The King

thrust out his legs to take the shock of impact, but it knocked the wind out of him anyway. He dangled for a moment against the hull by the gunports until someone reached over and grabbed him by the collar to haul him up.

He landed in a heap on the larboard gangway, almost getting trampled by sail-trimmers as they heaved on the yard braces to get the ship underway. He could barely hear the shouted commands over the roar of the fire aboard La Malouine.

'Ya awright, sir?' Cony asked, helping him to his feet, and disentangling him from the gant-line block and three-part loops of line. 'Christ, wot a mess!'

When he had a chance to look back at their foe, once Telesto was far enough to leeward that she wouldn't catch fire herself, he could see that the French ship was alight from taff-rail to the tip of her bow-sprit. Her upper yards were raining down in chunks like dripping embers. No matter that they were heavy, they were almost floating against the fierce, roaring up-draft of the fires. Now and again, there was a bright, blue- white flash and dull thud as a powder cartridge burst, or a loaded gun took light. Sparks would fly against a yellow-white cloud of powder, making La Malouine look even more like carnival fireworks.

Men dribbled from her, too. Men whose clothing, whose very flesh had caught fire, and swarmed staggering and blind in unspeakable agony, swathed from head to toe in greedy, gnawing flames like animated torches. They keened and howled, reeled and dropped out of sight. Or tumbled over the bulwarks of their ship to raise great splashes in the water alongside, where only a greasy smoke and a circle of foam marked their passing.

They dropped into the water beside others who floundered and thrashed in the glowing amber water, thrashing clumsily for any bit of flotsam to support them before they drowned. Pleas for help went unnoticed, cries to God went unheard, amidst all the screaming and wailing, amidst the crackle and roar of the flames.

La Malouine had had four ship's boats, all nestled on the tiers that spanned the waist between the gangways over the upper deck, and three of them now roasted like unattended steaks on a grill. The fourth was in the water, one side charred black and half sunk, reeking with smoke. Half a dozen men clung to her, and two sat on her after-most thwart, fighting the others to prevent them climbing in and swamping her. There was one large, grid-worked hatch cover in the water, and more men clung to the sides, while others who could swim splashed in its direction. Out of La Malouine's crew of roughly one-hundred-fifty men, not thirty could be discovered alive now.

'Oh, Christ, sir, look!' Cony shuddered.

Dark, triangular fins cut the glassy, illuminated red-and-amber waters. Sharks! Lewrie winced with a sudden cold chill as a fin went underwater just behind a struggling man. That man suddenly shot out of the ocean as if he'd been tossed by a bull, screaming louder than he could have thought possible from anyone's throat, setting off more panic among the survivors. Pale white fish bellies rolled with him as they seized upon his flesh, bit and shook like bulldogs to tear off huge chunks of living meat! More fins darted in from nowhere, summoned God knew how from the depths. More men thrashed and wailed as they were taken. The survivors who had been clustered around the half-sunk boat swarmed up on it in a wave, climbing over each other in their haste, as the boat rolled on its beam ends and capsized.

There was no time to put boats down. Telesto's crew lifted up their own curved, grid-work hatch-covers and tossed them in as Ayscough had her steered through the thickest pack of Frenchmen. The tail-ends of halyards, lifts and braces were slung over so that those that could might reach them and climb to safety, and life.

But it was futile. Three French sailors who could swim climbed aboard, shaking in terror. Perhaps three more made it to the floats. By the time Telesto had sailed on past, wore ship and came back into the area, there was no sign of living men around the overturned boat, and not seven altogether on all the floating hatch-covers, girded round entirely by circling fins and face-down bodies that one by one were taken under. There had to be a thousand sharks by then around La Malouine, striking at anything whether it moved or not-paddles, broken oars, charred flotsam or discarded clothing-it made no difference to them.

La Malouine burned for two hours before she went under, still a spark on the horizon by the time Telesto found her cutter and took her back aboard. She finally winked out around two in the morning, about the time Mr. Twigg finished interrogating the shattered remnants of her people.

Chapter 3

I should think we've done rather well so far,' Mr. Twigg said somewhat smugly as they held durbar, or conference, ashore at Bencoolen on Sumatra. They'd run into port before a punishing South China Sea taifun that had loomed up above the Johore Straits, and Telesto had been lucky to make a safe harbor before the full fury had broken upon them. The storm had passed, ravaging the settlement, but sparing the well-anchored ships. In its aftermath, a crushing humidity had settled in, along with steady rain and choking heat, and not a breath of breeze. If Bencoolen had been the arse-hole of the world before, the taifun had done nothing by way of improvement.

'And what is to be done with our French prisoners, sir?' Captain Ayscough inquired as he poured himself another healthful mug of lemon-water and brandy. 'The men don't much care for having them around, you know, pitiable as they are.'

'Perhaps it'd be a kindness to leave them here at Bencoolen,' Twigg said with an idle wave of his hand. 'A passing French ship may take them eventually. Them that survived, that is.'

They'd picked up ten terrified Frenchmen. Some had been bitten by sharks, and their wounds turned septic immediately, and the gangrene killed them. Not five lived now, and two of those were in precarious health. Lewrie suspected Twigg's penchant for cruel interrogation may have hastened the departure of some of those from life.

'Leaving them here in Bencoolen is no kindness, sir,' Lt. Col. Sir Hugo Willoughby granted. Alan's father had grown even older since he'd last laid eyes on him: his hair thinner and greyer, his face more care-lined and leathery. 'Hasn't been much of a kindness for my battalion, either, let me assure you.'

'You agreed it would place your troops closer to the action, I might remind you, Sir Hugo,' Twigg said, frowning. The vilely hot weather had not improved anyone's tempers, but it was almost too hot and humid to argue. 'As for the Frogs, I care less if all the buggers succumb. No real loss, is it, though I would wish for one or two to survive to bear the tale back to Paris. The effect would have been welcome.'

'And do you feel that same impartiality to my men, sir?' Sir Hugo snapped.

'Sir Hugo,' Twigg drawled. 'Colonel Willoughby. Unlike my utter lack of sympathy for piratical Frenchmen, I feel most strongly and deeply for the plight of the men of the 19th Native Infantry. And I assure you, I shall be most happy to extricate them from this hellish stew at the earliest opportunity. That moment has almost arrived, sir, but you must bear the deplorable conditions here for only a few more months. Soon, I promise you.'

'It had best be soon, sir,' Sir Hugo replied evenly, controlling his own temper with remarkable restraint, as Lewrie could attest. 'We arrived in mid-February with a grenadier company, eight line companies, one and a half light companies, and the full artillery detachment. And now, with Captain Chiswick and his half-company returned to me, I may only field eight. Eight, sir! Allow me to protest most vigorously that if this battalion is not removed to a more healthful climate, I won't have a platoon of men available to you by autumn! I demand of you, if you have any estimate of when we may depart this reeking cesspit, pray inform us of it.'

'I quite understand, Sir Hugo,' Twigg replied, on the edge of an explosion of his own temper, no matter how much the weather might dampen his fuses. 'Two months. Three months at the most, weather permitting, and you shall be out of here, at sea and in action.'

That created a stir of interest among the army officers seated behind Sir Hugo, and among the naval officers as well.

'You see, sirs,' Twigg continued calmly, getting a smug look on his face. 'I know where this fellow Guillaume