I craned my neck to look ahead. “Help me steer for that crabbed tree,” I directed. “It may give us a chance.”
Astiza pointed. We veered, my oars dipping faster than the galley’s as I furiously rowed, and yet still our lead shrank against the larger vessel. I heaved at the oars. “Do you see a dark spot?”
“Almost there.” She anxiously glanced behind.
Another shot. This one whined by like a hornet, splashing just ahead.
“Now,” my wife said.
We passed over weedy rock. Our shallow kayik barely scraped, and then we were in the fortress shallows.
I looked toward the shore. Odd. I’d expect to see Turkish soldiers running down to the beach to intercept us. No one. “Where is everybody?”
Another shot, and this one clipped our gunwale. A splinter of wood flew past Astiza’s cheek. She spat a curse, which shocked me. She was furious at this relentless pursuit. “Harder! We’re almost there!” Then she threw herself on Harry.
I pulled, muscles popping. I could see Von Bonin vigorously reloading. The galley oars dipped and rose, flashing in the lowering sun in perfect synchronization. The vessel was aimed directly for our stern, gaining by the second. There was a steady drumbeat setting the oarsmen rhythm, an ominous boom-boom-boom that came across the water like the hammered cauldrons of the Janissaries. Its captain began shouting. Von Bonin hollered back. The captain cried angrily. Von Bonin gave a crude gesture. White foam marked the on-rushing bow where it cut water. The Turks were making a last desperate surge to catch us before we reached land.
The Prussian took aim. It was only a hundred yards now, and he couldn’t miss with that fine Czartoryski gun. If he even just wounded me, it was over.
The galley hit the reef.
There was a tremendous crash and shock, the vessel’s lateen mast snapped like a twig, and Von Bonin shot off the bow as if launched by a catapult. The rifle sailed lazily through the air and hit the water with a splash. The German did likewise several yards away, throwing up a spout worthy of a cannonball. Galley oars lurched, cracked, and tumbled, and a great cry of consternation and pain went up from slaves and crew. The front of the ship reared partway out of the water, the gash in its bow like a shark bite.
“Yes!” my wife cried.
We grounded beneath the fort.
Musket fire from the wrecked galley peppered the beach as we sprang out. Astiza hoisted Harry while I cradled the palladium under one arm and took an oar in the other, the load heavy and awkward. I had no other weapon. We struggled toward the earth ramparts where the vast cannon rested. I kept expecting a challenge or rescue, but no one appeared. We scaled a bunker, crawled through an embrasure where a bombard muzzle jutted, dumped the statue, and looked back.
The galley was in chaos. Men were in the water, clutching at broken oars. Others on board were shooting toward shore, the bullets plunking into the rampart. In another direction there was a Russian ship anchored just beyond the fort, in a shallow bay at the edge of the Dardanelles. Russian marines were getting into longboats to investigate the tumult.
“Has there been a plague?” Astiza wondered, looking at the empty fort.
“I’m guessing that Selim’s New Army troops heard of his fall and deserted. The fort has been abandoned.”
“Not by Lothar.”
I knew the devil could swim, since I’d failed to finish him off on Canopus, and here he came with a respectable crawl even with his stump of arm. His flamethrower was disabled, his rifle gone, and yet he didn’t hesitate. He must know we didn’t have a gun, or we’d have fired back. But what was his weapon now?
He stood waist-deep and reached for it.
The bastard had kept his murder weapon, my medieval horse-pick.
My lance would be the oar.
I slid back down the earthen rampart of meet him, the Turkish fire slackening as Von Bonin emerged from the waves. He was breathing hard but grinning when he saw me gripping nothing but an oar of wood.
“At last you decide to fight, American? Pick against oar? I didn’t think you had the courage. Will you fight me with one arm, too?”
“You told the British I didn’t fight fair, Lothar. Remember?”
“Never too late to reform.”
The wicked pick whistled as he twirled it overhead with his left arm, carefully advancing. The hammerhead was still matted with Caleb’s blood and hair. He followed my eye. “Yes, a brutal antique you chose, Gage.”
I jabbed at him with the oar blade and he parried with the pick. Both weapons were clumsy, and we staggered for balance on the steep shingle of the beach. I thrust, keeping him at bay, while he tried to circle, aiming to get on the uphill side and force me against the water.
“The Trojan palladium is far too important for an ignorant treasure hunter to possess,” Von Bonin panted. “The world will thank me for taking it from you.”
“But not Athena.” I lunged again, deliberately striking him on his damaged prosthesis. He shouted. The pick came down in furious response and the oar blade sheered off, leaving a jagged edge of splinters. I swept this at his face, tearing a scratch and forcing him back.
But I’d lost two feet of advantage.
He was forcing me around.
“Ethan!” Astiza called. “Up here!” She threw a stone at the Prussian.
I swung the shaft of the oar like a club, Von Bonin ducking away to avoid being brained, and then I scrambled in retreat.
“Coward!”
I made for the embrasure where the clumsy bombard jutted. Von Bonin climbed right after me, swinging the pick but hampered by his lack of a second hand to grip the earth. I could hear Turkish sailors jeering at my panic. The pick point caught my jacket and tore it in two, momentarily dragging me downhill toward the Prussian. I twisted and clubbed him with the oar shaft on the shin. Von Bonin toppled. He raised the weapon to finish me but I threw sand and pebbles into his face, momentarily blinding his one eye. Then I kicked, making him skid. He brushed at his face, cursing in German.
I made it to the embrasure and climbed onto the cannon barrel to gain height. The pick clanged on old iron as my enemy followed. I rose to balance on the cylinder and danced, holding the broken oar, and now Von Bonin was up on the barrel too. We tottered. I thrust, he parried, and he tried to get inside my guard. I jabbed the shaft at his darting head and he minced backward, his one eye regarding me with hatred.
The Turks were screaming with excitement. The Russian marines were shouting from their boats.
“Find a sword or pike!” I shouted to my wife. Yet when I risked a look back she’d retreated to the butt of the cannon. Had she panicked? No, she wouldn’t leave Harry. The boy lay unconscious and I feared he was dying.
My fury redoubled. I thrust again, too hard. Von Bonin twisted to let the broken oar pass his torso, and then he brought the pick down with all his force, knocking the wood from my grasp. I lost my balance and fell, sprawling painfully on the bombard.
But the force of the blow made the Prussian lose his balance too, and he toppled off the end of the gun, just catching himself on its lip to save a nasty fall to the beach. He hung awkwardly, his amputated arm wrapped around the curve of the cannon barrel, his good arm trying to grasp the muzzle without losing its hold on the horse pick. He was dangling over the mouth of the gun, his head just above the metal, wheezing but determined.
“You can’t outfight me, Gage.”
“But we can outthink you.” It was Astiza’s voice.
He sneered, lifting himself upward. “I told you not to get involved in issues beyond your grasp. I told you to leave it alone.” But then he looked beyond me to where Astiza waited, and his eyes suddenly widened in fear. What had he seen? “Wait—”
Behind me, black powder hissed and whistled. I twisted to look. Astiza had struck a flint to oily cotton and touched fire to the cannon fuse-hole
.
The Turks had left it loaded.
The Prussian’s torso was still draped over the muzzle.
“No!”
There was a blast. I bucked from the jumping cannon as if it were a wild horse, pitched to the ground. The gun barrel recoiled as an eight-hundred-pound granite cannonball shot out in a sheet of flame and smoke. It disintegrated Von Bonin like an insect, his body disappearing in a cloud of smoke. As I hit the earth I could still see the shadow of the shot and his trailing remains hurtling toward the Turkish galley.
The explosion had cuffed my ears, but I could see the gaping mouth of sailors screaming.
Then the ball struck. The warship exploded in a thundercloud of debris. Wood, oars, men, and cannon tumbled in the air and rained into the sea.
A wave radiated out, breaking on the beach.
Dazed, I got to my knees. A triumphant Astiza threw herself beside me. “We got their boat!” I heard her dimly through the ringing.
My ears were bleeding, my body numb, my muscles trembling from exertion. I didn’t care. My wife’s shot had hit the grounded galley bow-on and split it open like a half-peeled banana, hurling yelling men into the water. The craft slid backward off the reef, filled with water, and sank.
There was a rumble of boot-steps behind and we turned. A company of Russian naval infantry had rushed the empty fort and charged toward the cannon’s eruption. Now they gaped as they saw a battered civilian, his exultant wife, and prostrate child. Beyond, frantic Turkish sailors were swimming for their lives, aiming for the shore well beyond the fort to escape Russian capture.
Half a dozen marines pointed muskets at us. A lieutenant shouted something in Russian.
I nodded, even though I didn’t understand a word.
My ears still rang as I drew myself up as straight as I could, given my depletion, and addressed the officer in French. “At last you’ve arrived,” I said, adding that edge of haughtiness that Russian soldiers expect. “I demand a meeting with my old friend, Admiral Dmitri Senyavin. Tell him that the American Ethan Gage is proposing to save Mother Russia from its enemies.”
CHAPTER 41
“You realize, Monsieur Gage, that you’re a wanted man in St. Petersburg?”
“I once was wanted as an advisor.” I was standing stiffly in front of Vice Admiral Senyavin in the great cabin of his flagship Tverdyi. It had been more than a year since I’d seen him at that ball in St. Petersburg. Now the admiral’s eyes were darker from the weariness of command, his great domed forehead giving him a professorial look as he frowned at me, as people are wont to do. His battleship’s black paint was still pocked by the bright raw wood of recent Turkish cannonball hits, and crews were still hard at work repairing the rigging. Officers had told me the Russian fleet had lost more than eighty men in its victory over the Turkish navy.
“No,” he said, “you’re wanted as a criminal, which of course came as a great surprise after our friendship in St. Petersburg. I enjoyed our discussions of Nelson and was astonished to learn that you were apparently a Polish agent and notorious thief. The rumor is that you somehow broke into the Imperial Treasury at the Peter and Paul Fortress.”
“One thing led to another.”
“Which explains, I suppose, why you fled an Ottoman galley in a small longboat with your bedraggled family and an old wooden figurine?”
“People are always taking shots at me, admiral, a habit that leaves me as consternated as you. I’m the mildest of fellows, or would be if unfriendly people didn’t get in my way. My son calls them bad men.”
“There is no shortage of those in our world.”
“I could still give the Tsar my military advice if it would square things with your government. Perhaps Minister Czartoryski could speak up for me?”
“Your Polish patron was removed from his position in February,” Senyavin said. “Something about his dislike of Prussia and his pro-French leanings to favor Warsaw. Fortunes change quickly in St. Petersburg.”
“A volcano, Adam called it.”
“I suspect any advice you have for the Tsar will be far too late in any event. Russia and Napoleon fought a terrible winter battle at Eylau to a draw, and their armies are maneuvering for a final showdown even as we speak. By the time I returned you to St. Petersburg in chains, the French war will be either won or lost.”
“The current French war,” I said. “I don’t believe either Napoleon or Alexander will regard any defeat as their final one.”
“Aye, war never ends. But your wife is the fortune-teller, not me. My duty is to return you to justice, now that Providence has delivered you into my hands.”
“Not Providence, admiral, but my own family’s initiative.” Since the Russian naval infantry had arrested us and taken the palladium to the Russian flagship, I’d quietly discussed with Astiza what our real options were. I was a thief in St. Petersburg, and our allies in Constantinople had been overthrown. Aimée and her son Mahmud had reportedly been confined with Selim in the harem. If history held to its habits it was unlikely the deposed sultan would be alive very long, and Mahmud might be executed as well if he didn’t find a good chimney to hide in. Both capitols were dangerous for us. So what choice did we have? Only to go on, as we all go on, bucked from the great bombard barrels of life and climbing on for the next catastrophic episode—yes, a bombastic metaphor, I admit.
I’d become somewhat philosophic about my devil’s luck. As Princess Izabela said, I’ve traded treasure all my life for astonishing experiences, and that, perhaps, is my fate and fortune. What I wanted now was freedom, and the time and space to recuperate with my family. A ship’s doctor had helped Harry regain some color but my boy was still ill and weak.
“The boy needs medicine from physicians wiser than I.”
So I’d remembered the interesting tale of Claude-Mathieu Gardane looking for his grandfather’s treasure in exotic Persia, while representing Napoleon as Sebastiani had done. Persia by repute has some of the world’s greatest doctors. And it’s not that far away after all, I decided.
“You’re taking credit for becoming my prisoner, Gage?”
“This is not imprisonment but a mutually desired rendezvous, admiral. I’m offering you a brilliant trade. It does Russia no good to throw me into prison. I’d be costly to feed, would complain far too often, would confess anything you wish before a torturer even got started, and would pepper court nobles with petitions for sympathy and relief. Far better is the alternative, which is mutual generosity. I rowed to the Dardanelles with a gift to balance any wrongs I accumulated in St. Petersburg. I’m going to offer you, admiral, the one thing on earth that can save Russia from ever being conquered by Napoleon. I’ll tell you what it is, but first I have a simple request. Forget you ever found me, take all the credit for our discovery upon yourself, become a hero when you return to the tsar, and quietly put me and family ashore on the plains of ancient Troy.”
He looked at me suspiciously. “That’s all you want?”
“To be forgotten. I’ve had all the renown I can take.”
“What’s this object you’re offering?”
“The greatest prize of the Emperor Constantine, ignored by the Turks, lost to time, and resurrected by the Ethan Gage family. Have you ever heard of Odysseus and ancient Aeneas, the Trojan refugee who by legend founded Rome?”
“Of course.”
“A gift from the sky, a sculpture of Athena, tied the fates of Troy, Rome, and Constantinople together.”
“You’re talking about that piece of junk wood?”
“Touch her before you say that. And ask yourself, what if this statue came to St. Petersburg or Moscow?” And I began to tell the unlikely story of the Trojan palladium, the curiously preserved statue that yes, had made even me temporarily invincible. I was alive, and Dalca and Von Bonin dead.
And so Senyavin put the palladium in the hold of his wa
rship and deposited us on the shore of ancient Çanakkale, where Troy controlled the Hellespont. There are mounds of rubble on the arid plain, and I suppose one or more of them might mark where Achilles and Hector fought. I’d have dug about for a helmet or golden shield, but didn’t have a shovel or the time.
I looked back at the longboat pulling away for Senyavin’s flagship, wondering if I’d ever see Russia or Constantinople again. Would Athena disappear into the Peter and Paul Treasury or the storerooms of the Kremlin? Good riddance, I thought; the wooden girl was a world of trouble. But maybe she’d keep Tsar Alexander out of trouble as well, if she didn’t blind anyone. And then we’d be square.
The sky was blue, the distant hills scrubby. Once more the Ethan Gage family was starting from nothing, except this time less than nothing, because Harry remained sick from our fight with Dalca.
“I’m still dizzy, Papa.”
“That’s because you’re brave.”
Perhaps my quest should not be for gold or jewels, but medicine.
“Now what, my love?” said Astiza, looking at the ancient landscape before us. Beyond was Asia in all its immensity.
“I’ve heard the Persians have good doctors,” I said. “Treasure, too. The French embassy there is poking about, and surely they’ve heard of my service to Sebastiani. I think we should travel to Tehran and take in Isfahan, Khorasan, and the ruins of Persepolis—just to broaden our perspective.”
“Always an exotic land.” She smiled wryly. “What gypsies we are!”
“The journey has become our destination.”
“And we’re traveling to a better house,” Harry reminded.
So yes we did have something, our love. It was good to be alive. “Our family is our home, son.”
“Yes, Papa. But I’d still like a palace.”
“Me too, if I’m being honest.”
I took one of Harry’s hands, Astiza took his other, and feeling the sun of Asia Minor on our shoulders and the dry dust of ancient Troy beneath our feet, we began to slowly walk.
The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) Page 33
