The King`s Commission

out. With this mist, that's 'bout as long a shot as we'll get. McGilliveray's warriors are further out, huntin' sign of their people, far's I know. You hear owls hootin' he tells me, that'll be them comin' back in. Well, damn my eyes if we didn't pull it off after all, me lad! Tis all over but the shoutin' at this point. Your crew see any Dagoes out to sea?'

'Not one sail in all that time. Almost uncannily easy.'

'Knock on wood,' Cashman said, grinning and rapping his knuckles on the butt of his fusil. He then strolled back towards the perimeter.

The cargo was finally off-loaded completely, the sloop swung about to direct its fire up-river, or overhead of the camp on the sand-spit to the marshes and swamps. The day dragged on until it was time for dinner, and the hands ceased their labors for 'clear decks and up spirits' from a small puncheon of rum brought ashore for them. Rabbit and the other girls had a small fire going, and were almost ready to ladle out more bowls of the eternal sofkee, mixed with some dried venison they had been steeping in a pot of water. There was also some salt-meat from the sloop's galley, and biscuit.

The Indian girls looked up first, their ears more attuned to an odd sound than the whites. Owls were not known to hunt so close to the coast, or call anywhere in daylight.

'That'll be the Creek scouts coming back in,' McGilliveray said. Cashman's troops were all back at the sand-spit by then, for the fogs had burned off or been blown away by a new day's sea breeze, and they were too exposed out by the edge of the marshes. Other than a few who stood guard from covert hides in the saw grass and palmettoes at the top of the beach, they were all queuing up for their rum and tucker.

'They're in a damned hurry if they are,' Cashman said, going for his weapons. 'Sarn't, stand to! Form, form open skirmish order!'

The Creek warriors came out of the woods at a dead run, first one who clutched his side where an arrow had pierced him, and then the last two, looking back over their shoulders as they ran as a rearguard for the wounded man.

Not a full minute after they stumbled into camp, a solid pack of painted and feathered warriors came loping out of the trees and across the shallow marsh.

'Apalachee!' McGilliveray shouted. 'The bastards!'

'Take 'em under fire, sor?' the sergeant asked Cashman.

'Stand by…'

'No, Cashman!' Cowell pleaded. 'We don't know why they chased these lads. They could have tried to raid the Apalachee just for the fun of it, they do that all the time. If we fire we might destroy whatever good will we've built here!'

'No, Mister Cowell, they're going to fight us,' McGilliveray countered.

'Fire!' Cashman ordered, and the fusils cracked even as the first Apalachee arrows came arcing down among them with a sizzling rush.

There were some shrill screams as the leading warriors were hit and knocked down, and the rest checked their headlong rush and began to weave back and forth among the reeds in the marsh, leaping up as targets to draw fire, or dropping out of sight after they got off an arrow or a cane spear from one of their throwers. They seemed to dart forward and then fall back as if frightened of their own audacity, running in circles like the practice of a Spanish tiercio of pistoleers on horseback.

Alan ran to his fusil, which had been leaning on the cargo, and checked his priming. He took aim at a warrior in a bone-armor vest and let fly as the man paused to nock an arrow. The man whooped in pain as Alan's shot took him in the belly and the Indian dropped into the marsh out of sight with a great, muddy splash.

'Svensen!' Alan called over his shoulder to the sloop not sixty yards to his rear in the river. 'Lay a gun on these bastards and shoot at the largest pack of them!'

An arrow whickered by him with a thrumming sound and he flinched as he pulled his weapon back to half-cock and began to load, rapping the butt on the nearest crate to settle the load after he had bitten off the cartouche and poured the powder in. Another arrow zhooped past his head, and his cocked hat went sailing off somewhere aft. Rabbit was kneeling near him behind the crates, and went to fetch it for him. She came back just as he stood up and shot another running man down in mid-stride, and as he sensibly knelt to load out of sight this time, she gave a blood-thirsty smile of encouragement, whooping in glee.

San Ildefonso's after-most larboard three-pounder barked, and the sound of round- shot and grape passing close overhead made them all go almost flat on the ground. The round-shot cut a warrior in half, leaving his legs and trunk standing, and his torso and head flying off into the trees, shattering against a cypress trunk when they finally hit something solid. The grape-shot frothed the water in the marsh and three more Indians screamed and erupted into bloody statues before they fell, which took the starch out of their courage. After a few more arrows were loosed at the encampment, and two more warriors had been clawed down by the fusiliers at over sixty yards, they made off back into the trees.

'Goddamn and rot the bastards!' Alan raged, snapping off his last shot at one Apalachee who stopped by the trees and presented his bare arse to them in derision. He laughed with delight to see that he had aimed a bit low and had hit the man on the inside of the thigh just a quim-hair from his genitals. 'Try stuffin' what's left up your arse, you sorry shit-sack!'

'Nice shot,' Cashman panted. 'Nigh on ninety yards.'

'Damn, but I like the fusil!' Alan shouted back with pleasure. 'Now you give me my Ferguson, and I'd have taken his right nutmeg off!'

Rabbit brought him his cocked hat, now decorated with a long cane arrow with a flaked stone point and three raggled feathers at the other end. She pulled a metal knife from her waist and waved it in the air, making motions that he should go out there and lift some hair.

'God, it's just as well I can't take you with me,' Alan told her, smiling so she would know he was pleased. 'I'd love to turn you loose on some people I know with that thing.'

'I should have known we couldn't trust the Apalachee, not with so much loot to be had,' McGilliveray spat. 'They once were a mighty people you could trust, but the Spanish have turned them into shabby dogs. They must have been watching all this time, waiting for us to get all the muskets landed, and for us to pull our pickets in.'

'For all the good it did them,' Cowell sniffed, clumsily trying to reload the musket he had snatched up and fired at least once.

Several shots boomed out from the marsh and the tree-line and they ducked down once more into cover. As Cashman crawled up to his furthest forward marksmen, the volume of fire increased.

'Damme, must be a platoon of 'em with muskets out there,' Cashman shouted back. 'Mark your targets and return fire, and keep your bloody heads down.'

'Svensen!' Alan bawled. 'Into the tree-line! Take your time and aim true, one gun at a time! Reload with grape and canister as you do so!'

'Aye, zir!' a thin voice called back from the sloop. Barely had the mate spoken than the first gun fired, and the trees rustled in shock as the deadly grape-shot thrashed at the hidden musketeers.

'We'll cut 'em to pieces if they try to rush us again,' Cashman said as he rolled over onto his back to reload behind a palmetto and a mound of gritty sand.

'If they do try to rush us, it might be a near thing, even so,' Alan told him. 'I've not seven men aboard the sloop, and the crew for a three-pounder is three men, so that's not two guns able to fire more 'n once a minute. With a whole lot of luck, they'll try to rush us once more, get cut up between your fusiliers and the artillery, and go sulk or something until the Creeks finally stir up their bloody arses and get here, damn their lazy eyes!'

Rabbit was tugging at his sleeve urgently, and he turned to her. She pointed up-river and growled something in her own language.

'Jesus Christ shit on a biscuit!' Alan cried.

The river was thick with dugout canoes, the canoes crowded gunwales deep with more Apalachee, and white men in dirty blue uniforms.

''Ware the river, Kit, we've been sold out to the Dons!' Alan warned. 'Svensen, use the springs and heave her about!'

He had to stand to direct the mate's attention up-river, and a flurry of arrows and bullets flailed the air around