Young Sherlock Holmes: Fire Storm

‘Come on!’ he yelled.

With Crowe, Virginia, Matty and Rufus behind him, he piled down the slope after the rocks. The gradient seemed steeper than it had on the way up, and he could feel himself accelerating out of control. He nearly slipped in the wet grass. He tried to slow himself down, but Amyus Crowe careered into his back, pushing him onward.

As they scrambled down the ridge, he saw the remnants of Bryce Scobell’s ambush. There were five men located in a dip in the ground. Four of them were cut and bleeding. It was impossible to tell how badly hurt they were, but two of those four were trapped beneath the boulders that Crowe and Stone had sent hurtling down the slope. The fifth was trying to help his companions, but he didn’t seem to know which way to turn. Crossbows lay scattered around them.

Sherlock ran right through the ambush before they were even aware that he was there. He looked back over his shoulder to see Crowe and Rufus slow down, shepherding Matty and Virginia past them, before they speeded up again, taking up the rear. One of Scobell’s men blindly groped for a crossbow, but Crowe kicked it out of his reach as he passed.

They raced on, leaving the ambush behind them.

The occasional bolt still pocked the ground or pinged off the rocks, fired from the cliffs above, but the range was too great and the angle was wrong and Sherlock knew, just knew, that they weren’t a threat.

He felt exhilarated as he ran. He had rescued Amyus Crowe!

‘Ginnie! Sherlock! Here!’

Without stopping, he looked over his shoulder. Amyus Crowe was standing at the bottom of a barely discernible set of steps in the cliff face fifty yards behind him. Sherlock had completely missed it as he had run past, and so had Virginia, but Rufus Stone and Matty were already scrambling up it. This must be the hidden path that Crowe had mentioned! Sherlock skidded to a halt at the same time as Virginia, ready to turn and go back to where Crowe was standing, but just as he was about to move three of Scobell’s men came running down the rocky slope behind Crowe. There was blood on their clothes and their faces – they were the remnants of the ambush team – and they looked ready to kill, despite what orders they might have been given by Scobell. They wanted revenge for the rock attack.

Crowe saw the way Sherlock was looking past himand turned round. Sherlock saw the immediate tension in his shoulders. His head snapped back towards Sherlock and Virginia, and his eyes were wide with a mixture of fury and terror. He had obviously done the same mental calculation as Sherlock. The men were running downhill. If Sherlock and Virginia ran back to where Crowe was standing, they would be running uphill. There was no way they could get to Crowe before Scobell’s men did. Despite Sherlock’s admiration for and trust in his friend and mentor, he didn’t think that Crowe could take three furious men by himself. Especially if they were armed.

‘Go!’ he shouted. ‘Look after Rufus and Matty! I’ll take care of Virginia!’

‘I can’t!’ Crowe yelled. His face was white with shock.

‘You have to!’ Sherlock yelled back. He turned to Virginia, who was looking back and forth between Sherlock and her father. ‘Trust me – we have to keep going down.’

She looked at Amyus Crowe. His face was despairing. Eventually, after a time that felt like hours but must have been less than a second, he nodded.

Virginia turned and ran towards Sherlock. Crowe scrambled up the hidden path, surprisingly fast for a man of his bulk.

Virginia grabbed Sherlock’s hand and ran with him, flying down the slope, pulling away from their pursuers.

Sherlock looked back, once, over his shoulder as they ran. Amyus Crowe, along with Rufus and Matty, was out of sight, hidden by the rocks. The pursuers had seen Crowe climbing. Two of them followed, while the other kept on going.

The slope began to level out ahead of them. To his left, Sherlock caught sight of the chapel that he’d seen on the way up. They would soon be back in the town. Could they evade their pursuers there, or were Scobell’s men already waiting?

Still clutching Sherlock’s hand, Virginia pulled him towards the chapel. ‘Maybe we could hide there,’ she panted.

They scurried behind a moss-covered gravestone that was leaning at a perilous angle. There was barely room for them both. Sherlock had to move close to Virginia so they could fit without being seen. He could feel her breath on his neck: warm and fast.

Boots clattered on the rocks, then disappeared.

‘What now?’ Sherlock asked after they had heard nothing for a few minutes.

‘I think we need to meet up with my father and Rufus and Matty. Somehow.’

Sherlock nodded. ‘All right.’

He turned his head. Her eyes were only an inch away from his.

He wanted to kiss her, but instead he just said, ‘Let’s go.’

The gorse and the heather were rough underfoot. The stems kept catching on Sherlock’s shoes as they trudged across the moorland. Virginia’s shoes were a lot more practical than his and he had to struggle to keep up.

They both looked around as they walked, checking the buildings behind them and the low wall they were slowly approaching in case anyone had seen them, but they were alone. The whole landscape seemed strangely deserted. Sherlock worried that a figure would spring up from somewhere, point at them and shout, but nothing happened.

The setting sun cast their shadows across the heather, purple on purple. The air was cold, and it smelled of flowers. Despite the lateness of the year a handful of bees buzzed slowly around, moving from bloom to bloom in search of pollen.

‘What are you thinking?’

He turned his head. Virginia was looking at him questioningly. She had noticed his preoccupation.

‘I was just thinking about bees,’ he explained.

‘Bees?’ She shook her head disbelievingly. ‘We’re separated from our friends, we’re on the run from a gang of murderers and you’re thinking about bees? I don’t get it.’

He shrugged, suddenly defensive. ‘I understand bees,’ he said. ‘They aren’t complicated. They do whatever they do for obvious reasons. They’re like little clockwork machines. They make sense.’

‘And you don’t understand people?’

He kept walking, not answering for a moment. ‘Why is any of this happening?’ he asked suddenly. ‘Because Bryce Scobell decided that he didn’t like the American Indians and decided to wipe them out instead of just moving somewhere there weren’t any Indians? Because your father was sent to catch him and became obsessed with finding him no matter how many people he lost along the way? Because Scobell became obsessed in turn with taking revenge on your father and followed him to England instead of hiding peacefully somewhere else in the world? I don’t understand any of it! If people just acted logically, then none of this would be happening now!’

‘Scobell is mad, according to my father,’ Virginia said quietly. ‘He doesn’t have any morals, any scruples. He does whatever he needs to in order to get what he wants.’

‘The madness aside,’ Sherlock said quietly, thinking about his own father, ‘that’s the only thing about this whole business I do understand. It’s a very logical attitude.’

‘It’s only logical if you’re the only person who acts that way,’ she pointed out quietly. ‘If everyone in the world acts that logically, then everyone fights everyone else, civilization falls apart, chaos ensues and only the strong survive.’

They walked on in silence for a while. Sherlock could feel Virginia staring at him, but he didn’t have anything to say.

A sudden movement and a burst of noise startled them both, but it was just a bird launching itself from cover and flying away.

By now they were nearly at the stone wall that they had seen earlier. Sherlock looked over his shoulder once more, expecting to see the same empty landscape he had seen every other time, but there were people moving down by the chapel. At that distance he couldn’t tell whether they were locals or Scobell’s men, but he wasn’t willing to take a chance. Before he could do anything, Virginia grabbed him by the arm and pulled him towards the