David Gilman - Ice Claw

Cold reality bit like a blade.

He wasn’t going to make it. He was going to die.

They circled him slowly, engines barely ticking over, gazing disinterestedly as the dark sea began to claim him.

He saw the boat ease alongside, a yard away. Help me . They watched. Unmoving. Help me. Please . Had they heard him? Were the words only in his head? One of the men in the boat handled a spear-ended boat hook, raising it like a lance. The men were grinning. They were going to spear him like an injured fish.

The man lunged.

Bobby felt the tip pierce his wet suit and the hook catch his skin. Water slipped across his face, which dipped below the surface, then bobbed free again. He gazed at the shining orb that blessed the darkness with its light.

The man in the moon was smiling.

Mocking him.

Max pulled the pendant over his head and gazed at the blind stone. Twirling the brass ring between his fingers, he turned it against the moonlight and then the dim ceiling light, but nothing revealed itself to him. So if the pendant sat as a star on the hermit’s neck, what did the other two stars in the painting signify? Max knew he was pushing his luck. It was getting late.

“Sayid, I need to have a look through there.”

Sayid slid the wooden chair backwards and rolled himself free of the contraption.

“Be my guest. I can’t see much. That’s the trouble with stars-they’re too far away. And the moon’s so bright. I’ve angled it away a bit, but it’s still too bright to see much.”

Max slid into the seat, pulled himself under the telescope’s angled eyepiece and began to focus. He squinted his eye across the eyepiece and tilted the barrel of the telescope down to where he hoped the Pyrenees would come into view. It was too sharp a movement; the magnification blurred everything. He tried again and the glaring moon, escaping the cloud cover, made his eye water. This was going to take more time than he had available. He tried again, promising himself no more than a few minutes to sweep the skies.

He focused and refocused, changed angle and direction, but nothing obvious presented itself. As he lifted his head away in frustration, ready to quit, the pendant swung loose on its cord, tapped the eyepiece, almost snagging it.

He tucked it back into the sweat rag, but with his face further away from the eyepiece, he saw there were grooves etched inside it. Something like a camera lens that you screwed filters onto. But this diameter was small.

Pulling the pendant free again, he slipped it over his head and fingered the brass ring. It fit perfectly. Careful not to cross-thread it, he turned it until it sat snugly in the eyepiece.

He looked through at what now revealed itself to be a polished, opaque crystal. Backlit by the moon’s glow, numbers and a diagram, both blurred, were visible, etched into its surface.

The blind stone had revealed its treasure.

“Sayid!” he whispered, without taking his eye from the viewfinder. “Write these numbers down. Quick.”

Sayid pulled out the piece of paper with the magic square on it.

“OK,” Sayid said.

“There’s a space between each of these … seven, then twenty-four and eight. Then a dash. Then ten, four, nine, twelve, twenty-five. Another dash. Yeah?”

“Got it.”

“Then seven, eleven, nine and seventeen. That’s the lot.”

Sayid repeated the numbers, with all their spaces and the dashes.

Max could see something else but it was blurred. Whoever had etched these tiny inscriptions onto this stone must have spent hour after patient hour doing it-it was the work of a craftsman. Or a determined scientist.

Max eased the eyepiece slightly, refocusing it. Now the numbers became blurred but the rest of the drawing revealed itself.

He looked up at Sayid. “There’s a drawing etched on this thing. Get me something to write on, will you?”

Max put his face back down to the eyepiece as Sayid grabbed one of the old brown files from the shelf, tore it down its middle and gave it, and his pen, to him.

Sayid stopped. “I think I heard something,” he said quietly.

“Like what?”

Sayid shook his head. They listened. It was silent, except for the eerie moaning of the wind torturing the gargoyles.

“Stay at the door. You hear anything definite, tell me. I need more time.”

Sayid moved to the doorway as Max put his eye back to the telescope.

Max put the folder on his lap and drew what he saw using his other eye. It was a long-sided triangle in a circle. Very similar in shape to, if not the same as, the drawing he had found earlier. But there was a single letter at each point of this triangle- E, S and Q .

Max had the next part of the secret. The vital element of the dying monk’s legacy. In less than a minute he had drawn a rough copy. He unscrewed the pendant from the eyepiece and folded the file’s cover in half, tucking it into his jacket pocket.

Time to go!

He pulled himself free of the sliding chair, closed the louvered window and walked quickly to Sayid.

“Sayid, I’ve got it. We’re getting out of here.”

Too late!

Max saw the ghostly image of a man walking up the stairs towards them. It was the German. And he was smiling. Max realized he was the one who had switched off the alarm system.

“That’s good, Max. We could not find it.”

Max realized with a sickening lurch that he and the woman must have known he would be at the chateau today. How? Who had told them? It didn’t matter right now. Max had played into their hands and they had waited in the darkness, giving him all the time he needed to try and work out Zabala’s secret.

The shock lasted no longer than the words spoken. Max got between the approaching German and Sayid, shoved Bobby’s mobile phone into Sayid’s hand and pushed him towards the chateau’s main bedroom. “Go, Sayid! Phone Bobby!”

Sayid didn’t argue and, like a stick insect in fear of its life, loped away on his crutches.

The man stopped, shook his head and lit a cigarette.

“Max, there’s nowhere to go.” He stopped midstairs, gazed upwards and shrugged, watching the smoke drift lazily into the moonlit stairwell. “I am not alone.”

Out of the darkness two figures bounded up the stairs past the nonchalant man. Bikers. One armed with a motorcycle chain, the other with some kind of short iron bar-a wheel brace. They were going to hurt Max and Sayid badly. There was no sign of Sharkface, but Max recognized the tough-looking teenagers as being part of his gang.

“Don’t kill him. Not yet. Go for the injured boy first,” the German called.

If they got to Sayid, they would inflict so much pain on his friend that Max would sell his soul to have them stop.

But he wasn’t ready to turn and run. In trouble? Always do the unexpected, Max . Dad’s voice. Max smiled. It checked them. “A length of chain and a wheel brace? Think again, porridge brains.”

Grabbing an Ethiopian shield and a set of lethal-looking antelope horns off the wall, he attacked, jumping down the top three stairs and smashing into the dumbstruck bikers. The German turned and ran, one of the bikers tumbling head over heels after him, catching the back of the man’s legs, crashing the bodies down together. The German yelled in pain and anger.

The second biker regained his balance and swung the chain hard towards Max’s head. Max ducked, turned his shoulder, raised his arm, felt and heard the power of the blow clattering across the shield, and lunged. The boy’s eyes widened as Max went for his throat. The fear served Max well; it was exactly what he wanted. The boy faltered, took a step backwards, found himself trapped against the banister-as Max drove the attack home. The horns went to each side of the boy’s neck, pinning him next to one of the monster creatures carved into the main staircase. A flicker of shadow and light, its eyes gleamed, as if relishing the helplessness of the boy held so close to its jaws.