KRAK! Watson recalled the ragged line at Maiwand: volley fire shredding howling ghazis on the approach.
KRAK! The tips of his fingers singed by the scorching heat of the chamber as comrades fell, and ragtag squares formed in doomed isolation.
KRAK! He’d killed men at Maiwand with this same lethal precision, and none of them, he knew, so deserving as the ones he claimed today.
KRAK!
KRAK!
KRAK!
He’d missed once and two men kept up their headlong pace, now less than a hundred yards from him. Blinking to refocus, operating in strict military cadence, he ejected and reloaded, brought butt to shoulder … and froze, momentarily stunned by what he was seeing.
One of the downed had risen, was shaking off the shot, and was staggering forward once again! Another man Watson had sworn he’d hit square to the left side of the chest got to his knees, and reeled to his feet to renew his lurching advance. They were slowed, but those who had gone down now rose again, forcing the doctor to hasten his tempo.
He put another round into the first man he had downed, and another into the second. He shot the third man’s thigh and dropped him again, only to watch him writhe, roll, rise and now walk forward. The hackles on Watson’s burly neck rose, and he knew it wasn’t from the cold. “Good Lord,” he whispered, awe-struck.
“Indeed,” Holmes countered.
The reavers had closed to within twenty yards.
Holmes grinned, and lunged forward, a canine snarl rippling his thin lips.
Watson had seen Sherlock Holmes close for hand-to-hand on many occasions, knew that his friend had made no little study of the combative arts, but the chilling efficiency and balance of the man routinely amazed nonetheless. He was wiry-strong, and naturally agile, but these components amplified by the dagger’s eldritch energy made Holmes a thing of slashing lethality. And even without Zulu magic, no man alive was better at obtaining and keeping initiative. Holmes’ judgment of distance and timing were exquisite.
Holmes bent low, put his shoulder into the first man’s hip, using his own momentum to hoist him up and over in a tumble of seal skin cloak and hide-bound legs. The second man rushed in with a thrusting harpoon in both hands, but his angle was bad, and Holmes had position. He swept the point aside with his left forearm, and walked his man onto the point of the Zulu knife — the broad, killing blade sighing into the man’s ribcage as though pushing through dense, wet clay.
The tribesman’s hood fell back, and Watson felt a thrill of fear pulse down his spine at the sight. The man was native, distant kin to those butchered some leagues to the south, but his face was a feral, twisted parody of theirs, and his eyes shone an impossible robin’s-egg blue. He clutched at his wound and slid off the blade, falling back onto his shoulders, his knees bent beneath him. Though he bled from a bullet wound in his chest, it had taken an African dagger to end the unspeakable life of this hellbound slayer.
Holmes whirled as the first man closed again, the tribesman’s face grotesque with hate. The man had produced a rust-encrusted rapier, of all things, holding it as one might hold a simple club. Holmes sidestepped awkwardly, stumbling as snow bit at his calves, but he recovered nicely, drawing the keen edge of his blade across the man’s jugular from an oblique angle. The native pitched face-first into the snow, hands clawing at his throat as his eerie life bled out crimson against the crisp, pristine white.
From there, Holmes pressed his attack to the others, but found that Watson’s bullets had done most of the work after all. Incredibly, the wounded had dragged themselves up that sweeping ice hill, lungs collapsed or thighs belching blood from throbbing arteries. They clung grimly to savage life, and their faces bespoke the same dark, malicious energy upon which the first two had drawn.
The dagger took each in turn: one touch of it, so long as it drank of their blood, was all it took to still them. In moments, Holmes stood alone, chest heaving, breath condensing fog-white in the Arctic air. Watson closed from a respectful distance, eyeing his friend warily, noting the barely contained bloodlust in those usually reserved eyes.
“Holmes?” Watson said from fifteen feet away, not pointing the rifle at his friend directly, but holding it at the ready nonetheless.
Holmes nodded, panting. “Fear not, doctor. I am in complete control of my faculties.”
“Grand,” said Watson, not comforted by the fact that he needed to be told.
Holmes smiled. “Shall we?”
They stepped their way to the galleon, Watson noting eight fallen foes en route. Poor devils, he thought. He could not help but feel that ending them had saved them somehow, from something darker than death.
And then a thought unbidden: would Holmes not also be saved thus?
Watson clenched his teeth so hard, he heard them squeak in his head.
At the gaping maw of the hull breach, Holmes stopped, resting a foot against the lowered shards of shattered planks like so many broken teeth. Watson crept close, peering in around Holmes’ shoulder, sensing large crates just out of sight in the gloom, and smelling a peculiar, vaguely familiar reek. Shouldering the Enfield, Watson prepared his service revolver, and whispered: “Ready.”
Holmes eased himself into the ship with a lithe, silent cat’s step, and Watson followed with the scrabbling grace of a bulldog charging a hedge.
The ship creaked and groaned under its own shifting weight, making Watson flinch at the erratic noises. Dim arctic light spilled in between gaps in the ancient planks, or through the massive puncture, turning absolute darkness into a frigid murk. Snow ground beneath their boots for a ways, then wood alone sounded out. Wooden crates lay in haphazard piles, worrying Watson with their proximity. Anything could be lying in the shadows, hidden from sight — just waiting for them to pass.
Inching forward, Holmes made the bulkhead door, sheathing the knife to work the portal with his gloved hands. “Heat,” he murmured, glancing back at Watson, and gesturing at the sliding bolt that held the door fast. Slipping the latch back, Holmes shouldered the door open, and both men were instantly met by a fetid, sweltering breeze drenched with the odor of rotted vegetation, dank soil, and endless rain. It was downright tropical, that wind. Watson placed the smells, the temperature, and the humidity as something more Caribbean than Arctic in derivation.
A small access corridor cut longitudinally across the length of the ship, leading to darkened stairwells at both ends. Before the intruders, and slightly to the right, another bulkhead door led into what Watson supposed would be the cargo-hold proper. He grunted, and lifted the pistol off his hip, edging in front of Holmes to take the lead. With the clear view, he could see a pale, feeble light shining around the edges of the door. “Shoot to kill,” Holmes whispered from very close behind. “This will be hot work at close quarters.”
Watson heard the oily rasp of the knife being drawn from its sheath, and the sound made him think of Indian cobras.
Watson approached the portal, braced his legs wide as if in a scrum. He tried the knob and found it sticky, but unlocked. Turning it, he shouldered the door in and crouched down, blinking as a gust of air hit him in the face as though he’d just opened a baking oven.