'Listen to me, you bastard!' said Oxford tightly. 'For your own good, next time you see me, don't come near!'
'I don't know you!' answered Burton. 'And, believe me, if I never see you again, I'll not regret it one iota!'
The time traveller was opening his mouth to reply when his control unit malfunctioned and sliced him through with an electric charge. He yelled in agony and almost collapsed from the pain of it.
He looked across at his adversary and suddenly saw him clearly, as if a curtain of fog had lifted. He marvelled at the brutal lines of the man's bloodied face.
'The irony is,' he said, 'that I'm running out of time. You're in my way, and you're making the situation much worse.'
'What situation? Explain!' demanded the explorer.
A ripple of electric shocks ran through Oxford. He flinched. His muscles jerked. The suit sounded an alarm in the centre of his skull. It was dying.
'Marry the bitch, Burton,' he groaned. 'Settle down. Become consul in Fernando Po, Brazil, Damascus, and wherever the fuck else they send you. Write your damned books. But, above all, leave me alone! Do you understand? Leave nze the fuck alone!'
He crouched low then sprang into the air.
Perhaps his warning would be enough.
Perhaps Alicia Pipkiss would be undefended when he returned to the Alsop field.
Perhaps he could go home.
He landed in the thick of battle.
IN COLD BLOOD
Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause;
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his selfmade laws.
There he is!' yelled one of the Rakes.
Burton turned back and looked at the spot he'd just left. Spring Heeled Jack was standing over the ashes of the fallen loup-garou. Ribbons of steam curled around him.
'Shit!' screamed the stilt-walker. 'Why didn't you fucking listen, Burton!'
Two Rakes dived at the tall lanky figure and knocked him sideways to the ground. Burton made to move toward them but a sixth sense warned him that danger was at his back. He dodged and something sizzled past his neck, gouging a furrow through the skin, burning the edges of the wound. Twisting, he found himself facing a Technologist who was holding a strange crossbowlike weapon. A belt of pointed bolts hung beneath it and the man was in the act of pulling back a lever that, the instant Burton looked, caused the topmost bolt to clunk up into the snub barrel. The Technologist raised the weapon and pointed it at the king's agent. At the same moment, to his right, a Letty Green villager who was wielding a hatstand like a staff swung it into the chest of a Rake. His victim, thrown off balance, floundered into the gunman; the crossbow gave a sharp puff of compressed steam and the bolt ripped through Burton's coat, missing his thigh by inches. The edges of the hole caught fire.
Burton slapped the material and lunged at the man, caught him around the waist, and sent him crashing down. He knocked him senseless with a left hook and snatched up the weapon. There was some sort of heating element beneath the grip. Four thin pipes passed from it into a cylinder positioned over the barrel. He pulled back the lever at the side of the crossbow as he'd seen the man do. The next bolt slotted into place.
Sheathing his blade, Burton took aim at one of the slavering werewolves. With the steam from the rotorship above, and the swaying lights from the circling rotorchairs, the scene of the battle crawled with dark and distorting shadows, making it difficult to focus on the target; nevertheless, his aim was true, and the bolt tunnelled through the beast's brain. The wolf-man fell, twitched, and lay still.
Burton reloaded and looked around in time to see three Rakes hoisting Spring Heeled Jack above their heads and running with him up the slope toward the western end of the field. He lifted the crossbow and shot one of the three in the leg. The man fell with a cry of pain and lay jerking spasmodically while the other two dropped the struggling time traveller. One of them caught the next bolt in his shoulder and went down with a screech. The remaining man began to spin bolas, his eyes fixed on Burton. The king's agent shot him in the arm before he could let fly.
'Trounce! Honesty!' bellowed Burton, spotting the two men fighting nearby. 'Jack is here! Help me!'
Detective Inspector Honesty was engaged in fisticuffs with a huge brute of a man, a Technologist who, by the state of his clothes and skin, was evidentially employed to stoke the boilers of the gargantuan ship hovering above. The svelte Yard man was dwarfed by him, yet, miraculously, seemed to avoid every swipe of the mammoth fists while planting his own again and again on the blocklike jaw above him. Even as Burton watched, the Technologist's knees wobbled and gave way. The big man dropped to a sitting position, and-bane-his head snapped to the left as Honesty's fist met the solid jawbone. Bang!-it was smacked to the right. The Technologist lay down and slept.
The slim detective shook his hands, flexed his fingers, and ran over to Burton with a smile on his face.
Detective Inspector Trounce, meanwhile, was displaying a much more basic form of combat. Truncheon in hand, he was moving from Technologist to Technologist, Rake to Rake, walloping them over the head.
He, too, paced over to Burton.
'The fight is moving up the field!' he shouted. 'They have more men than us! We're losing constables fast, Captain!'
'Where's your jumping Jack character?' asked Honesty, wiping a spot of blood from his goggles.
'There!' said Burton, but as he pointed to where Edward Oxford had fallen, the stilt-man suddenly bounded up and sprang away, a shower of sparks and blue flame trailing behind him.
'After him! Don't let him escape!'
Oxford took two mighty strides, plucked a shovel out of a villager's hand, whacked the man on the head with it, then started laying about himself indiscriminately.
Trounce and Honesty sprinted toward him.
Burton raised the crossbow and took aim at Spring Heeled Jack's left leg. He began to apply pressure to the trigger.
A blade slid out of his upper right arm, then withdrew.
With a cry of pain, Burton dropped the Technologist weapon, its bolt sizzling into the air.
He turned and faced Laurence Oliphant.
'From behind, Oliphant?' he asked, stepping back and drawing his blade left-handed.
'I'm not feeling gentlemanly today,' answered the albino. 'Fighting with my off-hand doesn't agree with me; though I have, at least, evened things up on that score.'
'How is your paw? Haven't you licked it better yet? And a bullet in the arm just above it. Poor little kitten.'
Their swords clicked together.
Blood ran down the fingers of Burton's right hand and dripped onto the grass.
'I see you have my blade,' observed Oliphant. 'I want it back. I had it specially made. It's a very fine piece.'
'That's true. It's wonderfully balanced,' agreed Burton. 'I have it in mind to keep it as a souvenir, something to remember you by after I run it through you. Don't you find it nicely ironic that the blade you commissioned is the one that'll pierce your dastardly heart?'
They circled each other.
Oliphant's sword blurred through the air. Burton countered it with ease and pricked the panther-man's
