Rebel Fire (28 page)

Even at that range, Sherlock could see that there was no emotion in those eyes: just a cold and hungry intelligence.

“Some kind of reptile,” he said, “but it's huge. I've never seen anything like it before.”

“It's the same size as
us
,” Virginia whispered. “I thought it might be an alligator—they have them down in Florida, I've heard, but this is something else. Alligators are slow and stupid, and they don't like being out of water, but that thing looks quick and intelligent, and it's walking on the rocks with no problems.”

Sherlock gazed at the thing's feet. “Those claws look like they could climb trees,” he pointed out. “Not that there are any trees here to climb anyway.”

The creature moved out onto a flat rock and stared at them, flicking its tongue towards them. It knew there was food around.

Something moved off to one side. Sherlock glanced that way. A second creature was emerging from another gap in the rocks. This one was even bigger than the first.

“Look!” Virginia warned. For a moment Sherlock assumed she'd seen the second creature as well, but when he looked over at her he saw she was facing the other way. He followed the line of her pointing finger. A third lizard was moving towards them along the line of the wall. Its head was swinging from side to side as it watched them.

The first creature that he'd seen moved in the other direction while the second one began to head towards them, its body swinging from side to side as its claws got purchase on the ground.

The three creatures appeared to be working together, like dogs. They were pinning Sherlock, Matty, and Virginia down, giving them nowhere to escape.

Sherlock's mind was racing. Given the size of the creatures and their massive and sharp teeth, they were obviously carnivores, and they were moving as if they were hungry and they knew there was food in the enclosure. They didn't seem wary or cautious, the way dogs might have been. They seemed deliberate in their movements. Sherlock had a feeling that reptiles couldn't be scared. Their brains just weren't made that way. They would keep coming, no matter what Sherlock and the others did. Noises wouldn't stop them, nor would sudden gestures. Thrown rocks probably wouldn't work either. They were like calculating machines with teeth.

The monstrous creatures were edging closer and closer now, from all directions. Sherlock, Matty, and Virginia edged backwards, towards the nearest wall. Their options were progressively being closed off by these freakishly intelligent reptiles.

“What's that
smell
?” Matty asked, his face wrinkling up. Sherlock could smell it too: something like rotted meat. If those creatures really did swallow their prey whole and then spend weeks digesting it then the smell was probably part of them.

“Sherlock,” Virginia said in a too-controlled voice, “what do we do?”

“Thinking,” Sherlock said, and he was. He was thinking as fast as he'd ever thought in his life.

The creature on their right took a few steps closer. Matty bent down and picked a stone up from the ground. He lobbed it at the creature. It didn't move as the stone hit the wall beside it and bounced off. No fear, no caution, nothing. It just didn't care. After a few seconds it took another two steps, legs splayed out to either side of its body.

The creature to their left hissed, head held up as it sampled the air. The other two hissed as well. Sherlock wasn't sure if they were communicating with each other, or just making noises designed to cause their prey to freeze in terror.

The distance between the reptiles and the three of them had almost halved now, taken up gradually by the reptiles in small steps. No rush, no sudden attack, just a progressive and intelligent process of backing their prey into a corner where they could be eaten at leisure.

And Sherlock couldn't think of any way of stopping them.

 

F
IFTEEN

“What about the water?” Matty whispered, as if the reptiles might hear and understand him. “Couldn't we get in the pond and wait them out?”

“I think they're partly amphibious,” Sherlock said. “Look at those feet. They're webbed. They can probably swim better than we can.”

Sherlock looked around desperately, hoping there might be something lying about that might help, but apart from rocks and bushes there was nothing.

The reptiles were getting closer now, and the stench of rotting meat was becoming almost too much to bear.

“Oh, I dunno if it helps,” Matty said, “but I got this from that bloke's jacket pocket.”

Sherlock turned to see that Matty was holding the small, two-barrelled pistol.

“It's a Remington derringer,” Virginia said. “Pa got me one, once, but I lost it.”

“How the hell did you get that off him?” Sherlock demanded.

Matty shrugged. “I live off my own resources,” he pointed out. “Pickpocketing is one of them.”

Sherlock looked from the gun to the advancing reptiles and back again. “Two lead balls, three creatures,” he said. “Not good odds.”

“It increases our chances,” Virginia said.

“It just means that one of us gets killed and eaten rather than all three of us, and that's not an acceptable solution.”

“You got a better idea?” Matty asked.

“Actually,” Sherlock said, “I have.” His gaze scanned the walls. “How did they get these things in here? I doubt they walked them along the plank. Too much chance of them getting hurt when they fell.”

“You think there's a gate or door or something?” Matty demanded.

“It seems logical. All we need to do is look for it.”

Sherlock considered the approaching reptiles more closely. “They're slower than us,” he said, “but they'll wear us out eventually.” His gaze skipped over the rocks. “Look, if we're fast we can climb above them, then jump over their heads and get behind them. Then we can look for the way in. They can't move fast.”

Before Matty or Virginia could stop him, he ran towards the reptiles. Three mouths full of sharp teeth opened, and the sudden hissing nearly deafened him. Without stopping to think, he leaped onto one of the rocks and from there to a larger boulder. It shifted beneath his feet, and he knew that if he slipped the creatures would be on him in a flash. He jumped, off balance, and saw the reptiles climbing on their hind legs beneath him as he flew through the air, stretching up with their long jaws, hoping to snag his heels.

He landed safely on a patch of open ground. He turned, to find Virginia hurtling towards him. He caught her as she landed and pulled her to one side so that Matty had a clear area. The reptiles snapped at him as he jumped, one of them using its muscular tail to propel it into the air, but its teeth snapped shut a split second after he passed. He hit the ground and stumbled, rolling before he could get to his feet.

Without any show of emotion, the three reptiles turned around and started advancing again, their beady black eyes fixed on Sherlock, Matty, and Virginia.

“Quick!” Sherlock shouted, and led the way to the wall that separated the enclosure from the outside world. To his right the wall was unbroken all the way down to the ground, but to his left piles of rocks hid its base. He ran along the side of the wall, checking in the space behind the rocks. Nothing! Another patch of open ground, and then a large bush that hid the wall. He pushed it to one side, and his heart leaped when he saw a metal grille, rising from the ground to waist height, hinged on the left, and the simple sliding bolt that secured it.

Then he saw the huge padlock that held the secured bolt in place on the other side of the grille.

Matty came up alongside him. “Can you blow it apart with the gun?” he asked, holding the derringer out.

Sherlock considered for a moment. “Unlikely,” he said. “That padlock is massive. The lead balls will probably just bounce off.”

“What about the hinges?”

“Three hinges, two bullets. Same problem.”

Virginia joined them, looking worriedly over her shoulder. “I'm not sure we have much of a choice,” she pointed out.

Matty kicked against the grille. It barely moved under the force of his foot.

Sherlock's mind was a whirl of conflicting thoughts. Two choices: shoot the reptiles, and leave one still alive, or shoot the padlock and probably waste two bullets. Which choice should he make?

A small voice in the storm of his thoughts asked: “What would Mycroft say? What would Amyus Crowe say?” And, just like back on the train, a voice answered: “When you've only got two choices, and you don't like either of them, make a third choice.”

His gaze wandered across the pool that the three of them had jumped into, and he suddenly remembered the stairs that had led
downward
, next to the steps that had led up to the balcony. They hadn't been leading to the grille, because that opened out onto flat ground. They had to lead somewhere else. The pool was on that side of the enclosure, and Balthassar had spoken of watching the reptiles storing their food beneath stones underwater. Maybe the steps led to an underground viewing gallery; a subterranean room with a glass window looking out into the depths of the pool, so that Balthassar and his guests could watch the reptiles swimming.

But how to break through the glass—if there was glass? It would be thick, to withstand the pressure of the water.

So what he had to do was cause more pressure than the window could stand.

He snatched the derringer from Matty's hand. Two triggers, of course, which made sense with two barrels. You'd want to be able to fire them separately. He stared down the barrels. “You used to have one of these,” he said to Virginia. “How did you load it?”

“You pour some black powder down the barrel, then you ram a patched lead ball down onto the powder,” she explained, “being careful not to leave any air gaps between the patched ball and the powder. You then put a percussion cap on the other end of the barrel. Then the gun is loaded and ready to fire.”

“Patched lead ball?” he asked, staring more closely down the barrels. “Ah, yes, the ball is wrapped in paper. That must form a seal.”

“Waxed paper. Why is that important?”

“Because it means it's airtight,” he said. “At least, for a short time. And if it's airtight, it's watertight.”

Before Virginia could say anything, Sherlock turned and ran towards the pond, cocking the twin hammers at the back end of the derringer as he did so. When he got to the edge he dived, hands held out in front of him, derringer held in his right hand. The water closed over his head: warm and filled with floating motes of dust and vegetation. Sound was suddenly muffled. He kicked with his feet to take him towards the far wall, beneath the balcony.

And there, where he knew it had to be, where deduction had told him it was, was a glass window set into a metal frame. Before any water could leak into the derringer he placed it flat against the glass.

And pulled both triggers at once.

Somewhere in the back of his mind was the fact, read once and never forgotten, that water was incompressible. No matter how much you squeeze it, water never gets any denser. All that happens is that the pressure you exert gets transferred elsewhere. Such as to whatever the water is touching.

And so when the hammers at the base of the barrels hit the two percussion caps, the fulminate of mercury inside ignited. This caused the sulphur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate in the black powder to burn rapidly, producing a huge volume of hot gas. The gas pushed the lead balls along the barrels, burning the paper patches away as it did so. The bullets pushed against the water in the barrels, and the water pushed against the window.

Which cracked and shattered.

The entire contents of the pond poured into the underground room, taking Sherlock with it. He struck out blindly for the corner of the room where the stairs had to be, hoping desperately that Virginia and Matty would realize what he'd done and follow him. Should he have warned them in advance? It hadn't occurred to him. He'd just followed through on his deductions without considering that the other two might not understand.

His lungs were burning with the effort of holding his breath, and his heart was thudding within the cage of his ribs. He pulled himself through the murky water with desperate movements of his arms. Suddenly he felt his knuckles brush against the stone edge of a step. He aimed upward and swam as hard as he could.

When his head emerged from the water, level with the bottom of the doorway that led outside, into the sunlight, he took huge gulps of breath one after the other, waiting for his racing heart to slow.

Matty's head popped out of the water beside him. Virginia was moments behind.

“You,” Matty said, breathing hard, “are some kind of genius. I don't know what you did, but you saved us.”

“Not quite,” Virginia pointed out breathlessly.

“What do you mean?” Matty asked.

“Sherlock said those things were amphibious.”

The three of them looked at each other for a long moment, then scrambled rapidly out of the water.

The steps to the underground observation room and to the balcony were out of sight of the house. The three of them sat down for a moment to catch their breath.

“What now?” Matty asked. “What do we do?”

“Only thing I can think is that we follow the train tracks back to the last town,” Sherlock replied. “There'll be a telegraph office there. We can send a message to Virginia's father. We have to tell him about Balthassar's army and the invasion of Canada.”

“Ah,” Matty said, “walking.”

“We could try stealing horses,” Sherlock said, “but we'll probably be caught. I suspect these people look after their horses, especially if they're planning an invasion.”

Matty sighed. “All right,” he said, “let's go. We can dry out while we're walking.”