the courtyard camera, the one he’d left untouched for that purpose. Speaking without moving his lips, he’d told her how to stand, when to keep still, and when to squirm a little. He hadn’t told her what he intended to do if the shutters remained resolutely down.
Now the shutters were up—at least, the ones that mattered were—and the door was open. The man went inside, closing it behind him. The enormous iron lock had a six-inch key in it. The man turned the key and pocketed it.
Despite what McKendrick had said, he half expected Horn to be waiting for him, in the hall or one of the adjacent rooms, too proud to hide. He was mistaken. On reflection, he decided, a man who’d played footsie with death among the snow-topped peaks of the world probably wouldn’t await the inevitable in a club armchair, like an elderly aristocrat in the first-class bar on the Titanic.
What he’d do instead was climb. He’d be making for the roof.
* * *
Too proud to hide, too tired to run: all that was left was to fight. Horn didn’t expect to win. Almost, he didn’t care anymore. He had to do it for his own satisfaction, so that he’d know he’d tried and had gone on trying to the end. Somewhere in the back of his head he half heard the drone of generations of schoolmasters declaring, It matters not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. But they weren’t the sort of masters who taught at the local comprehensive where Horn was a pupil, and it wasn’t the sort of sentiment that appealed to climbers. There’s no such thing as coming a good second to a mountain.
He took the stairs. He didn’t take them three at a time, which he would usually have done, but a certain amount of energy was seeping back into his body at the prospect of action. Adrenaline, of course, and you can only go so far on adrenaline. But sometimes you can go far enough.
He hesitated on the landing outside William’s room; but the stairs kept climbing, up into the tower, and after a moment so did Horn. Instinct pushed him upward, told him that he had one possible advantage, only one, and to use it he had to take the fight into a realm where he was at ease in a way that most people weren’t. The stone steps narrowed and the windows turned to lancets, and looking out he saw the tops of trees. The rest of the little castle was out of sight below him.
He’d been this way when they hung out the Tablecloth of Truce. The turret, Birkholmstead’s equivalent of a lumber room, was the highest part of the castle, and a dead end. The only way down was the way up. In such circumstances, having outdistanced the hired killer below him was no particular comfort. Still Horn climbed, his mind racing, trying to remember what he’d seen up here, what there was that he could possibly use.
* * *
Hanratty’s man paused on the first landing, looking over his left shoulder into the Great Hall. For a moment he didn’t understand the rusty jumble in the middle of the floor. Then he smiled. God help them, they’d hoped to keep him at bay with castle wallpaper—with medieval weaponry hung up for display! They’d have done better arming themselves with the chef’s knives from the kitchen. Even those wouldn’t have delayed him long, but they’d have made more sense than three-meter pikes and jousting lances designed not, whatever Hollywood might think, for pushing an opponent off his horse but to break on impact.
Of course, these were the things Horn had left behind. The mechanic spared himself a moment to wonder what he’d thought worth taking—chain mail, a morning star he could barely lift, a double-fisted broadsword?—and chuckle. A man didn’t get that many laughs in his line of work.
Though he was as certain as he could be that Horn would make for the roof, he took the time necessary to check that the threadbare wall-hangings weren’t hiding more than a few damp spots. He trusted his judgment, but he never took any risks he didn’t have to. He didn’t want Horn creeping up behind him, or sneaking past him and finding his way downstairs. The result would be the same, but it would be tiresome having to round him up again.
No other rooms adjoined the Great Hall. The man returned to the stairs