"Yu!" One of the Creek warriors said from beside him, letting fly with an arrow from an osage-wood bow. Each time he aimed and fired he chanted some incantation under his breath for proper aiming and a good kill, then expelled "Yu!"-he was getting five arrows for every shot from Alan's guns, and his prayers were working wonderfully.
The charge faltered just short of the dune line, with the fusiliers rising from cover to let off their last shots and go in with the bayonet, for which the Apalachee were not prepared. Half a dozen of them died howling on the steel, and then they were fading away, taking the Spanish with them.
"Sarn't, one squad to cover the marsh! Rest of you, fall back to the breast-works! And reload that damned swivel!" Cashman shouted.
They were barely in time. Svensen had been banging away steadily at the approaching canoes full of warriors, but Alan doubted if some 5th Rate frigate in the same predicament could have made much of an impression on that flotilla of dugouts, even with a dozen carriage guns. The boats were within twenty yards of grounding on the muddy river bank when Andrews lit off the swivel on the breast-works and stopped the progress of one boat by killing everyone in it with a canister-load of musket balls.
An Apalachee came dashing through the shallows, eager to fight, and Alan shot him down with his fusil. The Brown Bess took down the second one ashore, and then there was no time to reload. Cashman's men got off a volley and stood ready to receive with the bayonet. Alan drew his hanger.
One Apalachee dashed for Alan, screaming loud enough to curdle Lewrie's blood, but he found the courage to step forward and meet him, tempered steel blade against a wooden war club, which he beat aside, and glided his point into the man's throat as he drew up for a second swing. He picked up the war club for his off-hand to use as a mobile shield, cutting the thong that bound it to the dead warrior's wrist by hacking the man's hand off with his superbly sharpened blade.
A second man with a cane spear died with one feet of steel in his belly, and a third got back-handed with the war club, which shattered his skull like a melon.
A Spaniard came against him next, a man with a small-sword, a smelly dog of a man with one of those infuriating mustaches and a smug look of eventual victory. Their blades rang in the first beat of their duel. The Spaniard was fast, but he had a weak wrist, and Alan threw a flying cutover at him, forcing his blade wide. To keep it there, he binded with the war-club and as the Spaniard leaped back to disengage and regain an equal advantage, Alan back-handed the slightly curved cutting edge of the hanger across the man's stomach, opening his belly and spilling his entrails. He would have finished him off with another slash across the throat, but there was another Spaniard there with a musket and bayonet.
Alan stepped forward to fight him, but the dying Spaniard on the ground groped at him and nailed him to the spot, and the musketman came forward. Alan deflected the bayonet down to his left, but the man got all fourteen inches of it through his thigh.
"Goddamn you!" he screamed in sudden pain and this time got a slash at the throat, which almost took the man's head off as they both fell. The bayonet twisted and turned as the gun behind it toppled from the dead man's grasp, ripping Alan's leg into agony. He saw stars and almost fainted from the indescribable pain of it. A shadow loomed over him, an Apalachee with a war-club ready to brain him, and then there was a shot and the man was toppling back into the ooze at the river's edge.
Rabbit was there by his side, a smoking dragoon pistol in her hands, crying and weeping as if he was indeed already dead. She got him under the arms, and he could not credit such a little girl being capable of it, but she seemed to lift him and bear him back behind the breast-works and shove a loaded musket into his hands.
"You silly bitch, I'm bleeding like a slaughtered pig! What the hell you want me to do with this, for Christ's sake?" he railed.
There was a shot next to his ear that almost deafened him and he turned to see Cony and Andrews flanking him, discharging muskets as fast as they could pick them up. Alan wobbled his weapon up over the crates and leveled it in the general direction and fired, not knowing where the ball went. He sank back, feeling very tired and sleepy, and looked down at his leg. The Spanish musket and bayonet had gone away, which he thought was nice of somebody, but there seemed to be an awful lot of blood, and he was frightfully sure it was all his.
"Christ," he muttered, feeling his skin pop out cold sweat. His ears were ringing like Westminster's chimes, and that was about all he could hear. Rabbit's face loomed up in his vision as she held him to her breasts.
Worse things to look at when you're dying, I s'pose, he thought.
IV
Chapter 1
"Oceanus ponto qua continet orbem,
nulla tibi adversis regio sese offeret armis.
Te manet invictus Romano marte Britannus
teque interiecto mundi pars altera sole."
"Wherever the Ocean's deep encompasses the Earth,
no land will meet thee with opposing force.
The Briton whom Roman prowess has not vanquished
is reserved for thee, and the other portion of
the world, with the Sun's path in between."
"Panegyricus Messallae"
– Tibullus
Alan woke up in a lot of pain as someone tried to haul him up from his prone position, but damned if he wanted to move! He struck out at whoever it was, and several more hairy paws grabbed onto him to restrain him, and, still lost in a terrifying dream of being taken by savages intent on his scalping and mutilation, he let out a howl of fear and pain.
"Sorry, sir, almost done," Dr. Lewyss told him.
"Ah," Alan said, biting his lips trying to be stoic now that he recognized the good doctor, though his chest still heaved with panic. "Where am I?"
"Aboard Shrike, sir. In my sick-bay below the forepeak," the man said, between snatches of humming some song to himself as he fussed with a fresh dressing on Alan's leg wound. "Most amazing thing, really. Thought sure I'd have to take the leg, but God seems to favor you remaining a biped, sir. Even if there was the foulest poultice applied to it when you were brought aboard. Some pagan muck, egh!"
"When?" Alan groaned as Lewyss finally finished wrapping his thigh and allowed it to be lowered to the bunk, where it ceased screaming and settled down for some long-term throbbing.
"Yesterday, sir," Cony said from Alan's side, where he had been assisting in his restraint. "Got some brandy 'ere, sir, iffen ya feels up ta takin' some."
"God, yes, I'm ready!" Alan said with some heat.
"A drop or two of tincture of laudanum for that first," Lewyss suggested, reaching for his case.
"And then someone please tell me what happened at the river-bank," Alan ordered, now that he was up in a sitting position on the short cot.
"Them Apalachee an' Dons almost done fer us, sir, 'til them Muskogee an' Seminolee showed up," Cony related, offering him a squat pewter mug brimming with harsh ratafia, which Alan sipped from avidly. "Thought the ones in the swamp was acomin' fer us, but they was runnin' instead. God, they don't butcher half-fair, sir! Loppin' off 'eads an' arms an' legs and what-all fer the fun of it, aliftin' scalps an' laughin' like loonies, sir. 'Twas the scariest thing ever I did see, even worse'n the fightin'."
"What about the rest of our party?" Alan demanded.
"Well, Andrews got a cut'r two, sir, an' I got scratched up a piece," Cony went on. "We lost three of the 'ands dead, them sodjers got five killed an' ever'body else down with wounds. 'Nother minute'r two, an' there'd been nobody to save, sir. Near as damnit's a thing as ever I did see. An' we lost that nice Mister Cowell, sir. Apalachee nailed 'im all over with arrers, they did."