The French Admiral

themselves, now that they had an enemy on the run, wanting to be in at the kill before the cavalry earned all the honors. The mounted officer with them loped alongside them, waving his sword over his head and urging them on.

'Looky thar!' Hatmaker, the private soldier, called out over the sound of battle. 'More o' the shits.'

'Thort they wuzn't ta come down hyar 'thout they brung a whole passel of 'em,' Mollow said, pointing out the second company of troops that was emerging on the road, led by the third officer in blue and white with the tricorne hat. 'Virginia Militia, looks like.'

They were an outlandish-looking bunch of soldiers, some dressed in purplish long-fringed hunting shirts, some in castoff blue and white tunics over a variety of civilian breeches and waistcoats, some in gray or tan tunics without facings. They formed well enough, though, and came on at a trot, four columns abreast with ten men in each file, jogging forward to the north of the road through the tobacco plants as though they meant to flank the fighting and skirmish through the woods, swinging wide of the cavalry.

The change in sound from the south got Alan's attention, and he turned his head to see the first cavalrymen spur their horses and soar up and over those fences. The roars of challenge changed to shrill and womanish screams as they came down on the double row of chevaux-de-frise that had been hidden in the shadows. Mounts neighed in pain and terror as they skewered themselves on the sharp wood spikes. Those cavalry that had been balked and were milling about in front of the fence suddenly came under fire from Burgess and his men, and gaudily dressed troopers were spilled from their saddles, their useless sabers spinning in the air.

There was time for Governour to get off a volley as well, directly in the face of the charging infantry, punching their officer off his horse before they faded back into the woods for the first of their lines of rifle pits, bringing the French charge to a sudden halt as half a dozen more of their men were smashed down. They stopped to reload, and the quicker-loading and quicker-firing snipers in the woods knocked down more of them before they could raise their weapons to return fire.

'Should we stand ready for this bunch?' Alan asked as the militia seemed to trot forward on a beeline for their own low dead-fall log ramparts.

'Lie down an' keep quiet, now, but do ya be ready ta rise up an' give 'em a volley when I give ya the word,' Corporal Knevet ordered, calm as a man in church.

'Steady, men,' Alan seconded him, crawling along his line of sailors, who clutched their borrowed rifles with white-knuckled hands. 'You can get off two volleys to their one if you're steady. They can't face that. We're going to give it to them point-blank and run their ragged arses all the way back to Gloucester Point.'

And I wouldn't believe me for a second, he thought fearfully.

'On, boys, we got the bastards skinned!' the militia officer was encouraging his panting soldiers. He was off his horse, having left it in the rear, a heavyset, sweating man in a too-small uniform wrapped with a large red sash of command, with a gaudy bullion epaulette on each shoulder like a general, far above his true rank. Alan peered out from a gap between two of the mossy dead-fall logs as they came on, swishing through the weeds and the dried leaves of tobacco, their accoutrements jangling and thumping on their bodies, musket butts knocking against each other as they jogged shoulder to shoulder for comradely support.

'Now?' Alan asked Mollow.

'Not yit, be quiet, young'un,' Mollow cautioned. 'They's swingin' off ta our left. Let 'em get in real close fuhst.'

''Ware them logs thar!' someone yelled to their front.

'Shit,' Corporal Knevet groaned, realizing they had been spotted. 'Stand to! Take aim… fire!'

They stood up from behind their barriers, to find the militia company not thirty yards away, turned slightly oblique to them and stumbling to a halt at the sight of their weapons. The volley was a blow to the heart, right in their astonished faces, a ragged crackling of shots that took the front rank and the nearest column of files down, so close Alan could see the blood fly from the nearest men struck.

'Load!' Alan cried, not knowing where his first shot had gone. His hands seemed to have plans of their own as he cranked the breech of the Ferguson open, flipped up the pan cover, and dug into the pouch at his side for a fresh cartridge to rip open with his teeth.

'Face left!' the officer was screaming, waving a huge straight sword and shoving numb survivors of that fatal volley off to his left to lead out the unharmed files. 'Form two ranks!'

Mollow, Knevet, Hatmaker, and the other soldiers got off another volley as they shambled into order, quickly followed by Alan and his men, who were less familiar and comfortable with the rifles. Alan saw some of his sailors grounding their rifles to begin the process of loading from the muzzle, as they had been trained on the Brown Bess muskets aboard the ship, before coming to their senses, or being swatted by a senior hand.

More enemy soldiers were being laid out on the ground, groaning and crying in terror as they were hit.

'Front rank, kneel! Take aim… fire!' the militia officer yelled.

They got off a volley, and at that close range it was deadly, no matter that half the militiamen had not even bothered to do more than stick their muzzles in the right direction. Volunteers and sailors shrieked in agony as they were smacked down behind the log barrier, which suddenly seemed to be about knee high instead of waist deep.

'Charge 'em!' the officer screamed.

'Fire when ready!' Alan screamed back, trying to be heard over all the noise. Rifles cracked, his own slamming back into his shoulder, and the white-bearded older man who had been running at him was struck on the breastbone and was slammed backwards as though jerked on a rope to drop to the ground with his heels flying in the air.

'Better fall back ta the boats,' Knevet suggested.

'Once my boys run, there's no stoppin' 'em,' Alan shouted right into his face. The enemy charge was coming forward, bayonets pointing for them big as ploughshares and shining wickedly.

The men were fumbling at the loading and firing of their Fergusons, hands trembling like fresh-killed cocks at the sight of the enemy at the charge. If they waited to get off a last volley, they would be all over them, and he was still outnumbered.

'Boarders!' Alan howled, drawing his pair of dragoon pistols and dropping the Ferguson. 'Away boarders! Take 'em, Desperates!'

Alan brought up the first pistol in his right hand, aimed, and lit off the charge as his men began to surge forward over the barrier to meet the militiamen. He did not hear the explosion, but a ragged man with a half spontoon leveled like a pike spouted a scarlet bloom below his chin.

Alan dropped the spent pistol and transferred the other to his right hand. He fired, and a soldier in dirty blue and white almost up to the barrier gave a great silent scream, and his waistcoat turned red over one lung.

Then Alan was over the barrier himself, cutlass in his right hand and one of his own pistols in his left. A bayonet lunged for him, and he nicked his blade into the wood of the fore-stock, shoving it out of the way, then slashed back to his right, inside the soldier's guard. He sank his cutlass into flesh and bone on the man's right arm, knocking him down to the dust and the weeds, chopped downward again and laid his opponent's face open. Another man was close, and Alan brought up his pistol and fired. There was a soft pop, but that man's face writhed in terror and he dropped away, clutching at his stomach and dropping the musket that had been near to taking Alan in the chest.

There was a lot of screaming going on, but he heard little of it, for he moved in an unreal fog, a swirling, shifting kaleidoscope of colors through which he waded. Grays and blues and tans, flesh and blood, dark wood and bright metal. He discharged his last pistol somewhere along the way and had no idea where the ball went, found his dirk in one hand and the cutlass in the other as he slipped in under someone's guard and took the man in the abdomen. He was in among the trampled and broken dry tobacco plants, slashing about as though he was cutting a path through them to get at the enemy.

He came face to face with the sweaty, obese enemy officer with the glittering epaulettes, his hat gone and his eyes huge with fear and shock. The man brought up that heavy straight sword, big as a Scottish claymore, but Alan smashed it aside as easily as a feather and the man opened his mouth to scream before he turned to flee, dropping his sword in fright.

Alan seemed to float forward like some vengeful Greek god masquerading as a man in the Iliad under the walls of Troy; he brought down that heavy cutlass blade and cut the