that little La Fitte brute. Fusilier clambered in first, then aided the girl. Balfa considered leaving Jean, not trusting him one inch, but Fusilier reached for him and hauled him in, while the mademoiselle knelt on the soleboards, coughing up water, as drenched as any wharf rat. Balfa spun his boat about, got Fusilier and Jean to seize hold of two oars, and started north, up the bay,
for escape.
'Capitaine Balfa!' Charite finally found strength to say. 'You must go back! Those cowards took all the boats. My brothers!'
A mere hundred yards off the beach, Balfa could hear the firing and the clash of blades, the desperation of French-speaking or Spanish pirates… and the encouraged battle cries in English.
'Naw, cherie,' Balfa sadly said, 'dere nothin' t'be done. Best we can hope is we get away. De game's done did.'
Charite knew it in her heart, too, as she crept aft near Balfa to cling to the boat's gunnl's and peer at the battle on the mounds.
'Helio!' she yelled, sitting up on her knees and waving as her elder brother appeared at the back of their mound's flat top, pistols in both hands, looking seaward, looking at her. He shouted something, waved as if to drag back the only boat still in sight.
Two horrid red splotches suddenly blossomed on his white shirt, the fine linen and lace punctured through- and-through with.75 calibre musket balls! Helio stumbled forward, dropping his guns, and almost knelt as if to recoup his strength… then pitched, tumbling and sliding down the back slope of the mound like a bundle of cast-off clothes from a rag-picker's barrow.
'Nooo!' Charite screamed, grief, protest, and horror together.
'Gotta go, chers,' Balfa urged. 'Vite, vite!'
Topman Willy Toffett scrambled up the slope of an earth mound, gasping, almost clawing with his free hand for purchase, grasping his heavy Brown Bess Sea Pattern musket in his right. He had been scared at first, but seeing so many pirates-some he even recognised from his ordeal in their grasp, their marooning on the Dry Tortugas -on the run, or dying, had perked up his courage considerably. A Marine ahead of him, Private Doyle, a fair-decent bastard for a Lobsterback, was kicking muck in his eyes as he scrambled, howling eagerness, his musket held in both hands. 'Hah… hah!' Doyle cried as he engaged a pirate who rose up atop the lip of the mound, bringing his bayonet-fitted musket level, thrusting at the sword-armed foeman's belly, but the pirate whipped up a pistol and shot him in the chest.
One of 'em! Toffett thought, panicked again as Doyle fell back the slope, head-down and instantly killed. He was one of 'em aboard that schooner, the one who killed Midshipman Burns, all those slaves in the water! Toffett howled inarticulately as he reached the top and swung his musket like a quarterstaff at the man's legs, knocking him off his feet long enough for Toffett to take proper hold and get into the drill he'd been taught four times a week since 'volunteering' into Proteus. Thrust!-partially parried by the bastard's sword. Recover. Thrust again, step forward inside guard. Butt-strike, up from below-right to level, the heavy brass-footed stock smashing into the bastard's mouth with a toothy Crunch! to send him sprawling on his back! Plant left foot forward! Thrust! Toffett screamed just as loud as the pirate as he sank six inches of triangular steel into the foe's belly, folding him up like a jackknife! Twist, stamp, and Recover! 'Yew murd'rin' son'fabitch!' Stamp! Thrust, into the enemy's unguarded throat! Lean on the musket like shoving a capstan bar, and twist and grind, saw back and forth! 'Yew filthy goddamn whoreson! That fer Mister Burns! That, fer them Cuffies! That, fer ol' Doyle!'
'Don't make a meal of 'im, lad!' Marine Sergeant Skipwith said almost in his ear, beaming with delight. 'Six inch o' bayonet's good as a yard fer his sort!'
And Don Rubio Monaster, whose aristocratic ancestors had been hidalgo since the Reconquista of Spain, and charged into battle with El Cid against the Moors, died with the taste of blood and cold metal in his mouth, and his elegant breeches full of shit.
Hippolyte de Guilleri could only hear a whistling noise in his ears as he scampered to the back of the mound, terror making an empty, cold pit in his middle, and his bowels watery. Time and motion slowed to a crawl as he saw Rubio get spitted, as he took hopeless guard with his sword to oppose the sailors and soldiers running at him, him alone as the last defender, all by himself, and it was so unfair, he didn't mean to kill all those people, and he pleaded with God that he was now sorry to have taken such perverse pleasure from killing, but hadn't it been in a righteous cause, for Louisiana, for France, so…!
Hippolyte stamped his foot and slashed with his sword, howling at the hard-faced men who swarmed at him from every corner, trembling inside despite his wish to be brave, go game.
Maman, don't let it hurt! he wailed to himself as his blade was easily knocked aside, and he saw the flicker of a heavy cutlass coming at him sideways. It cleaved like an axe into the side of his neck… and it did hurt, very much, a white- hot agony in his head, his throat, and a second was rammed into his groin with so much force that he was lifted up on tiptoes. It redoubled the agony, brought forth a scream through the bubbling blood he was drowning in, his last breath.
And then there was an officer in a blue coat standing over him as he sank to his knees struggling for air; raising a pistol in his face, inches from his eyes, and the bore was as wide as a cannon, and then there was a hot, reeking, scalding wind on his face, bright amber light like the fires of Hades then… rien. Nothing.
He ain 't a hop master! Lewrie wearily thought as he caught his enemy's blade on his, twisted his wrist so it slid off his own, jabbed under to force him back, then swept his hanger up to high-left to stop another slash, counter-sweeping under at his belly, again, missing…
Elegant as Lanxade dressed, he wasn't the product of some languid fencing-master's salle d'armes. He was skilled, quick, and steel-wristed, and fought with the desperate savagery of a back- alley brawler, the cut-and-thrust he'd learned at sea in close-quarter murder.
They swirled about each other, leaping, stamping, and clashing. All the other pirates were down, the schooner was theirs, and his hands stood watching their captain's fight. If he stumbled or fell, looked about to lose, Lewrie was sure that a dozen muskets or pistols would take Lanxade down the next instant. Surely, Lewrie thought, Lanxade knew he was a dead man even if he won, and, tiring as Lewrie was, the issue was in doubt! Swordplay was the most strenuous and enervating way to fight, and his one-on-one 'duel' with Lanxade felt like it had been going on for half an hour, not one or two minutes!
Lanxade clashed, drew him wide left, then whipped under, thrust with a mighty shout and stamp, but Lewrie met it, whipped off a flying cut-over, forcing Lanxade's longer rapier low and left, wide- open…!
Lanxade, panting and gasping as loud as Lewrie, instinctively cut right, was left high and wide, vulnerable for once, backed against the schooner's taff-rails, and Lewrie put all he had into a slash that would gut the bastard from his left hip to his right breast!
Lanxade bellowed rage and defiance, even as Lewrie's hanger cut his clothing open like a berserk tailor's razor. Blood sprang from a slash on Lanxade's left thigh, another gout from his right shoulder. Something went Twang-twang-twang! and Lanxade fell back with his sword hand on the taff-rail to recover, his stomach and belly swelling like he'd suddenly become pregnant, and Lewrie was stunned motionless for a second or two.
'Bloody Hell.' Lewrie gawped.
'Merde alors!' Lanxade snarled back, using that second granted him to glance down and see his waist-coat and shirt slashed open, and the severed laces of his whale-bone corset standing out like hedgehog quills! ' Sale chien!''Lanxade screamed, shoving off the railing, and brought his rapier up in a wild slash at Lewrie's head, which he ducked, tried to slash back
