Once Upon a Time in the North (8 page)

He swiftly filled the magazine, cursing his carelessness over the pistol, and enjoying the feel of a well-balanced and well-oiled piece of machinery. He felt much better having it in his hands.

"Captain," he said, "this is the warehouse, this one right here?"

"It is."

"Do you know exactly where your cargo is stowed?"

'Yes. All we need to do is open the door."

Lee took a handful of cartridges from the box and dropped them into his pocket, then turned to look back along the quay.

For the gas-gun had resumed its grinding forward movement, and Lee could see now how it was crewed: it looked like one man to drive it, two to fire and reload. The long barrel rose and swung from left to right and back again, before settling on the stern of the schooner. It was a thing to smash down buildings with, a thing to sink a ship, and Lee thought that if they fired it just once it would be the end of this adventure, and the end of him too.

It came closer, and Lee lifted the rifle to his shoulder. It was nearly at the end of the middle warehouse, just opposite the alley between that and the next to last, and Lee's finger tightened on the trigger—

But before anything else happened, there came a thunder of feet and a roar such as Lee had never heard, and out of the alley burst Iorek Byrnison, to hurl the huge weight of himself against the bulk of the gun.

Lee gave a cry of surprise—he couldn't help it.

The gunners cried out in alarm as the wheels and the track skidded and scraped on the stone. Iorek's first smash had swung the front of the gun round so that the barrel was pointing out over the harbor, and the driver desperately hauled at the brake; but then Iorek set his shoulder to the side of the carriage, and heaved and shoved until the two front wheels had rolled over the edge, and the whole gun tilted forward. The gunners were shouting with alarm and struggling to swing the barrel back round, and then Iorek shoved again and the gun went off with a flash of fire and smoke and a deafening bang, sending a shell skipping across the water, right into the side of the quay beside the coal tanker. It exploded with a plume of water, and rock hurled high into the air, scattering the ship's crew and the crane driver. But few noticed them, because the blast of the gun had infuriated Iorek, and now he had his claws under the rear of the carriage, and while the engine roared and the caterpillar tracks screamed on the stone, the bear straightened his back with an immense effort and heaved the whole weapon and its three-man crew into the water with a huge splash. One of the men jumped clear; the other two disappeared with the gun.

Cheers from the ship's crew, a yell of delight from Lee.

The bear dropped to all fours again and sauntered along to join Lee at the schooner.

"Well, I'd hate to see you get angry, York Byrnison," said Lee.

Across the water, the crew of the coal tanker were cautiously inspecting the damage to the wharf. The crane driver was shaking his head at the bosun, who was yelling at him to get back to work, and the driver in charge of the rail trucks was running back from the engine to see what had happened. Even the dredger had stopped work for a minute, but presently the steady chugging resumed.

For the moment, no one was moving among the crowd further down the quay. Lee looked around more carefully. To his right as he faced towards the town loomed the bulk of the warehouse: a three-story building in gray stone, with a row of windows on the top and middle floors. The massive doors were of steel, and opened inwards. Projecting from the center of the wall above the top floor, just under the eaves, was a beam and tackle for lifting goods directly up. The sun was bright now, for the clouds had blown away, and it shone full on the warehouse front from over Lee's left shoulder when he faced down the quay.

Behind him, the Captain was shouting orders, and Lee heard a muffled bang from belowdecks, followed by a coughing throb, which told of the detonator starting the heavy-oil engine. On the foredeck, two sailors were busily removing the cover from the forward hatch, while another man was checking the tackle on a derrick that had been rigged over it on the foremast.

Suddenly Hester said, "Top floor right, Lee."

He swung the rifle up towards the warehouse and saw what she'd seen: a flicker of movement behind the third window in from the end. He kept the rifle trained directly on it, but saw no more movement.

Iorek Byrnison stood beside Lee, glaring down the length of the quay towards the crowd. The Captain and the mate came down to join them.

"Now, Mr. Mate," said Lee, "how you going to move that cargo of yours?"

"It's on trucks," the mate said. "We set it all up ready before they locked us out. It won't take half an hour."

"Right. Captain, tell me this: what's the layout in the warehouse? What do we see when we open the door?"

"The space is fully open. There are columns, I don't know how many, stone columns supporting the floors above. On the ground floor at present there are mostly bundles of furs and skins. My cargo is near the far wall on the left-hand side, stacked ready on trucks."

"These bundles of skins—how high are they stacked? Can I look right across the whole space in there, or are they too high to see over?"

"Too high, I think."

"And what about stairs?"

"In the center at the back."

"And the upper floors?"

"I don't know what—"

"Lee! Top left!" said Hester, and in the same moment Lee caught a flash of sunlight as a window opened.

He swung the rifle up, and that must have put the sharpshooter off, because the one snatched pistol shot went past him and thudded into the deck of the schooner. Lee fired back at once. The window shattered, scattering broken glass down three floors to the ground, but there was no sign of the gunman.

Iorek Byrnison looked up briefly, and then said, "I open the door."

Lee half expected to see him charge and flatten it in one rush, but the bear's behavior was quite different: he touched the steel door several times in different places with a claw, tapping, pressing, touching with the utmost delicacy. He seemed to be listening to the sound it made, or feeling for some quality in the resistance it offered.

Lee and Hester were standing back from the building, at the edge of the quay, from which point he could see all the windows.

"Lee," said Hester quietly, "if that's McConville in there—"

"Ain't no if, Hester. I've known he was in there from the first."

"Mr. Scarsby," said the bear, "shoot a bullet at this spot." He scratched an X at a point near the upper hinge of the right-hand door.

Lee looked up to make sure the gunman at the window was still out of sight, checked back along the quay to see the crowd hanging back still, unwilling to come closer just yet, checked with the Captain that the men were ready.

"Right," he said. "Now this is what we'll do. York Byrnison and I will open the door, and I'll go in first. There's a gunman in there—maybe more than one— and I want to make sure they're not intending any unpleasantness. If you take my advice, Mr. Mate, you and your crew will wait on board and out of sight till you hear from me or York Byrnison that the place is safe."

'You expecting more trouble?"

"Oh, I always expect trouble. York Byrnison, you ready?"

"Ready."

"Here goes."

He lifted the rifle, took aim at the X on the door, and fired. A neat hole appeared in the steel sheet, and that was all; but then Iorek Byrnison reached out a paw and pushed gently, and the entire door fell inwards with a deafening crash.

At once Lee leapt past Iorek and ran into the warehouse, making for the open staircase he could dimly see straight ahead.

And at the same moment a shot blazed out from dead ahead, somewhere in the ranks and rows of stinking bundles. The bullet clipped the shoulder of Lee's coat, feeling like the clutch of a ghost, and then came a cry and a crash from the ship outside. Lee stopped and took cover behind a row of bales. Stupid to rush in like that, he thought: after the bright sun on the quayside, this was almost like night, and his opponent's eyes were already well adjusted.

"Where is he?" came the bear's voice from behind him.

"He fired from dead ahead," said Lee quietly. "But there's at least one other man upstairs. If you take this one, I'll go on up and deal with him."

As he said that, he heard another shot, and another, from above, and a cry of distress and alarm from the ship. Lee and Iorek ran at the same moment—Lee lightly for the stairs, with Hester bounding ahead, and Iorek slow and ponderous for the first two or three steps as he drove against the inertia of his great bulk, but once moving he was unstoppable. Lee, halfway up the open iron staircase, saw bales of fur and skins hurled aside like thistledown, and then came two or three quick shots and a scream of fear, suddenly cut short in a hideous grunt.

More shots from high up. Lee leapt up to the next floor, which was largely empty, with just a few wooden cases resting on pallets near the back wall; but it was much lighter here, with sunlight pouring in through the long line of windows.

And there was no one in sight.

Lee doubled back and made for the next flight of stairs. He couldn't run silently on these bare floors, and he knew that the man up there would hear him coming and have plenty of time to line up a shot towards the top of the stairs. He stopped just below the level of the upper floor, and raised his hat high on the rifle barrel, and at once a shot spun it round and round—a good shot, instant and accurate.

But it told him where the man was shooting from: the far corner, on the right as you looked at the warehouse from the quay. Lee stopped and considered.

What he didn't know was how clear the floor was, whether there were barrels or boxes for the other man to hide behind, or whether he would have a clear shot to the corner.

Nor did he know whether McConville was alone, or whether he had an accomplice who could shoot Lee in the back from the other corner. After all, the window that had opened when Lee was outside was on the left.

He looked at the staircase he was standing on. The steps were open ironwork, about ten feet wide, and they led up towards a landing at the back wall of the warehouse. His best chance was to take it at a run, hope to avoid any bullets, and shoot fast as soon as he could.

"Lee," whispered Hester, "pick me up."

He bent to lift her. She wanted to listen, and the higher she was the better. She sat tensely in his arms, flicking her ears, and then whispered:

"There's two of 'em. One left, one right."

"Just two?" he whispered back.

"There's something in the way—maybe barrels. Use that smokeleaf tin."

He put her down and fished in his waistcoat pocket for the tin he kept his cigarillos in. He tipped the last three out and slipped the tin back, keeping the lid. He'd polished the inside to a bright gloss until it was almost as good as a mirror.

The floor above was a foot or so over his head: heavy pine boards, with an iron flange at the edge and a guardrail around the opening for the stairs.

Moving cautiously up to the next step and keeping his head low, Lee lifted the tin lid up very slowly close to the nearest stanchion of the rail, and tilted it so he saw along the floor and towards the right-hand corner, where the shot had come from. He could see no one, but that was because a row of heavy barrels stood in the way: two rows, in fact, one stacked on top of the other, separated by the pallets the barrels were standing on.

Lee knew well how small a movement would catch a watching eye, and taking infinite pains to move slowly, he turned the lid round to face the other corner. That side was empty, apart from some piece of machinery under a tarpaulin, and Lee could see the gunman clearly, standing behind it and looking over the top, with his rifle pointed just above where Lee was standing. It was not McConville.

The stone columns holding up the roof—sixteen of them, each about two feet in diameter—were equally spaced along the length of the room in two rows, one near the back wall and one near the front, and Lee calculated that if he could reach the column closest to the stairs on the gunman's side, he might be able to shelter behind it while dealing with him; but that still left McConville free to shoot him in the back. This was really a hopeless situation, and he shouldn't have got himself into it.

In fact it was like pretty well every other situation he'd ever been in. And I'm still here, he thought, and Hester twitched her ears. He slipped the smokeleaf lid back into his pocket.

Then from down below there came the loud scraping clang of the big steel door being hauled out of the way, and under cover of the noise, Lee took a good grip of the rifle and launched himself upwards as fast as he could, running at an angle to the top of the steps and left along the floor to the shelter of the nearest column.

His ears were full of noise—shots from right and left, and the echoes from the bare stone walls. He reached the column and pressed himself behind it.

It was the third column from the end on that side. The tarpaulin-covered machinery behind which the gunman was hiding was near the middle of the end wall, and it was a little less high than the head of a man, which meant the shooter had to crouch all the time: not a comfortable position to hold for long. The best way to deal with him, if he'd been alone, would be to wait till he moved, as he'd have to eventually, and pick him off with one shot.