T.F. Banks - The Emperor's assassin

“They can see us against the flame!” he shouted. “Into the shadows!”

Up against the cliff they found soft sand, which slowed them, their chests heaving. Ahead Morton could see cliffs lifting up and along their base a white fringe of waves. They looked anxiously about, searching, their eyes moment by moment adjusting.

“There, Morton! Do you see? Someone moving.”

And Morton saw. A flickering shadow, skittering along the base of the cliff wall to their left. He instantly crouched, and Presley imitated him.

“Good man,” Morton said, his breath coming easier now. “We'll have the bloody villains yet. But now we can go more cautiously. They'll not be able to climb up here. It appears too perilous.”

Morton loaded his discharged pistols, and they crept forward. Along the cliff base the water swept in around their knees, the motion of it disorienting in the faint light. Shadows were everywhere. Rocks stood up from the surf, tall as men. Morton found his footing carefully. A fall here would drown his pistols, and then they would be helpless. They were already outnumbered three to two.

A muzzle-flash flared ten yards ahead, and a ball cracked against the cliff by Presley's knee. The young Runner raised a pistol and fired back-at what Morton wasn't sure. But perhaps it would keep their enemies from growing too brave.

Presley hurriedly reloaded while Morton peered hard into the obscurity. But then, to his amazement, he heard a small sound from above . Raising his eyes, he thought he saw some dark movement on the cliff ahead, not twenty feet up. So they were trying to climb after all. Be it on their own heads. He raised his pistol and fired. Someone scrabbled, arms flailing, and then half-slid, half-plummeted down the cliff face, landing with a splash at the bottom.

Silence. Morton wanted to reload, then decided against it. The Runners crept forward until suddenly another flash from above sent them reeling back against the cliff. So at least two of them had gone up there. A few feet away, in the sea-washed rocks, Morton could see the fallen man begin to move weakly. A wave raced in and rolled him hard against the cliff base, flinging his helpless body back and forth. Keeping close to the stone, Morton tucked his pistols into his belt and waded forward, the water splashing up and soaking him. He could hear the man choking now. Choking and trying to lift himself up out of the surging water.

As the sea retreated, Morton reached out quickly with one hand and caught hold of the man's jacket lest the Channel claim him. As he did, the man gasped and convulsively reached up to seize Morton's arm. But then there was the report of a pistol, a sharp snap half-carried away by the wind, and the struggling man went rigid. His fingers slipped from Morton's sleeve. After a moment Morton released his grip, knowing the feel of death, and the body slipped into the sea.

Another shot, but this time from behind. Presley came up beside him, tugging Morton back into the safety of the cliff. The dead man rolled limply against their legs as the sea surged in, then he was dragged out to sea, limp as kelp. In a moment gone.

Presley leaned close to his ear, as Morton pulled out his pistols again and they both bent to reload. “I think I hit the cully above. He's not moved since-neither up nor down. I thought he'd shot you.”

“Nay; hit the man I was trying to rescue.”

“Who was he?”

“Never saw him before,” Morton said as he fished his powder flask out of the inner pocket of his coat. “I want to go on. I thought I saw something moving up ahead. Will you stay here and watch the man above? Try to convince him to climb down. Tell him you will shoot him if he tries to climb up.”

Presley nodded, and Morton finished loading his pistols, the pan cover clicking into place. He prayed he could keep his powder dry. Starting out along the cliff face, he realised the seas were rising, and he had no notion of what the tide might be. It might rise some way yet, catching him here. He could likely swim to safety, but Presley, a born Londoner, couldn't manage a stroke.

Morton was still angry, and he was not about to let his prey go free. He went forward, wary but hurrying. The moon emerged from behind a cloud, its cold light washing over the sea and cliff. He kept himself low, pistols in hand. Every few beats the cold sea would wash in around his legs, then drag at him as it retreated. The water grew deeper as he went, the cliff curving out into the Channel. Above he could see shadows on the cliff face, long dark streaks that were fissures in the ancient stone.

Morton began to think that he had been wrong-all three must have gone up the escarpment-when he saw something move ahead. A pistol flashed, and Morton fired once in return.

The water was to his waist now, and when the waves came in, he was thrown about, holding his pistols high, praying that he could keep them dry.

A rocky headland jutted out raggedly, and beyond he found a tiny bay, perhaps twenty yards across but cut back into the cliff for some unknown distance. With the sea washing around his legs, Morton tried to load his discharged weapon, fumbling powder into the water, certain that the seawater splashed down the barrel. He rammed the wadding home, took a few long slow breaths, and went forward.

As a wave washed out, Morton reached a jutting edge, behind which he crouched to look around the corner. He could see no one and dodged out, finding some shelter behind another small projection of stone a few feet farther along. Exposing as little of himself as possible, he leaned out and examined the small bay at which he had arrived. Here the pebbled strand was above the water. Shadows were everywhere, pale stone faint in the moonlight. The cliffs, however, looked too steep to be climbed. If his royalist quarry had come in here, he was well hidden.

Morton stepped out from his hiding place into terrible darkness. He'd not gone three paces when he realised he faced a man with a pistol levelled at his heart. Eustache d'Auvraye. The young aristocrat was leaning against the stone, his slight figure tucked into a hidden niche in what had appeared to be smooth wall, a perfect natural ambush. He stooped a little, his other hand clutched to his abdomen. Morton observed that the young Frenchman looked somehow amiss in his plain English clothing, whose dark hues had helped conceal him in the shadows of his hiding place.

“I think you have enough blood on your hands, Count,” Morton said evenly. But he was horribly conscious of the racing of his heart, the sickening prospect of that small black hole barely an arm's length away. And his own weapon useless by his side.

“And most of it is mine.” Eustache took the hand from his abdomen and revealed a wound. “You shot me, you filth!”

“You are a murderer, several times over-”

“I am a servant to my king!” the young man hissed.

Morton could just make out his face now, the dark deep-set eyes. The bitter mouth. His face unnaturally pale and haunted.

“I am a servant,” he repeated softly, and sagged against the stone. “Bonaparte had to die. It does not matter what happens to me. Bonaparte had to die.” A fleeting look of triumph passed over his face, then a spasm of agony convulsed him.

“And what about all the others? Did it not matter what happened to them, either?”

“It is a war, monsieur. In wars people die.” The young man's arm wavered, as though he weakened. The pistol wandered in a slow circle, the black eye within the muzzle ring searching for Morton's heart.

“People do die in wars, but not many kill their own father, or have him killed.”

D'Auvraye blinked several times, shaking his head. “It is a tradition of war that fathers sacrifice their sons,” he said quietly, as though he were instructing an idiot. “I sacrificed my father. But not without cause. Not without reason. No, monsieur, I hoped to kill the father of us all. The father of this terrible age, this time of revolt, and Madame Guillotine, of blood, and the loss of all that was once good and glorious.” He looked down at the blood running between his fingers. “This age of horrors-that is what sired me, monsieur. Kill my father? It is a pity someone did not kill him before I was born. Now I die in any case-the true son of this glorious age. I go to whatever darkness will have such a child, but I will take my murderer with me.” He steadied his pistol with effort and pulled the trigger.