Part 34 (2/2)

'Archer . . . Archer!'

Flora moved forward and lifted the man's wrist. 'He's dead,' she whispered.

'He can't be,' protested Shannow.

'I'm sorry.'

'Where is Riggs?'

'He was in the meeting hall.'

Shannow strode from the room and down the stairs, emerging into the sunlight where Batik was pa.s.sing food amongst the Wolvers. Batik saw the expression on his face and moved to join him.

'What's happened?'

'Archer is dead.'

'Where are you going?'

'Riggs,' said Shannow tersely, pus.h.i.+ng past him.

'Wait!' called Batik, grabbing Shannow's arm. 'He's mine!'

Shannow turned. 'What gives you the right?'

'Poetry, Shannow. I'm going to beat him to death!'

Together the two men entered the meeting hall. There were two dozen tables and a long bar running the length of the room. At the back sat three men, all of them armed. As Shannow and Batik moved forward slowly, two of the men eased themselves to their feet and edged away from the third.

The man hurled the table away and stood. Riggs was over six feet tall and powerfully muscled, his face flat and brutal, his eyes small and cold.

'Well?' he said. 'What's it to be?'

Batik handed the pistol to Shannow and moved forward unarmed.

'You must be insane,' said Riggs. Batik hit him with a cras.h.i.+ng right-hand blow and he staggered and spat blood from his mouth. The fight began. Riggs was the heavier, but Batik moved with speed and landed more blows, yet the punishment each man took was appalling to Shannow's eyes.

Grabbing Batik in a bear-hug, Riggs lifted him from his feet, but Batik hammered his open palms into Riggs' ears and broke free. Riggs kicked Batik's legs from under him and then leapt feet-first at his head. The h.e.l.lborn rolled and rose to his feet; then, as Riggs rushed at him he ducked under a left hook and hammered a combination of punches to Riggs'

belly. The big man grunted and backed away and Batik followed, thundering blows to Riggs' chin. Both men were bloodied now and Batik's s.h.i.+rt was in tatters. Riggs tried to grapple, but Batik swung him round and tripped him. The bigger man landed on his face and Batik leapt on his back, grabbing his hair and his chin.

'Say goodbye, Riggs,' he hissed, then wrenched the chin up and to the right. The sound of the snapping neck made Shannow wince. Batik staggered to his feet, then moved to a nearby table where Shannow joined him.

'You smell awful,' said Shannow, 'and you look worse!'

'Always words of comfort from you just when they're needed.'

Shannow smiled. 'I'm glad you are alive, my friend.'

'You know, Shannow, after you went over that ledge and Archer and I raced clear of the lions, he talked about you. He said you were a man to move mountains.'

'Then he was wrong.'

'I don't think so. He said you would just walk up to a mountain and start lifting it a rock at a time, never seeing just how big it was.'

'Maybe.'

'I'm glad he lived long enough to see you attack a castle single-handed. He would have enjoyed that. Did he tell you about Sir Galahad?'

'Yes.'

'And his quest for the Grail?'

'Yes. What of it?'

'Are you still planning to kill Abaddon?'

'That is my intention.'

Then I'll come with you.'

'Why?' asked Shannow, surprised.

'You might need a hand lifting all those rocks!'

Ruth floated above the fabled palaces of Atlantis, gazing in wonder at the broken spires and fractured terraces. From her position just below the clouds, she could even see the outlines of wide roads beneath the soil of the rolling prairies. Around the centre of the city was a flat uninspired wasteland which must once have housed the poorer quarters of Atlantis, where the homes were built of inferior stone long since eroded by the awesome might of the Atlantic Ocean. But now, once more, the gleaming marble of the palaces glistened beneath a silver moon.

She wondered what the city must have been like in the days of its glory, with its terraced gardens and vineyards, its wide statue-lined ways, its parks and colosseums. Part of die city to the north had been destroyed by a volcanic upheaval, and now a jagged mountain range reared above the ruins.

Wis.h.i.+ng herself downwards, she floated gently to an open terrace before a gaunt and shadowed sh.e.l.l which had once been the palace of Pendarric. Wild gra.s.s and weeds grew everywhere, and a tree had taken root against a high wall - its roots questing like skeletal fingers for a hold in the cracked marble.

She stopped before a ten-foot statue of the king, recognizing him despite the artificially curled beard and the high, plumed helm. A strong man - too strong to see his weakness before it was too late.

A sparrow settled on the helm and then flew off between the marble pillars of a civilization which once had stretched from the sh.o.r.es of Peru to the gold mines of Cornwall. The land of fable!

But even the fable would fade. For Ruth knew that hi centuries to come, her own age of technology and s.p.a.ce travel would become embroiled in myth and legend to which few would give credence.

New York, London, Paris ... all synonymous with the fiction of Atlantis.

Then one day the world would topple once more, and the survivors would stumble upon the statue of Liberty protruding from the mud, or Big Ben, or the Pyramids. And they would wonder, even as she did, what the future held now.

She turned her gaze to the mountains and the golden s.h.i.+p lodged in the black basaltic rock five hundred feet above the ruins.

The Ark. Rust-covered and immense, and strangely beautiful, she lay broken-backed on a wide ledge. Within her thousand-foot length the Guardians laboured, but Ruth would not go amongst them. She wanted no part of the old world, nor the knowledge so zealously guarded.

Ruth returned to Sanctuary and her room. As always when her mood was sombre, she created a study without doors or windows, lit only by candles that did not flicker.

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