The King

coast road for Plymouth, from Dorchester to Bridport and Honiton, skirted south of Exeter for Ashburton across the southern end of the Dartmoor Forest. Highwaymen were rife with so many veterans discharged with nothing but their needs, but so far they had traveled safely enough in company with other wayfarers.

Ever since leaving their last inn that morning, they had seen no one, though when they stopped to rest their horses they had thought they could hear one, perhaps two, riders behind them. The wintry air was chill. Snow lay thin and bedraggled on the muddy ground like a sugar glace on soaked fields. Rooks cried but did not fly in the fog that had enveloped them. It was thinning now, not from any wind but from the mid-morning sun, and sounds carried as they do in a fog, easy to hear from afar but without any true sense of which direction they came from.

They were two men on horseback, with a two-horse hired wagon to bear their sea-chests, driven by an ancient waggoner and his helper of about fourteen. They had gotten on the road just before dawn, and now stood listening, about halfway between Buckfastleigh and Brent Hill. A lonely place. A perfect place for an ambush, Alan thought. He cocked an ear towards the road behind him, trying to ignore the creaking of saddle leather and bitt chains.

''Ear 'em, sir?' Cony whispered. 'Sounds more like two now.'

'How far to South Brent from here?' Alan asked the carter.

'Jus' shy of a league, sir,' the grizzled old man replied, looking a trifle concerned. 'Maght be an' 'ighwayman, ye know. Lonely stretch o' road 'ere'bouts. 'R could be trav'lers lahk y'selves, sir.'

'Let's be prepared, then,' Alan ordered. The carter and his boy had bell-mouthed fowling pieces under their seat, and they took them out and unwrapped the rags from the fire-locks. Alan drew one of his dragoon pistols, checked the priming and stuck it into the top of his riding boot. That pistol's mate went into the waistband of his breeches. Finally, he freed his hanger in its scabbard so it could be drawn easily.

' 'Tis two men, sir,' Cony muttered cautiously as two riders hove into sight on the slight rise behind them like specters from the mists. They checked for a moment from a fast canter, then came on at the same pace.

'Stand and meet them here, then, whoever they are,' Alan ordered. He reined his mare out to one side of the wagon, while Cony wheeled his mount to the other side. The old carter kept his fowling-piece out of sight, but stood in the front of the wagon looking backward, with one hand on his boy's shoulder to steady him.

But once within musket shot, the two riders slowed down to a walk and raised their free hands peaceably. Alan kept his caution-they looked like hard men. One was stocky and thick, tanned dark as a Hindoo, and sported a long seaman's queue at the collar of his muddy traveling cloak. The second was a bit more slender, a little taller, though just as darkly tanned. He seemed a little more elegant, but it was hard to tell at that moment as he was just as unshaven and mud-splashed as his companion.

'Gentlemen, peace to you,' the slender one began, halting his animal out of reach of a sword thrust. 'We've heard your cart axle this last hour and rode hard to catch up with you. 'Tis a lonely stretch of road, and that's no error. Fog and mist, and I'll confess a little unnerving to ride alone on a morning such as this.'

Alan nodded civilly but gave no reply.

'Allow me to name myself,' the fellow went on. 'Andrew Ayscough. And my man there, that's Bert Hagley. On our way to Plymouth to take up the King's Service. You going that way as well, sir?'

'The road goes to Plymouth eventually, sir,' Alan replied.

'Then for as far as you fare, we'd be much obliged to ride with you, sir,' Ayscough asked, 'if you do not begrudge a little company on the road, sir? Four men are a harder proposition for highwaymen than two. Our horses are fagged out. Being alone out here made us push 'em a little harder than was good for them. That and having to be in Plymouth by the first bell of the forenoon watch, sir.'

'You're seamen, the both of you?' Alan asked, losing a little of his caution.

'Aye, sir,' Ayscough admitted. 'Down to join a ship. I've a warrant to be master gunner, and Bert there's to be my Yeoman of the Powder Room.'

'Already down for a ship, hey? Not just going to Plymouth to seek a berth?' Alan queried further. The man looked like the sort to be a warrant master gunner. He even had what looked to be a permanent tattoo on one cheek from imbedded grains of burnt gunpowder. 'I suppose there'd be no harm in you riding along for as far as we go. What ship?'

'Telestos, sir,' Ayscough replied evenly.

'Alan Lewrie,' he said with a relieved smile, untensing his body and kneeing his horse forward to offer his hand to Ayscough. 'That's my man Will Cony. Cony, say hello to Mister Ayscough and Mister Hagley.'

'Aye, sir,' Cony intoned, still a little wary.

Near to, with his hands empty of weapons, one hand on reins and the other groping like a sailor out of his depth on horseback at the front of the saddle, Ayscough appeared to be a man in his late thirties to early forties. The hair was salt and pepper, worn long at the back in sailor's fashion. The complexion matched as well; scoured by winds and sun, and pebbled with smallpox scars. But the man's speech was pleasant, almost gentlemanly, and the eyes were bright blue and lively.

'Telestos, did you say?' Alan said as they began to ride along together, smirking a little at the man's unfamiliarity with the Greek pantheon. 'What do you know of her?'

'She's an eighty-gunned, two-decked Third Rate, sir. Bought in-frame at Chatham in 1782.' Ayscough chuckled as they headed west. 'Completed but never served, she did. By the time she was launched and rigged, the war was over. And you know how eighties are, sir. Too light in the upper-works some say. Snap in two in a bad sea, some of 'em did. But Telestos had her lines taken off a French line-of-battle ship. Laid up in- ordinary for a while, then just got sold as a… trading vessel.' Here Ayscough tipped him a conspiratorial wink. 'Now she's to fit out as an Indiaman.'

'For the East India Company?' Alan asked, a little confused. If he was to join Telesto as a Navy officer, what was the need for subterfuge about being an Indiaman? And Ayscough said he was in possession of a warrant for a King's ship.

'That's all they told me, sir,' Ayscough commented with a shrug.

'Telestos,' Alan said, feeling cautious once more. 'That's Greek, is it not? I read a little Greek. Horrible language.'

'Why, I believe 'tis one of Zeus' daughters, sir. The ancient goddess of good fortune,' Ayscough replied brightly. 'A favorite of mine, sir. She's always treated me well. Do you know, sir, you have the look of a seaman yourself, you and your man Cony. Might you be on your way to join a ship as well?'

'Only going to visit relations near Plymouth,' Alan lied, not knowing quite the reason why he did so. 'I know little of the sea. Nor do I care to, sir. Life is brutal, short and nasty enough on land for most people, is it not?'

'Ah, I thought you to be, sir,' Ayscough said, frowning. 'After all, you have what looks like seamen's chests in your cart. Why, at first, I fancied you to be a sailorman, sir. Perhaps even an officer. I've heard tell of an Alan Lewrie. A Navy lieutenant, I believe.'

'Lots of Lewries here in the west, Mister Ayscough, but thankee for the compliment,' Alan replied, now chill with dread. 'One of my distant cousins, perhaps. My family is from Wheddon Cross. The Navy? God no, not me!' He pretended a hearty chuckle. 'I mean, who in his right mind would really be a sailor?'

'I see,' Ayscough said, pursing his lips. He put both hands on the front of the saddle and frowned once more, as if making up his mind. 'Bert!' he shouted, digging under his cloak for a weapon!

'Ambush!' Alan screamed, raking his heels into his horse's flanks and groping to his boot-top for his pistol. He sawed the reins so his horse shouldered against Ayscough's as he tried to thumb back the hammer of his pistol.

Ayscough got a weapon out, a pistol, though he was having trouble staying seated. Alan lashed out with his rein hand, kicked Ayscough's mount in the belly, making it rear, and shoved hard. The other horse shied away, and Ayscough came out of the saddle to tumble into the slushy road.

There was a loud shot and a million rooks stirred up cawing. Time slowed down to a gelatinous crawl. Alan jerked the reins to turn his terrorized horse, saw Ayscough rolling to his knees to free his gun hand and begin to take aim. Alan's muzzle came up and he fired first. Missed! Thanks to the curvetting of the damned horse! Alan dropped his smoking barker, clawed at his waistband to get its twin, all the while looking down the enormous barrel of Ayscough's gun. There was another loud shot, another angry chorus from the wheeling rooks, and Ayscough grunted as the air was driven from his lungs. He pitched face-down into the slush, the mud and the stalings from myriad animals, his pistol discharging into the road with a muffled thud, his cloak flapping over his head like a shroud. The back of it had been rivened with a positive barrage of pistol balls.