William's hand tightened on the basket hilt of his sword. If he could dispose of his cousin himself…it would be something out of a romance. William shrugged. He was willing to forgo the glory-and the risk of getting killed instead of killing-if he knew someone had put paid to Rodney Radcliffe.
A great clamor of musketry broke out to the northwest. William almost forgot his cousin. The landing from the sea was starting. If the sailors could break in…"Avalon is ours," he muttered.
When Red Rodney Radcliffe heard the commotion behind him and to his right-the commotion from the sea wall-he stopped dead in the middle of a narrow, unpaved street. Had a marine with a charged musket or a bayonet stood close by, he would have died in truth, his guts spilling over the mud and slops. His hopes had been low. They sank further now.
Ben Jackson knew that clamor for what it was, too. "Are they in?" the mate asked hoarsely. "Can they get in there?"
"I…don't know," Radcliffe answered. Under the circumstances, it was about the worst thing he could have said.
"What do we do?" Jackson demanded. "Go back to Black Hand Fort and stand siege?"
Red Rodney only grunted. It wasn't a hopeful grunt. The great captains' forts weren't provisioned for long sieges. They were strongholds where crews lived, from which they sallied, and to which they retreated in time of crisis. They were made to hold out other pirate bands, not determined soldiers. No one who built them had imagined soldiers could break into Avalon.
All that flashed through Radcliffe's mind in a heartbeat. He shook his head. "Not unless we have to. We've got to drive them out, not let them drive us in."
Jackson nodded; he could see that, too. But he listened to what was going on at the sea wall. "I think they are in, damn them," he said.
"I think so, too," Radcliffe said. "That doesn't mean we can't drive them out again, though…does it?" He wished, too late, he hadn't added the last couple of words.
Ben Jackson shook his head like a hunted animal-which, at the moment, he was. Red Rodney was another one, and he knew it. Well, some hunted animals had teeth and fangs of their own, and could turn the tables on their pursuers. Not many beasts in Atlantis did, but that wasn't true through most of the world. The pirate chief aimed to fight back as long as he could.
A bullet cracked past him. He saw a marine down at the end of the street. He pulled a holdout pistol from his boot top and fired at the bullock. The marine let out a horrible howl and clutched at his shoulder. Rodney stared at the pistol in delighted surprise. He'd hoped to scare the man in the red coat. Hitting him was an unexpected bonus.
He wanted to recharge both his guns. He wanted to, but he had no chance. Jackson was shouting for freebooters to come up and join them. The wounded marine's roar of pain brought his comrades at the double. They did look after one another, no doubt about it.
Marines and pirates smashed together in bloody collision. Red Rodney hacked and slashed. He threw one pistol in a bullock's face. The marine went down, clutching at his nose. Radcliffe kicked him. Not far away, beset by three men at once, Ben Jackson fell, blood spurting from a belly wound and from his throat. Rodney feared he would never get up again.
Pirates and marines fell, clawing and biting at one another till they could fight no more. Red Rodney's band had more men in it than did his foes' party, but one marine was worth more than one corsair in this kind of brawl.
A bayonet had pinked Radcliffe's leg. A sword had scored a bleeding line down his right arm. He wasn't quite the last man standing, but the marines who still lived were hurt worse than he was, and drew back out of range of his cutlass.
Backed by three hale marines, a middle-aged man with a rapier came around the corner. When he said, "You are Rodney Radcliffe," each individual word might have been chiseled from stone.
"Damn right I am," Red Rodney snarled. "Who the bloody hell are you?"
The stranger bowed. "I have the honor-if that be the proper term-of being your cousin. William Radcliff, at your service." He bobbed up and down again.
Rage ripped through Rodney. "You filthy bugger! You've ruined me!"
"Good," William said coolly, "for that was my purpose. If you yield now, I promise you a quick end. I regret-though not very much-I have nothing better to offer."
"I'll give you something to regret!" Red Rodney shouted. "You'll regret coming up against me face-to-face, by God! You won't gloat over my carcass, that's for sure." He swung up his sword for a limping charge.
William Radcliff appeared unwounded. He also knew how to handle that long, thin, straight sword-a stop thrust almost skewered Rodney. Well, there were ways. Red Rodney smashed at the rapier. If he could break the blade, the other man was his meat.
But William proved a better man of his hands than the pirate had dreamt he could be. He took the slashes and turned them without batting an eye. He ran the point of his blade into Rodney's left shoulder. And Rodney could not reach him, no matter how he tried.
Then one of the marines fired at point-blank range. The bullet slammed into Red Rodney's chest. Blood filled his mouth. He knew it was a bad wound. Then he took another one, this time in the belly. He slumped to his knees.
"You don't fight fair," he choked out.
Through growing darkness, he saw William Radcliff nod. "Indeed not," the merchant admiral replied. "I fight to win. Nothing less is worth fighting for." A third musket bellowed, and Rodney knew no more.
William Radcliff eyed Ethel Radcliffe like a man eyeing a beautiful but poisonous snake. She'd already tried to knife him once. Now she was-he devoutly hoped-disarmed. "What am I to do with you?" he asked.
"You'd better kill me," she answered matter-of-factly. "Christ knows I'll kill you first chance I get."
"I have no stomach for slaying children," he said, "and we are kin, of sorts."
"My shame, not yours," Ethel said.
"If I send you to Stuart-"
"I will hunt you down," the pirate's daughter broke in.
She meant it. Whether she would mean it a few years from now was a different question. For the time being, though, she was as dangerous as a hogshead of gunpowder in a fire. "I have no quarrel with you," William said. "Mine was with your father."
"Well, I have one with you, for my father's sake," Ethel said. "Look to your life-more warning than a scorpion like you would give, Radcliff." She somehow contrived to make him hear the missing e that separated his name, and his kind, from hers.
William thought he would laugh at a death threat from a child. At such a threat from most children, he would have. From Red Rodney Radcliffe's daughter? No. She'd called him a scorpion. To him, she seemed to have all her father's venom in a small, innocent-looking exterior. A strawberry-blond coral snake, he thought uneasily.
Trying to calm her, he said, "We've been merciful where we could. Ordinary pirates, men of no rank, who yielded to us may go free. Many of them will make good enough honest sailors. Nothing will happen to you, nor to… Is that your mother?"
"Who? Jenny?" Ethel Radcliffe laughed in his face. "Jesus, no! Just one of my father's doxies. He had enough of 'em." She sounded as proud of Red Rodney as one of his men might have.
"Indeed," William said stiffly. Where Ethel spat defiance, Jenny had offered anything she had to give to keep from meeting the gibbet. And she had a lot, as he'd found out to his pleasure and perhaps even to hers. He'd never intended hanging her, but she didn't need to know that. What Tamsin, back in Stuart, didn't know wouldn't hurt her a bit. William made himself return to the business at hand. "What shall I do with you?" he asked Ethel again.
"I told you once what I aim to do. If you don't care to listen, it's your funeral." She punned with vicious relish. She would probably kill the same way. It had to run in the blood.