Andrew Lane - Red Leech

“So it was just words.”

He nodded. “Just words. There was always a chance you’d believe them and come out of your own accord, but I didn’t have much faith.”

He began to walk forward, swinging the spanner.

Sherlock looked around frantically for something he could use to fight with. It looked like fighting was his only option now.

Clang! The spanner hit an iron pipe, sending shock waves reverberating around the engine room.

“Just look at me,” Grivens said in a calm, low voice. “Just look at me, kid. Look me in the eye. Don’t look for a means of escape. Accept the inevitable, yes?”

Sherlock felt the calmness of the voice, the reasonableness of the words and the heat of the engine room lulling him into a trance. He shook his head abruptly. He couldn’t let himself be hypnotized by the steward.

He glanced from side to side desperately. Something caught his eye — something leaning against a ladder. A shovel! One of the stokers must have left it there at the end of their shift. Its handle was black with coal dust and its blade was partly melted, as if it had been pushed by accident too far into the flames when it was shovelling coal. Sherlock reached out and grabbed it, holding it across his body with the blade up by his face.

“So the cur’s got some spirit in him, yes?” Grivens’s face was set into a grim mask. “Just means I have to work a bit harder for my cash.”

He lunged forward and lashed out with the spanner, trying to catch the side of Sherlock’s head. Sherlock ducked back, and the spanner hit the side of an iron tube. Sparks flew across the room. Sherlock felt them burn his face. He brushed at his hair in case any of them had caught in it.

Grivens snarled, and pulled the spanner back. Raising it over his head, he brought it crashing down towards Sherlock’s scalp.

Sherlock blocked the blow clumsily with his shovel. The spanner hit the wooden shaft at its halfway point and dented it, nearly knocking Sherlock to his knees. The vibration transferring from the shovel felt like it might tear his arms from their sockets. He managed to bring the shovel around and he caught Grivens’s kneecap with the blade. Grivens screamed and staggered back, mouth open in an “O” of disbelief.

“You little beggar!" he cursed. Swinging the spanner like a club he lunged at Sherlock again.

Sherlock brought the blade of the shovel up to meet the spanner. The two connected with a sound like the crack of doom. Grivens bounced backwards, the spanner whirling away from him and disappearing into the darkness of the engine room. Sherlock’s suddenly nerveless fingers dropped the shovel on the floor.

Grivens was standing in a half-crouch, cradling his right elbow in his left hand. His face was twisted into an animalistic snarl.

Sherlock turned and ran.

The alley ended in another junction, with more alleys heading left and right. Sherlock took the right-hand one and tore along it, stopping only when he came to a ladder leading upward. He glanced back over his shoulder. No sign of Grivens. Feeling the weakness in his shoulders from where the steward had bought the spanner down on his shovel, he clumsily climbed up the ladder to a walkway.

The walkway ran parallel to the main axle that crossed the room, exiting through a gap in the engine-room wall and driving one of the paddle wheels. Sherlock had lost track of which way was forward and which was back. He wasn’t sure which paddle wheel the axle was turning. Maybe both of them. Not that it really mattered. The axle turned slowly alongside him, as thick as his body, glistening with grease. Further back towards the centre of the engine room was the complicated arrangement of toothed gear wheels, pistons and offset cams that drove it.

Leaning over the barrier that ran alongside the walkway, he tried to see where Grivens was. No luck. The steward had vanished.

The fight seemed to have attracted no attention. Was the engine room always this deserted, or had Grivens bribed the crew to stay out while he dealt with Sherlock?

Something grabbed at his ankle and pulled. Sherlock fell to the walkway, feeling his leg being tugged over the edge. He grabbed hold of the barrier to stop himself being pulled over. Grivens’s face was pressed up against the metal grille of the walkway. It was his hand that had grabbed Sherlock’s ankle.

“You’re really going to make me earn this money, aren’t you?” he hissed. “Just for that, I’m going to make the Yank and his daughter suffer. Just think about that as you’re bleeding to death here.”

Sherlock’s only response was to kick out with his other foot, scraping the sole of his boot down his leg until it hit Grivens’s fingers. Grivens grunted in pain, and released his grip. Sherlock rolled away and pulled himself to his feet.

Grivens’s face appeared at the top of the ladder, followed by the rest of him. His teeth were exposed by the grimace of hatred on his face.

“This isn’t about money any more,” he hissed. “This is personal.”

Sherlock backed away slowly. The steward reached the top of the ladder and moved on to the walkway. His shoulders were hunched, his fingers curled into claws. His previously immaculate white uniform was now grey and streaked.

Sherlock felt something hard pressing into the small of his back. He glanced down quickly. He’d reached the end of the walkway. He was pressed into one of the wheels that controlled the flow of steam through the pipes. Alongside him, the massive cylindrical axle rotated endlessly around on its bearings. He’d reached the area where the offset cams transferred the linear motion of the pistons into rotary motion, driving the axle. There were several of them, and they looked like grease-smeared metal horses’ heads bobbing up and down in a complicated rhythm. For a second Sherlock found himself appreciating the sheer brilliance of the engineering at work in the ship. How could people just assume these things worked without wanting to know how?

Not that he would be getting the chance to ever learn anything again. Grivens was still stalking towards him, closing the gap. He reached out for Sherlock’s throat with both hands.

“I should get a bonus for this,” the steward whispered. His fingers closed around Sherlock’s throat and he squeezed tight. Sherlock felt his eyes bulge with the pressure. His chest wanted to suck air into it, but no air was getting through. Frantically he clutched at Grivens’s wrists, trying to pull them away, but the steward’s muscles were locked tight, hard as iron. Sherlock shifted his grip to the man’s fingers. Maybe he could pry them away from his throat. His vision had turned red and blurred, and black dots were beginning to swim around in front of him, obscuring Grivens’s face. His chest burned in agony.

Desperately he twisted his body with his last ounce of strength. Caught off-balance, Grivens half fell on to the barrier running along the side of the walkway, but his grip on Sherlock’s throat did not slacken. The cams were pumping up and down beside them now: chunks of metal pounding the air just inches from their faces. Grivens’s expression was feral, his eyes pinpricks of black hatred.

Sherlock let his body drop, as if he’d run out of energy. Grivens, taken off-guard, let him drop. Instead of falling to his knees, Sherlock shifted his hands from the steward’s fingers to his leather belt. Grabbing the belt, he straightened up again, pushing as hard with his legs and pulling as hard with his arms as he could. Grivens’s feet left the walkway as Sherlock lifted him up by his belt. Already twisted around, the weight of Grivens’s body carried him sideways over the edge of the barrier. Sherlock expected him to let go then, scrabbling for purchase on the barrier, but he kept his grip on Sherlock’s throat, pulling him over as well.