Kage Baker - Dark Mondays

So they dropped, stumbling down the ploughed-up slope, and ran like madmen but without a sound, as they’d been ordered. Meanwhile the musketmen in the trees sent covering fire, picking off the Spanish sentries backlit so nice and sharp as they were. It was what should have been done the first time, and it worked now. Shadows skipping over the bodies of the dead, near invisible in the twilight, the grenadiers were to the ravine and down one side before the Spanish knew what was what.

Their Indians saw what was happening first, and had the presence of mind to start shooting arrows down into the ditch. Even so, John saw the Reverend, frothing at the mouth, going up the side like a spider scaling a web, tearing at the rotten wood with his nails. Bob Plum followed him close, shoving lit grenades all along the base of the wall and scrambling on. Fifty pieces of eight for them, thought John.

He lit a grenade whilst running and lobbed it high and far as he could. The Spanish sentries had made themselves a nice palm-thatched sunshade that ran the length of the rampart, for their ease in keeping watch under the noonday sun no doubt; but it made a pretty target for firebombs now. John missed, but heard his grenade burst and voices howling behind the rampart.

Jago dashed past him, a glint of white teeth in the smoke, his knotted hair bristling. John looked up just as the arrow struck home clean through the saddle of Jago’s shoulder. The force knocked him back on his heels; Jacques was by him at once crying, Petite, ma petite, but Jago’s eyes were red and mad. He pulled the arrow out, not seeming to feel it at all, and shoved it down the muzzle of his musket, making to fire it back at the bowman.

“Wait!” The girl appeared out of the smoke, pulling the red silk from her head. “Here!” She tied the silk about the arrow’s shaft and held an end of slow-match to it. It kindled up bright straightaway.

“Ah!” Jago was laughing as he took aim. Bang , and the arrow flew like a bird and lighted in the palm-thatch sun shade, lighted indeed, for the leaves curled back and the bright fire spread and licked along. The girl was laughing, they were all laughing to hear the shrieks from above as the Spanish tried to put the blaze out, but it seemed all their sand was gone.

By the firelight John could see plenty of arrows scattered along the bottom of the ditch, as could all the other grenadiers. He grabbed up one and tore off a piece of his shirt for kindling; all along the ditch others were doing the same; up went the flight of little phoenixes, and some stuck in the thatch and some in the wooden palisades. The inshore wind, gusting down the ravine, fanned the flames like Hell.

From behind them came a roar as Bradley gave the order for the marksmen to advance, and John heard them dropping from the trees now, charging the field, coming on toward the ravine. They kept up a steady fire the whole time, reloading on the run. John scrambled to and fro, finding dropped grenades, relighting them and pitching them as fast and as far as he could go; for he had a strong right arm then. The girl flitted here and there, bringing him grenades too, and they laughed together to hear the Spanish scream so, when the whole of the burning thatch collapsed on the walls.

Just as the marksmen came to the ditch, something behind the wall exploded, with a crash to tear open the sky and a blaze of light like day come early; John heard later it was the biggest of the Spanish guns. Red-hot bronze shrapnel came out of the air and fell like hail, wounding all men alike. Someone yelled beside him and he turned to see Blackstone on the ground, clutching his head. Someone else yelled above him. John looked up and saw the palisade beginning to collapse, eaten through as it was with flame, and a great wave of earth and stones burst from behind it and came down the slope into the ditch.

When John knew anything again he was clear down the far end of the ditch, toward one of the other bastions, and he and the girl were dragging Blackstone between them. Blackstone was slick all down one side with blood, and he was saying over and over, “My ear, my ear, they’ve blown off my fucking ear,” and there were more explosions sounding.

The palisades had collapsed nearly all the way across, and the earth they had had packed behind them all gone down into the ditch, filling it in in some places, so Captain Bradley’s marksmen had a nice open window through which to shoot at the Spanish who ran to and fro, exposed as though they were on a theater stage. Some were trying to put out the fires; some were fighting hand-to-hand with privateers who’d crawled up over the fallen palisade. John caught a glimpse of one unlucky bastard fending off Reverend Hackbrace, who was on him like God’s own werewolf.

But the defenders weren’t done for yet; some among their officers were rallying to drag over guns from the other batteries, aiming them out at the gap to slay all comers that way and any of the marksmen out there in the night. They loaded the cannon with musket-balls and fired point-blank into the waves of men coming up the hill, and washed them back down in blood. Others of the defenders had run and fetched their own grenades, or even chamber pots, flinging down anything they had to repel the privateers.

John was all for finding a cool place in the dark and waiting for the bullets to do their work up above, once they’d bound up poor dear Blackstone’s bloody head; but the girl went sprinting over the fallen earth with her cutlass drawn, screaming like an Irish witch. To John’s amazement he found himself scrambling after her, and so was Blackstone, dodging grenades and shite. They all three gained the top at about the same moment, and looked straight into the faces of the Spanish defenders, and then it got nasty for a long while.

Now and again John had a moment to notice things, over the red hours; that he was wet to the elbows like a butcher, and that Dick Pettibone had somehow gotten his fat bulk up the slope and was cutting the throats of the wounded, and that the girl seemed to be everywhere at once, lithe as the flames that spread, and spread, and that the Reverend was roaring out a hymn that wasn’t about any little lambs, and that at last the gray dawn was showing up eerie and cold beyond the walls.

The Spanish weren’t firing anymore now, whether from a wish to save powder for the last assault or because they’d used it all, John couldn’t guess. He slumped down behind a mass of smoldering timbers, trying to get his breath, watching dully as the girl bound up a cut that had laid his upper left arm open. He wondered when that had happened. He could see down the causeway the fallen earth had made, where Captain Bradley was in conference with a group of boucaniers , Jago and Jacques amongst them. They were passing their muskets to a couple of Bradley’s aides, who collected them like bundles of firewood. Then they drew pistols and cutlasses.

“It’ll be close work, now,” said the girl, laughing. John looked at her in wonderment. Then he understood: they were readying for the last push, and Bradley must intend for the boucaniers to be the spearhead. It seemed like a dream, or a story someone was telling him. If he turned his head he could see down to the green trees and the Chagres River winding gray away between them, and one and then two and three canoes moving up its placid water. Deserters, he thought. Don’t blame them.

The sun came up, red as a wound in all the smoke and stink; the Spanish had retreated to the inner buildings, seemingly, for there was no sign of them but the dead ones on the bastions. There came a shout from below. John looked down and saw the boucaniers formed up for the charge. Over they came, yelling, Victoire! Victoire!