Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

A startled shout rose from the palisade just as the marine lieutenant in charge of the piece said, "You may fire now, Sergeant."

Boom! The ball wasn't even as big as William's fist. But it was plenty big enough to smash one of the upright trunks ahead when it thudded home. The marines in the gun crew got to work reloading. "Give them a volley!" Marcus Radcliffe bellowed. Muskets and rifles thundered. A couple of men on the palisade went down.

"Charge!" yelled a captain in a red coat. Marines and backwoodsmen-and William Radcliff-rushed the palisade. They all screamed like wild Terranovans. Maybe that would scare the freebooters. Maybe it would lift their own spirits. William could hope so.

He knew how to shoot and load a musket. He had a rapier on his hip, not a cutlass. He also carried a loaded pistol in his boot. He hadn't done a lot of fighting, but he thought-he hoped-he knew how.

Some of the marines hauled scaling ladders forward. They'd blasphemously lugged those through the woods along with the cannon. Boom!…Crash! The cannon smote the palisade again. One way or another, the landing party was determined to break into Avalon.

Only a couple of shots came from the enemy. Not many corsairs stood on the palisade, and some of the ones who did promptly fled when they saw marines bearing down on them. Radcliff might have done the same thing. They had a chance to save themselves. If they stayed on the palisade, they were bound to be butchered-they didn't have enough men to keep the bullocks and backwoodsmen from getting up there with them.

"Ladders high!" an officer shouted. There wasn't even a ditch outside the palisade to make things harder for the attackers. No one in Avalon really seemed to have believed attack could come from this quarter.

Believe or not, here it was. A pirate shot down at a climbing marine. The ball hit the red-coated Englishman in the face. As he fell, he brought down two other men below him. But others took their places. Marines were as stolid as men could be in the face of death or maiming.

William didn't mind letting a good many of them precede him up onto the palisade. They were younger and stronger and better trained than he was. But he swarmed up a ladder himself. He hadn't come this far only to watch. He aimed to fight, too.

He almost didn't get the chance. A bullet cracked past his head as he hurried toward the closest stairway down into Avalon. Marcus Radcliffe was a few feet behind him. The backwoodsman chuckled. "Nothing like it when they shoot at you and miss, is there?"

"Better that than their shooting and hitting," William agreed.

Marines formed lines and advanced through the streets. Some people fled before them, screaming in fear. Others charged at them with whatever weapons came to hand. Marcus' backwoodsmen shot down several of those before they got close. The leathery, nondescript Atlanteans carried rifles accurate to a much greater distance than the usual smoothbore musket. The marines took little damage from the pirates who closed. The pirates fought as individuals, the marines as a team. They killed methodically, without much malice and without much waste motion.

Following their lethal line, William Radcliff didn't think he'd have to do much himself. But a man with a cutlass lurched out of a grogshop, stared blearily, and rushed him. William fired his pistol at point-blank range-and missed. He threw the pistol at the corsair's head. It struck the man a glancing blow, and gave Radcliff the chance to draw his own rapier.

The first stroke from the cutlass almost broke his blade and almost knocked the long, thin, straight sword from his hand. His own first thrust almost spitted the pirate, who sprang back just in time. But the freebooter's foot went out from under him in the mud. As the fellow staggered, William skewered him.

The pirate howled like a hound. He didn't crumple, though, the way William hoped he would. He kept right on fighting.

"Stick him again!" Marcus shouted. "People aren't as easy to kill as you'd think."

How do you know? William wondered. But that was a question for another time. His next thrust caught the corsair in the throat. Blood rivered out. The man gobbled something and finally fell.

"That's the way, coz!" Marcus said. "Let's go on and finish the job."

William brandished the blood-dripping rapier. "Yes, by God! Let's!"

"You see?" Red Rodney shouted. "They haven't the stomach for landing!" With all the freebooters on the sea wall, he wouldn't have wanted to land there, either.

Whether the enemy wanted to land or not, though, they went right on cannonading Avalon. Every so often, a roundshot would tear a bloody slice out of the corsairs or knock over some of the palisade, which caused more casualties.

Casualties or not, the English and the Dutch and the men from Stuart could pound away from now till forever, and they wouldn't break in. Radcliffe cursed them and shook his fist and cheered whenever the gun Ethel went on commanding shot at the ships offshore. So much powder smoke drifted in from their guns and the ones fired at them that he coughed between cheers. His eyes streamed. His face was probably black as an indigo-growing slave's down in southeastern Atlantis.

A man tugged at his arm. "Red Rodney!" the fellow cried.

Even through the roar of the guns, Rodney heard the fear in his voice. "What is it?" he asked, an ominous rumble in his own.

"They're in the city! They're over the palisade and in the city!"

"What? Are you daft? We're holding 'em out!"

"No. I wish I was." The pirate pointed south. "They're over the palisade down there. Swarms of 'em-great bloody bullocks in red coats, killing anything that moves."

"Oh, Christ Jesus! Bugger me with a worm!" Rodney Radcliffe said. And the enemy had buggered him-buggered him and Avalon. They'd drawn all the defenders here to the sea wall, and then come right up the town's arse.

"What do we do?" wailed the man with the bad news.

"What can we do? We've got to fight 'em," Radcliffe said grimly.

He started pulling men out of the struggle on the sea wall and pointing them back into Avalon. He shouted. He punched. He cajoled. He swore. Little by little, he started getting the corsairs to pay attention to him.

They didn't escape the hell of battle even after descending from the wall. Roundshot from the enemy fleet crashed down at random. Sometimes they would come down on a man, or on a clump of men. When that happened, it wasn't pretty.

All the same, Red Rodney shouted, "Keep on, damn you! Keep on! The bloody marines will murder us if you don't!"

Other pirates with loud voices also urged freebooters into the fight. Maybe they were captains, too. Maybe they were just men with eyes to see where trouble lay. It didn't matter. As long as they could see that much, nothing else mattered.

Avalon was not a big city. The pirate from the sea wall didn't need long to bump up against the bullocks. When they saw the men in the red coats, they roared in rage and charged with whatever weapons they happened to hold. Stinging volleys of musketry drove them back, and bayonets outreached swords. The marines were ferociously well disciplined. Red Rodney had always thought sheer fury could overpower anything that stood in its way. Discovering he was wrong was bitter as gall.

It was also almost fatal. A musket ball tugged at his left sleeve. When he looked down, he discovered his arm was bleeding. It was only a scratch, which didn't mean he wanted it. Had the ball flown a few inches to the right…He didn't even want to think about that.

"Musketeers! Pistoleros!" he bawled. "Into the houses! Shoot from cover! Don't make it easy for those poxy whoresons!" He'd always been proud of the pirates' independence. When every man was as good as every other man, no man could tell any man what to do. If the freebooters wanted to listen to him, they would. If they didn't…