Isles of the Forsaken (23 page)

One of the players, a girl with bouncing brown curls and an open, sunny face, raced up to the small postern door and pounded on it with her fists, calling for someone to let her in. The face of a Torna guard appeared over the wall, looking down at her with amusement.

“Will you let me in to get our ball?” she asked.

“What’s your name, darling?” the guard asked, grinning. Harg had seen him watching the game from the guardhouse window; if he knew soldiers, they probably had wagers riding on the outcome.

“Essie,” she answered with a little toss of her head.

“Well, Essie,” the guard answered, “I’ll give you your ball if you give me something in return.”

Pertly, she blew him a kiss.

“She’s overplaying it,” Harg said through clenched teeth.

“No, she’s not,” said Calpe. “You don’t know how they think about Adaina women. Their brains turn off.”

Calpe was right. The guard said, “Wait there. I’ll be right down.”

He only opened the door a crack, but Essie squirmed through past him. She snatched up the ball where it lay in the open gravel courtyard inside, agilely dodged the guard, and slipped out again. The watching soldiers hooted at their comrade for his lack of prowess.

In the course of the game the playing field had shifted closer to the fort, so it was no surprise when the ball went sailing over the walls a second time. By now the game had a small audience inside the fort, and they laughed in anticipation when Essie and a young man came running up to the gate.

“Who are you, her younger brother?” the guard called down to the young man.

“I’m her fiancé,” he answered hotly.

“Oh no! You have a jealous lover on your hands!” a soldier called to the guard. “Better watch your step.”

This time when the guard opened the gate, he didn’t let Essie get away from him. As her companion searched for the ball, the guard pinned her against the wall and pressed his mouth against hers. When he slipped a hand into her shirt she wriggled from his grasp and dashed red-faced out the gate. Returning, the young man gave the guard a poisonous look. The soldier wiped his lips and grinned.

This time the guard did not even bother to bar the gate, but left it ajar, and leaned against the jamb. When the ball went over the walls a third time and he saw Essie heading toward him, he grinned in anticipation.

Without a sound or signal, the players all turned in unison and rushed at the gate. Metal flashed, and the astonished guard fell, clutching at Essie’s throwing-knife in his throat. The gate fell open and armed warriors poured into the fort. Harg and the other onlookers seized up the arms hidden in the picnic baskets and raced in after, tossing weapons to anyone who lacked them.

The four team leaders split up as soon as they got inside, heading for prearranged targets. Birk’s team stormed up the steps toward the guardhouse. Cobb’s headed for the powder magazine. Calpe’s went for the barracks. Harg shouted for his team to follow him toward the front walls to secure the cannons.

Taken by surprise, the soldiers on duty scattered. Some of them dashed toward the safety of the armoury, but were headed off by Cobb’s band, and a fierce hand-to-hand battle broke out. The great front gates slammed shut, a futile precaution that only prevented escape.

There were fewer in Harg’s team than there should have been; people had gotten confused in the rush. With only five others behind him, he headed for the seaward walls. As they reached the base of the steps, two young soldiers came to the top, muskets at the ready. Rather than lose momentum, Harg shouted, “Rush them!” He stood back to take aim with his pistol, but never had to fire. At sight of the shrieking pirates racing up the steps with cutlasses, the two soldiers fell back to take cover behind one of the cannons. “Helpful idiots,” Harg said grimly. They might have held the stairs a long time if they had tried.

When he reached the top of the wall, the two soldiers had surrendered, and the pirates had disarmed them and bound them with their own belts. “You guys would scare the Mundua,” Harg told his team appreciatively. “Here, take those muskets and two of you get back to the top of the steps. Hold them against anyone who tries to come up. The rest of you—”

A peppering of shot thudded into the stonework around them, and they all dived for the pavement. From behind the low parapet on the inward side of the wall, Harg peered out, trying to locate the source of the fire.

It was coming from across the courtyard behind them. Some soldiers had locked themselves inside the postern gatehouse where they could pick off the invaders in safety. Harg gestured for three of his troop to join him. They came crawling over on their bellies as a hail of buckshot ricocheted over their heads. One of them, a strapping woman with heavy eyebrows, was bleeding where a shot had grazed her temple.

“We need to turn this cannon round and aim it at the gatehouse,” Harg said. He turned to the woman, whose name he didn’t even know. “Go find Cobb, see if he’s secured the magazine. Bring back some powder cartridges and fuse cord. Keep your head down.” She crawled away.

The courtyard below them, which had been a scene of mayhem only moments before, had cleared of people. The snipers in the gatehouse were keeping everyone pinned inside. Birk’s troop was nowhere to be seen. Harg crawled over to the two men with the muskets. “Try to keep them busy,” he said. “Shoot whenever they show their faces. Don’t let them fire.” He then turned back to the last two. “Ready?” They nodded. “Okay, now. Let’s turn the cannon round.”

Three shoulders straining against the gun carriage, they wrestled it round till it was trained directly at the gatehouse. They had to dive for the floor then, as a volley of musket fire zinged around them. From the other side of the cannon, Harg heard a man swear. “You okay?” he said, not daring to lift his own head. A musket ball hit the cannon barrel, making it ring.

“I’ll live,” the man said, sounding more angry than hurt. “But Harg, look at the watchtower.”

Harg twisted round to peer at the tower that rose like a protruding tooth above the fort walls. “Bloody hell,” he said.

A thin column of black smoke was beginning to thread its way into the sky from the top of the beacon tower. One of the defenders had managed to climb the tower and kindle a fire there, to signal the warships. And at the moment there was nothing they could do about it.

“Keep firing,” Harg hissed at the two men with the muskets, and crawled forward on his elbows to add what help he could with his pistol.

It seemed like an age passed as they waited for the woman pirate to return with the powder, and Harg was starting to think they might have to storm the gatehouse, or be pinned down all morning, when he saw her coming back, dragging a burlap bag. Swallowing his impatience, he shouted, “Good job!” at her, and gestured her to hurry.

She had brought three felt-wrapped gun cartridges and a couple of feet of fuse cord. “It was all I could get,” she apologized.

“It’ll do,” said Harg. I hope, he thought silently. With his knife he cut a length of fuse, then stopped. “A match,” he said. “Who’s got a match?”

No one did. “Use the flint and steel from your pistol,” said a lean man with big ears. “We’ll load the gun.”

“Be careful,” Harg said. He poured some of the contents of his powder flask onto the stone, ripped a strip of cloth from his bandana, then snapped the pistol flint against the frizzen till a spark fell on the pile of powder and ignited it. He then lit the cloth. “Ready?” he said.

They were just ramming the ball down the cannon’s gullet. “Ready,” the big-eared man said. Harg lit the length of fuse, then scrambled over to the gun, pierced the cartridge with the spike, and rammed the fuse down through the touchhole. He rolled away, fingers in his ears.

The cannon went off with a bone-shaking force, recoiling against the outer parapet. They had barely aimed it, but at such close range it didn’t matter. The ball crashed through the wall of the gatehouse, bringing beams and stone down, and sending up a cloud of dust and smoke. There was a moment of silence, then a dust-covered soldier came climbing out through the wreckage, his hands raised. Harg heard a cheer from below him as Birk’s crew came pouring back into the courtyard, racing up the steps to take the prisoners.

Harg met Birk in the courtyard. “Is that it?” he asked. “Anyone else still fighting?”

“Not that I know. I think we’re in control.”

“Not quite,” Harg said, turning to the tower where the warning smoke still rose. As he did so, he heard, from far away across the island, two shots in quick succession. “Ashes!” he swore. It wasn’t quite noon. The ships were here too soon. “Birk, get Cobb up here quick to aim those guns. Tell him he needs to place a ball close to that frigate in the harbour. Don’t hit it! Only aim for the ship if it tries to escape.” Cobb had been a gunner in the navy, legendary for his accuracy. If anyone could send a cast-iron message to the frigate’s captain, it was Cobb.

Meanwhile, Harg turned to the beacon tower, which had just become the most pressing problem. He beckoned the only unoccupied man of his team to follow, and headed for the door at the tower’s base. It swung open onto a narrow stair that spiralled up through the thickness of the outside wall, dimly lit by small slit windows.

“We’re going to need something to put out the fire.” Harg looked around, and spied a cistern barrel under the downspout of a nearby building. “Go soak your coat in the water and bring it along—what’s your name?”

“Gibbon, Captain.”

“Be quick.” As Gibbon peeled off his coat and headed toward the cistern, Harg leaped up the stairs two at a time.

Fifty steps later, he emerged into a small room set like a box on the flat top of the tower, apparently the light-tender’s shelter. A small door stood open onto the top of the tower, where a windswept fire now smouldered in a shallow pit, billowing clouds of damning black smoke. There was no sign of whoever had set it. Harg checked to right and left, then pushed on through the door, intending to kick the fire apart.

He had forgotten to look up. He was barely out when heavy boots landed on him from behind, and he crashed to the stone floor, the breath knocked out of him. He heard an ominous click and looked up straight into the barrel of a pistol held by a tall, aristocratic Inning. The weapon was levelled to blow his brains out.

His arm flailed out wildly to knock it aside. The gun exploded in his face, blasting him back into a sulphurous darkness. Choking on smoke, he tore at the blackness, striking out in a blind fury. His fist hit something solid and he felt stone under his hands. The world swam greyly into focus. He was kneeling on the floor. The Inning stood three feet in front of him with another pistol that Harg recognized as his own.

“Brown bastard!” the Inning spat. Harg watched, dazed, as the Inning levelled the gun at his face and pulled the trigger.

The pistol clicked harmlessly and the Inning swore, for Harg had forgotten to reload it. An instant later, Harg dived for the Inning’s legs and knocked him sprawling on the pavement. They wrestled in silence then, muscle straining against muscle. Harg managed to ram a knee into the man’s stomach. The Inning doubled up, and Harg reached for a burning billet of wood from the fire to club him senseless. Before he could bring it down the man rolled free and lunged again.

They grappled, and the Inning forced Harg backward step by step till they were at the edge of the tower, with no parapet or rail between them and the sheer drop to the rocks below. The Inning brought a fist up under Harg’s jaw, snapping his head back, then threw him down with bone-jarring force on the pavement. With a desperate energy Harg grabbed at the boot raised to shove him over the edge, and squirmed round to kick with both feet at the other boot. Then the stone edge was under his shoulder. One arm flailed in the air; the windy drop gaped below him. He clutched for some handhold on the smooth pavement, his bruised fingers scrabbling on stone.

A hand grasped his wrist and a strong tug brought him back from the brink. He fell gasping onto the solid stone at Gibbon’s feet. The Inning was nowhere to be seen.

The wind whistled past the edge of the tower. Harg looked up at Gibbon’s face, then at the precipice he had almost gone over.

“You pushed him over?” Harg said numbly.

Gibbon shook his head. “You did,” he said. “You pulled his foot out from under him, and he fell.”

A little queasy, Harg crawled on hands and knees to the tower’s edge and looked over. The Inning’s body was only a small patch of white on the tumbled rocks below.

“I killed him,” he said in a tone of strained disbelief. “I killed an Inning.”

It didn’t feel like it. He hadn’t thought it out, or really even intended it.

Gibbon was staring at him gravely. Harg touched his head where there was a tight feeling, and his hand came away smeared with blood and soot. Then he remembered.

“Get that fire out!” he said.

As Gibbon headed toward the fire pit with his wet coat, Harg wadded up his bandanna to sop up the blood where the pistol ball had grazed his scalp. He had started shaking in delayed nervous reaction, and didn’t quite trust himself to stand yet. As he sat, there was a cannon blast from the walls below, and he saw a ball arcing out into the sky, over the town, into the harbour. It landed thirty feet from the bow of the frigate.

“Oh, good shot, Cobb!” Harg said.

At this signal from the fort, a horde of small boats set out from the docks, heading for the warship, whose decks were suddenly swarming like an anthill. Harg wanted to sit and watch the outcome, but there was no time. The rest of the plan had to be set in motion.

When he reached the courtyard again, some of Calpe’s team were already leading the mules out of the stables and harnessing them in preparation for hauling the guns across the country to Rockmeet Straits. Harg met her at the stable door. “Are the prisoners secure?” he asked.

“Yes. Birk’s sweeping for stragglers. Harg, what happened to you?”

“A little disagreement with an Inning,” he said. “It was stupid of me.”

“Sit down and let me clean it off.”

Still a little shaky, he sat on a barrel and let her wash his scalp with a wet handkerchief. “I’ve got to get down to the harbour to join Barko,” he said. “Can you spare one of those mules?”