Blood and Oak- Wolves Will Eat

by Garrett Bettencourt

  “Get them off me!” Kaitlin shouted. “Where is it—where is it—where is it!”

  “Kait!” John said.

  Her hands swept through the grain. “Where is it!”

  “Kait!”

  She looked up at her brother. John held his rapier in one hand, the blade red and glistening to the hilt. In the other, he held out the key to the shackles. She could see gore caked under his fingernails. His face was muddy with ash and sweat and blood. As she stared at the man before her, covered in a slurry of violence, Kaitlin realized the gentle brother she remembered was gone.

  “It’s all right, Kait,” he said. “Hold out your hands.”

  Kaitlin did as he asked. While her brother unlocked the shackles, she stared at the flames licking up through the open roof. The red glow lulled her into a trance.

  “See? I told you we’d find it,” said Ethan. He grimaced at her brother, breathing hard as he squatted on his haunches. “Really, John, must you burn a building full of grain in every town we visit?”

  The shackles clicked open, and John took them off Kaitlin’s wrists. For some reason, he put them in his satchel. He shrugged at Ethan like a precocious boy. “The Janissaries started it! Now, let’s move. We need to get back on the Silver Road.”

  The moans of the people in the streets were like a funeral dirge. Kaitlin couldn’t help but listen. The citizens—and their slaves—had been working all year to fill the city’s largest granary to the rafters. At best, its destruction would raise the price of food. At worst, people would starve. First slaves. Then the poor. Maybe a good number of those better off. The people knew, as Kaitlin did, that the bey and his men would never go hungry. To John, they were enemies on a foreign shore. To Kaitlin, they were her neighbors of five years. A part of her wanted to weep for what she had done.

  “Kait!” called John.

  She snapped out of her reverie.

  John was a few paces away, beckoning to her. “Get moving! Before the roof caves in!”

  “Aye, Johnny.” Kaitlin started after him, her legs feeling as heavy as lead. “Coming.”

  Chapter 50

  The Silver Road

  Near the City Bastedan

  Time Until Low Tide: 2 Hours, 54 Minutes

  A mile to the southwest, a column of smoke rose off the granary. It was a menacing thunderhead of soot against the bright blue sky. John stopped amid the vegetable crops of a rooftop garden. He collapsed on his knees, wheezing. The fight through the burning storehouse had tapped reserves he didn’t have. His healing wounds and the strains from Naim’s gallows were all hot with pain. John scraped a few leaves of Qat from the pouch and chewed.

  Warmth washed from John’s head to his toes.

  “John? Are you all right?” Ethan was a few paces ahead, with Kaitlin close behind him. They went to John’s side.

  “Johnny, what is it?” Kaitlin asked.

  “I’m fine,” John slurred over the leaves in his lips. The qat was helping, but he was still winded. “I need to rest a spell, that’s all.”

  Kaitlin’s nose wrinkled. “What’s that on your breath?”

  Ethan’s brow furrowed, and he noticed the pouch in John’s hands. He snatched it up and took a sniff. “Ugh! What is this?”

  “It’s nothing!” John said. “Arabian tobacco, that’s all.”

  Kaitlin sniffed the pouch herself and recoiled. “My arse, tobacco. That’s qat.”

  “Hey, watch the language!” John said.

  “What’s qat?” asked Ethan.

  “A medicinal leaf,” Kaitlin said. “From Arabia. Buford sometimes sells it. Men chew it to get energy—especially Muslims who can’t have ale or spirits. Men who chew too much have been known to go mad. Or worse.”

  Ethan frowned at John. “How much have you chewed?”

  Before the wheezing midshipman could answer, Kaitlin said, “A lot, by the smell of his breath.”

  “No wonder there’s been no end to your energy. But now it’s catching up to you. You’re running yourself to death. It’s the skiff all over again.”

  “Look, I didn’t have a choice.” John got to his feet, grabbing the flaring pain in his side. “I had to get to Kaitlin. I didn’t have time to rest up in a sick bed.”

  “You could have told me. Given me a chance to help.”

  “Why? You’ve made it known our friendship is done.”

  “I never said that…exactly.”

  “We don’t have time for this!” said Kaitlin.

  John ignored his sister. “You didn’t have to say it. You’ll never forgive me for what I did. You won’t even let me speak my piece.”

  “Because there’s not a damn thing you can say,” Ethan said. “Because you’ll never know what you did. Not truly.”

  “Stop this!” Kaitlin pressed. “We have to move or—”

  There was an explosion in the distance. The report roared across the city. The building trembled under their feet. Screams erupted in the road. Kaitlin slapped hands to her ears. Ethan stumbled back a step. John’s mouth fell open. The blast had come from the Lake of Tunis.

  A cloud of dust billowed into the sky over the Lake Fort. It rolled across the area where the Crusader castle had been. Naim’s tower and its ruined counterpart were completely gone. Whole chunks of the outer fort ramparts collapsed into a pile of rubble.

  “What on Earth…?” whispered Ethan.

  “What’s happening over there?” said Kaitlin.

  “Dom…” John pulled the turban from his head, staggering forward as if drunk. “Naim…It had to be Naim. Somehow…”

  “Now, hold on,” Ethan said. “There’s no way to know if she was in that blast.”

  “We’re too late. I should never have left her.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Kaitlin. “I’m sure she’s okay. We just have to keep going.”

  “How could anyone survive that?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting, Johnny? We left Melisande to look after her. No way she let anything happen to her sister.”

  “There’s no way to be sure.”

  Kaitlin touched John’s arm. “You look out for me, and Melisande looks out for Dominique. She’s safe. I know she is.”

  John had to admit he found her words reassuring. “Aye, Kait. You’ve got the right of it. Let’s get—”

  “Thief!” someone cried in Arabic—at least one word John recognized from his time on the Barbary Coast. “There! Thief!”

  Three Nizam-I Djedid stormed out of an attic door. John recognized the old man from earlier in the day, pointing and shouting at him. The soldiers sighted the fugitives and raised muskets.

  “Halt!” cried the leader.

  John jerked his pistol from his belt and fired. The bullet ripped through the first soldier’s white bandolier belt, and he collapsed. Ethan fired his musket, and a bullet ripped through the other Djedid’s side.

  “Go!” John cried.

  “Follow me,” cried Kaitlin. She and Ethan took off across the rooftop.

  John followed hot on their heels. The two Djedid still standing bolted after them, shouting. A shot rang out. John heard a musket ball whistle by his ear. He followed his friend and his sister through several aisles of potted crops growing on trellises. John skidded to a stop as they came to the other side of the roof, a wide alley separating them from the next bank of tenements. There was a small shed two stories directly below them, with a square hole in the roof.

  “We have to jump,” shouted Kaitlin.

  “What?! Bugger that!” cried Ethan.

  “It’s part of the Silver Road. I’m fairly sure there’s a pile of pillows at the bottom. We go one at a time.”

  John looked back, hearing the rustling of leaves as their pursuers crashed through the rooftop garden. Then he looked down at the shed, the open square in the roof revealing only darkness. “Kait, what do you mean fairly sure?”

  Kaitlin shrugged. “During the day, there is no Silver Road.” Kaitlin jumped. She sailed down feet firs
t and vanished through the square.

  John and Ethan leaned over, their mouths agape.

  Kaitlin burst out of the door of the shed and waved up at them.

  John let go a breath of relief.

  “Bugger this!” Ethan groused. He threw the rifles off his shoulder. Then he took a breath and stepped off the ledge.

  Pop!

  A bullet caught Ethan’s left calf at the moment of his jump. With a yelp, he plunged down. John whirled around, pistols drawn. He fired at the two Djedid charging down the aisle of plants. He struck one in the shoulder. His other exploded a squash. John dropped the spent pistols and leaped off the roof.

  He closed his eyes as he hurtled toward the shed.

  ###

  “How you doing, mate?” John asked as he cut a piece of cloth from his kaftan.

  Kaitlin leaned against the alley wall, watching her brother wrap the strip around Ethan’s leg. The bullet wound near Ethan’s calf was already soaking through the makeshift bandage.

  “I’m fine.” Ethan winced, sitting on a pile of discarded baskets. “The ball went all the way through the flesh. I think I’ll be all right with a few stitches.”

  Kaitlin listened to the sounds of a city tearing itself apart. The streets were alive with gunfire and raised voices. Citizens were pouring out of their homes, adding to the chaos of soldiers waging war. The smoke of burning grain blew on the air. The whole mood of Tunis had changed since the fire started in the granary. Kaitlin occasionally caught snippets of the chants coming from the nearby thoroughfares.

  “Down with the Ottoman traitors!”

  “Kill the fool Hammuda!”

  “End the sultan’s oppression!”

  The people of Tunis had been enduring the depredations of Naim and the Nizam-I Djedid for over a year. The burning of the granary—easily a third of the city’s entire harvest—had evidently been the final insult. Now, the citizens wanted revenge. Kaitlin had helped John and Ethan elude the Djedid for the moment, but there was no way back onto the rooftops with the streets full of angry people. And at the end of this alley lay a dead end—the wall of the bastedan.

  “Kait, we need a way back onto the rooftops,” said John.

  “I told you—there’s too many soldiers. The nearest way onto the Silver Road is too far.”

  “What about that way?” John nodded toward a flight of steps, which led below the surface of the street and under the bastedan wall.

  “That leads to the slave prison. It will be full of Janissaries.”

  “The Janissary presence might be light,” suggested Ethan. “What with them busy elsewhere.”

  “Isn’t Buford’s place on the other side?” John asked.

  “Aye,” said Kaitlin. “There is a way into the sewers from the River Falls. But even if we could make through the slave bagno, I broke my lockpicks. I can’t get the door open.”

  “Sure you can.” John slipped a pair of lockpicks from the pockets of his pirate disguise. “Buford gave me a spare set before I left the tavern.”

  “But…we’ll never make it…”

  “We’ll make it, Kait.” John held the tools out to her. “Pick the lock.”

  Kaitlin reluctantly accepted them and went down to the bagno door. John finished bandaging Ethan while she got the door open. After a few minutes to prepare, John led the party into the prison.

  Kaitlin followed her brother into an underworld of condemned souls. They walked single file through a tunnel of limestone brick. The hum of hundreds of slave voices soon became a howl. The air was hot and thick with the odor of unwashed bodies. She felt the stench of excrement sticking to her sweat. They exited the corridor into the bagno—the slave prison. It was a long hall of beige brick, with three rows of pillars holding up the vaulted ceiling. Panels of prison bars were bolted between the columns, forming a grid of cells, crisscrossed by narrow lanes. On the west side of the building, opposite her party, the stairs led up to a side street near the River Falls Trading Post.

  She followed her brother between the cells. They were packed with men and boys, covered in filthy rags, bugs crawling through their ratted hair. They crowded the bars, calling out to Kaitlin and her companions, sometimes with desperate pleas, other times with chilling threats. She found it ever harder to breathe, due as much to the human suffering as the heat. A few arms reached out, and Kaitlin started, crowding close to John.

  “It’s all right, Kaitlin,” said Ethan as he followed behind her. “We’re here with you.”

  The words of comfort didn’t help. Kaitlin could barely keep away from the reaching arms on either side. Blackened fingertips brushed her shoulders, her elbows, her hair. Sun blisters wept on dozens of outstretched hands. The eyes of the prisoners were the worst—some of them alert, others vacant, others crazed. She tugged on her brother’s hand. Her heart beat so fast, she worried it might give out. “Johnny, we have to get out of here. This place is death. We can’t stay.”

  “It’s the only way, Kait,” said John. “We can’t turn back.”

  Kaitlin closed her eyes, trying to breathe. Sweat ran down her face in heavy drops. A weight pressed on her chest.

  They were halfway across the bagno when they heard a shout in Arabic.

  “You there!” shouted a Janissary. “Identify yourself. What re’is do you serve?”

  Ahead of them, a group of four guards marched straight toward them. The Janissaries’ canteens, powder horns, and daggers rattled on their belts.

  “Get ready, Kait,” John whispered. “On my order.”

  Her heart hammered. In the minutes before their trek through the prison, her brother asked her to ready a distraction. As agreed, she pulled a skunk valeri from her row of throwing sticks. She held the fuse close to the flint on her belt.

  “I said, identify yourself!” the Janissary repeated, grabbing the musket strapped over his shoulder. His three comrades did the same.

  “John!” whispered Ethan.

  “Not yet, Kait,” said John, keeping a steady pace. They were only ten strides away from the guards. “When I say.”

  Kaitlin nodded, gripping the special throwing stick tighter.

  “Mercy!” said a woman.

  A hand brushed Kaitlin’s arm, and her gaze snapped to a woman about her mother’s age. She had dark hair and pretty features, though weathered by sun and starvation. She was in a cage with dozens of other women and girls. Kaitlin stared into the slave woman’s eyes, unable to speak, unable to look away.

  “On your knees!” cried the Janissary, raising his musket.

  “Now, Kait!” John cried.

  Kaitlin struck the fuse on the flint. She jumped out from behind John and threw. The stick burst among the guards, releasing a cloud of rancid smoke. The Janissaries scattered, dropping their aim as they coughed and wiped away tears. John and Ethan drew a pistol in each hand. They unloaded a volley of bullets into the stunned soldiers. And just like that, Kaitlin helped four men die.

  “Stop!” shouted a Janissary.

  Kaitlin looked around the prison through the walls of bars. Soldiers with muskets converged on them from every lane—right, left, and dead ahead. John looked around like a fox cornered by the hounds. The only route of escape was the way they came.

  “We have to go back,” Kaitlin said.

  “No!” John snapped. He tore a ring of keys off one of the dead Janissaries. They jingled as he unlocked a cell. “You want freedom?” he said to the prisoners in Lingua Franca. The men inside crowded up to the door. “Now’s your chance!”

  John pulled the gate open, and the prisoners poured into the main aisle. A charging pair of guards went wide-eyed as a mob of angry slaves ran toward them. The Janissaries fired their muskets, taking one slave in the gut and another in the head. In the next second, the guards were crushed under a tide of men. Kaitlin pressed herself against the bars as she listened to the screams. The slaves were stomping, punching, shouting.

  More guards were jogging toward them, but John was already
pulling open another cell. Kaitlin watched in surreal fascination as more bare feet pounded into the lane.

  “Kill your masters!” John raved. “Kill your masters and take your freedom!”

  “Let us out!” cried other slaves nearby.

  “Please!” cried the woman who had touched Kaitlin’s arm.

  John tossed the keys to a girl in the women’s cell. He grabbed Kaitlin’s hand and pulled her through a tide of bodies flowing in both directions. Ethan limped close beside them, fighting his way against the growing current. They passed the three dead guards as they continued west. The slaves had beaten them until their faces were reduced to red pudding. Their weapons and clothes had were already stripped. One man’s private parts were exposed, and Kaitlin gasped. She had rarely seen the nude male form. Seeing it now on a corpse was somehow stark and shocking.

  The three of them were nearly to the west side of the bagno. Everywhere they looked, cells were flying open. The slaves had more of the guards’ keys and were swiftly passing them around. With so many slaves running rampant, the few Janissaries were already overwhelmed. Gunshots added to the deafening voices, no doubt fired by escapees. There was barely room to move in the press, and Kaitlin could feel her panic taking over.

  Let me out of here! She screamed in her mind. This place is death. Let me out!

  “Don’t let go of my hand!” John shouted above the roaring chaos. “Stay together. Don’t get separated.”

  Ethan had Kaitlin’s other hand, forming a daisy chain as they fought through the hundreds of escaping slaves. What was once a tide had become a clog. Men and women filled the aisles, fighting against each other as they tried to pass in opposite directions. The flow of people slowed, then ground to a halt. Kaitlin found herself crushed in a mass of bodies, unable to move forward, unable to move backward. She felt the heat of sweaty, grimy skin pressing on her from all sides, so tightly she couldn’t tell where one body ended and another began. The convulsing wall of flesh began to push and pull her, and she felt her grip on John’s hand weakening.