Authors: Paul Finch
His bronze pursuer had now come fully into the room, and walked slowly along the
the
bath-side, its footsteps ringing.
The globe of light, which winked with each pillar it passed behind, was bright enough to screen the monstrosity from view, rendering it an awkward shadow moving with a steady, jerking gait. Again, there was a nightmarish
whirring
and
clicking
of gears. Tom watched in disbelief as it veered towards the edge of the bath, at the point where a flight of tiled steps led down. It
knew
was it was doing! This wasn’t just some automaton, some terrible clockwork toy gone wrong – it knew this place, and had a plan to defend it.
Hysterically, Tom fled to the far side of the bath and tried to climb out. But at a little less than five feet tall, he could barely reach the upper rim. With a
clank
, the monster put its first foot on the topmost step. Tom whirled around, jamming his back against the bath wall. He still couldn’t see it properly, but sensed it watching him from beyond that glaring light. And he knew that it still clasped that weighted
sceptre
, now no doubt smeared with Sam Clegg’s bashed-in brains.
*
“Sam Clegg!” Corporal Flint roared. “Tom Caxton! What in thunder are you idiots playing at?”
Flint was bemused by what he’d just seen. To be confronted first of all by Tom Caxton, who’d screamed like he was facing every devil in hell and gone racing off into the depths of this weird place, was difficult enough to understand. But now someone else – someone Flint hadn’t quite seen properly, but who’d looked as if he was encased in bronze
armour
, and carrying a light – had gone lumbering in pursuit of the boy.
“Caxton!” Flint shouted again, advancing. “Caxton, what the devil
… ?”
Bytes had come into the mound behind Flint, but was hanging back a little because he’d spotted the coins scattered from the smashed urns. Even at first glimpse, their
lustre
suggested they were gold. He eyed them greedily. The temptation to start scooping them up was almost irresistible, but Bytes controlled himself. The penalty for looting in war-time was death. In peace-time it was less severe, but it would be still be brutal and inconvenient. As with the many occasions in Spain, Portugal and France, when he’d robbed houses, shops and even churches, he wouldn’t take unnecessary risks. He watched Flint’s back carefully, waiting for the rangy corporal to move out of sight. However, now a figure came into view at the end of the passage. There was an archway there, with a T-junction beyond it; it was from the right-hand route that the figure appeared. It was the
armour
-clad shape again. Or was it
armour
-clad? Flint and Bytes were baffled by what they were seeing. Whoever this fellow was, he was tall – well over six feet, and so broad at the shoulder that he almost filled the passage. With each step he took towards them, there was a shuddering metallic impact.
“Sam Clegg?” Flint said uneasily, though both he and Bytes knew already that this was neither of the missing youngsters.
As the figure emerged into the daylight, its dimensions became visible. The two men were astounded by the sculpted bronze face with its blank eyes and imperious nose, by the huge shoulders and deeply curved chest, by the massive limbs crammed with sinew, and by the sound of its innards – turning and
clicking
with mechanical precision. Bytes backed slowly away. Flint’s response was to draw his pistol and take aim.
“Stay where you are! Declare yourself!”
The thing continued to approach.
“Declare yourself!”
When it was five yards away, he fired – only for the pistol-ball to ricochet from its left breast, leaving no more than a dent.
“We should get out of here!” Bytes shouted.
“Damn the bloody ’prentices!”
Flint didn’t agree. Wielding his pistol like a club, he advanced again.
“What’ve you done with my lads?”
The monster parried the first blow with a cudgel of its own.
Then, dropping its glowing globe – which exploded like a rocket flare – it grabbed Flint’s throat with its free hand.
Flint choked as he was picked bodily from his feet and flung against the nearest wall. Bytes watched the struggle, fascinated, but with no inclination to assist. His mind was working feverishly. Whatever this thing was, as long as it kept Flint busy the treasure could be gathered. He crouched, sweeping up coins – checking their weight, biting them. They felt and tasted like gold; this was almost too good to be true.
Flint gave a gargling scream, which sounded like a death-thro.
Bytes glanced up again. The bronze horror had dragged Flint through one of the side doors and both were now out of view. Bytes crept forward and glanced around the jamb. His eyes attuning to the dimness, he saw a room of sorts: once luxurious wall-hangings were visible. There was also furniture in there – what looked like a sideboard with silver plate arrayed along the top; again, it was all buried in the dust-wadding of centuries.
In the centre of the room, Flint was still being throttled by the bronze figure, beating at it with his right fist until his knuckles were bloody and raw. With his left, he clung to the wrist of the hand in which the bronze titan wielded its
sceptre
, trying to prevent it raining blows on his skull. Still he was suspended, his feet kicking empty air. His eyes goggled in a face already bruised and flushed with blood. Vomit and spittle daubed his gaping mouth.
Bytes’s
gaze shifted back to the silver plate. Gold coins – especially of the ancient vintage – might be difficult to spend. But he knew a fence in
Southwark
who could move plate with indecent speed. The problem was getting to it. Flint and his assailant blundered back and forth across the room. When the bronze figure swung Flint around and threw him on top of the sideboard, it collapsed all too easily in a mass of dust and rotted timbers, burying the plate beneath it.
Even though dazed, Flint recovered his feet with a speed that would have surprised anyone who hadn’t been at Mont St. Jean, where he’d been ridden down by a French
cuirassier
, only to jump back up and unhorse the bastard from behind using a ramrod from the gun. Now, as then, he sought to improvise a weapon. He seized a handsomely carved chair, but on raising it and throwing it, it flew to pieces before making contact. And then the bronze man struck with his
sceptre
, and impact was finally made. Bytes didn’t see how hard or clean the blow, but Flint went down as though pole-axed.
Less than a second passed before the bronze figure turned back to the entrance, but it was long enough for Bytes to cross the main passage and dart through the facing doorway, into a place so dark that his eyes couldn’t at first make out anything. Face prickling with sweat, he flattened himself against the wall and listened to the heavy, ringing treads as the bronze man came back into the passage. A chilling silence followed. Did it know he was here? Would it come searching for him?
Even facing the cavalry charge at Waterloo, Bytes hadn’t felt such fear.
It moved again. At first he thought it was coming towards him, and almost swallowed his tongue – only to
realise
that the footfalls were growing fainter. Still he didn’t move, glancing around instead, trying to work out where he was. Rather than another room, this appeared to be a second passage, but it was wider than the first, and with more doorways leading off it. It also contained more of the urns – many more. They were ranged along the floor on the right-hand side; at first glance alone he counted thirty, maybe forty.
Dreadful though the danger was
,
Bytes knew that he’d stumbled upon the chance of a lifetime. However ancient these coins, however difficult to exchange, if they were genuine gold
someone
would want them. There had to be a fortune in this place, a king’s ransom. He poked his head back into the main passage. There was no immediate sign of the monster, but now Bytes began to wonder why the daylight down at the entrance seemed to be fading. He squinted to see better – and almost shouted when he
realised
that it was being blocked up. The bronze man had moved down there and, clump by clump, was restoring the turf and rubble knocked through by the
roundshot
.
Bytes’s
blood ran cold.
After the elation of several seconds ago, when he’d envisaged a life of decadence and squander, now he envisaged a life in here, entombed alive with this mindless monstrosity.
He’d have panicked on the spot, gone hysterical, had he not suddenly heard a voice of salvation.
Not that he’d ever have expected such from an illiterate ruffian like Dominic Grubber.
Initially it sounded as though Grubber was expressing astonishment – but not fear. Clearly he, and whoever else was with him, had found the entrance, or what remained of it. Bytes strained his eyes to see what was happening at the far end of the passage. Two figures – the second one looked and sounded like
Alker
– were climbing in through the narrowed gap. There were further exclamations, and this time he could tell what they were saying.
“Put the fear of God into me,” Grubber guffawed.
“It’s only a statue.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Three metallic knocks sounded; Bytes pictured them testing their knuckles against the bronze man’s breastplate.
“Fancy enough
thing
, and it’s heavy …”
“Hardly what we’re here for.
Corporal Flint!
Bytesey
!
”
The voices drew nearer. They were venturing along the passage – leaving the entrance and its motionless guardian behind them. It would have been easy to warn them to get out, tell them to bring others, to bring every gun they could. Instead, Bytes slunk back into the darkness. Within a few moments they’d almost come alongside him. They sounded nervous now, wary, especially Grubber, who, though a good artilleryman, hailed from the rural border country with Scotland and was always fearful of the unknown.
“We sure they’re even in here?” he asked.
“Where else could they be?”
“Wouldn’t they have answered us?”
“Depends how far they’ve gone in.”
“Christ loves a Christian, into a
faerie
mound like this?”
“It’s a burial mound.”
“So in God’s name what are they doing here?”
“Grubber, I don’t know.
Corporal Flint!
”
Fresh sweat speckled
Bytes’s
brow. He slid further into the darkness. If they found him, it would be difficult explaining why he was hiding.
“Doorways,” Grubber said.
“Which way?”
“Place is bigger than it looks,”
Alker
replied. “We should split up.”
“Say that again and I’ll split your head.”
“In that case, straight on.”
“We need a light.”
“Go back and ask for one. See what that officer says when you tell him you wouldn’t look because it was too dark.”
“We’ve looked already, haven’t we?”
Their voices faded as they proceeded. They’d soon be reaching the T-junction, and would be out of sight. But Bytes didn’t allow himself to relax – a short while later, as he’d expected, he heard something marching in pursuit of them: heavy footfalls, and a
whirring
of wheels and gears. He didn’t dare look out as the hulking shadow passed by. It was several seconds after it had gone before he even allowed himself to breathe. As such, he only just suppressed a shrill screech when a hand reached from the darkness and clutched his wrist. He spun around, jerking himself free – and stared into the white, sweat-soaked visage of Tom Caxton.