Authors: Paul Finch
“Gunner Grubber!”
Silverwell
bawled, not yet comprehending what was happening. “Stand your ground like the soldier you’re supposed to be!”
With more
clicking
and
whirring
, the bronze man turned around. Tom again set eyes on that blank expression, now scarred where its opponents had struck at it.
Silverwell
gave a grunt of shock as it lurched towards him. He even lowered his sword a little, but Tom had already seen enough and fled back into the central passage. He
hared
down towards the entrance, but, before he reached it, the daylight was again blotted out – this time as another figure came in,
its
back apparently turned. Tom wasn’t initially sure who he was seeing; and then he
realised
. It was Bytes again, and he was dragging something.
Bytes didn’t notice Tom until they’d almost knocked into each other, at which point Tom spotted the body of Sergeant
Kilgariff
, long crimson smears on the paving stones behind him. Bytes swung around, dropping the corpse and snapping a blade open. Tom grabbed the arm holding the knife, but was slammed backwards against the wall. Suddenly
Bytes’s
elbow was pressed into the boy’s larynx, crushing it. Tom gagged, felt his eyes expand in their sockets. He kicked and punched desperately. Their faces were now less than an inch apart, Tom’s bruised, bloody and white with fear,
Bytes’s
red as raw beef, trickling with sweat, his lips folded back on feral teeth through which foul breath hissed.
Pinning Tom in place, Bytes drew back his knife, looking to plunge it under the boy’s ribs – but he never saw the big knuckled fist that dealt him a ferocious blow on the right cheek. The
smack
was deafening; then Bytes was falling sideways. He landed on top of Sergeant
Kilgariff’s
body and lay motionless.
Ned Flint had thrown the punch, but the exertion had taken so much out of him that he had to lean on the wall. Clotted blood streaked his face and his dirty blonde hair.
“Tom … lad,” he said. “Tom … what in Christ’s name is going on here?”
“I don’t …” Tom stammered. “I think there’s … it sounds mad, but … some kind of guardian …”
“Guardian?”
“This place is a treasure house … left by the Romans.”
Flint pushed himself upright again. He glanced back along the passage. All sounds of combat had ceased, to be replaced a sepulchral silence. Finally, he said: “If the Romans wanted it buried, buried it’ll stay. What was
Bytesey
up to?”
“The gold,” Tom said as they headed back towards the entrance.
“Thieving wretch.
He always was.”
“I think he killed Sergeant
Kilgariff
.”
“There’s no thinking about it, lad. I know
Bytesey
of old.” They stumbled outside to the wagon, Tom having to shield his eyes against the daylight. Flint took one powder barrel down after another. “Take these inside, and stack ’
em
just beyond the entrance.”
“What’re we going to do, Ned?”
“We’re going to bury them all together.
Bytes too.”
Tom did as he was
told,
rolling Bytes and
Kilgariff
to one side and making trips back and forth from the wagon until there were twelve barrels in total piled against the passage wall. Flint meanwhile, took a barrel of his own, knocked its lid off and, choosing a start-point some thirty yards away, laid a winding trail of powder across the grass and into the entrance, where he placed the barrel, which was still half full, alongside the others.
“What about Dominic and Lieutenant
Silverwell
?” Tom asked.
Flint looked astonished. “They’re still alive in there?”
“I don’t know, but …”
They listened again, but heard only tomblike silence. A split-second later even that was lost as, behind them, the cannonade resumed.
“We can’t just bury them alive,” Tom shouted.
“No we can’t,” Flint agreed, returning to the wagon. There were numerous items on it. He took several down. The first was a stout piece of wood, its thicker end bound with pitch-stained rags. The second was a roll of sacking in which the crew kept the guns they’d acquired during the many wars they’d fought. He pulled one out for himself – a ‘Brown Bess’, the traditional land-pattern musket of the British infantry, and pocketed several cartridges. To Tom he handed a short-
barrelled
blunderbuss and a glass jar filled with nails.
“That’s a muzzle-loader,” he said, after priming his own weapon and passing over the powder horn. “I reckon even a novice like you can’t miss with that. Only shoot when we’re close up, mind.”
Tom half-emptied the jar into the blunderbuss’s flared barrel, shoved in some material torn from his shirt as wadding, then crammed the rest of the ‘grape’ into his pockets. He filled and capped the pan, and was ready. Together they went back to the hole. If there was anything to hear in there now, the resounding
crump
of cannon masked it. They glanced at each other before entering. Flint’s face was pale and sweaty. Tom expected that he looked the same. It was an effort to prevent his lips from quivering.
“These are our pals, lad,” Flint reminded him. “We can’t leave ’
em
.”
“We could … we could go and get help,” Tom suggested.
“Back through that hell?”
“Our alley should be clear.”
“Lord love you for your innocence, lad. Some of those idiots couldn’t hit Old Bailey from
Newgate
yard. No Tom, it’s just us. But we take it slow, alright? First sign we see that they’re all dead, we get out of there.”
They advanced into the darkness, which, after Flint had put a match to his torch, retreated ahead of them in a flickering red glare. The thumping of guns slowly receded. They passed the bodies of
Kilgariff
and Bytes, Flint kicking at the latter to check that he was still unconscious. Shortly after, they passed
Alker’s
body. It was difficult to imagine that he’d made it as far as he had, being so grotesquely injured. The entire left side of his skull appeared to have been crushed; brain matter as well as blood had
puddled
on the paving stone.
“He took everything Boney could throw at him for six years,” Flint said bitterly.
“Only to die in a Cotswold field.
We’re going to send this fiend back to Hell, Tom lad.”
Now that they had a flaming torch, they were able to see much more of the underground realm. It was indeed like the interior of some fine but ancient house. More painted plasterwork was visible: images of fountains and gardens, imperial archways, parades of charioteers and nymph-like dancers. The passage floors were strewn with black, rotted threads, which conceivably were the remnants of carpets. In the statue room, a corroded relic hung from the ceiling; a twist of rusted metal that might once have been a chandelier in which candles or oil lamps had been fixed.
Flint took his light to every corner. There was scarcely a statue left intact, but though there was no trace of a body, blood was spattered across one of the walls.
“Bastard!” he said in a tight voice.
He moved to the doorway connecting with the bathhouse.
“Ned …” Tom said, feeling that the route back to safety was already long enough.
“Alright, you bastard!”
Flint bellowed, going through the portal, musket
levelled
.
Again, the flaring torch revealed more of the bathhouse than Tom had seen previously. The pillars surrounding the bath itself were carved with vines and fabulous animals. Further frescoes adorned the left-hand walls: a three-sailed galley on high waves, a whale spouting spume. The other walls and the ceiling were painted with leaves and enmeshed branches. Even in his fear, it struck Tom what a wondrous effect this had on the room. The impression it created was of a woodland pool overlooking the sea. But more important than any of this, Lieutenant
Silverwell
was still alive. He was standing on the right side of the bath, looking sorely used – his coat, blouse and breeches had gone, he was wearing only a bloodstained undershirt. His face also was bloodied, but at least he was upright, his sword in his right hand.
“Mr.
Silverwell
, sir,” Flint said, approaching. “Is it destroyed?
Sir?”
Silverwell
remained still.
“Sir?”
Flint said, puzzled.
Tom’s hair began to prickle.
Then Flint gave a deep, guttural grunt – because
Silverwell’s
sword had just passed clean through his body.
“Ned!”
Tom screamed.
Silverwell
ripped the blade free as his gutted victim fell, and advanced towards the quaking boy. He came stiffly but strongly, to a hideous accompaniment of
whirrs
and
clicks
. Tom was already pointing his blunderbuss but was too
mesmerised
to shoot.
Silverwell
was perhaps five yards away, and raising his sword for a slashing blow, when his face fell off like a mask and hung from his chin in a flap. The scalp slid back, revealing a bloodied, bronze cranium. As the monster jerked forward, the entire rest of the disguise
unravelled
, piece by fleshy piece.
Shrieking, Tom leapt aside as the blade came down with guillotine force. Yet again, he landed in the tiled bath, but this time on top of something moist and rubbery. It was like an anatomist’s dummy – human in outline, but stripped down to muscle and cartilage, bone and organ. It
glistened
vermilion in the dancing firelight. Tom rolled away from it, vomit frothing from his lips. But already the
clunk
of heavy footfalls told him that his assailant was descending the stair. Tom cast around for the blunderbuss, which he’d dropped somewhere. When he found it, it had shed its grape. Frantic, he thrust his hand into his pocket and crammed the remaining handful of ammunition into the muzzle. He swung the weapon round just as the bronze colossus alighted from the bottom step. It was less than three yards away when Tom fired. The kickback was ferocious, the blast enormous. A searing flash filled the room, and the monster was struck full on – with a deafening
clangour
.
It staggered backwards and fell full-length.
But it only lay still for a few moments, after which it climbed slowly back to its feet.
Fresh sweat broke on Tom’s brow. It would not be killed, he
realised
; it
could
not be killed. It was now more horrible than at any time since he’d first seen it: fragments of flesh still adhered to it; its front was mangled, bashed-in, riddled with broken iron. But still it came on, sword in hand.
“Tom lad, out the way!” someone shouted.
Tom looked to his right – and saw Dominic Grubber, who must have been hidden close by. The short but immensely strong
ventsman
was shoving at one of the pillars, which, like so much else in this ancient place, was no longer as sturdy as it had once been. Tom turned and ran, as the pillar, which had already come loose at the ceiling, now broke loose at its base and started to tilt. When it fell, it did so with an echoing dissonance, flattening the bronze monstrosity and burying it in a mass of rubble and masonry that surely would have been the death of any living thing.
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.