The King`s Commission

Chapter 7

There had been a lot more room in the boats on the journey back down-river. The man Tom/Red Coat had come along, just to see the coast region once more, and get a share of rum, most likely. While the Creeks and Seminolee went overland with pack-horses and mules, the men from Shrike were alone with their own kind for the first time in over two weeks, and it felt odd.

Not totally alone, even so. McGilliveray, still dressed Indian fashion, was with them, and Cowell in his new deerskin clothing, and three of McGilliveray/White Turtle's younger male kin and their traveling girls. And Rabbit.

At the last, Alan could not bear to leave her, and she could not bear to let him ride away on a spotted Seminolee horse and never be with her new husband again, and against his better judgement, he had let her accompany him. She rode as well as he did, it turned out, and she and the traveling girls did all the cooking for their party, delaying the day the soldiers and sailors had to fend for themselves again.

Not that he had minded the night on the trail, or the night in a Seminolee chickee at the lake where they had left their boats, for she had left him wheezing after their passion. She had never been in a real boat before, but adjusted quickly, and sat aft with him at the tiller of the twenty-five-foot launch, treating the whole trip like a honeymoon jaunt, and full of wonder at the life in the swamps, which she had never seen. And when Cony or Andrews fetched her an egret plume or some flamingo feathers she was as delighted as any miss just given a ruby bracelet. The hands treated her as deferentially as they would have a proper officer's wife, and she had begun to feel like a queen, or a chief's bride.

"You talwa!" she exclaimed, after McGilliveray had talked to her about what Alan did in the Royal Navy.

"Not a chief, dear," Alan laughed. "My captain is chief. I am his mikko. Tell her, McGilliveray."

With Soft Rabbit by his side, he felt charitable enough to accept the whole world, even McGilliveray and his ponderous lecturing.

"And an imathla lubotskulgi," McGilliveray informed her to her great delight. "A little warrior, too young to be an imathla thlukulgi, a big warrior chief. But he has killed many foes, haven't you, Lewrie? How many, do you think, so that I may praise you to the skies to her?"

"Well, I've fought two duels, cut one and killed the other. With swords, mind, not pistols at twenty paces," Alan bragged. "Damme, maybe a dozen more in boarding melees."

"Most impressive."

"And God knows how many with artillery," Alan concluded.

Soft Rabbit was thrilled that her man was such a bloody-handed warrior, and her awe of him, which was already considerable, went to new heights of reverence after McGilliveray translated that to her.

"She says she is honored to be the wife of such a brave young man, and is sure that your son shall be a man-slaughtering Hector as well, she'll make sure of it. Man-Killer will be his father and will teach him to be a warrior."

"Man-Killer? He'll be her husband when I'm gone?"

"No, you misunderstand. It's more important to Muskogee who your mother's relatives are," McGilliveray went on, happy to find an opportunity to preach. "The husband and father is not of the mother's clan, where she shall live. She's Wind Clan now, a very important clan in our way of life, and Man-Killer and all the males are her uncles, so to speak, and they fill the role of the father when it comes to rearing the child. You are only of their fire, anhissi, which means friend. What clan you are doesn't matter, as long as you weren't Wind Clan. Marrying into your own clan is a sin."

"She'll be well-treated, won't she?" Alan pressed.

"Do you really care, Lewrie?" McGilliveray asked, almost mocking him.

"Damme, yes I do care," he shot back, putting an arm around her, which she understood more than words, and she came up from her pad of blanket between the thwarts to sit at his side.

"Yes, she shall be well-treated," McGilliveray finally softened, after taking a long moment to consider Alan's fierceness on the subject. "She will have an honored place in my mother's huti, and in the clan. I suppose, technically speaking, she could never re-marry as long as you are alive and could come back to claim her. But since we both know that you shall never see her again, it would best if she used your absence at the next Green Corn Ceremony as proof that the marriage didn't take. Love-matches can be repented then, if they aren't working out, even if children have already resulted. Being with child will make her more desirable as a wife, since it proves she is fecund and able to bear children. She could do right well."

"I'd like to leave something for her, something to help her in future. What do you suggest?" Alan asked in a soft voice, and some of his concern and sadness must have communicated to Rabbit, for she tucked her head onto his shoulder and hugged him back, eyes downcast.

"As a sop to your conscience?" McGilliveray snapped.

"Damn you to Hell, McGilliveray, I've had it with your bitterness at being born only half-white or half-Muskogee. What passes between us is no matter, though, as long as the girl prospers. And my child."

There, I've said it, he thought with sudden wonder. I've claimed the brat as mine, and her as my responsibility.

"And what do you want for your child?"

"I'd like him to grow up English, frankly, with proper schooling and all. There's no bloody future in growing up Indian."

"Hardly possible unless our mission is successful. And that after he's been raised Muskogee for his first few years. Best let him be what he'll be and let it go at that, Lewrie. I'll be staying on with the tribe, though, and I'll see that he knows who his father was, and what his legacy is. I am truly sorry for you about this."

"Then give me a little help here," Alan demanded.

"Blankets and such for the present. Make her a rich little girl when she goes back to the White Town. Her own skillets and pots and all the needles and thread you can, that sort of thing. Any spare shirts you have. Maybe some sailcloth you can spare. For the future, I can tell her the value of money, and you could leave her some. Small coins would be best, pence and shillings, so she can buy from the traders who will come. Could you come up with about twenty pounds in change?"

"Yes, I could."

"At five pence here and a shilling there, it will keep her and her babe in style for years," McGilliveray promised him. "Good, then," Alan said, giving her another assuring hug.

The next noon found them at the mouth of the Ochlockonee River, in the long narrow inlet between the two arms of swamp and marsh that formed the hiding place for the Guarda Costa sloop San lldefonso. It was too soon to expect the sloop to be there, but they were close enough to deep water to have a good view of the ocean beyond and could spot her arrival when she appeared.

They made camp on the east bank, though it was not much to look at, given a choice. Their new Muskogee and Seminolee allies would be coming down the east bank, so they had to suffer in silence. The ground was half-marshy, half-sand-spit, strewn with sea-oats and dune grasses, saw grass and palmettos, and cypress and pine inland to their rear. It teemed with biting flies, mosquitoes and gnats, and but for the sea breeze would have been uninhabitable for very long. They pitched lean-tos of cane and palmetto fronds for shelter and settled down to wait. Cashman sent some of his fusiliers out on picket, and the young Creek warriors went off to hunt silently with bows and arrows, and to scout the ground.

While Soft Rabbit and the other unmarried travel girls set up their pots and gathered firewood, Alan and Cashman went to the shore and found a place to spy out the sea.

"By my reckonin', this is the day you wanted the boat to come back for us," Cashman said. "If she makes it."

"Should have been safe as houses out there, out of sight of land," Alan said, extending his telescope and patiently scanning the horizon.

"Well, Red Coat… Tom… was tellin' me that when they took Fort St. George at Pensacola, Galvez fetched a fleet of sixty-four ships from Havana for the job."

"Sixty-four?" Alan scoffed. "They've not ten decent sail of the line in the entire West Indies. Damn few useful frigates, either. Most were merchantmen, I'll wager. You can depend on my captain to come back for us, you'll see."

"Two weeks, three weeks, is a long time to lay out there and kill time, though. Seriously, if he doesn't come, what could we do?" Cashman pressed.

"Sail off in the boats, I expect. I did it once before up in the Chesapeake, and that was with river barges never meant for the open sea. I could do it again, a lot better than before, with the launch and the gig."

"It's a devilish long way to Jamaica, though, ain't it," Cashman grunted, pulling off his moccasins and spreading his toes in the dry white sand. "What, two days' sail to Tampa Bay, another two to the Keys?"

"Let's not go borrowing sorrow so quickly," Alan replied. "If things go that badly, it might make more sense to borrow horses from the Creeks and go overland to Charleston. If traders can do it, then there's a chance we could, with some help from our new allies. Tonight's the night Svensen was due back with the sloop. If he doesn't make it, then we might have to change our plans, but I'd give him at least two days' grace before I started worrying for real."

"'Nother thing that bothers me…" Cashman began.

"God, but you're a fountain of joy today, Kit."

"Notice we didn't come across any Apalachee on the way back?" Cashman droned on full of caution. "We gave 'em some muskets and truck, they got the drift of what we're doin' here with White Turtle and the Seminolee with us. I know they're a shattered lot, compared to the Muskogee, but you'd think they'd come out of the woodwork and give us a cheer or two, maybe try to cadge a free sip of rum'r somethin'."

"Hmm, have you asked McGilliveray about that?" Alan asked, now sharing a worry with the infantryman.

"Not yet, but I'm goin' to, right now," Cashman replied. "Never thought I'd be the one to say this, but I'll be tickled pink to see the sight of our Creeks and Seminolee show up with 'nough weapons and men."

"I'd like it, too," Alan agreed, putting down his telescope after deciding that not even an errant whitecap could be mistaken for a topsail on the horizon. "If the sloop comes inshore tonight and anchors here in the inlet, and our Indian friends are not here to take delivery of the guns, we'll be forced to wait for them with a target no patrol could miss."

"De sloop's heah, Mista Lewrie, sah!" Andrews hissed at the front of Alan's lean-to, where he had been sleeping with Soft Rabbit, after staying awake most of the night awaiting the arrival of San Ildefonso. He had barely lain his head down, it seemed, to sleep the morning away.

"I'll be right out," Alan said, groping for his shirt. It was the first night he had slept with her that they had not made love, or even removed their clothing. Soft Rabbit had gone to sleep without him hours before, after sensing that his duty took precedence over her.

"Ah-lan," she coaxed as he started to leave what little scrap of privacy they had in the lean-to with a blanket hung over the front.

"Got to go, Soft Rabbit, like it or not," Alan said. He gave her a quick hug and a kiss, then darted out into the dawn. It was not foggy on their sand-spit, though fog hung thick as the Spanish moss on the trees to their rear and inland. By the light of a few smoldering coals in the cook-fire from the night before, he could see that his watch read about half past four in the morning. It was false dawn, and the soft breezes coming off the sea were chilly. Waves rolled in and broke on the beach with a soft, continual hissing.

There was barely enough light to see where he was walking as he made his way down to the shore by the river.

"Where away?" he asked in a soft voice.

"Deyah, sah," Andrews said, pointing out to sea to the southwest. "Mustah missed de river in dah dahk un' come 'long de coast."

San Ildefonso ghosted out of the river fog, hardly a ripple of bow wave under her forefoot, and her sails hanging almost slack with the last gasp of the pre-dawn sea breeze. For a moment, Alan was worried she might have been a real Spanish Guarda Costa sloop, but he recognized several patches on her outer jib, and caught a lick of color aft on her mains'l gaff-the blue, white and red of a Royal Navy ensign.

"That's her, alright," Alan breathed with relief in his voice.

"If she's in the right hands," Cashman said at his elbow, which made Alan's full bladder jolt with alarm. "I'm keepin' my troops hidden 'til we know for sure."

"Good thinking," Alan replied, realizing that it was never good to see what you expected to see without making some preparations to be surprised by a clever foe. "Unfortunately, they'll expect to see some of our party. And me, or they'll turn about and sail out of here with the land breeze when it comes up. It's too late to be fooling about on a hostile shore with dawn in an hour."

"I'll leave you to it, then, Alan. Good luck."

Alan opened his breeches and stepped into the sea oats to drain his bladder while he had the chance. Then, gathering his nerves, he stepped out onto the river shore in plain sight and waved his arms at the sloop, hoping that Cashman's fear was not real.

There was no answering wave that he could see, so he lifted his telescope and eyed her as she came on without a sound on the still river, becoming more solid, with a bank of fog behind her on the western shore. It looked like Svensen at the tiller, but that did not guarantee that a Don officer might not be hidden, directing Svensen's movements.

"Damn you, Kit, now you've got me starting at shadows, too," he grumbled. He had to step out and call, softly "Ahoy the sloop!"

He hung the glass over his shoulder and waved both arms over his head. Someone at the bows waved back and the sloop altered her head slightly more bows-on to him in response.

"Ahoy derr!" Svensen boomed back at last, making every bird on the riverbank squawk in alarm and take wing. "Mister Lewrie, ja?"

"Svensen!" he rasped back in a harsh whisper. "Yes, it's me."

"Dat you, zir?" Svensen howled as though it was blowing a full gale. A bull gator began to roar somewhere off in the fog in response.

"Lieutenant Lewrie, yes!" he replied. "Svensen, not so loud!"

"Aye, zir, dis be Svensen! Und who be mit you, zir?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Alan muttered. "Captain Cashman of the 104th, Mister Cowell, Mister McGilliveray… Svensen, this is supposed to be secret, you know! Not so loud?"

"Vat, zir?" Svensen bellowed loud as the Last Trumpet. "Vat ship I from, zir?"

"Shrike, brig o' war, you noisy bastard!" Alan finally yelled back at full volume. "Now for God's sake, will you shut the hell up, and get your miserable arse ashore this instant!" The sloop swung about, let go her halyards and dropped anchor once she coasted to a stop.

"I'll have the damn fool's guts for garters," Alan promised himself as he motioned for the gig to be launched into the river. Within a minute, he was standing on a ship's deck once more, among his own kind, all of them beaming with relief that a hard and dangerous job was almost over.

"Zorry, L'tent," Svensen said. "But, by damn, ve been not a mile offshore all night, down't' coast here."

"Missed your land-fall in the dark, did you?"

"Aye, zir, 'bout five mile, I't'ink. Vas dark as a cow's arse, it vas, zir," Svensen said with evident relief. "Been vorkin' our vay off shoals und bars, und den der vind, 'bout vun hour ago, on us she die."

"You're here now, that's the important thing," Alan said, clapping him on the arm and forgetting his own promise to nail the ignorant bastard's hide to the main-mast. "Well done, altogether."

"T'ankee, zir!" Svensen expanded with pride. "Gott der cargo ready to hoist out, zir. Dem red-skins, dey gon' take it, zir?"

"Yes, they've agreed to aid us in getting Florida back. They haven't shown yet, but they're on their way, with pack-horses and mules," Alan explained. "I'll get the launch over here and we may begin stacking everything on the shore yonder. On the way down here they also may have picked up some canoes or dugouts from their friends the Seminolee."

"Vundered vat for we gif dem muskets, zir. Ja, ve start!"

The launch butted up alongside a few minutes later, and Alan was surprised that Soft Rabbit was in the boat. She scrambled up over the rail and came to his side, clad only in skirt and blanket. The sight of her beauty, with so much of it on view, made the hands stop their labors dead until Svensen gave the nearest man a kick and yelled at them to hop to it.

She gazed up at the mast, looking around the deck, and he realized that she had never seen such a powerful collection of civilized technology in her life, so far beyond her experience that it might as well be some shaman's magic.

"My ship," Alan said, tapping his chest and waving a hand about the deck possessively. "All mine."

She understood "mine," and looked at him as if he had suddenly stood revealed as a god from her perfect Upper World come down to earth.

"Cony?"

"'Ere I be, sir."

"Thank you for bringing… ah, her, out to the ship."

"My pleasure, sir. Thought she'd like ta see her, sir."

"Please gather up some things for her in a pack. Needles and thread, twine and some scrap sailcloth. What blankets you can find, some cooking implements, too. She'll have to go back to her people."

"Aye, sir, I'll take care of it, sir."

He led her below and aft into the captain's quarters, which were now his again, even if only for a short time. As she gazed amazed and laughing at so much wealth in so small a space, he loaded her up with an embroidered and painted canvas coverlet from the bed-box, the sheets and the blankets, the small round mirror from above the wash-hand stand and the hand-basin, too, some towels, half a dozen pewter plates, cups and bowls, and all the silverware. They tied it up into small bundles that could be strapped across a horse's back for her return journey to the Mus-kogee White Town. There was his sea chest in the same place he had left it, and he opened it to lay out more treasure for her, including a suede purse containing his small change.

"Money," he told her, sorting out and counting the coins for her. "White Turtle will tell you what it's for. Traders, come. You give to traders. Oh, devil take it, you don't understand a word I'm saying."

"Ah-lan," she whispered, setting aside her new wealth. She took his hand and placed it on her stomach. "Mine bebby, you bebby…" She waved a hand at her bundles and gave him a smile that made him feel light-headed, indicating that she understood how much he was giving her and the child to come. She raised his hand to cup one of her breasts, shrugged off her blanket, and smiled impishly at him.

"There's not time for that now," he said, but to no avail, for she turned her head to see if the door was shut, lifted her skirt and stretched out on the bare straw-packed ticken mattress.

"Well, just this last once," he gave in as he looked down at how beautiful she was. "Never let it be said I refused a lady."

He came back on deck about half an hour later, just as true dawn was making itself apparent. Nearly a third of the cargo had been shifted, and was stacked ashore, covered with sailcloth to keep the damp out of the muskets and powder. And still no sign of the Creeks to take delivery of it. Soft Rabbit was still flushed with the last rogering he had given her, now dressed in a loose shirt that came down almost to her knees, cinched in with a kerchief for a sash over her deerskin skirt. Alan had changed back into uniform and had returned his precious hanger to his left hip. Even plain as a lieutenant's uniform was, to her it was cloth of gold, even though she thought that his cocked hat was sort of silly, and laughed at him every time he adjusted it.

"'Bout anudder hour vor de cargo, zir," Svensen told him and knuckled his forehead in salute. "By damn, dat's vun pretty girl, she be, zir! Dey all vas like dat up de river?"

"Most of 'em, Svensen."

"Den by damn I'm zorry I not go mit you, zir. Been to der Cook Islands und to China vunst before de var. Sveetest little girls in der vorld, native girls ist," Svensen said in appreciation. "How long you't'ink ve have to vait on dese fellas?"

"No idea, Svensen. Once the cargo's been off-loaded, get a kedge anchor out, with springs on the kedge and bower," Alan said. "Load the cannon in both batteries."

"Loaded now, zir. Tompions in, vent's covered. Powder be dry, I reckon."

"Round-shot?"

"Round-shot und grape, zir. Didn't know vat to expect in de dark, zir."

"Very good. Light a coil of slow-match now, just in case, and tell off some hands for gunners. Andrews?"

"Yas, suh?"

"Send two men ashore and start dismantling our camp. Bring back everything the Admiralty'd miss. Oh, and see to helping Rabbit… Mrs. Lewrie… gather up my gifts to her and then put them ashore."

"Aye aye, sah."

They took the gig ashore with her gifts, and piled them all in one place for later packing out by horseback. Cashman wandered in from his picket line out at the edge of the trees and tipped his hat to them, which made Rabbit giggle and point to his cocked hat.

"She thinks they're hilarious, Kit." Alan shrugged. "Don't ask me why. Everything quiet so far?"

"So far so good," he agreed. "I've brought my pickets in from the marshes to a close perimeter 'bout fifty yards out. With this mist, that's 'bout as long a shot as we'll get. McGilliveray's warriors are further out, huntin' sign of their people, far's I know. You hear owls hootin' he tells me, that'll be them comin' back in. Well, damn my eyes if we didn't pull it off after all, me lad! Tis all over but the shoutin' at this point. Your crew see any Dagoes out to sea?"

"Not one sail in all that time. Almost uncannily easy."

"Knock on wood," Cashman said, grinning and rapping his knuckles on the butt of his fusil. He then strolled back towards the perimeter.

The cargo was finally off-loaded completely, the sloop swung about to direct its fire up-river, or overhead of the camp on the sand-spit to the marshes and swamps. The day dragged on until it was time for dinner, and the hands ceased their labors for "clear decks and up spirits" from a small puncheon of rum brought ashore for them. Rabbit and the other girls had a small fire going, and were almost ready to ladle out more bowls of the eternal sofkee, mixed with some dried venison they had been steeping in a pot of water. There was also some salt-meat from the sloop's galley, and biscuit.

The Indian girls looked up first, their ears more attuned to an odd sound than the whites. Owls were not known to hunt so close to the coast, or call anywhere in daylight.

"That'll be the Creek scouts coming back in," McGilliveray said. Cashman's troops were all back at the sand-spit by then, for the fogs had burned off or been blown away by a new day's sea breeze, and they were too exposed out by the edge of the marshes. Other than a few who stood guard from covert hides in the saw grass and palmettoes at the top of the beach, they were all queuing up for their rum and tucker.

"They're in a damned hurry if they are," Cashman said, going for his weapons. "Sarn't, stand to! Form, form open skirmish order!"

The Creek warriors came out of the woods at a dead run, first one who clutched his side where an arrow had pierced him, and then the last two, looking back over their shoulders as they ran as a rearguard for the wounded man.

Not a full minute after they stumbled into camp, a solid pack of painted and feathered warriors came loping out of the trees and across the shallow marsh.

"Apalachee!" McGilliveray shouted. "The bastards!"

"Take 'em under fire, sor?" the sergeant asked Cashman.

"Stand by…"

"No, Cashman!" Cowell pleaded. "We don't know why they chased these lads. They could have tried to raid the Apalachee just for the fun of it, they do that all the time. If we fire we might destroy whatever good will we've built here!"

"No, Mister Cowell, they're going to fight us," McGilliveray countered.

"Fire!" Cashman ordered, and the fusils cracked even as the first Apalachee arrows came arcing down among them with a sizzling rush.

There were some shrill screams as the leading warriors were hit and knocked down, and the rest checked their headlong rush and began to weave back and forth among the reeds in the marsh, leaping up as targets to draw fire, or dropping out of sight after they got off an arrow or a cane spear from one of their throwers. They seemed to dart forward and then fall back as if frightened of their own audacity, running in circles like the practice of a Spanish tiercio of pistoleers on horseback.

Alan ran to his fusil, which had been leaning on the cargo, and checked his priming. He took aim at a warrior in a bone-armor vest and let fly as the man paused to nock an arrow. The man whooped in pain as Alan's shot took him in the belly and the Indian dropped into the marsh out of sight with a great, muddy splash.

"Svensen!" Alan called over his shoulder to the sloop not sixty yards to his rear in the river. "Lay a gun on these bastards and shoot at the largest pack of them!"

An arrow whickered by him with a thrumming sound and he flinched as he pulled his weapon back to half-cock and began to load, rapping the butt on the nearest crate to settle the load after he had bitten off the cartouche and poured the powder in. Another arrow zhooped past his head, and his cocked hat went sailing off somewhere aft. Rabbit was kneeling near him behind the crates, and went to fetch it for him. She came back just as he stood up and shot another running man down in mid-stride, and as he sensibly knelt to load out of sight this time, she gave a blood-thirsty smile of encouragement, whooping in glee.

San Ildefonso's after-most larboard three-pounder barked, and the sound of round-shot and grape passing close overhead made them all go almost flat on the ground. The round-shot cut a warrior in half, leaving his legs and trunk standing, and his torso and head flying off into the trees, shattering against a cypress trunk when they finally hit something solid. The grape-shot frothed the water in the marsh and three more Indians screamed and erupted into bloody statues before they fell, which took the starch out of their courage. After a few more arrows were loosed at the encampment, and two more warriors had been clawed down by the fusiliers at over sixty yards, they made off back into the trees.

"Goddamn and rot the bastards!" Alan raged, snapping off his last shot at one Apalachee who stopped by the trees and presented his bare arse to them in derision. He laughed with delight to see that he had aimed a bit low and had hit the man on the inside of the thigh just a quim-hair from his genitals. "Try stuffin' what's left up your arse, you sorry shit-sack!"

"Nice shot," Cashman panted. "Nigh on ninety yards."

"Damn, but I like the fusil!" Alan shouted back with pleasure. "Now you give me my Ferguson, and I'd have taken his right nutmeg off!"

Rabbit brought him his cocked hat, now decorated with a long cane arrow with a flaked stone point and three raggled feathers at the other end. She pulled a metal knife from her waist and waved it in the air, making motions that he should go out there and lift some hair.

"God, it's just as well I can't take you with me," Alan told her, smiling so she would know he was pleased. "I'd love to turn you loose on some people I know with that thing."

"I should have known we couldn't trust the Apalachee, not with so much loot to be had," McGilliveray spat. "They once were a mighty people you could trust, but the Spanish have turned them into shabby dogs. They must have been watching all this time, waiting for us to get all the muskets landed, and for us to pull our pickets in."

"For all the good it did them," Cowell sniffed, clumsily trying to reload the musket he had snatched up and fired at least once.

Several shots boomed out from the marsh and the tree-line and they ducked down once more into cover. As Cashman crawled up to his furthest forward marksmen, the volume of fire increased.

"Damme, must be a platoon of 'em with muskets out there," Cashman shouted back. "Mark your targets and return fire, and keep your bloody heads down."

"Svensen!" Alan bawled. "Into the tree-line! Take your time and aim true, one gun at a time! Reload with grape and canister as you do so!"

"Aye, zir!" a thin voice called back from the sloop. Barely had the mate spoken than the first gun fired, and the trees rustled in shock as the deadly grape-shot thrashed at the hidden musketeers.

"We'll cut 'em to pieces if they try to rush us again," Cashman said as he rolled over onto his back to reload behind a palmetto and a mound of gritty sand.

"If they do try to rush us, it might be a near thing, even so," Alan told him. "I've not seven men aboard the sloop, and the crew for a three-pounder is three men, so that's not two guns able to fire more 'n once a minute. With a whole lot of luck, they'll try to rush us once more, get cut up between your fusiliers and the artillery, and go sulk or something until the Creeks finally stir up their bloody arses and get here, damn their lazy eyes!"

Rabbit was tugging at his sleeve urgently, and he turned to her. She pointed up-river and growled something in her own language.

"Jesus Christ shit on a biscuit!" Alan cried.

The river was thick with dugout canoes, the canoes crowded gunwales deep with more Apalachee, and white men in dirty blue uniforms.

"'Ware the river, Kit, we've been sold out to the Dons!" Alan warned. "Svensen, use the springs and heave her about!"

He had to stand to direct the mate's attention up-river, and a flurry of arrows and bullets flailed the air around him as he waved and pointed.

"Sarn't, six men this side of the cargo, use it as a breastwork," Cashman snarled. "Rest of you, stand fast along this dune line! Mister McGilliveray, you and your warriors up here, please. You, too, Mister Cowell. It's going to be warm work here in a few minutes."

Warm ain't the fuckin' word for it, Alan thought with a grim shudder of fear. Not two-score of us against at least a company of Dago troops and God knows how many Apalachee. Oh Christ, you could fit our little defense line into Shrike's fo'c'sle. We're all going to get knackered and scalped. "Rabbit!"

"Rabbit, go to the ship. Understand me? Be safe there! Go ship! Swim?" he said, talking with his arms and hands in a flurry.

She shook her head and snatched the dragoon pistol from his belt.

"Let's have this crate opened, and that'un there!" Cashman was ordering. "You men, load as many muskets as you can and stack 'em ready for use. With enough volume of fire, we may blunt 'em yet."

San Ildefonso cut loose finally with her starboard battery of guns, which had yet to be fired. Round-shot and grape-shot tore the river into a forest of water fountains, and two of the leading canoes were shattered into scrap lumber, pitching their screaming paddlers and warriors into the river. Svensen had shot his bolt, though, with that broadside, for with only seven men it would take time to reload three guns.

"Swivels, Svensen!" Alan screamed. "Don't forget the swivels! Cony, fetch the two swivels from the boats. One here facing the river, one for the fusiliers to play with up on the dune line."

With no more cannon being fired at them from the sloop, the savages in the marsh whooped into motion. Alan stuck his head up and saw that there were at least thirty Spanish troops with them, probably the ones responsible for the musket fire. The boats were too far off to land close; it would be the pack coming from the marsh they had to deal with first.

"Feel like a gambling man, Lewrie?" Cashman asked.

"Aye, but the odds are bloody horrible."

"Bring your people up here to be my second line."

"Svensen, keep that lot off our backs!" Alan shouted out to his ship, which looked so damned safe and snug out there on the water, where he really much preferred to be. Damn the cargo, he thought with a sick, empty feeling inside. If we can fight these bastards off, we're out of here like a shot.

They met the charge with a shot from a swivel gun that had had its stand jammed down into the firm sand. Bayonets glinted evilly as the Spanish came on to the sound of a trumpet, and the Apalachee howled their death songs.

"First rank, pick your targets… fire!"

A dozen shots, perhaps eight men struck down.

"Lewrie, fire!" Cashman yelled.

"Take aim… fire!"

He shot one Apalachee down, tossed down his fusil and snatched up a Brown Bess from the cargo that had seen better days, but the lock came back with a firm snap, and when he pulled the trigger, it fired, and a Spaniard shrieked in shock as his chest was torn open by the.75 caliber ball.

"Yu!" One of the Creek warriors said from beside him, letting fly with an arrow from an osage-wood bow. Each time he aimed and fired he chanted some incantation under his breath for proper aiming and a good kill, then expelled "Yu!"-he was getting five arrows for every shot from Alan's guns, and his prayers were working wonderfully.

The charge faltered just short of the dune line, with the fusiliers rising from cover to let off their last shots and go in with the bayonet, for which the Apalachee were not prepared. Half a dozen of them died howling on the steel, and then they were fading away, taking the Spanish with them.

"Sarn't, one squad to cover the marsh! Rest of you, fall back to the breast-works! And reload that damned swivel!" Cashman shouted.

They were barely in time. Svensen had been banging away steadily at the approaching canoes full of warriors, but Alan doubted if some 5th Rate frigate in the same predicament could have made much of an impression on that flotilla of dugouts, even with a dozen carriage guns. The boats were within twenty yards of grounding on the muddy river bank when Andrews lit off the swivel on the breast-works and stopped the progress of one boat by killing everyone in it with a canister-load of musket balls.

An Apalachee came dashing through the shallows, eager to fight, and Alan shot him down with his fusil. The Brown Bess took down the second one ashore, and then there was no time to reload. Cashman's men got off a volley and stood ready to receive with the bayonet. Alan drew his hanger.

One Apalachee dashed for Alan, screaming loud enough to curdle Lewrie's blood, but he found the courage to step forward and meet him, tempered steel blade against a wooden war club, which he beat aside, and glided his point into the man's throat as he drew up for a second swing. He picked up the war club for his off-hand to use as a mobile shield, cutting the thong that bound it to the dead warrior's wrist by hacking the man's hand off with his superbly sharpened blade.

A second man with a cane spear died with one feet of steel in his belly, and a third got back-handed with the war club, which shattered his skull like a melon.

A Spaniard came against him next, a man with a small-sword, a smelly dog of a man with one of those infuriating mustaches and a smug look of eventual victory. Their blades rang in the first beat of their duel. The Spaniard was fast, but he had a weak wrist, and Alan threw a flying cutover at him, forcing his blade wide. To keep it there, he binded with the war-club and as the Spaniard leaped back to disengage and regain an equal advantage, Alan back-handed the slightly curved cutting edge of the hanger across the man's stomach, opening his belly and spilling his entrails. He would have finished him off with another slash across the throat, but there was another Spaniard there with a musket and bayonet.

Alan stepped forward to fight him, but the dying Spaniard on the ground groped at him and nailed him to the spot, and the musketman came forward. Alan deflected the bayonet down to his left, but the man got all fourteen inches of it through his thigh.

"Goddamn you!" he screamed in sudden pain and this time got a slash at the throat, which almost took the man's head off as they both fell. The bayonet twisted and turned as the gun behind it toppled from the dead man's grasp, ripping Alan's leg into agony. He saw stars and almost fainted from the indescribable pain of it. A shadow loomed over him, an Apalachee with a war-club ready to brain him, and then there was a shot and the man was toppling back into the ooze at the river's edge.

Rabbit was there by his side, a smoking dragoon pistol in her hands, crying and weeping as if he was indeed already dead. She got him under the arms, and he could not credit such a little girl being capable of it, but she seemed to lift him and bear him back behind the breast-works and shove a loaded musket into his hands.

"You silly bitch, I'm bleeding like a slaughtered pig! What the hell you want me to do with this, for Christ's sake?" he railed.

There was a shot next to his ear that almost deafened him and he turned to see Cony and Andrews flanking him, discharging muskets as fast as they could pick them up. Alan wobbled his weapon up over the crates and leveled it in the general direction and fired, not knowing where the ball went. He sank back, feeling very tired and sleepy, and looked down at his leg. The Spanish musket and bayonet had gone away, which he thought was nice of somebody, but there seemed to be an awful lot of blood, and he was frightfully sure it was all his.

"Christ," he muttered, feeling his skin pop out cold sweat. His ears were ringing like Westminster's chimes, and that was about all he could hear. Rabbit's face loomed up in his vision as she held him to her breasts.

Worse things to look at when you're dying, I s'pose, he thought.