1635: A Parcel of Rogues - eARC (37 page)

Chapter 41

There was a pain in Finnegan’s right ear that told him he was going to be at least hard of hearing there forever. Every part of the plan had been good, right up to the point where he just went ahead with it while there was an angry mob breathing down his neck.

It could still have worked, but apparently someone inside the house knew his business better than Finnegan did. Oh, he’d had a moment of utter rage at the inbred up-country cow-fucking collection of bollockses for not carrying the breaches, but then his own lads had been in and driving them, and done no better. How many were left?

That milk’s spilt, stop crying.
“Tully! O’Hare! Mulligan!” He had no idea what his voice was sounding like, those were the three he could see. Hopefully they could hear—

All three looked to him. His mind went blank. Most of the crowd had broken and run when Burke started playing with that fancy new shotgun. There were still a few brave souls ducking out of doorways, throwing stones and so forth, but the drovers were back in the mews, cowering under the windows so as not to get shot, and some bright lad had put the buffcoated and helmeted Irishmen to holding the gateway to the street. Mostly the rocks missed, stout leather and steel hats turned what hit, and a shot or two kept the
pleidhcíocht
from the townsfolk to a dull roar. It was surprising how quickly a fucked situation could turn around, if you just kept your head, and Finnegan decided he’d find out who’d kept his and see him rewarded. After all, he never told the boys he was infallible, and the trick to leading
torai
wasn’t so much strength and leadership as cunning and trust. The smarter ones appreciated it, and the fools followed the smart.

And right now, a smart man would be
leaving.
“One of you, find a close that leads away. We’ve watched enough of these back ways someone must know a way out.”

Three nods.

He looked back at the mews. Two of his own boys were crouched behind the narrow buttresses so many of the walls in this part of town had to have, with being built on hills. They were calm and steady, taking turns to fire into the stable at the end. There was someone in there who’d held, and held well. Far too much cover with stalls and horses’ mangers, and more than a couple of frightened horses. He’d seen
that
for a bad bargain as soon as he arrived. No way that way, if it was defended. Into the house was out, too. The house had been warned, had defended the breaches, had organized well enough to hold in spite of grenadoes. Had even stopped one of the throwers, leaving a shambles in the mews and probably taken the fire out of the assaults with it.

They’d lose a few getting out, that was sure. There were still shots coming from the house. Nothing with modern weapons, just the occasional bullet. There was enough cover about that the main danger was flying chips of brick.

Pursuit? No, not right away. They’d gotten three grenadoes in there. There’d be wounds to lick.

“Chief?” It was O’Hare. “The next close along has but three lads in it. We can rush them, and then it’s two turnings and we’re on our way down the Grassmarket.”

Finnegan paused before answering. He’d made one snap decision today and got heartily buggered by it. Another?
No, run away is the snap decision that always works
. “Make ready,” he snapped. “We go on my shout.”

He checked his gun. He’d only fired twice. Still another four. It was hard, in the press of it, to remember he didn’t have to reload. He leaned back into the corner between the Mackay house and the wall that held the archway into the mews. “Make ready!” he shouted again, bracing himself to spring. “Look to the archway, we all go at once! Follow the man in front and devil take him that stands in our way! Now go!
Fág a’ Bealach!
”

The next minute was a madness of running and dark closes, a Scotsman looking shocked as he fired into the man’s belly, another going down to a shoulder-charge and near tripping him as he ran.

Came the Cowgate, he had eight men, fifteen of the drovers, and barely the wind to talk.

“Right,” he said, after a moment whooping air into his lungs. “You lads.”

It was time for hard riding and heads down. They didn’t need the encumbrance. He pulled the purse he’d been carrying from inside his coat. The leather of the little pouch was damp with sweat. “Your pay,” he said, throwing it to one of the bigger fellows. “The pay for them as died is in there too. On your conscience. Divide it as you will, and scatter. This day’s work is done. We lost, and we’re all the bastards of failure this day. Don’t let yourselves be found.”

Nods all round and the drovers made off.

“Still a crowd, Chief,” Tully said.

Finnegan had seen that. They’d get a hundred yards, if that, before they were mired in angry Scotsmen. And he’d seen, too, the herd of cattle that some optimistic bastard was trying to drive out of town by the Cowgate. Clearly he wasn’t the biggest fool in Edinburgh today; to get what looked like forty head out of town today was to take the nearest gate and go around, no matter where they were bound. He could do the same, too, but there was an easier solution, and a more satisfying one. “Grenado!” he barked, holding out his hand.

“Chief?” Tully was frowning.

Finnegan took the last bomb anyway, lit it and hurled it as far along the Cowgate as he could. The explosion cleared some of the crowd—nothing like explosions and broken iron to put flight in a bystander. What it certainly did was frighten the living daylights out of the herd of cattle who turned and ran. And where a herd, however small, of Scots highland cattle wish to run, there is no stopping the bastards. Even with his ears shocked again by the report of the grenado, the screaming and the din of hooves was terrible. There was a small satisfaction, when having a bad day, in making sure someone had it
worse
.

“Gentlemen,” Finnegan said, as the ringing in his ears died down, “the way is clear. To the White Hart for our horses, and to Balgreen for our remounts. We are, in a word,
fucked.
I say we take what we have and be away, and on the ride back, be thinking. Every idea for where we go now, I will hear it. I much suspect the earl is no longer minded to be our master.”

The faces of his men were torn between horror and awe. To a man, they were from cattle-farming country. Cattle run wild were at the very least a problem, and they’d all have grown up knowing someone who died that way. It was the horror closest to their childhood homes.
Yes, you pack of scoundrels, I did
. Cunning and trust, yes, but scaring the living shit out of the bastards had its place, too.

* * *

“I hear horses,” Julie said. Of those in the house, she was the only one who had been far enough away not to have any ringing in her ears from the explosions. The footmen and stable hands were clearing wreckage, nailing up boards on the broken windows, making things secure again. Meg wasn’t back to lay out the dead, but two of the older girls knew the business, and had sent for older women who could take proper charge. The dead would lie until tomorrow. Today, and she was not minded to hear any argument, was for
revenge
. She’d thought, all her life, that tales of old-time hillbilly feuds were tales of stupidity written in thuggery by madmen. She’d thought that the Hatfields and the McCoys had been vicious fools, answering murder with murder.

Now, though, now.
Alexi
. In the morning-room, being fitted for his shroud, his life’s blood spattered across the walls, her father-in-law.

Oh, she’d played tricks with herself when she first went to war. Thinking of exes who’d made her mad. Or, when that trick started to seem childish,
just targets
. Before this day was out she’d look every last one of the bastards in the eye through her scope and watch the lights go out. No courts, no bail, no Tolbooth, no waiting for the ageing bores in their black gowns to argue it out and send them to hang. These bastards had the protection of the powerful. They would not live to run and hide behind their master. She’d think on the master another time. Today, there were some fuckers who just needed killing.

There was a fine trembling in the tips of her fingers, but not enough to get in the way of checking her rifle. She’d seen to her gun before she put it away, and that had been weeks ago. With no air-conditioning, no heating, and the damp that was never far away in Scotland, everything needed a clean and check. So far, all was well.

“I said, horses,” she repeated, a little louder.

“Heard you the first time,” Darryl called, from somewhere in the hallway. “Bunch of guys with weapons out in the street. They’re clearing the rioters.”

Julie nodded. Campbell was supposed to be sending men. And he had a commission of justiciary. So this was the cops, arriving after it was all over.

“Campbell’s men,” Alex said, echoing her assumption. “I’ll speak with them.” He rose to head out into the hallway.

“Ain’t you on the lam?” Darryl asked.

“My wife gave surety for my appearance at court, Darryl,” Alex said, “and since the pursuer in my case is now a wanted man himself, I doubt it will be any long hearing.” The sarcasm in his voice was withering. It was the little things that told, Julie found. Gayle had noticed that Oliver got more stoical and calm when he was upset. Kind of subtle, but a good tell to those who knew him. Julie had long known that her man, one of the most direct and blunt guys she’d ever known—cheerful and good-natured and not shy about it, and straight to the point when he was angry—got sarcastic only when he was upset. His father had been the other way around. Oblique and witty most of the time, blunt when pissed off, or in quiet moments of strong emotion. She’d treasure the ones she’d seen, when Alexi was sick. It was a mercy the man hadn’t lived to see his youngest granddaughter hurt. He’d doted on all his grandchildren. Alex having four half-siblings altogether and all of them married and settled, he was the elder of a fair-sized tribe. Julie meant for him to have his revenge too. She’d thought the old guy was an absolute sweetheart, and Alexi had loved him too.

No. Can’t cry. Need my eyes to shoot
.

Alex came back in. “Well,” he said, “I’ve had the good fortune to meet the earl o’ Argyll. The sickness in London took his father yesterday. I gave my condolences.”

“He ain’t worried you’re on the lam?” Darryl asked.

“The matter never arose. He was at pains to assure me that wherever I chanced to take myself for the rest of today, he and his men would be busy about the Cowgate and Grassmarket and not able to concern themselves with the surrounding country.”

The Cromwells came in at that moment. Gayle was the first to speak. “Well, if that ain’t a promise to look the other way, I never heard one.”

“Aye,” Alex said. “I hinted as much that we might need it.”

“Are you sure of this?” Cromwell’s tone seemed a little worried. He’d had a stint in charge of law enforcement, after all, or as near as seventeenth-century England got. What little Julie had seen of the fen country, she could well imagine he’d had trouble with feuds there too. Not that she intended letting this one turn into some generations-long cycle of murder.
This ends today.

“Aye,” Alex said again. “I ken richt well that vengeance belongs tae God. And I mind Finnegan and his pack o’ filthy hounds will feel the vengeance o’ the Almighty. Oor part is to put doon yon rabid beasts afore they kill again.”

Julie shivered. Alex’s Scots burr had faded in the time they’d been together. Her friends back in Grantville teased her that she was picking it up a little. All part, she thought, of them growing together. If Alex was back to having a serious accent, he was feeling his roots, and they were the same roots as the Appalachian maniacs whose tales of feud she’d once thought so nasty.

Her scope mounted, she realized she’d not been able to zero it properly since the last time she’d had it out, for that meeting with Montrose and Campbell. She’d have to get closer than she usually did, was all. If the scope was off, she could compensate. Unless it got knocked again in the ride to Balgreen. She stopped to think about it. Sure, it was a good and durable hunting scope. She’d had years of good service out of it. She had, however, had any amount of trouble trying to shoot when it had gotten knocked. And if the bastards tried to run, she’d probably be better with iron sights anyway—
fuck it.
A moment’s work to get it off and put it back in its box. Rifle. Sling. Boxes of ammo into her shoulder bag.

“Ready to go,” she said, standing up and striding into the hallway.

Only Alex didn’t flinch from the expression on her face. “Aye, love,” he said, the barest ghost of a smile on his face.

“Oliver, can you and Gayle and Vicky stay here and mind the place while Alex and I deal with this? I want Darryl, Sergeant Hamilton and Major Lennox with us. Thomas and maybe one of his boys to hold the horses.”

“You’ve a plan?” Alex asked.

“Yep.” She nodded. “We catch up with them at Balgreen. They’ll be packing and getting ready to skedaddle, back to London or off to hide somewhere. We don’t catch them there, we’ve missed them.”

“You mean to assault wherever they’re staying?”

“Nope.” She’d been thinking as she worked on her rifle. She didn’t have all the details, but she could feel it taking shape in her head. There was a four-mile ride. They’d not be able to mount any kind of assault, not unless they could persuade Campbell to lend her his men. That would hold them up and Finnegan would get away. “We wait for them to ride out. First thing, I shoot the horses. Then we can ride ’em down at our leisure. You say you saw pistols and shotguns?” She directed the question at Oliver.

He nodded. “Not to say they might not have other arms, mind,” he cautioned.

Not trying that hard to dissuade me, either,
she thought. “If they had ’em, they’d’ve brung ’em,” she said. “So we can stand off some. Alex, you and Andrew take the lead if we’ve got to ride any of ’em down. Darryl, you’re shooting with me since I figure you’re the next best with a modern rifle.”

“Do my best,” Darryl said. “My rifle’s back at Canongate, though.”