Stormfire (70 page)

"Not particularly." Let's get this over with, damn you, Sean thought tautly. The place reminded him of a bordello. The bed was covered withjeopard skins and jewel-colored pillows, while on the stone walls incongruous draperies hung in swags. Candles in brass sconces created mosaics of light on the mirrors and oriental carpet.

"You look a bit tense, Robert," Enderly murmured. "Dare I hope you're impatient to confess and have done with any more unpleasantness?" His light mockery was evident as he stood up, the light picking up the curve of his lips as he came nearer.

"No?"

The Englishman began to unbutton Sean's shirt, smiling as his prisoner tensed. He caressed him, watching his eyes.

Disgust wrenched Sean's gut. He focused through the man's eyes to the back of his skull, anywhere but the eyes of the other men.

"Have you
really
nothing to say?"

With a snarl, Sean drove his knee upward with all the force he could muster. And connected with nothing.

Enderly must have expected just such a reaction. He twisted away with practiced swiftness and a rifle butt cracked across Sean's skull, stunning him. The two guards on either side jerked his arms up high behind his back, forcing him to his knees, and dimly he felt the newly healed back open. They shoved him, still dazed, onto the floor, then clamped a rifle stock behind his neck. With lightning efficiency, they had him stripped and spread- eagled face down, one man on each arm and leg, holding him taut. His head clearing, he twisted and bucked like a pinioned stallion.

They took turns with gun butts until he no longer , needed to be held down. At some point his will dissolved, ground away until he was broken in body and spirit. He wanted to beg, but only a croak would emerge from his throat. Finally, they rolled him over and stood back. Enderly leaned down and thumbed back the Irishman's eyelid, then, hearing a groan, touched his mouth almost tenderly. "Tell me what I want to know. Say it, Robert, and no one will hurt you any more. Otherwise . . ." There was a silence, then the dark head nodded. "Say it."

"Yes. Please . . ." The words were broken, like a sob of need. The green eyes looked up at him as if he were a savior, then slanted into those of a fiend. Before the guards could react, Sean wrenched at the man's hair with one hand and smashed his nose with the other. The guards went at him all at once, pounding at him with fists and boots. Then a musket butt smashed down on his skull and his grip went lax. They dragged Enderly, stilly screaming, out from under him, then went on kicking him in the head and sides.

One of them helped Enderly to a chair. "Take him," he croaked. "Tell Worthy. I want him . . . hacked to bits!"

The guard nodded and the four of them carried the slack body out, face down, head dangling.

Faraway, Sean heard the four marines complaining about his weight. Like a gnat's nagging stings in the midst of livid pain, Blankface's thumbnail dug into his left Achilles tendon, keeping him conscious and aware of what awaited him in a room just beyond the opening guardroom door.

"Hah. Looks like the viscount was in a bit of a miff," observed the chief guard, stepping back to let them in.

"That an't half," said Blankface, dropping Sean's left foot. "Ye ought to see old Johnny's face. Nose all over it."

He strolled over to the wall to light a cheroot from a candle. Shovel Hands dropped his leg; he saw no point holding up dead weight if everyone was bent on gossip.

"Pick him up and let's get on with it," Raker growled. "I an't plannin' to spend the night with him. Besides, he's tricky—" The warning came too late. The battered, silent man exploded, jabbing and kicking. With a maniac's strength, he wrenched away as a guard went down screaming with a smashed knee. Shovel Hands sailed headfirst into the wall and Sean jerked the pistol from the unconscious man's crossband. Raker fired point-blank into his back. His body lurched against the wall, seeming to embrace it, then he turned, eyes blazing with hate and pain. Even as the rattled chief guard's bullet pocked stone splinters by his head, he squeezed the trigger. Raker clutched his exploding face and dropped.

Then, with his first animation of the evening, Blankface smiled from across the room and leveled his gun.

Lifting his drooping head with an effort, Sean waited with weary patience for the final bullet; when it came, he seemed almost grateful to his executioner. His body jerked once, then sagged. Leaving a streak of scarlet, he slipped down the stone.

"Appears ye got him square through the heart, Corporal," observed the guard. Sheepshanks huddled, clutching his knee, his eyes squeezed shut with pain. The fourth guard lay inert by Raker.
        

Blankface nudged the body in the ribs. "We'll pitch him out for the diggers."

He was cold. So cold. Like the night his childhood had been brutally wrenched from him. Tears seeped in icy rivulets down his cheeks as he shivered naked in a surfswept crevice and watehed the glare of a blazing village, its sullen glow reflected from low-lying clouds heaped like dirty piles of sheared fleece. Beyond moonlit stones as luminous as skulls, the sea sighed in mourning, lulling whispers like a beguiling lure. The blanket he tried to draw over himself dissolved into icy powder between stiff fingers as he weakly plucked at the snow of the prison courtyard. Mother . . . please, I'm cold.

Go back to bed, Sean. If you are going to be king, you must be brave.

I'm lying naked in the snow. I can feel my life seeping out on the ground.

Men don't whimper. Be a man.

Don't go. Help me . . . please. Somebody. I hurt. Kit, hold me. Warm me. He tried to blink away snowflakes that froze on his lashes. High stars shone faintly through the falling snow and silently he cried out to them. Kit, I fought them. I didn't die the way you think. I'm still a man. I am . . . His head twisted in restless struggle and struck a dark shape beside him. He managed to move a hand far enough to tug at it with numb fingers. The coarse blanket came away; underneath it was a corpse, features already drawn in rigor, open eyes glassy, impervious to the gathering snow. Another corpse lay on the other side of him; and Raker's bulk, stripped of its uniform, beyond that. Hardly knowing what he did, Sean rolled over heavily, seeking warmth against the dead body. The pain of the effort shook him and he moaned against the rough blanket. Oh, God. I hurt. End it. Jehovah, God of Vengeance. You're good at killing. You've killed me over and over. When you made me Kit's brother. Up in that room. Finish it.

Yet somehow, he could not stop huddling for warmth against that corpse, could not roll away and let the cold take him quickly. You hate me too much to let me die, don't you? Inch by inch, bitterness welled up. I lost
both
balls up in that room and you know it. I haven't enough courage left to die; I used the last going for that gun. Damn you! His teeth bared in a snarl. This is how the damned die. With a grimace of outrage. Like this poor bastard I'm hugging like a friend. Well, you won't get me. I'll spit in your Stone Eye.

He pawed with new energy at the body, struggling with it until he had its filthy rags and dragged them onto himself. It took a long time but he did it with grim triumph. He rifled the other corpse for rags to tie around his feet, then clawed the ragged blanket around his shoulders like a shawl.

Finally, he began the agonizing ordeal of getting to his feet. Leaving the snow bloody with his efforts and staggering like a drunken derelict, he wandered out of the deserted courtyard to the street. The guard normally posted at the back entrance was standing on the corner with another watch, rubbing his hands and hugging himself, bored, lonely, and chilled. Shivering in the unblocked wind of the street, Sean kept to the shadows along the wall, avoiding the light from the windows across the street. As he safely turned the corner,
hë
clutched at the bricks, digging his nails into the mortar grooves to keep from sliding to the ground.

With terrible slowness he stumbled toward the harbor, keeping to the darker streets and alleys, until he collapsed. Curled up against the cold in his rags, he lost consciousness. He came to, teeth chattering, shaking violently. From then on, he crawled.

The few people he encountered averted their eyes from his battered, filthy face and went out of their way to avoid him. A marine and his mate were more curious. As they approached, a frown of suspicion creased the corporal's forehead. "See here, what are you up to?"

Sean stretched up a hand that shook. "Thruppence, sir?" he croaked. "Thruppence for a gin?"

"Filthy sod," the mate remarked. The marine shook his head in disgust, and the two walked on.

Near the harbor, a sailor actually gave him a penny to impress his sentimental doxy. They watched him drag himself into a side street. "Lumme, poor bloke. He's leavin' blood in the snow," the girl said. "Mayhap we ought to . . ." The sailor firmly pulled her away.

At last, Culhane came to the haven he sought, an unpainted, narrow house near the harbor. Shivering uncontrollably, he leaned his head and shoulder on the back door and weakly pounded with the heel of his hand. No one came. The place was dark, neglected, the curtains drawn. If the house was empty, he would die here. He could drag himself no farther. It had taken three hours to cover the quarter-mile. He could not feel his hands and feet, only pain that exploded in his chest with each heartbeat. His face was numb, his hair filling with drifting flakes. Too weak to cover himself again, he scratched at the door, almost absently watching the slowly spreading blackness over his heart.

Then the door drifted away and he tumbled into the house with the gently blowing snow.

Lazarus

Catherine twisted her hands about the small pistol in her muff as she waited in the office of the commandant of Liverpool Military Prison. Since her return from Scotland the previous evening, the effort of behaving normally with the battered Enderly had nearly exhausted her control; now her nerves were strung taut. This place is
a mountain
of stone, she thought bleakly. A man could be buried alive here and no one would know. Scream his life away and no one would hear. Or care. Her fingers twisted, twisted.

The door opened and a green uniform came at her. She put out her hand automatically, warding the officer off; he kissed her fingertips.

"Countess. This is an honor. I am Colonel Deal." A short, blunt man with a ruddy face made ruddier by his powdered white periwig, his small eyes appreciatively took in the rakishly sophisticated figure in chocolate velvet with satin cloche and sable muff. "The general didn't mention your coming. I would have made some preparation . . ."

"That is kind of you, Colonel, but totally unnecessary. I understand military quarters aren't designed to administer tea and scones. You have a prisoner who has been accused of my abduction. May I see him?"

"I . . . am afraid not."

"Why not, Colonel? I'm the sole witness. If you've made an error, an innocent man may pay for it with his life. If he's guilty, I can identify him."

The commandant squirmed. "This is a prison, Countess; its prisoners are villainous scum. Hardly a fit place and company for a lady."

Catherine ignored his slight inflection on the last word. "Surely I may trust to your able protection, sir."

"I regret, my lady—"

"Colonel, prisoners not in the military are subject to civil law. Must I display a warrant to see the prisoner? You have no right to hold a civilian incommunicado indefinitely without trial."

The commandant's jowls began to swell against his tunic collar. "I'm sure Mr. Sexton, the magistrate, will tell you—"

She frostily cut him off. "I've been to the chief magistrate of the Western Counties, Mr. Andrew Carton. In fact, Mr. Carton has provided just such a warrant. I wish to see the prisoner now."