His face dripping with sweat, Sam waved people away so he could stand.
He saw they were heading back to the amphitheatre. ‘No!’ Sam hung onto the wooden king post that ran through the bus like a pin through the thorax of a butterfly. ‘Lee! No, we can’t stop now. Turn back! We’ve got to hit them again!’
47
Noon, Christmas Day, 1865
Even in the bloody mire of the battle there was a weird grace and harmony to it all.
From the height of the bus’s passenger deck Sam witnessed it.
The movements of the fighting men were like those of a basketball match. There was an ebb and flow of motion. One moment they were fighting down by the river. Then the focus of the action moved smoothly away to the middle of the pass. Clumps of men formed into intense clamouring knots, battling with absolute passion. Then these groups dissolved, moved away, reformed, fought again, before dissolving once more.
Sam watched as the bus drove backward and forward. Artillery guns thundered. Soldiers fired rifles, muskets, pistols. They threw grenades.
Explosions formed a surreal pattern of orange, yellow and gold blooms above the surface of the snow. They were like huge roses, abruptly flowering before vanishing into nothingness again. Everywhere, barbarians and Casterton’s defenders alike lay dead in the snow. Most of the cars were reduced to wrecks now, some upside down, wheels still turning. One burned with a furious intensity, a black smoke-column rising from it into the air.
And everywhere, the landscape was flecked red with blood.
At the front of the bus Carswell gripped the door strut and, leaning forward like a carved figure on the prow of a ship, fired his handgun down at the barbarians. Miraculously he was unharmed. He didn’t seem to tire, either. His eyes still blazed icily as he fired, reloaded, fired, reloaded.
Ryan Keith fired the shotgun, swearing, laughing, crying, all at the same time. ‘This is yours!’ Bang. ‘Come and get it!’ Bang.
Zita and Jud stood behind the boxed-in driver’s compartment, where they lit the fuses of hand grenades from a lamp before pitching them over the side of the bus. The explosions tore holes in the air with a God-Almighty CRACK!. Red-hot pieces of the grenades’ casings tore radiating lines in the snow. More tore holes in the bodies of the attacking barbarian warriors.
And there was a gleaming intensity to the way they – everyone – worked on the bus. If the bus had been destroyed there and then Sam could have believed the spirits of those on board would still continue as before – loading, firing, reloading, firing again.
Sam hung onto the king post as the snow-covered ground blurred by. He felt a hand on his arm.
‘Sam.’ He looked up into the face of Rolle. The corkscrews of red hair fluttered and his eyes blazed. ‘Sam Baker… have you seen what’s happening?’
Sam looked round the landscape of the dead and dying. He shook his head, puzzled. ‘What’s happened to the Bluebeards? Where have they gone?’
Here goes, Nicole told herself as the group of freed captives and Liminals approached the barrier between Limbo and 1865.
There wouldn’t be time to run away if they met the Bluebeards returning from their latest raid.
Ahead, the boy who was fused into the cow, so creating a kind of bovine centaur, was first through, moving at a slow gallop.
Quickly, Nicole did a head count. There were perhaps a hundred or more of Casterton’s people there. Many of the women simply hadn’t survived the last three days. There were also perhaps 150 Liminals. They were armed with anything from clubs to shotguns. Not nearly enough if they should meet a returning army of barbarians.
William smiled at her. ‘It is just one short step, Nicole.’
She was going to hold her breath and grit her teeth ready for the transition. But then it had happened as quickly and as easily as stepping through a doorway from one room to another.
The England of 1865 was full of snow.
The cold rushed at her; she shivered.
And coming towards them through the falling snow were figures.
‘What did I tell you?’ came Bullwitt’s croak. ‘Bluebeards. Bloody Bluebeards!’
‘Stop the bus! Lee, stop!’ Sam shouted the words as soon as he noticed something about the battle had changed.
Lee braked hard, bringing the bus to a sliding halt. He killed the engine.
Instant silence.
No gunshots.
No sounds of battle.
Only a silence that seemed so devoid of anything it cast a ghostly spell over the landscape.
Sam leaned out through one of the glassless windows. Snowflakes drifted down from the sky.
Here and there riderless horses stood, not knowing where to go next.
Bodies littered the snow. Everywhere there were either black smudges left by exploding shells and grenades, or pools of bloody red that stood glaring out from the white.
But there was no movement.
Casterton’s surviving soldiers stood looking around, baffled.
‘Dear Lord,’ Thomas said in a hushed voice as he took off his glasses. ‘Where have they all gone?’
‘They’ve run for it,’ shouted one of the soldiers. ‘They’ve only gone and bloody run for it.’
‘We’ve won!’
Rolle held up a hand. His piercing gaze swept the landscape.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not over yet.’
Nicole saw there were Bluebeards walking towards them.
That was, moving towards them. Those that could actually walk were either bent double or limping. Many crawled on hands and knees.
‘Something tells me they’ve taken a rather severe beating,’ William observed.
‘About bleeding time. If they’ve had a bloody good hiding it serves the bastards right. Go on, William.’ Bullwitt gave a delighted chuckle. ‘That one over there. Give him a good kicking while he’s down.’
William glanced down at one of the Bluebeards. A huge man in a grey cloak with a clutch of starling chicks springing from his face was dragging himself along the ground. He left a red smear that ran across the snow and into the distance, as if he’d been dipped in red paint.
‘What’re you waiting for, William? Stick the boot into the ugly sod!’
William shook his head. ‘There’s been a battle fought here. And undoubtedly the Bluebeards have met formidable opponents.’
Nicole gazed down at the dying warrior as he struggled back in the direction of his home. ‘But Rolle told us that Casterton was defenceless.’
‘No doubt we will find out more presently,’ William said softly. ‘But in the meantime we should devote our attention to these poor souls from Casterton, and see them safely back home.’
Sam shook his head, then said to Rolle, ‘You’re telling me that the Bluebeards aren’t in retreat?’
‘Retreat? No, far from it. They have only fallen back to regroup.’
‘Damn. We were that close to stopping them.’ Sam placed a forefinger and a twin-jointed ‘thumb’ together as if about to pluck an invisible flower stem from out of the air in front of his face. ‘That close. We’d nearly finished the Bluebeards for good.’
‘What a pity,’ Carswell said drily. ‘I was rather beginning to enjoy this. So, what are your orders now, Sam, old boy?’
‘We don’t quit. We hunt them down. Every last one of the sons of bitches.’ He called across to Jud, who was pulling arrow shafts out of the flanks of the bus. ‘Jud… Jud! Get all the foot soldiers and cavalry together… Tell them to follow the bus.’