Occasional cannon fire boomed behind her. Maybe some of the enemy’s lighter vessels were catching up to pirates and engaging them, as Ben Jackson had suggested. Or maybe some of the pirates didn’t have the sense to pull back when the enemy came at them. If they didn’t, they didn’t have the sense God gave a honker. So Radcliffe thought, anyhow. His fellow captains were not in a good position to argue with him.
Looking north, he saw plumes of smoke rising into the sky. Those came from burning ships—they couldn’t very well spring from anything else, not on the sea. Red Rodney swore every time he spotted one. Some of his friends wouldn’t make it back to Avalon. They were also his rivals, but he didn’t dwell on that, not now.
Ethel would scorn him for turning tail. That was funny, if you looked at it the right—or maybe the wrong—way. He’d laid towns waste. He’d captured merchantmen past counting, and killed and tortured to make sure he wrung every copper’s worth of loot from them. The wenching he’d done…His full lips parted in a reminiscent smile. Jenny and her predecessors in Avalon—Ethel’s mother among them—were only a tiny part of it. He’d shown fear nowhere and never. You were ruined if you did.
But he feared facing his own daughter when he got home. Ethel didn’t understand how things worked in the real world. Her head was full of stories. Most of them had him as the hero, which didn’t make him feel any better now.
The Black Hand sailed close enough to the west coast of Atlantis to let him watch it slide past. He knew the look of the coastline as well as he knew the look of the skin on the back of his right hand. If one of the great redwoods that marked it fell, it was as if he’d scratched himself.
A challenge gun boomed from the fort on the north spit shielding Avalon Bay. He answered with one gun of his own. A galley came out to look over his ship. A couple of others from Avalon’s fleet were also in sight. “What happened?” a man with leather lungs shouted from the galley.
“We lost. They’re after us,” Red Rodney shouted back. The men on the closest galley swore. Red Rodney had already done his swearing. Now he needed to fight the enemy…if he could. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth again: “Let me through! Let all of us through—all of us who make it here. We’ve got to get ready to hold our town!”
“What happens if we don’t?” asked the man on the galley.
Radcliffe didn’t answer, not with words. He let his head flop onto one shoulder and jerked up with the other fist, pantomiming a hanging. The men on the galley cursed some more. So did some of his own sailors. He wondered why. Hanging, he was sure, was the best the pirates could hope for if Avalon fell and they got caught. Drawing and quartering, the stake…He shuddered. So many nasty possibilities.
“Go on in,” the strong-lunged sailor said. “We’ll whip those bastards yet.”
“Damned right!” Rodney pumped his fist in the air again, this time in defiance of the rest of the world. His men cheered. So did the other corsairs. He waved to them. Keeping their spirits high wasn’t the least important part of the role he played here. They would have to fight, and soon.
If they were to make a go of it, somebody had to give them orders. They all had to work together. They couldn’t fight crew by crew, as ships did. Red Rodney didn’t intend to have anyone tell him what to do. He aimed to do the telling.
He got into Avalon first. The Black Hand had taken a beating, but most of the crew survived. After his ship tied up at the pier, the men swarmed into Avalon. They grabbed anyone who looked as if he could carry a musket or a pike or a sword.
Radcliffe harangued his new recruits from just outside of Black Hand Fort. “The Stuart swine and Dutch dogs and English idiots think they can take our town away from us!” he roared. “Are we going to let ’em?”
“No!” the new soldiers shouted. He suspected not all of them meant it. A barber cared more about cutting whiskers than cutting throats. But, if he got them into the line, he expected they would do well enough. Once somebody started shooting at you, you damn well would shoot back. Otherwise, the bugger on the other side would kill you. No one was keen on that.
“We can fight. We can win,” Red Rodney insisted. “Plenty of forts inside Avalon. There’s the one across the mouth of the bay, too. Put those together with the galley, and the bastards can’t get in. So what’ll they do? They’ll hang around for a while, and then they’ll give it up and go home, that’s what!”
His own crewmen cheered. So did the new fish, if less enthusiastically. He went on telling them what a slaughter they’d visit on the enemy. He also warned them what the invaders would do if they won. He wasn’t subtle, and he was graphic. He believed what he was saying, too. By the time he got done, he had them believing it with him. They streamed along the muddy, crooked streets of Avalon, ready to give their all for the right to go on freebooting.
“Good speech, skipper,” Ben Jackson said. “I wouldn’t’ve believed anything this side of rum could make those wharf rats hot to fight.”
“Put a cannon ball through my mizzen if that’s not a bloody good notion,” Radcliffe said. If Avalon had plenty of any one thing, it was rum. He arranged to serve it out to the defenders. Maybe Dutch courage would help them fight Dutchmen.
After he’d done all he could outside, he went into Black Hand Fort. Jenny was half glad to see him, half afraid Avalon would fall in the next fifteen minutes—about what he’d expected. Half an hour alone with her in the bedroom and she was all glad to see him…or she pretended to be, which served well enough for now.
But that half hour, and the rest of the time since he and his crewmen came off the Black Hand, gave Ethel the chance to find out what was going on. By the time Red Rodney spoke with his daughter, she knew as much as he did—maybe more. “You lost,” she said, nothing but scorn in her voice. “Even with the fireships, you lost. How could you?”
“Not all my fault.” Only later did Rodney wonder why he had to justify himself to an eleven-year-old. “I was hoping we could make them turn around, but they wouldn’t do it, damn their black souls to hell. They’ve got a Radcliff in charge of them, too, even if he clips his name.”
“He’ll clip your neck if he gets the chance,” Ethel said. “I knew you should have taken me with you.”
“And what could you have done that I didn’t, your Worship?” Red Rodney demanded.
“Made sure I killed Will Radcliff, that’s what,” his daughter replied.
“How, pray tell?”
“Chainshot, barshot, red-hot shot—whatever it took to sink his ship.” Ethel had all the Radcliffe stubbornness. Sense? Maybe not. Red-hot shot was almost as dangerous to the ship firing it as it was to the one on the receiving end. You had to be desperate even to think about using it…unless you were eleven. Red Rodney hadn’t been desperate enough. All things considered, maybe he should have been.
“So that’s Avalon Bay.” William Radcliff raised a spyglass to his eye for a closer look. The image was upside down, which didn’t bother him, and fringed in red and purple, which did. It seemed much closer than it had to the naked eye, and that was what he really wanted.
Elijah Walton had a spyglass, too. “Not a bad harbor,” he said grudgingly.
“No, not a bad one,” Radcliff agreed dryly. It was the best harbor he’d ever seen, and he’d seen harbors from Valparaiso to Stamboul. “It’s the people holding it now who are bad.”
Those people had long guns in the fortress north of the town, guns that outranged anything the fleet carried. And a fortress didn’t have to worry about firing red-hot shot the way a ship did. They wouldn’t set a fortress of earth and brick on fire the way they would a ship’s seasoned timbers.
The northern approach, then, looked bad. So did forcing the channel. His spyglass showed him the galleys patrolling it. Upside down, they looked as if they were about to fall into the sky and spill out all their rowers. He only wished looks didn’t deceive here.
Another fortress at the northern edge of Avalon proper also guarded the channe
l into the bay. The town itself had a sea wall to keep invaders from swarming straight ashore. William didn’t think the guns on the sea wall were anywhere close to being as formidable as the ones in the fortresses.
Inside Avalon, forts topped half a dozen hills. He didn’t think they mounted big guns, either. Why would they? Little guns throwing canister would be all they needed to hold off attackers.
“What is your plan, Admiral?” Walton asked. Radcliff understood what the Englishman wasn’t saying, too. If this goes wrong, it’s all your fault—that was what he really meant.
Instead of answering directly, William turned to the signal officer. “Run up marine commanders repair aboard,” he said.
“Marine commanders repair aboard,” the lieutenant repeated. He waited for Radcliff’s confirming nod before adding, “Aye aye, sir.”
“Do you think you can get marines over the sea wall?” Walton asked. “Most of it is just a palisade, but even so….”
“I aim to discuss the possibilities with the men who needs must do the actual fighting,” William replied. The Englishman fumed, but William didn’t worry about that. Walton wasn’t going anywhere, not now.
Every ship in the fleet carried marines. They were the marksmen in the fighting tops, and they went ashore when there was need of that. Radcliff wasn’t sure how many Dutch marines spoke English, but he didn’t worry about that, either. Some of them would, and they could translate for their comrades.
Marcus Radcliffe came up over the Royal Sovereign’s rail after most of the other marine officers. As usual, he wore nothing resembling a uniform: only homespun wool trousers and a linen shirt. His sole ornament was a tail plume from an oil thrush thrust under the band on his colorless, floppy hat. But none of the true marines, with their fancy uniforms and accoutrements, seemed inclined to mock the leathery backwoodsman.
“If we land your combined forces south of the town, can you march up, march in, and take it?” William asked.
His distant cousin gave back a question of his own before anyone else could speak: “What’ll you be doing in the meantime?”
“Cannonading,” William replied.
Marcus Radcliffe considered that, then nodded. “Well, fair enough. If you knock down some of the sea wall, will you send in sailors to give us a hand?”
It was William’s turn to hesitate. He was a seaman, first, last, and always. Sending in landing parties of sailors would mean coming very close—dangerously close—to shore-based defenders. In the end, though, he also found himself nodding. “If we possibly can. I understand that the distraction may help you.”
Another marine officer said, “We ought to take a couple of four-pounders off one of our brigs and see if we can drag them up to their palisade down there. They’ll give us the kind of door-knocker we need.”
“Good,” William Radcliff said. “Do it.”
The marine blinked. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Radcliff told him. “It sounds like a good idea. The worst that can happen is, the guns get left behind. If they do, you’re no worse off than if you hadn’t brought them. So give it a try.”
“By God, sir, I wish every captain were like you,” the marine said. “Too many of those buggers can’t make up their minds, or else they haven’t got any minds to make up.”
“You don’t know my coz.” Marcus Radcliffe sounded sly. “He’s always sure. He’s not always right, but he’s always sure.” He got the laugh he must have hoped for, then went on, “If not for him, we wouldn’t be here now, and the pirates wouldn’t be in the mess they’re in.”
“For which I thank you. But, by the same token, we also wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in,” William said dryly. “We have to beat them. We have to take Avalon away from them. If we do that, we redeem ourselves. If they hold us, they redeem themselves. How can it get any simpler?”
Nobody said anything. Maybe he’d made it as clear as he hoped. Maybe the men were even simpler than the situation. They were marines, after all, and the bullocks did not have a reputation for wit. They were human roundshot: you pointed them at a target, and you used them to smash it flat.
“Looting should be good,” one of them remarked. “The corsairs have stashed their booty in Avalon for years now.”
That might have inspired them more than anything William said. He didn’t mind. As long as something did, he was content.
XV
R ed Rodney Radcliffe woke with a warm, bare thigh draped over his and with the sound of thunder in his ears. He was used to the one or the other; both together were something new. He needed a moment to remember he wasn’t at sea and another to remember he wasn’t in a brothel in some distant port. This was Avalon. This was Jenny.
And this was a fine, clear morning, with sunbeams sliding between the slats of the shutters on his bedchamber window. Which meant that wasn’t thunder. Which meant…
Full memory returned. Red Rodney spilled Jenny off him and sprang out of bed, swearing horribly. His lady love let out a most unladylike squawk. He was pulling up his breeches when somebody pounded on the door. Jenny squawked again. “They’re bombarding us!” Ben Jackson shouted through the planks.
“I know. I hear. I’m coming, dammit.” Radcliffe needed only two strides to get to the door. That gave Jenny just time enough—or maybe almost time enough; Red Rodney didn’t look back—to cover herself before he threw it open.
He rushed to Black Hand Fort’s palisade. No, that wasn’t thunder. That was his cousin’s fleet hammering at the sea wall and the closer forts with all the guns the ships carried. Black Hand Fort was safe enough; lying near the bayside, it was beyond the reach of even bow chasers. But the closer forts were taking a pounding, and so were all the shops and dives and houses between them.
And so was the wall. It had been built to hold invaders out, but no one had imagined an onslaught like this when it went up. Even the hard-bitten Jackson sounded uncertain when he asked, “Can we keep ’em from breaking in?”
“We’d better,” Red Rodney answered, which was nothing less than the truth. He looked around. Someone he would have expected to watch the fireworks with him wasn’t here. Not Jenny—she’d still be cowering under the coverlets. But…“Where’s Ethel?”
His first mate hesitated again, which was most unlike him. “Well…” he began.
“Well, what? Out with it, damn you.” Rodney’s voice took on a rumble more ominous than the cannonading—or so he intended, anyhow.
“Well, skipper, when the shooting started, she ran down toward the sea wall, to lend a hand where she could.” Ben Jackson got it out in an unhappy rush.
“She—?” Radcliffe clapped a hand to his forehead. “Why the devil didn’t you stop her?”
“On account of she was gone before I could,” Jackson answered. “Christ, don’t you think I would have?”
“Well, yes,” Radcliffe admitted. A roundshot hit something made of stone, flew high in the air, and then crashed down again. A plume of smoke rose inside Avalon. The bombardment had started at least one fire, anyhow. “God damn William Radcliff to hell and gone!” Red Rodney shouted.
“Yes, skipper.” Jackson hesitated again, then asked, “What do we do?”
Rodney Radcliffe didn’t hesitate. That was one of the reasons he was the captain and Ben Jackson the mate. “I’ll take most of the men down by the sea wall. If they send boats against us, we’ll make ’em sorry—see if we don’t. You hold here with the rest, just in case some of our so-called friends think to get gay while everything’s topsy-turvy.”
The mate nodded. “I’ll do it.” As long as he had his orders, or as long as the task in front of him was too obvious to require them, Jackson was as good as any man unhanged. Red Rodney laughed harshly. What happened over the next few hours would tell if they stayed that way.
Armed with muskets and cutlasses and pistols and pikes and hatchets and anything else they could lay their hands on, the corsairs from Black Hand Fort rushed west through Avalon�
�s crowded, chaos-filled streets. They had to fight their way through every now and again. Most of the people under bombardment were sensibly fleeing east, out of range. Some of them were armed, too. If they lacked the mother wit to step aside, they paid the price for stupidity.
What had to be a forty-two-pound ball smashed into a grogshop not fifty feet from Red Rodney. The dive was there—and then it wasn’t. It turned to rubble before his eyes. A spinning roof tile caught one of his men in the belly. The pirate went down, and he didn’t get up again.
They had to brave more roundshot of all sizes as they neared the sea wall. One ball plowed a bloody track through the freebooters, killing three men and maiming two more before mere flesh could halt its progress. Radcliffe left the shrieking, wounded men where they lay and hurried on.
Another fire had started by the time he got close to the wall—started and showed every sign of spreading. It might wreck Avalon even if the attackers didn’t get into the town. Rodney swore some more. At the moment, that was all he could do. He hoped he would be able to go on doing it. A cannon ball tore the head off a man only a couple of paces behind him. The spouting corpse ran on for several strides before crumpling in a muddy puddle.
Up to the wall at last. Where was Ethel? Anywhere close by? Radcliffe looked this way and that. He didn’t see her anywhere. A big roundshot—it had to be another forty-two-pounder—flew only a few feet over his head and crashed down somewhere behind him in Avalon. Were it lower…He shuddered. It wouldn’t have had to hit him to kill. Sometimes the wind of a cannon ball’s passage was enough.
“Give it back to ’em!” That high, shrill voice could only belong to Ethel.
Rodney hurried south along the sea wall. There she was, and damned if she wasn’t commanding a six-pounder’s crew as if she’d been doing it for years. The cutthroats obeyed her, too. Maybe they knew whose daughter she was. Maybe they just knew they needed someone to keep them firing fast.
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