded, and Logan called, “I thought you were a gentleman.”
The rider laughed, a chilling sound. Abruptly he sobered. “I was born a bastard—I’m simply living up to my birth.” With that, he spurred away. At the first clack of hooves, the assassins attacked.
Alex had been about to turn and flee the debacle Daniel’s plan had degenerated into when Daniel had suddenly spurred out of his hiding place down the street, opposite the hotel, much closer to the writhing mass of cutlists and townspeople. Alex had drawn back into hiding, watched Daniel ride up and turn down the opposite half of the same street Alex hovered in. A little way along, Daniel reined in, unsheathed his sword. With his guard close behind him, he proceeded slowly down the lane behind the buildings facing the street—the lane that, Alex felt sure, ran all the way along the block to the back of the hotel.
What had caught Daniel’s attention? What had he gone to take care of?
Alex hoped, sincerely hoped, the answer was Monteith.
But as the minutes ticked by with no further sign of Daniel, and the melee down the street increasingly turned the townspeople’s way, the compulsion to quit the scene grew. Alex didn’t want to be caught there—a stranger watching the action, and at such an hour. Difficult to adequately explain.
Alex dallied, and dallied—was lifting the reins, about, to leave, when Daniel rode out of the lane. Sheathing his sword, he looked up, but he couldn’t see Alex tucked deep in the shadows across the road and further down the side street.
Alex watched Daniel walk his horse back to the High Street. Halting, he tugged down his scarf and looked back down the street at the now faltering melee. Then he smiled.