Johannes Cabal The Necromancer Read Online Free PDF Page A

scientiss?” moaned Dennis. He put his hand on Denzil’s shoulder. “He woan have no money. C’mon, Denzil. Less go.”

    The skein thickened and started to knit itself back. Denzil, however, had decided that he really didn’t like Cabal. Even if Cabal had nothing that they wanted, Denzil was damn sure that he was going to take it anyway. He angrily shook Dennis’s hand from his shoulder.

    “No, I want whatever you’ve got, you milk-faced bugger. Open the bloody bag before I cut ya.” The skein grew thin as a bubble, tight as a drumskin. Cabal pursed his lips and opened the bag. The skein tore from side to side. Although Dennis and Denzil hadn’t been fully acquainted with the facts yet, they were doomed men.

    Cabal reached in and drew out a human skull. Denzil and Dennis took a step back. Cabal wondered for a moment how he was going to explain concisely why he was carrying a bank clerk’s skull and decided not to.

    “This is a memento mori,” he said instead. He could see they were going to say it—no, it was a skull—so he quickly added, “A reminder of mortality. That we are all clay. That we all die.” This last was said pointedly, but the pair of thieves was too busy gawping at the skull to be paying much attention to the nuances. He replaced the skull and took out a small leather folder. He flipped it open to reveal gleaming scalpels and probes. “These are my surgical instruments.”

    “Yer a doctor, then?” asked Denzil, trying to guess how much the instruments might be worth. Cabal put them away again.

    “Not really. These,” he continued as he produced a box about the size of a binocular case, padded inside and out, “are phials containing Test Batch 247.” He worked the catch with his thumb and opened it to show the heads of several test tubes, each sealed with wax into which the imaginative might have thought they saw a curious symbol worked.

    Denzil could see that they weren’t going to be retiring after this job. “Wassat worth, then?”

    Cabal closed the case and put it away. “If you don’t know how to use them, nothing at all. And finally,” he said, rummaging deep in the glad-stone. “This is a Webley .577.” Cabal drew the biggest handgun either Denzil or Dennis had ever seen in his life. Dennis cheered up.

    “Werl, that’s gotta be worth something, eh? Eh, Denzil?” He turned around to see Denzil running as fast as his fat little legs could carry him. Somewhere deep in the reptilian part of his brain, Dennis got the feeling that he might be in trouble. The bullet that smashed through his back did nothing to diminish this. Even as Dennis was falling, his minimal amounts of brain activity flickering down to nothing, Cabal was carefully levelling the revolver at Denzil’s diminishing form. The first shot threw up stone fragments close by his heels. Cabal raised his aim a little and tried again. Denzil went down like he’d been poleaxed.

    It took some time to find a spot where he could climb through the straggling and unhealthy hedgerow that grew alongside the earthwork, and another few minutes of climbing through brambles to reach the top. As he’d surmised, this was indeed the “proposed spur line” mentioned on the map. The dilapidated state of the line made him wonder how old the map was: the rails were heavy with undisturbed rust, the sleepers were rotting under moulds and mushrooms, weeds and young trees grew waist-high along the full length of the track as far as he could see. He consulted the map again. From his vantage point he could finally make out a few of what might, locally at least, be called landmarks: ponds, marshes, and forks in the roads. He turned the map through a few angles until he could work out where he was, reorientated himself facing north, and then looked directly along the line where the map carried an enigmatic “X.” The vegetation seemed far more mature there, a dense copse of trees that straddled the line and spread down each