“There will be none,” said Daniel, “except for that!” And he pointed toward the dog, who was sprinting for them.
It turned out that this animal’s tether was very long indeed, so that it could range over the entire hilltop, provided it did not commit the classic error of getting the rope wound around anything-and it was one of those dogs who was clever enough to avoid that. Having (or so it imagined) chased off the carriage of Newton, Leibniz, et al., it had found employment on the opposite side of the compound, barking at some untoward noises. But now it was coming for them, angling in on their larboard quarter. It faltered as it perceived a choice between going for Newton and Leibniz-who were several paces ahead-or Daniel and the mounted Mohawk. Wisely, it chose the former. Newton and Leibniz, so different in matters of high philosophy, were absolutely the same when it came to being chased across a farm-yard by a huge ravening mastiff. They cheated to the right, and got up against the hedgerow, prepared to clamber over it if they had to-but this was a last resort, at their age. Then they hustled forward, hoping to get out of the tether’s fatal radius. But that tether simply kept uncoiling-just when it looked as if it were about to jerk taut, fresh miles of it would appear, as if by some conjuror’s trick. Newton almost tripped over something, and Leibniz bent down and picked it up: it was a long wooden paddle, chymically gnawed and stained, its handle snapped off at one end, but still a fathom long. For they had drawn nigh the boiler where such implements were used to stir and test the thickening coction. Leibniz waved this find around, sending a message that the dog collected instantly; it broke off the frontal assault and shifted fluidly into a feinting-and-lunging style of flank-attack. Daniel caught up with the others about now, and, passing behind Leibniz’s defense, went to haul Isaac Newton up off the ground. Meanwhile the Mohawk had ridden up behind the dog and was shouting to draw its attack: a plan his mount well understood and little favored, so that this rider must devote all his powers to managing the mental states of the dog on one hand and the horse on the other.
Isaac was down, not because he had tripped, but because he had gotten interested in something. He held out his hand. A reddish nodule lay in the middle of his palm. “Behold,” he announced, “Jack has learnt the art of making red phosphorus. It is scattered all about.”
“That would be the source of ignition for the Infernal Devices, then,” said Leibniz over his shoulder. He was still en garde with the paddle, protecting the other two, who were crouched behind him at the base of the hedgerow. But this was less and less necessary, as the Mohawk now had the dog’s undivided attention. The horse kept rearing so that it might bring down its hooves on the mastiff’s head.
The rider had his pistol out.
“Hold your fire, sir,” said Daniel, who long ago had grown sick of seeing dogs killed in the name of Natural Philosophy. He stood up, and pulled Newton to his feet. Something in that word fire was troubling him.
“Hold your fire!” cried Leibniz, who had glanced down to see red phosphorus all over the ground. But the Mohawk heard them not. The dog’s tether had come round to touch the horse’s hind legs, and made it panic. The cavalryman leveled his gun at the dog. Leibniz whirled about, turning his back on what was about to happen. Seeing the others a few paces away, side by side, he spun the paddle round to make it horizontal, and held it before him at chest height. Then he hurled himself forward. The implement caught Daniel just below the collar-bone and forced him back until the stiff old vegetation of the murdered hedgerow chopped him just below the buttocks. His last clear impression was of a bolt of fire jerking out of the muzzle of the pistol. Then the sky spun round him-a Ptolemaic illusion, of course, as in truth he was executing a backward somersault over the hedgerow. He-and Newton beside him-tumbled all the way over on the other side, and ended up sprawled face down in the lee of the hedge. The backs of his calves were being broiled by a sea of white flame that had reached over the wall like sunrise.
BOB HAD LOST THE FACULTY of hearing sounds of a high sharp timbre, but had grown very keen to thuds, bumps, and rumbles, which he heard not with his ears but with his feet and his ribs. What he listened for, with said organs, was hoofbeats, door-slams, gunfire, amp;c. Of guns he had heard only a little thus far. Hooves were spattering the earth to their rear: the Whig Association cavalry, dashing across the back of the line. Bob was leading his company across a pasture toward a hedgerow that bordered its up-hill side. Like all the other hedgerows on this estate, it had been trimmed short, which Bob looked on as a military preparation; the height was good for men to kneel behind and shoot over.
Three such hedgerows, dividing perhaps a quarter mile of more or less open ground, stood between Bob’s line and a hilltop farm that seemed to be the source of the barking. Bob glimpsed a carriage careering to and fro up among its buildings but could make no sense of this, and so forced himself to ignore it. His line had instinctively wheeled so that it was parallel to the next hedgerow. When they were just reaching it, and slinging arms and breaking stride to clamber over, Bob felt something in his feet, and shouted, “Cavalry! Less than a squadron-much less. Hold the line. They are coming from beyond those trees.” Which was merely a reasonable guess, based on the fact that he could not see them yet. His men’s heads all turned-they were hearing something he couldn’t. Following their eye-line, Bob locked his gaze upon the edge of the little copse ahead of them-it was growing in a little pocket of the landscape-and saw horses’ legs, lit by the orange-amber sun of early morning, scissoring against tree-trunks.
A moment later three riders tore around the corner of the wood and made straight for them. They’d been apt in their timing-waiting for the moment when the approaching foot broke stride to address the hedge-climbing project. “About face-backs against the hedge!” Bob commanded, and they did it.
The three riders had formed a diagonal spread as a result of wheeling round the corner of the wood-the one who’d taken the outside track now trailed. The one in the middle was-his eyes had to be deceiving him-black. Had he been burned? A weapon burst in his face? No time to ponder it now. Bob drew out his sword in case he needed to parry a saber-cut from above. But none of the riders had drawn. The foremost jumped the hedgerow very near Bob, and Bob was almost felled, not by any physical contact but by dizzy awe at the magnificence of the horse and the power of its movement. The black man made the jump just behind Bob. At the same moment a flash lit up the top of the hill, and a moment later came a roaring whoosh and a clatter of booms. The third rider was just fixing to jump the hedgerow when all of this occurred; his mount faltered, clipped the top of the hedge, landed awry, and broke a leg.
The rider tumbled free and rolled to his feet only a little hurt. But two platoons of Foot were crouching with their backs to the hedgerow, all aiming their muskets at him from such short range that his riddled corpse would be scorched by powder-burns if Bob gave the order to fire.
“Take that bloody thing out of my face and shoot my horse,” said this fellow to the nearest.
The other two riders-first the black man, then the white-wheeled about in the middle of the pasture, a stone’s throw away. In the distance Bob saw several Whig cavalry rounding to intercept them. “Jimmy! Tomba!” shouted the dismounted man. “Go! You can get through ’em! It’s a few fops on some nags, and they don’t know the territory, and they won’t fight!”
All of which, Bob suspected, was true. If “Jimmy” and “Tomba” had kept on at a gallop they could, with a bit of luck, have survived a volley from Bob’s musketeers and probably shot through the Whig line. But they showed no gust for it. They exchanged a look, then turned back, and began riding toward their comrade. Bob came out from the shade of the hedgerow, glancing back one time-unnecessarily-to verify that all three of the men had muskets trained on them. A word from Bob and they were dead. They knew this. But they took no notice of Bob or anyone else. As the white rider approached, he said, “Don’t be such a tosser, Danny. We are not a devil-take-the-hindmost sort of family, are we?”