His gaze moved over Gahan Macfarlane. The big Scotsman was staring at Sherlock. He glanced at the doorway to the previous room, then back at Sherlock again. Then he nodded.
What was he trying to say?
Sherlock remembered the pit in the centre of the room next door, and the creature that was penned inside. Was that what Macfarlane wanted him to think about? He didn’t know what the creature was, but judging by the dog fight and the boxing match in the other rooms, and by the various animal heads that hung from the walls here, Macfarlane liked to see people and animals fighting. Whatever was in the pit was likely to be big and fearsome. Macfarlane probably set dogs against it, or possibly even people, wagering not on whether they would win but on how long it would take them to die.
It gave Sherlock an idea, but he had to get to it first.
‘It’s time,’ Scobell said. ‘The names on my forehead and on my forearm have been red for too long. It is time to have them covered in black ink.’
As Scobell stepped forward, Sherlock’s eyes fixed again on the gold skull on his cane. The cane had a blade in the end, activated by one eye socket. But the skull had two eye sockets . . .
He reached out and jammed his forefinger in the skull’s right eye socket.
A blade erupted out of the slot in the skull and through Scobell’s hand. He screamed: a high-pitched, shocked noise that paralysed everyone in the room apart from Sherlock. He pushed past Scobell and towards the door to the previous room – the one with the beast trapped in the pit. Scobell’s men regained their wits and tracked him with their crossbows as he ran, but he was already through the doorway when they fired. He heard the bolts whizzing behind, and screams as some of them found a mark. Scobell’s men were shooting each other by accident.
There was chaos in the room he had left, cries and shouts and sounds of people running, but Sherlock was more concerned with what was ahead of him: the swimming-pool-like pit, and the waist-high wooden panels that lined the edge.
The creature in the pit roared. Sherlock heard the thudding of paws and the clicking of claws as whatever it was rushed towards his side of the pit.
He grabbed a panel and pulled it upward. It was loosely bolted to the floor and resisted for a moment, but in his desperation his strength was such that he tore it loose. He didn’t have the luxury of failure. The panel was perhaps fifteen feet long and three feet wide, and so heavy that he had difficulty in manoeuvring it, but somehow he managed to turn it and throw it into the pit so that one end was left on the edge by his feet, right in the gap where the panel had been fastened.
He had made a ramp so that whatever was in there could get out.
It was the only thing he could think of that could even up the odds.
With a roar, a massive shape surged out of the pit and loomed above him, shaggy arms wide and claws spread like handfuls of knife blades. It was a bear – a brown bear – and it must have measured ten feet from its tail to the tip of its nose. Its eyes gleamed red with rage and madness. God alone knew where Macfarlane had got it. Probably he’d had it since it was a cub. The chances were that it had been penned up for years, taunted and abused and forced to fight, and now it was free.
It swiped at Sherlock with a massive paw. Sherlock dropped to the floor and rolled beneath it, just as Scobell’s remaining men burst through the doorway looking for him. The bear forgot about Sherlock. It saw the men, and it saw their crossbows. It remembered all the pain it had suffered.
And it attacked.
Sherlock rolled over the edge of the pit. As he was falling he could hear screams from Scobell’s men and terrifying roars from the bear.
The impact with the floor of the pit drove the breath from his body in a whoosh. His vision filled with stars. It took him a moment to recover. He rolled over and stood up cautiously, looking around. The sides of the pit were about fifteen feet deep, and it was littered with bones. Some were old, but some were fresh and bloody. Sherlock could have sworn that some were human.
He climbed carefully back up the ramp. The bear had gone into Macfarlane’s main room, but five or six of Scobell’s men were lying on the ground just inside the doorway. It was hard to tell exactly how many there were, given the state they were in.
Cautiously Sherlock moved into the doorway.
Most of Macfarlane’s men had run. Macfarlane himself was still there, on the dais by his throne, with Rufus Stone, Matty, Amyus Crowe and Virginia clustered around him. They were watching what was happening in the centre of the room with horror.
The remainder of Scobell’s men had been pulled apart by the bear’s claws. They had obviously tried to stop it: their crossbows had been fired, and there were bolts sticking out of the bear’s fur, but that hadn’t helped them at all. Having dealt with them, the bear was rearing over Bryce Scobell. It was nearly twice his height. There was no trace of fear on Scobell’s face. There was no trace of pain either, despite the blood that was streaming from his right hand where the blade from the cane had sliced through it.
‘Get out of my way,’ he said with just a tinge of annoyance in his voice. ‘I have business to attend to.’
The bear swiped at Bryce Scobell with a deadly paw. The sharp claws caught in his chest, picking him up like a rag doll. He flew across the room and hit the wall. As Sherlock watched, his body slid, broken and crumpled, to the ground. His expression was as calm, as uninterested, as it had always been, and now would always remain.
The bear scented the group of people on the dais. It dropped to all fours and stalked towards them. The growl that rumbled deep in its chest reverberated through the floor.
Sherlock moved up behind it. He knew he had to stop it, but he didn’t know how. One of the crossbows dropped by Scobell’s men lay by his feet. It hadn’t been fired. He bent and scooped it up. Five or six bolts were already sticking out of the bear’s body, but maybe Sherlock could hit a vulnerable spot. Did bears even have vulnerable spots?
Gahan Macfarlane took a step forward, but Amyus Crowe put a hand on his shoulder. Macfarlane looked at the American, frowning. Crowe moved past Macfarlane, stepping off the dais. He walked forward, towards the bear. Matty and Rufus Stone were frozen. The bear padded towards Crowe, growling. Sherlock could see Virginia raise a hand to her mouth. Her face was shocked, her eyes wide. She could see her father’s death unfolding right in front of her.
Sherlock raised the crossbow, taking aim at the back of the bear’s neck. Maybe he could sever its spinal column. He knew his chances were very slim, especially given how much his hands were shaking. But he had to do something.
The bear reared up on its back legs. It loomed above Crowe, front legs stretched wide and paws spread. It raised its snout and let out a deafening roar.
And then Amyus Crowe did the most amazing thing Sherlock had ever seen. He threw his arms wide and his head back, and he roared as well. His voice echoed through the room. With his massive chest and his heavily muscled arms and legs he seemed suddenly larger than life. He was like a bear as well, but white instead of brown – a polar bear instead of a grizzly bear.
The bear dropped its head and gazed down at Crowe. It sniffed uncertainly.
‘Ah have eaten bigger bears than you for mah breakfast,’ Crowe said firmly. ‘Go back from whence you came, mah friend. Live for another day.’
Unbelievably, the bear sank to all fours. Even so, its head was on a level with Crowe’s. It sniffed at him for a long moment, then it turned round and shambled out of the room, back towards its pit. It passed by Sherlock without even a glance, head held low.