Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm Part 15

'Bryce Scobell had a wife an' child. Ah don't believe he ever loved either of them. Ah don't believe he's capable of love. But ah think he came closer to real emotion with them than with anyone else. Maybe it was more like possessiveness a ah don't know for sure. But the thing that happened was, we cornered Scobell an' his bodyguards at a farmhouse in Phoenix. They started firin' when they saw us, an' we fired back. In the crossfire, two of mah people were killed, and so were Scobell's wife an' son. We'd had no idea they were there. Scobell escaped, like he always did, but he took an oath that day that he would make me pay for what ah'd done.' He grimaced. 'A month later a message arrived for me. It was from Scobell. He told me that he'd kill mah wife an' mah child an' he'd make me watch. He told me exactly what he'd do. It weren't . . . the kind of thing that would occur to any normal, G.o.d-fearin' person, but ah knew Scobell a ah knew that once he set his mind to a thing, then that thing would happen. With the permission of President Johnson ah took a leave of absence from mah duties an' came here.'

'And now he's followed you,' Sherlock said in the silence that followed Crowe's admission.

'As ah said, once he sets his mind to somethin', that thing happens.'

'You could have asked for help,' Rufus Stone pointed out. 'Mycroft Holmes would have provided guards for your cottage, I'm sure. If not, we could have recruited some people locally to help.'

'For how long?' Crowe asked. 'Even if Mr Holmes provided us with round-the-clock bodyguards, he couldn't keep them there forever. At some stage they would have been taken away an' placed on more important duties.' He shook his head. 'Bryce Scobell is a patient man. Patient, and very, very clever. He would have waited until everyone had gotten bored an' tired, an' then he would have struck.'

'But you've faced dangerous men before,' Sherlock pointed out. He was confused. He didn't understand why Amyus Crowe hadn't stayed to fight. Crowe had always seemed to Sherlock to be a man who confronted difficulty rather than running away from it. Secretly he felt a bit disappointed. 'I was there in the tunnels beneath Waterloo Station when you took on that man who wanted to kill me. You nearly broke his neck, and you didn't seem the slightest bit frightened. What's so different about Scobell?'

'Ah have faced dangerous men before,' Crowe agreed. 'Ah've gone up against some of the toughest, hardest men in the world in mah time, but Bryce Scobell is a different bucket of catfish entirely.' He sighed. 'It's difficult to describe, but there's something . . . not human about him. Most people are wary of bein' hurt, of bein' damaged, an' that gives you an advantage in a fight, but he ain't. He just don't care. Ah'm not sayin' he don't feel pain, cos he does, but he just shrugs it off. It don't interest him. An' he don't remember the pain neither. If you punch a normal man in the face enough times he'll stay back, not wantin' to get hit again, but Scobell a hit him the first time an' he'll remember the fact that he was. .h.i.t, but he don't seem to learn from the pain. He don't seek to avoid it next time. Knock him down an' he just gets up again, an' again, an' again. He keeps comin' back at you, like some kind of mechanical creation.' He shook his head. 'Ah'm not makin' much sense, ah know, but facin' Bryce Scobell is like facin' some dark force of nature. He's unstoppable. That would be bad enough if he was stupid, but he's one of the cleverest men ah know. He thinks several moves ahead, like he's playin' chess, an' he gathers people around him who are like him.'

'I don't understand about the names tattooed on his skin,' Virginia said suddenly. She had been quiet up until that point. 'Why would he do that? What does it mean?'

'It's a fixation with him,' her father replied darkly. 'Ah was told that when he joined the Confederate Army he only had three names, tattooed on his arm. Someone asked him what they were. He said they were the names of men he'd killed.' He paused and shook his head sadly. 'He was only eighteen. He'd had them indelibly inscribed on his skin, along with the dates. Said he wanted to make sure he never forgot them.' He shrugged. 'Course, in war you rarely know the names of the men you kill, so he'd leave a gap an' do his best to find out who they were, where they were from, based on their regiment. After the end of the War Between the States he spent a considerable sum of money tryin' to get the names of all the Union soldiers who died in particular places, at particular times. He even tried to find out the names of the Indians he killed. Had Black Kettle's name tattooed right across the nape of his neck. He's obsessed with the idea.'

'What about the ones in red?' Rufus Stone asked. 'As if I didn't know.'

Crowe eyed him darkly. Sherlock a.s.sumed he was tacitly warning Rufus not to mention Virginia's name. 'Those are the people he's going to kill but hasn't got around to yet,' he said slowly. 'Planning for the future, ah guess. He's makin' a statement that there are people out there whose days are numbered. When they're gone, he has the name tattooed over in black.' He peered out of the window again. 'Ah'm told he's got mah name in red on his forearm, right where he can see it every day.'

Rufus Stone was frowning. 'For a supposedly intelligent man,' he mused, 'this Bryce Scobell seems to have missed a trick. I mean, he's on the run from you, he's on the run from the whole US Government, and he deliberately makes himself more and more recognizable. If I was him I'd dye my hair blond and keep out of sight, not tattoo more and more names on myself.'

'It's a compulsion,' Crowe explained. 'The man can't help himself. An' it's amazing' what a pair of gloves an' some stage make-up on the face an' neck can accomplish.'

'So what's the plan?' Matty asked. 'What do we do?'

'We don't do anythin',' Crowe replied. 'Ginnie an' I, we leave the country. Head somewhere else. Change our names. Change our descriptions, as much as we can. You three go back to Farnham an' try to forget about us.'

The words. .h.i.t Sherlock like blows. His gaze slipped across to Virginia. 'I don't think we can do that,' he said quietly.

Rufus Stone frowned. 'I don't understand. Why did you leave the clues to bring us to Edinburgh if you don't want our help?'

Crowe closed his eyes momentarily. 'Because ah wanted to say goodbye properly,' he said. 'An' because ah wanted to explain, face to face, why ah was runnin' away. Ah wanted you to understand the scale of what ah'm up against. Scobell will keep comin', an' keep comin', and keep comin' until he succeeds. An' even if ah try to turn the tables an' hunt him down, he's too clever. He'll cover his tracks an' hide until I stop lookin'; or worse: he'll lure me into a trap.'

A silence followed as each of them tried to come to terms with what Crowe was saying.

'There's two problems with all that,' Sherlock said eventually.

Crowe raised an eyebrow. 'An' what're they then?'

'The first,' Sherlock continued, not put off by Crowe's att.i.tude, 'is that this man, Bryce Scobell, will keep on coming after you. If he's as clever and as dedicated as that, then he will find you wherever you go, no matter how long it takes him.'

'You're right,' Rufus Stone said, nodding.

'What's the other problem?' Matty asked.

'It's that you're treating this like you would treat any hunt.' Sherlock paused for a moment, trying to collect his thoughts into some kind of order. 'I know, from what you've taught me, that you treat men as if they were animals. If you're hunting them you try to predict their movements based on their habits, and you look for the signs of their presence a the signs they can't help leaving, the way that animals leave tracks.'

'Ah've always believed that mankind is just a different kind of animal,' Crowe conceded, 'an' many's a time ah've used that fact to mah advantage. What's your point?'

'My point is that Bryce Scobell isn't an animal. He's turned the tables. He's treating you as the animal, and he's tracking you, and that's spooked you. Your usual way of dealing with a situation won't work. The game has been reversed.'

'You're saying he's cleverer than me?' Crowe challenged, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng beneath his bushy grey brows.

'Yes,' Sherlock said simply. 'So if the game has been reversed, let's change the game. If Scobell is a better hunter than you, let's not make this a hunt. If he's a better game player than you, let's not make it a game. Don't let him choose the fight. Change the rules.'

'Easier said than done, young man,' Crowe rumbled, but the expression on his face suggested that Sherlock had surprised him.

'If he's looking for you,' Sherlock said, 'then don't hide. Don't do what he expects. Stay in the open. He'll wonder what you're doing. He'll a.s.sume it's a trap and he'll back away.'

'And then what?' Crowe challenged.

'And then he'll make a mistake, and you can turn the tables on him.'

Crowe nodded slowly. 'When the game is a hunt and you're losing, change the rules.'

'When the man you're up against is cleverer and more ruthless than you,' Sherlock amplified, 'make sure that the game doesn't depend on the winner being the cleverest or the most ruthless.'

Crowe smiled and opened his mouth to say something, but there was a sudden thump from the roof of the cottage. Crowe's gaze snapped upward, his hand already on the pistol, then he looked through the window again. Sherlock followed his gaze. The narrow enclosed hillside that sloped away in front of the cottage was empty, deserted, but something in the air had changed. A smell. Something . . . burning.

'Smoke!' he said. 'I smell smoke.'

Amyus Crowe moved swiftly across to the window. 'Nothin' out here.'

Sherlock looked towards the door out to the rest of the cottage. Was it his imagination, or was there a faint haze in the atmosphere out there?

'It's Scobell,' he said. 'He's set fire to the cottage!'

'But how?' Rufus snapped. 'n.o.body's come near! And how on earth did he find us?'

'They didn't have to come near,' Sherlock replied. 'He's dropped something burning on to the thatched roof from the cliffs above the cottage! That's dry straw a it'll go up in seconds!'

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

'Come on!' Matty yelled. 'We need to get out!'

Sherlock moved to take Virginia's hand, wanting to make sure she got to the door safely, but Crowe grabbed at his shoulder. 'Scobell will be out there, son!' he shouted. 'He'll have rifles. He'll pick us off like rabbits!'

Sherlock had a mental flash of the decapitated rabbit back at Amyus Crowe's Farnham cottage. He didn't want to end up like that.

'We don't have a choice,' Rufus Stone said. 'If we stay here we'll be burned alive.'

They could hear the fire catching hold in the straw thatch now a a crackling sound, like sticks being broken by some giant hand. Smoke was drifting in through the open door. Already it was hard to breathe, hard even to see.

'I don't think he wants to kill us in the fire,' Sherlock suddenly said.

Crowe stared at him questioningly.

'He wants to take his revenge on you. A fire isn't good enough for him a especially if he can't be sure from the remains if you were even here.'

'So what's he trying to do?' Rufus Stone asked, struggling not to cough.

'Flush us out into the open. He'll have men waiting further down the hill. They'll have guns, and they'll take us prisoner when we run out.'

'But that's the only option we've got!' Matty cried.

Crowe shook his head. 'Not quite. There's a path that leads up the rock face, away from the house, if we can get down the slope that far. It's hard to spot, but I know where it is.'

Stone covered his mouth and coughed. 'The trouble will be in getting there,' he said. 'Scobell's men won't let us get too far from the house before they take us.'

'I think I've got an idea.'

Sherlock ran for the door to the outside. Crowe and Rufus were moments behind him, with Matty and Virginia just behind them. Sherlock threw the door open. The sudden blast of fresh air sucked the smoke out in a billowing plume that would immediately alert whoever was watching from the rocky crags above a as Sherlock was sure they would be doing.

All over the ground in front of the cottage were the rocks of various shapes and sizes they had pa.s.sed on the way in. Twenty feet ahead of that was the point where the ground dropped sharply away for ten feet or so a the point where they had had to scramble up using hands and feet. Somewhere past there, hidden by the sudden drop in the ground, were Scobell's men.

'Help me!' he shouted, and set to work dislodging one of the bigger stones.

Realizing what he was doing, Rufus and Crowe threw themselves against two more rocks a even larger ones. Matty and Virginia joined Sherlock, trying to get his one moving.

Sherlock set his shoulder against the boulder and heaved. His throat and his ankles throbbed where the rope had bruised the flesh, but he ignored the pain and kept pus.h.i.+ng. The boulder s.h.i.+fted before his weight, rising up slightly and pivoting on a point on its front edge.

'We've got it!' he yelled.

Something whistled past his ear and buried itself in the ground by his side. He let go of the boulder in surprise, and it fell back into its crater with a thud that he could feel through the soles of his feet. He looked at the new object in surprise. For a moment he thought it was a stick, but there were feathers stuck to the back. He pulled it out of the ground. The front end was sharp, like an arrowhead.

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 a like small arrows a 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 a 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 s.h.i.+fted again, pivoting forward, teetering on the point of rolling down the hill.

Which was exactly what Sherlock wanted.

More crossbow bolts. .h.i.t 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 gra.s.s a and kept on rolling down the slope, gathering speed as it did so, bouncing slightly as it hit b.u.mps in the ground. Amyus Crowe got his rock moving as well a a bigger one that rolled heavily rather than bounced, creating a furrow of gra.s.s and earth as it moved. But it did move a 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 pa.s.sed with no response a and then he heard a flurry of shouts and screams from below. Sherlock imagined the boulders smas.h.i.+ng into a line of Bryce Scobell's men like a bowling ball hitting skittles, breaking legs and smas.h.i.+ng 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 gra.s.s. He tried to slow himself down, but Amyus Crowe careered into his back, pus.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed.

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 a they were the remnants of the ambush team a 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 a 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.

Boots clattered on the rocks, then disappeared.