The Edinburgh Dead - Brian Ruckley [117]
He kicked in the door of the kitchen, and found it bare and damp and cold.
“Dunbar,” he shouted, feeling despair winding itself about his heart. “Blegg!”
There was no answer, but he heard the creak of floorboards above his head. He looked at the ceiling. The sound came again. He ran out into the hall, almost colliding with Merry Andrew as he came loping into the house. In each hand he carried a burning lantern and a bottle of thin oil, tied together with fine rope. Quire hurriedly sheathed his sabre and took one of the cumbersome bundles from Merrilees.
“Up there,” he said to the grave robber, and led the way up the stairs.
When Quire was halfway up, Blegg heaved a linen chest over the railing of the landing above. His timing was off, but only by a fraction. The massive wooden box plummeted down just behind Quire, struck Merry Andrew a glancing blow on the shoulder, shattered the banisters into splinters and cracked the stair upon which it landed. Quire heard the sharp click of Merry Andrew’s collarbone breaking an instant before the man’s yelp of startled pain; and an instant before the sound of glass shattering and the soft whump of flame erupting through the spray of spilled oil.
A surge of fear rushed through Quire, and he scrambled further up the staircase, out of reach of the blooming flames. He twisted, raised his gun and fired just as Blegg darted back out of view. Quire looked back down towards the hall. Merry Andrew was kneeling on the floor down there, head bowed in pain, one hand clamped to his shoulder. Flames were leaping between the two of them, crackling away as they took hold of the staircase. Quire shied away from the memories that sight brought forth.
He stowed his pistol and drew the sabre once more. He climbed the stair with sword in one hand, improvised fire grenade in the other. The doorway through which he thought Blegg had likely retreated was open. He approached it cautiously, trying to shut out the sound of the fire hungrily consuming the old, dry stairs. He could tell just from the roar of it that it was spreading quickly. Already, smoke was thickening all about him, stinging his eyes and his throat.
He looked into the room, and saw Blegg leaning over Dunbar, who was lying quite motionless on a wide bed. Blegg had his hands over Dunbar’s mouth and nose. Quire shouted and rushed at him, sword raised, but Blegg was a good deal too fast for him. He straightened and turned quickly, and caught Quire’s descending arm by the wrist. With his other hand he punched Quire once, solidly, in the chest. Pain lanced through Quire. It felt as though his whole chest was cramping.
Blegg pushed him backwards, towards the open doorway and the landing and the rising flames beyond it, and Quire could not help but go, for the man was terribly strong. His wrist was crushed and bent in Blegg’s grip.
With all his strength, he hit Blegg on the side of the head with the lantern in his left hand. It did not break, but Blegg paused in his determined advance, and looked down at Quire’s hand, and reached to block it with his own. Quire swung again, and this time the oil flask cracked and spilled some of its contents across the lantern with a little flash of flame, and that little flash became a cloud, blinding Quire even as he twisted away, billowing over Blegg’s face and head and shoulders.
The two of them parted, Quire staggering along the landing, dropping what remained of the lantern and his sword, pulling frantically at the collar of his coat to drag it off over his head. The left sleeve and breast of it were burning, and he could feel the awful heat of the flames already in his skin, and with it the panic that he knew would master him completely if he could not free himself of the coat.
He did manage to tear it off, and cast it into a corner. He blinked through the churning smoke as he felt for his sabre. Blegg was a bright, awful beacon of flame,