Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty

“The third part,” he said, “is well in hand, Mr Nuth. Such is the guarantee of the grand old firm.” Then he turned away and leaned over his levers and cranks, urging his war wagon forward. For some time afterward, the only sound, besides the gurgle of the boiler and the growl of the engines, was the crash of falling trees and the noise of their splintering beneath our remorseless treads.

It took us little time to smash a path through those close-set and unruly trees. When one moves without care, dark paths do not take so long to tread. As we drew close to the narrow house of the gnoles, Moriarty hissed an order and his men lurched to their feet to man the narrow firing slits that lined the armoured hull of the machine. Carbines were aimed, and Parker played a cheery tune on his Jew’s Harp. My palms were damp, and my throat dry. The Professor, for his part, hunched over his controls like a conductor over his sheet music.

A pair of crooked trees, blistered with knotholes, were ground under and suddenly the house came into sight through the viewing slit. Moriarty released one lever and pumped another, bringing the machine to a slow, onerous halt. The boiler audibly shuddered, and the whole contraption shook like a man afflicted with ague.

There was no sign of life from the house. There was no birdsong in the trees, not even the hum of insects, only the steady, dull grind of the engines and the breathing of the men in the rear of the war wagon. Nevertheless, I knew that we were being watched, sized up and somehow found wanting. I glanced at the Professor, and I saw that he knew it as well. His lips peeled back from yellow, thin teeth and his eyes sparked with an ugly light as he reached for the lever that would propel his construct forward. He hesitated, head cocked, as if listening. With every moment that passed, I expected some reaction from the gnoles, but none was forthcoming. It was as if, knowing of the Professor’s expectations, they had decided to confound him by simply staying hidden.

His head oscillated, his eyes scanning the house, the green casement window where poor Tommy had met his fate, and his thin shoulders shook with what I suspected to be frustration. I wanted to speak, but held my tongue. This was the Professor’s pitch, and I was but an observer. “Fine then,” he said, so softly I almost missed it. “If you will not come out, we shall come in.”

The great machine groaned as he threw the lever, and it lurched forward, at all speed. Wood cracked and splintered as the war wagon crashed into the house, rupturing its aged face in a single, titanic motion. The uppermost levels swayed drunkenly as the Professor jerked and slashed with the arrangement of levers. Roof tiles, covered in centuries’ worth of moss, pattered across the hull of the machine like hard rain. Old furniture, mildewed and puffy with mould, burst like toadstools as the war wagon forced itself deeper into the house, like a wolf gnawing on the innards of a deer.

When the first gunshot came, it was a surprise. I whirled, hands clutching uselessly at nothing. There was nowhere to hide within the belly of the beast, and I had not brought a weapon. Nuth is not a man for conflict, but the Professor’s crew seemed to thrive on it. Parker led the others in a rousing hymn of repeating fire that would have done the South Wales Borderers proud. I spun in place, searching the nearby gun-slits for any sign of gnoles, but, if they were there, they were moving too swiftly for me to see.

I turned back to the Professor, where he stood before the controls, and saw that his attentions were fixed upon something ahead. He muttered to himself – calculations, I thought. Then, I heard the sound of wood creaking, and the war wagon lurched in an unpleasant fashion. Moriarty threw a lever and stepped back, straightening his waistcoat as he did so. “As I suspected,” he said, as he made his way towards the hatch. “Mr Parker! It is time to disembark.”

The Professor caught my arm and shoved me towards the hatch. “We have only a few moments, Mr Nuth. Best be quick.”

“What is it? What’s going on?”

“This house is but a shell – an overgrown knothole, if you will, in a thoroughly rotten tree. And we have cored it out and put much strain on the roots. So, now …”

“The tree is coming down,” I said, as I squeezed out of the hatch and dropped to the ground. The Professor followed me, walking stick in hand. As I stood, I looked about, keenly conscious of the fact that I was at last in the house of the gnoles. In many respects, it was a normal house, save for the damage caused by the wagon. A rotten house, a house that had seen better years, but a house.

That, if anything, only added to the strangeness of it. Moonlight pierced the trees and sagging, shattered roof, pinning the shadows in place. In that darkness, as deep as Roman wells, things moved. Things without shape, but more substance than I was comfortable with. They were humanoid at first and then rather like Jerusalem artichokes and, as they humped and slumped and slunk about us, their shapes billowed and shrunk like shadows cast by a fire. One of these shadows detached itself and slithered forward on too many legs, or perhaps too few, and I had the impression of many teeth and eyes winking like emeralds.

I leapt, and rolled, avoiding the claws I felt, more than saw. The gnole turned on a dime, eyes blinking, and then one went out as the Professor taught it its first lesson – never come within arm’s length of a man with a walking stick. I had not seen him draw the thin blade from its sheath of walnut, but, as he swept it out, it caught the moonlight and drew the gaze of the gathered gnoles. They learned their second lesson then, about not ignoring men with carbines in favour of a man with a sword.

At Parker’s cry, the disembarking criminals fired a ragged salvo, and gnolish eyes winked out as the dark was pierced by tongues of flame. Over the sound of this fusillade came the eerie groan of oft-abused joists and popping nails. The war wagon heaved, shimmied and then … fell. All at once, and promptly, as the floor gave way beneath it. It took men with it, down into the dark, and their screams trailed up and up, much as poor Tommy’s had done.

The gnoles came in a rush then, a tide of slavering shadows that seemed to blend together into one. The Professor rattled off firing solutions with chill precision, and, where he gestured, gnoles died, or at least fell. But there were so many, boiling up out of the dark like ants; I had never, even in my most extravagant fantasies, conceived of such numbers and I knew then that the rumours of emeralds in the house of the gnoles were just that. I knew then that what men had claimed to see had been nothing more than the eyes of the gnoles themselves, watching from the corners and casements.

Parker caught my arm, his face as white as flour, and the Webley in his hand smoking. “The Professor says to run, Mr Nuth – run!” And, as if to lead by example, he did so, bounding away from me like a rabbit. I did not need to be told twice, and I too took to my heels. I was not alone. Men streamed past and around me, running for their lives, all thought of plunder forgotten in the mad rush of fear. They scattered through the crooked woods, but I kept to the path, running for the free field and the village beyond.

As I ran, the night was punctuated by screams and cries as men were taken, one after another, by the gnoles. I am not ashamed to admit that I leapt over one such struggling knot of fell shapes and anguished cries, and did not look back. I ran and ran, and, all the while, something kept pace, following me unerringly through the trees. Gnoles, I knew, were very fast, and I heard them slashing through the trees on either side of me, their emerald eyes glinting at me. No man had ever caught Nuth, but gnoles were not men, and I wondered, in those moments, whether my legend was to end like Slith’s, in grandeur and painful mystery.