The Two Lost Mountains - Jack West Jr Series 06 (2020) Page 13

  ‘Sire, one more thing,’ Mendoza said, rushing to catch up with him. ‘What should we do with Father Rasmussen, Brother Dagobert and the other monks here?’

  Sphinx stopped.

  He looked at Rasmussen and Bertie and the other three monks of the monastery as if they were a minor detail that he had forgotten.

  ‘Well, they cannot be allowed to live and tell anyone about what they have seen here,’ he said lightly. ‘Have a bronzeman tear off their heads and throw their bodies into the shaft.’

  Bertie blanched.

  Rasmussen’s face went red with shock. ‘My Lord, I implore you, I only wish to serve—’

  ‘Sire!’ a voice called, silencing Rasmussen and making both Jack and Sphinx spin; Jack on his balcony, Sphinx down on the eastern bridge.

  Dion entered the chamber.

  He was followed by Hades who was covered by Jaeger Eins and the armed Knights.

  ‘Oh, Jesus . . .’ Jack breathed.

  ‘How did he get here—?’ Iolanthe gasped.

  ‘If it isn’t Lord Hades.’ Sphinx smiled broadly, his cool grey eyes flush with success. ‘Well, the former Lord Hades.’

  Hades stood there defiantly, surrounded by his enemies: by Sphinx; by his bitter son, Dion; and by his furious brother, Yago, the Royal Jailer.

  ‘You stole my son, Hardin,’ Hades said flatly. ‘Turned him against me.’

  ‘It wasn’t hard, Anthony,’ Sphinx said. ‘You ruled like an old-school king. You expected loyalty solely because of your crown. But people need more than that.’

  He gestured toward Dion: ‘Royal sons need to know their future.’ And to Yago: ‘Royals brothers need more than faraway postings. And I don’t think you should lecture us on loyalty, Anthony. Since the end of the Great Games, you have forsaken the royal world and sided with Jack West.’

  Sphinx shrugged. ‘As for Dion here, I offered him more than you ever could: power of a kind never seen in the modern age of the world. He is my son now and, as such, he will be my heir, making him heir to the throne of the whole world, not a backwater kingdom like the Underworld.’

  Jack watched as Hades bowed his head.

  Throughout his time with the former Lord of the Underworld, Jack hadn’t truly considered the effect on Hades of his sons’ betrayal or of the hatred of his brother, Yago.

  Now Hades stood here, beaten.

  Sphinx stepped forward so he stood right in front of Hades.

  ‘Once you were a king, Anthony. Now, you are nothing. Kneel before your emperor.’

  Hades dropped to the ground, kneeling before Sphinx.

  Sphinx turned to Dion and Yago.

  ‘Gentlemen? You are the ones who were wronged by this man during his rule. What sentence would you ask of me?’

  ‘Death,’ Dion said immediately.

  ‘Death,’ Yago said.

  Sphinx raised his eyebrows at Hades. ‘The decapitation of Hades.’

  He turned to one of the four silver automatons standing nearby like a chrome statue.

  ‘Silverman!’ He pointed at Hades. ‘Tear off that man’s head.’

  Up on the balcony, Jack’s eyes popped as he heard the command.

  ‘Oh, Jesus . . .’ he whispered.

  Down in the chamber, the silverman took four striding steps over to Hades and without so much as a pause, clamped its glistening silver claws around his skull.

  Sphinx watched impassively.

  Dion watched, grinning.

  Yago watched silently.

  Jack watched in absolute horror.

  As the silverman’s claws gripped his head tightly, Hades said proudly, ‘You will never win, Hardin. West will beat you—’

  With shocking strength, the silverman twisted Hades’s neck . . .

  . . . snapping it . . .

  . . . and then it wrenched his head from his body with a sickening tearing sound.

  With a blast of arterial blood, Hades’s head came free of his shoulders. So violent was the action that a whole section of his spinal column was torn out of his back. His headless body collapsed to the ground.

  From his position on the balcony, Jack swallowed back the nausea that rose in his throat. Beside him, Iolanthe was aghast.

  Sphinx said to the silverman, ‘Throw his body into the shaft.’

  The silverman obeyed, tossing Hades’s head and corpse off the thin eastern bridge on which Sphinx and his people stood.

  Sphinx watched Hades’s body disappear from view.

  Then he did something that Jack did not expect.

  He called out, ‘Well? Did you enjoy the show, Captain West?’

  Jack’s first instinct was to duck back further into the shadows of his balcony.

  Sphinx’s voice called: ‘We know you are here, Captain! You came in via the English tunnel, which was really rather brave considering how unstable it is. Hades triggered a laser trip-wire at this end when he arrived. We checked the entrance and found more footprints: the prints of one man in hiking boots, a woman and a monk. I can only assume it’s you. Show yourself!’

  Iolanthe said, ‘Jack, don’t—’

  Jack stood up on his balcony . . .

  . . . in full view of Sphinx and his people over on the other side of the vast hall.

  Sphinx smiled. ‘Why, hello.’

  Behind Jack, Iolanthe scowled. ‘Oh, hell. Guess I’m all-in with you now.’

  She stood up, too, rising into view beside him.

  Sphinx looked quizzically at her—taking in her shaved head and scarred face—before he recognised her. Beside him, Chloe Carnarvon just gazed up coldly at her.

  ‘Iolanthe? Is that you? Oh, dear,’ Sphinx said.

  ‘The handiwork of my brother’s torturer,’ Iolanthe said, her voice carrying easily across the chamber.

  ‘You look truly ghastly,’ Sphinx called. ‘But I mean, really? You’re siding with Captain West?’

  Iolanthe held his gaze. ‘Life is choices. I questioned mine. What about you, Chloe? Is that what you did when you allied yourself with my brother and then betrayed him for Sphinx?’

  Chloe snorted. ‘You might say I questioned my choices, too. Honestly, working for you was holding me back, and by the look of things now, I think I chose better than you did.’

  Sphinx smiled slyly at that. ‘Well, Captain? Did you enjoy the show? My Fall and the sad demise of Lord Hades?’

  Jack stared at Sphinx. ‘Hades made his peace with the world before he died. That’s not going to happen with you, asshole.’

  ‘Captain, when it comes to what is going to happen, you do not have the first clue. Honestly, do you have any idea what I intend to do with the world when I rule it?’

  Jack said nothing.

  He wondered how much time he had. He guessed there were bronzemen, silvermen and some Knights of the Golden Eight converging on his balcony right now.

  Sphinx said, ‘The current system has collapsed. Order has been lost. Failed states, poverty, famines, refugees. Civilisation is broken. On top of that, it is infected. Infected with weak people. The dregs of humanity. Humans with the brains of sheep.

  ‘Entire populations live like animals: fighting, rutting and killing each other. African nations are little more than the tribes of three centuries ago. Many of them still believe in witchcraft. India lives in squalor. China is overpopulated. Africans flee across the Mediterranean to escape poverty, while Latin Americans try to sneak into America to do the same. All this while America itself is beset by opioid addicts and fools who believe that Noah’s Ark actually existed.

  ‘I want a better world. A world for intelligent men and women. For advanced Homo sapiens. The rest—the dregs—need to be culled. And, as a wise but firm ruler, I will do the culling. I will use the Siren bells to put most of humanity to sleep . . . and I will only wake those who mak
e the world better. The weak will not be woken. They will just be allowed to starve in their slumber and die.’

  Jack’s eyes widened at the breadth of Sphinx’s plan.

  It was insane.

  Sphinx looked up defiantly at Jack. ‘And I will rule this world with an iron fist. People need a ruler who demarcates the boundaries of life clearly. A ruled world is a better world. I fight for that better world, Captain. Tell me, what do you fight for? Do you even know?’

  Jack frowned. This was all too much. He heard rushing footsteps in the levels below his balcony. They were closing in on him and here was Sphinx asking him to justify why he fought.

  Sphinx said, ‘Do you fight for the oppressed? Are they oppressed or are they just ignorant? Too stupid to know that there is a wider universe out there?’

  ‘I fight for those who can’t fight for themselves,’ Jack said.

  ‘Oh, please! This is your fatal weakness, Captain. You care. This compassion of yours will be your downfall.’

  ‘If I’m the only one who stands up to you, then that’s fine by me,’ Jack said.

  ‘That is your other great weakness, Captain. You do not know your place. Mark my words when I say that when this is over and your loved ones are lying bloodied and dead around you and I am standing over your battered body with my boot on your throat, you will know your place.

  ‘The poet Robert Browning famously wrote that a man’s reach should exceed his grasp. Browning was wrong. Every man should know his place. He should not reach beyond his station, and you have already attempted to reach well beyond yours.’

  Jack said, ‘I’m in this till the end.’

  ‘And I will fight far longer than you will,’ Sphinx roared. ‘I believe in what I want, Captain. I am committed to creating my new world on a level you cannot even imagine. What about you? What do you really believe in?’

  Jack didn’t reply.

  Sphinx scowled, waved dismissively and turned to leave.

  ‘Goodbye, Captain West. Sadly, you will not live to see my world, for you will not leave this island alive. There are two hundred bronzemen on it whom I will now task with finding and killing you.’

  Sphinx raised his voice. ‘My loyal bronzemen! Kill these monks and’—he pointed up at Jack—‘kill that man and that woman! Dion! Manage this. When it is done, perform the Fall and join me.’

  ‘Yes, sire,’ Dion said.

  Then Sphinx swept out of the Hall of the Falling Temple, followed quickly by Mendoza, Chloe and Yago, leaving Dion behind.

  Near Dion, beside the Falling Temple, stood Bertie and Father Rasmussen, while Jack and Iolanthe were up in their balcony . . .

  . . . with two hundred deadly automatons coming to kill them.

  ‘Jack, we need Bertie and all the information in his head!’ Iolanthe cried.

  ‘Okay!’ Jack said, whipping out his trusty mini-Maghook.

  Down on the eastern bridge, Bertie didn’t know what to do. He’d seen many things in his life, but nothing like this.

  He whirled as suddenly, right beside him, a bronzeman lunged quickly forward and seized Father Rasmussen by the head and, with a gruesome twist, tore it clean off.

  Blood sprayed and the young priest’s body fell to the ground, headless.

  The faceless bronze automaton dropped his head as if it meant nothing and turned to face Bertie.

  Behind the automatons, Dion snorted cruelly.

  Jack took advantage of the distraction. ‘Bertie! Get to the temple now!’ he shouted.

  Shocked at Rasmussen’s fate, Bertie bounded onto the temple as fast his legs could carry him, pursued by twenty bronzemen and three silvermen.

  At the same time, over on his balcony on the other side of the hall, Jack fired his Maghook at the floodlight crane closest to him.

  The Maghook’s magnetic grappling hook thudded against the crane’s metal frame and held . . .

  . . . and without a moment’s hesitation Jack leapt off his balcony and swung in a long swooping arc across the western side of the chamber and landed on the temple itself, right beside its main obelisk.

  He saw Bertie clambering up the sloping sides and stairways of the temple’s upper half, pursued by bronzemen and silvermen.

  ‘Bertie! Come on!’ he yelled.

  Bertie reached the main obelisk just as a bronzeman lashed out at his ankles, tripping him—

  —and he fell to the ground at Jack’s feet.

  The bronzemen and silvermen kept swarming up the flanks of the temple, faceless monsters climbing and climbing, hellbent on catching and killing Jack and Bertie.

  Jack had wanted to swing back to his balcony with Bertie but the automatons had come up too fast and now, surrounding him, they were blocking that escape.

  Laughing, Dion called, ‘There is no getting away this time, Captain! Time for you to die!’

  ‘Aw, screw it,’ Jack said under his breath.

  He leaned forward and pulled Bertie up.

  ‘Hang on to me!’ he yelled as he aimed one of Aloysius Knight’s Remington shotguns at the chains affixed to the Falling Temple’s metal collar.

  And he fired . . . at the collar.

  Boom!

  The collar sprang open . . .

  . . . releasing its grip on the Falling Temple . . .

  . . . and the temple dropped . . .

  . . . with Jack, Bertie and the thirty-plus bronzemen and silvermen on it.

  Dion’s mouth fell open as the temple on which he had planned to do the Fall disengaged from the ceiling.

  With a colossal whoosh, the temple fell through the air, just like it had done before, plummeting into the darkness of the shaft below while Jack, gripping the Maghook, swung up and clear of it, with Bertie hanging from him!

  Jack and Bertie swooped away to the west, arriving at a balcony a few levels below Iolanthe’s.

  Iolanthe leaned over the rail of her balcony and called to them. ‘We have to get back to the English tunnel! Meet me at the priest’s entrance! Move it, boys!’

  Jack and Bertie hurried for the rear door of their balcony.

  A little over fifty seconds later, a resounding boom rang out from the bottom of the shaft as the great temple slammed into its base with shocking force.

  Jack and Bertie joined Iolanthe inside the tight, dark, switchbacking stairwells of the priest’s entrance.

  Down the stairs they ran.

  Fleeing, panting, running for their lives.

  Jack led the way, taking the steps three at a time, pivoting at each landing then bounding down the next flight, closely followed by Iolanthe and Bertie.

  The heavy footfalls of dozens of bronzemen echoed above them, coming after them.

  At length, they came to the English tunnel.

  It was now chest-deep with muddy water, still filling with the incoming tide.

  ‘Can we make it to the other end before it fills completely?’ Iolanthe said.

  There was only about three feet of space between the surface of the rising water and the ceiling of the crumbling tunnel.

  ‘No choice,’ Jack said.

  They forged ahead into the tunnel, plunging into the milky chest-deep water.

  They were barely fifty metres down it—wading through the muck—when Jack turned back and saw the first bronzeman enter the tunnel, splashing into the water behind them.

  It was followed by a second, then a third, then a fourth.

  ‘Shit,’ he breathed.

  He keyed his radio. ‘Nobody! We’re coming out via the tunnel and we’re coming out hot! Got a lotta bad guys on our tail!’

  Nobody’s voice came in. ‘I got some bad news for you, Jack. They’re out here, too. A Chinook chopper just landed on Tombelaine and unloaded about forty of those bronzemen. They ran straight into the English tunnel from this end and then the
chopper took off.’

  Jack froze in mid-stride, stopping so abruptly that Iolanthe bumped into him from behind.

  ‘We’re cut off. Caught in the middle of this tunnel with two sets of bronzemen at each end. There’s no way out.’

  Jack’s mind raced.

  The bronzemen behind them continued to push through the rising water, their faceless heads and necks visible above the waterline, their burnished metal skin glinting in the beams of Jack and Iolanthe’s flashlights.

  And more were coming from the other end.

  The tight and not very stable tunnel loomed around him: its rough earthen walls pressing close against his sides; the crumbling wooden beams holding up its ceiling low over his head.

  And the foul water all around him was rising relentlessly, creeping up to his shoulders now, nearly five feet deep.

  ‘Talk about being between a rock and a hard place . . .’ he said before cutting himself off.

  ‘A rock . . .’

  Iolanthe said, ‘What are you talking about?’

  But Jack was now rummaging through the pockets of his cargo pants.

  He found it.

  The tiny hourglass of greystone that Zoe had found in Venice at the headquarters of the Omega monks; one that had once been worn around the neck of a monk.

  Iolanthe saw the grey powder inside the hourglass. She knew full well what it was and what it could do.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  Jack was now scanning the ceiling, assessing the wooden beams holding it up. A few of them, he saw, had creases and seams in them that they could use as handholds and to wedge their feet against.

  ‘Quick, up and out of the water, now!’ Jack ordered. ‘Go! Before the water rises too far! Grab hold of a beam and be sure to keep your whole body above the waterline.’

  Bertie threw a puzzled look at Iolanthe.

  She just shrugged. ‘You get used to it.’

  And then they were all moving, reaching up for the ceiling beams, grabbing handholds on them and pressing their feet against other beams.

  Within moments, the three of them were hanging from the ceiling of the tight tunnel—facing up; their hands gripping the beams, their feet wedged against other beams; their backs only inches above the steadily rising water.