J. Campbell - Gaslight Arcanum - Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes

Men moved upon the derelict’s frozen and desolate decks, shuffling and battening down against the coming night. They had built and added onto the existing structure of the ship, ramshackle constructs, like webs stretched between rotted tree trunks. Canvas lean-tos and wooden sheds broke up the nautical lines of the once-proud vessel; hanging lanterns illuminated the scene in a hard yellow light.

“Our quarry, Watson,” Holmes breathed.

The doctor shifted his position, wincing in discomfort. “They have the advantage of us, Holmes.”

“We shall see. You’re a fine hand with the service revolver, but how are you with the rifle?”

“Respectable, I daresay. But Holmes…”

“They are vermin, doctor. We shall show no mercy.”

Watson thought of the hunting camp they had left behind; saw red-coated bodies slumped in their lines at Maiwand. He swallowed, and his throat was dry.

“Do we offer battle, or attempt a skulk?” Watson asked.

“There is a captive in the game,” Holmes replied. “Perhaps dead already, though likely not. These reavers will fight to keep what they’ve shed so much blood to take. And if they fight, I would rather meet them out here, than in there.”

Watson grunted, rising to one knee. The resulting pop was so loud, it almost sounded like the first gunshot. He slung the Enfield off his shoulder, and withdrew ammunition boxes from the cavernous pockets of his parka. He tilted the rifle up and let loose a shattering salvo into the twilight, the frozen air lending a sharpness to the retort that hastened its shriek across the ice.

Instantly, pack-dogs yelped and howled; men on the ship whirled and stood motionless, astonished at the presence of intruders. The amazement passed, and Watson saw the figures vanish into the ship’s hold like a swarm of cockroaches to stream out onto the snow from the jagged tear in the ship’s hull. Eight dark-cloaked figures fluttered in the distance, running full-tilt towards the duo like great rushing bats just skimming the surface of a great frozen lake.

Watson nestled himself soundly on one knee, slowing his breathing.

They had a good two hundred yards or more to clear to his position, up a gentle, but long incline. Not a rifle amongst ‘em , Watson thought. Not even a bow.

They were all as good as dead, every man jack of them.

KRAK! The Enfield slammed against Watson’s shoulder and he saw a figure jerk and drop backwards as though clothes-lined by an unseen wire. His accomplices rushed on, plunging forward as Watson ejected the cartridge and calmly reset the bolt. He had been modest in his self-assessment: he was a dead shot over the killing range of the Enfield. He’d proven it many times over the years, though his skill rarely made the written accounts. “It must be brains over brawn; science over force that forms the thrust of these tales,” Holmes would frequently emphasize. It would never do to mention the blood Dr. Watson had been obliged to spill, on top of everything else.

KRAK! Watson recalled the ragged line at Maiwand: volley fire shredding howling ghazis on the approach.

KRAK! The tips of his fingers singed by the scorching heat of the chamber as comrades fell, and ragtag squares formed in doomed isolation.

KRAK! He’d killed men at Maiwand with this same lethal precision, and none of them, he knew, so deserving as the ones he claimed today.

KRAK!

KRAK!

KRAK!

He’d missed once and two men kept up their headlong pace, now less than a hundred yards from him. Blinking to refocus, operating in strict military cadence, he ejected and reloaded, brought butt to shoulder … and froze, momentarily stunned by what he was seeing.

One of the downed had risen, was shaking off the shot, and was staggering forward once again ! Another man Watson had sworn he’d hit square to the left side of the chest got to his knees, and reeled to his feet to renew his lurching advance. They were slowed, but those who had gone down now rose again, forcing the doctor to hasten his tempo.

He put another round into the first man he had downed, and another into the second. He shot the third man’s thigh and dropped him again, only to watch him writhe, roll, rise and now walk forward. The hackles on Watson’s burly neck rose, and he knew it wasn’t from the cold. “Good Lord,” he whispered, awe-struck.

“Indeed,” Holmes countered.

The reavers had closed to within twenty yards.

Holmes grinned, and lunged forward, a canine snarl rippling his thin lips.

Watson had seen Sherlock Holmes close for hand-to-hand on many occasions, knew that his friend had made no little study of the combative arts, but the chilling efficiency and balance of the man routinely amazed nonetheless. He was wiry-strong, and naturally agile, but these components amplified by the dagger’s eldritch energy made Holmes a thing of slashing lethality. And even without Zulu magic, no man alive was better at obtaining and keeping initiative. Holmes’ judgment of distance and timing were exquisite.

Holmes bent low, put his shoulder into the first man’s hip, using his own momentum to hoist him up and over in a tumble of seal skin cloak and hide-bound legs. The second man rushed in with a thrusting harpoon in both hands, but his angle was bad, and Holmes had position. He swept the point aside with his left forearm, and walked his man onto the point of the Zulu knife — the broad, killing blade sighing into the man’s ribcage as though pushing through dense, wet clay.

The tribesman’s hood fell back, and Watson felt a thrill of fear pulse down his spine at the sight. The man was native, distant kin to those butchered some leagues to the south, but his face was a feral, twisted parody of theirs, and his eyes shone an impossible robin’s-egg blue. He clutched at his wound and slid off the blade, falling back onto his shoulders, his knees bent beneath him. Though he bled from a bullet wound in his chest, it had taken an African dagger to end the unspeakable life of this hellbound slayer.

Holmes whirled as the first man closed again, the tribesman’s face grotesque with hate. The man had produced a rust-encrusted rapier, of all things, holding it as one might hold a simple club. Holmes sidestepped awkwardly, stumbling as snow bit at his calves, but he recovered nicely, drawing the keen edge of his blade across the man’s jugular from an oblique angle. The native pitched face-first into the snow, hands clawing at his throat as his eerie life bled out crimson against the crisp, pristine white.

From there, Holmes pressed his attack to the others, but found that Watson’s bullets had done most of the work after all. Incredibly, the wounded had dragged themselves up that sweeping ice hill, lungs collapsed or thighs belching blood from throbbing arteries. They clung grimly to savage life, and their faces bespoke the same dark, malicious energy upon which the first two had drawn.

The dagger took each in turn: one touch of it, so long as it drank of their blood, was all it took to still them. In moments, Holmes stood alone, chest heaving, breath condensing fog-white in the Arctic air. Watson closed from a respectful distance, eyeing his friend warily, noting the barely contained bloodlust in those usually reserved eyes.

“Holmes?” Watson said from fifteen feet away, not pointing the rifle at his friend directly, but holding it at the ready nonetheless.

Holmes nodded, panting. “Fear not, doctor. I am in complete control of my faculties.”

“Grand,” said Watson, not comforted by the fact that he needed to be told.

Holmes smiled. “Shall we?”

They stepped their way to the galleon, Watson noting eight fallen foes en route. Poor devils , he thought. He could not help but feel that ending them had saved them somehow, from something darker than death.