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tension, I lifted its loop to release the animal, hoping it would swim away up the Nile.
Instead the crocodile exploded half out of the water, the loose chain singing like a whip. I ducked as it whickered by. The animal fell back into the lagoon, realized it was free, and suddenly was charging full tilt, but not toward me. His agonized eyes had spied the men on shore watching our struggle. The crocodile came out of the water after them, great feet splayed out as it charged, spray flying. Screaming, they ran.
A crocodile can gallop short distances as fast as a horse. He took one of my tormentors and broke him nearly in two with a furious snap of its jaws, then dropped that one and chased the next, straight toward the fort. The man was shouting a warning.
I didn’t have much time.
I was damned if I’d leave it all to Silano. I’d kill him if I could, and if not I’d torment him with what he’d lost. I’d take the scroll and throw it into the deepest hole in the Mediterranean. Wounded by the animal’s teeth, dripping blood, I limped up the path, following the trail of swept sand where the crocodile’s mighty tail had thrashed. Cautiously, I paused at the small sally gate we’d come out of. The crocodile had smashed right through and was in the courtyard, men beginning to shoot. A cannon went off in alarm. I went inside myself but kept to the shadows, creeping around the perimeter to my quarters. There I grabbed my longrifle and peeked out the door. The crocodile was down, a hundred men blazing at it, chunks of another human trapped in its colossal jaws. Then I aimed, but not at the beast. Instead I put the sights on a lantern in the stables across the courtyard, which in turn weren’t far from the magazine.
I was going to set the fort on fire.
It was one of the prettiest shots I ever made, breath held, finger squeezing. I had to fire the length of the parade ground, through an open window, and pluck down the lantern without extinguishing its wick. It fell, broke, and flames began to dance in the hay. A weird light began to illuminate the scales and saber-like teeth of the monster, even as men began shouting, “Fire, fire!” Horses were screaming.
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No eyes were on me.
So I limped again and got back to the room where I’d been poisoned. Along the way, I seized one of the picks used for construction of the fort.
The scroll, damn him, was gone.
I glanced out. Flames were shooting higher and neighing horses were stampeding from the stable, adding to the chaos. I could hear officers shouting. “The magazine! Wet down the magazine!” I loaded and fired again, hitting someone trying to organize a chain of buckets from the fort’s well. When he fell the bucket brigade scattered in confusion, not knowing what was going on. Shots went off as sentries fired in all directions.
Astiza burst in dressed in her nightclothes, her hair undone, eyes wide with confusion. She took in my bloody leg, soaked clothing, and the empty table where I’d had the scroll.
“Ethan! What have you done?”
“You mean, what has your ex-lover Silano done! He poisoned me and tried to feed me to that reptile out there! Don’t think you wouldn’t have been next, once he’d had you and tired of you. He wants that book all for himself. Not for science, not for Bonaparte, and certainly not for us. It’s driven him mad!”
“I saw him running for the lookout tower with Bouchard. They slammed the door and locked themselves in.”
“He’s going to wait and let the garrison finish me. Maybe you, too.” More shouting, and now bullets began pattering the headquarters building where we huddled.
“We can’t let him disappear with that book!” she said.
“Then why did we find it in the first place?”
“Why do people learn anything? It’s our nature!”
“Not my nature.” I grabbed her. “Are you with me?”
“Of course.”
“Then if we can’t have the scroll, we’ll break the key that translates it and give him a worthless book. Is there a way out of this rat hole?”
“There’s an officer’s armory behind that other door, and some powder inside.”
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“You think we can fight the whole garrison?”
“We can blow a hole through the back wall.” I smiled. “Lord, you are beautiful under pressure.” It was a heavy locked door but I fired once and then swung the pick. It gave way. This was not the main magazine, just the officers’
arms, but by Thoth there were two kegs of powder. I uncorked one and set a trail of powder to the main room, then put both kegs against the outer wall. “Now we take the stone for ourselves.”
“You can’t take that! It weighs too much!” I hefted the rolling pin I’d put in my satchel as a decoy and grinned.
“Ben Franklin says I can.”
Publishing always seemed a messy trade to me, but Franklin claimed it was like printing money. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and limped back to the room with the Rosetta Stone, lurid firelight outside throwing shadows. Soldiers in the courtyard had formed a long chain all the way down to the river, buckets passed over the tail of the
