Matthew took a breath, almost choking on the billowing smoke that was blowing past him, and stepped outside. He chose to fire his single shot in the direction of the coach—an ear-shattering blast—and Greta ran. Almost at once Matthew realized a figure was on its stomach under the coach, and as he turned to follow Greta the next gunshot flashed and boomed. Matthew felt a heavy tug at the left sleeve of his coat just above the elbow. Someone else fired from the woods: a sputter of sparks and a hiss, a misfire from wet powder. Then Greta had reached her husband and helped him up, and together they made for the cottage door, which Julian opened for both them and the shivering young man who threw himself into the cottage at their heels, knowing how close he’d come to being the recipient of two pistol balls.

Julian slammed the door shut. Elizabeth was standing back against the far wall and Firebaugh had not moved from his position on the floor. Even with his newly-split lower lip, he was grinning like a fool and daring another visit of violence from Julian.

Greta eased Oliver down to the floor. “Damn!” the man said, breathing hard and obviously in severe pain, as the ball had likely cracked his thighbone. “Took a good gooser that one, lady! Busted somethin’, I can tell!”

She looked up at Julian, who had produced his own pistol and had drawn the curtains aside from a window. “Who are they?” she asked.

“Bad men,” said the bad man.

“Horses are gone,” Matthew said, examining the two burn-edged holes in the left sleeve of the polar bear coat where the ball had torn through.

“I saw.”

“Montague came in,” said Matthew. “Greta shot him, and thank God for that.”

“Montague,” Julian repeated. His eyes were narrowed as he scanned the snowy dark. “Lash has brought the others, then.”

“Let me go talk to him!” Elizabeth insisted. “Please, Matthew!”

“And say what?” Julian asked; in this moment of extreme stress his voice was calm and even, as if conversing quietly over social affairs in the lobby of the Mayfair Arms. “Bargain with him? To what end? We need the book and we need the doctor and by God we’re not giving either of them—”

A pistol shot flashed out, again from beneath the coach. The window beside Julian’s face suddenly grew a hole and a spiderwebbing of cracks and there was a whine as the ball hit the stones of the hearth and ricocheted off.

“—up,” Julian finished, speaking calmly again. “Lash intends to kill us anyway, even if we were to give him the book, the doctor and yourself, so what might be the point of that conversation?”

“I would ask him to deliver quick deaths instead of slow,” Elizabeth answered. “You know you’re outnumbered, and by now he’s got this place surrounded.”