The Anubis Gates

Romany had turned and strode back, and now shouldered his way between two of his wolfish attendants and confronted his attackers. His lean face, weirdly underlit by the lantern, was contorted with rage as he opened his mouth and began to pronounce syllables that warped and shrivelled the very air that carried them—Doyle felt the chain around his ankle vibrate and grow warm—and then he noticed Doyle standing in the forefront with a bared and bloody sword in his hand, obviously immune to his magic and not even bothering to try to prevent it. The chant faltered and stopped, though Romany’s mouth stayed open in a dismayed gape.

Doyle crouched to pick up the lantern, then straightened, grinned at the wizard and pointed his sword at him. “I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us, Doctor Romany,” he said.

The magician made a prodigious leap backward over the heads of the wolf men. He bounded away down the alley, and his creatures loped after him, cautiously followed by Doyle and Burghard and the others.

The loud bang of a pistol shot sounded from some point ahead of them, and an instant later a shrill howl echoed between the close stone walls, and as it died away into choked panting Doyle heard Longwell shout, “Halt, ye monsters—there be primed pistols enough here to send all of ye home.”

Doyle, running forward ahead of Burghard, raised the lantern just in time to glimpse a robed figure flying straight upward. “He’s jumped for the roof, get him quick!” he roared, and two more gunshots flared and banged ahead of him, the muzzle flashes angled upward, and then he was nearly deafened as Burghard’s pistol went off beside his ear.

“Them things is going up the walls like spiders!” yelled Longwell. “Shoot ‘em off!”

A window squeaked open somewhere overhead, and what could only be a chamber pot burst against the opposite wall, showering Doyle. “Begone from here, ye thieves and murderers!” shrieked a woman’s voice.

Shingles and bits of stone blown loose by the gunshots clattered back down onto the alley floor. “Don’t shoot!” called Burghard, his voice harsh with disappointment, “You’ll hit that damned woman.”

“They’re gone, chief,” said Longwell, hurrying up to where Doyle and Burghard and the others stood. “Fled over the roof fast as rats.”

“Back to Thames Street,” rasped Burghard. “We’ve lost Romany—he could go in any direction across the roofs.”

“Aye, let us go back to our dinner,” suggested Longwell fervently as they sheathed their swords, thrust away their pistols and picked their way back over the two hirsute corpses to the moonlit pavement of Thames Street.

“I know where he’s going,” said Doyle quietly. “He’s heading back to the place where I originally said he’d be—the place where his magic will work best—the gap field, that inn in Borough High Street.”

“I’m not delighted with the idea of crossing the ice, now that he knows we oppose him,” spoke up a gangly, curly-haired member. “If he was to turn on us out there… “

“It wouldn’t necessarily doom us,” said Burghard, leading the way forward. “Don’t let yourself rely so heavily on your armor. Right now we’ll reconnoiter and make no incautious moves.”

They hurried back down the cross lane to the stairs below Thames Street, and leaning out over the railing at the top step they stared out across the ice at the torches and tents of the frost fair.

“Too many people about to be knowing if any is them,” grumbled Longwell.

“Perhaps,” muttered Burghard, who had pulled out his telescope and was inching it by slow degrees across the scene. “I see them,” he whispered finally. “They’re just making a straight line across, not even bothering to avoid people—ho, you should see some of these people recoil!” He turned to the towering figure of Doyle. “How much more powerful will he be when he gets to that inn?”

“I don’t know the precise amps or anything,” Doyle said; “let’s just say vastly. He must have had something pretty urgent in mind to have left it before.”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to follow right on his heels then,” said Burghard reluctantly, starting down the stairs. “Come along smartly—we’ve got some catching up to do.”

* * *

Oriental clog shoes knocked on frost-split cobblestones as another company of furtive men rounded the corner from Gracechurch into Thames Street. The peculiarly shod leader scanned the empty street for a moment and then resumed his determined stride.

“Wait one moment, alchemist,” said one of his company. “I’ll go no farther without an explanation. That was gunfire we heard, was it not?”

“Aye,” said the leader impatiently. “But ‘twasn’t aimed at thee.”

“But what was it aimed at? I think that was no man that screamed.” The breeze blew the man’s long brown curls, unconfined by a wig, forward across his somewhat pudgy and petulant face. He pushed his hat down more firmly on his head. “I’m in command here, though without official sanction, as much as was my father in France. I say all we need is what you carry in yonder box—we need no advice from another damned sorcerer.”