Revenge of the Brotherhood (Book 3 in the Tom & Laura Series) (13 page)

“Parliament.” There was the sound of spitting. “No one there gives tuppence for the likes of us.”

“Nor does the General. Just so long he gets his victories. I hear the Spellbinder’s a young girl and don’t know what we’re doin’. When she finds out he’d best kiss his balls goodbye; you know what Spellbinders can do.”

There were mutterings of agreement among those standing there.

“Hope she sticks ‘is cock so far up ‘is arse it comes out ‘is mouth.”

“Shhh, someone’s coming, best be off.”

Laura heard the men walk away. There were tears of rage in her eyes and for a while she fumed in silence. Then she lit a candle and kicked Daisy awake.

“Ow, what did I do?”

Laura found her friend’s pain pleasing and kicked her again.

“They have been killing the people I’ve been binding. Some of the children too. What have you made me do, Daisy Drew?”

Daisy tried to put her arm around Laura, but she pushed it away.

“I was not sure at first. He could have been telling the truth. But last night and tonight I have known; the visions were unambiguous.”

“And you let me carry on doing it?”

“Laura, all I could see was you being used as a common prostitute or being whipped if I did not. There was no way out.”

Laura’s eyes blazed.

“Those were my choices to make, Daisy, not yours.”

Daisy nodded her head. There were tears in her eyes. “It is what friends do. Try and protect the ones they love. Forgive me?”

Laura shook her head. “It is not that easy. How many people are dead because of what you encouraged me to do? I have to escape tonight. You may come with me if you choose.”

“You have no spellbinding tools.”

Laura mused. “My blood smeared on the canvas will have to do. It might work for half an hour.”

“Or you could use these.” Daisy dug into her clothes and brought out the pen and paper Mr. Timothy had sold her. “It uses copper ink,” she said as she handed over the pen.

“Consider yourself partially forgiven,” Laura said as she examined the pen and recognized the quality of the paper. She could do a lot with these if she set her mind to it.

It was a little past midnight when Tom and Antonia made their move. Their main problem was getting out of the fort undetected. It would be guarded at the gate. To Tom’s surprise Antonia brought a long rope with knots along its length.

“We can climb out of the window and jump over to the wall. It is only a few feet away and the walkway is almost on the right level. It should be easy. Then we use the rope to climb down.”

Tom closed his mouth, which was hanging open. “When did you get the rope?”

“Ages ago. I told you, Telepaths are caged animals, so we like to be prepared to escape wherever we go. I planned the escape route out of here the day after I arrived and I stole the rope weeks ago.”

“I will never understand either women or telepaths,” Tom confessed. “Do you have any other surprises I should know about?”

Antonia grinned. “There are a few. I like to be prepared.”

As Antonia predicted, the jump from outside the window to the walkway was easy, though Tom was horrified at the noise he made when he landed.

“Don’t worry, Thomas,” Antonia said as she landed equally heavily beside him. “The soldiers guarding this post have become most lax in their patrolling and as the last one went past half an hour ago, I suspect we have at least another hour before anybody leaves the guard house. I doubt they will notice the rope until morning.”

Tom fastened the rope securely to the heavy posts that made up the wall and then helped Antonia climb over it. She was wearing a pair of men’s trousers, which, given all that Tom had come to know about her, did not surprise him in the slightest.

It was an easy climb down to the ground, but Tom had performed no exercise recently except for in the bedroom and he was out of breath by the time he reached the bottom.

“Which way is the Hubris?” he asked. He had never walked around the fort and in the dark he was lost.

Antonia sighed and took his hand in hers. “Does Laura have this much trouble with you?”

“All the time,” Tom whispered back.

The massive building holding the Hubris blacked out the sky and it was difficult to see the ground well enough to walk.

“What if the door is locked?” Tom asked, suddenly struck by the notion.

“We will find a way in,” Antonia said confidently. Her words gave Tom greater confidence and he strode forward.

The door turned out to be unlocked. Tom and Antonia had just entered when a lantern opened and light flooded over them.

“Well, look what we have here,” Dougal said with some satisfaction. “Our love birds are running away. What would Laura think of this, Tom?”

Tom shielded his eyes from the lantern. As far as he could tell, Dougal was alone.

“Running to something, Dougal. Not away. Ebenezer is dying and I need to get to him. Only the Hubris can get me back to London in time.”

“And you did not think to come to me as a friend and ask my permission?”

“I did not think you would approve.” This conversation was getting away from Tom.

“Daisy told me to come to her when you wanted to come home. You are an idiot, Thomas Carter and it is lucky you are so obvious in your secret plans that I had the time to provision the Hubris. She is fully ready to go.”

“You are coming with us?” Antonia said, disbelief coloring her words.

“Of course I am. That’s why I took this godforsaken job in the first place.”

There was a long pause. Dougal was the one who finally broke it.

“Well, which of you is going to open the doors?”

Tom and Antonia ran to the doors and began to push them open. Dougal boarded the Hubris and started up the engines. The steam engines powered a small generator and soon pale electric lights began to glow on the bridge.

Tom untied the ropes and then ran to board the Hubris before it rose too high. Antonia was ahead of him and she gave him a hand to get onboard.

“It is a pity we don’t have more crew,” Dougal said as they arrived at the bridge. “However, I could not tell anyone what I was going to do in case it got back to high command. I doubt they would approve.”

Antonia was nervous as she adjusted their altitude and the Hubris bumped against the roof before she got it under control. Dougal was at the wheel and Tom felt like a spare part, not much good for anything.

Once out of the shed, they began to rise. There followed an enormous bang, which shook the Hubris and knocked Tom off his feet.

“What was that?”

Dougal spun the wheel and the Hubris turned. Tom’s mouth fell open for the second time that night as he saw the fort was on fire. The buildings near to the gate had been destroyed by a massive explosion and only the mansion looked be in one piece. Sounds of sporadic gunfire split the night.

“The natives are attacking the fort. Someone must have set off the gunpowder,” Dougal said in a remarkably calm voice. “Our men don’t stand a chance.”

“Then we must go back and help them,” Antonia said. “Which of you two is steering this thing?”

13.
              
Flight

It was just before noon when the camp stirred. It had been a bitter morning. Those guarding the camp had sat immobilized for nearly eight hours, wondering if the enemy would come across them and kill them. For the soldiers in the camp it was a shock to wake in the same state as the men and boys they had killed, unable to move and scared to cry out for fear it might alert the enemy to them.

The enemy did not call as they were in full retreat against an Army capable of killing them without them being able to fire a single shot. So the camp sat there in a blaze of summer sunlight with the only sounds being that of the horses, insects and birds

Corporal Wainwright was one of the first to recover the use of his limbs. He knew at once that the culprit had to be Laura, but she was not the urgent problem. That was securing the perimeter of the camp from the enemy.

He staggered to the tents where his men lay and shook them. Not all responded, but some were able to get to their feet. All of them had trouble moving as their muscles didn’t seem to be working properly.

“Pick up your rifles and relieve the guards. Prop yourselves up if you have to, but make sure you can shoot anyone who gets too close. Shoot first and ask questions later, we are in no state to defend the camp against a serious attack.”

His men staggered to their feet and set off in two’s towards the perimeter.

“What have you done to us, Miss?” Wainwright mused as he headed for his officer’s tent. The female Bretons had recovered in minutes once Laura’s bind had broken, why were the soldiers taking so long to recover?

Captain Trentwood had been awake, but unable to move since dawn. He had squirmed feebly on his bed and was aware that his body felt different and he had lost his bushy sideburns. His longjohn’s flopped about his arms and legs as though he had shrunk in some manner.

Captain Trentwood was never as glad to see someone as he was to see Corporal Wainwright stagger into his tent. The Corporal came to the side of his bunk and stared down at what he saw in shock.

“Captain Trentwood? Is that you?” he asked. Trentwood saw the man’s lips twitch as though he was trying not to laugh.

“Of course it’s me, man…” Trentwood stopped speaking, because what he heard wasn’t his voice. It was far too high. “Wha… what has she done to me?”

Wainwright turned away and Trentwood saw the man’s shoulders heaving. He was trying to suppress laughter and not fully succeeding as painful wheezing gasps were escaping from his wracked frame. Trentwood tried to move and managed to lift a hand, which fell across his chest. He felt soft bulges that shouldn’t be there and squealed like a girl. As a matter of incontrovertible fact he sounded exactly like a girl.

Wainwright pulled himself together and turned to face his commanding officer.

“I have managed to raise a few of our men, sir,” he stifled a laugh with some difficulty, “and have sent them to guard the perimeter. They are all weak and unable to move around normally.”

“Good work. But what about me, man? What about me?”

Wainwright’s face twisted as he fought to stop himself laughing. “I am afraid to say, sir. That the Spellbinder has taken her revenge and not only has she taken your balls, sir, but she appears to have turned you into a girl. Eleven or twelve years old, if I might make a guess, sir.”

General Brent-Smyth woke late. He was a heavy sleeper and relied on his Adjutant to wake him at dawn each morning. He felt a surge of anger run through him. His adjutant was a disgrace and he would put the man on a charge as soon as he could get out of bed.

Unlike Captain Trentwood, the General slept naked and the night had been so warm and humid he did not bother with sheets. Bleary-eyed he sat on his bunk before getting to his feet, seeking the water jug and his travel dish. He poured water into the dish and splashed water over his face. That was when he noticed his moustache was missing.

He opened his eyes to see two attractive female breasts staring back at him, reflected in the water in the bowl. His hands travelled to his chest and he realized they were his own.

“I will have her whipped to death for this,” he said feeling righteous rage build in him. His feminine tones still conveying deadly certainty. His crotch felt strange and somehow damp. He was not surprised to discover his manhood was missing, but when he raised his hand and discovered it covered in blood the shock was almost too much for him.

Corporal Wainwright ran into the tent and stopped when he saw the naked woman.

“She’s done it to you too, sir,” he said, with awe in his voice. “A little older in your case.”

“Get her from the wagon,” the General hissed, the effort of turning to face the Corporal almost too much for him.

“She’s gone, sir. Along with Agent Drew. I suspect all the officers have been changed to girls, err woman in your case. I’ve secured the perimeter, but my men can barely walk, sir.”

The General became incoherent with rage. Emotions of far greater power than he had ever experienced ran through him. He felt an urge to cry. Needing to get Wainwright out of the tent before that happened, he pulled himself together enough to speak.

“Check on the other officers, then report back.”

“Yes sir.” Wainwright turned to leave when a thought occurred to him. “Begging the General’s pardon, but would the General like me to get you some rags for that bleeding?”

“Get out, Corporal.”

Daisy stopped walking and surveyed the landscape, dense forest in all directions. Since dawn they had been using the sun to head roughly north into enemy territory. She did not need to be a Precog to know that the enemy behind them would treat them far worse than the enemy they were fleeing towards.

There was a convenient fallen tree to sit on and Laura joined her a few moments after she sat down.

“You spent a long time on that bind. I have never seen you write such a long one. Did you turn the Captain into a frog?”

Laura took out the bind and checked the paper for signs of charring. When that happened the bind would be about to burst into flames and she would need to decide what to do next.

“Worse than that. But I did not kill them, not even the General. And his men were only carrying out orders and would have been shot if they refused.”

“Have you punished me enough yet? You giggled annoyingly for the first hour of our walk. Tell me what you did.”

Laura smiled. “I have forgiven you. I might have done the same if I was you and Tom was in my charge. I created a complex bind and it probably breaks a couple of the rules of magic.”

“You and Tom have never obeyed any rules, have you?”

“And that is why you love us so. I set up three binds in one. The first bind was to immobilize the camp as I did to the Bretons. I could not leave that on too long as a local would be bound to notice and take revenge on them, so I set up a secondary bind that after eight hours they would wake, but be unable to carry out any strenuous task. That will be with them until the bind bursts into flames.”

Daisy knew Laura could have kept the camp immobilized for at least a day and somebody would have discovered the soldiers helpless. It would have been what Daisy would have done, but Laura’s had beliefs including ‘thou shalt not kill.’

“I take it the third bind was the one that left you laughing?”

Laura nodded. “We need a distraction to allow us to make good our escape. If I had turned the General into a frog, his second in command would take over and chase us down. Even if I immobilized all their commanders, the sergeants or the corporals would come after us. Even the ordinary soldiers would seek revenge because I have humiliated them.”

“You came up with a distraction?”

“I turned all the officers into girls. The younger ones will be young girls and some, like the General, will be young women. Their men will find it difficult to take orders from children, especially female ones. It should give us the time we need.”

Daisy smiled and then as she considered the full implications she started laughing.

“You stripped the command of their balls. They will shoot us on sight.”

“I wonder if they will choose to wear dresses.” Laura was unperturbed by the thought of being killed. If they shot her it would be better than the alternatives.

“I would love to have been there when Trentwood found out,” Daisy said between giggling fits.

The two girls sat there laughing for several minutes before sobering up enough to start walking again.

“Tom, get down to a Gatling Gun. Scare the Indians if you cannot bring yourself to shoot any of them. I will steer the ship over the fort and we will try and pick up any survivors.” Dougal’s commands came in a crisp sharp manner and Tom felt feelings of relief run through him. Someone knew what to do.

When he got into the gunner’s position they were nearly over the fort. He saw French and Baum shooting from the upper windows of the mansion at shadowy shapes flitting across the open ground. Tom aimed ahead of the shadows and fired.

A stream of bullets raked across the area killing over a dozen natives in less than five seconds. Tom had failed to allow for the airship’s motion and the bullets flew straight at the approaching men. He took his finger off the trigger, but it was too late. They were dead. The light from the fires was enough to show the damage he had done

Up on the bridge, Dougal aligned the ships wheel to bring them directly over the mansion.

“I didn’t think Tom had it in him,” he said in a whisper. “Cut the engines Antonia. Baum and French look to be the only ones left alive.”

Antonia moved the propeller control to neutral and most of the engine noise ceased. The only gunfire they heard was coming from the mansion. The rest of the fort was ablaze and the fire was spreading fast enough to threaten the mansion within minutes.

“We can’t stay over the blaze, the heat will set the Hubris on fire,” Dougal told Antonia. “You stay on the bridge and be ready to start the propellers if the fire spreads. I have locked the wheel. I am going down to open the bomb hatch and lower a rope ladder for the men.”

Tom saw Indians outlined in the blaze behind them. He elevated the gun, but he could not bring himself to pull the trigger. They had seen the devastating power of the Hubris and he hoped they would stay where they were. French and Baum had stopped shooting and they must have seen the airship by now. He did not know what to do and felt completely helpless.

“Tom, help me with the bomb hatch.”

Dougal’s shout was a great relief; especially as obeying the command would take his finger well away from the trigger. He clambered out of the gunner’s chair and up the ladder.

Dougal struggled with the hatch in the floor. It was designed to be opened by two men, not one. The twin door hatch lifted upwards rather than dropping down as people had to walk over it when it wasn’t in use. Tom took hold of the other handle and the hatch lifted to reveal the roof of the mansion. Baum and French had moved up to a skylight in the roof some twenty feet below them.

“Hey, good to see you guys,” French called out cheerfully. Franz Baum looked panicked and frightened, but he gave them a wave.

Dougal dropped a rope ladder, which clattered along the tiles before French grabbed it. French tied his end to the window frame, tethering the airship.

“Come on up, gentlemen. Tom’s shooting will not keep the natives at bay forever.”

French gave Tom a smart salute. “First class shooting, sir. I see you got the hang of the ship’s speed.”

“Perhaps you should get a move on,” Tom suggested. He wanted to go somewhere private to vomit, but that would have to wait.

Dougal handed Tom a heavy knife. “As soon as you have them safe, cut the rope ladder and we’ll be off. I’ll go back to the bridge to keep an eye out for the natives and keep the ship steady.”

Tom nodded. When he looked back at the ladder, French was already halfway up. Baum was dithering by the window.

“You have to get on the ladder, Franz. Do it now,” Tom called.

Baum shook his head. “I am scared of heights.”

French, who was now almost within Tom’s reach, stopped and looked back at the German. “I shall come back and get you, Franz. Don’t you go and make me do it.”

French’s words stirred Baum into action. He climbed out of the window, clutching onto the ladder, and began to climb. Sensibly, he kept his eyes up, looking at Tom for reassurance. French laughed and completed his assent.