“Maybe,” Will answered skeptically. “Tha’ be nearin’ quick-like.” He slapped his mount’s neck with the rude reins he had fashioned. “Best we pick a hidin’ place. Yonder spinney?”
“That won’t screen us from dogs,” Rupert reminded. “At most, it may help us make a stand. Hoy!” He and his companion beat their animals into a trot.
Presently the huntsmen came up onto the ridge, entering distant view. Sparks glinted eye-hurtlingly among them. “That’s sun off armor,” Rupert said.
Will smote palms together. His stubbly features twisted. “Oh, God, General! Tha’ warn’t zuppoased to miss you at tha house for hours yet.”
“It seems they have, though. I can guess how.” Rupert’s own lips bent in anguish. “Poor Jennifer.”
After a moment he shook himself and said to the wind, “Nay. I think I dare hope better. I’ve seen how fondly her uncle’s gaze follows her about—one touch in him not sanctimonious or mechanic, that may make some angel smile—If he punishes her, he’ll not be too severe, surely.”
“Tha’ll be with us,” Will declared. “What’s your counsel, zir?”
The warrior filled Rupert. “Keep moving,” he said. “Find a strong point where we can’t be taken alive, and can make them pay for us—”
“Through my noase.”
“—unless, by happy chance—” Rupert leaned over, shaded eyes from sun and strained them at the valley floor. The mists were breaking, to show more clearly the railway line and semaphores. “I chose this course’gainst your advice, Will, because of what’s there, thinking perhaps—Let’s seek downward. More cover, if naught else.” He sent his nag on a slant along the slope.
This concealed the followers for a while. When they again became visible, they were close enough for sharp sight to make out details: eight men in helm and cuirass, one in Puritan civil black, one in a red coat who shouted thinly-heard orders to the pack of hounds. Seeing the two ahead, he winded a bugle.
“Aye, Shelgrave in truth,” Rupert snarled. “He’ll overtake in minutes. Gee-up!’Raus mit dichi” Drawing sword, he pricked a bony haunch till its owner lumbered into a gallop. It took horseman’s skill to stay on, bareback. Will lay behind, gripping mane, flailing with flat of blade. The hillside leveled out, the rails drew near. Likewise did the Roundheads, their halloos, and the savage song of their hounds.
A hoot responded. Around a shoulder of the ridge, some two miles north but headed south, came a train.
Rupert’s ring flared in glory. He didn’t notice.
The locomotive puffed, boomed, spouted smoke and sparks, a black monstrosity in that serene landscape; he had rarely seen a sight more beautiful. After it, clacked its tender and half a dozen open, empty cars. It must be bound for a colliery, that the mills be kept fed.
Rupert’s horse snorted and shied. “So-so, my bully,” he soothed. Through knees and hands he let confidence flow. “Ah, good, brave fellow, stout fellow, echter Knecht—” Glancing over a shoulder, he saw the mettlesome animals of his pursuers buck, rear, and bolt. Gleefully he cried to Will, “Thanks, man, for choosing stolidness like this!”
Onward. He gauged speeds and distances, made himself into a centaur, reached the rails a few yards and seconds ahead of the engine. Roadbed stones grated beneath hoofs. The driver shouted something indignant, unheard through grunting and clangor. He hauled on a cord; his whistle blasted forth shrillness.
Then Rupert’s horse stampeded. But then the prince had come alongside. Heat, vapor, greasy fumes torrented over him. He grabbed a handrail and swung himself onto the platform.
The driver’s grime-black face opened in terror; his tongue was incredibly pink. The stoker, more bold, whacked with his shovel. Rupert caught the handle in his left hand. He overtopped either of them by nearly a foot. His sword gleamed free. He poked air, gestured a command. The crewmen scrambled onto the fuel heap in their tender. Crouched, gibbering, they saw him work the levers which vented pressure and put on brakes.
The train rocked to a slowdown. Will Fairweather had lost his seat, tumbled stern over bow in the grass. As he crawled up, the staghounds rushed him. He drew saber—snick, snick, snick, blood fountained scarlet under the sun, the dogs flopped right and left, the rest of the pack milled in yelping confusion. Meanwhile the Roundheads struggled to keep their saddles.
“Hurry, Will!” Rupert called.
The dragoon pumped his legs. Astoundingly fast for such awkwardness, he reached the locomotive. Rupert jerked a thumb at driver and stoker. They caught his intent and leaped off. Rupert snatched Will’s hand and hauled him aboard. “There’s the firebox,” the prince said. “Shovel those coals like a devil assigned to a Covenanter, if ever thou’dst shovel manure again.”
He made whistle shriek and bell clang to frighten the horses further. Beneath his grip, wheels gathered speed afresh. Will took an instant to bite his thumb at the riders before he started work.
The train was gone when Shelgrave’s party had restored order. They sat for a while staring at each other in a silence broken by the gasps of their mounts. Foam dripped from bits, sweat-smell boiled off lathered flanks. The dogs lay nearly as worn.
“Well, Sir Malachi,” said the kennelmaster at last, “what’s to be done?”
Shelgrave straightened. For all his pallor and blinking eyes, he seemed in that moment more Ironside than any of them. “We signal ahead, of course,” he snapped. “If that fails… I’ll consider what next.” He spurred his animal. It was only capable of a stumbling walk.
At the second message tower he reached, Rupert halted. It was a tall wooden frame, upbearing two arms painted in bright stripes and tipped with polished brass. Blocks led tackle to a bench, where were fastened a pair of ratcheted winches by which the apparatus could be moved. It stood in front of a plank hovel, from whose interior the aged operator tottered. Boys and oldsters were cheapest to hire for this work. They did not need especially keen eyes, though the companion constructions right and left poked barely into view.
Telescopes were part of their equipment.
“What’s amiss?” he quavered. (Rupert vaulted down gigantic, in a thud and a puff of dust.) Squinting closer: “Nay, thou’rt no crewman… no uniform… hair to thy shoulders—God help, a Cavalier!”
“Intending thee no harm, gaffer, if thou’lt stand peaceful by,” Rupert said. He stalked to the winches, drew sword, slashed the ropes across, and reeled them in. “We’ve need to disable communication awhile. To that end, I must chop these lines like herbs for dinner—and, h’m, I’ll take that pretty optic tube as well.”
“An’ tha coade book,” Will added from the engine platform, where he had been curiously examining the controls. “ ’Twill feed our fierebox. I wager zuch be harder to replaece than coards or even spyglasses. An’ for what pittance a purse-lipped Puritan doles out, who’s spent free time a-learnin’ o’ their litany?”
Rupert slapped his thigh. “ ’Fore heaven, thou’st a head on thy shoulders!”
“Tha aim o’ tha gaeme’s to keep yours on yours, my loard. Me tha’ll hang, if this Adam’s apple o’ miane doan’t upbear tha weight.”
“We’ll not burn the book, however,” Rupert decided. “Further on, after we’ve broken a few more links in the chain, we may wish to launch a message of our own. I’ll think on that.”
His blade had meanwhile been whacking. Satisfied that no repair was possible without replacements, he entered the cabin, took the volume, smiled bleakly when a glance at the title page showed that the printer had registered this a few years ago with his Majesty’s stationer. Stepping forth again, “The telescope, if thou wilt, gaffer,” he said. “Fear no wrath of thine employers. Thou’rt helpless against us.”