Blood and Oak- Wolves Will Eat

by Garrett Bettencourt

  Melisande’s heart skipped a beat, and she pressed a finger to her lips. In her war paint, she realized she might not look friendly. But Meadows didn’t raise the alarm—he simply went back to work as if he hadn’t seen her. When the guards turned their backs, she slipped into the Great Hall and closed the door. She darted behind a column, back flat against the stone as the lieutenant’s eyes roamed in her direction. He didn’t see her as he turned to the Djedid with the ledger and exchanged a few words. Melisande darted to the next column, then the next, timing her footsteps with the scraping of barrels.

  Meadows whispered something to Kelham, who in turn passed the word down the line of captives. Their eyes flicked in Melisande’s direction, many of them widening in surprise, but none of them saying a word. Evidently, Meadows recognized her or at least didn’t consider her an enemy, and he had the men playing along. It made sense—how many women dressed in Iroquois war regalia would one find on the Barbary Coast?

  Melisande charged out of cover. Lieutenant Djedid didn’t see her running up behind him, and her war club struck the back of his knee, knocking him into a genuflect. Melisande wrapped an arm around his throat and held her dagger to his cheek. The two other guards leveled their rifles, shouting orders. Melisande gave a toothy smile over her hostage’s shoulder. “Well hello, boys. Heartily glad to see you. Drop the guns.”

  “You will die,” said the hostage in broken English.

  “Really?” Melisande made a girlish chuckle. “No, that doesn’t sound right, my lovely.” She flashed the blade in front of his eyes.

  Boots pounded down the staircases. Two more pairs of Djedid aimed rifles at her over the banisters on either side of the hall. Flintlocks clicked from somewhere behind Melisande. She cast a look over her shoulder and found two more on the mezzanine.

  “Yes, it is right,” smirked Lieutenant Djedid. “You are surrounded. Drop your weapons.”

  Melisande looked around the room, from the soldiers on the stairs to the two below, to the chained sailors, to the sharpshooters on the mezzanine. The bastard had a point.

  “Well, shit.” Melisande plunged the dagger through the soft jelly of the lieutenant’s eye, and his body went rigid. Two Djedid fired muskets. The balls thudded into the corpse, and Melisande dashed for the cover between a column and a stack of barrels. Shots pelted the stone all around her. The six Djedid at the north end of the room charged toward her.

  Melisande listened to the footfalls. Counted three beats.

  She thought to herself, At least death is better than a cage.

  ###

  Dominique watched in horror as Melisande said, “Well, shit,” and plunged her dagger into the Djedid’s eye. Now the four soldiers on the stairs were charging the war-painted woman with pistols and swords.

  Adrenaline pumped through Dominique’s veins. What could she do? The last time she’d fired a gun, she was hunting with Grey Feather. The only living thing she hit was a tree.

  Maybe she didn’t need to hit anything. She ran into the Great Hall and took position behind a column. She aimed at the charging soldiers, who were steps from Melisande. “Hey!”

  Three soldiers looked in Dominique’s direction. Dominique pulled the trigger. The musket roared and belched fiery smoke. The butt kicked her hard in the shoulder, and the weapon clattered to the floor. The musket ball missed and poked a hole in a sack of flour.

  The second of distraction was all Melisande needed. She darted from cover and fired both pistols, dropping two soldiers. A third swiveled his rifle on Melisande, but a giant teen-aged sailor trapped the man in a bear hug, and the musket discharged at the ground. Melisande ducked behind the column.

  The sailors and Marines rushed their remaining guards. One they ran through with his own sword. Another they strangled with a chain. They held the soldier with the ledger to the floor, pressed the book to his head, and stomped his skull flat.

  A soldier on the mezzanine fired, his bullet taking off a piece of a Marine’s head. The man fell dead, becoming an anchor at his comrades’ feet. Dominique reached into her dress pocket for the grenade.

  “Melly!” Dominique cried.

  Melisande met her sister’s eyes. Dominique rolled the iron ball across the flagstones. Melisande scooped it off the floor, reached for the torch sconce on the column, and lit the grenade’s wick.

  The grenade hissed with sparks. Melisande lobbed the grenade high. A trail of smoke followed the iron ball as it sailed over the mezzanine rail and bounced down the old choir pews. The two sharpshooters scrambled to their feet, but it was too late. The grenade detonated.

  The explosion threw one of the soldiers over the rail, and he flopped head first on the floor. His neck snapped as he landed in an unnatural heap. The second soldier took the blast without so much as a stumble. When the smoke cleared, blood and gore coated his face, and he shambled forward like a creature from the underworld. Then he slumped over the rail, blood raining on the flagstones.

  Dominique ran to the grey-haired sailor. “Mr.…erm,” said Dominique as she used Aarif’s keys to unlock the shackle at his feet.

  “Meadows, Ma’am,” said the sailor.

  “Mr. Meadows,” Dominique repeated as the lock turned and the shackle came free. “Get the other men free and arm yourselves. Bar the doors. The others will be coming.” She pulled the key off the iron ring and handed it to the old sailor.

  Shouts echoed from elsewhere in the castle.

  “Dom!” cried Melisande, running to her sister. “I have to get you out of—”

  “Melly, there’s no time,” Dominique said. She found the key for the cages and held it up. “Get to the pens in the courtyard. Free the men.”

  Melisande took the keyring but hesitated. Her face, shirt, and trousers were coated in grime. If not for her ice-blue eyes, she wouldn’t have looked human. “But Dom, I can’t leave you.”

  “I’ll be fine. Now go! Hurry!”

  Melisande hesitated a second more, then ran for the courtyard.

  ###

  The Lake Fort

  Slave Pens

  Lieutenant Chester Ryland sat against the bars of the slave cage, his mind racing. So much made sense now—how the Barbary Pirates nearly captured the Philadelphia a month ago. How the Wolf of Tunis ambushed and sank the Allegheny. They had an enemy whose tactical brilliance was matched only by his malevolence. Whatever John Sullivan had done to earn the ire of this assassin Naim, there was no bargaining with revenge. The survivors of the Allegheny needed to escape—and soon.

  “She’s gone too far this time!” griped Captain Aubert, pacing his well-worn track around the cage. “That woman is out of her damn head!”

  “You always said she was headstrong,” said Marquis Larocque in his French drawl. He sat cross-legged with his wife’s head against his shoulder. “You tried your best to save her from herself.”

  “Everything I do, I do for us,” added Aubert. “I’ve given her everything. A home. Wealth. Status. I saved her from a life as frontier riffraff. And how does she reward me? With disrespect!”

  “She doesn’t appreciate you, Richard,” said Angele. “She spent too many years in the wild with the savages. She wants to be like the rest of those colonial animals. She plays at culture and bearing, but it is so much theater!”

  Ryland bristled at the insult to his country, and he wasn’t alone. All of the officers and sailors had sour looks on their faces, but none dared speak against the captain’s friends. Ryland buried his distaste for the French nobles with a sigh.

  Shots popped off in the distance. Men rose to their feet, and the Djedid soldiers paused in their patrols. Aubert looked toward the castle. The sound of more shots carried on the night air, and the guards went into a frenzy. Half a dozen Turk soldiers broke into a run, all of them headed toward the main castle keep.

  “What the devil?” said Captain Aubert.

  The men pressed against the bars of the cages. They were straining for a look at the old castle, foreboding against t
he starlit sky. Only two guards stayed behind in the courtyard. A few more walked the ramparts. Most were headed toward the commotion.

  Bang! The pudgy-faced guard smacked the bars with his gun-butt. He barked a few foreign commands at the prisoners, then swept them with the muzzle of his gun. The men backed away.

  “Easy, now,” Ryland said to the guard. “No need to lose our heads.”

  Pudgy’s expression turned black as night. His musket turned on Ryland.

  The look in the soldier’s eyes ran Ryland’s blood cold. “Easy now,” said Ryland taking a step back. Other sailors edged away from him. “Easy…”

  Pudgy’s finger moved to the trigger.

  A whistle came from behind the pudgy-faced man, and he and his comrade spun around. A shape darted out of the darkness and smashed a club into the man’s face. The second guard leveled his musket, but the shape dove under his aim. There was a gasp and a sound like a fork poking meat. The two guards fell dead. The creature who killed them stepped into the torchlight.

  The figure crouched like a beast ready to maul and appeared to be an Indian. He wore buckskin leggings and moccasins and a tunic trimmed with beadwork. He held a war club shaped like a raven and a dagger with an antler hilt. His face was covered in black and red war paint, and he looked young. His whole body was slick with mud and gore.

  Shouts came from the ramparts. The guards had spotted their dead comrades, and they fired shots into the courtyard. A musket ball pinged off the bars near the feral creature.

  “Hurry,” said the Indian, unlocking the cell with a ring of keys. “It’s me, Dufort. We’ve got to take the walls and storm the keep. Meadows and the others are in trouble.”

  “Dufort? Seaman Michael Dufort?” Ryland blinked. He recognized the wolf-like blue eyes cutting through the filth and warpaint. Incredibly, it was Sullivan’s sailor friend from the Philadelphia. Only Ryland—and presumably Aubert—knew she was really Melisande Dufort.

  “The very same!”

  “Good God!” sneered Aubert.

  “Mon Dieu!” cried Marquis Larocque.

  “Sebastien,” whimpered Marquess Larocque, covering her eyes and pointing at Dufort. “What is that thing?”

  Djedid troops were charging down the aisle toward Dufort, scimitars drawn. She pulled open the cage door. “No time for tea and crumpets. I’ll get the cages open. You take care of the guards.”

  “Right,” said Ryland.

  “All right, men,” cried Aubert. “Take the ramparts!”

  With all their pent up rage, the sailors roared out of the cell. Dufort ran to the next to unlock it, the occupants already crowding the bars. Shots rang out, and one of the officers dropped as he charged toward the Djedid.

  Sailors and Marines were in full stampede now, groups charging down the aisles between slave pens in both directions. It was over in minutes. The Djedid fired shots into the crowd, wounding a few. They drew their swords, one of them managing to badly slash a sailor. But the sheer numbers of Allegheny crew overwhelmed the guards. Some of them were thrown from the walls. Others the men wrestled down and stomped to death.

  When the courtyard was secure, Ryland started to the tunnels leading up to the keep. He raised a captured scimitar. “Alleghenies, on me!”

  The men raised a cheer as they followed Lieutenant Ryland.

  ###

  The Lake Fort

  Great Hall

  Doors buckled on all sides of the Great Hall. The chained sailors were free and armed with the dead soldiers’ muskets and swords. They mustered in a line near the back of the hall, beneath the mezzanine, where they could take cover behind columns. They could also face any soldiers that entered. Dominique stood behind Meadows and Kelham, eyes darting from door to door. It was only a matter of time before the Nizam-I Djedid broke through.

  “Stay behind us, Mrs. Aubert,” said Seaman Meadows. There was something comforting in his salty accent. “We’ll keep you safe or die trying.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Meadows,” said Dominique. “But I prefer you not die at all.”

  “Respectfully, Ma’am,” said Private Anderson of the Marines. “We may not have a choice.”

  The sound of breaking wood echoed through the hall. A stack of barrels fell away from a door on the east side. The door opened a crack.

  “This is it,” said Meadows. “Make ready, men.”

  There was another loud crash as a wood beam punched through a door on the west side.

  The men huddled around the columns and a few sacks of grain—a paltry excuse for cover. Dominique marveled at their bravery. They all looked at the breaking doors with steely resolve.

  Gunshots popped off in the corridors. There were sounds of men yelling and swords clashing.

  “It’s our boys!” cried one of the sailors.

  “Dufort must have got them out,” said Meadows.

  Dominique’s heart leaped with hope. She listened for the next few minutes alongside the defenders, scrutinizing every grunt, every clang, every shout. But as the minutes wore on and the sounds of melee died away, her heart began to sink. In the growing quiet, she and the men in the Great Hall soon realized they had no way of knowing who had won. After all, there had been at least fifteen Djedid in the corridors. What if they had overpowered the unarmed Alleghenies?

  The main double doors at the north end of the hall shuddered on their hinges. Rifles clicked as the men readied their aim. Another slam, and another, and the doors burst open. The men touched their triggers.

  “Hold fire!” shouted Meadows.

  A crowd of Allegheny sailors and officers flowed into the hall. At their head was Melisande, like the spirit of war herself. She walked with her usual swagger, bloody war club and dagger swinging in her hands. She was looking straight across the hall at her big sister.

  For all the years Dominique had been at odds with Melisande—fought with her, protected her, worried over her, raged at her—at this moment, she had never been more glad to see her.

  “Didn’t you hear us knocking?” said Melisande. “We fight a whole damn army for you, and you don’t even answer the door?”

  Without a second thought, Dominique ran to Melisande and threw her arms around her. Melisande’s body went rigid as if she were expecting a punch, not a hug. On any other night, the thought of all that grime would have repelled Dominique like the pox. Not tonight. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  “Easy, my lovely,” said Melisande. “Sure you want to ruin those fancy frills?”

  “Oh, it’s no matter,” Dominique whispered. A tear ran down her cheek. “A woman of my station never wears a dress more than once. She would die of shame.”

  Melisande pulled away from their embrace, blinking. “Did I just hear?…Did you just?…Was that a joke—about yourself?”

  Dominique winked and pinched Melisande’s cheek. A little black paint rubbed off on her fingers. She left her younger sister to stare in bemusement and went to Lieutenant Ryland. Blood dripped from his scimitar.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Aubert?” Ryland asked.

  “I’m well. Thank you, Mr. Ryland.”

  “Mr. Ryland!” shouted Captain Aubert as he strode into the Great Hall. “Your report at once, sir!”

  Ryland faced his approaching captain. What he said next filled the Great Hall with cheers.

  “Captain, it is my pleasure to inform you: The fort is ours.”

  Chapter 36

  The Lake Fort

  Great Hall

  Monday, September 12th, 1803

  Day 3, Dawn

  “Don’t worry about me, ma’am,” said Lieutenant Kimble in his Georgia drawl. There were bruised circles under his eyes, and his skin was white as a sheet. “I’ll be fine once I’ve seen the doc.”

  Dominique followed the young officer as his mates carried him on a stretcher. She mopped his forehead with a wet rag. The light of breaking dawn spilled through the high windows of the Great Hall. The crew placed beds in the hall to serve as a sick berth. �
�I’ll be right here.” Dominique took Kimble’s hand, his skin eerily cold. “I won’t leave your side during the surgery.”

  Kimble smiled with blue lips. “That’s kind of you, Mrs. Aubert, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you didn’t see me in such a state. You ought to go to the captain. I’m sure he’s worried about you.”

  Dominique was about to protest, but the gruff voice of the Allegheny’s surgeon, Dr. Murphy, intruded. “This is no place for a lady.” Dr. Murphy’s apron was already spotted with blood. He wiped a line of sweat from his half-bald head and pointed the stretcher detail to one of the open beds. “Your husband has taken up residence in the tower, Mrs. Aubert. I believe your place is at his side.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, Doctor.” Dominique sighed. She gave Kimble another sip from a bottle of rum. “I’ll come to visit when you’re better.”

  “Don’t fret, ma’am,” Kimble said. “I never much liked that leg anyhow—was always a touch shorter than the other. A wooden leg can be fitted to my taste.”

  Dominique smiled at the jest, amazed at Kimble’s bravery.

  “Mrs. Aubert,” fussed the doctor. “These men are in capable hands. Now please, leave me to my work.”

  “I want you to know,” said Kimble as they carried him away, “you did a real fine job. You and the captain. I know you’ll get us home.”

  Dominique wiped a tear from her cheek. The cot went on without her, and she headed out of the Great Hall and into the west corridor. She was passing the powder magazine when she heard a voice calling after her.

  “Mrs. Aubert.” Lieutenant Chester Ryland was jogging after her. “A word?”

  It was good to see Ryland back in full uniform, blue coat and all. Having to see the sailors stripped of their dignity in the cages had been heart-wrenching. But with the fort under Navy control, clothes and possessions had been restored to their owners. “What is it, Mr. Ryland?”