Barbara Hambly - Magistrates of Hell

‘Nonsense, people bought them for their children,’ retorted Lydia – and in fact four or five urchins in the street were devouring the t’ang kuo with enthusiasm. But Madame wouldn’t have it. She wadded the paper around the t’ang kuo and flung it to the gutter, from which the children promptly snatched it up and ran away.

‘What is it?’

‘Good heavens, child, how should I know?’ Madame herded the two girls back toward the rickshaws. ‘It’s probably opium!’

Menchikov (or Korsikov) trailed behind them, both laden with so huge an armload of paper-wrapped parcels from every shop in the lane that a fourth vehicle had to be hired to transport it all back to the Russian Legation.

‘So you see,’ concluded Paola as she climbed up into the high-wheeled wicker chair, ‘though Richard Hobart seemed indeed to be a most polite young man – and was, I understand, coveted by all the ladies of the Legations who had daughters to dispose of suitably – when I heard that he had arrived at Sir Allyn’s reception Wednesday night, late and probably drunk, I should never have permitted Holly to go down to meet him alone. He is Sir Grant’s son.’

Lydia reflected that if her own conduct were assumed to reflect her father’s, no man in his right mind would have sought her hand in marriage. As she put her foot on the step of the rickshaw a voice behind her whispered, ‘Missy—’

The old rickshaw-puller held out to her a little white square of t’ang kuo wrapped in a bit of paper, with a conspiratorial grin.

It was candy, the white powder sugar, like Turkish delight. It covered Lydia’s hands, and Paola’s, with telltale evidence as they headed back toward the Legations at a breakneck trot through the blue evening streets.

‘What is it?’ Willard held up his hand for caution.

Asher had already stopped, listening to the deathly silence that had followed the chill keening of the wind.

Beside him, Karlebach’s breath hissed sharply.

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it . . .

‘Bloody rotten luck if it’s robbers, after that lot nicked the horses,’ Barclay muttered.

‘Can’t be robbers,’ returned Gibbs. ‘They’ll have seen somebody’s already had a touch at us.’

‘Well, I bloody well ain’t givin’ up my boots without a fight.’ The younger trooper brandished his stout bamboo spear.

Asher – the only man of the party who’d had a hideout knife in his boot – had, at the sight of a rare stand of bamboo in the gorge below them, scrambled down to gather makeshift weapons. It had been nearly dark even then. He’d cut five lengths of six feet apiece and carried them up to the road again to sharpen. The process had taken roughly half an hour, but he knew that even an extra half-hour wouldn’t get them to Men T’ou Kuo or anywhere near it. It had been almost full dark when he’d finished, the moon not yet risen.

Now they stood straining their ears, each wondering if that actually had been movement they’d heard in the brush-choked gorge far below the track, or only some trick of the icy wind.

‘How far is it until the trail turns off over the ridge, Jamie?’ Karlebach murmured. ‘We’ll be farther from the stream then.’

‘Do they stay close to water?’ he returned. ‘Or can they come on to drier ground if they want?’

‘That I don’t know. I’ve only seen them on a few occasions, you understand. Matthias—’ His voice hesitated over the name of his latest protégé, the young man whose departure for some other cause had, Asher guessed, finally cut the old man loose from his accustomed ways.

‘Phew! God!’ Barclay gagged as the wind shifted, and for a moment the stenchy reek – like rotting flesh rolled in filthy garments – flickered in the air. ‘Where the bloody ’ell ’ave them bandits been hidin’?’

‘In the mine, you dumb berk,’ retorted Willard. ‘Didn’t you smell ’em back there?’

Barclay took a few steps to the edge of the gorge, raised his voice to a shout. ‘Hey! Chink-chink! We got nuthin’, savvy? Mei ch’iên ! Flat broke, y’hear . . . How’d you say “we ain’t got a pot to piss in” in Chinese, Professor?’ Starlight made smoke of his breath; the wind whipped it away.

So much, reflected Asher, for discretion about letting people know he spoke Chinese . . .

‘Shut yer ’ole,’ whispered Gibbs. ‘See ’em there, against the sky?’

‘There’s boulders by the trail,’ said Asher quietly, ‘about a hundred yards back.’ He had spent the past hour’s walking identifying every scrap of cover or defensive terrain they’d passed. ‘If we can cover our backs—’

‘Too late.’ Willard pointed. It was nearly impossible to see in the starlight, but behind them on the trail Asher thought he glimpsed the reflective glitter of eyes. ‘What the hell—?’

‘Keep in the open!’ said Asher, and the five men set themselves back-to-back, spears pointing outward, as all the underbrush on the slope down to the stream crashed in the darkness with the sudden onslaught.

‘How the hell many of ’em—?’ Gibbs began, and then the scrambling forms sprang up on to the trail.

Asher struck with his bamboo, felt it sink into something that screamed, a hoarse awful noise, like an injured camel. The stink was nauseating. He heard Willard swear. Asher shouted into the crowding darkness, ‘ Na shih shei? Ni yao shê mo? ’ but doubted he’d get an answer; he felt the thing he’d impaled still thrashing on the end of the spear, fighting to get at him. It lurched closer, and he felt its clawed nails flick his face.

Other screams. Barclay yelled, ‘What the—?’ and Asher heard the crunch of something – a rock? – impacting with flesh.

The darkness all around them seemed filled with shoving shapes – Christ Jesus, how many of them are there? Then a rifle fired from somewhere down the trail, and the thing on the end of his spear thrust at him again, its weight jerking at his grip, as if it cared nothing for the shot . . .

He saw its face then, and yes, it was yao-kuei , it could be nothing else: a dim impression in darkness of deformed features, a fanged mouth snapping at him, eyes gleaming.

Another shot. Then running feet and the screams of the Others – the yao-kuei – and a flash in the starlight of what looked, impossibly, like the blade of a sword. And an instant later on the round lenses of spectacles.

A man shouted, the bellowing bark of a Japanese war-cry, and yes , thought Asher, that was a sword . . .

The yao-kuei jerked, and where its face had been – pale and hairless and almost canine in its deformation – there was nothing. He smelled the blood that fountained from the severed neck. The pale glimmer of a man’s white coat or jacket in the darkness, splattered with gore; another flash of sword-steel and spectacle-lenses. Colonel Count Mizukami. He’s the one who followed us .

It’s too dark to shoot without danger of hitting one of us .

He wrenched the bamboo free, drove it hard at another one of those dark, slumped forms, pinning it for the Japanese to slash. He’d seen men torn apart in South Africa by shellfire, and had once had occasion to dismember the corpse of a man he’d killed with an ax in order to dispose of it discreetly – in the service of the Department, which was supposed to make it all right, though it had given him frightful dreams for years. But there was something horrifyingly fascinating about the archaic art of slaughter with cold steel.

He heard the yao-kuei shrieking and the crash of foliage below. So they at least have some sense of self-preservation . . .