Medi-Evil 3 Page 18

  Tom slung his blunderbuss over his shoulder by its strap, and wafted his way through a choking fog tinged red with firelight, coughing. He skirted around the heap of debris, and scrambled up the steps. Grubber was waiting at the top, the eyes blinking in his filthied face.

  “Did I get it?” Grubber asked, sounding as if he didn’t quite believe it.

  “You got it!”

  “And they said I’d never be an aimer.”

  Then the roof collapsed.

  The first they knew was when a huge piece of masonry struck Grubber on the head and shoulder. He dropped where he stood. Another piece exploded on the top step, right where Tom had just been standing. With a tectonic groan, the ceiling – now missing one of its key supports – sagged and split. Dust and dirt was suddenly pouring through it. Tom shielded his head, and a chunk of masonry broke across his forearm. Grubber was still conscious and trying to get to all fours, but was totally disoriented – Tom hauled him by the collar.

  “Dominic, this whole place is going!” the lad shouted.

  Grubber nodded, and wiped at his eyes, which were filling with grimy blood, but went dizzy again and sank down. At which point they both heard a sound neither had imagined possible. It was a heavy grating of stonework. They looked into the bath. The largest section of the fallen pillar, which had broken into three main parts, was shifting – until it was completely dislodged. Bit by bit, the rest of the bricks and plaster was also now moving. Beneath it, a twisted bronze figure was working itself free. Tom mercilessly yanked Grubber to his feet, further injuring his shoulder.

  “You bloody young fool …”

  “We’ve got to go!” Tom screamed.

  The bronze demon was now sitting upright. Despite the pounding it had taken, it was clambering back to its feet.

  Tom snatched the torch, and they staggered together towards the statue room, though Grubber was still dazed and needing assistance. With heavy treads, their enemy re-ascended the bath stair.

  As they threaded through the passages, yet more of the weakened structure collapsed around them. Bricks, plaster and wooden props fell; fissures ran through the walls. It goaded them to even greater efforts. They passed Alker’s body, then Kilgariff’s, then Bytes’s, who was still out cold – Ned Flint had clearly belted him a good one. Poor Ned …

  “You damn demon!” Tom shouted over his shoulder. “I’ll show you!”

  At last they were outside in the fresh air.

  “We should get the twelve-pounder,” Grubber said.

  “No need! I’ll do for him.”

  Tom disentangled himself from his colleague, dropped him to the grass, then turned to the powder and jabbed down with the torch. Immediately the powder sparked; a spark which raced off towards the mound entrance, where – astonishingly – there was movement. Tom couldn’t believe it, but Bytes was conscious again. He’d braced himself in the doorway, one arm to either side, but was recovering quickly. He saw the flame snaking towards him, and sluggishly began to kick at the powder, to try and break the trail.

  “Murdering bastard,” Tom whispered, unslinging the blunderbuss.

  He had no more ‘grape’ in his pocket and of course the glass jar was empty. But an alternative ammunition was available. As soon as he’d primed the weapon – which he did with the swift sureness of the soldier he’d now become – he grabbed up a handful of the spilled golden coins, thrust them down the barrel, and took aim.

  When Bytes saw what was happening, his pale face paled even more.

  Tom fired.

  The glittering payload smashed into its target like a battering ram, flinging him several feet backward into the mound. The spark passed along the powder trail a close distance behind. Tom was then distracted by the ghoulish sight of the bronze colossus, broken and contorted and slathered with blood and filth, clumping towards the entrance, stamping on the bodies of the slain – only for it to vanish in a blinding gout of flame.

  There was a cacophonous, booming roar as every barrel in the passage detonated. Tom was knocked heavily to the ground. Soil and rubble rained through the thin belt of woodland, but the main force of the blast was concentrated inside the mound, which belched flame and smoke with near volcanic force, finally imploding, caving in on itself with a rumble like the crack of doom.

  *

  It was several minutes before Tom looked up from where he lay, to see dust and smoke still thick in the air. He ached all over, felt intolerably tried. When a hand landed on his shoulder, he squealed and flinched.

  “Easy,” Grubber said.

  Tom calmed a little. They ventured together through the rolling smog. The mound was still a mound, but now a mound of earth and shattered stones. No grass clad the smooth-contoured sides. No entrance was visible.

  “You were right before,” Tom said nervously. “We should bring the twelve-pounder.”

  Grubber couldn’t reply. He was too busy scanning the jumbled surface. There was no sign of movement there. Yet.

  “Dominic, I said …”

  “If this hasn’t worked, lad, what chance the rolling iron?”

  “But what if …”

  “You know what Boney said the only thing better than cannon is, lad?”

  Tom shrugged.

  “Thunderbolts.” Grubber swallowed bitter spittle. “And we ain’t got many of them.”

  Author’s note: It may interest readers to know that, though this is a work of fiction, there is a grain of fact in it. A London broadsheet of 1685 reported how workmen quarrying for gravel at a place called Colton’s Field in Gloucestershire, central England, uncovered the opening to what appeared to be an underground dwelling. When they ventured inside, they discovered preserved rooms and Roman artifacts. They also discovered a life-size bronze figure, which attacked them with a club. The workmen fled in terror, but when they returned with the authorities, the rooms had collapsed under a huge weight of rubble. A few Roman coins were the only evidence that such an incident had ever occurred. This may be a tall story – for one thing, there’s no such place as Colton’s Field on maps of that period – but traditions of the more distant past also describe the tombs or treasure halls of famous men, Octavian and Virgil for two, being jealously guarded by bronze automata driven by a technology far in advance of their period. No explanations for these strange stories have ever been offered.

  Sources

  The Gaff was first published in Enigmatic Tales # 6, 1999

  To Walk On Thorny Paths was first published in The Mammoth Book Of Jacobean Whodunnits, 2006

  A Plague On Both Your Houses is original to this collection

  The Destroyers was first published in F20 #1, 2000

  Colossus is original to this collection

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