Doctor Who_ The Roundheads - Mark Gatiss [94]
Please help me. Quickly!’
Almost as if it knew what was planned, the mud gave a great sucking burp and Ben slid further into its grasp. He yelled with sudden fear as he sank up to his armpits, feeling the cold, clammy stuff pressing against his flesh.
‘Quick!’ he gasped.
There was some activity on the shore and then a kind of whiplash sound. Ben saw something fall in front of his eyes and recognised it suddenly as the end of a rope. He gave a great sigh of relief and grabbed at it with both hands, wrapping it repeatedly around his wrists for better purchase.
‘Pull! Pull!’ he squawked, feeling the pressure of the mud against his bones.
His rescuer gave a great heave and Ben waited for his body to pop from the mud.
Nothing happened.
‘Again!’ he insisted. The rope stretched taut and he gripped it even tighter till his knuckles whitened.
‘I must have help!’ came the voice again. ‘Wait a moment.’
Ben rolled his eyes. To come so close to rescue...
‘I’m, not going anywhere,’ he whispered ruefully. The rope went slack and Ben swallowed anxiously. If only he could keep still now he might be all right.
There was a loud splash behind him and Ben remembered the figures he had seen.
‘Not now!’ he lamented.
He trid to swivel himself round but immediately felt the mud tighten its grip. Instead he stared ahead and waited for the figures to reach him.
To his immense surprise, it was Sal Winter who toppled down into the mud before him.
Despite her size and the great weight of her mud-filled green coat, the captain did not sink as Ben had. Clearly he’d had the misfortune to stumble into a pocket of quicksand.
But Winter was still in trouble. Her wooden leg had sunk deep into the mud, she was exhausted, and then Captain Stanislaus appeared like a devil from the darkness, his cutlass flashing in the moonlight.
‘Sal!’ cried Ben. The captain swung round, her leg sunk in the mud.
‘Ben, my lad,’ she gasped. ‘You made it.’
Ben was about to say that he hadn’t made it very far but it didn’t seem the most appropriate time. He felt Stanislaus’s looming presence behind his back.
Stanislaus managed to find a semi-firm spot and stood there, both hands on hips, looking down at his enfeebled enemies.
‘Well, well. Two pretty birds for my table it seems. How sad that they are to be so easily taken.’
He lifted his cutlass above Ben’s head and Ben braced himself for the killing blow, which he knew would decapitate him.
With a roar of fury, Winter launched herself at the Pole.
Ben realised with a start that she had unbuckled her wooden leg and it stood there now, stranded in the mud, the leather straps that had held it in place sliding down into the murk.
The big woman crashed into Stanislaus and they fell together into the marsh.
Stanislaus let out a muffled roar as he ‘splashed down, but then one of Winter’s hands was round his throat while the other pummelled his head. His long hair billowed over his face like weed as his head was forced backwards into the mud.
‘Do you think I would let ye win after all these years?’
spat Winter, her face a mask of righteous wrath. ‘I shall pursue you to perdition. My shade will haunt yours. I will never rest!’
Ben wanted desperately to help Winter, to make certain that Stanislaus went to his watery grave. But he could only watch helplessly as the Pole slipped out from Winter’s grasp, pulled himself between her legs, and jumped on her back, grappling her like a bear.
Winter roared with frustration and punched repeatedly at Stanislaus’s face but, unbalanced by the loss of her false leg, she toppled forward and Stanislaus had only to step aside to watch her fall flat on her face into the mud.
The Pole stood up straight, his face twisted into a grimace of hatred, his chest heaving with exertion.
‘Now it comes, Winter. Feel my blade open your throat.
Ye shall haunt me no more.’
Ben saw the cutlass flash down and, with the reactions of a tiger, reached forward and looped the trailing end of the rope around Stanislaus’s foot.
As the blade sang past, he hauled