A Feast Unknown

I called back up to warn Trish and then went up. She took the automatic and the crossbow, while I carried the big machine gun. I descended one staircase. Trish took the other. The two men were standing out in the hall between the two rooms and discussing what they should do. I fired at the stone walls at an angle to richochet bullets at them without exposing myself. They ran away and Trish killed them with three shots. That left four rounds in her automatic and three bolts for the crossbow. I had twenty rounds in the belt of the .50-caliber.

It was inevitable that some of those who had left would return on hearing the firing. I emptied my machine gun down the steps and blew three apart. When a man stuck his head out through the door below, I threw the machine gun at him. He dodged back in time to avoid being hit.

“There must be more than one outside that door,” I said. “We could go around them; there are at least five other staircases to the next story. But I don’t like to have them behind us. I think I’ll use the grenade.”

I went down the stairs while Trish, from above, kept her .45 pointed at the door. She had insisted that she was an expert in using the big powerful weapon, but I have no faith in its accuracy, especially if handled by a woman who, though strong, is still not a strong man. I did not want to be shot by the .45

while she was trying to hit our enemies.

I listened a while and determined that at least three men were talking out there. I could not detect the odor of more than three, but the gunpowder was so strong I was handicapped.

“Jesus Christ!” a man said. “He can’t have much ammo left, even if he did get all the stuff from the blokes upstairs. I say we ought to rush him.”

“Don’t be a dumbshit,” another said.

“Well, hell, if we stay here, he can go down another flight of steps and come up behind us. Or just leave us sitting here.”

“Fine,” said a third. “Let Noli and his bunch handle him.”

“Hell, they ain’t got any ammo left! What’ll they handle him with?”

“We got all that’s left,” the first man said, “and that ain’t much. Six rounds between us three. Don’t waste no more.”

“If they got more than we think they got, our goose is cooked,” the second said.

“We could take off,” said one who sounded like a Yankee. “Shit, this ain’t pa

Congo.”

“We took Noli’s money, and so we’re staying,” said another. “Besides, if we run out now, we’ll lose the other five thousand and maybe a hell of a lot more. There’s that gold he promised us.”

“How you go

I pulled the pin on the grenade, counted to three, and tossed it. It struck with a metallic sound. There was a silence, then a series of yells and scuffle of feet. I flattened against the wall, turned my head away, and jammed my fingers in my ears. Even so, the roar half-deafened me, and the smoke billowing through the arch set me to coughing.

When the smoke was cleared, I looked in.

All three were dead against the walls, their clothes and parts of their bodies blown off. Unfortunately, the explosion had ruined two guns, bending their barrels slightly and set off the ammunition in the third and blowing it apart.

38

The crossbow bolts and the remaining bullets were disposed of inside the next two minutes. We were on the ground floor and crossing the great entry room, lit by a number of bulbs in artificial torches in sconces, when a shadow fell across us from above. I jumped and whirled; Trish screamed. A suit of armor that belonged to my 15th-century ancestor, John Loamges de Clizieux William Cloamby, Baron of Grandrith, struck the floor beside Trish. She fired up at the dark gallery, and a shadowy figure ran along the hall of the gallery, hugging the wall as it crouched. The .45 was emptied, but a richochet must have hit the man, because he staggered over and fell across the railing. A man appeared at the far end of the entry room with a pistol in his hand and fired. My bolt took him in the shoulder and he whirled with the impact and fell. I loaded the crossbow again, while another man ran out from the hallway and dived to get the fallen automatic. He fired and missed, too, and I did not. That was his only chance, because the gun was now empty.

The wounded man was gray with shock. I said, “How many more ambushers?”

He stared at me with big pain-glazed eyes and said, “None. Everybody else is down there with Caliban and his men.”

“Any guns among them?” I said.

“No. Noli let us have what was left because you were still armed. He’s got enough men to run over three Calibans and then some.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” I said, and I cut his throat.

Trish became even paler and swayed. “Do you have to do that?” she whispered.

“I don’t want live enemies at my back,” I said.

We went through three rooms and down a hall towards the rear of the castle and then down a tightly corkscrewing case of stone steps. This led to the dungeon, which was a huge room with a number of cells with iron bars, some old torture machines, and, in one wall, the stone door to the atom bomb shelter. The room was well lit by a number of electric torches in sconces and several batteries of lamps overhead. It was a dead end room. The stone door to the shelter was pitted and gouged with Noli’s efforts to blast it open.

The room was a babel of shouts and screams and a chaos of struggling men. I paused a few seconds.

The chaos became a pattern, fluid, but still a pattern.

At the far end of the room was Caliban. He was not totally visible because he was immersed in bodies. About 14 men were trying to get at him. Some were trying to get away, however, I quickly saw.

They held knives, the butts of pistols, brass knuckles, and one had a mace taken from the wall upstairs.

Some were armed only with their fists or were trying to use their feet or their hands, karate style.

The goal of their weapons seemed to be a whirlwind. He could not be halted long enough for anybody to get in a crippling blow or thrust. The flesh around him was a bag trying to contain one man, and when the man pushed, the bag swelled out on one side and collapsed on the other. His hands were a blur; they chopped, poked, and his elbows rammed, and his feet kicked frontwards and backwards. He did not seem to be holding a knife, but blood was spurting from stabs of his fingers. Shrieks of agony rose as he snapped wrist bones and fractured shinbones, crushed insteps, punctured an eye, tore an ear off, slammed a man so hard against three others that they all fell.

I have never seen a man move so swiftly or powerfully or skillfully. He seemed to be more of a natural force than a mere man. Yet, he was doomed. In a matter of seconds, a knife would go through a soft part or the butt of a gun slam into his skull and momentarily make him open to other weapons. Most of his clothes had been torn off, and he was splashed with blood everywhere.

There were unconscious or dead men on the floor around him. Eight at least. And six sitting up on the floor, too hurt to get up.

The two old men were halfway down the room, their backs against the wall. They were clubbing at the five men against them. Four men lay on the floor.

Simmons and Rivers went down even as I took stock of the situation. The slender Rivers succumbed to brass knuckles against his temple. The apish Simmons, bellowing as if he were enjoying the fight, fell several seconds later. A huge, black-haired, blue-jawed man stepped in just as Simmons brought the barrel of his weapon down on the head of a bandy-legged red-haired man. The huge man slammed Simmons on the side of the neck with the butt of a pistol. Simmons dropped his gun, and another man thrust a knife into the white-haired gorilla chest.