Blaylock, James P - Langdon St Ives 02 (10 page)

 
          
 
"Perhaps the roar of the falls . .
.," said Hasbro at St. Ives's back. But the rest of his words
was
lost in the watery tumult as the two men hurried up the
steepening hill, keeping to the edge of the trail and the deep shadows of the
steep rocky cliffs.

 
          
 
St. Ives patted his coat, feeling beneath it
the hard foreign outline of his revolver. He realized that he was cold, almost
numbed, but that the cold wasn't only a result of the wet arctic air. He was
struck with the overwhelming feeling that he was replaying his most common and
fearful nightmare, and the misty water of the falls seemed to him suddenly to
be the rain out of a
London
sky. He could hear in the echoing crash the sound of horse's hooves on
paving stones and the crack of pistols fired in deadly haste.

 
          
 
The revolver in his waistband suddenly was
almost repulsive to him, as if it were a poisonous reptile and not a thing built
of brass and steel. The notion of shooting it at any living human being seemed
both an utter impossibility and an utter necessity. His faith in the rational
and the logical had been replaced by a mass of writhing contradictions and
half-understood notions of revenge and salvation that were as confused as the
unfathomable roar of the maelstrom in the chasm.

 
          
 
There was a shout behind him. A crack like a
pistol shot followed, and St. Ives was pushed from behind. He rolled against a
carriage-sized boulder, throwing his hands over his head as a hail of stones
showered down around him, and an enormous rock, big as a cartwheel, bounded
over his head, soaring away into the misty depths of the abyss.

 
          
 
He pushed himself to his knees, feeling
Hasbro's grip on

 
          
 
his
elbow, and he
peered up into the shadowy gloom above. There, leaping from perch to rocky
perch, was a man with wild hair and beard—Hargreaves, there could be little
doubt. Hasbro drew his revolver, steadied his forearm along the top of a rock,
and fired twice at the retreating figure. His bullets pinged off rocks twenty
feet short of their mark, but the effect on the anarchist was startling—as if
he had been turned suddenly into a mountain sheep. He disappeared on the
instant, hidden by boulders.

 
          
 
St. Ives forced himself to his feet, pressing
himself against the stony wall of the path. Hasbro tapped his shoulder and
gestured first at himself and then at the mountainside. St. Ives nodded as his
friend angled away up a rocky defile, climbing slowly and solidly upward. He
watched Hasbro disappear among the granite boulders, and for a moment he felt
the urge to sit down right there in the dirt and wait for him.

 
          
 
He couldn't do that, though. There was too
much at stake. And there was
Alice
to think of. Always there was
Alice
to think of. If revenge was the compelling
motive for him now, so what? He had to call upon something to move him up the
path; it might as well be raw hatred.

 
          
 
He sidled along carefully, grimly imagining
himself following the course of the rock that had plummeted over his head
moments ago. Icy dirt crunched underfoot, and the hillside opened up briefly on
his right to reveal a wide, steep depression in the rock—a sort of conical hole
at the bottom of which lay a black, silent tarn. The water of the tarn brimmed
with reflected stars that were washed with the blue-red light of the aurora. It
was a scene of unearthly beauty, and it reminded him of the alluring darkness
of pure sleep.

 
          
 
Abruptly he jerked himself away and climbed
farther up the trail, rounding a sharp bend. He could see high above him the
mouth of the smoking crater. Perched on the rim and hauling on the coils of a
mechanical bladder was the venomous Dr. Narbondo, the steamy reek of boiling
mud swirling about his head and shoulders. Hargreaves capered like a lunatic
beside him, dancing from one foot to the other like a man treading on hot
pavement.

 
          
 
They were too distant to shoot at, but St.
Ives compelled himself to take the pistol out of his waistband anyway. Calmly
and with a will, he began to sing "God Save the Queen" in a low
voice. It didn't matter what song—what he needed was a melody and a set of
verses with which to sweep his mind clear of rubble. Narbondo worked furiously,
looking back over his shoulder, scanning the rocky mountainside. There was
nothing for St. Ives to do but step out into the open and rush up the path
toward the two of them. It might be futile, exposing himself like that . . . He
sang louder, but the thought that Har-greaves would simply kill him caused him
to scramble the words, and for a moment he considered going back down to where
Hasbro had cut off into the rocks, maybe following his friend's trail. But that
would be a retreat, and he couldn't allow that.

 
          
 
He cocked his pistol and stepped forward in a
crouch. Hargreaves grappled now with a carpetbag, pulling out unidentifiable
bits and pieces of mechanical debris, which he fumbled with, trying to assemble
them. His curses reached St. Ives on the wind. Narbondo raged beside him,
turning once again to survey the rocks behind and below him. He looked straight
down into St. Ives's face. Despite the distance, his expression was clear in
the moonlight; hatred and fear and passion played across his features, and for
a moment he stood stock-still, as if he had seen his fate standing there below
him.

 
          
 
A pistol shot rang out, echoing away somewhere
among the rocks, and Narbondo spun half around, grabbing his shoulder and
shouting a curse. He worked his arm up and down as if testing it, and then
pushed Hargreaves aside, tearing at the contents of the bag himself and
shouting orders. Hargreaves immediately disappeared behind a tumble of rocks,
and St. Ives scrambled for cover as the anarchist popped up almost at once to
shoot wildly down at him. Another shot followed close on, and for an instant
St. Ives saw Hasbro leaping across a granite slope, only to disappear again
when Hargreaves spun around and fired at him.

 
          
 
St. Ives stood and darted up the path,
breathing heavily in the thin air. There was the sound of another gunshot just
as a spatter of granite chips sprayed into his face, nearly blinding him. He
blinked and spit, creeping along until he could see Hargreaves above him,
looking down. Hargreaves dropped like a stone, then stood up at once and fired
again twice, the bullets pinging off the rocks beside St. Ives's head.

 
          
 
St. Ives yanked himself down, the smell of
powdered granite in his nose. He smiled grimly, wiping at his watering eyes,
the sudden danger surging over him like a sea wave, washing away his muddled
doubts. He stood up to draw Hargreaves's fire, ducking immediately and hearing
two shots, one after another, from Hargreaves and Hasbro both. He stood again,
resting his forearm across the cold stone and setting up to fire carefully now.
Hargreaves set out at a run, down and across the rocks. But he was too far away
and moving too
fast,
and St. Ives was no kind of
marksman. He waited too long, and his man again disappeared.

 
          
 
St. Ives stepped at once out onto the path,
half expecting a bullet and half expecting Hasbro to provide covering fire.
There sounded two more shots, from roughly the sarne direction, but St. Ives
forced himself to ignore them, intent now on Narbondo, who worked madly,
casting futile glances down at him and bellowing for Hargreaves, the roar of
the falls drowning his words before they reached St. Ives, who ran straight up
the path, leveling his pistol. He hadn't bothered to reload after the last
couple of shots, but somehow it didn't matter to him. What he wanted now was to
put his hands on Narbondo's throat. He had failed once before; he wouldn't fail
again.

 
          
 
There was a warning shout, though—Hasbro's
voice—and St. Ives turned to see Hargreaves scrambling toward him, ignoring
Hasbro, who stood like a statue, his pistol raised and pointed at Hargreaves's
back. Narbondo was oblivious to them all, as if he would cheerfully die rather
than give up his loathsome dream. He peered suddenly skyward, though, his forearm
thrown across his brow as if to shade his eyes from moonlight. St. Ives
followed Narbondo's gaze, and there, below the moon, dropping past the pale
blue wash of the aurora, drifted the dark ovoid silhouette of a descending
dirigible.

 
          
 
St. Ives bolted forward, as if the sight of it
had brought the world to him once again, had reminded him that he wasn't a
solitary man facing a solitary- villain, but that there was such a thing as
duty and honor . . . He heard the crack of Hargreaves's pistol almost at the
same time that the bullet struck him in the shoulder. He cried out and dropped
to his knees, his revolver spinning away into the void on the opposite side of
the path as he scuttled like a crab down again into the shelter of the rocks.

 
          
 
A shriek followed, and St. Ives looked up to
see Hargreaves dancing next to Narbondo now, the two of them shouting and
cursing. Hasbro stepped determinedly toward them as Narbondo furiously worked a
mechanical detonator. It was too late for him.
though
,
and he knew it. He hadn't had enough time. St. Ives was full of something like
happiness, although it was cold and cheerless, and he stepped out onto the path
again, gripping his bleeding shoulder.

 
          
 
Hargreaves raised his hand to shoot at Hasbro.
But there was no sound at all.
even
though the man
continued to pull the trigger. He pitched the gun away from him in disgust,
picking up the carpetbag as if he would fling it into Hasbro's face. He turned
with it, though, and slammed Narbondo in the back, roaring nonsense at him.
Hasbro stood still twenty feet below them, his arm upraised, and shot
Hargreaves carefully and steadily.

 
          
 
The anarchist lurched round, teetered for a
moment on the edge of the crater, and then toppled ofT, disappearing into the
mouth of the volcano as Narbondo made one last futile grab at the bag clutched
in Hargreaves's flailing hand.

 
          
 
There was an instant when no one
moved,
all of them waiting, and then a thunderous explosion
that rocked the mountainside—the volatile contents of the bag having been
detonated by the fires of
Mount
Hjarstaad
. The three men pitched to the ground as the
explosion echoed away, replaced by the low roar of rocks tumbling toward the
plain below. Hasbro was up at once, stepping toward the crater's edge, leveling
his pistol at Narbondo, who stood still now, hangdog, his head bowed like that
of a man defeated at the very moment of success. He raised his hands in
resignation.

 
          
 
Then, without so much as a backward glance, he
bolted down the footpath toward St. Ives, gathering momentum, running headlong
at the surprised scientist. Hasbro spun around and tracked him with the pistol.

 
          
 
"Shoot!" St. Ives shouted, but a
shot was out of the question unless he himself backed away, out of the line of
fire. He scrambled back down the path toward the bend in the trail as Narbondo
leaped along in great springing strides behind him, wild to escape, his face
contorted now with fear and wonderment as he hurtled uncontrollably toward St.
Ives. The scientist stopped to face him, but saw at once that Narbondo would
run him down like an express train.

 
          
 
St. Ives turned and hurried downward, hearing
Narbondo's footsteps slamming along and knowing he would be overtaken in
seconds. The path widened just then, but turned sharply at the edge of the
cliff, and St. Ives saw below him the waters of the starlit tarn, deadly still
in the moonlight. In an instant he took it all in—Narbondo was moving too
quickly. He would plummet off the edge of the path where it turned, hurtling
into the abyss below. There was no hope for him.

 
          
 
And good riddance, St. Ives thought. But then,
almost instinctively, he braced himself against two rocks, and as Narbondo
raged past, St. Ives reached out to pull him down. He bulled past like a
runaway express, though, and St. Ives, meaning to grab him by the arm, was
slammed sideways instead, back into the rocks, managing only to knock Narbondo
off-balance. His feet stuttered as he tried to stop himself, and then with a shriek
he catapulted forward, away from the abyss, head over heels, caroming against a
rock and then somersaulting like a circus acrobat across the steep
scree-slippery slope until he plunged into the black waters of the tarn. The
reflection of the moon and stars on the surface of the water
disintegrated,
the bits and pieces dancing wildly. But by the time Hasbro had made his way
down to where St. Ives stood staring into the depths of the pool, the surface
was lapping itself placid once again.