The Guardship

seat.

The reins were still lying there, and George took them up, though he did not think the horse would respond to any command from God or man. He could see a streak of blood where the pirate’s bullet had grazed its flank.

The crazed beast was charging down the road, quite out of control, but at least it was running in the right direction, away from the house, so George gave it its head. He could hear the shouting and the gunfire at his back, growing farther away as they left the big house behind. He kept his eyes on the road. He hunched over, tensed, bracing for the tear of a bullet through his back. He did not turn around.

Chapter 32

THE VOICES were troubled. They did not think this was good anymore.

LeRois chewed nervously at a long strand of his beard. Something was making the voices upset. It was time to get back to the ship. The ship was safety. This wide-open country was not.

Those thoughts bothered him, but the voices were still soft and soothing, had not reached the point of screaming panic. He walked slowly through the house as if through a museum, glancing at those things that were not yet smashed or stolen. Men ran past, men screamed and beat delicate objects apart with their swords, men guzzled from bottles of wine and rum and whiskey, but LeRois just watched. When they had finished with this house they would go back to the ship. It was time.

At the far end of the hall there was a room that was as yet undisturbed, so he wandered down that way while the men had their fun in the sitting room and the dining room. He could see a wall lined with books, an elegant carpet, a sideboard with bottles. Perhaps he would sit a moment.

He stepped through the door, and his eyes wandered to the windows across the room. A striking view, clear down to the river, a dark band of water in the fading light, running through the fields on either side. It would be lovely, flickering red and orange as it reflected the light from this house, once they had set it on fire.

“LeRois?”

The voice was gruff, demanding. None of his men would speak to him that way. No one who wished to live would speak to him that way. He froze, unsure if his name had really been spoken out loud.

“LeRois!”

He jerked his head around. There was a man sitting in a winged chair, a book open in his lap. LeRois had not even noticed him. And the man knew his name. There was something gnawing at the back of his mind, something troubling, but he could not recall what it was.

“Are you LeRois?” The man stood up and set his book aside.

LeRois squinted at him. “Oui,” he said at last.

“Do you know who I am?” the man demanded. “Do you know who I am?”

LeRois just looked at him. The man had shouted. He could not believe it. This man had actually raised his voice in speaking to him.

“I am Jacob Wilkenson! I am the man who employs you! The one who sent Ripley to set this whole deal up, and now look what you have done! This cannot be tolerated!”

LeRois squinted again. The man’s hands were trembling. He was sweating. He shifted from one foot to another under LeRois’s gaze. LeRois could smell the fear-it was a smell he knew well. The man’s bluster was all merde, shit, nothing more.

“You work for me!” the man screamed, an edge of hysteria in his voice.

LeRois sensed movement at his back. He turned to find a dozen of his men standing behind him, watching the confrontation, and more filing in. They had paused in their destruction to see what was happening.

“All of you, listen to me,” the man was saying. “My name is Jacob Wilkenson. I am the man who has been buying your

goods. I am the one who has provided you with specie. We have a good arrangement, and I do not care to see it fall apart now. We can make each other very wealthy, but you must go back to your ship now!”

LeRois could not fathom what the man was talking about, and he concluded that he was insane. There was no other explanation.

The Vengeances began to step around Jacob Wilkenson, to fill the room, to encircle the man. Wilkenson in turn was forcing himself to stand more straight, to meet LeRois’s eye, but his bravado was running out.

“I order you to leave at once!”

“Order?” LeRois spoke at last. “You ‘order’? You do not order me.”

“Very well, then, I ask that you please-”

“Sweat him.”

The Vengeances were now completely encircling the man, watching LeRois, waiting for the word.

“Listen, you-” the man began again, and once more LeRois said, “Sweat him.”

One of the Vengeances pulled a sword from his belt and with an ingratiating smile poked Jacob Wilkenson with the tip.

“Ow, son of a bitch, stop that!” Wilkenson shouted, and stepped away. Then the man standing beside the first poked him and made him step back farther.

All around the circle swords came out and cutlasses were raised and their dagger points reached out and jabbed at Jacob Wilkenson. He backed away and backed away, but he was surrounded and the points reached out at him from every direction.

He stepped around the winged chair, trying to escape, but they were on his every side. He moved faster, but still the blades found him. He moved faster still, around and around the chair. He began to breathe hard. He began to sweat.

Then one of the brigands grabbed him and pinned his arms, and another pulled a knife. With a motion like skinning a bird, the man with the knife cut away Wilkenson’s coat and

his waistcoat and shirt to reveal an obese, white midriff, already bleeding from a dozen minor wounds.

The pirate that was holding Wilkenson pushed him forward. He stumbled and then flinched as another and another sword point jabbed at him, and soon he was running around the chair again, stumbling, heaving for breath, bleeding.

“Oh God, oh God, no more,” he gasped, falling to the floor. LeRois’s eyes fixed on the strange patterns his blood made on the Oriental rug as the fat man rolled in agony, bleeding from dozens of cuts. They seemed to swim around, swirling and forming more patterns before his eyes. He could not understand the man’s words.

One of the pirates stepped forward and with deft strokes of a dagger stripped Wilkenson of his breeches and socks so that he was lying on the rug naked, save for his shoes.

The voices were now screaming in LeRois’s head, screaming to be heard over the raucous laughter of the Vengeances, the gunshots, the breaking glass, the gasping pleas of this Jacob Wilkenson.

Two of the pirates hauled the fat man to his feet again, and again he was made to stagger around the chair. His white skin was streaked with blood, which ran freely now down his sides and legs. Bottles were smashed over his head and shoulders and gouged into his flesh. He was whimpering and pleading and praying, and that made his tormentors laugh harder still.

Malachias Barrett! Malachias Barrett! The voices broke through the din, screaming their warning in LeRois’s brain. The room seemed to swirl around, the faces undulating, the fat man coming in and out of focus.

He had forgotten! He had forgotten! But the voices had reminded him. To the ship! To the ship! All of this could wait, all of this would be here, but first Malachias Barrett had to die.

LeRois felt the scream rising from his bowels, and as the sound came up so his sword seemed to float out of its scabbard and rise with the sound over his head.

He charged forward. Faces floated by, surprised faces of his own men as they stepped away, and then the great fat man on the floor, a blood-streaked, terrified face, looking up at him, and then his sword came down again and again and again and he could not stop hacking away at the man.

Malachias Barrett! the voices screamed again, and LeRois stepped back and looked around, the dead man at his feet forgotten.