The King

Choundas was going over backward, but he hefted Alan high enough over his shoulder to heave him a few feet away, to splash into water deep as his waist!

Drowning! Lewrie's mind screamed as he tried to get his feet under him, tried to fight the rush and shove of another wave. Tried to find a breath of air for lungs thumped empty by Choundas' body!

Lewrie lurched erect, coughing on the water he'd taken in, his eyes burning with salt and his hair streaming down his face.

Choundas! The final thrust! DEATH!

Arm across his chest to defend, sword point held low at prime, the blade pointing down as the thrust came for his throat. A sting on his left hip as the smallsword's point bit him, and he was going over backward again, and could feel Choundas' feet near to his own!

He kicked with his right foot as he landed on his left hand and knee. The heel of his shoe took Choundas in the nutmegs, making him hiss like a serpent! Choundas bent over with the sudden agony, and Lewrie came up with all he had left.

Bright steel and sterling silver came sweeping up from the sea bottom, under Choundas' guard, under his upraised sword drawn back for a killing hack. Salt water streamed in a glittering arc as the hanger swept upward. Choundas flinched back to avoid it.

Lewrie could feel the shock in his wrist, up his arm, as his sword made contact, flicking point-low to point-high following the angle of the razor-sharp edge as he straightened his wrist and turned it. And Choundas was falling backward, his sword hand to his face!

A wave of surf surged high as Alan's shoulders as he got to his knees following that stroke, and Choundas was tumbling about in the water, rolling and tumbling shoreward like a piece of flotsam.

'Don't tell me I actually killed the bastard!' Lewrie gasped in surprise, retching saliva and salt water as he rose to his feet and shuffled onto the beach, sword ready at fourth slightly across his body should Choundas be shamming.

But there was red in the water, pink on the man's shirt.

And when Choundas managed at last to crawl ashore on hands and knees, his sword forgotten, he was screaming. Screaming and writhing like a worm in hot ashes, moaning and whimpering pitifully between his screams and patting his face. Rolling over and over, twitching like a serpent.

'Strike, you bastard!' Lewrie hissed, prodding that body with the tip of his sword. Choundas kicked out with his left leg and hit Lewrie painfully on the kneecap, and without thought, Lewrie slashed down hard into the back of Choundas' left calf, which raised another howl of pain and set him rolling and thrashing again.

'Sir!' someone was yelling. 'Sir, we done fer 'em, sir! They struck, sir!'

Lewrie stepped back from Choundas and looked up to see Cony coming toward him, limping from a sword-cut across the outside of his thigh, and blood matted in his sweaty blonde hair.

The beach was littered with dead and wounded, and the most of them French, Lewrie was happy to observe. The rest were sitting in a fearful knot, covered by his men's weapons.

'You failed!' Lewrie crowed at Choundas. 'You failed at everything you tried, you bloody murdering bastard! We beat you, understand me?'

'Alan, what's all the shouting about?'

'Hey?' he said, swiveling to see Captain Chiswick coming down the beach, leading two spaced ranks of his troops. His hat was gone, his sword was slimed with blood and he winced with each step, but he was whole. 'Bloody Hell, where did you spring from? Took you long enough.'

'Were you impatient for my arrival, dear Alan?' Chiswick said with a rasp of gunpowder in his throat. 'Had to clear this damned eastern palisade first. Had a busy morning, have you?'

'Tolerably busy, yes,' Lewrie replied. Now that the fight was over, now that they were safe in the hands of the sepoys of the 19th Native Infantry, he could allow his usual weakness to creep over him as he loosed the awful tension of mortal combat. A moment later and it was all he could do to stand.

'Much hurt?' Chiswick inquired anxiously after wiping his sword clean and sheathing it to come to his side.

'Pinked in the hip,' Lewrie allowed, sinking down on his haunches to let Cony undo his breeches and take a look at it.

'Not deep, sir,' Cony assured him as he laved it in the sailor's universal nostrum, fresh seawater. 'T'ain't bleedin' much, neither, so 'e didn't get ya nowhere vital. Make ya stiff fer awhiles, sir. Could I 'ave yer breeches, sir, I could bind it Er if ya got a clean handkerchief in yer pocket, sir, I could fother a bandage over'n it fer now.'

'The bandage, Cony,' Lewrie said with a shaky laugh. 'Damned if I want to go back aboard bare-arsed.'

Chiswick dug into his tailcoat pocket and offered a small silver flask, which Alan drank from gratefully. 'Urn, a lovely brandy you have there, Burge. I was half-expecting some of that corn whiskey I remember from Yorktown. Are those bloody pirates beaten yet?'

'Slaughtered like rabbits,' Chiswick assured him with a harsh laugh, which made Lewrie look up at his face. There was something odd about Chiswick now. Some new-found brutality he hadn't had when they'd put him ashore the night before.

'And how did your regiment fare?'

'Main well,' Chiswick replied, shrugging and taking a sip of brandy himself. 'I got my light company in a hellish predicament. Shot my bolt a bit too soon and had to melee with the bayonet. But the boat-guns cleared the way for us, and your father sent reinforcements to our flank. We lost about fifty dead and wounded, it looks like. Fourteen of them from my company, I'm sad to say.'

'Sorry to hear that.'

'Aye, they were damned good lads,' Chiswick added, nodding and getting to his feet. They could hear the pipes skirling as the regiment took the village at last, and the guns fell silent. They could also hear the braying of Lt. Col. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby as he issued some new command and laughed at something that amused him.

'Seems I'm still blessed with a father,' Lewrie smirked.

'Here, what's the matter with this bugger?' Chiswick demanded, toeing Choundas in the ribs, which brought on another bout of howls. 'Hmm, hamstrung neat as any Indian'd do a straying slave. He'll be a 'Mister Hop-kins' from now on, if I'm any judge. Don't take on so, you bloody bastard. You'll hang before it heals!'

Chiswick used his foot to roll Choundas over.

'My word!' Chiswick gulped.

'Kill me!' Choundas pleaded in a harsh whisper. 'Kill me!'

'Our captum done fer 'em, sir,' one of the sailors boasted.

Choundas had taken the hanger's edge across his lips, and the hard steel had knocked out several teeth- knocked them out, or cut them out, for the upper gums were laid open on the right jaw. The right cheek was pared back to show the chipped bone beneath, and the nose was hanging free on the right side. Choundas' right eye teared blood from the slice that had chopped it in half like a grape. And a ragged patch of eyebrow and forehead hung open, matted and gory with clotted blood and sand.

'Well ain't you the pretty young buck, now, Captain Beau-Nasty?' Chiswick drawled, once he had gotten over his shock. 'I say, Alan, you do bloody nice carving when you've a mind. Remind me to have you for supper next time we have roast beef!'

'Kill me!' Choundas croaked. 'Messieurs, je implore…!' Chiswick drew a pistol and checked the priming. 'No!' Lewrie shouted, reaching up to put a hand on Chiswick's wrist. 'Leave him the way he is. Let him live with it.'

'Yes, I suppose Mister Twigg'd prefer a hanging at that,' Burgess sighed, putting the pistol back into his waistband.

'I think he'd prefer M'seur Choundas go back to France as he is,' Lewrie replied. 'As a warning. An example of failure. Of what the next bastard'll get should they dare cross our hawse in future!'

'Well,' Chiswick nodded, seeing the wry sense to it, 's'pose he could always do himself in later.'

'My dear Burgess,' Lewrie chuckled, 'the way this poor wretch's luck is going, he'd probably miss with a pistol to his skull! Failure has a way of staying with you, don't ye know.' There was a dull boom that sounded across the harbor, making them turn to look seaward. A cloud of smoke wreathed Culverin as she sat higher and dryer as the tide ran out. But coming into the bay was a frigate.

'Almighty God!' Lewrie snapped, getting to his feet and doing up his breeches. 'Cony, get the hands back to