He stared upward. Silhouetted on top of the V-shaped cliff into the bottom of which the cottage was set he could see men holding cross-shaped objects in their hands. They were aiming at Sherlock the way they might aim a rifle.
They were crossbows. Sherlock hadn’t seen one before, but he’d seen pictures. It was like a small bow, but on its side, and made of metal rather than wood. It could fire bolts – like small arrows – very fast, and with enough power to punch through metal armour.
‘Get out of the way!’ Matty yelled, pulling him back towards the cottage.
‘He’s not trying to shoot us – he’s trying to spook us into running!’ Sherlock shouted, pulling away from Matty and rugby-tackling the stone with all his weight. ‘They don’t want us dead, remember!’ The stone shifted again, pivoting forward, teetering on the point of rolling down the hill.
Which was exactly what Sherlock wanted.
More crossbow bolts hit the ground around him, but he ignored them. He gave the boulder one last push, using all his weight and all his strength. It rolled over on to the grass – and kept on rolling down the slope, gathering speed as it did so, bouncing slightly as it hit bumps in the ground. Amyus Crowe got his rock moving as well – a bigger one that rolled heavily rather than bounced, creating a furrow of grass and earth as it moved. But it did move – faster and faster.
Rufus Stone’s boulder started to move, but instead of following the other two down the widening slope it veered sideways, towards the rocky walls of the V-shaped canyon. For a moment Sherlock thought it was going to stop dead, but it hit the wall and rebounded, catching two smaller stones on the way and dislodging them from where they sat.
The boulders, rocks and stones vanished over the edge of the slope. Seconds passed with no response – and then he heard a flurry of shouts and screams from below. Sherlock imagined the boulders smashing into a line of Bryce Scobell’s men like a bowling ball hitting skittles, breaking legs and smashing people aside. He smiled grimly.
‘More!’ he shouted, and immediately got both hands beneath another rock and levered it out of the ground. It came out easily. He hoisted it up to his shoulder and threw it like a shot-putter. It hit the ground and bounced away downhill until it was out of sight. Matty and Virginia sent smaller stones the same way, while Amyus Crowe and Rufus managed to dislodge two more huge boulders.
Two more bolts struck the ground around them, splattering earth everywhere, but the shooters had realized that their distractions weren’t working. For a moment Sherlock worried that they might start shooting at the four of them, rather than around them, but that didn’t seem to be part of their orders. The shooting continued sporadically, but no longer felt dangerous.
The shouting and screaming from below was reaching banshee proportions now. Sherlock didn’t know how many men Scobell had down there, but it sounded like they were all either incapacitated or otherwise distracted. They would have been expecting a handful of desperate runners whom they could easily subdue, but instead they’d got an avalanche of rocks.
‘Come on!’ he yelled.
With Crowe, Virginia, Matty and Rufus behind him, he piled down the slope after the rocks. The gradient seemed steeper than it had on the way up, and he could feel himself accelerating out of control. He nearly slipped in the wet grass. He tried to slow himself down, but Amyus Crowe careered into his back, pushing him onward.
As they scrambled down the ridge, he saw the remnants of Bryce Scobell’s ambush. There were five men located in a dip in the ground. Four of them were cut and bleeding. It was impossible to tell how badly hurt they were, but two of those four were trapped beneath the boulders that Crowe and Stone had sent hurtling down the slope. The fifth was trying to help his companions, but he didn’t seem to know which way to turn. Crossbows lay scattered around them.
Sherlock ran right through the ambush before they were even aware that he was there. He looked back over his shoulder to see Crowe and Rufus slow down, shepherding Matty and Virginia past them, before they speeded up again, taking up the rear. One of Scobell’s men blindly groped for a crossbow, but Crowe kicked it out of his reach as he passed.
They raced on, leaving the ambush behind them.
The occasional bolt still pocked the ground or pinged off the rocks, fired from the cliffs above, but the range was too great and the angle was wrong and Sherlock knew, just knew, that they weren’t a threat.
He felt exhilarated as he ran. He had rescued Amyus Crowe!
‘Ginnie! Sherlock! Here!’
Without stopping, he looked over his shoulder. Amyus Crowe was standing at the bottom of a barely discernible set of steps in the cliff face fifty yards behind him. Sherlock had completely missed it as he had run past, and so had Virginia, but Rufus Stone and Matty were already scrambling up it. This must be the hidden path that Crowe had mentioned! Sherlock skidded to a halt at the same time as Virginia, ready to turn and go back to where Crowe was standing, but just as he was about to move three of Scobell’s men came running down the rocky slope behind Crowe. There was blood on their clothes and their faces – they were the remnants of the ambush team – and they looked ready to kill, despite what orders they might have been given by Scobell. They wanted revenge for the rock attack.
Crowe saw the way Sherlock was looking past himand turned round. Sherlock saw the immediate tension in his shoulders. His head snapped back towards Sherlock and Virginia, and his eyes were wide with a mixture of fury and terror. He had obviously done the same mental calculation as Sherlock. The men were running downhill. If Sherlock and Virginia ran back to where Crowe was standing, they would be running uphill. There was no way they could get to Crowe before Scobell’s men did. Despite Sherlock’s admiration for and trust in his friend and mentor, he didn’t think that Crowe could take three furious men by himself. Especially if they were armed.
‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘Look after Rufus and Matty! I’ll take care of Virginia!’
‘I can’t!’ Crowe yelled. His face was white with shock.
‘You have to!’ Sherlock yelled back. He turned to Virginia, who was looking back and forth between Sherlock and her father. ‘Trust me – we have to keep going down.’
She looked at Amyus Crowe. His face was despairing. Eventually, after a time that felt like hours but must have been less than a second, he nodded.
Virginia turned and ran towards Sherlock. Crowe scrambled up the hidden path, surprisingly fast for a man of his bulk.
Virginia grabbed Sherlock’s hand and ran with him, flying down the slope, pulling away from their pursuers.
Sherlock looked back, once, over his shoulder as they ran. Amyus Crowe, along with Rufus and Matty, was out of sight, hidden by the rocks. The pursuers had seen Crowe climbing. Two of them followed, while the other kept on going.
The slope began to level out ahead of them. To his left, Sherlock caught sight of the chapel that he’d seen on the way up. They would soon be back in the town. Could they evade their pursuers there, or were Scobell’s men already waiting?
Still clutching Sherlock’s hand, Virginia pulled him towards the chapel. ‘Maybe we could hide there,’ she panted.
They scurried behind a moss-covered gravestone that was leaning at a perilous angle. There was barely room for them both. Sherlock had to move close to Virginia so they could fit without being seen. He could feel her breath on his neck: warm and fast.