He counted the rockets.
One, two away.
Three, four, five, six.
Not bad, Mr Carswell. Only two duds.
He glanced to his right.
Thunder Child fired the rockets from her remaining ‘wing’. Streaks of smoke drew the trajectory line of the rockets. Somewhere ahead they were exploding in the faces of the barbarians. More blood would be speckling the snow.
To his left, the roof-mounted cannon of the ice-cream van fired its single shot. The sound of the explosion rolled along the cliff wall like thunder.
Sam sounded the horn again in a long blast.
The Bluebeards were perhaps a hundred yards away, a dark raggedy line spiky with spears.
Now Sam accelerated, taking the car up to 40 miles an hour. Beside him the other cars, matching his speed, stayed in formation.
A tight line rushing across the snow to hit the flesh-and-bone mass of Barbarians head on.
Ahead of the group of men and women lay the time-gate. Nicole put her arm round Sue as they rested before entering the world of 1865. It was a gesture of reassurance as well as affection. They’d gone through a lot together over the last few months. Nicole was determined to see her safely back with Lee.
Here there was no snow. It was a cool, damp place, with trees and grass and sluggish streams.
All around her the women and children they’d released not an hour or so before sat exhaustedly on the ground. They’d have had precious little sleep in the last three days. The women especially.
William stood at Nicole’s side.
From the slot in his jacket Bullwitt looked out with his brown bulging eyes. ‘There it is,’ he said in his nasal voice. ‘The doorway back to 1865.’
‘The way to home and safety,’ William said, pleased. ‘Unless we happen to run into the Bluebeards face to face.’
‘The Bluebeards have embarked on another of their raids.’
‘I know, but what if something makes them turn around and come back bleeding home. Have you thought of that?’
The speedometer needle hovered on 40. Snow spurted from either side of the tyres like the V-shaped spray of a speedboat.
At either side of Sam the vehicles held their line. A near-as-damn-it solid wall of steel rolling along the pass towards the line of barbarians.
Sam gritted his teeth. ‘Hold on,’ he said to the men in the back. ‘We’re going to hit them any second now.’
The windscreen wipers batted away the snow. Headlamps blazed.
The drivers began laying into their horns, sending an automotive battle cry before them – from the high bleating of the Fiat’s horn down to the bull-like bellow of the bus.
Suddenly the blurred dark line ahead resolved itself into sharp focus as the speed annihilated the open ground between the vehicles and the Bluebeards.
Now Sam could see faces.
He could see the whites of their eyes, as the saying went. He stared into the faces of brutalised and brutal men. Their ferocious glares raked the oncoming vehicles.
Then the cars slammed into the oncoming line of warriors.
Sam wasn’t prepared for what happened next.
Bodies crashed over the bonnet and up over the roof.
The sound was incredible.
He could hear the screams and shouting of the Bluebeards above the roar of the engines.
As well as screams of pain there were screams of bloodlust and fury too.
The wipers slashed at the snow on the now-cracked windscreen.
The snow had turned pink.
A face slammed against the glass, leaving a great sunburst of red. The wipers slashed at it, the whispery sound of the blades giving way to a wet slip-slop sound.
Sam hit the screen-wash.
Still the momentum of the car carried them on deeper into the pack of men in front of them.
The ‘wings’ at either side of the car were sheared off the moment they hit the solid bodies.
And still the car moved on.
But now it was slowing.
Thirty.
Twenty-five.
Twenty.
Slowing fast as bodies compacted against the front of the car.
The tyres rolled over more bodies, throwing the car from side to side like a boat on a storm-riven sea.
‘We’re stopping,’ Sam shouted. ‘Get ready to fire!’
Pushing the muzzles through the open windows of the rear doors, the men cocked the rifles.
Ten miles an hour.
The vehicles had pushed the barbarians back like a snowplough heaping snow in front of it. Now the weight was so great it defeated the forward motion of the car. Probably the bus was doing better than him. Its huge bulk would charge on for another hundred yards or so yet.
But as for the lighter cars at either side, they’d probably been stopped dead in their tracks by now, their bonnets and body panels mangled by the impact of so many hard warrior bodies.
‘Fire!’ Sam yelled as the speedo needle kissed zero.
The reports of the rifles crashed against his ears, deafening him.
Now he pushed the gear lever into reverse, then stamped the pedal to the floor.
With a buzz-saw sound the car lurched, tyres spinning, not gripping.
Plumes of blood-drenched snow turned the air red above the mound of bodies.
The car’s tyres at last bit; they began moving back.
A couple of cars weren’t so lucky. They’d either become stuck under the bulldozed mound of bodies or the tyres’ treads simply couldn’t bite deeply enough into the snow, slush and blood.
Instantly a wave of Bluebeards clambered over the bodies of their fallen dead to leap onto the cars, hammering at them with their axes and swords.
He watched in horror as car windows shattered under the blows. Drivers and soldiers were dragged out to be hacked to death in the snow.
A face appeared at the side window. Sam saw for a moment the blue tattoos across the upper lip. The man raised his axe ready to smash it through the open side window of the Range Rover.
A blast of sound smacked him in the side of the head. One of the soldiers in the rear seat had fired a pistol. The barbarian clutched his mouth. With blood squirting between his fingers he fell back onto the tangle of bodies behind him.
Sam reversed hard now, not waiting to be overrun.
He reversed until he was well clear of the wall of broken bodies, then he spun the car until it faced forward.
A second later he drove away, leaving the mayhem behind him.
What remained of Sam’s fighting force regrouped.
Three of the cars were missing. The remaining ‘wing’ on the bus was a tangled mess being dragged alongside by one of the supporting cables from the king post. A soldier hung dead and bleeding through one of the glassless windows. One of his comrades pulled the body back.
This was going to be no easy victory. Sam knew that now.
And with the Bluebeards still surging strongly towards the exit of the pass that led out to the relative safety of open ground and woodland there was no option but to go back in again.
And just hope the remaining vehicles could knock the fight out of the barbarians. Even so, Sam knew that they couldn’t possibly have killed more than a couple of hundred in the last charge. There would still be more than two thousand of them.
And now those bastards had a score to settle.
Sam swung open the car door. It crunched against the remains of the wooden framework of the wing that held the rocket tubes.
And that framework held more now. There was a severed head, skewered onto one of the timber spars, and elsewhere a couple of bloody hands were trapped in the mess of cables and twisted tubes.
Swallowing, Sam stood on the driver’s seat and leaned out so the cavalry and soldiers could see him. The car itself was awash with blood.