The Blooding

by James McGee

  And as Lawrence uttered a despairing, “Sweet Jesus!” the stench rose to meet them. Fighting back the bile surging into his own throat, Hawkwood saw the edge of the pit.

  12

  The wagon rolled a few yards further before jolting to a halt.

  One chance, Hawkwood thought. That’s all we’re going to get.

  The driver applied the brake and his companions rose to their feet. The two troopers at the rear of the wagon hefted their muskets in one hand and jumped down. Turning, they prepared to supervise their prisoners’ descent.

  Hawkwood slammed the flat of his boot against the leaking cask, aiming it towards the nearest trooper. At the same time, he pulled his wrists apart, drawing the stiletto from his left sleeve with his right hand as he did so, praying that Lawrence would be as quick to react as he had been aboard the Snake.

  He’d transferred the knife from boot to sleeve when he’d squatted down in the hut, thinking there might be a chance to exact damage before the end came, but it was only as he’d pushed himself to his feet that his fingers had hooked themselves around the half-bent nail that had been lying in the dirt beneath his right buttock. With his movements hidden by his coat sleeves and with the noise of his endeavours masked by the rumble of the wagon, he’d used the nail to unpick the lock securing the manacle to his right wrist.

  Jago, he thought as he felt the band separate, would have been proud of him.

  There had been no time to release the left manacle, so as he withdrew the knife – and as Lawrence launched himself at the driver – he used his left hand to curl the chain and the full weight of the empty shackle against the temple of the trooper standing behind him, the impact making itself felt the length of his arm. As the trooper rocked back, Hawkwood pivoted.

  The cask, meanwhile, had found its target. It had caught the first trooper in the upper chest, knocking aside his musket and discharging a wave of milky-grey fluid up and across the only exposed part of him: his eyes. Dropping his musket and clasping his hands to his face, the trooper began to shriek.

  Recovering from the shock, the remaining escort threw up his musket as Hawkwood followed Lawrence over the side of the wagon. As he dropped, he heard the crack of the gun – loud and sharp in the night air – and then he hit the earth and rolled. Winded but unhurt, he came up with the knife in his hand.

  The trooper who’d fired, knowing there was no time to reload, scrambled for his companion’s weapon. As Hawkwood charged round the back of the wagon, the trooper raised the gun, his finger curling around the trigger.

  Hawkwood grasped the musket barrel just as the trooper fired. Turning his eyes from the flash, he felt the recoil in his left arm as he pushed the muzzle aside and brought the stiletto round in a stabbing arc. The rapier-thin blade pierced the trooper’s scarf and entered his neck just below his jaw bone.

  Hawkwood stepped away as the trooper fell, clutching his throat. The scarf slipped, revealing eyes widening with incomprehension and pain.

  The trooper who’d received the contents of the cask was still screaming. His fingers were clawing at his face. The scarf had been ripped away and it looked as if he was trying to tear his skin off. The cask lay open next to him. Liquid was draining out of it.

  Ignoring him, Hawkwood turned in time to see that the trooper he’d struck with the manacle had regained his feet. Upon seeing Hawkwood, he levelled his gun.

  A figure rose up behind him.

  Lawrence, his savage expression accentuated by the lantern light, drove the musket butt against the base of the trooper’s skull. The trooper fell forward on to his knees and then face down on to the wagon’s deck.

  Breathing hard, Lawrence stared down at the comatose form. “Goddamned bastard.” He looked at Hawkwood and said wearily, “This is getting to be a habit, my friend.”

  Hawkwood wiped the stiletto blade on his sleeve and slid the weapon inside his boot. The trooper doused with the contents of the cask had curled into a foetal ball. His hands were clamped to his face. He had stopped screaming. The sounds bubbling from between his fingers were no longer human.

  Taking care to avoid the spillage, Hawkwood moved to the trooper he’d knifed. It was the same one who’d given the order to board the wagon. The trooper’s mouth had frozen into a rictal grin. Blood from the fatal throat wound had pooled on to the ground.

  Hawkwood went through the trooper’s pockets. He didn’t know if the key to the manacles would be there, but it was a place to start. If the search proved fruitless, he would have to search the rest of them. Failing that, it was back to the nail, assuming he could find it in the dark. It had been dropped during the fight. He cursed his clumsiness. He should have been more circumspect, but then there had been other things to worry about.

  His fingers touched metal. Surely, they couldn’t be that lucky?

  He pulled out the key. Maybe manacles were at such a premium that they couldn’t afford to discard any of them. It took only seconds to attend to the remaining locks. Lawrence massaged his freed wrists, wincing as he did so.

  “You’re hurt?” Hawkwood said.

  “Just a bit bruised. All this brawling’s a reminder that I’m not getting any younger.” He stared down without sympathy at the trooper who’d been hit with the barrel and grimaced. “How did you know the casks contained lye?”

  “I didn’t. It was a guess. I saw one of them was leaking and I remembered Stagg telling us he was carrying potash. They make lye by soaking wood ash in water. The trench back there, stinking like a latrine? That’s the way it smells when they use lye to render down dead bodies.”

  Lawrence stared at Hawkwood with the same expression of horror he’d shown earlier. “I’m not going to enquire how you know that.”

  He gazed bleakly towards the pit and then at the shovels which, isolated on the mound of soil, looked uncannily like a row of truncated burial crosses.

  A movement on the wagon caused them both to turn quickly. The trooper Lawrence had toppled with the musket was coming round. His scarf no longer covered his face and he’d lost his cap.

  Between them, they dragged him from the wagon and on to the ground. Using a set of manacles, they secured the trooper’s arms behind his back and propped him against a rear wheel. Withdrawing the knife from his boot, Hawkwood squatted down and pressed the point against the trooper’s already bruised and bloodied cheek. “Who ordered this? Was it Quade?”

  The trooper’s gaze fastened upon the bodies of his companions before moving to the face of the man holding the knife to his skin. There was no mercy in his captors’ eyes, the trooper saw. Fear flooded through him. As the knife blade moved down towards his jaw, he tried to jerk away, only to crack his head against the wheel rim. Moaning, he nodded.

  “And to keep quiet about it?”

  Another nod, more fearful than the first.

  Which confirmed why they had worn caps and the wrap-around scarves, Hawkwood thought.

  “What’s your regiment?”

  The trooper found his voice, though the reply came out as a whisper. “F-Fifteenth Infantry.”

  “Pike’s boys,” Lawrence grunted.

  “Quade told you we’d killed your comrades back in Greenbush, yes?” Hawkwood said. “Told you it was a chance to get even?”

  Hawkwood moved the knife down to the trooper’s throat and applied pressure to the blade, piercing the skin. Blood welled beneath the stiletto’s point. “Y-yes.”

  “Got them to do his dirty work,” Lawrence said coldly. “Scheming bugger.”

  In the moonlight, the trooper’s face reflected a sickly pallor. In contrast, his jowls hadn’t been near a razor for several days. The smell coming from him suggested he hadn’t washed for a while, either, though the odour rising from the nearby pit could have had something to do with that.

  Hawkwood sat back on his haunches before leaning in again.

  “The boats; how long before they depart?”

  The trooper looked confused at the change of subject. “Boats
? I don’t—”

  Hawkwood pressed in with the knife. “Last chance.”

  Opening his mouth as if he were about to reply, the trooper paused. A new expression stole across his face. Suddenly, before Hawkwood and Lawrence’s startled gaze, his eyes rolled back into his skull and a dribble of saliva emerged out from the corner of his mouth and trickled down his chin. His head lifted momentarily and then, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, he lolled forward; as his jaw fell open, his body gave a small shudder, sagged, and then went still.

  “Good God!” Lawrence exclaimed, stepping back quickly.

  Hawkwood withdrew the knife and searched for the trooper’s pulse with his fingertips. “He’s gone.”

  He stared at the trooper’s face for several seconds and then rose to his feet.

  “I’ve seen this before,” Lawrence murmured, gazing down at the dead man. “In Spain. A young subaltern got kicked by a cavalry horse. Went down as if pole-axed. Took several minutes to come around. Swore he was fine, finished his duties and then dropped dead an hour later. Surgeon said the blow had caused some sort of blockage in the brain that took a while to reveal itself. Looks like hitting this one with the musket did more damage than we thought.” Lawrence gnawed the inside of his lip. “Just when the conversation was getting interesting, too, damn it.”

  “What about the driver?” Hawkwood asked.

  Lawrence shook his head. “Neck’s broken.”

  Hawkwood was about to ask Lawrence if the break was due to the fall or judicious use of the manacles but decided there wasn’t much point. It wasn’t as if it would make any difference to their current situation.

  “Best we were on our way, before they discover we’ve gone. The shots will have carried.”

  Lawrence looked back towards the woods and the track that had brought them to the clearing. “I doubt that way’s feasible. Any suggestions?”

  “Continue north, same as before.”

  “Steal a boat?”

  “Not likely. I’ve had enough of bloody boats.”

  “I’m glad you said that.” Lawrence eyed the wagon. “Horses?”

  “They’re not saddled. Besides, in these woods they’d be more trouble than they’re worth. We’ll be quicker on foot.”

  Lawrence nodded. “Very well. Though I suggest we see what these fellows are carrying. With luck they’ll have powder and shot, in which case we can make use of the weapons.”

  They checked the bodies by lantern light. Hawkwood searched the pockets of the trooper struck by the lye barrel, ensuring none of the caustic liquid touched his skin. The trooper neither stirred nor made a sound, though the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest indicated that he was breathing. The pain which had caused him to lose consciousness must have been beyond terrible. Lye devoured flesh like molten fire. The trooper’s natural reflex would have been to clamp his eyes shut, but Hawkwood knew that wouldn’t have made any difference. He stared down at the state of the trooper’s hands and face. Even when he moved the light away, the darkness couldn’t conceal the horrific damage done to the man’s exposed skin and what remained of his eyes bore no relation to what had been there before. Some things, Hawkwood thought, were worse than death.

  Further examination of the troopers’ pouches produced lock covers and cartridges. When he rifled the driver’s corpse, Lawrence discovered a small tin containing flint and steel and a wad of char cloth, which he pocketed, along with two pemmican strips another of the troopers had been storing inside his jacket.

  After helping themselves to a pouch, a scarf and a canteen each, they were ready to depart. The lantern would have been useful for travelling at night, but they knew it would only draw attention to their presence, so they doused it. Then, taking their bearings and leaving the bodies where they lay, they headed into the woods.

  They heard the river a while before it came into view and used the sound as a guide. Reaching the water took some time, however, and no small amount of effort for the descent through the trees in darkness was steep and made slippery and hazardous by the rains.

  When they finally found themselves on the bank, Lawrence stared out across the swift-moving torrent. “Here we go again.”

  It wasn’t that far to the other side – sixty or seventy yards at the most – but they knew that trying to traverse even a relatively short distance presented a huge risk. In daylight it would be hard enough. At night, doubly so. Added to which, it wasn’t only the speed of the river that was worrying, it was the depth of it. Wavelets breaking energetically over the rocks in the middle of the current suggested that although it might not be that deep, the flow was impressive. Even if they did make it across, it was inevitable they’d end up wet and, as a result, a lot colder.

  Several dots of fire light were visible through the trees to their right; reminders that the encampment was only a short distance away. How far exactly, it was hard to tell. In their present situation, the glow from just one fire would be enough to pose a threat.

  Hawkwood cast his eyes back to the far shore. He judged it to be formidably steep on that side, too, though it could have been the trees casting unhelpful shadows. They came down very close to the water’s edge. He looked to his left. The river didn’t seem so broad in that direction. It was also further away from the camp. He tapped Lawrence’s shoulder and they set off along the bank. The rush and tumble of the water was loud in their ears and passage proved harder than it looked. There wasn’t much shoreline and their progress was hampered by rocks and tree roots.

  They had covered some fifty paces when Hawkwood spotted what looked like a suitable crossing point. Several low-lying islets protruded from the middle of the river bed. Composed of pebbles and clumps of weedy vegetation, the largest wasn’t more than a yard or so in width, but its effect was to divide the river into two narrower and, hopefully, fordable streams.

  Hawkwood slid the musket from his shoulder and removed the strap. Then he took off his coat, boots and socks. Convincing himself that it wouldn’t be for long, he wrapped the coat around his footwear and used the strap to secure the bundle across his shoulder. He checked to see that Lawrence had followed suit, then using the musket as a steadier, he steeled himself and waded out into the water. The temperature of the stream almost made him gasp out loud, as did the strength of the current. The algae-covered rocks were very slippery underfoot. Those that weren’t felt as sharp as knives. Even with the musket as a support and planting his weight firmly, it was all he could do to remain upright. But if his years in the army had taught him one thing, it was the value of dry boots; they’d be worth their weight in gold when he got to the other side. If he got to the other side. He paused momentarily as Lawrence stepped after him. Then, tentatively, leaning into the flow, they inched their way out into the river.

  It took three or four cautious steps before they got used to the awkward contours of the river bed and the power of the water. Even so, progress was agonizingly slow and it seemed as though an age passed before they eventually reached the safety of the nearest islet, by which time they were soaked to their thighs and Hawkwood could hardly feel his toes for the cold. But the tactic had worked. They were well over halfway to their objective.

  “Jesus,” Lawrence gasped. “We should have brought the bloody horses and let their arses get wet.”

  Cheered by the realization that they were almost there, with less than twenty paces separating them from their goal, Hawkwood shouldered his pack once more, swore under his breath then set off. And wondered immediately how it was possible that one side of a river could be colder than the other.

  He knew it was his imagination but it did feel as though his feet were turning into blocks of ice. It would have been easy to return to the isle and persuade himself that it would do them good to rest a few moments before completing the remainder of the crossing, but with the bank now so tantalizingly close he knew they had to keep going. And so, pushing all thoughts of rest to the back of his mind, he allowed his concentration
to focus wholly on where to place his feet.

  So he had no idea that Lawrence was in trouble until he heard him cry out.

  Hawkwood was less than a dozen paces from safety when he heard the commotion behind. Even with the river creating noise all around them, the splash and grunt were loud enough to alert him that Lawrence had stumbled. He turned quickly, almost losing his own balance in the process, to find Lawrence on his knees, half in and half out of the water, his face a pale oval, his coat bundle about to slide off his shoulder and the second musket nowhere to be seen.

  Without thinking, using his own musket as a prop, Hawkwood made a grab for Lawrence’s arm, and failed completely. It was a reach too far. As the current took hold, Lawrence’s feet lost their purchase again and he began to slide.

  No time for hesitation. Crouching as best he could to counteract the tug of the water, Hawkwood grasped his own musket by the barrel and swung the butt towards his struggling companion.

  It worked, though more by luck than judgement. As the musket sheered towards him, Lawrence managed to seize the neck of the stock with his left hand.

  Fearful that Lawrence would not be able to maintain his grip, Hawkwood crabbed his way down the length of the gun and grabbed Lawrence’s wrist. Only then did he realize that Lawrence was still holding his musket in his other hand. It was the one thing anchoring him to the river bed. With the water surging around them, they clung together until Lawrence, using his gun as a fulcrum, managed to push himself to his feet. Then, slowly, arms linked, they fumbled their way across the remaining few yards of river and up on to the bank.

  Lawrence, breathing hard from the effort, stammered his thanks.

  “Only returning the favour, Major,” Hawkwood said as they dropped their bundles and weapons on to the ground.