Chapter 319: His Majesty’s Excellent Disaster

Past the last of the pines, the ground turned to coral, which takes a little skin from every hand that touches it. The thirty crossed it bent double, followed by the mosquitoes that had plagued them since the hollow, carrying the smell of wet wool through the trees.

A hole opened under Dickon and swallowed him to the knee.

Beto hissed. "Chist! Chist! Ay, Inglés, such a fuss! That hole, God dug her, and God, he is a lazy digger. Mine are better made."

Then the jungle ended, and Mateo and Isaiah saw the King’s camp spread before them, as large and lit up as a market town.

A wall of cut logs stood head-high across the landward end, with a ditch in front and a gap where the track passed through, and lanterns hung from poles along the top, each illuminating a redcoat. Behind the wall, the tents stood in rows, with the guard tent and its drum at the head.

At the cookhouse, the cook slept sitting against his big pot, while the powder tent stood well apart, as though even the other tents didn’t trust it.

Near the shore, a landing place made of rough timber stretched over the water, with boats drawn up beside it and a guard boat beneath a lamp at the end. Beyond the surf, the transports and supply ships rode, and past the reef the lights of the man o’ war hung beneath her pennant.

A man from Portsmouth would have called the camp well defended.

It was a textbook encampment, and the book had a page for every part of it, but none for lantern light, which blinds the man standing in it, or for a ditch dug in coral marl, which refuses to hold its shape, nor for green pine, which makes excellent kindling.

Across the darkness, more militia waited on every side, each carrying a hatchet and a bow. Isaiah raised a hand toward the two at the gap.

The two sentries stood inside the lantern glow, and neither could see beyond it.

The younger sentry had been humming for some time, and his stomach had begun to harmonize lyrics behind him. "Lord love us, I’d sell me own mother for a bowl o’ that grey stew, I would. With the gristle in it, too. Dirt cheap, mind, her cookin’ bein’ what it were."

"Give over that hummin’, lad, afore I stuff me hat down thy throat! That sounds like a gate in a gale, and a poor sort o’ gate at that."

Then rustle came from the dark, and muskets came up.

"Who goes there? Stand an’ show yerself or by God I’ve a shot here for any that don’t!"

A land crab walked into the light, took a good look at the Royal Navy, and continued across the track. The young sentry lowered his musket with a gentleman’s flourish, bowing to the crab

"Evenin’ to ’ee, zur! Lovely night for a stroll, ain’t it?"

Isaiah came out of the darkness on the left, carrying the forge hatchet, while Mateo approached from the right with a gutting knife.

The freedmen stroke was careful and exact, and the older man folded without a word. Mateo’s hand slipped, the knife skated off a belt buckle, and the young man’s cry made it halfway out before the Spaniard clamped a hand over his mouth.

The redcoat’s heels drummed against the ground until they stopped, and a stank rose that no fish had ever taught Mateo to expect.

The partners dragged both redcoats into the ditch and righted the toppled lantern. Mateo knelt and retched into the marl, then wiped his palm on his breeches, only to wipe it again.

Isaiah laid one hand at Mateo’s shoulder. "The next one come easier, Mateo. God forgive me, and the one after that, easier still. That is the part you must remember, hold it close, carry it when your hands start to shake."

He raised two fingers, and the bands slipped away along the wall and into the shadows between tents.

Tib and Remy crept toward the cookhouse, and the Frenchman smelled the pot from afar.

He whispered eloquently. "Mon Dieu... Tib. Tib, regarde. Zey have boiled it... boiled it grey, like ze face of a drowned man. Zey have murdered ze beef, ze poor creature, and zen, zen, left ze body in ze pot to rot..."

"Louder, Frenchie. Go on, louder. I don’t reckon the cook’s quite got yer meanin’ yet."

Tib drew a long, suffering breath through her nose.

"Why not wake the whole bleedin’ camp while yer at it and give ’em a sermon on sauces?"

A lantern hung from a pole at the corner, where a redcoat stood scratching his neck and looking at the stars as though they owed him money.

She came out of the darkness behind him, knife held low, clamped a hand over his mouth, and drove the blade in. His boots scrabbled until they stopped.

Remy dragged the body behind a stack of cut pine, gagging into his sleeve, then took the musket. The lantern stayed lit, as there was no reason to leave a dark smudge where the redcoats might notice one.

Twenty paces farther on, the next picket saw a light with no one standing beneath it.

"Dobbs? Marra? Where’s the lad gannin’?"

Nothing.

He tried again.

"Howay, Dobbs, mate! If ye’ve gone for a kip, aah’ll skelp ye, so aah will!"

Still, no reply. His call turned heads at the next post, and the corporal of the sentries came out of the tent carrying his lamp.

He swung the lamp over the dark in a wide, impatient motion. "Reckon Dobbs’s off to piss at the pines, I’ll be bound. Four of you, down the track, and fetch him back by his ears, and kick him once for me."

Four redcoats walked out. Beside the track, behind a fallen pine, Quaco crouched with an old hunter, who cupped both hands around his mouth.

"Always dey come for de pig, boy," the old man whispered, a smile spread over his wrinkles.

Then he squealed, exactly as a hog would, long, bubbling, and shrill, the cry of a beast with an arrow in its ribs. The redcoats immediately walked toward it.

"Well, strike me pink! That’s a hog! A fat one, an’ all, hark at her squealin’!"

"Fresh pork, lads! Fresh bleedin’ pork!"

"Whisht, man. The sergeant said keep to the track."

"He ain’t had a bite neither, the sergeant! He’ll be blessin’ our names!"

"Think on it, mate. Fat sow on a spit by midnight, crackling poppin’, juice down yer chin..."

"Gentle, friend. Gentle now. This ground’s plenty soft," Quaco murmured.

The private dropped into the pit, and the next soldier, still looking at him, fell in on top, and bones broke down there with a crack that spread all the way to the tents, sending the other two scrambling back so hard they ended up sitting on the ground.

"A pit! It’s a bloody pit! The black-hearted buggers have dug bloody pits! Sarge! SARGE!"

Every head turned toward the trees.

A sergeant came running out in his shirt, the cookfire lighting him from the side. The redcoats behind him crossed a patch of light at the edge of the trees, where Beto and Pip lay waiting.

"The leaf, Pip. La hoja," Beto whispered. "Never the finger. You hear me?

"I know, Beto, I know, I know. Leaf, no finger, I know."

Pip used a leaf to dab the pot’s contents onto the arrowhead, then nocked the arrow with hands that rattled the shaft against the string. The string sang, and the third private out took the arrow in the thigh.

The redcoat yelped, stared at it, and rushed toward the water.

"He no fall, Beto! Why he no fall? I hit him true, I see the arrow go in!"

Beto lay a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and his voice came out soft, patient. "Ay, he fall, Pip. He fall, he fall. Not tonight, tomorrow night, maybe, when he is sitting at the table and the soup is coming. The little apple, she is not a quick woman, she is slow, but oh, she is faithful."

The boy’s bow arm kept shaking long after, while down at the shore a lamp swung toward the noise. The wounded private ran down to the water, bawling about an arrow, and the guard boat pulled in to meet him.

"Boat ahoy! Boat ahoy, damn ye! The password! Give me the word, or I’ll fire into ye!"

"GIBRALTAR, ye blind, bog-eyed son of a sea-cock!" the coxswain roared. "Are ye deaf as well? There’s a man bleedin’ all over yer timbers, an’ ye stand there askin’ for the bloody password?"

Chest-deep beneath the planks, Paco heard him. The boat bumped against the timbers, and his hook dragged a sailor off the gunwale without a splash.

From the mangrove roots, Dickon sent arrow after arrow toward the boat, then blew the little owl twice to tell Paco it was close. The sound came out like a kettle with a cold, and a sailor whistled it back in mockery before standing up in the stern, which was a fine way to tell a bowman exactly where he stood.

Dickon’s arrow struck him in the shoulder.

"Give way! Give way, damn ye! Pull off, ye lubberly sons o’ bitches, afore we’re all stuck like pincushions!" the coxswain bawled. "ARROWS! Out o’ it! Pull!"

Paco moved along the drawn-up boats, cutting their painters, and they slid off the sand into the tide. The rowboat’s lamp toppled onto the landing place and burned on its side against the timbers, turning every eye ashore toward the water.

At the far end of the logs, where no one was looking anymore, Carbón knelt beside a clay pot of embers buried in ash. Brian laid a hand on the nearest log.

"Green, so she is. Ah, God love her. She’ll go up like lamp oil, Carbón."

Carbón tipped the embers into a heap of chips and pine needles without saying a word. The needles caught first, then the chips, then the resin, until the fire caught everywhere.

It spread across the logs, and before anyone could finish a Hail Mary, the whole landward wall stood in one bright line longer than any street in Concordia. The tents sprang out of the darkness, casting black shadows, while the transports turned red from truck to waterline and the surf became a ribbon of blood.

Bells clanged across the water. The cook woke, hugged his big pot, and fled the flames with the pot held out in front of him, his nightshirt smoking.

From the far side, a second fire answered, then a third farther down the shore.

The thirty men in this jungle were only one tooth in a comb, and the militia was drawing that comb through the whole camp.

Then the drum thundered, and a flat voice cut across the sound. "FORM on the drum! On the DRUM, you bleating, gutless rabble! Two ranks! Two! Ranks! And the first to speak in them, I’ll nail to the nearest stump!"

Within a few heartbeats, the crowd became a line. Sailors passed buckets to the burning wall while the marines formed two ranks facing the trees, their musket rammers ringing.

"NUMBER off! Smartly! Where’s the sentries at the track? Where’s the corner post? Where’s the whole bloody privates I sent out? DOBBS! Dobbs, you idle bastard, answer me! DOBBS!"

Only the fire answered.

"They went into the trees, Sarge. Into the trees, and they ain’t come out again."

"Then we’ll fetch them out. Marines! PRESENT!"

The volley crashed into the trees, and green leaves came down like rain. The thirty lay flat in the mud while the lead bullets passed overhead.

Isaiah’s breath stayed slow in the mud, even as the last leaves came spinning down across his shoulders. He cupped his hands and called the little owl twice, and in the dark, Dickon listened with professional envy.

The bands slipped away along separate paths, with Beto leading since he had dug the traps and the others stepping where he stepped.

Behind them, the drum changed its beat, and the ranks marched off the lit ground into the trees, bayonets first, a red wall on the move.