They stepped into the smokier gallery.
Charles appeared from their left. “There’s no way out on this side-the hotel abutts the next building. No alley, no windows.”
Deverell emerged from a room along the right-hand side of the gallery. He shook his head as he came jogging up. “They’ve men along the riverbank, too. Under the trees, watching like hawks, plus others feeding fires against the walls on that side.”
Around them, the smoke was steadily thickening, rising and filling the upper levels of the hotel. They all coughed; Linnet’s eyes were stinging.
Deverell shook his head. “Regardless of the absence of flames, we can’t stay here.”
“Smoke can kill just as easily as fire.” Charles tightened his kerchief.
Grimly, Logan nodded. “Let’s see if we can get out the rear entrance.”
Coughing, doubled over, they ran around the gallery, trying to avoid the worst of the smoke. Logan found the back stairs and started down, Linnet at his back, Charles and Deverell behind her.
They descended half a flight into rising smoke, then Logan abruptly halted. He nodded at the window set into the wall beside him. “Look.”
From his tone, Linnet knew what she would see when she did. He stepped down; she did, too, letting Charles and Deverell look out as well.
Cultists were ranged behind barrels and carts in the inn’s rear yard. She counted ten.
Grimly shaking his head, Charles straightened and met Logan’s eyes. “I don’t fancy those odds. We might be able to best those we can see, but if there are more within hailing range, which seems likely, we’ll be in big trouble.”
And they had Linnet with them.
Logan heard the unsaid words loud and clear; they were already ringing in his head. He looked past Charles to Deverell. “Charles said the building against the fourth side abutts the hotel, so it’ll have to be the roof.”
No one argued.
Deverell turned around. “I think the hotel is the highest building in the area. With luck, the archers across the road won’t be able to see us.”
As quickly as they could, they went back to the first-floor gallery. “This way.” Linnet took the lead, heading for the door through which the hotel staff had come down from the attics. Beyond the door they found the attic stairs, blessedly less smoky. They climbed quickly up and Deverell shut the door behind them.
Once in the attics, they spread out, searching. The air was clearer, but the smoke seeped steadily in. From the street below, they heard shouts, then yells, a building ruckus. Linnet tried to look out of the attic windows, but the balconies below blocked her view.
“Sounds like a melee,” Deverell said. “As if the townsfolk have taken exception to foreigners setting their hotel alight.”
“More power to their right arms,” Charles replied. “Unfortunately, we can’t risk going out and joining in.”
Logan finally found the right door. “This way.”
He waited until they were all assembled. “We go up and out, and with luck, there won’t be any cultists waiting, but be prepared-they might have thought of the roof.”
Logan turned and climbed the stairs. Linnet moved to follow, but Charles caught her shoulder and drew her back. “Ladies to the rear, this time.”
He pushed past her, and so did Deverell, before she could think of any reply. With a humph, she seized the moment to swing her cloak about her shoulders and tie it firmly at her throat, then she loosened her cutlass in its scabbard, and followed.
Logan opened the door at the top of the narrow flight, gently eased it wide, giving thanks to whoever had kept the hinges oiled. Silent as a wraith, keeping low, he slipped out, through the drifts of smoke scanned the roof. It was largely flat, with no protrusions of sufficient size to hide a cultist.
And it was empty.
“All clear,” he murmured, straightening as Charles joined him. The noise from what sounded like a pitched battle below would mask any sound they made.
Charles glanced back as Deverell, then Linnet emerged. He pointed to the side of the roof away from the river-the side beyond which the adjoining building lay.
Swiftly, they crossed to the waist-high stone parapet. The air was somewhat clearer, slightly fresher there, and now the thick smoke worked to their advantage, wafting up the hotel’s walls and screening them from watching eyes.
Deverell had been right. The neighboring building was shorter than the hotel, its roof lower, but thankfully not too low. And that roof, too, was empty of cultists.
“They’ve positioned all their archers across the street,” Charles murmured.
“Luckily for us.” After one glance at the archers, Logan took advantage of a thicker gust of smoke to swing one leg over the parapet, then the other, then he dropped lightly down to the lower roof.
Charles and Deverell helped Linnet to do the same, then they followed.
Keeping low-they were now at a level where, if they stood upright too close to the edge, the archers on the roofs opposite might see them-they scouted, but could find no access to the building below. No way to get down.
Logan signaled. “Next one along.”
The next building’s roof was lower still, but this time by barely a step. Even more carefully, they spread out and searched its roof for some way to get inside, but neither it, nor the next two adjoining buildings, all of similar height, had any direct way to get into the buildings below.
Moving on, they looked down at the roof of the next building, which was smaller and lower, two storeys but with a many-gabled roof. From above, they studied it, searched, then Linnet pointed. “There-that covered porch.” A small, single-storey structure, it was built onto the back of the building. “We can go down that waterpipe from the roof, onto the porch roof, and then down into the little yard at the rear.”
The building beyond the one with the gabled roof was significantly higher; climbing up to its roof would be a problem. Logan glanced back. They were sufficiently far from the hotel to risk going down into the lane that ran along the rear of the buildings. More, the small square yard into which they would drop didn’t open directly to the rear lane, but was joined to it via an alley some ten yards long. Unless a cultist came to the alley’s mouth and looked in, their party wouldn’t be seen by the cultists watching in the lane.
And the longer they remained on the roofs, the more risk that they’d be seen.
He nodded. “Let’s go.”
Although the smoke was still thickening about the hotel, it was much thinner, a bare veil, where they now were. The flares in the street were largely concentrated outside the hotel, but every now and then some townsman would run past with a brand, on their way to join the fracas outside the hotel, throwing light up onto the wall down which they had to climb.
They tried to pick their times, dropping down to the roof one after another, then making their way cautiously over the gables to the pipe that let them ease down to the porch roof.
Within ten minutes, they were within reach of the ground.
Daniel cursed. “Damned meddling gits! Why couldn’t they keep their noses out of things?”
None of the men at his back volunteered an answer.
Still cloaked in the alley’s shadows, they watched as the fight in the street swelled to an all-out brawl. More townsmen came charging up to join in; as the minutes ticked by, more of those arriving waved weapons-pitchforks, spades, whatever they could lay hands on.
He’d overlooked the fact that the common English were not the same as the run-of-the-mill Indian-that they were more likely to react with belligerence than cower. His fault, his mistake; he knew it.
The instant the gathering townsfolk and those flooding out of the hotel had comprehended that the source of the fires threatening the building was a group of foreigners, who were continuing to diligently feed the flames, they’d cursed, bellowed, and fallen on the cultists’ backs. For their part, the cultists expected anyone whose house they were burning down to cower; they’d struck back, expecting instant victory. Before Daniel could think of any way to intervene, battle had been joined.