The Difference Engine (42 page)

Chairs clattered as men leapt to their feet. Bartlett shrieked something lost in the noise.

“I want Swing! I must speak to him alone!” As chaos rose, Mallory kicked the empty chair before him into skidding flight, and yanked both pistols from his belt. “Sit down, you bastards!” He leveled his pistols at the audience. “I’ll blow daylight through the first coward that stirs!”

His answer was a fusillade of shots.

“Run!” Brian screeched. He, Tom, and Fraser fled at once.

Chairs splintered, toppling, on either side of Mallory. The audience was shooting at him, ragged popping shots. Mallory leveled both his pistols at Bartlett at her podium, and squeezed the triggers.

Neither gun fired. He had neglected to cock the hammers. The Marquess’s gun seemed to have some kind of nickeled safety-switch.

Someone nearby threw a chair at Mallory; he fended it off, absently, but then something struck him hard in the foot. The blow was sharp enough to numb his leg, and knock him from his stance; he took the opportunity to retreat.

He could not seem to run properly. Perhaps he had been crippled. Bullets sang past him with a nostalgic drone from far Wyoming.

Fraser beckoned at him from the mouth of a side-alley. Mallory ran to him, turned, skidded.

Fraser stepped coolly into the open, raising his copper’s pepperbox in a dueling stance, right arm extended, body turned to present a narrow target, head held keen-eyed and level. He fired twice, and there were screams.

Fraser took Mallory’s arm. “This way!” Mallory’s heart was jumping like a rabbit, and he could not get his foot to work.

He limped down the alley. It ended abruptly. Fraser searched frantically for a crawl-way. Tom was boosting Brian atop a great unsteady heap of cartons.

Mallory stopped beside his brothers, turned, raised both pistols. He glanced down swiftly at his foot. A stray bullet had knocked the heel from his shoe. He looked up an instant later to see half-a-dozen screaming bandits approaching in hot pursuit.

A vast concussion shook the building. Heaps of tinned goods clattered to the floor in a billow of powder-smoke. Mallory gaped.

All six of the wretches lay sprawled and blasted in the alley, as if lightning-struck.

“Ned!” shouted Brian, from atop his heap of cartons. “Get their weapons!” He crouched there on one knee, the Russian pistol gushing smoke from its opened loading-chamber. He loaded a second cartridge of brass and red waxed-paper, as thick as a copper’s baton.

Mallory, ears ringing, lunged forward, then slipped and almost fell headlong in the spreading blood. He grabbed right-handed for support and the Ballester-Molina went off, its bullet whanging from an iron beam overhead. Mallory paused, uncocked it carefully, uncocked the Marquess’s pistol as well, stuck them both into his belt, precious seconds ticking as he dithered.

The alley was awash with blood. The blunderbuss blast of the Russian hand-cannon had lacerated the men hideously. One poor devil was still gurgling as Mallory pried a Victoria carbine from beneath him, its stock dripping red. He struggled with the fellow’s bandolier, but gave that up for another’s wooden-handled Yankee revolver. Something stung his palm as he snatched up the pistol. Mallory looked stupidly at his wounded hand, then at the pistol-butt. There was a corkscrewed bit of hot shrapnel embedded in the wood, a razored thing like a big metal-shaving.

Rifles began to crack from a distance, slugs plowing into the bounty around them with odd crunches and a musical tinkling of glass. “Mallory! This way,” Fraser shouted.

Fraser had uncovered a crevice along the warehouse wall. Mallory turned to sling the carbine and look for Brian, seeing the young artilleryman leap across the alley for another vantage-point.

He followed Fraser into the crevice, grunting and heaving, for several yards along the wall. Bullets began whacking into the brick, before them and behind them, but well above their heads. Ill-aimed shots burst the tin-sheet roof with drum-like metal bangs. Mallory emerged to find Tom working like a demon in an open cul-de-sac, flinging up a barricade of spindle-legged ladies’ vanity-tables. The things lay piled in a white-lacquered heap like dead tropical spiders.

The cracking of rifles, sharper now, made the warehouse a cacophony. From behind them Mallory heard shouts of rage and fear over the dead.

Tom drove a length of iron bedstead into a heap of crates, put his back into it, and toppled the mess with a crash. “How many?” Tom panted.

“Six.”

Tom smiled like a madman. “That’s more than they’ll ever kill of us. Where’s Brian now?”

“I don’t know.” Mallory unslung the carbine, handed it to Tom. Tom took it by the barrel and held it at arm’s-length, surprised by its caking of gore.

Fraser, maintaining close watch at the crevice, fired his pepperbox. There was an awful, girlish scream and a thrashing, like a poisoned rat in a wall.

Bullets began to plunge into the rubble around them with somewhat greater accuracy, attracted by the scream. A thumb-sized conical slug fell from nowhere at Mallory’s feet and spun like a top on the floor-boards.

Fraser tapped his shoulder. Mallory turned. Fraser had tugged the mask from his face; his eyes glittered and stubble showed black on his pale chin. “How now, Dr. Mallory? What new inspired maneuver?”

“That might well have worked, you know,” Mallory protested. “She might have taken us straight to Swing if she’d believed me. There’s no accounting for women . . . ”

“Oh, she believed you right-enough,” said Fraser, and suddenly he laughed, a strange dry chuckling like the rubbing of resined wood. “Well, what do you have there?”

“Pistol?” Mallory offered Fraser the salvaged revolver. “Mind that bit of shrapnel in it.”

Fraser scraped the embedded barb free on his boot-heel. “Never saw the like of that lad’s barker! I rather doubt it’s legal, even for one of your gallant Crimea heroes.”

A rifle-shot knocked a spinning chunk from one of the vanity-tables, narrowly missing Fraser. Mallory looked up, startled. “Damn!” A distant sniper clung monkey-like to one of the iron rafters, fitting another round into his rifle.

Mallory snatched the Victoria from Tom, braced the bloodied strap around his forearm, and took close aim. He squeezed the trigger. To no effect, for the single-shot had been fired already. But the sniper’s mouth opened in an O of terror and he leapt from his perch with a distant crash.

Mallory yanked the bolt back, flinging the dead cartridge. “I should have taken that damned bandolier —”

“Ned!” Brian appeared suddenly to their left, crouched at the top of a heap. “Over here — cotton-bales!”

“Right!” They followed Brian’s lead, scrambling and heaving atop the booty in a cascade of whalebone and candlesticks. Bullets whizzed and thwacked around them — more men in the rafters, Mallory thought, too busy to look. Fraser rose once and took a pot-shot, to no apparent effect.

Dozens of hundred-weight bales of Confederate ginned cotton, wrapped in rope and burlap, had been stacked almost to the rafters.

Brian gestured wildly, then vanished over the far side of the cotton-stack. Mallory understood him: it was a natural fortress, with a little work.

He and Tom heaved and toppled one of the bales free from the top of the stack, stepping into the cavity. Bullets thumped with gentle huffs into the cotton as Fraser rose and returned fire.

They kicked out another bale, and then a third. Fraser joined them in the excavation, with a leap and a stumble. In a frantic, heaving minute they had burrowed their way into the thick of it, like ants amid a box of cube sugar.

Their position was obvious now; bullets popped and thudded into the cotton fortress, but to no effect. Mallory yanked a great clean wad and wiped sweat and blood from his face and arms. It was dire hard work, hauling cotton-bales; no wonder the Southrons had relegated it to their darkeys.

Fraser cleared a narrow space between two bales. “Give me another pistol.” Mallory handed him the Marquess’s long-barreled revolver. Fraser squeezed off a shot, squinted, nodded. “Fine piece . . .” A volley of futile shots came in reply. Tom, grunting and heaving, cleared more space by lifting and dropping a bale off the back of the heap; it struck something with a crash like a splintering pianola.

They took inventory. Tom had a derringer with one loaded chamber; useful, perhaps, if the anarchists swarmed in like boarding pirates, but not otherwise. Mallory’s Ballester-Molina had three rounds. Fraser’s pepperbox had three caps left, and the Marquess’s gun five rounds. And they had an empty Victoria carbine, and Fraser’s little truncheon.

There was no sign of Brian.

There were angry, muffled shouts in the depths of the warehouse — orders. Mallory thought. The gunfire died away quite suddenly, replaced by an ominous silence, broken by rustling and what seemed to be hammering. He peered up over the edge of a forward bale. There was no visible enemy, but the doors of the warehouse had been shut.

Gloom flew across the warehouse in a sudden wave. Beyond the glazed vaulting of the ceiling, it had grown swiftly and astonishingly dark, as if the Stink had thickened further.

“Should we make a run for it?” whispered Tom.

“Not without Brian,” Mallory said.

Fraser shook his head dourly — not speaking his doubt, but it was clear enough.

They worked in the gloom for a while, clearing space, digging in deeper, heaving up some of the bales to serve as crenellations. At the sound of their activity, more shots came, muzzle-flashes savagely lighting the darkness, bullets screaming off iron braces overhead. Here and there in the heaps of merchandise, the kindled light of lanterns glowed.

More shouted orders, and the firing ceased. There was a flurry of pattering on the metal roof, swiftly gone.

“What was that?” Tom asked.

“Sounded like rats scampering,” Mallory said.

“Rain!” Fraser suggested.

Mallory said nothing. Another ash-fall seemed far more likely.

The gloom lightened again, quite suddenly. Mallory peered over the edge. A crowd of the rascals were creeping forward, almost to the foot of the ramparts, barefoot and in hushed silence, some with knives in their teeth. Mallory bellowed in alarm and began firing.

He was blinded at once by his own muzzle-flashes, but the Ballester-Molina, kicking and pumping, seemed to have a life of its own; in an instant the three remaining rounds were gone. Not wasted, though; at such short range he had not been able to miss. Two men were down, a third crawling, and the rest fleeing in terror.

Mallory could hear them re-grouping out of sight, milling, cursing each other. Mallory, his gun empty, grasped its hot barrel like a club.

The building shook with the awful roar of Brian’s pistol.

The silence afterward was broken by agonized screams. A long and harrowing minute passed then, filled with infernal yells from the wounded and dying, with a crashing, a cursing and clattering.

Suddenly a dark form came catapulting into their midst, stinking of gunpowder.

Brian.

“Good job you didn’t shoot me,” he said. “Damme, it’s dark in here, ain’t it?”

“Are ye all right, lad?” Mallory said.

“Nicks,” Brian said, getting to his feet. “Look what I brought ye, Ned.”

He passed the thing into Mallory’s hands. The smooth heavy form of stock and barrel fit Mallory’s grip like silk. It was a buffalo-rifle.

“They’ve a whole crate of such beauties,” Brian said. “Out in a pokey little office, across the way. And munitions with it, though I could only carry two boxes.”

Mallory began loading the rifle at once, round after brassy round clicking into the spring-loader with a ticking like fine clockwork.

“Queer business,” Brian said. “Don’t think they knew I was loose among them. No proper sense of strategy. Don’t seem to be any Army traitors among this rabble, I’ll tell you that!”

“That barker of yours is a marvel, lad,” Fraser said.

   Brian grunted. “Not anymore, Mr. Fraser. I’d only two rounds. Wish I’d held back, but when I saw that lovely chance for enfilading-fire. I’d got to take it.”

“Never you mind,” Mallory told him, caressing the rifle’s walnut stock. “If we’d four of these, we could hold ‘em back all week.”

“My apologies!” Brian said. “But I won’t be doing much more of a proper reconnaissance-in-force. They winged me a bit.”

A stray bullet had seared across the front of Brian’s shin. White bone showed in the shallow wound and his filth-caked boot was full of blood. Fraser and Tom wadded clean cotton against the wound while Mallory kept watch with the rifle.

“Enough,” Brian protested at last, “you fellows carry on to beat Lady Nightingale. D’ye see anything, Ned?”

“No,” Mallory said. “I hear them plotting mischief, though.”

“They’re back in three mustering-grounds,” Brian said. “They had a rally-point just out of your line-of-fire, but I raked ‘em there with the Tsar’s slag-shot. I doubt they’ll rush us again. They’ve not got the nerve for it now.”

“What will they do, then?”

“Some sort of sapper’s work. I’d wager,” Brian said. “Advancing barricades, perhaps something on wheels.” He spat dryly. “Damme, I need a drink. I haven’t been this dry since Lucknow.”

“Sorry,” Mallory said.

Brian sighed. “We had a very pukka water-boy with the regiment in India. That bleeding little Hindu was worth any ten of these buggers!”

“Did you see the woman?” Fraser asked him. “Or Captain Swing?”

“No,” Brian said. “I was staying to cover, creeping about. Looking for a better class of firearm, mostly, something with a range. Queer things I saw, too. Found Ned’s game-rifle in a little office-room, not a soul in it but a little clerky chap, writing at a desk. Pair of candles burning, papers all scattered about. Full of crated guns for export, and why they’re keeping those fine rifles back with some clerk, and passing out Victorias, is beyond my professional understanding.”

A wave of drowned and greenish light passed into the building — outlining, as it passed, an armed man rising up a pulley-line, seated in a noose. Swift as thought. Mallory centered his bead on the man, exhaled, fired. The man flopped backward, dangled from his knees, hung limp.