A Feast Unknown

Suddenly, the car was in the mire but still moving forward. It slid to one side, straightened as the driver fought it and then was back on the pavement. In the meantime, I had been firing at it and so had Trish.

But it went on.

I bit my lip. We had lost all our transportation now the gamble had not paid off. I was hoping to get that car without wrecking it.

The lights of the car receded, then slowed, and suddenly they were no longer moving. I shouted to

Trish to be careful, it might be a trick, and ran towards it. When I got closer, I could see those within silhouetted against the beams from the headlamps. The door by the driver’s seat was open, and two men were pulling him out. He had been hit.

One man dropped the body and whirled. I fired, and Trish’s shot came out of the darkness. He fell backwards over the driver’s body. The other man was firing into the darkness with no idea of where we were. I shifted the crossbow to my right hand, aimed, and saw him throw the automatic up into the air and then double over, clutching his leg. When Trish and I moved in, we found that the bolt had gone through his thigh and several inches were sticking out in back.

I had intended to question him, but he died a moment later. A previous wound in the ribs, plus the shock of the bolt and more loss of blood, had put him out of our reach.

A voice speaking what I thought was Albanian was issuing from the car radio. It was questioning and, when no answer came, was threaded with rage and then with hysteria. There was no point in letting Noli know what had happened, so I repressed the temptation to crow over him. I turned it off and started to haul the other bodies out. Afterwards, we collected all the arms and ammunition from the other car and put them in ours. Two men in the wrecked vehicle were unconscious but moaning. I put them out of their misery with a slash across the jugular vein.

The trunk of both cars contained flares, which I put on the floor of the rear of the big American car.

They might have a use. We drove off at 11 P.M. The skies were still cloudy, and it was lightning and thundering again in the distant west, this side of Blencathra mountain.

36

Without incident, we drove all the way to the road at the foot of Raven Crags at the highest speed which the road conditions permitted. We kept a watch out for a copter. If Noli had one, he might send it off to find out why his men were not reporting in.

When we neared the fork of the road which led to the left to the village of Cloamby and straight ahead up the fell to Grandrith, we slowed down. I turned off the lights and poked along, because I suspected that Noli might have stationed men at the fork. A half a mile before the crossroads, I stopped at the bottom of a hill, and Trish and I proceeded on foot. This would delay us, but I was so sure that an ambush would be waiting for us I had to take extreme caution.

We circled through the heavy brush on higher ground. After intent observation, occupying ten minutes of quietly listening and peering, we found two men. They were on the north side of the road and a few yards below the fork. They were smoking, and, although they kept the flames cupped in their palms, I saw them. I also smelled the smoke. Reasonably certain that no others were around, I carefully approached them. They were on a slight eminence, screened by brush. Besides their tommies, they were armed with a bazooka. One had a walkie-talkie.

The road was only forty feet away; they could scarcely have missed us if we had driven by. I crawled back to Trish and told her what I had seen and what we should do. Before proceeding, I subjected the woods to another intent scrutiny by eye, ear, and nose. It was well that I did. A third man was fifteen feet up on the broad limb of a giant oak thirty feet behind the others. He had been stationed there, I presume, in case I was wily enough to do just what I was doing. He was facing away from them and had not seen or heard me because I am not one to make any noise in the woods. I found him because he sighed softly once and once moved his weapon against the bark.

It took some time to get Trish quietly into a position where she could get a good shot at him with the crossbow. I left her and crawled back to the three. They were talking softly in English. One was born within the sound of Bow Bells and one must have been born in Germany near the Dutch border.

I said, “Freeze! Don’t make a sound!”

At my orders they turned around slowly, hands on their necks. I got behind them, and they advanced towards the man in the tree. One of them, at my softly spoken command, told him to throw his rifle down and then climb down. When the sniper hesitated, I told him he was covered on both sides. I did not add that I would kill his colleagues if he disobeyed. I doubted that he would care about them.

They were tough men but also, by their definition of reality, realists. They gave me information quickly enough. I told them I would kill a man for each unanswered question or unsatisfactory answer and torture the last one. They believed me. Perhaps they had been informed of the failures of the others to kill me.

Noli had recruited them through an agent, and they had been flown up here with ten men and landed on the meadow north of Catstarn. Others had come by car and on another flight of the big helicopter.

There were probably thirty-five to forty men in Catstarn Hall and Castle Grandrith. Noli might not believe in God, but he certainly believed in overkill. Of course, he had Caliban to worry about, too.

Those of his men not Albanian—about half—had been paid $5000 apiece and promised another

$5000 after the job was completed. That it, after I was killed.

Noli had told them they might have to deal with another enemy, a Doctor Caliban. But not if I was killed soon and they got away.

Where was my wife?

When I asked this, my heart was squeezing, and I was shaking a little. I expected the worst.

Their spokesman replied that she was holed up in the castle. When the copter had descended and the cars had come in in a two-pronged attack, she had fled to the castle with a rifle. She had wounded two men during her flight.

The castle was across the tarn from the hall. It had been in ruins since the time of Oliver Cromwell, but I had rebuilt part of it. The keep was massively constructed and built as a refuge for atom bomb attacks or an emergency like this. The great stone doors had been closed behind her, and she could not, as yet, be pried loose. Bazookas had launched missiles against it without success. Clio sat inside with an untouchable source of oxygen and plenty of supplies. She could be blasted out if enough powder and time were used, but Noli had quit trying. He was afraid of attracting the villagers. The five domestics were still alive but locked up in a storeroom.

This had happened two days ago at dawn.

The three men had been diverging, as if they were corners of a very slowly growing triangle, while I was questioning them. Perhaps they hoped that, since it was so dark and they were moving so slowly, I would not notice. Even if I had been blind, I could have told that they were moving away, since their body odors were getting slightly weaker.

I don’t think that they would have tried anything if they had believed that I was going to let them go.

But they must have decided that I would not dare to release them, since they could get to a phone in the nearby village of Cloamby or at a farmhouse on the secondary road and call Noli. It was possible that Noli had cut the telephone lines, but I could not trust them to tell me the truth about that.

One of them barked, “Take them!” and dived off to the left. The other two jumped for the right, one diving at my feet. There was a twang as Trish’s crossbow cut loose. I fired four times. The top of the head of the man coming at me must have been blown off, because, as I later found out, my pants were wet with blood and brains. His head almost struck my leg as he fell. The fellow nearest me had his pistol out (I had suspected that they were carrying weapons under their coats but did not want to frisk them in the dark). My second bullet hit him in the shoulder; his pistol flamed to one side; he was hit two more times before he struck ground. The third, of course, had been pierced at point blank range with the crossbow bolt.