Blood Royal Read online

  “Tally ho, what?” the khan said, excitedly. “Let the fight begin.”

  A huge cheer went up from the crowd as the butler strode into the ring and the heavily-muscled man-mountain assumed a fighter’s stance.

  A transformation came over Nimrod as he assumed his light-footed prize-fighter’s stance. Constantly shifting his weight from one leg to the other, and back again, he never stayed still for a second, barely even blinking as he fixed Targutai’s champion with a gaze as sharp and penetrating as sapphires .

  A bemused expression gripped the Mongol’s features as he regarded the butler hopping from foot to foot before him. And then his bewildered expression morphed into one of annoyance and he lunged at the smaller man, but Ulysses’ manservant agilely side-stepped the clumsy, swiping blow.

  The bigger man swung at Nimrod again. Again he missed, as Nimrod’s upper body twisted, describing an arc that took his head out of reach of the Mongol’s fist.

  Chuluun swung again, the fingers of both hands locked together to produce a clubbing sledgehammer swipe designed to knock the other man out of the circle. But again he missed.

  Snarling in anger, the brute came at Nimrod with a flurry of blows, taking swipe after swipe at the ducking and dodging butler, the exertion starting to show on his face, in his panting breaths and the glistening sheen of moisture now covering his body.

  Nimrod didn’t appear to have even broken a sweat.

  The crowd were behind the bigger man but it didn’t seem to be making any difference.

  Suddenly bellowing like a mammoth, the Mongol charged at Nimrod, making a lunge for him, apparently intending to encircle him in his muscular arms and trap him in a crushing embrace.

  One minute Ulysses’ manservant was there in front of him, the next he was rolling under the Mongol’s flailing arms and rising to his feet again in one fluid movement, putting all the momentum of his springing ascent into his rising right-arm.

  His fist connected with the Mongol’s jaw hard enough that everyone heard the crack of bone. Ulysses winced.

  Chuluun’s head jerked backwards, blood spraying from his mouth. There was the sound of bone snapping with whiplash force, a grimace of pain and shock knotting the big brute’s features, before his eyes rolled up into his head. Chuluun staggered and crashed down on his back in the dust like a felled oak.

  Silence descended over the crowd.

  A lone round of applause broke the silence. “Well done, old boy. Bravo!” Ulysses called, a broad grin splitting his face.

  Nimrod smiled in return and bowed to the khan and his attendants.

  Ulysses turned to Targutai Khan, who looked back at him with an expression of slack-jawed disappointed disbelief.

  “Well, you know what they say about an Englishman’s valet; you should never leave home without one. I rather think that’s round one to us, don’t you?”

  THE KHAN’S DISPLEASURE at his champion losing was only momentary and by the time he and his guests were tucking into a feast of suckling pig and triceratops – all except for the sneering Katarina, who was actually grimacing at the smell of roast meat that permeated the camp – Targutai seemed delighted that Chuluun had lost the match. He saw Nimrod’s win as simply another example of the superior quality of an English upbringing.

  And so, Ulysses and his prize-fighting manservant were being lauded as guests of honour and under suspicion of being spies no longer.

  The khan insisted that he and Ulysses become blood brothers, having not given up all of his Mongol tribesman’s ways in his study of the English gent.

  Ulysses knew better than to protest and, having emptied another sack of fermented mare’s milk, endured the ritual cutting of palms. Targutai grasped Ulysses’ hand in his own great paw with a triumphant “Yaah!” and then, in calmer tones added, “You and I are now bonded close as brothers, my friend.”

  “Pleased to hear it,” Ulysses replied. His hand throbbed, but at least it had been his left hand and not the right, which he favoured for sword play. “Well, if we’re brothers now, you’d best call me Ulysses.”

  “And you must call me Targutai Khan!” the warlord bellowed, the liquor putting fire in his heart.

  “Very well,” Ulysses conceded.

  The slap Targutai laid on his back almost sent Ulysses tumbling out of his seat. “I’m only joking, brother!” he guffawed. “What has happened to your robust English sense of humour? What-what?”

  And so the evening dragged on as the festivities continued with raucous singing, wild dancing, arm-wrestling competitions, and enthusiastic, good-natured carousing.

  “YOU KNOW WHAT you need, khan?” Ulysses said later, over a shared sack of liquor.

  “And what is that, brother?”

  “A Rolls Royce. Silver Phantom, Mark IV.”

  “A Rolls Royce?” Targutai gasped, his eyes lighting up in delight. “Could you get me one?”

  “In fact, I’ll have one sent over for you the very minute I get back to England.”

  “You could do that for me?”

  “I could, khan, and I will. After all, you know what they say – one good turn deserves another.” Ulysses flashed the warlord a shark-like smile.

  “I love you English,” Targutai exulted, “with your Rolls Royce, your cricket on the green, your cream teas and your boiled sweets!”

  “I’ll throw in a bag of mint imperials, too.”

  “A Rolls Royce? Finest automobiles in the world.”

  “I drive one, you know?” Ulysses threw in casually. “Although usually it’s Nimrod that does most of the actual driving. But it’s my car.”

  “And I love this butler of yours too,” Targutai said, slapping Nimrod soundly on the shoulder. “You should stay here with me, Nimrod!”

  “Uh-uh, he’s spoken for,” Ulysses said.

  “More’s the pity.”

  “I think he likes you, old boy,” the dandy said, nudging his scowling manservant in the ribs.

  “I NEVER APOLOGISED for intruding on your lands and putting your men to all that trouble with the pterosaurs,” Ulysses slurred, some hours later.

  “Think nothing of it,” Targutai said. “No, in fact think of it as a happy accident that has brought us together. I would not now have had it any other way. But Ulysses, my brother, you still haven’t told me what you are doing so far from England. What matter is it that has brought you to these wild, desolate lands.” The khan broke off and starting sucking noisily at a drumstick the size of a cured ham.

  “Well, Targutai, old boy,” Ulysses began, “it’s funny you should mention that. Truth is, I’m doing my bit for queen and country, if you know what I mean.”

  Targutai pricked up his ears at that.

  “You are an agent of Queen Victoria?” He frowned. “Then you have played a cruel trick on me. You are spies after all.”

  “You’ve seen right through me,” Ulysses said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Mea culpa. But we never meant to trouble you, oh great khan. Between you and me we were on the tail of another airship that was skirting your lands.”

  “Another airship?” Targutai said, his brows knitting. He suddenly directed his gaze into the thick of the throng gathered around the edge of the light cast by the cook-fire. He shouted something in his native tongue and, at his summons, a lean warrior extricated himself from the arms of a pug-faced woman and, bowing low, approached his lord and master.

  Warlord and bondsman shared a brief exchange, during which the tribesman shot Ulysses a disparaging look more than once. But the man was soon sent away, with a wave of the hand and a barked command, and Targutai turned back to Ulysses.

  “Temüjin confirms your story. He says there was another blimp, heading north over the Sayan Mountains. Temüjin says it bore the crest of the Bratsk bat.”

  “That’s it! That the one!” Ulysses exclaimed, relief flooding through him. “Do you know this crest then?”

  “I do,” Targutai confirmed, lowering his voice, Ulysses’ conspirator once mor
e. “It belongs to the region ruled by the Dark Prince.”

  “The Dark Prince?” Ulysses suspected that he was talking of Prince Vladimir, but with Targutai in such a voluble mood, he didn’t want to say anything that might limit the information the khan might otherwise choose to share.

  “His lands lie north of here, on the other side of the mountain wall. But it is a cursed land. Many evil things are said of the place.”

  “What kind of a place is it?”

  “A place of brooding forests and deep shadowed valleys. Its peasant folk live in poverty, begging scraps from their master’s table. I treat my slaves better than the Dark Prince treats his people. The prince is a recluse. It is said that he never leaves his castle, which stands on an outcrop over-looking the whole of his domain. It is known as the Winter Palace.”

  “That’s the place!” Katarina suddenly interjected.

  Targutai scowled at her in response. “And what business do you have there?”

  And so, between them, Katarina and Ulysses told the khan everything.

  “I see,” the khan said at last.

  “I don’t suppose you could see to helping us on our way again, could you, brother? Time is, as they say, of the essence.”

  “Yes, I can help you,” Targutai Khan said. “As you yourself said, brother, one good turn deserves another.”

  “Of course, and as soon as I’m back on English soil I shall make the necessary arrangements to have a Rolls delivered to you forthwith.”

  “But that might be months away, brother. And what if you are not successful in your mission?” the khan asked. “I would rather have my reward now.”

  “O-kaay... What precisely did you have in mind?”

  “Your butler, Nimrod, stays with me.”

  “Wha-!” Ulysses began but Targutai silenced him by raising a hand.

  “No, hear me out. Nimrod stays here with me, so that he might further educate me in the finer points of English etiquette and in return I will help you and your woman reach the Winter Palace.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  On The Wings of The Night

  BY DUSK THE next day, the wreck of the Potemkin had been recovered from the gully in which it had come down – pulled free by a team of harnessed triceratops. The horde’s tent-makers had repaired the damage to the airship envelope, and the fuselage had been roughly beaten back into shape by the Khan’s factory-sized workforce of skilled armourers. Nimrod and Ulysses had been able to help Agent K make what few repairs were necessary to the dirigible’s engines and, with a fresh load of fuel to stoke the firebox under its boiler, by sunset they were ready for the off again.

  It was a rush job – the best they could manage in the time available to them and it was amazing that the Potemkin was fit to fly at all.

  With the envelope filled from the emergency gas tanks and the gondola securely tethered, Ulysses Quicksilver and Katarina Kharkova – along with the guide Targutai had provided them with – prepared to embark.

  Yesugei, their guide, seemed very unsure about travelling on board the airship. It was as if he was of the opinion that if you were going to fly then whatever you flew should have wings. But he didn’t have much of a choice, unless he wanted to endure a flogging at the hands of his master.

  Katarina was already onboard, grumbling to herself, and none too quietly either, as she ran a final instrument check.

  Ulysses turned back before mounting the disembarkation platform himself, so that he might bid Targutai Khan and his faithful manservant farewell.

  “Thank you again, Khan,” Ulysses said, waving with the bloodstone-tipped cane he had managed to retrieve from the Potemkin.

  “Don’t mention it, what?” the Khan smiled.

  The dandy turned to his personal valet and oldest companion. “And, Nimrod, old man, don’t go having too much fun now, will you? Remember, this arrangement is only temporary. Don’t get too comfortable in that tent.”

  “Perish the thought,” Nimrod replied, his face the picture of disgruntled indifference.

  “You had best be on your way, sir,” the Khan said. “Under cover of darkness and all that, what?”

  “Indeed.”

  And with that, Ulysses turned on his heel and boarded the Potemkin.

  Moments later, anchors were weighed and, engines labouring a little, Katarina Kharkova’s zeppelin took to the skies once more, with a shout of “Tally-ho!” from the Khan.

  THE WINTER PALACE lay north of the Mongol warlord’s lands on the other side of the Sayan Mountains, which made travel by air by far the quickest and most effective way to approach it.

  The barren black wastes beneath them gave way to rugged foothills and then the white scree and snow-clad slopes of the mountains themselves.

  “There,” Agent K said, an hour after moonrise.

  It was a full minute before Ulysses could make out the looming castle, perched on its outcropping of rock over the forested valley below. It looked like something out of a Murnau-inspired picture, the sort of over-exaggerated magic lantern documentary reels that played in the kinemas before the main feature started, such as the recent runaway hit Nosferatu.

  The first any of them knew of the attack on the airship was when the Potemkin inexplicably began to lose height.

  “What is it?” Ulysses demanded, joining Katarina at the controls.

  “I don’t know!” she snapped. “I think we’re losing gas. Your friends didn’t do such a slap-up job as you obviously thought.”

  “Now don’t be like that,” Ulysses said, coming to the Mongols’ defence. “You saw their needle-work. You tested the seams for yourself.”

  “Well, at this rate we are going to hit the forest before we reach the castle.”

  “Look!” the Mongolian guide suddenly shouted.

  “I am looking, thank you very much!” Katarina retorted, adding something in mumbled Russian.

  “No, I think he means look at that,” Ulysses said, grasping Katarina’s arm and guiding her round.

  The clear, midnight blue vista that had been before them was now filled with a storm of black wings. The Potemkin hit the flock head on, the force of the impact shattering the glass of the cockpit and filling the gondola with a chill, biting wind and a maelstrom of bats.

  Squeaking like demented mice, the creatures set about those trapped inside, clawing at them with their savage talons, biting their exposed skin, flapping wings getting entangled in hair as they descended upon them with malign intent.

  Ulysses stumbled backwards, beating at the bats that surrounded him. He caught a glimpse of the cone of the Potemkin’s envelope through the shattered cockpit. Clinging to it were more of the black-winged monstrosities, worrying at the fabric with claws and teeth.

  The engines coughed and the dirigible juddered. Ulysses could only guess that yet more of their nocturnal assailants had got drawn into the workings of the airship’s turbines.

  The Potemkin was going down, and there was nothing any of them could do to prevent it.

  Hearing a scream, Ulysses batted the bats from his face to see the wretched Yesugei stumbling for the door, blinded by the creatures tangled in the thick mane of his hair. The falling airship lurched again, throwing him into the door with a crash.

  A window smashed as the spear-tip of a severed branch penetrated the cabin. A tree top snagged the deflating balloon, jerking the falling airship round, sending it into a spin.

  With a scream of rending metal the door was wrenched open, torn from its hinges. The Mongol gave another scream as he tumbled backwards out of the opening.

  The crump of an explosion shook the tumbling airship as an engine exploded.

  Ulysses and Katarina were lifted off their feet by the ball of fire that chased them through the fuselage of the vessel as they hurtled into the night.

  For a moment everything was light and dark and noise and silence and then Ulysses hit the ground, the deep snow capturing him in its smothering embrace.

  Woozily he opened
his eyes, and in the moment before blissful unconsciousness took hold, he saw Katarina Kharkova there above him, hanging from a tree like a marionette with its strings cut. The pine needles were wet and red where the splintered branch had punched clean through her chest, impaling her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Prince of Darkness

  “MR QUICKSILVER,” CAME a voice as clear and sharp as crystal, accompanied by a slap to the face, “wake up!”

  Ulysses lifted his lolling head and slowly opened his eyes.

  Shapes began to form in the darkness in front of him. From the echoing quality of the voice and the deepening space that grew with every blink of his eyes, he imagined he was in some great vaulted chamber underground; or inside a large, solidly-constructed building.

  The castle, he thought as his memories began to return.

  And standing there in front of him was a man, no more than a black silhouette against the nimbus of light that dimly illuminated the vaulted chamber.

  A dull, throbbing ache permeated every part of his body. He was suspended by the wrists, from the rusted frame of some torture device. He could feel the rough, flaking metal as it scrapped against his back, the manacles biting into the flesh of his wrists and the muscles of his shoulders singing with pain.

  “How do you know my name?” Ulysses managed.

  The man laughed. It was a sharp, cruel sound. “It is my business to know. And besides, you do not get to be one of the most powerful noblemen in Russia without learning a thing or two.”

  “Vladimir,” Ulysses spluttered.

  The man slapped him across the face and Ulysses felt his arms tense with the desire to slap the man right back.

  “I think you’ll find that’s Prince Vladimir.”

  “What do you want? Whatever it is, was it really worth waking me up for?”

  The prince glared at him and took a step backwards, moving into the hazy nimbus of light cast by a guttering candle-flame.