The Wedge
LINES OF DARK red robed Hades Consortium troops marched towards them from the rear, brandishing long-poled spears in their hands, swords at their backs or pistols at their belts.
Their retreat was blocked.
'What do we do, Aksak?' asked Nehmet of Faroud.
'We stand our ground, my brother Scarab!' Faroud bellowed, pulling the sword from his scabbard. 'Stand shoulder to shoulder. This brigade will not halt our progression!'
'That is good to know,' said Kulfar, 'but what about that one?'
On the other side of the vast stone doors, another troop of Hades Consortium guards appeared, blocking any advancement forwards. With the enclosed tunnels penning them in at each side there was nowhere to run. They were wedged between the two brigades.
'It did not take them very long to mobilise,' said Faroud to Quaint.
'Almost as if they knew we were coming, eh?' said Quaint to Faroud.
Gone was their element of surprise, and if they wanted to salvage anything even remotely resembling the upper hand, they needed to act fast. The soldiers numbered over twenty in each platoon – so they were outnumbered at least eight to one. The guards were all garbed alike, wearing long, dark red robes from their hooded heads to their feet. Whereas the inner stratum functioned as the brains behind the Consortium's campaigns, they were not without a reliance on hands and eyes to perform their menial tasks, and should any interlopers stumble across one of their hideaways, it paid to have some lethal measures on hand to deal with the situation.
Back to back with Quaint, Faroud called over his shoulder, 'What shall we do?'
'There's only one course of action open to us if we want to live,' replied Quaint.
'You mean surrender? Never! A Clan Scarab never surrenders!'
Quaint spied the array of spears, knives, swords and guns trained at them.
'Might I recommend a rethink of that policy?'
Faroud grimaced, clenching his jaw tight. Quaint was right, infuriatingly so.
'Stand down,' he said to his men. Kulfar and Nehmet exchanged quizzical expressions, first with each other and then with Faroud. 'That is an order!'
The two Scarabs reluctantly complied and, eventually, Quaint's band was relieved of all their weaponry. It was at that moment that Godfrey Joyce showed his colours.
He raised his hand, like a schoolchild begging his teacher's attention.
'Um…excuse me!' he called, bobbing above the heads of the mass of guards. He took a step to the side in an attempt to distance himself from Quaint's group. 'I'm not with these people. My name is Godfrey Joyce. I'm one of you! Check with your superiors if you don't believe me. I work for Baron Remus!' One of the Consortium troops stepped forward and Joyce took him to be the man in charge. 'This is all some dreadful misunderstanding! If you would be so kind as to run along and tell the Baron of my arrival, we can sort this all out nice and peacefully, hmm?'
The head guard pulled back his dark red hood. Tattoos swirled from the sides of his face, across his cheeks and up to his eyes where the patterns merged in a pit of black ink. His eyeballs were buried somewhere within the darkness. From the grim look of distemper on his face, this man was not one to suffer fools gladly. He took another step nearer to Joyce, looking all around his face in uneasy close-up detail, and then took a brief sniff of the man.
'What is he doing?' asked Quaint, from the corner of his mouth.
'He looks to be…smelling him,' replied Faroud.
Quaint frowned. 'What the hell is he, a Labrador?'
Just then, the head guard clapped his hands three times. At this cue, his men grabbed Joyce roughly by the arms and steered him back into Quaint's pack.
'Didn't you hear what I just said? I'm not with them, I'm on your side!' he cried, as he was led roughly to stand next to Quaint and Faroud. 'This is intolerable. Do you know who I am?'
The head guard cuffed Joyce roughly across the face.
'I'd take that as a yes,' quipped Quaint.
Faroud exhaled, pondering their predicament. He was a leader of men, and not such a bad strategist himself if he was being honest, but this situation was impossible to escape from. With over twenty men at the front and more than twenty at their rear, the odds were definitely against them. It was lucky for Faroud that he was partnered with Cornelius Quaint – a man that paid no heed to the odds.
'Cover your ears,' said the conjuror.
'Cover my ears?' asked Faroud, with a glower. 'Why?'
'Because there's going to be a loud bang,' replied Quaint.
He broke free from his guards' grasp, and before anyone had a clue what he was doing – let alone tried to stop him from doing it – he lunged for one of the wall-mounted torches. He tore it from its housing on the wall and threw it down onto the ground directly behind him. With a cloud of black smoke, the torch sparked into a furious wall of fire six feet high.
All hell broke loose as the Consortium guards' tongueless mouths screamed silent cries of alarm. They pressed themselves against the tunnel's walls to avoid the ensuing inferno, watching mystified as the trail seemed to spring to life and sped off down the tunnel and into the distance.
'What now?' Faroud yelled.
'Now?' Quaint pulled out his timepiece and consulted it carefully. 'We duck.'
The explosion that followed took everyone by surprise – especially the large group of Consortium guards that were crowded into the tight space behind Quaint. The force ripped through the brigade and the guards were thrown in all directions, crushed against the walls, slammed up into the ceiling. A large, violent crack formed itself in the tunnel roof and clouds of choking dust rained down.
Using the confusion to his advantage, Quaint grabbed hold of Faroud's robes and wrenched him through the ensuing curtain of smoke, with the Aksak fumbling blindly for Kulfar and Nehmet. They stumbled forward, barging straight into Godfrey Joyce, who was standing dumbstruck watching the events unfold. The men tumbled into each other through the huge stone doors and into the main audience chamber. Once through, Quaint looked around and saw a huge wooden beam by the doors.
'Help me!' he yelled, pushing the doors closed, containing the smoke-filled tunnel on the other side. Kulfar and Nehmet lifted the beam and fitted it in place, barring the doors.
With the entire brigade of guards trapped on the other side, Quaint afforded himself a brief respite, and he slid his bulk down the wall onto his backside, coughing violently. Faroud and the rest were also panting heavily as they tried to empty their lungs of the acrid smoke. Their faces were covered in a thick layer of red, chalky dust. Through the heavy stone doors they heard the stomach-churning screams of men as the fire consumed them. With nowhere to run, they were helpless. If the fire did not speed their deaths, the acrid, choking smoke that swamped the tunnel surely would.
'What in Ra's name was that?' demanded Faroud, wiping dust from his eyes.
'Backup plan,' said Quaint, coughing a sticky brown mess into the palm of his hand. 'I thought there was a risk of the tunnel being used against us…so I left a trail of gunpowder as we entered…leading right back to a stack of explosive sticks that I'd stashed by the main entrance.'
'Quaint, you lunatic!' squawked Godfrey Joyce, joining the fray. 'You almost brought the whole bloody city down on our heads!'
'Almost…but then I would've missed the pleasure of doing this.' Quaint punched Joyce hard in the face and a trickle of dust-clad blood seeped from the man's nose.
Aksak Faroud glared at Quaint. 'Do you feel better now?'
'Much,' grinned Quaint, blowing on his sore knuckles.
'But he has a point,' said Faroud. 'You are a lunatic. By now the whole base will know we are here.'
'Quite so,' agreed Quaint. 'But at least we're free to start some serious trouble.'
An icy expression graced Aksak Faroud's face and he grasped at Quaint's robes.
'I would not exactly class our situation as "free", my friend.'
Quaint looked in the direction of Faroud's fixated eyes, and what he saw was not to his liking.
Standing upon a large, stone plinth behind them, with a fresh brigade of at least fifty armed Consortium troops surrounding her, was Lady Jocasta.
'I do hate it when guests turn up uninvited,' she said.