The Providence Rider (37 page)

“This can go more easily for you,” Sirki promised. “I’ve grown to respect you. I can make your death very quick.”

“I’d rather stretch my life out a bit longer.”

“I’m sorry, but that will be im—”

Sirki was interrupted by the noise of the cell door banging open. When the giant looked in that direction to see Zed emerging from the cage Matthew stepped in and struck the torch at the side of his head, but Sirki had already recovered and deflected the torch with his own. Then he whirled to meet Zed with his blade…an instant too late, for Zed’s fist met Sirki’s mouth in a jarring
smack
of flesh and bone and though the knife swung viciously at Zed’s chest the Ga had darted away with admirable agility.

Sirki was caught between Matthew with his torch and Zed with his fists. He slashed first at one and then the other, and both kept their distance. Then Zed plucked up one of the lengths of chain from a chair. Sirki grinned in the flaring light. Blood was on his mouth, and he was minus a diamond as well as a front tooth.

“Ah!” he said. “I do get to kill you, after all.”

Matthew lunged at him with the torch from the right side, aiming at the knife hand. Zed swung the chain and struck Sirki a blow across the left shoulder. Sirki spun toward Matthew and rushed him in an attempt to cancel the weaker threat, but Matthew swept the torch past Sirki’s face to keep him away. Then the chain whipped out again across Sirki’s back, and now the giant in an instant of what might have been panic threw his torch at Zed and followed it with his own huge body and the deadly blade upraised.

Matthew had already seen, in the Cock’a’tail tavern in New York the October before, what Zed could do with a chain. Now Zed stood his ground and lashed the chain out; it curled around the forearm of Sirki’s knife hand, and just that fast Zed used the momentum to swing the giant crashing against the bars of the nearest cage. Sirki did not give up the knife, and grasping the chain with his free hand he hauled Zed toward himself like reeling in a hooked fish.

Zed’s feet slid along the stones. He tried to right himself but the giant’s pull was too strong. The knife waited with what seemed to be eager anticipation.

Then Matthew struck Sirki across the left side of the head with a second chain he’d picked up. The killer’s turban unravelled from the blow. Sirki’s eyes glazed for perhaps two seconds, his knife wavered and in this space of time Zed was upon him.

They grappled for the blade. It was the battle of the giants, brute against brute. Zed smashed Sirki in the face again with a heavy fist. Sirki grasped hold of Zed’s throat with his free hand, an enormous implement of murder, and squeezed hard enough to make the cords stand out. They whirled toward Matthew in their fight and hit him with their shoulders, picking him up off his feet, throwing him to the floor and leaving him breathless in the winds of violence. He was amazed to see Sirki actually lift Zed off the floor with the hand at his throat. Zed hammered at Sirki’s face and head while grasping the knife hand to keep those sawteeth from flesh. They slammed against the opposite wall so hard Matthew thought it would complete the destruction of the castle that the earthquake had begun. From above pieces of stone fell, and drifts of dust. Still the two fought on, Sirki’s fingers digging into Zed’s throat and Zed reshaping the giant’s features with the mallet of his fist.

Zed began to make a gasping, gagging sound, and Matthew saw his blows weakening. Sirki was about to defeat the Ga, an unthinkable proposition. Matthew’s torch had spun away in the collision and lay beyond the fighters. He had to decide what to do, and quickly. Though he was afraid out of his wits he took a running start and leaped upon the giant’s back, at the same time looping the chain around Sirki’s neck and squeezing as if his life depended upon it.

Sirki thrashed wildly but Matthew hung on. He was a rider of a different nature this time, and damned if he’d be thrown. The giant’s hand left Zed’s throat to reach back for Matthew’s hair, but suddenly there was a crunching noise and Zed had attacked the knife hand with ten fingers. He succeeded here where he had failed in their battle on Oyster Island, for Sirki’s knuckles sounded like walnuts being stomped under rough boots. The knife clattered to the stones, but just as quickly Sirki kicked it out of Zed’s reach. Matthew still hung on, as the wounded giant pitched and bucked. Zed hit Sirki so hard in the jaw that the man careened back and nearly broke Matthew’s spine against the wall. Then Matthew slithered off, his breath and strength gone, and through a red haze he saw Zed take his place by leaping upon Sirki’s back. The Ga grasped the chain and began to strangle the giant, the muscles in his forearms strained and quivering. Sirki fought back by slamming Zed continually against the wall with blows that Matthew thought must be near breaking bones, yet Zed would not be thrown off nor denied his moment of revenge.

The chain sunk into the flesh of Sirki’s throat. The giant’s eyes bulged and blood streamed from his nostrils. His mouth opened in a hideous gasp, and Matthew saw that the second diamond-studded tooth had been knocked out.

Still Sirki fought. Still Zed clung to his back and choked him with the chain, which had now nearly disappeared. Matthew thought with horror that in another moment Sirki’s head was going to be cleaved off by the chain. Sweat stood out in beads on the faces of both men, and then Sirki’s eyes began to bleed.

Still Sirki crashed Zed against the wall, though the fury was weaker. Still the muscles of the Ga’s arms worked. Sirki began to emit a high keening sound, an eerie gasping for departing life itself. His eyes were wide and wild and as red as the sun going down.

Then Sirki’s legs buckled and he fell to his knees. Suddenly he was not so gigantic. Zed stayed astride him. The Ga’s teeth were gritted, his huge shoulders thrust forward, his body trembling with the effort of delivering death to one who would not accept it. Sirki made an effort to stand. He got one foot planted and, incredibly, began to lift himself and Zed off the floor. But the pressure from Zed’s hands and the chain never faltered, and suddenly Sirki’s face took on a waxen appearance, the eyes pools of blood, and from his gasping mouth a dark and swollen tongue emerged. It quivered rapidly, like the tail of a rattlesnake.

Something crunched inside Sirki’s neck. The head hung at an angle, as Gentry’s had upon being sawed off at the dinner table. The giant’s body shivered, as if feeling the chill of the grave. Matthew saw that the hideous eyes were sightless. At last Sirki’s spirit seemed to flee the body, for the keening gasp ceased on a broken note to go along with the broken neck.

Zed let go of the chain, which was buried somewhere in there. He climbed off Sirki’s back. For a moment the giant remained on his knees, obstinant far beyond the end. Then the corpse pitched forward and the stone floor added a cruel smashing to the twisted face.

Zed crumpled to his own knees and released a shuddered moan. He was all used up.

But the stone dust was falling now in greater volume. Matthew heard a dozen cracking noises from above. Suddenly a piece of stone the size of Sirki’s dead body crashed down on the other side of the dungeon, followed by smaller bits of rubble.

“We have to get out!” Matthew shouted, and standing up he grasped hold of one of the Ga’s arms to pull him to his feet, a task he could accomplish only in his most boastful dreams.

Language barrier or not, Zed fully understood. He nodded. Something on the floor nearby caught his attention and he scooped it up before Matthew could see what it was. Then, getting up on his own power, he took Matthew by the back of his collar and pulled him into another corridor at the far right of the room. It was dark in here and Matthew could see nothing. In a few seconds Zed stopped. There was the noise of a bolt slamming back. Zed pushed forward. A heavy door opened into gray morning light. The garden lay before them, and a pathway toward the front of the castle. Now Matthew took the lead, urging Zed to follow.

Matthew fully expected Minx to be gone, but she was still waiting at the wagon and tending her wounds with the bloody cloth. “Did you enjoy your wanderings?” she snapped at him, though there was some relief in her voice. “You damned fool!” she added, and then she took stock of the Ga. “Who is
this
?”

“My new bodyguard,” said Matthew.

Minx used the whip to spur the team into motion. As they took off at a gallop along the road to the harbor, there came a noise like the discordant shrieking of a chorus of demons. Matthew and Zed looked back to see a shimmer of dust rising up around Castle Fell. Suddenly part of the cliff itself broke away, and the entire castle tilted toward the sea. The cobra head of one turret toppled, then a second and a third. Pieces of red slate flew like gulls. Every arched window that had not already broken shattered in an instant. With a tremendous, ungodly grinding of catastrophic forces fully half the castle tore away from its own tortured stones and pitched downward into the waves, leaving furniture hanging from rooms and splintered stairways leading to no destination but the somber sky.

“My God,” Matthew whispered.

Zed gave a rough grunt that might have been accord.

Minx Cutter had never looked back. “To Hell with all of ’em,” she said, and she lashed the team for greater speed.

Matthew realized that miracles did happen. The
Nightflyer
, as beautiful a ship as he had ever seen, was still docked. Minx drove the wagon nearly up to the gangplank. Any harbormaster either had not arrived here today or had left to see to his family.

“Damn if you people aren’t
prompt
,” Falco sneered from the deck, his voice as booming as any cannon and his twisted cane propped against his right shoulder. “Did you stop to eat your corncakes?”

Minx went up the plank first, followed by the Ga and then Matthew. There were a few men hauling lines and working on deck, but not nearly the crew that had brought them over. “I rounded up twenty-six men,” Falco told Matthew, as he lit his clay pipe with a small taper. “Four of those haven’t arrived, and three others decided they weren’t going to leave their wives and children after that damn tremble started. I said to bring them all along, but they couldn’t get their belongings together fast enough to suit me. They may show up yet, but so far we’ve got a crew of nineteen men on a ship that operates with forty. That means you, the Ga, and the bleeding lady will have to
work
.” He frowned at Minx through a pall of smoke. “What the hell did you get into? A knife fight?”

Minx just laughed as if this were the funniest thing she’d ever heard, and her laughter rang out across the ship like church bells. Then she winced and gave a very unladylike curse, because her face hurt like hell.

“I do have someone on board who can sew stitches,” said the captain. “Myself.”

“Matthew!”

He recognized that voice, all right.

Berry had emerged from the doorway that led below. She was wearing a gray cloak over the crab-stained sleeping gown. Her feet were bare and dirty. Her hair was tangled, her eyes swollen from sleepless worry. She looked a mess. She crossed the deck toward the new arrivals, and she looked hopefully and expectantly at Matthew. She started to reach for him, but something about his posture and attitude stopped the gesture.

“You can thank Miss Grigsby,” said Falco, “for our still being docked. She said you would come, no matter what. She believes in you, Mr. Corbett. More than I
do
, it seems, because as you can see we have two longboats tied up ready to row us out of the harbor. Lucky for you, she’s very persuasive.”

“Yes,” Matthew said. “Lucky for me.”

He smiled at her then, for he felt his heart open and the sunlight pour into it, and Berry poured herself into his arms.

He felt her heart beating, hard and fast. He crushed her to himself. Their shadows became one on the deck’s plankings. They had shared so much already, for better
and
for worse. Even though Berry was dirty and wretched in her current state, Matthew couldn’t help but think she was so very beautiful, and that she always to him smelled of the grass of summer, of cinnamon and the perfume of a wildflower meadow, and…

Life
.

Then he caught himself, short of falling.

“Listen to me,” he said, and he saw his tone of voice make her blue eyes blaze. “You’ve caused me no end of trouble! Why you left that inn, I have no idea! And traipsing about at night? Do you know what might’ve happened to you? My God, girl! I ought to put you over my knee like the child you are and give you a good—”

A hand with fearsome strength closed upon the back of his neck, and suddenly he was looking into a pair of deepset black eyes in a solemn, bearded African face decorated with tribal scars that appeared to spell out a Z, an E and a D.

“Mr. Corbett,” Berry said frostily, “I think you should mind your manner of speech while on this voyage. And please correct your lack of respect, starting this instant.”

He might have answered, if his throat had been in working order. It seemed his new bodyguard had his own ideas about who commanded his loyalty.

“Quarrels must wait for the open sea,” the captain said, with a puff of smoke that drifted into Matthew’s face. “Right now we’ve got to get this ship out of here. I don’t want to think what might be coming down that road at any moment. So…my new additions to the crew…you will join the men already in those longboats. You will take orders from Mr. Spedder, my first mate. I expect you to pull hard and steady. With just the two boats, we’ll be lucky to get out of this cove in another hour.” He spoke to Zed in their common tongue. At once Zed released Matthew and was first down the gangplank.

“Ladies,” said Falco, “I mean you as well. Get to it!”

As Matthew walked between Berry and Minx on their way to the longboats tied up at the bow, he realized that before they reached New York—if, pray to God, they ever did—they were going to know every inch of the
Nightflyer
, have worked their fingers to the bone and have an affair of both love and hate with every sail and every mast. Their affairs of love and hate were about to begin, commencing with the longboat’s oars and the first mate’s roar of “Row! Row! Row!” amplified through a tin voice-horn.

The captain was correct in his judgement of how much time the two longboats and their crews would need to row the
Nightflyer
out of the cove into tide and wind. It took a little over one hour, after which Matthew thought his shoulders were near falling off and Berry would have cried if that might have done any good, but tears would not move sailing ships. They returned to the
Nightflyer
by means of rope ladders lowered over the side, and the longboats were cast off to drift. Matthew, Berry, Minx and Zed were instantly put to work on tasks involving the hoisting of sails and the tying down of ropes, of which there seemed to be hundreds aboard ship and all excess to be coiled neatly and out of the way.

It was going to be pure hell, Matthew realized, and no one this trip would be a passenger save perhaps Saffron, her child, two other women of middle age, an elderly woman and three more children who were aboard.

Falco aimed the
Nightflye
r to the northwest. The sails filled and swept them along. The sun had broken through the gray morning clouds and painted the blue sea with gilded caps. There were over a dozen other smaller boats—native craft—in the water around Pendulum Island, embarked from the local harbor that was somewhere in the vicinity of Templeton. They were circling about, their masters and passengers waiting to see if they would have an island to return to. When Matthew stood at the railing and looked back at the island he could see the haze of dust rising in the area where Castle Fell had stood, and fires still burning in the wreckage of the fort and the ravaged woods. For the most part, though, the quake seemed to have ended.

He thought of what Sirki had said, in his last moments of life.
He asked me to tell
you that he will not be very much damaged by this little incident
.

It seemed to Matthew that that was the professor’s pride talking. Great damage had been done to the professor’s schemes and enterprises. His refuge half-destroyed, the gunpowder works likely fully destroyed, the storehouse of Cymbeline gone up, his trusted Sirki gone down, the brothers Thacker finished off, the remains of Fell’s weapons man and finances expert consumed by an octopus, and…of Aria Chillany? Matthew hadn’t asked Minx about that yet, but it was obvious who had survived that bitter confrontation.

But what of Augustus Pons, Toy, Cesar Sabroso and Mother Deare? The problem-solver had no clue. Either they had survived, or they had not. He expected they had. Especially Mother Deare, who seemed to know a great deal about survival.

And Pretty Girl Who Sits Alone. Gone dreaming in her blue silence, which hurt Matthew’s heart but made him realize he could not be the champion for everyone, and he could not make life-or-death decisions for them either.

The sun lay heavy upon him. He was tired, near exhaustion. Finding a hammock below deck and falling into a peaceful sleep would be his idea of paradise right now, but until Captain Falco said he could leave the deck here he stayed.

The
Nightflyer
had been out of harbor for nearly an hour, and Matthew staggering around doing whatever task he was ordered to do by the first mate, when the very same short, thickly-set bulldog of a man hollered to him over the noise of wind and spray, “You there! Deadwood! Captain wants you!
Now!
” He hooked a dirty thumb toward the upper deck where the helmsman steered the ship. Falco stood at the stern viewing something behind them through a spyglass.

On climbing up the set of steps to reach that exalted poop deck, Matthew saw immediately what was the captain’s object of attention. A three-masted ship, sails spread, was at their back maybe a mile or so distant.

“That’s Grayson Hardwick’s command,” said Falco, with the pipe gripped between his teeth. “Mr. Hardwick is one of the professor’s best…shall we say…providers. His sloop carries twelve guns. Mr. Landsing!” He was addressing the helmsman, a fair-haired native lad. “Course change twelve degrees port.”

“Twelve degrees port! Aye, sir!”

“They’re after us?” Matthew asked.

“You,” said Falco, “win the prize.” He turned toward the first mate, who had followed Matthew up. He said quietly, with the tone of full and calm authority. “Full sails, Mr. Spedder. Everything we’ve got and more. And when you deliver the orders, do remember that our lives may depend on three extra knots.”

Spedder hollered at the crew in a voice hard enough to shred the bark off a tree, and at once the experienced crew went to work raising whatever sails were not already catching wind.

“Shall I help?” Matthew asked.

“Stay put. I don’t want green hands tangling ropes right now.” Falco put the spyglass to his eye again. “That little bitch is coming on,” he said. “Going to be close enough for an aimed shot in a couple of hours. But my
Nightflyer
’s fast too, when she needs to be. We’ll just wait and see.” He turned to watch the progress of his men aloft in the shrouds, and spotting some hesitation he did not like he leaned forward on his cane and shouted, “To the task, ladies! Get that royal up!”

The morning moved on. Water was provided to the crew, and bits of limes to chew on. Falco allowed Berry to join Matthew at the poop deck’s railing, watching Hardwick’s armed ship close the gap. Every so often Falco ordered the helmsman to change course a few degrees, and he monitored the wind by watching the smoke of his pipe. The sails held full and steady, and as the
Nightflyer
hissed through the dark blue waves flying fish leaped before the bow.

Berry voiced the question that had been poised like a swordpoint in Matthew’s mind. “Is
he
on that ship?”

“I don’t know.”

“If he’s not dead…he won’t let you go that easily.”

“He’s
not
dead,” Matthew said. “And yes, you’re perfectly correct.” His eyes narrowed against the glare, he watched the vessel coming on with a mixture of dread and fascination. Dread that he should be the cause of the
Nightflyer
being blown out of the water, and fascination that of all the people in this world he alone might now be the prime object of Professor Fell’s cold and calculating wrath.

“He knows you must be here, doesn’t he?”

“Oh, yes.” Matthew was sure of it. When Sirki had not returned with some bleeding part of Matthew, the professor had to realize his giant had been vanquished. “He knows.”

Captain Falco watched the sails, his amber eyes taking in every detail. Then he turned to Matthew and Berry. “I assume you two are very tired.”

“Very,” Matthew answered.

Falco nodded. “You can sleep when you’re dead. Which I don’t intend to be, this day. Mr. Spedder!” The first mate came over. “Send a man aloft to tighten the lower right edge of the topgallant. I don’t want any luff in that sail. Then pick five men, and make sure the Ga is among them. Pass out every axe, saw and cutting tool we have. I want the cabins cleared of all heavy furniture. The beds, the dressers, the chairs and washstands…everything over the side. The doors too. Start with my cabin.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Oh…Miss Grigsby and Mr. Corbett will be joining that work detail. Go along with you, children!”

Thus began a hideous afternoon, but one with no uncertain purpose. Axes fell, saws worked and hammers knocked things to pieces small enough to be carted up to the deck and thrown over. Minx Cutter joined the workers, as did Saffron who had given her baby to the elderly woman to watch over. Saffron had tended to Minx’s wounds as best she could, washing them and wrapping a cloth bandage around the deeper of the two, the forehead cut. But Minx was sullen and silent, and Matthew made sure to stay out of her way. It appeared to him that killing a woman was not to her liking either, and possibly the spirit of Nathan Spade still did not rest easily in her memory.

Starting with the captain’s cabin, one cabin after another was cleared of its furniture. Whether they had much of an impact on the ship’s speed was hard to say, but Matthew noted in the late afternoon as he helped pitch another bedframe over that Hardwick’s craft had not gained anymore between them but was holding steady.

As the sun was sliding down and deep violet began to paint the eastern sky, the job had been finished. Everything possible had been broken apart and cast off, even the doors. The
Nightflyer
was now a creature of sails and hull with fewer innards. Would it be enough? Even Captain Falco seemed not to know.

But as the darkness descended, there came a flash of fire and a concussion from the direction of Hardwick’s cannons. A volley had been sent flying. Without waiting for an invitation, Matthew, Berry and Minx climbed up to the poop deck and there stood the captain at the stern railing peering again through his spyglass.

“The balls troubled fish, nothing else,” said Falco, who himself sounded weary onto collapse. It was possible only the cane was holding him up. “But they’re reloading.”

A second volley was fired. Thunder rolled across the sea. Six geysers of water shot up two hundred yards from the
Nightflyer
’s wake.