Of Chiefs and Champions Page 14

  "Oh, I had my reasons, Arsen." She smiled and added, "Night, Arsen."

  The day had been dark and stormy and the night on the riverine island which was the base of Captain Abdullah and his Spanish-Moorish slaver-raiders lay shrouded in a damp mist and, away from the watch fires, as dark as the inside of an ox, as Abdullah had put it. It was the kind of night that set the old scars and healed injuries of old soldiers to a dull, endless aching that called for extra amounts of mulled wine or a tot of brandy or, at worst, some analgesic roots on which to chew.

  Don Felipe, guards officer for that night, finished checking the guard posts around the perimeter of the island, then those of the men guarding the slave pen, lastly the guards manning the stockade of the fort itself, the gun positions and those at the powder magazine—dangerously fully aboveground in this place of a very high water level—and before the headquarters cabin. Then, his duties done, he went to his own cabin, let his squires divest him of his armor and his mud-sticky boots, drank a pint of hot, spiced wine, and went to bed in his hammock. Trying to ignore the biting bugs, their incursions little affected by the smoldering of a brazier heaped with glowing embers and tobacco stems, he lay and listened to the thunder rumbling distantly, far down the river, earnestly courting sleep.

  It seemed that he had but just sunk at last into the soft embrace of slumber when the earth itself shook and moved strongly and, for the briefest of moments, it was bright as day outside the open door of his cabin, while a roar of awesome loudness deafened him. While the world still was reeling and his hammock was swaying as if slung on board a storm-lashed ship at sea, one of the larger cannon—either the ten-pounder demiculverin or one of the three eight-pounder sakers—roared close by, while the guard-bugler began to wind his horn in an off-key rendition of first the Assembly and then the Call to Arms.

  Don Felipe rolled out of his hammock, jerked his cased sword from the wall peg and thrust the leather baldric over his head and left arm, clapped a helmet on his head, and went racing outside with only his pantaloon-trousers for clothing, his squires having taken his boots away for cleaning after undressing him, earlier.

  Three running paces into the open, he ran full-force into his captain, the impact knocking both the men sprawling in the now day-bright, noisy, chaotic main square of the triangular fort. Don Felipe was well clothed compared to Abdullah, who was stark naked, with his sword in one hand, a wheel-lock horse pistol in the other, and his boots and helmet at bottom and top.

  It looked to Don Felipe, at first glance, that everything that would burn was afire. The only place where there seemed to be no conflagration of some sort or size was a bare, blackened area near the center of the fort where so recently had stood the powder house.

  When he was once more on his feet, he grabbed a slightly singed man he recognized and, because his hearing still was affected by the blast, shouted, "What the hell is going on, Gregorio? Are we under an attack?"

  The short, squat commoner shook his disheveled head. "N . . . no, it does not seem so, Don Felipe, sir. The powder magazine, it . . . it just blew up, blew all over the place and set fires everywhere."

  "Then why in hell was that cannon shot loosed off, man?" the knight demanded, with some heat. "Who was the miscreant who fired it? The captain will have his balls, all four of them."

  "And . . . and it please the noble officer," stammered Gregorio, "the . . . the only man up there was one of the indio warriors, who says that a bolt of bright light bathed the gun just before it blew off its charge and its carriage burst into flames."

  "Lightning?" The thought flitted through Don Felipe's mind, but then things of more immediate importance intruded and he ordered, "Gregorio, gather a detail of as many of these ninnies as you can find and shake the mindless foolishness out of, then report back to me at this place. Damn your wormy lights, man, move!"

  With an attempt to finger the forelock that was become only a burned-crisp stub, the short man scurried off to obey his orders.

  With a roar, spouting an ells-long bolt of fire from its brazen mouth and a ten-pound iron ball that left the island to go crashing into the heavily wooded west bank of the river, the big demiculverin let go its charge, set off by the fire or the heat of its blazing carriage. The recoil cable had burnt through minutes before, and the kick of the piece sent it and its burning carriage down the incline of packed earth and log-corduroy, much to the pain and suffering of a bucket line through which it suddenly burst, hurling men hither and yon like so many ninepins. Captain Abdullah bravely essayed chocking one of the spinning wheels with a billet of wood, only to be knocked down and run over by the fire-wreathed piece.

  Yusuf, one of Abdullah's squires, raced up to Don Felipe, who was just then supervising his own fire-fighting unit. "Capitàn Don Abdullah lies sorely hurt yonder, Don Felipe, and he right often has told us all that in the event of his death or incapacitation, overall command should pass to you."

  As they two trotted back over to the downed commander, Don Felipe questioned the squire. "You say that cannon knocked him down and ran over him? Well, how badly is he hurt? Can you tell?"

  Don Felipe's first action in his new command was to order the squires of the Moor to fashion a litter of some description and on it bear their lord out through the sally port and thence down to the floating dock, there to place him aboard the pinnace, at least one staying aboard to see to him while the others fetched his gear from within the fort, since the Spaniard was not at all certain but that the entire thing, stockade, dwellings, outbuildings and all, would be but smoking ash by sunrise.

  Then he sent runners to summon back the perimeter guards, the dock and boatyard guards, and all but four of the slave-pen guards, for there was just not enough manpower within the fort to do all that was needful were they to save much of it from the leaping, curling flames set to engulf it.

  Black Wolf used the pegs set in a palisade log to climb up onto the stockade that held the captive Shawnees, hoping to get a better view of the interior of the fire-filled fort. But he completely lost interest in the troubles of the white men when he saw what was in the slave pen below him. He, personally, had never before seen one of the things, but he instantly recognized it for what it was on the basis of the descriptions of those who had seen them.

  This one was not in the air, but sitting upon the ground, and it gaped open like the shell of a long bivalve. A pale-greenish glow surrounded the thing and the white man with the silver helmet who stood beside it.

  Drawing his throwing-stick and one of his fine balanced, steel-shod darts from his holder, Black Wolf fitted the one to the other with the ease and speed of long practice, drew back his sinewy arm, and sent the deadly dart whizzing at the heart area of the helmeted man, only to see the missile abruptly slow and veer off upward to continue a short, wobbly flight before it clattered on the ground at some distance behind its intended target, having never come closer than some two handspans from him.

  He shook his head. What had happened, what his own two eyes had just witnessed, was patently impossible. It had been years since he had missed so large a target so close at hand. Nonetheless, he drew out another dart and was fitting it into the stick when the man in the silver helmet looked up at him and spoke in good Creek.

  "Put your dart back in its case, brother. You cannot kill or even harm me with it. Do you remember Soaring Eagle of the Turtle Clan? He now is of my tribe, he and fifteen other Creek warriors. He will come this night to talk to you and your own brothers, to tell of me and my brothers and of why we are come among you. Gather all your brothers and go to the other side of the island, keep away from the fort, for my powerful medicine has already struck it once and it soon will strike again, bringing death to all within that fort."

  The strange white man in the shiny helmet spoke not at all in tones of threat or bluster, not as warrior to enemy warrior, but very gently, as a solicitous father might speak to a loved but erring young son. Black Wolf could not but obey him.

  With most o
f the fires under some sort of control, Don Felipe took both of his squires out the sally port and down to the pinnace to see about his sometime commander. But he and the squires had but only just stepped aboard the small sailing vessel when a brace of huge, lumbering river monsters came ashore just up past the boatyard and, with a hideous din of rumbling and roaring and shrill squeaking, raced toward the still-blazing riverside palisades.

  Al built up speed, came at an angle to the eroded wide, shallow ditch and crossed it easily, slowing a little as his tracks sought purchase on the muddy bank, but finally going up and over, his steel tracks crunching the smoldering stubs of burnt-down palisade logs under them. Mike Vranian, on the other hand, tried it fast and straight, but bounced off still-solid, deep-sunk logs with a jolt that sent Creek warriors slamming and skidding all over the interior of the APC, skinned and bloodied Simon Delahaye's nose, and all but shook Greg off the gunner's seat. In the end, Vranian had to back up and follow Al's clear trail into the fort, wherein the other Mike's M-60 could be heard firing short, controlled bursts of deadly 7.62mm.

  "Mikey, damn your fucking ass, anyway!" Greg snarled into the intercom mike. "You're just as fucking crazy sober as you are stoned or hopped up, you cocksucker. This ain't no fucking Patton tank."

  Vranian did not answer, but Greg could hear him chuckling.

  As Vranian proceeded slowly into the fort, Greg played a sealed-beam spotlight around the place, seeking a clear target. The front gun platform had no gun at all on it, and the one to his left held what was left of a burned carriage and the blackened tube of the gun itself. The gun on the one to his right had been halfway turned about, but no farther than that. Now a limp body lay across the broad double trail of the garrison carriage of the piece, and six others sprawled unmoving around the platform. Mike Sikeena's work.

  Homing on his light, the other APC clattered over to halt at the side of Greg's. Mike Sikeena leaned over and shouted above the noise of the engines, "Greg, it ain't nothing left in here to shoot at, nothing that ain't gone to ground out of sight, so why don't we go outside and see can we find any targets, huh?"

  Greg thought it over for a moment, then said, "Okay, Mike, we'll go on out. You think we can get through that gate, though?"

  "Oh, yeah, Greg. Thesehere one-thirteens is less than nine feet wide and that gate there is ten, if it's a foot," the Lebanese assured him.

  "How 'bout our Injuns?" asked the other Mike. "Should we ought to let them out now or outside?"

  "Have you seen any of the Spanish Indians?" asked Greg.

  Sikeena shook his head. "Not a fucking one, Greg, have you?"

  "No," Greg answered, adding, "So let's keep them in the PCs till we do see some of their kind. After all, they're not along to fight so much as they are to try and talk their former buddies into coming over on our side."

  By ones and by twos, by fives and by sixes, and one group of a dozen led by one of the other knights, Don Eshmael al-Shakoosh, the surviving slavers fled toward the safety of their boats. Some still bore their arms; most—who had been fighting fires rather than arming for a battle—did not.

  "I don't know what the wretched things are," he informed Don Felipe, "but they're no kind of monster or other living creature. They're machines of some strange, new sort, with at least one man inside them, likely more. They run on metal things looped around a number of wheels, I could deduce that much. I don't have any idea what gives them their motive power, but they emit one of the foulest stenches that ever has offended my nose."

  "They're apparently armored all over; balls from pistols and even calivers don't even dent them, it would seem. They only mount a single gun, looking about as big as an old-fashioned arquebus, though with a shorter, thinner barrel. But there the comparison ends, my friend—that weapon throws out charges faster than a woodpecker can peck, and I never once saw the gunner reload."

  "Poor Don Antonio de la Torre scraped together a crew and tried to get the remaining saker turned about to bring one of the things under fire, but within the bare blink of an eye, that hellish gun on the thing had killed him and every one of his crew. It was then that I decided that continuing to try to fight the things would be surely suicidal for me and anyone brave or stupid enough to follow me. That was when I bethought me of the pinnace, for it will take a far stronger, better-armed force than what we now have remaining to face these things with any hope of living to see the next dawn."

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

  King Brian the Burly received the Duke of Norfolk in his smaller, spartanly furnished audience chamber. "Sir Bass, Your Grace, my client, Righ Ronan of Airgialla, has been murdered in his very palace at Ard Macha, along with the Bean-Righ and all save but one of his councilors. Furthermore, his month-old son and the babe's wet nurse have completely disappeared. The letters of the surviving councilor, hight Adomnan Ui Loughfiran, make no sense at all, rattling on about gypsies and some curse of olden times, godless debauchery, and the sure wages of long years of self-indulgent evil and sin."

  "Upon receipt of the first of these nonsense letters, I called for a dozen of my Silver Moon Knights and sent them up to Ard Macha to discover and bring back to me the truth of how things occurred up there. They had to invoke my name repeatedly before they were so much as let into the damned city, then they were flatly denied entrance to the palace or words with this damned councilor, who, they were informed, now styles himself Holy Priest-King of Airgialla. So I want you to go up there."

  "Your Majesty," said Bass dubiously, "I beg to doubt that even the invocation of Your Majesty's name would gain me entrance to Ard Macha, not after the way that my force and I last left that city."

  Brian shook his head. "You misunderstand me, Your Grace. You are not to go alone, cap in hand; no, you are to march up there with all your troops, guns, trains, and all, and demand instant admittance and, when they refuse, blow down the gates and slay or maim all who then make opposition to your entry. There is but one, proven way in which to successfully handle rebels—and that these are quite possibly regicidal rebels, as well, makes them the more loathsome—to put down rebellions and discourage would-be rebels. Treating civilly with rebels only breeds more of their wretched kind in the land, Your Grace."

  "If you can take this self-proclaimed Holy Priest-King and sometime royal councilor, this Adomnan Ui Loughfiran, alive, fine—bring him and all his advisers to me in the heaviest fetters you can find. I think that my torturers are expert enough to protract their punishments throughout the entire, dreary winter coming without allowing them to die prematurely. We can cart them back up to Ard Macha for a public execution in the grand manner next spring. Can you march out in the morning?"

  Bass nodded. "Yes, Your Majesty, but only with my cavalry and my light guns. If Your Majesty wants the entire force to march together, then it will require about a week to prepare to do so."

  Brian frowned and squirmed in his cathedra, then said, "All right, then, Your Grace, prepare your full force to march up there as fast as is possible, but meanwhile—lest the rebel leaders get word of this and decamp for healthier climes—send up most of your cavalry to interdict passage into and out of the city."

  During the ride back to his sprawling camp, Bass decided to send Sir Ali ibn Hussain up with the Kalmyks and half the squadron of his mounted galloglaiches, plus six of his specially cast short minions—each throwing four-pound cylindrical shot from its rifled barrel, but only some four feet long in the brazen tube, with a bore of only an inch and a half, weighing less with its carriage than did the tube, alone, of more average minions, and thus eminently suitable for being broken down and speedily transported with fast-moving cavalry by muleback. But back at his headquarters, Baron Melchoro dashed his plans in that regard. "No, Bass, Sir Ali is not in camp, for no one of us anticipated any sudden assignment by King Brian, such as this, so he is somewhere in the south visiting a famous shrine for the good of his soul, as too is Don Diego . . . although I believe that each mentioned a different shrine, this land
seeming to be full of them. Why not send Reichsherzog Wolfgang? That jolly Germanic gentleman would welcome and relish such a posting, I'd wager."

  "No." Bass shook his head. "I'm going to need Wolfie here to help me with the organizing of the trains. Where is Sir Colum?"

  Melchoro grinned and shrugged in a purely Mediterranean manner, his palms outward, fingers spread. "Alas, he and Sir Liam rode off to visit certain noble relatives, not at all anticipating, as I said heretofore, a call to arms for the condotta."

  Gritting his teeth in frustration, Bass thought for a moment, then said, "All right, send a galloper down to Dublin-port and have him tell Fahrooq to come up here and take command of this force. As I recall, he has been importuning me to allow him to show me his aptitude to command horsemen. Now I'll take him up on it."

  But the Portuguese nobleman could only shake his balding head ruefully. "I thought you had been informed, Bass. Walid Pasha sailed Revenge out two days ago bound for Liverpool and with a Dutch merchanter he had captured whilst we were in the north under tow. He had been forced to inflict some shot damage of her in the course of his pursuit and capture which required more extensive repair work than could be done to his critical satisfaction by local yards, and he also wanted her slightly altered so as to fit her to serve your fleet as a victualer, in future. He meant to lie up in that port a sufficient time to receive some ordered items from Sir Peter's armory in York, too."

  "Very well, then, Melchoro," said Bass. "Set your squires and grooms to work on your gear and horses. You lead the force out at dawn, tomorrow. Don't fight unless attacked, mind you, but under no circumstances are you to allow anyone of any station to leave the city of Ard Macha or enter it. Is Sir Guy FitzWilliam still in camp?"

  At Melchoro's wordless nod, Bass continued, "Very good—thank God for very small favors. He will be your lieutenant for the galloglaiches, Nugai can serve that purpose for the Kalmyks, and . . . what now?" he demanded when the Baron shook his head.