He waited until the patrol had passed by, then stepped out of his hiding place and started to move tentatively away. Ducking through the arch the men had come through, he glanced back over his shoulder to check nobody had spotted him.
And froze to the sharp snick-snack of a rifle bolt.
Chapter Eighty-One
Stone and his group led the Federation prisoners out into the night. The wind was howling and the snow lashed down as Alex, Harry Rumble and the remaining six Supremos were shoved down a flight of steps leading from the great hall and surrounding buildings to the upper courtyard that overlooked the castle grounds.
Through the curtain of swirling snowflakes, Alex could see the maze of lanes and streets down below, the tiny trucks parked up inside the gates in the distance.
At a gesture from Stone, the guards halted the prisoners. A few yards away, standing in the middle of the wide cobbled courtyard, was a tall oblong shape, some eight feet high, covered with a canvas sheet that crackled in the wind and was weighed down at the corners with bricks. Big Zachary stepped over, kicked away the bricks and pulled back the sheet to reveal the thing underneath.
It was a guillotine. Simple, but deadly — a rectangular vertical wooden frame with a heavy chopping blade suspended at the top by a crude pulley mechanism. Two steps led up to the horizontal platform on which the victim would be strapped to a plank and their neck secured between wooden stocks. A side lever released the blade, and a wicker basket was positioned underneath to catch the victim’s severed head as it fell.
‘Last used in the Place de la Revolution, Paris, 1793,’ Stone said proudly, running his hand down the side of the grim device. ‘I had to go to some trouble to obtain it after the mob had finished giving the chop to the French aristocracy. I always knew it would come in useful one day.’
Lillith pointed at Alex. ‘Let’s get this started. I want her to be first.’
Stone shook his head. ‘No, Lillith. This has to be done properly. The men first, in order of seniority.’ He scanned the five male Supremos. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at Hassan.
‘You animals,’ Olympia shouted. ‘You can’t do this!’
Stone arched an eyebrow. ‘Really? You would have preferred a Nosferol termination?’
The guards took Hassan’s arms and marched him to the guillotine. He was shaking badly and protesting as they tied his wrists behind his back and strapped his body tightly to the plank. Then it was slid into place and the wooden chocks positioned around his neck to stop his head thrashing about.
‘Something’s missing,’ Anastasia said. ‘We should have got a drummer.’
The blade was in position. Zachary pulled the retaining pin from the activation lever and looked to Stone.
Stone gave a nod.
And Zachary yanked the lever. The blade came whooshing down in the frame.
Its diagonal chopping edge impacted against Hassan’s neck with a sound like a knife hacking through a cabbage. His legs jerked against the restraining straps, then his body flopped and lay still as his head bounced into the wicker basket.
‘Quite clinical, isn’t it?’ Stone said. ‘Far quicker than, say, being left out to burn in the morning sunrise — which is what will happen to any of you who resist.’
Lillith gave a hoot of triumph, went striding over to the basket and snatched Hassan’s head up by a fistful of hair. His face was frozen into an expression of terror.
She spat in his sightless eye. ‘Here’s one Federation tyrant who won’t be bothering us any more.’
The guards busied themselves unstrapping the decapitated body and carrying it away to the side. Dark vampire blood was already soaking into the plank. Stone pointed at Goldmund, who began to bluster and panic.
‘Next.’
Chapter Eighty-Two
The fourth guard must have been lagging behind his companions to light the cigarette that was glowing red in the darkness. Joel had almost run right into him.
Moonlight glittered off the barrel of the rifle as the guard stepped out of the shadows.
Joel backed off, raising his hands, and he saw that it was just a young guy, maybe eighteen or nineteen, smooth-featured and missing the heavy moustache of the older men. There was as much fear as aggression in his eyes.
‘Wait,’ Joel said. ‘Hold on. There are worse things than me in this place. Let’s talk about this.’
The young guy narrowed his eyes, seemed to hesitate for a second, and then opened his mouth to call the others.
Joel moved faster than he’d ever moved in his life. Twisting out of the line of fire, he grabbed the end of the rifle barrel, yanked it hard towards him and then shoved it back towards the guard with all his strength. The gun was an obsolete military rifle, an old Lee Enfield.303. Joel had shot one, once, on the thousand-metre firing range at Bisley while there to compete in a police pistol competition. Even more than the harsh recoil of the weapon, he remembered the solid steel butt plate that had left a painful weal on his shoulder for hours afterwards. It was that same metal plate that he rammed into the young guy’s face now. It caught him across the bridge of his nose and silenced the shout that had been on his lips. Blood hit the snow.
Joel didn’t want to hurt him any more. ‘Listen to me,’ he pleaded, letting the rifle drop to the ground. ‘Try to understand.’
The young guy was bent over, whimpering in pain from his broken nose. His hand flashed down to his boot and, before Joel could register what was happening, the knife was punching out towards him in the dark. There was nothing he could do to stop the blade from sinking deep into his stomach.
But the cross in his belt saved him from a fatal wound. The point of the knife glanced off the hard stone and Joel felt the cold steel slice into the soft flesh of his side, above the left hip.
The young guy started yelling loudly for the others. His head bursting with pain, Joel hit him hard in the face and he went sprawling in the snow.
Joel staggered back a step with the knife still lodged in his side. He gritted his teeth, took hold of the slim wooden hilt and cried out in agony as he drew it out of the bloody wound. The young guy was trying to get to his feet. Joel knocked him back down with a kick to the face. He threw away the red-smeared knife, spotted the fallen Lee Enfield lying in the snow and snatched it up. Footsteps and voices were approaching fast from around the corner. The rest of the guards had been alerted.
Joel ran like crazy, slipping in the snow and trying to fight the pain in his side. He willed himself to go on. He had to get to the upper levels of the castle.
Goldmund’s headless body was thrown on top of Hassan’s as Lillith drop-kicked the head over the edge of the battlements with a whoop. Next up was Korentayer, who showed much less grit than his two predecessors and had to be dragged on his knees to the guillotine.
As Alex watched the unfolding horror, her mind was racing through a thousand ways she could get out of this.
None of them were possible.
Korentayer’s head became the next addition to the basket, then Borowczyk’s.
Lillith was bored with disposing of the heads by now, and let the guards take it away to be added to the pile
