Spring Heeled Jack lurched through the cloud and entered the alley.
He emerged from the steam and faced his enemy.
Sir Richard Francis Burton stopped and looked up at him, then stumbled backward and pressed himself against the side of the passage.
"Burton!" said the time traveller, stalking toward the famous Victorian. "Richard Francis bloody Burton!"
He jumped at the man and hit him, sending him spinning across to the opposite wall.
"I told you once to stay out of it!" he spat. "You didn't listen!"
He grabbed the explorer by the hair and glared into his face.
"I'll not tell you again! Leave me alone!"
"W-what?" gasped Burton.
"Just stay out of it! The affair is none of your damned business!"
"What affair?"
Oxford snarled, "Don't play the innocent! I don't want to kill you. But I swear to you, if you don't keep your nose out of it, I'll break your fucking neck!"
"I have no idea what you're talking about!" cried Burton.
"I'm talking about you organising forces against me! It's not what you're meant to be doing! Your destiny lies elsewhere. Do you understand?"
He slammed his forearm into Burton's face.
"I said, do you understand?"
"No!" the man gasped.
"Then I'll spell it out for you," growled Oxford. He yanked the explorer around, shoved him against the wall, and punched him three times in the mouth.
"Do what-you're supposed-to do!"
Burton raised a hand in weak protest.
"How can I possibly know what I'm supposed to do?" he mumbled. Blood oozed from his mouth.
Spring Heeled Jack jerked the explorer's head up and looked directly into his eyes.
"You are supposed to marry Isabel and be sent from one fucking miserable consulship to another. Your career is supposed to peak in three years when you debate the Nile question with Speke and the silly sod shoots himself dead. You are supposed to write books and die."
"What the hell are you babbling about?" Burton shouted. "The debate was cancelled. Speke shot himself yesterday-he's not dead!"
Edward John Oxford, the scientist and historian, froze. How could this be? He knew the facts. They couldn't be wrong. They were well documented. Speke's death was one of the great mysteries of the period. Biographers had endlessly debated it, wondering whether it was suicide or an accident! Slowly, he absorbed the things he'd seen, the strange machines and the weird animals.
"No!" he said softly. "No! I'm a historian! I know what happened. It was 1864 not 1861. I know-"
He stopped. What had he done? How could so much have changed?
"God damn it!" he groaned. "Why does it have to be so complicated? Maybe if I kill you? But if the death of just one person has already done all this-?"
Burton suddenly slipped out of his hands and shoved him hard. Oxford lost his balance, staggered away, and fell against the opposite wall.
They stood facing each other.
"Listen to me, you bastard!" said Oxford tightly. "For your own good, next time you see me, don't come near!"
"I don't know you!" answered Burton. "And, believe me, if I never see you again, I'll not regret it one iota!"
The time traveller was opening his mouth to reply when his control unit malfunctioned and sliced him through with an electric charge. He yelled in agony and almost collapsed from the pain of it.
He looked across at his adversary and suddenly saw him clearly, as if a curtain of fog had lifted. He marvelled at the brutal lines of the man's bloodied face.
"The irony is," he said, "that I'm running out of time. You're in my way, and you're making the situation much worse."
"What situation? Explain!" demanded the explorer.
A ripple of electric shocks ran through Oxford. He flinched. His muscles jerked. The suit sounded an alarm in the centre of his skull. It was dying.
"Marry the bitch, Burton," he groaned. "Settle down. Become consul in Fernando Po, Brazil, Damascus, and wherever the fuck else they send you. Write your damned books. But, above all, leave me alone! Do you understand? Leave nze the fuck alone!"
He crouched low then sprang into the air.
Perhaps his warning would be enough.
Perhaps Alicia Pipkiss would be undefended when he returned to the Alsop field.
Perhaps he could go home.
He landed in the thick of battle.
IN COLD BLOOD
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his selfmade laws.
There he is!" yelled one of the Rakes.
Burton turned back and looked at the spot he'd just left. Spring Heeled Jack was standing over the ashes of the fallen loup-garou. Ribbons of steam curled around him.
"Shit!" screamed the stilt-walker. "Why didn't you fucking listen, Burton!"
Two Rakes dived at the tall lanky figure and knocked him sideways to the ground. Burton made to move toward them but a sixth sense warned him that danger was at his back. He dodged and something sizzled past his neck, gouging a furrow through the skin, burning the edges of the wound. Twisting, he found himself facing a Technologist who was holding a strange crossbowlike weapon. A belt of pointed bolts hung beneath it and the man was in the act of pulling back a lever that, the instant Burton looked, caused the topmost bolt to clunk up into the snub barrel. The Technologist raised the weapon and pointed it at the king's agent. At the same moment, to his right, a Letty Green villager who was wielding a hatstand like a staff swung it into the chest of a Rake. His victim, thrown off balance, floundered into the gunman; the crossbow gave a sharp puff of compressed steam and the bolt ripped through Burton's coat, missing his thigh by inches. The edges of the hole caught fire.
Burton slapped the material and lunged at the man, caught him around the waist, and sent him crashing down. He knocked him senseless with a left hook and snatched up the weapon. There was some sort of heating element beneath the grip. Four thin pipes passed from it into a cylinder positioned over the barrel. He pulled back the lever at the side of the crossbow as he'd seen the man do. The next bolt slotted into place.
Sheathing his blade, Burton took aim at one of the slavering werewolves. With the steam from the rotorship above, and the swaying lights from the circling rotorchairs, the scene of the battle crawled with dark and distorting shadows, making it difficult to focus on the target; nevertheless, his aim was true, and the bolt tunnelled through the beast's brain. The wolf-man fell, twitched, and lay still.
Burton reloaded and looked around in time to see three Rakes hoisting Spring Heeled Jack above their heads and running with him up the slope toward the western end of the field. He lifted the crossbow and shot one of the three in the leg. The man fell with a cry of pain and lay jerking spasmodically while the other two dropped the struggling time traveller. One of them caught the next bolt in his shoulder and went down with a screech. The remaining man began to spin bolas, his eyes fixed on Burton. The king's agent shot him in the arm before he could let fly.
"Trounce! Honesty!" bellowed Burton, spotting the two men fighting nearby. "Jack is here! Help me!"
Detective Inspector Honesty was engaged in fisticuffs with a huge brute of a man, a Technologist who, by the state of his clothes and skin, was evidentially employed to stoke the boilers of the gargantuan ship hovering above. The svelte Yard man was dwarfed by him, yet, miraculously, seemed to avoid every swipe of the mammoth fists while planting his own again and again on the blocklike jaw above him. Even as Burton watched, the Technologist's knees wobbled and gave way. The big man dropped to a sitting position, and-bane-his head snapped to the left as Honesty's fist met the solid jawbone. Bang!-it was smacked to the right. The Technologist lay down and slept.