Ulysses

By Alekto
All notes, disclaimers etc., as for Chapter 1


Chapter 8


Time seemed to stretch out as I stared transfixed down the bore of the neat little automatic she held in her hand. It wasn't that the experience of staring down a gun barrel was a novel experience: it was that this was the first time that the finger on the trigger belonged to a madwoman. I have to say it wasn't often that I froze in such situations, but then, in that cellar, was most definitely one of the exceptions. I was dimly aware of the ever growing heat of the fire pressing at my back as it neared the hidden dynamite, the threat it posed mitigated by the more immediate danger of the gun. A thick, ever-lowering fug of smoke roiled between the ceiling beams like a living thing, hungrily searching for sustenance. Then, after an age, the tableau was broken. She gave a harsh, brittle, humourless laugh and stepped backwards through the door. Her escort followed and I heard the heavy 'clunk' of the ancient lock imprisoning me in the blazing cellar that looked like becoming my tomb.


I turned quickly to check the progress of the fire towards where I'd placed the dynamite - still about twenty feet away - I had only a few minutes grace, but still I dithered a few seconds. Should I move the explosives or just try to get out? At the rate the fire was spreading, I guessed I had no more than five minutes before the flames reached the fuse, but it was enough time to see if I could get out. I ran up the steps and tried the door. As expected, it was immovable. Thoughts raced through my mind - was there any way to force the lock or the hinges? Perhaps shoot it out? A quick scan of the door showed it to be far too solid for any such options to work. I'd need a cannon to get through that door by brute force.


Being up on the stairs had brought me closer to the smoke. I coughed, feeling the acrid stab at the back of my throat and the increasing pressure that was wrenching at my chest with every breath. I pressed my handkerchief over my nose and mouth. It helped, but not much. I reeled back down the stairs suddenly wondering if it wasn't better to leave the dynamite in place. If I was going to die here, letting the explosive go off would at least be quicker than being burned to death. The fire was growing faster than I had originally estimated. The flames were licking across the ceiling between the beams as if they were feeding on the dense smoke. Ash and embers floated down, searing my skin where they touched, lost and ignored in the greater heat radiating from the fire. Unable to help myself I slumped to my knees, coughing and retching uncontrollably. The edges of my vision were beginning to become grey and hazy as I struggled to breathe the noxious air.


On the floor in front of me I noticed a bottle of wine that had rolled free of its rack, glowing pale and golden in the firelight: Chateau d'Yquem, the best wine of Sauternes, rich, fragrant and able to age for decades. Involuntarily I recalled a comment of Don Ferdinand's from long ago: 'we have a long-standing family tradition, John. When everything's gone to Hell, we know we can always find a way out through the Sauternes'. The way he'd said it had been as a joke that I hadn't understood. I looked around for the rack where the Sauternes had been stored, a faint spark of hope blossoming that I might be able to get out. Don Ferdinand had mentioned that his house had been built with secret passages for the convenience of a long dead ancestor whose frequent and not always secret assignations had passed into family legend. I was praying that taking that with the Sauternes comment I was putting two and two together and ending up with something resembling four.


A few seconds of searching brought me to the alcove where the Sauternes was stored. A few more seconds of frantic, half blind scrabbling located a casually hidden lever. I glanced around - the fire was licking at the pile of debris I had stacked around the explosive to direct the blast into the wall. I was pretty much out of time. I jiggled the lever around with an urgency born of desperation, trying to work out which direction it should be moved in, and praying with unaccustomed fervour that the mechanism still worked.


Another bout of coughing almost doubled me over, my eyes were smarting, tears streaming down my face, and every breath was agony. I finally felt the lever slide and a part of the rack holding the Sauternes swing away from the wall. I staggered through pulling the rack closed behind me. The air in the tunnel must have been stale and musty, but to me it was as sweet as an Alpine meadow. I couldn't delay, though. I could only guess how much longer remained before the dynamite went off, but I was sure it could only be seconds.


The tunnel was dark but to go back for a lamp would have been rank stupidity. I took the next best option and once again my lighter flared into life and I could see where I was going. The tunnel wound round a corner then led to a steep wooden stair that seemed to end in a blank panel that was outlined on three sides with the glow of light. By now I was running on nothing more tangible than adrenaline and determination, and I knew it couldn't last. My hands were shaking as I climbed the stairs and reached for the release mechanism that I knew had to be there. Somehow I managed to trip it and the panel swung open. I scrambled through and closed it behind me, idly noting that it was a life size painting of some caballero in Eighteenth century dress. I recognised the surroundings as the house's drawing room.


Smoke was billowing up through the floor in mute testimony to the inferno below. The adrenaline rush was fading fast as I stumbled out to the main hall. The front doors stood inviting and open, beckoning me to safety. I mustered up what little strength I had left and broke into an unsteady run. The darkness was closing in again at the edges of my vision. I was so tired, I just wanted to find somewhere cool and lie down to sleep. The instinct for survival that had spurred me through dangers in the past, now pushed me onward. To give in to the darkness was the cowards' way out; however much easier it would be.


It was with sheer relief that I dragged myself through the open doorway. I could hardly see and to breathe was torment, but I'd managed to escape! A few more faltering steps forward, I tripped and fell. My mind was muzzy as I peered myopically back to see what I had tripped on. I stared in dull incomprehension at the corpse I'd fallen over. It was 'Don' Ernesto Lopez, lying as if asleep, unmarred except for the tiny, neat bullet hole on his forehead, the kind of bullet hole that a .25 calibre would make...


I don't know how long I sat there in a blank stupor, still gasping for every breath, before I heard the unforgettable sound of a gun being cocked close by. "Buenos dias, senor Lord John Roxton, you do not know how glad I am that you escaped."


My oxygen starved mind was still fogged with pain and confusion, slow to process the information and realise the threat. I blinked and my vision cleared sufficiently as I looked up into the sneering face behind the gun and recognised Ramon. "Oh Hell," I murmured. Then, as if in sympathy to my sentiment, the house blew up.


I was thankfully sitting on the ground and it was not too great a chore to take advantage of the minimal cover provided by Lopez's supine form. Ramon was less fortunate: the shockwave knocked him off his feet. Huddled in the scant cover that had been available, I could feel myself frowning in confusion: the scale of the explosion was entirely out of proportion with the meagre amount of dynamite I'd had access to. Something else must have gone up as well, God knew what, but whatever it was it more than did the job. The detritus that had once been part of the house began to rain heavily down on us: fragments of tile, brick and glass and other, less immediately identifiable objects.


Another surge of adrenaline was beginning to kick in, fooling my body into believing that I hadn't just escaped from a fire, that it could suddenly breathe again, that near suffocation was no more than a passing inconvenience. I was all too aware of how few reserves I had left, that adrenaline apart I was having real trouble getting enough oxygen in the thin mountain air. I knew that if I was to stand a chance of taking Ramon down, it had to be quickly or not at all. He too was recovering from the shock of the explosion but the gun which had been in his hand was no longer there. He ignored its absence, took a couple of steps forward and with casual brutality kicked my side as I was struggling to get to my feet. The savage force behind the blow was enough to lift me off the ground. My vision darkened to a fractal swirl of grey and black as my side flared in pain. I desperately tried to continue to roll away from him but I was too busy trying to drag in another breath. He kicked again, but the pain was somehow less than before, as if from further away. I could feel myself drifting away into unconsciousness, or worse.


"And so it ends, the great White Hunter grovelling in the dust like the spineless peon he truly is. Dona Maria should have stayed for this. It's pitiful! Such a big man with a gun in your hands, but without it, you're nothing. Where's your superiority and arrogance now?" I let him rant on. It was giving me the time I needed to catch a breath and gather myself for one last attempt at... something, anything. Ramon continued regardless, "El Mayal del Dios! Hah! Perhaps I should keep you alive until we can work out some way of killing you so as to give those superstitious peasants the object lesson they so richly deserve."


He reached down and hauled me to my feet by the collar. We were of a height, his face barely inches from my own, his stench in my nostrils, his victorious sneer revealing teeth yellowed and rotting. Out of his sight I eased my knife silently from its sheath and with the last of my strength buried it to its hilt in his chest. Confusion crossed his features as his grip on my shirt relented, then his face relaxed into the slack flaccidity of death. "Ramon, you talk too much," I muttered as he collapsed to the ground. I made it no more than a few paces further before my own legs gave out and I folded into an inelegant heap.


I'm not sure how long I lay there, but when I had gathered enough strength to move the sun was high overhead. Behind me the house had long since collapsed in on itself, Don Ferdinand's usurped legacy now no more than a smouldering ruin. Tears that had nothing to do with the fire pricked at my eyes. My old friend had deserved better than this. In front of me lay the rapidly cooling corpses of two of the people who had engineered his death and terrorised an entire region. If Ramon's words were anything to go by, the third, Dona Maria had escaped. She was perhaps the most dangerous, the leader of their little cabal, possessed of all the delicate femininity of a black widow.


I stood up, albeit unsteadily, and made my way back to the copse where I had tethered Robbie. He looked at me in the oddly knowing way he had apparently developed since our escape after the skirmish at the quarry. I took a long swig from the canteen and hauled myself up into the saddle, chary of the stab of pain from where Ramon's kicks had landed. Holding the pony to a gentle walk I directed him away from the house back up to the cave where Domingo would be awaiting my return.


It was nearing sunset by the time I got there. Domingo had been watching for my arrival and rode down to greet me, full of solicitude. I spent the next couple of days in the cave, hacking up gobbets of phlegm as my lungs cleared themselves of the soot and smoke that I'd inhaled. Ramon's kicks had somehow managed to bruise rather than break ribs, much to my relief. Domingo was always at hand, seeing to my needs. His attitude spoke eloquently of his surprise at my success and survival, at times verging on hero worship.


Although my body was healing, I was sick to my soul for the killing and destruction that I'd undertaken. I'd realised long ago that it ought to be far harder than it was to take a life, any life. The casualness with which I had been capable of despatching Ramon disturbed me more than I cared to openly admit. I wondered what sort of person I really was to be able to do that without a second thought, to even be happy at the man's death. Was it something that the War had given birth to or had it always lain dormant within my subconscious, merely waiting for the right stimulus to bring it to the surface? It was a question I dared not ask, for fear of the answer.


When I felt well enough, I walked a little way from the cave to where I could sit down and see the sweeping vista of the Amazon basin. It truly was beautiful, but hidden underneath that beauty was oppression and torture, entire peoples enslaved to harvest the rubber in the forests and enrich the few who held the reins of power, that the public had coined the Rubber Barons. Dona Maria had doubtless fled there, to whatever sanctuary she had prepared.


Truth was, I was bone weary of the fighting and killing. What had been envisaged as a retreat from the world had turned into a crusade. I was tired but I'd made a commitment, a promise to do what I could and as always, duty took precedent over everything else.


This war I'd declared was by no means over yet.





The End... for now