‘Oh, goodie.’ Carswell snapped a fresh clip of ammo into his automatic. ‘The fun isn’t over yet.’
‘Right,’ Sam called out to the people on the bus. ‘Reload the guns.’
Zita shook Sam by the arm. ‘I think we’re going to need them sooner than we thought. Look what’s coming this way.’
Sam looked along the pass. A straggling line of people approached through the falling snow. ‘Damn,’ Sam hissed under his breath. ‘Okay, everyone. More Bluebeards are coming this way. We’re going have to deal with those before we go after the others.’
Rolle looked too. ‘Not more enemy.’ He turned back to Sam and smiled. ‘These are our allies.’
‘Our allies?’ Sam looked again. Approaching the bus were what appeared to be two or three hundred men and women. Some of the women he recognised as having been taken from Casterton on the night of the raid. Others were strange-looking figures. One he immediately recognised: the creature that was part cow, part boy. It moved quickly across the snow, the thick bovine legs eating the distance easily. The boy carried a bow with the arrow notched lightly against the string, ready to shoot the moment he needed it.
‘These are our reinforcements, Sam Baker.’
‘Dear God,’ Thomas breathed in astonishment as he saw what kind of people were approaching. He couldn’t take his eyes from the man with the mass of bees squirming on his face. A blond-haired man held up a hand to halt his people. Meanwhile a pair of bulging brown eyes peered from a slot in his jacket. ‘My dear God,’ Thomas whispered. ‘Who are these people? Where are they from?’
Sam smiled grimly. ‘I think we should consider them as heaven-sent and leave it at that, don’t you?’
Introductions, and reunions when Nicole and Sue came on board, were of necessity brief. Half a dozen Liminals continued walking on towards town, accompanying the rescued women and children.
The rest of the Liminals, armed with swords, axes, spears and shotguns, would follow the bus, together with what was left of the cavalry and foot soldiers.
‘Is everyone ready?’ Sam shouted from the front of the bus.
This time he was greeted by a cheer. Everyone there had got the bit between their teeth. They wanted to finish the job.
It didn’t take long to find the Bluebeards. Rolle had stood beside the timber box where Lee sat at the steering wheel. Like a maritime pilot he pointed ahead, talking to Lee constantly.
The bus lurched across the snow-covered meadow.
Hanging on tightly to the king post, Sam watched as hundreds of figures emerged through the mist of the falling snowflakes.
Already the Bluebeards had regrouped and were ready to fight once more.
He thought: If it’s a fight the barbarians want, then they’ve got it. They’re going to get themselves the mother and father of all battles.
The bus must have appeared as a great roaring dragon to them.
One that spat fire.
The artillery thundered from the sides of the bus, tearing the barbarians apart.
Soldiers fired their rifles. More barbarians fell dead.
Meanwhile, the surviving Bluebeards charged the bus.
They ran straight into a blizzard of bullets and grenades.
Dozens fell, kicking and screaming, clutching their stomachs, chests, faces.
Now there was pandemonium.
Even though there must still have been two thousand or more of the barbarian warriors, they’d had enough. Turning their backs on the advancing soldiers who followed the bus, they scattered back along the pass and into the woods.
Rolle shouted, ‘Don’t let them use the time-gates here. Drive them into the gorge farther along the pass.’
Sam leaned through the window and shouted to the soldiers to follow the retreating Bluebeards.
Rolle hung onto the king post and called to Sam. ‘Have the bus cut them off from going back through the pass. You’ve got to make sure you drive them up into the gorge. There’s no way out of there.’
No way out? Sam licked his dry lips.
Was Rolle, the Christian mystic, suggesting that they trap the two thousand Bluebeards in the gorge, then kill them one by one?
Sam watched, feeling cold inside now, as the soldiers from Casterton barracks, helped by the Liminals, sealed the trap.
In less than an hour a cavalry officer rode up alongside the bus as it stood in the mouth of the gorge. ‘We have them locked up in there, sir. There’s no way out unless they grow wings and fly up the cliff-faces. What are your orders now?’
Sam paused, thinking hard. The gorge held the two thousand or so men, that was true. But it was perhaps half a mile long by almost a quarter wide. Deeper into the gorge the trees grew densely in the spaces between the walls of sheer rock. If he sent the soldiers in there the Bluebeards would still cut them to pieces.
If anything, they’d reached a Mexican stand-off. Going into the gorge and massacring the Bluebeards would be nigh impossible, irrespective of the morality of butchering the trapped enemy.
The mouth of the gorge was narrow, and largely open ground, so the Bluebeards would have a hard time of if trying to break out.
Sam rubbed his jaw. This was a stalemate. They couldn’t kill the Bluebeards without losing most of their own people. And, for sure, they couldn’t stand here at the mouth of the gorge forever, holding the Bluebeards prisoner in there.
He told the cavalry officer to wait. Then he found Rolle.
‘What now?’ Sam asked. ‘We can’t just sit here and keep the prisoners in the gorge forever.’
‘No, I had no intention of doing that,’ Rolle replied. ‘There is a time-gate there, just a little way inside the gorge.’
‘But do the Bluebeards know that?’
‘They do,’ Rolle nodded.
‘Then why aren’t they disappearing through it like rats into a hole?’
‘Because it leads farther back than they’ve ever gone before. Also it is the only entrance – and the only exit – to that particular time.’
‘You mean, they’re afraid that if they go there they’ll never be able to come back?’
‘Yes. And that’s what I intend.’
‘But how do we get them to leave the woodland and go through the time-gate?’
‘There’s the knot of the problem.’ Rolle scratched his beard. ‘How do we do just that?’
Sam looked back at the soldiers standing in a line across the mouth of the gorge with their rifles ready. They looked as if they could hold the Bluebeards there for an hour or so. But soon the barbarians would probably recover their senses, and their strength, and rush the line. If they broke through it they’d scatter into the woods upstream. It would be only a matter of time before they regrouped, rearmed, then raided Casterton again.
Sam realised he must nip this in the bud once and for all. He looked back at Rolle. ‘Can you stay here and make sure the soldiers hold the Bluebeards until I get back?’
‘Where are you going?’
‘There’s something I need from the amphitheatre.’
That ‘something’ was the 20 or so barrels of wood alcohol.
Before taking the coach back to the amphitheatre, Sam had the cannon unceremoniously dumped over the side and into the snow. They’d done their work well enough, but they’d be dead weight when it came to the bus making its last short journey.
‘Okay, what’s the plan, Sam?’ Lee called as he drove the bus back to the amphitheatre.
‘After loading all these barrels of what to all intents and purposes is Victorian napalm? I reckon you can guess for yourself.’