Medi-Evil 3 (27 page)

 
“Jo-Joshua!” the boy gibbered. “Joshua! Have you … have seen it?”

 
Bytes grabbed him by the shirt lapels. “Miserable little shit!” he hissed. “What are you doing sneaking around?”

 
“Did you see it?”

 
“Of course I saw it.”

 
“What in the name of God
… ?”

 
“What does it bloody
matter!
”

 
A wild shouting erupted from further up the main passage.

 
“The … the others!”
Tom stammered. “It’s found the others!” The shouting continued, and there was a
crash
of breaking furniture. “Joshua, we have to help them!”

 
Bytes nodded thoughtfully.
Then head-butted the boy between the eyes, before gripping him around the throat and throwing an almighty punch.
The smack of fist on bone would have echoed through the derelict passages had it not been for the cacophony of battle already raging.

 
Bytes wasted no more time; he snatched up as many urns as he could – it was gratifying to hear the coins inside them clinking – and scrambled back down the main entry. After the dankness of the underground lair, the fresh air was invigorating; the sunlight caused him to shield his eyes. He placed the urns down and set off back, this time collecting an armful from the entry itself. These he also placed outside. He now had nine in total. Surely he could get more? –
but
suddenly the roars and screams inside the mound subsided. There was an uncanny silence, until a haughty voice said: “Do my eyes deceive me?”

 
Bytes twirled around, and saw that pious dandy Lieutenant
Silverwell
seated on his horse, one hand at the hilt of his straight-bladed infantry sword.

 
“Aren’t you under orders at this moment?”
Silverwell
asked in an incredulous tone.

 
“Sir, I … “

 
Two more horses appeared through the trees. They were drawing the supplies wagon. Sergeant
Kilgariff
was at the reins.

 
“What the bloody hell, Bytes!”
Kilgariff
shouted, jumping down. He’d buttoned up his blue tunic, and was now fixing his crimson sash. “The entire exercise has been delayed. Every crew’s waiting on you.”

 
“The exercise has been delayed, gun commander,”
Silverwell
said, “
because
this fellow here, and presumably the rest of your wretches, have been pillaging.”

 
“Mr.
Silverwell
, sir … it’s not how it looks,” Bytes stammered. But he knew the game was up. He’d been caught in the act, and no amount of excuse-making would save him.

 
Silverwell
swung down from the saddle. He took another long look at Bytes,
then
glanced at the urns. “Are these items of contraband?” he asked. “Or are they not? And look me in the eye when you answer, fellow. I can tell a liar from fifty paces.”

 
“Nobody owns them,” Bytes said.

 
Silverwell
kicked at the nearest urn and it shattered, disgorging another heap of coins. Full daylight provided the final proof that they were gold. No matter how many millennia they’d been buried, they hadn’t tarnished in the least.

 
Silverwell
nodded. “Your crimes grow by the minute.”

 
He was about to say more when there came a renewed shrieking from inside the mound, accompanied by a roar of exploding masonry.
Silverwell
and
Kilgariff
gazed at the entrance in astonishment.

 
“What in the name of Heaven …?”
Silverwell
said.

 
Bytes clamped his mouth shut. Suddenly there was nothing he desired more than that they should both go inside to investigate.

 
“Is this robbery still in progress?”
Silverwell
asked, sounding amazed.

 
Bytes refused to answer.

 
“Christ’s sake, man, what’s happening here?”
Kilgariff
barked at him.

 
“Gun commander, put this man under arrest and keep him here,”
Silverwell
said, moving to the entrance.

 
This surprised Bytes a little. A certain breed of officer – and Richard
Silverwell
was one – were rarely willing to put themselves in the front line. But of course the alternative would be holding Bytes by himself, and a man facing charges of desertion, looting and maybe mutiny could be capable of desperate actions.
Silverwell
was taking what he considered the safer option. Sword drawn, he advanced cautiously into the darkness.

 
“Double up, man!”
Kilgariff
bellowed. “Stand to attention!”

 
Bytes went rigid as a post, but now kept his right hand behind his back. Slowly, he thumbed open the lock-knife concealed there.

 
“Double up, I said! You slovenly bloody ox!”

 
“There’s a fortune in those pots, sergeant …”

 
“No talking on parade!”

 
“You poor bloody fool.”

 
The muscles in
Kilgariff’s
bull-neck visibly tightened. He took a step forward and leaned into
Bytes’s
personal space until they were nose to nose – which of course was exactly what Bytes wanted.

 
The first knife-blow caught
Kilgariff
in the abdomen, the second in the solar plexus – this one ripped upwards several inches. The third was in the ribs, the fourth across the throat as
Kilgariff
sank to his knees, severing both his windpipe and his jugular vein. As
Kilgariff
lay in the grass, his life pulsing out in ruby fountains, Bytes hunkered down and peered straight into his ashen face.

 
“Believe it or not, sergeant,” he said, “I’ve just done you a
favour
. You can’t imagine the fate awaiting Lieutenant
Silverwell
.”

*

A native of
Henworth
village in the Forest of Arden, Tom Caxton had been forced to leave home with his mother and his sister when he was five years old.

 
His father, a land-
labourer
in the service of Lord Rayne, had died from influenza that year, and the rest of the
family were
subsequently turned off His Lordship’s land because they were no longer deemed useful. Tom’s mother took them to Coventry, where she and his sister found employment in a blacking factory. It was around this time that, Tom, who was too weak and ill to perform manual
labour
, was sent to the charity school run by the
Macphersons
, a missionary couple from Edinburgh. There were no fees required, but he only remained in their care for three more years at which point his mother died from an infected cut. By this time Tom’s sister had taken up with a fellow worker, a drunken sot who
brutalised
her at every turn, and occasionally
brutalised
Tom as well. Tom’s sister had also taken to drink, but still retained a modicum of decency, and, on her mother’s death, she gave Tom a knapsack filled with food, and three shillings that she’d been saving up, so that he could find his way in the world. It was a bitter winter, and Tom only found his way as far as the workhouse, where he was treated for frostbite and exposure, the cost of which he had to meet himself with his three shillings. After that he was dispatched to work on a treadmill, but this was worse slavery than even his father had found on the muddy furrows of Lord Rayne’s estate, and, after one thrashing too many, he fled the parish. Destitute, he wandered as far as Birmingham, where, in a hellish fog of fumes from the furnaces and soot from the factories, he came upon a recruitment officer for the Royal Artillery, who was touring the working districts in an attempt to replenish his regiment’s ranks, which had been thinned by the wars against Napoleon. Dazed with hunger, Tom signed up there and then – writing his own name rather than a simple X, which impressed the officer no end. That night – for the first time in he didn’t know how long – Tom slept under clean sheets, on a proper mattress. He even had warm food in his belly and clean water to drink. It was the closes thing to luxury he could remember.
No matter that the next morning he awoke in a draughty barrack tent, to the sound of a bugle, horses neighing and brutal shouting …

 
His eyes snapped open again, and for a short while he was too
agonised
and confused to understand where he was or what had happened. Slowly the dank underground passage swam into view, the earthen smell of the underground filled his quivering nostrils – and it all came back.

 
To be clouted unconscious was not a new experience for Tom, but he was still a little groggy and the other events were enough to set his mind teetering. Only with great difficulty did he get back to his feet.

 
The bronze monstrosity had been on the verge of descending into the derelict bath, when it had heard his colleagues calling. This had drawn it away. Only when Tom had heard the shouts and screams as it engaged them, had he felt safe enough to climb up the steps. He hadn’t had sufficient pluck to join the fray. Instead, he’d tried to escape, scrambling through doorway after doorway, tearing through veils of webbing, blundering into furniture that simply disintegrated on contact. By pure accident, he’d come upon another figure cowering in the dark. Only the mingled stenches of human sweat and burned powder had convinced him that it was one of his own. He’d crept forward to find that it was Joshua
Bytes,
and – nothing else after that made sense.

 
His head spinning, blood dripping from the end of his broken nose, Tom stumbled back towards the light, rounding a corner into what he assumed was the main passage – and again he almost collided with someone.

 
“God’s blood!”
came
a whip-crack shout. A steel sword-tip appeared at Tom’s throat.

 
“Lieutenant
Silverwell
, I … please sir …”

 
“Young Caxton, is it?”

 
Tom could still hear a terrifying racket from close by – things were being broken, in fact shattered, as if demolition charges were going off.

 
“Sir, there’s a … devil in bronze,” he stuttered.

 
“What are you talking about, boy?”

 
“It’s all a terrible accident, but this thing …”

 
“There’s devilry afoot here, for sure! What have you swine been up to?”
 

 
“This awful thing …”

 
“You could swing for this, Caxton!”

 
Then there was a rasping breath and a wild stumble of footsteps. Tom screamed and backed away.
Silverwell
whirled around – just in time for a staggering form to flop out of the darkness and land upon him. It was Gunner
Alker
, but in a shape that would have been more at home on the corpse-strewn field at Waterloo. His upper body was drenched with blood, his face battered to ruin, the left cheek-bone and eye socket so badly broken that the eyeball hung onto his cheek by threads of tissue. From his anguished gasps, there was still life in him, but he now sank to his knees, tongue dangling from a mouth that hung unnaturally wide thanks to a shattered lower jaw.
Alker
tried to form words, but failed. He slipped down and lay still on the floor.

 
“God’s blood,”
Silverwell
said again. “God’s blasted blood!” He moved forward, sword brandished.

 
“Sir!”
Tom pleaded.

 
“Get to me, lad! Damn your eyes!”

 
Tom followed, but at a distance of several yards. They reached the T-junction and turned right. Tom had already guessed that the noise emanated from the statue room. And when they reached the entrance to
it
there was just enough light to reveal what was happening in there. Dominic Grubber, his cheeks glistening with tears, leapt from one sculpted figure to another, using them as shields, while his bronze tormentor stalked him around the room, assailing each one with its weighted
sceptre
, smashing them apart.