"Promise me that you"ll never become a motivational speaker." And, so saying, she crawled rapidly across the pylon in a few sharp, deliberate movements, her concentration completely on the metal beneath her and pointedly not on the hundred yards or so beneath it, all that separated them from perdition. The treetops ran by in a blur of hard greens variegated with black shadow, the lack of distinction in her peripheral vision giving the impression of a great sea, waiting to drown them. She reached the other side and used the louvred vents to hold on to as she climbed up on to the line guide"s top, getting covered in carbon black in the process. Once she was more or less secure, she turned to see if Cabal was following.
He was, and exhibiting no sign of enjoying the experience. Down on all fours and with a face like the wrath of Jove, he crept slowly forwards onto the pylon, his gaze focused entirely upon it. Miss Barrow made one halfhearted and unconvincing attempt at saying something encouraging, but Cabal shot her such a testy glance that she decided to leave him to it. He was about a third of the way across when his unreliable luck failed him once again.
Somewhere in the labouring innards of the Princess Hortense, a tortured relay finally overloaded, and failed in a spray of sparks to a chorus of swearing engineers. Three gyroscopic levitators in the fore starboard array died, their constant rea.s.suring hums diminishing al niente. Like a puppet with a string cut, the corner of the aeroship where Miss Barrow clung and Cabal crawled dipped sharply.
Anyone who has ever ridden quickly over a humpbacked bridge or experienced the first descent of a roller coaster will know the sudden sense of falling while the stomach seems to carry on rising. It is a thrilling sensation when enjoyed in safety, but, as this was not the case with Cabal at the moment, the sudden horrid sense of helplessness created by the pylon"s moving quickly away from him, momentarily causing him to fall, made him cry out. The pylon stopped, even swung up a little, and Cabal smashed heavily into it and rolled off the edge.
For the second time in his life, he found himself dangling by one hand from an aeroship. Miss Barrow was shouting, no, screaming at him, telling him to hang on, to pull himself up, to do all the obvious things that he intended to do anyway if only he could. He looked down and was surprised to see the treetops so close below. He wondered briefly if a fall would be survivable, but then saw in a gap amongst the trees how tall they stood and decided against it. Then he realised that Miss Barrow was screaming about a tree, too. He was just thinking what a coincidence it was that they were both so concerned with trees when the particular specimen Miss Barrow was talking about-a monarch of the forest, growing well above its neighbours-struck.
There was the great sound of gla.s.s smashing as the treetop dealt the starboard flying bridge position a fearsome blow. A moment later, it hit the pylon. Cabal heard the collision at the same moment that he felt it, the tree smashing into the pylon halfway along its length. Suddenly, he was swung forwards to bang harshly against the pylon"s underside as a ma.s.s of pine fronds whipped against his back. The Hortense, ma.s.sive and imperturbable, was not to be slowed by such a thing and was in the process of sheering off as much of the treetop as possible, and bending back the rest. It was not a one-way act of destruction, however. Cabal grabbed a second handhold and hugged himself as close to the ship"s hull as he could, as the tree tore away the pylon"s skin and much of the girder work beneath it. Miss Barrow cried out in terror as the line guide sagged on the pylon tip and lurched backwards on the ruined pivoting mechanism that connected it to the pylon.
With a loud crack, the tree was behind them, leaving only shredded fronds hanging from the ripped metal, and a pleasantly fresh scent. A rapidly diminishing series of crashes sounded as the trunk sc.r.a.ped along the starboard promenade, shattering every surviving pane of gla.s.s as it went.
The collision had done Cabal a little good; where before he had been able to reach nothing but smooth steel, snapped and bent girders now jutted out of the pylon just behind him. He tested one before trusting his weight to it, pushed his foot into the bend at the torn end, and slid back towards the upper surface and relative safety. Miss Barrow, fingers driven deep into the line guide"s uppermost louvred slot, was surprised to see him emerge, and then even more surprised to feel relief. She watched him heave himself onto the pylon top and roll back onto the deck edge. He lay there, breathing heavily and watching the sky for several long seconds as he recovered his strength and his composure.
"Cabal?" she called. "Cabal? Are you all right?"
He turned his head to look at her. "Never been better," he said, too exhausted to put even a whit of the sarcasm he would usually have employed into it. "Give me a moment to catch my breath, and I"ll join you."
"Yes, about that ... I was thinking, actually, maybe if I came back." Something bent and snapped in the line guide"s swivel mount, making it swing and tilt by a few more degrees from the horizontal. Miss Barrow suppressed a cry, and tightened her grip until the metal edges dug painfully into her fingers. "It"s just ... I don"t think I feel very safe over here."
"You shouldn"t feel safe anywhere aboard," replied Cabal, truthfully if undiplomatically. "Stay where you are."
"I think ... it"s going to fall off," she said in a very careful and moderated tone, as if the line guide might hear her and fall off in spite.
"That is the idea," said Cabal. He got painfully to his feet, grunting at his sprains and bruises. "It will come off easily on impact, not before. It is our best chance to survive this. Stay where you are and-" He paused as he glanced forwards. "Ach, Scheie," he snapped. With seconds to spare, he glanced at the shattered pylon with the line guide wagging slowly at its tip and decided he would never make it in time. Instead, he ran forwards onto the landing strip and threw himself full length at the nearest arrestor-cable slot. He hooked his fingers around the cable, pressed his face against the deck, and hoped for the best.
The rocky outcrop Cabal had seen jutting proudly out of the hillside, like a glacier awaiting the next unsinkable ship, smashed into the forward dining-room windows and tore through the structure, rupturing the next deck up. The sound of the smash of rock, metal, and gla.s.s meeting in a cacophonic orgy was visceral in its force. Cabal gripped the arrestor cable with the fierce determination of a man who knows that there is no second chance. His head was jerked down as his body snapped straight behind him, and for long, long seconds, the roar of destruction and the black rubberised decking were his entire world.
Gushing coolant, hydraulic fluid, and root vegetables from her dreadful wound like a gut-shot haemophiliac, the Princess Hortense crashed downwards, spearing her belly on the great trees in that rarely travelled deep forest. But her momentum was ma.s.sive, and she tore trees up by the roots in her headlong charge down the hillside; those that wouldn"t be uprooted were ripped atwain.
Miss Barrow had followed Cabal"s glance and was already securing her grip on the line-guide housing as he"d run for the landing strip. She saw Cabal hang on for his life and, just momentarily, thought he glanced up at her, but then she had to put her own face down against the metal of the line guide and brace herself. She closed her eyes, cherishing and fearing every second to come.
The incredible roar of destruction battered her, the dreadful tones of disintegration buffeting through her like a fierce, endless beat upon a ba.s.s drum, the resonations pouring through her, making her stomach and her heart feel as if they would explode in sympathetic vibration, and that she would welcome such a rapid release. Beside her, the aeroship lost its first and last battle, fought against an implacable and invincible foe. The Princess Hortense died screaming her last, as the earth itself tore out her guts and smeared them across the hillside.
When it suddenly became quieter, Leonie Barrow a.s.sumed she had been fatally injured, life and senses ebbing from her. She couldn"t bring herself to lift her head for the longest time, afraid of what she might see. But even fear can be defeated by curiosity or, failing that, boredom, and she looked.
Almost a mile ahead of her, the Hortense was still sliding, but slowly, so slowly. She would smash into a tree and start to roll up it until her immense weight cracked the trunk, and the ship lurched on again, with small shreds of rediscovered momentum, until she struck the next. She was alight, angry orange flames boiling out from rolling circular clouds of evil black smoke that moiled and hovered in the air like the Devil"s fingerprints. Amidst the smoke, Miss Barrow thought she once saw the figure of a man standing at the forward end of the flight deck, black jacket fluttering about him, but then the black clouds closed around him and she wasn"t sure she had seen anybody there at all.
Then the aeroship hit several trees simultaneously, and this time they bent, but they did not break. The ship lay still, and burned.
Leonie Barrow stood atop the shattered remains of the line guide, lying where a tree had interceded between the hull and the guide itself and neatly bisected the supporting pylon. She stood, and she watched the ship burn. She chose to ignore the bodies she could see scattered along the path of crushed trees, bark and branches stripped upwards by the pa.s.sage of the aeroship over them.
She was still standing there an hour later when a flight of Senzan combat entomopters flew overhead and started circling. One sighted her and flew low, dropping the pilot"s pack of survival supplies by her with a hastily scribbled note that the terrain was too difficult for the fighters to land, but that help was on its way. Miss Barrow did not react, even when the rescue mission arrived. They could get little sense from her, but this was only to be expected; a wreck is a traumatic event, an air wreck doubly so. She was drugged and removed from the site of such carnage, and flown back to Pa rila in the company of doctors while the search for other survivors continued.
But they found only corpses.
Miss Leonie Barrow, a British national, was the only known survivor of the catastrophe. In the two days of bed rest she had before her doctors declared that she could be questioned for short periods, the investigators at the crash site had already begun to have grave suspicions that the Princess Hortense was not what she appeared to be. Senzan mechanics and engineers would not be fooled as customs officers might be: they studied the line guides and levitators, and found them to be of military grade; they examined the aeroship"s skeleton, exposed by collision and fire, and noted the concealed frames and hard points where armour could be welded and weapons mounted. So when Miss Barrow told them of Marechal"s subterfuge, it came as no great surprise to them. When she told them of his death, it came as no great sorrow.
They had found Marechal"s remains-"body" was altogether too composed a description-and tentatively made an identification based on clothing and artefacts. It was good to have his unexpected presence and death confirmed. Now all they required was an explanation. Some useful data had come from the man Roborovski, but when it was realised how deeply he was involved in the Mirkarvian armament programme he was spirited away by Senzan Intelligence, and the crash investigation saw no more of him. The Ambersleigh woman had been even less helpful, saying that she wasn"t interested in local politics, crossing her arms, and demanding to be taken to the British Consulate in increasingly strident terms until the investigators acquiesced for no better reason than to be rid of her.
This left Miss Barrow, and even she was evasive, pleading that shock had affected her memory. She asked to see a list of casualties, which they were reluctant to give her at first, until she suggested that it might help her recall. It turned out to be a very short list; the Princess Hortense had burned fiercely and consumed flesh and bone. Marechal, whose body had fallen from the ruined salon windows before the conflagration and been left in the ship"s shattered wake, was one of the few that they had been more or less sure of.
Miss Barrow read the few names and the short physical descriptions and effects of those still unidentified, and she bit her lip. "He may still be alive," she said quietly to herself.
Not quite quietly enough to escape the attention of the police officer a.s.signed to her; a chit of a girl barely out of the academy, but who burned with an intelligence and perceptivity that would either see her to the top of the force, or resigned within a year. "Alive, signorina?" she prompted. "Who may be alive?"
Miss Barrow started, and then relaxed. It would be a relief to tell somebody, she realised. The only consideration was how much to tell. "It"s time," she began slowly. "It"s time to tell you what happened. Time for you to know. I think I"ve put it all together properly in my mind now." The officer had already produced her notebook and flipped it open. She sat, pencil hovering and eyes intent upon her charge. Miss Barrow hesitated a moment longer, unsure if she was being wise. Then, trusting to fate and judgement, she began.
"There"s a man central to all this. He may still be alive. You have to find him. Dead or alive, you have to find him." And, with Officer Frasca"s shorthand flowing, Leonie Barrow told her story.
Through the forest, he walked alone. His jacket still stank of smoke, and it reminded him of another time, not so long ago, when he had been walking home smelling much the same, albeit with a more sulphurous note to it. He hoped this wasn"t going to become a recurring feature of his life.
His escape from the stricken Princess Hortense had been so pathetically simple that he felt faintly ashamed that he had placed Miss Barrow on the line guide. She was probably dead now, he thought, and that was his fault. His conscience p.r.i.c.kled him and, for once, he did not chide it into silence. To be fair to himself, he had thought the aeroship would explode on impact, but instead it had burned and that had given him time. Time, as the ship ground along the hillside at little more than a fast walking pace, to take up station at the end of the pylon at the shattered tip where once Miss Barrow"s line guide had been, time to wait for a likely tree bough to approach, and time to grab it as it pa.s.sed. That part of the operation had been no more difficult than boarding an escalator or a paternoster; descending the tree after all of its branches beneath him had been torn away by the pa.s.sage of the aeroship proved more exercising. He had finally managed it by going back to the trunk and clambering gracelessly around to the undamaged side of the tree, before making an inelegant descent that left him sweaty, swearing, and bruised.
Once on the ground, he had contemplated going in search of the missing line guide to check whether Miss Barrow had survived, but the arrival of a flight of Senzan entomopters had dissuaded him. By the time he worked his way back up the hillside, he decided, rescuers would be arriving in force, and he had no desire to answer their questions. Besides, if she was dead, she was dead. That didn"t put her beyond his particular brand of help, but he doubted that she would appreciate anything he could do for her. Well, then. Her fate was her fate, and his was his.
His looked as if it would involve a lot of walking.
Through the towering trees, dismaying the wildlife by his very presence and never pausing to apologise, went a pale man. Johannes Cabal was walking home.
AN AFTERWORD OF SORTS.
On the subject of Cabal"s journey home, some commentators have enquired whether anything noteworthy occurred en route, to which the author has replied that there was very little to concern oneself with on that subject. The journey was uneventful in all respects, unless one counts the business with the spy and the bandits and the Elemental Evil and the end of the world as we know it. So, no. Nothing one might call noteworthy.
Ah, said the commentators, who plainly don"t know when to leave well enough alone, some people might like to hear about spies and bandits and all that. This, the author grudgingly admits, is a fair point. If, therefore, you are a person of such low appet.i.tes, here follows an account of a further adventure of Johannes Cabal. Read it or ignore it as you are minded.
JLH.
THE TOMB OF UMTAK KTHARL.
Just around the corner from the Haymarket, the knowledgeable Londoner will note a discreet and understated portico, under which stands a discreet and understated doorman in a discreet and understated hat. By the door is a small bra.s.s plaque, which-for the sake of completeness-shall be described as discreet and understated. The plaque declares, quietly, that the establishment it marks is called Blakes. It says no more, because the knowledgeable Londoner needs no more.
Within its portals (which are not "hallowed," because enhallowment suggests some fame, and this is anathema to the establishment) lie facilities of comfort and convenience for the rare variety of clubbable men who do not care for clubs. In all conceivable senses, it is a club for gentlemen, but in a single ineffable sense it is not, and this is what attracts a particular caste. Nor is it sheer coyness to say that this exotic factor is ineffable-it is a je ne sais quoi of which one literally does not know what. The nature of this curious factor is neither germane to the following narrative nor even to the jealousies of rival clubs, which are simply aware of the existence of "Blakes men" and are content to leave them in Blakes.
Certainly, there was little beyond its doors, hallowed or otherwise, to mark it out as anything but one of the smaller clubs of the great metropolis. There is a dining room, studies, some rooms for members to stay overnight should the need arise, and a library, which, despite its books going untouched from one year to the next, is the most popular room in the place. Here the members slouch in overstuffed chairs, hold desultory conversations, and read (newspapers, that is, although the otherwise unloved books get the occasional perusal provided they are either a volume of Wisden or, oddly enough, Quiller-Couch"s Oxford Book of English Verse).
On a wintery evening, the members had concluded a pleasant dinner-the majority enjoying an excellent beef Wellington followed by spotted d.i.c.k and custard, finishing with a good port served with a varied cheeseboard-and had retired to the library to cap the evening with brandy and cigars. There, they occupied their habitual seats and settled into a warm and happy glow as they chatted about politics and sport. Chiltern, who seemed to spend every morning memorising the newspaper so that he should never be without a topic for conversation, was setting forth his views on the marbles that the Greeks seemed to regard as theirs. These views seemed uncannily similar to those of that morning"s editorial, but that was Chiltern; he regarded the newspaper as a useful alternative to having to evolve any opinions of his own.
"They"re ours," he said, waving his pipe stem at Protheroe, who seemed to be asleep. "How dare those Grecians start laying down the law to us. To us. If we hadn"t removed the blessed things, the Turks would probably have blown them up or something." He glowered. "You know what the Turks are like." Chiltern had read history and had yet to forgive the fall of Constantinople.
"How much does a Greek earn?" asked Tompkinson abruptly of anybody. "I mean, what does a Greek earn?"
"Drachmas, I should think," said Munroe, sketching Chiltern in profile. None too flatteringly, at that. "That"s what they use instead of money over there."
"No, no, no," said Tompkinson, shaking his head emphatically. "I mean, What"s a Greek earn?" He looked around until he caught somebody"s eye. On this occasion, the poor unfortunate was Kay, the professor of chemistry. "About five bob!" said Tompkinson. Kay looked at him blankly. "It"s a joke," Tompkinson explained. "What"s a Greek earn?"
"About five bob?" Kay ventured.
"No! You"re supposed to say, "It"s a bit of pottery" or similar. It"s a pun! A ... a ... thingy. Earn, E-A-R-N," he spelled out, "and urn, U-R-N. Sounds the same, but it"s different."
"h.o.m.ophone," supplied Munroe.
"Well, good Lord, if you can"t take a joke," said Tompkinson, and subsided into an aggrieved silence, for which they were all very grateful.
"One should be very careful with archaeology," said Enright from where he stood by the fireplace. Everybody stopped and looked at him.
Enright was something of a mystery. Blakes was, as has already been intimated, a club of slightly unusual attributes, this slightness being of such a degree that n.o.body was sure exactly which attributes were specifically the unusual ones. There had been the incident of the whiskers in the water closet, and some of the members became very tight-lipped should the words "clockwork" and "Lord Palmerston" ever accidentally find themselves in the same sentence, but these were no more than the common eccentricities of any establishment. Enright, by comparison, was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a very tasteful Holland & Sherry suit. No one knew very much about him. He came highly recommended from a former member, and sailed gracefully and somewhat laconically through the selection committee. It seemed that the club was perhaps his only social indulgence, as he was never seen at any of the many parties that one attends in and about town. Attempts at gentle investigation into his past by having a word with his primary sponsor came to naught when that gentleman took a nosedive off Beachy Head after some share options turned out to be less than on the square. Even the committee had been reticent in discussing Enright"s background. Everyone made noncommittal noises about "salt of the earth" and "confidentiality" but seemed discomforted and eager to change the subject. Thus, it may be understood that all were intrigued about anything to do with Enright, and all listened attentively as he spoke on this occasion.
"Careful with archaeology?" echoed Chiltern. "What"s that supposed to mean? One might as well say, "One should be circ.u.mspect with ornithology," or perhaps "There are dangers incipient in accountancy.""
"Here, here," said Wilson, whose wife had run off with a chartered accountant.
"Sorry, Wilson. Still, what do you mean, Enright, "careful with archaeology"?"
"Just what I say. No more, no less."
"Good heavens," said Clifton, folding his newspaper and putting his reading gla.s.ses into his top pocket. "I do believe there"s a story here."
"A story?" Enright took a spill from the pot on the mantelpiece, lit it from the fire, and used it to rekindle his cigar. "Perhaps there is. There is certainly a salutary warning to the curious."
"Don"t be so dashed mysterious, Enright," chimed in Kay. "Is there a tale to be told or isn"t there?" Perhaps it was the impatience in his tone, but Enright shot Kay a warning glance that the chemist didn"t like at all. It was too late for discretion, however; the others had the scent of a yarn and would worry Enright like terriers with a rat until they had it out of him. To his credit, he knew an impossible position when he saw one. He warmed the brandy in his gla.s.s and took a sip as he considered his words. Then he began.
I appreciate that I seem something of a dark horse amongst you," said Enright. "Only the committee know anything of my background, and I swore them to silence upon their word. I fear I shall have to ask the same of you."
This demand raised no eyebrows; if a shilling had been entered into a fund every time a member of the club agreed to tell a story only under the most sober promise of secrecy, it would by now contain two pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence (to cover Battersby"s tale of his cuckolding; everybody knew all about that well before Battersby did, so it was only worth half a bob). The a.s.sembly made its usual collection of incoherent mumbles to signify agreement, and he continued.
"I have seen a great deal of the world in my forty years, sometimes rather more than any Christian would want to see. I was at Panisha in the year "85, I was in the Guasoir Valley shortly after the Desolee Suppression and, on the occasion I am thinking of, I was in Mirkarvia during the rioting after the a.s.sa.s.sination of Emperor Antrobus II. I should point out that, at all these times-and others too numerous to mention-I was acting as a private citizen. My loyalties, however, lie with the Crown in all affairs. I am, I like to think, a patriot and I believe it is my duty to see what is to be seen, and report it to the proper authorities.
"Good Lord!" interjected Chilton at this point. "You"re an amateur spy!" He looked around, aghast. "Another one!" He was always put out to discover that yet another fellow member was a spy, as he was about the only member who had never been one. He did, however, maintain hopes that one day a coded letter might accidentally make its way into his hands, or that a desperate government agent might hoa.r.s.ely whisper some vital secret into his ear before succ.u.mbing to a knife between the shoulder blades. Then, he was sure, he would show his mettle and save the day. Towards this happy adventure, he read a good many yellow books, and bought a bowler hat containing a concealed camera. The others shushed him, and Enright continued.
"The rioting was very ugly and threatened to turn into civil war at any moment. I stayed as long as I could, but foreigners quickly came to be regarded as agents provocateurs by elements of both sides and I found it necessary to leave. My departure was neither as ordered nor as leisurely as I might have hoped, and I found myself on horseback with a few belongings heading for the neighbouring state of Senza in the wee hours of the morning.
"There was a ... misunderstanding at the frontier, the border guards made fractious and suspicious by the events of the moment, and I was forced to ride on with bullets threading the night air behind me. I made it through unscarred, but my horse was less lucky. She was a skittish mare, all I could lay hands on at short notice, and she was creased upon her left flank by one of the guards" wild shots. The combination of her fragile nature and the mild but stinging wound conspired to drive her into a frenzy of fear, and she bore me deep into the dense forest that is common in that part of the world.
"I"d venture to say that I am not a novice in the saddle, but that nightmare"s ride filled me with apprehension as she bore me through the closely packed trunks of ancient and twisting trees as if the Devil himself were at our heels. There was no hope of controlling her; her neck was iron and she cared little for the bit that I pulled fiercely back into her mouth. She was beyond fear of a mere man. I was no longer her rider but simply a pa.s.senger. I clung onto her as long as I could and, as she tore blindly through the forest, I could not help but think of the tales my old Scottish nanny used to tell me of the water horses of her country that tempted the unwary onto their backs and then ran insanely along the banks of the loch, terrifying their hapless victims before plunging into the waters and drowning them, the easier to feast upon their flesh. That started me worrying about the streams that crisscross the valleys there, running off the mountain ranges that delineate the many pocket states.
"And then, suddenly, it was morning.
"I have been knocked unconscious before and am familiar with the small loss of memory that comes with it, so I was not unduly concerned that I could not recall precisely how I had lost my horse. Indeed, a wound on my brow suggested that I had been swept off her back by a low bough. I was, however, very concerned to discover that my clothes were filthy, and I found that I had a beard of several days" growth.
"As I lay there, I heard voices and, looking to one side, realised that I had been laid out in a clearing in the woods. My horse, that wretched beast, was tied up by a tree with two others and, by a small fire, two men were going through my saddlebags. I have a small gift for languages, but their parochial dialect of Mirkarvian German was difficult to follow-salted as it was with Katamenian words-and only with difficulty could I make out what they were talking about. What I heard filled me with anger but made me apprehensive for my safety. They appeared to be bandits and had happened across me-they consistently referred to me as the baromarcu" Auslanderfotz, a singularly insulting term for "foreigner"-in a state of confusion. Seeing that pickings rarely got easier than an amnesiac upon an injured horse, they had ridden after me and knocked me from the saddle. They kept speaking of me in the past tense, and I realised that that they believed this second fall had killed me. In fact, it had restored me to my senses.
"I remembered reading Mallory in my youth, and thought of the mad Lancelot lost in the forest. I couldn"t remember what happened to him, but I doubted he had recovered his wits to discover a pair of thieves bickering over his field gla.s.ses. I lay doggo and considered my next move. If they discovered me to be alive, I had little doubt they would cut my throat and consider it small inconvenience. I felt weak, and my wound-I had been fortunate that the bandits had not seen me stir and touch it-burned abominably, suggesting some infection. Fighting them was out of the question. Thus, I was left with little option but to continue to lie quite still and play dead.
"After some further argument, the two villains finished splitting my belongings between them, took their horses-and mine-and made to leave. One briefly wondered whether they should bury me, but the other said to leave me for the wolves and bears. The first was unhappy about this, and I had the sense that he was superst.i.tious about mistreatment of the dead, a courtesy he notably didn"t extend to the living. Thankfully, his companion was made of sterner stuff and belittled him for his fears until they both left, the former in a nervous dudgeon.
"For safety"s sake, I lay still for several minutes after the sound of their movement had faded away. I was in a dilemma-injured, weakened, and lost without food or water. What was I to do? I"ve been in a good few sc.r.a.pes in my time but, to be frank, none had seemed this hopeless, and it took a few moments to fight a sense of despair that arose in me as the gravity of my situation made itself perfectly apparent. Of course, I was able to rein such sensations back; despair is an enemy just as any other, but at least it can be fought with action. At which point I heard an animal moving close by.
"I stayed perfectly still. Most bears, no matter what the bandits had said, are not especially interested in dead meat until it has become a little gamy. They are, however, easily antagonised and, judging by the sounds the animal was making, it was more likely to be a bear than a wolf. I lay absolutely still, eyes shut, and listened as the animal came closer and closer by degrees, obviously suspicious of the clearing. There would be silence for seconds, sometimes minutes on end, and I would think it had moved on. Then I would hear it again, still cautious, still closer. The blood was pounding in my head as my heart raced, goading me to leap to my feet and either fight or run. I knew that either course would almost certainly result in my death. There was nothing to do but wait.
"Can you imagine what it felt like? Even now, I remember with perfect clarity what it was to lie there and hope against hope that whatever was interested in my p.r.o.ne form was not hungry at that moment. Then I felt its shadow fall across me, and I knew that everything would be settled one way or the other in a few moments.
""You are quite the least convincing corpse I think I"ve ever clapped eyes upon," said the creature, causing my own eyes to snap open with surprise.
"The "creature" was a man, standing over me and giving me a look of such sour criticism that I felt faintly ashamed, as if caught in the commission of a puerile practical joke. I sat up and immediately regretted such rapid movement, as my head whirled and I felt dangerously nauseous. "Somebody"s been using your head as a punchbag," said the man, studying me coldly, as if I were but a microbe upon a microscope stage. He knelt by me, pulled back my eyelid, and studied the white. "Mild concussion," he said. "You"ll live."
""You"re a doctor?"
"He smiled, and it was like a bloodless cut. "No," he replied, amused by something. "No, not a doctor. I haven"t the bedside manner for it."
""But you"ve had medical training?"
"He seemed to find this line of questioning boring. "Self-taught, largely," he replied in a dismissive tone, before adding, "Look, we"re both a long way from civilisation and those brigands have horses. I suggest we appropriate them."
""Yes, you"re right, of course." After I"d floundered around on the ground for a moment, he deigned to help me up. "My name"s Enright," I said. He nodded and set off across the clearing in the direction the thieves had taken. He showed no indication of answering my implicit enquiry. "And your name is ... ?" I called finally as I stumbled after him.
""A closely guarded secret. Do keep up, Enright.""
Protheroe, apparently snoozing by the fire, muttered, "A curious cove," before lapsing back into gentle snores.
"As I walked with the stranger, I took the opportunity to study him. He stood around the six-foot mark, perhaps a little taller, perhaps a little shorter, but not by much in either direction. His hair was blond, a very Nordic blond that matched the faint German accent I"d detected in his speech. He seemed not to have shaved for a few days. His clothes were an odd choice for travelling through dense forest, too; he was wearing a city suit, and a conservatively cut one at that-it was as if a civil servant had been plucked from the streets of the government district and dropped in the wilds. I remember noting that he had a sorely battered and ageing red carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole; when I pointed this out, he looked at it with surprise and said something about forgetting that it was there. He then plucked it from his lapel and tossed it away into the undergrowth with a sour remark about life having seemed to be a good deal more agreeable on the morning he bought it. All this said, I must have looked as ill-prepared for the rigours of the forest as he, and I made the natural a.s.sumption that he, as I, was a refugee from the troubles.
""You don"t talk much," he said suddenly.
""I thought we were trying to catch them unawares?"
""Just so. Based on the evidence, however"-he indicated a clear trail running through some bushes leading across a slope-"we"re not dealing with the world"s most cunning criminals. I"m hardly frontier material myself, but this ... this really is pathetic."
""They probably think they"re safe this far from the beaten track."
""Well," said the stranger, "we shall simply have to disabuse them of that notion."
"We followed the trail until it met with a small stream running out of the hillside and turned up the slope. I was about to continue the hunt when I noticed that my mysterious companion had paused by the stream. I guessed that he wanted to get some water, which seemed to be an excellent idea. I crouched by the bank, scooped up a cupped handful of water, and supped.
"The liquid was barely in my mouth before I spat it out again. I cannot communicate how foul that water was."
"Well, at least have a go," prompted Munroe. "Can"t be as bad as one of Kay"s gin slings."
"I say!" Kay said.