"Vous!" Choundas screamed, beating his breast and striding easily through the surf toward Alan. "Timonier a mois, I think 'e slay ze wrong man in zat alley! En garde! I eat your brains and shit in your skull!"
Lewrie waded shoreward to meet him, to avoid the clumsy fate of the younger officer, sword held at third, waiting for Choundas' first move. It was like an explosion!
Choundas had no grace, no elegance to his swordplay, coming from a rougher school. With howls he was upon Alan with his smallsword swinging like a cutlass. Blades rang, not in beat, but with the rasp of a farrier's hammer, and the shock sang up Lewrie's arm like a bell's echo with each blow. Try as he would to thrust and counter-thrust, to slash with the point and cut over from defensive guards to direct or even indirect cuts, Choundas was always there, quick as lightning, all attack and very little defense of his own.
Lewrie was forced to give ground, half a step at a time, and the sea swirled higher up his body. From the ankles to his shins to his knees, then to mid-calf.
Captain Osmonde warned me I'd meet a truly dangerous man if I kept this up, Lewrie frowned, recalling the Marine officer aboard his first ship, the one who had taught him the true rough and tumble of steel, and guided him through his first adult duel on Antigua.
Choundas was pressing forward, both of them up to their waists in salt water and being buffeted by the incoming surf. Lewrie swung down and left to ward off a chest cut, felt a leg reach out to tangle with his to bring him down and stumbled right and away, into shallow water. Choundas' sword came arcing up out of the water glistening in the dawn light with water droplets, and he met it high left, the beat of steel on steel forcing his own blade back to touch his left cheek!
A shoulder lunging forward, and Lewrie stumbled again, reaching back with his left hand to steady himself. Falling sideways into the surf, with Choundas splashing forward to tower over him, and a wicked razor-honed blade descending in a powerful two-handed overhead strike!
He got his hanger up to parry at fifth, got his left hand under his hip and swept out with his legs. Cut directly down and forward under the off-balanced Frenchman's blade to clash with the hand-guard!
Choundas reeled back, almost going down himself. Lewrie came up soaking wet with his left leg under him and thrust with all of his might to leap like a porpoise with sword arm extended as rigid as a pike-staff. And missed!
His sword's point went over Choundas' left shoulder as the man ducked. Their bodies slammed together, and Choundas was going over backward, but he hefted Alan high enough over his shoulder to heave him a few feet away, to splash into water deep as his waist!
Drowning! Lewrie's mind screamed as he tried to get his feet under him, tried to fight the rush and shove of another wave. Tried to find a breath of air for lungs thumped empty by Choundas' body!
Lewrie lurched erect, coughing on the water he'd taken in, his eyes burning with salt and his hair streaming down his face.
Choundas! The final thrust! DEATH!
Arm across his chest to defend, sword point held low at prime, the blade pointing down as the thrust came for his throat. A sting on his left hip as the smallsword's point bit him, and he was going over backward again, and could feel Choundas' feet near to his own!
He kicked with his right foot as he landed on his left hand and knee. The heel of his shoe took Choundas in the nutmegs, making him hiss like a serpent! Choundas bent over with the sudden agony, and Lewrie came up with all he had left.
Bright steel and sterling silver came sweeping up from the sea bottom, under Choundas' guard, under his upraised sword drawn back for a killing hack. Salt water streamed in a glittering arc as the hanger swept upward. Choundas flinched back to avoid it.
Lewrie could feel the shock in his wrist, up his arm, as his sword made contact, flicking point-low to point-high following the angle of the razor-sharp edge as he straightened his wrist and turned it. And Choundas was falling backward, his sword hand to his face!
A wave of surf surged high as Alan's shoulders as he got to his knees following that stroke, and Choundas was tumbling about in the water, rolling and tumbling shoreward like a piece of flotsam.
"Don't tell me I actually killed the bastard!" Lewrie gasped in surprise, retching saliva and salt water as he rose to his feet and shuffled onto the beach, sword ready at fourth slightly across his body should Choundas be shamming.
But there was red in the water, pink on the man's shirt.
And when Choundas managed at last to crawl ashore on hands and knees, his sword forgotten, he was screaming. Screaming and writhing like a worm in hot ashes, moaning and whimpering pitifully between his screams and patting his face. Rolling over and over, twitching like a serpent.
"Strike, you bastard!" Lewrie hissed, prodding that body with the tip of his sword. Choundas kicked out with his left leg and hit Lewrie painfully on the kneecap, and without thought, Lewrie slashed down hard into the back of Choundas' left calf, which raised another howl of pain and set him rolling and thrashing again.
"Sir!" someone was yelling. "Sir, we done fer 'em, sir! They struck, sir!"
Lewrie stepped back from Choundas and looked up to see Cony coming toward him, limping from a sword-cut across the outside of his thigh, and blood matted in his sweaty blonde hair.
The beach was littered with dead and wounded, and the most of them French, Lewrie was happy to observe. The rest were sitting in a fearful knot, covered by his men's weapons.
"You failed!" Lewrie crowed at Choundas. "You failed at everything you tried, you bloody murdering bastard! We beat you, understand me?"
"Alan, what's all the shouting about?"
"Hey?" he said, swiveling to see Captain Chiswick coming down the beach, leading two spaced ranks of his troops. His hat was gone, his sword was slimed with blood and he winced with each step, but he was whole. "Bloody Hell, where did you spring from? Took you long enough."
"Were you impatient for my arrival, dear Alan?" Chiswick said with a rasp of gunpowder in his throat. "Had to clear this damned eastern palisade first. Had a busy morning, have you?"
"Tolerably busy, yes," Lewrie replied. Now that the fight was over, now that they were safe in the hands of the sepoys of the 19th Native Infantry, he could allow his usual weakness to creep over him as he loosed the awful tension of mortal combat. A moment later and it was all he could do to stand.
"Much hurt?" Chiswick inquired anxiously after wiping his sword clean and sheathing it to come to his side.
"Pinked in the hip," Lewrie allowed, sinking down on his haunches to let Cony undo his breeches and take a look at it.
"Not deep, sir," Cony assured him as he laved it in the sailor's universal nostrum, fresh seawater. "T'ain't bleedin' much, neither, so 'e didn't get ya nowhere vital. Make ya stiff fer awhiles, sir. Could I 'ave yer breeches, sir, I could bind it Er if ya got a clean handkerchief in yer pocket, sir, I could fother a bandage over'n it fer now."
"The bandage, Cony," Lewrie said with a shaky laugh. "Damned if I want to go back aboard bare-arsed."
Chiswick dug into his tailcoat pocket and offered a small silver flask, which Alan drank from gratefully. "Urn, a lovely brandy you have there, Burge. I was half-expecting some of that corn whiskey I remember from Yorktown. Are those bloody pirates beaten yet?"
"Slaughtered like rabbits," Chiswick assured him with a harsh laugh, which made Lewrie look up at his face. There was something odd about Chiswick now. Some new-found brutality he hadn't had when they'd put him ashore the night before.
"And how did your regiment fare?"
"Main well," Chiswick replied, shrugging and taking a sip of brandy himself. "I got my light company in a hellish predicament. Shot my bolt a bit too soon and had to melee with the bayonet. But the boat-guns cleared the way for us, and your father sent reinforcements to our flank. We lost about fifty dead and wounded, it looks like. Fourteen of them from my company, I'm sad to say."
"Sorry to hear that."
"Aye, they were damned good lads,
" Chiswick added, nodding and getting to his feet. They could hear the pipes skirling as the regiment took the village at last, and the guns fell silent. They could also hear the braying of Lt. Col. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby as he issued some new command and laughed at something that amused him.
"Seems I'm still blessed with a father," Lewrie smirked.
"Here, what's the matter with this bugger?" Chiswick demanded, toeing Choundas in the ribs, which brought on another bout of howls. "Hmm, hamstrung neat as any Indian'd do a straying slave. He'll be a 'Mister Hop-kins' from now on, if I'm any judge. Don't take on so, you bloody bastard. You'll hang before it heals!"
Chiswick used his foot to roll Choundas over.
"My word!" Chiswick gulped.
"Kill me!" Choundas pleaded in a harsh whisper. "Kill me!"
"Our captum done fer 'em, sir," one of the sailors boasted.
Choundas had taken the hanger's edge across his lips, and the hard steel had knocked out several teeth-knocked them out, or cut them out, for the upper gums were laid open on the right jaw. The right cheek was pared back to show the chipped bone beneath, and the nose was hanging free on the right side. Choundas' right eye teared blood from the slice that had chopped it in half like a grape. And a ragged patch of eyebrow and forehead hung open, matted and gory with clotted blood and sand.
"Well ain't you the pretty young buck, now, Captain Beau-Nasty?" Chiswick drawled, once he had gotten over his shock. "I say, Alan, you do bloody nice carving when you've a mind. Remind me to have you for supper next time we have roast beef!"
"Kill me!" Choundas croaked. "Messieurs, je implore…!" Chiswick drew a pistol and checked the priming. "No!" Lewrie shouted, reaching up to put a hand on Chiswick's wrist. "Leave him the way he is. Let him live with it."
"Yes, I suppose Mister Twigg'd prefer a hanging at that," Burgess sighed, putting the pistol back into his waistband.
"I think he'd prefer M'seur Choundas go back to France as he is," Lewrie replied. "As a warning. An example of failure. Of what the next bastard'll get should they dare cross our hawse in future!"
"Well," Chiswick nodded, seeing the wry sense to it, "s'pose he could always do himself in later."
"My dear Burgess," Lewrie chuckled, "the way this poor wretch's luck is going, he'd probably miss with a pistol to his skull! Failure has a way of staying with you, don't ye know." There was a dull boom that sounded across the harbor, making them turn to look seaward. A cloud of smoke wreathed Culverin as she sat higher and dryer as the tide ran out. But coming into the bay was a frigate.
"Almighty God!" Lewrie snapped, getting to his feet and doing up his breeches. "Cony, get the hands back to the boats. We have to defend our ship!"
"Flag, sir," Cony said instead. "T'ain't Frogs, sir." "What are they?" Chiswick asked.
"Well, Goddamn, I do believe it's a Spanish ship of war!" Alan blurted as the white-and-gold flag curled out lazily.
"Bet they're going to be mightily displeased with us," Chiswick prophesied. "Poaching in their private preserve and all."
"Back to the ship, anyway. Burge, I trust I'll see you later. After Captain Ayscough and Mister Twigg talk their way out of this."
"Think you they can, Alan?"
"Burgess, Twigg is half a politician," Lewrie replied, smiling. "He can talk his way out of anything!"
V
"lam valete, formosi!
Nos ad beatos vela mittimus portus,
magni petentes docta dicta Sironis,
vitamque ab omni vindicabimus cura."
"Now fare ye well, ye goodly youths!
We are spreading our sails for blissful havens
in quest of great Sim's wise words,
and from all care will redeem our life."
Catalepton, V 7-10
– Virgil
Chapter 1
The Board Room at the Admiralty was blessed with a huge fireplace trimmed in wooden carvings of navigational instruments. Tall candles lit the chilly chamber against the gloom of a late February afternoon. As they huddled in front of the fireplace, lifting the tail skirts of their uniform coats to warm their frozen backsides, Lt. Alan Lewrie studied the white-and-gilt ceiling, the light-toned wood paneling and the parquet floors.
He'd only been inside the Admiralty once in his life, back when Shrike had paid off in '83, and then only to the first floor, to cool his heels for hours in the infamous Waiting Room before going to the basement to wrangle for even more hours with a clerk in a tiny monk's cell of an office, perched on tall stools to stay out of the two inches of water that had seeped in from a recent Thames flood. All to balance the ship's books and military inventory.
"Ahem," Captain Ayscough grumbled as the double doors opened and two elderly officers entered. First was Admiral Lord Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty, followed by Admiral Sir Samuel Hood. In their retinue were several civilians. Lewrie was amazed to learn during the introductions that they were Secretary of State Lord Sydney, and the first Secretary to Admiralty, Phillip Stephens. They took their seats behind a long table, and Ayscough, Percival and Lewrie were seated on the opposite side.
"We have read your report with great interest, Captain Ayscough," Lord Howe stated. "The lieutenants' journals as well. With not only great interest, but, may I be the first to say so, great admiration for your energetic prosecution of this matter in the King's name."
'There is also, milords, gentlemen," Lord Sydney added, "the report from Mister Zachariah Twigg, as regards the… uhm… political matters beyond the purely nautical and military scope of your recent expedition. The gentleman commends you and your officers in the most forthright manner, captain. For your zeal and enterprise, sagacity and competence. In fact, his only regrets or recriminations are the unfortunate demise of his fellow Crown… uhm… emissary, Mister Wythy, in Canton. And the untimely arrival of that Spanish frigate at Balabac Island. Had that not occurred, we might have been out and gone before any civilized nation could ever learn of our presence in those waters, assuring us total secrecy, start to finish, and then the book could have been closed shut on this affair forever."
"Well, the French know of it, milord," Admiral Hood scoffed. 'To their detriment, even if the Dons did free Choundas and his men."
"There are some niggling… uhm…" Lord Sydney posed, "ramifications anent our relations with the Spanish crown regarding this expedition. Violation of their territorial waters, for one. Violation of their sovereign sanctity ashore. Some remuneration paid, sub rosa I need hardly inform you, to their Viceroy-General in Manila, to help restore that native village, one would assume."
"Should the moneys ever find a way of trickling down through their Viceroy's fingers," Lord Howe smirked, cracking his bleak and patrician visage for a brief moment.
"Fortunately, there was hardly any mention of the incident in the… uhm… American public notice from the crew of that whaler we freed," Lord Sydney continued. "That… nation… has more on its rebellious little mind than taking time to be in any way grateful for the lives and freedom of some of its… uhm… citizens. Gratitude to their mother country is in rather short supply on that side of the Atlantic, and most likely shall be, for a generation to come."
"Whilst gratitude here at home, for the heroes of this venture, shall have to be rather thin as well, sirs," Lord Howe intoned, turning in his chair to see if Lord Sydney had anything further to add. Lord Sydney inclined slightly towards the older admiral, allowing him to proceed. "By God, sirs, had we leave to print your reports in the Marine Chronicle or the Gazette, it would be an eight-day wonder! The populace would chair you through the streets! However"-here he sobered once more, and settled back into a strong resemblance of the rebel General George Washington suffering an acute attack of gas-"for diplomatic reasons, none of this may ever see the light of day. I fear, Captain Ayscough, that the inestimable credit due you, Lieutenants Percival and Lewrie, shall never be adequately expressed by a grateful Crown, or an equally grateful Admiralty. Until such time as anoth
er war occurs with France, any word of this glorious expedition of yours must never pass your lips, not even to your dear ones."
"I… that is, we, completely understand, milords," Ayscough nodded sternly. "And obey your strictures without question, it goes without saying."
"There shall be no public commendation," Lord Sydney smirked, "but that does not mean there shall be no expression of pleasure for your valiant deeds. Name the reward dearest to you, my good sir, in reason, and we shall endeavor to please."
"An adjudgment by Droits of Admiralty in the matter of prize money, milords," Ayscough said quickly. "Not for my own gain, let me assure you. But for the ship's people. Most especially for those widows left without succor. I believe the reckoning of what we took at Spratly, and at Balabac, was in excess of five hundred thousand pounds, assigned as Droits of the Crown. Even an eighth of that for warrants, petty officers, able and ordinary hands would reward them for all their magnificent courage and loyalty, even when they didn't know what we were doing out there."
"Nothing for your officers or yourself?" Lord Howe queried.
"Active employment, naturally, milord." Ayscough reddened, feeling ashamed to even dare ask for anything for himself. "The heartfelt cry one would hear from any Sea Officer."
The King l-4 Page 38
