A third shot rang out in reply. Matthew heard the ball zip past. It was a higher report than the first two shots. A pistol, Matthew thought. And did Royce have one musket or two? How quick was he at reloading the weapons? Was it worth the risk to charge at him with the sword? But he was hidden there in the thicket, and by the time Matthew crossed the fifteen yards or so between them another musket could be ready. Matthew glanced back at Abram and Tobey. The blood was oozing between Tobey’s fingers. It might not have been a killing shot but in time it would be, and time was a precious commodity.
Matthew was still weak from his own loss of blood. He thought he was turning into a bearded ragamuffin himself, a pale piece of parchment as Magnus had said at the Sword of Damocles Ball, which seemed a lifetime away. Lightning zigzagged across the sky and thunder boomed overhead, and Matthew Corbett was caught between what he ought to do and what he feared to do.
“Give it up!” Royce called. “None of you are leavin’ this swamp!”
Abram suddenly stood up. He drew a knife from the waist of his breeches. “You won’t be leavin’ it either, Cap’n Royce,” he promised, and with an inhalation of breath he ran past Matthew and Quinn toward the woods where Sarah’s killer lay in wait.
Magnus Muldoon knew it was coming. All this blood…the smell of it…the Soul Cryer was coming.
Out of the smoke it skulked, at first a shadow and then a substance, moving with the strange irregular rhythm Magnus had already seen, but this time it crept slowly forward across the mud until it reached Barrows’ body. Then its misshapen snout sniffed at the blood, and the slitted yellow eyes stared at Magnus as if trying to determine what this huge muddied beast was…a challenger to its territory, or a fellow monster best left alone.
It was not a ghost nor a witch-created demon but it was surely the biggest panther Magnus had ever seen. Except the dark blotches and streaks across its muscular brown body were burn scars, and its head showed what could happen to an animal caught in a raging forest fire. Both ears had been burned away, its skull hairless and nearly covered with scaly black scars, its muzzle malformed and twisted to expose on the left side the fangs as if in a grotesque grin, one foreleg withered by fire and its tail a blackened stub. It moved in such a manner, Magnus realized, because under the damaged skin some of the muscles had contracted and stiffened, and if this creature had been nearly burned to death seven years ago it must have suffered all the torments of agony. Even now, it must be still in pain…and maybe driven to its own kind of insanity, a thirst for blood and killing not for food but for domination. It could not growl and proclaim itself like an ordinary panther, it could only cry.
Its eyes still fixed upon Magnus, it snapped at the falling embers as if in memory of what had deformed it. Bovie clung onto Magnus’ legs, as Magnus awaited the Soul Cryer’s decision to attack or not.
With a whuff of breath the Soul Cryer suddenly lifted itself up onto its hind legs and balanced there. Bovie gave a strangled noise of terror, but Magnus remained silent and resolute though his heart hammered in his chest. Magnus thought the beast had learned this action possibly to overcome the weakness of the burned foreleg, or maybe as a way to scare off other younger and healthier male panthers. He prepared himself for the Soul Cryer to leap forward from its hind legs, and he aimed the pistol at its heart and the sword’s wicked edge at its throat.
Nineteen
As Abram started for Griffin Royce’s hiding place with a knife in his hand, Matthew scrambled up from the ground and with two desperate strides crashed into Abram, knocking him aside just as the musket fired. He had not come this far to watch Abram be shot down. The ball passed somewhere behind Matthew’s head and into the trees. Abram fell to the ground, and Matthew realized he had no choice but to charge into the smoke-filled thicket with his sword ready to slash flesh from bone because Royce would already be pouring the powder into another weapon.
He leaped into the churning gunsmoke and through vines and thorny weeds that clutched at him like little claws. And there about ten feet to his left and crouched against an oak tree was the figure of Royce, frantically ramrodding a ball and cloth patch down into a second musket’s muzzle. Matthew rushed the man, even as Royce turned the musket on him and cocked it with a grimy thumb. As the musket’s barrel came at him, Matthew swung out with the sword and deflected it, the musket firing with a noise that shocked Matthew’s eardrums but the shot going wide. Then Royce became a truly wild animal, and with clenched teeth and a growling in his throat he struck at Matthew with the musket’s barrel but again Matthew’s sword knocked it aside.
Royce launched himself at Matthew, the man’s right shoulder hitting him in the chest with bone-jarring force. The musket was dropped and forgotten as Royce fought Matthew for the sword, and Matthew was swung around and slammed so hard against the oak’s trunk the breath burst from him and he and nearly lost his grip. Royce punched a fist into the arrow wound on Matthew’s shoulder, breaking it open and causing a fresh blossoming of blood. Matthew fought back as hard as he could, catching Royce on the jaw with his left fist and striking him a blow on the throat that caused his opponent to gag and falter for a few seconds, but the man was powerful and adept at close-in fighting. A knee rammed into Matthew’s stomach and a fist struck him on the back of the neck, but still Matthew clung to the sword, for to lose that was certain death. Royce gripped Matthew’s hair and tried to knee him in the face. Matthew stopped the knee with his free arm and struck into the pit of Royce’s stomach. The stocky killer let out a pained gasp of breath, but he would not let go of Matthew’s right wrist and began to brutally twist it to weaken the fingers and free the sword. With his other hand he drew his knife from its sheath, but before it could find flesh Matthew saw it coming. He was able to grasp the killer’s knife hand and for the moment hold the blade at bay with the strength of desperation.
Matthew gritted his teeth and would not open his fingers. He thought his wrist was about to snap, but let it break; he wasn’t giving up to this animal, and letting him kill—
“Stop that, Cap’n Royce,” said Abram. “Drop the knife. I don’t want to have to cut you.”
The pressure on Matthew’s wrist went away. He was released. Matthew staggered a few paces, then took in the scene. Abram had come up behind Royce and was gripping the back of the man’s shirt. More importantly, Abram’s blade was right up under Royce’s chin. Royce’s knife fell from his hand.
“You all right?” Abram asked Matthew, and Matthew nodded but he was lying; he eased himself down to the ground, and was met there by Quinn. She put her arms around him and held him tightly and might have said to him Daniel, my sweet Daniel but Matthew was nearly beyond hearing.
“Got you now,” said Abram to Royce, who managed for all his rage and ferocity to remain very still. “Takin’ you back to the Green Sea, cap’n. You’re my prisoner.” And then, because he was yet a slave and Royce a white man, however low, he added by force of habit the respectful, “Suh.”
The Soul Cryer remained upright on its hind legs, as the yellow eyes in its burn-scarred head threw their own fire at Magnus.
“Shoot it!” Bovie croaked. “Christ’s sake…shoot it!”
But Magnus did not pull the trigger, nor did he slash with the sword.
The Soul Cryer wavered, about to lose its tentative balance. Magnus recognized in the beast the cruelty of this wilderness and perhaps the cruelty of the world itself. He thought it was a tortured thing, a creature forsaken and maybe feared by its own breed. It prowled alone out here, hunted alone and wept alone. He knew solitude, and what it could do to a man. He wondered if years of it could do the same thing to a scarred and tormented panther, and maybe in the slitted eyes there was a death wish, if indeed the creature could think beyond the green walls of its prison.