The King`s Commission

him as he waved and pointed.

'Sarn't, six men this side of the cargo, use it as a breastwork,' Cashman snarled. 'Rest of you, stand fast along this dune line! Mister McGilliveray, you and your warriors up here, please. You, too, Mister Cowell. It's going to be warm work here in a few minutes.'

Warm ain't the fuckin' word for it, Alan thought with a grim shudder of fear. Not two-score of us against at least a company of Dago troops and God knows how many Apalachee. Oh Christ, you could fit our little defense line into Shrike's fo'c'sle. We're all going to get knackered and scalped. 'Rabbit!'

'Rabbit, go to the ship. Understand me? Be safe there! Go ship! Swim?' he said, talking with his arms and hands in a flurry.

She shook her head and snatched the dragoon pistol from his belt.

'Let's have this crate opened, and that'un there!' Cashman was ordering. 'You men, load as many muskets as you can and stack 'em ready for use. With enough volume of fire, we may blunt 'em yet.'

San Ildefonso cut loose finally with her starboard battery of guns, which had yet to be fired. Round-shot and grape-shot tore the river into a forest of water fountains, and two of the leading canoes were shattered into scrap lumber, pitching their screaming paddlers and warriors into the river. Svensen had shot his bolt, though, with that broadside, for with only seven men it would take time to reload three guns.

'Swivels, Svensen!' Alan screamed. 'Don't forget the swivels! Cony, fetch the two swivels from the boats. One here facing the river, one for the fusiliers to play with up on the dune line.'

With no more cannon being fired at them from the sloop, the savages in the marsh whooped into motion. Alan stuck his head up and saw that there were at least thirty Spanish troops with them, probably the ones responsible for the musket fire. The boats were too far off to land close; it would be the pack coming from the marsh they had to deal with first.

'Feel like a gambling man, Lewrie?' Cashman asked.

'Aye, but the odds are bloody horrible.'

'Bring your people up here to be my second line.'

'Svensen, keep that lot off our backs!' Alan shouted out to his ship, which looked so damned safe and snug out there on the water, where he really much preferred to be. Damn the cargo, he thought with a sick, empty feeling inside. If we can fight these bastards off, we're out of here like a shot.

They met the charge with a shot from a swivel gun that had had its stand jammed down into the firm sand. Bayonets glinted evilly as the Spanish came on to the sound of a trumpet, and the Apalachee howled their death songs.

'First rank, pick your targets… fire!'

A dozen shots, perhaps eight men struck down.

'Lewrie, fire!' Cashman yelled.

'Take aim… fire!'

He shot one Apalachee down, tossed down his fusil and snatched up a Brown Bess from the cargo that had seen better days, but the lock came back with a firm snap, and when he pulled the trigger, it fired, and a Spaniard shrieked in shock as his chest was torn open by the.75 caliber ball.

'Yu!' One of the Creek warriors said from beside him, letting fly with an arrow from an osage-wood bow. Each time he aimed and fired he chanted some incantation under his breath for proper aiming and a good kill, then expelled 'Yu!'-he was getting five arrows for every shot from Alan's guns, and his prayers were working wonderfully.

The charge faltered just short of the dune line, with the fusiliers rising from cover to let off their last shots and go in with the bayonet, for which the Apalachee were not prepared. Half a dozen of them died howling on the steel, and then they were fading away, taking the Spanish with them.

'Sarn't, one squad to cover the marsh! Rest of you, fall back to the breast-works! And reload that damned swivel!' Cashman shouted.

They were barely in time. Svensen had been banging away steadily at the approaching canoes full of warriors, but Alan doubted if some 5th Rate frigate in the same predicament could have made much of an impression on that flotilla of dugouts, even with a dozen carriage guns. The boats were within twenty yards of grounding on the muddy river bank when Andrews lit off the swivel on the breast-works and stopped the progress of one boat by killing everyone in it with a canister-load of musket balls.

An Apalachee came dashing through the shallows, eager to fight, and Alan shot him down with his fusil. The Brown Bess took down the second one ashore, and then there was no time to reload. Cashman's men got off a volley and stood ready to receive with the bayonet. Alan drew his hanger.

One Apalachee dashed for Alan, screaming loud enough to curdle Lewrie's blood, but he found the courage to step forward and meet him, tempered steel blade against a wooden war club, which he beat aside, and glided his point into the man's throat as he drew up for a second swing. He picked up the war club for his off-hand to use as a mobile shield, cutting the thong that bound it to the dead warrior's wrist by hacking the man's hand off with his superbly sharpened blade.

A second man with a cane spear died with one feet of steel in his belly, and a third got back-handed with the war club, which shattered his skull like a melon.

A Spaniard came against him next, a man with a small-sword, a smelly dog of a man with one of those infuriating mustaches and a smug look of eventual victory. Their blades rang in the first beat of their duel. The Spaniard was fast, but he had a weak wrist, and Alan threw a flying cutover at him, forcing his blade wide. To keep it there, he binded with the war-club and as the Spaniard leaped back to disengage and regain an equal advantage, Alan back-handed the slightly curved cutting edge of the hanger across the man's stomach, opening his belly and spilling his entrails. He would have finished him off with another slash across the throat, but there was another Spaniard there with a musket and bayonet.

Alan stepped forward to fight him, but the dying Spaniard on the ground groped at him and nailed him to the spot, and the musketman came forward. Alan deflected the bayonet down to his left, but the man got all fourteen inches of it through his thigh.

'Goddamn you!' he screamed in sudden pain and this time got a slash at the throat, which almost took the man's head off as they both fell. The bayonet twisted and turned as the gun behind it toppled from the dead man's grasp, ripping Alan's leg into agony. He saw stars and almost fainted from the indescribable pain of it. A shadow loomed over him, an Apalachee with a war-club ready to brain him, and then there was a shot and the man was toppling back into the ooze at the river's edge.

Rabbit was there by his side, a smoking dragoon pistol in her hands, crying and weeping as if he was indeed already dead. She got him under the arms, and he could not credit such a little girl being capable of it, but she seemed to lift him and bear him back behind the breast-works and shove a loaded musket into his hands.

'You silly bitch, I'm bleeding like a slaughtered pig! What the hell you want me to do with this, for Christ's sake?' he railed.

There was a shot next to his ear that almost deafened him and he turned to see Cony and Andrews flanking him, discharging muskets as fast as they could pick them up. Alan wobbled his weapon up over the crates and leveled it in the general direction and fired, not knowing where the ball went. He sank back, feeling very tired and sleepy, and looked down at his leg. The Spanish musket and bayonet had gone away, which he thought was nice of somebody, but there seemed to be an awful lot of blood, and he was frightfully sure it was all his.

'Christ,' he muttered, feeling his skin pop out cold sweat. His ears were ringing like Westminster's chimes, and that was about all he could hear. Rabbit's face loomed up in his vision as she held him to her breasts.

Worse things to look at when you're dying, I s'pose, he thought.

IV Chapter 1