The Difference Engine

A vast concussion shook the building. Heaps of ti

All six of the wretches lay sprawled and blasted in the alley, as if lightning-struck.

"Ned!" shouted Brian, from atop his heap of cartons. "Get their weapons!" He crouched there on one knee, the Russian pistol gushing smoke from its opened loading-chamber. He loaded a second cartridge of brass and red waxed-paper, as thick as a copper's baton.

Mallory, ears ringing, lunged forward, then slipped and almost fell headlong in the spreading blood. He grabbed right-handed for support and the Ballester-Molina went off, its bullet whanging from an iron beam overhead. Mallory paused, uncocked it carefully, uncocked the Marquess's pistol as well, stuck them both into his belt, precious seconds ticking as he dithered.

The alley was awash with blood. The blunderbuss blast of the Russian hand-ca

Rifles began to crack from a distance, slugs plowing into the bounty around them with odd crunches and a musical tinkling of glass. "Mallory! This way," Fraser shouted.

Fraser had uncovered a crevice along the warehouse wall. Mallory turned to sling the carbine and look for Brian, seeing the young artilleryman leap across the alley for another vantage-point.

He followed Fraser into the crevice, grunting and heaving, for several yards along the wall. Bullets began whacking into the brick, before them and behind them, but well above their heads. Ill-aimed shots burst the tin-sheet roof with drum-like metal bangs. Mallory emerged to find Tom working like a demon in an open cul-de-sac, flinging up a barricade of spindle-legged ladies' vanity-tables. The things lay piled in a white-lacquered heap like dead tropical spiders.

The cracking of rifles, sharper now, made the warehouse a cacophony. From behind them Mallory heard shouts of rage and fear over the dead.

Tom drove a length of iron bedstead into a heap of crates, put his back into it, and toppled the mess with a crash. "How many?" Tom panted.

"Six."

Tom smiled like a madman. "That's more than they'll ever kill of us. Where's Brian now?"

"I don't know." Mallory unslung the carbine, handed it to Tom. Tom took it by the barrel and held it at arm's-length, surprised by its caking of gore.

Fraser, maintaining close watch at the crevice, fired his pepperbox. There was an awful, girlish scream and a thrashing, like a poisoned rat in a wall.

Bullets began to plunge into the rubble around them with somewhat greater accuracy, attracted by the scream. A thumb-sized conical slug fell from nowhere at Mallory's feet and spun like a top on the floor-boards.

Fraser tapped his shoulder. Mallory turned. Fraser had tugged the mask from his face; his eyes glittered and stubble showed black on his pale chin. "How now, Dr. Mallory? What new inspired maneuver?"

"That might well have worked, you know," Mallory protested. "She might have taken us straight to Swing if she'd believed me. There's no accounting for women… "

"Oh, she believed you right-enough," said Fraser, and suddenly he laughed, a strange dry chuckling like the rubbing of resined wood. "Well, what do you have there?"

"Pistol?" Mallory offered Fraser the salvaged revolver. "Mind that bit of shrapnel in it."

Fraser scraped the embedded barb free on his boot-heel. "Never saw the like of that lad's barker! I rather doubt it's legal, even for one of your gallant Crimea heroes."

A rifle-shot knocked a spi

Mallory snatched the Victoria from Tom, braced the bloodied strap around his forearm, and took close aim. He squeezed the trigger. To no effect, for the single-shot had been fired already. But the sniper's mouth opened in an O of terror and he leapt from his perch with a distant crash.

Mallory yanked the bolt back, flinging the dead cartridge. "I should have taken that damned bandolier—"

"Ned!" Brian appeared suddenly to their left, crouched at the top of a heap. "Over here—cotton-bales!"

"Right!" They followed Brian's lead, scrambling and heaving atop the booty in a cascade of whalebone and candlesticks. Bullets whizzed and thwacked around them—more men in the rafters, Mallory thought, too busy to look. Fraser rose once and took a pot-shot, to no apparent effect.

Dozens of hundred-weight bales of Confederate gi

Brian gestured wildly, then vanished over the far side of the cotton-stack. Mallory understood him: it was a natural fortress, with a little work.

He and Tom heaved and toppled one of the bales free from the top of the stack, stepping into the cavity. Bullets thumped with gentle huffs into the cotton as Fraser rose and returned fire.

They kicked out another bale, and then a third. Fraser joined them in the excavation, with a leap and a stumble. In a frantic, heaving minute they had burrowed their way into the thick of it, like ants amid a box of cube sugar.

Their position was obvious now; bullets popped and thudded into the cotton fortress, but to no effect. Mallory yanked a great clean wad and wiped sweat and blood from his face and arms. It was dire hard work, hauling cotton-bales; no wonder the Southrons had relegated it to their darkeys.

Fraser cleared a narrow space between two bales. "Give me another pistol." Mallory handed him the Marquess's long-barreled revolver. Fraser squeezed off a shot, squinted, nodded. "Fine piece…" A volley of futile shots came in reply. Tom, grunting and heaving, cleared more space by lifting and dropping a bale off the back of the heap; it struck something with a crash like a splintering pianola.

They took inventory. Tom had a derringer with one loaded chamber; useful, perhaps, if the anarchists swarmed in like boarding pirates, but not otherwise. Mallory's Ballester-Molina had three rounds. Fraser's pepperbox had three caps left, and the Marquess's gun five rounds. And they had an empty Victoria carbine, and Fraser's little truncheon.

There was no sign of Brian.

There were angry, muffled shouts in the depths of the warehouse—orders. Mallory thought. The gunfire died away quite suddenly, replaced by an ominous silence, broken by rustling and what seemed to be hammering. He peered up over the edge of a forward bale. There was no visible enemy, but the doors of the warehouse had been shut.

Gloom flew across the warehouse in a sudden wave. Beyond the glazed vaulting of the ceiling, it had grown swiftly and astonishingly dark, as if the Stink had thickened further.

"Should we make a run for it?" whispered Tom.

"Not without Brian," Mallory said.

Fraser shook his head dourly—not speaking his doubt, but it was clear enough.

They worked in the gloom for a while, clearing space, digging in deeper, heaving up some of the bales to serve as crenellations. At the sound of their activity, more shots came, muzzle-flashes savagely lighting the darkness, bullets screaming off iron braces overhead. Here and there in the heaps of merchandise, the kindled light of lanterns glowed.

More shouted orders, and the firing ceased. There was a flurry of pattering on the metal roof, swiftly gone.