The Borribles - Larrabeiti Michael - Страница 39

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It took a long while for them to recover. They gulped deep breaths, though each lungful had more smoke than air in it, and they coughed and retched in dreadful spasms. At last Napoleon got to his hands and knees and peered cautiously from the hole. A dozen or so of the Rumbles were grappling with the ladder, attempting to get it upright. Others raced from the fiercely burning Library, instructing their comrades to run from room to room and along the corridors to guard against the escape of the two Borribles.

Napoleon roused the flagging Bingo. "Come on," he said tenderly, the first time that Bingo, or anyone else, had heard him talk in such a manner. "We've got to get you out of here."

"You'd better leave me," said Bingo, raising his head with an effort. "I can knock them off the top of the ladder as they come up. Give you time to get away."

"I'm not leaving you anywhere," said Napoleon firmly, "and I don't like it here, the air's bad. All you've got to do is crawl."

Bingo got to his hands and knees. "All right, I'll have a go. Which way?"

That was a problem. The shaft stretched away darkly on either side of the trap-door. Which way lay safety, if at all, they could not guess.

"Let's go the way the smoke is going," suggested Napoleon, "it might lead us out. If it don't, we'll suffocate."

So, coughing and spitting, their eyes smarting and running with tears, they moved along the metal tunnel, banging their heads from side to side, like ping-pong balls in a drainpipe.

Torreycanyon leant back against the armoured car and felt pleased with himself. He had caused enough mayhem to account for three adventures. The engine of the armoured car lay smashed to smithereens by the blows of an iron bar he had found amongst the tools. He had emptied dozens of petrol cans all over the workshops, saturating the work-benches and the shelves where the tools and spare parts were kept. Into the petrol tank of the car he had lowered a long length of rag and the petrol had soaked its way up and out. All he needed was a match and the whole place would go up like a bonfire and retard the Rumble war effort by a dozen years. But a match he did not have, his box must have fallen from his pocket somewhere.

During his work he had been interrupted by the Rumbles many times. The Warriors had forced the door and chivvied him back along the workshop with their lances, but Torreycanyon had taken a lid from a dustbin and used it as a shield. Not one lance had hit him, though he was cut in several places from near misses. He had defended himself like a lion in the garage area, just in front of the armoured car, and had beaten off many attacks. Scores of unconscious Rumbles littered the battle ground, others had crawled away to lick their wounds. Torreycanyon was almost content, all he wanted was one match so that he could add to the smoke that had drifted to him from the fires in the kitchens and in the Library.

He leant against the car, liking the solidity of it behind him. He was tired. Twenty yards away stood the Rumble Warriors, waiting for help, and more spears. It was only a question of time before they wore him out and captured or killed him, but all he could think of was his match; he wanted to go out blazing, like a firework. One match to that rag in the car and a touch of it to the floor and fire would spurt down the workshops quicker than a Borrible could run. He wouldn't care what happened to him then; perhaps he would be able to get away through the garage door. There was a red button marked, "Push once", but there might be more Rumbles on the outside, waiting. It would be dawn over Rumbledom, he reckoned; time to be going.

"One of you Rumbles nip off and get a match, will you? I want to pick my teeth." He leant on his iron bar and shifted the grip on the dustbin lid. He laughed aloud at his own stupidity. He hoped the others were safe out of it by now and not wasting time by joking with the enemy.

A sudden noise above his head made him spring into action. So that was why the Rumbles had been so quiet, they'd found a way to outflank him through he roof. If they came at him from two directions at once he wouldn't last long. He clambered onto the car and looked closely at the ceiling. A square flap was being lifted away. Torreycanyon glanced at the group of Rumbles standing by the workshop entrance. They hadn't moved. He swung the iron bar over his shoulder; if any Rumble put so much as a snout through that trap-door, he would swipe it flatter than a dead cat on a motorway.

The trap-door lifted and a hand appeared and took a grip on the underside and pulled it open to reveal a black hole from which thick smoke drifted. There was a coughing and spitting from the shaft and somebody was taking in large gulps of air. Torreycanyon prepared to strike.

"I'll give you cough and spit, you myxomatosed rabbit," he said, "you snouty old stoat."

The hand came out again and Torreycanyon lowered the bar. It was a small human hand, not a paw at all. On the other end of that hand must be a Borrible.

A begrimed and bloody face appeared. Its red-rimmed eyes blinked and the mouth was open, taking in as much air as it could, and then, very nearly suffocated and lifeless, the small body of Bingo flopped out like a filleted fish, and fell into Torreycanyon's arms.

Torreycanyon placed his comrade on one of the seats of the car and looked at the enemy. They were sidling nearer, so with a mighty and blood-curdling bellow he threw his iron bar and it skeetered and bounced across the concrete, sweeping the Rumbles' legs from underneath them. They retreated; they had had enough of this mad Borrible, and they did not want to take him on again until he was dropping with fatigue.

Bingo fluttered his eyelids and looked up. "Oh, Torrey," he groaned, "I'm so glad it's you. I couldn't go a step further, my knees are worn raw and my lungs feel like two smoked haddocks." And poor Bingo started coughing again.

There was another scrabbling noise above Torreycanyon's head and he drew his catapult and seized a stone from Bingo's bandolier. But he saw another hand and the head of Napoleon Boot soon followed it. He was in no better state than Bingo. His eyes were streaming and cuts from a dozen lance wounds had covered him in blood which in turn was covered in grime and grease and soot. His clothes were torn all over and his scuffed knees stuck out through large holes in his trousers. Torreycanyon helped him down and rested him on a seat alongside Bingo.

"Looks like you done all the fighting yourselves," said Torreycanyon, "and you're going to have some more to do, soon as you get your breath back."

Napoleon said nothing but lay gasping. Bingo, breathing a little easier, raised himself to a sitting position and looked over the twenty yards of body-strewn no-man's land to where the Rumbles stood.

"What are they waiting for, Torrey?" he asked.

"More ammo and more friends," answered Torreycanyon. "They've gone right off me."

"Have you any kind of a plan?" asked Bingo, a little dazed.

"Not half," said Torreycanyon. "Get out!" And in answer to Bingo's puzzled shake of the head he said, "There's a garage door here but I don't know if it opens; I suppose so. The trouble is I don't know what's on the other side. More Rumbles most like. It must be daylight, you know—very dodgy."

"It's the only chance we've got," said Napoleon, coming to himself and standing up, although he staggered violently. "There's no point in going back into the shaft, that would be certain death."

"Well, in that case," said Torreycanyon, "watch the bunnies while I get down and try the door. If they move, let them have it with your catapults. You're lucky to have a stone or two left, I haven't."

He jumped down onto the floor of the garage near to the huge sliding door. He approached the red button, licked his lips and looked at it as if trying to cast a spell. As his hand hovered in the air he turned suddenly to look up at Bingo and Napoleon.

"Here," he said sharply, "either of you Borribles got a match?"

Knocker stumbled on down the Great Door corridor, the weight of the box of money boring deep into his back. His muscles ached, the sweat poured from underneath his Borrible hat and down into his eyes, and the pungent smoke chafed at his lungs. Orococco led the way, scouting round every bend and corner and beckoning the others on. Vulge limped and staggered behind, supported by Adolf when the German was not fighting a rearguard action against the Rumbles who followed along the tunnel. When the lights went out they could feel their enemies come nearer and strike at them in the dark with the sharp points of their lances. Furry bodies brushed past and tried to separate them and bring them down, but they kept together and counter-attacked with such ferocity that the Rumbles suffered many casualties.

Without warning, Orococco stopped at a sharp bend in the tunnel and beckoned to Knocker. What Knocker saw made him drop his precious box and bound forward. About twenty yards further along the tunnel Sydney and Chalotte stood ringed by enemy warriors. They were backed into a kind of alcove in the corridor and a circle of steel-pointed lances held them in check. Their bandoliers were empty and they were fighting with captured Rumble-sticks against ten of their enemies and were obviously on their last legs. Their hats were gone and their hair was grimy with soot, hanging in stiffened strands over their lined faces. Chalotte's lance was broken and she used it like a dagger, flailing it about with a desperate fury.

Orococco and Knocker arrived together on the scene and struck the Rumbles from behind with lances they had scooped from the floor. They yelled and they shouted and the Rumbles fled into a side tunnel, thinking that the whole Borrible nation was at their heels. Three of their number lay on the ground and would fight no more.

Chalotte and Sydney leant against the wall and wiped the sweat from their eyes.

"One minute later would have been one minute too late," said Chalotte, breathless and shaking.

"I thought I'd never see the sky again," said Sydney. "How many of us left?"

"Just us," said Knocker, "and we aren't in good shape. The others have probably had it."

"Let's get on," said Adolf. "There's as many Rumbles behind as in front."

Sydney took up the rearguard with the German,

Chalotte marched up front with Orococco and the little procession moved on, fighting its way slowly towards the Great Door. Rumbles came thick and fast from the side tunnels as soon as the Borribles had passed and crowded along behind, just waiting for a favourable moment to attack. What lay ahead the Borribles dared not imagine. Even if Stonks was still guarding the way out there would be hundreds of Rumbles, all well armed, lying in ambush for them in the cold green grass of Rumbledom.

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