Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

A bullet cracked past him. He saw a marine down at the end of the street. He pulled a holdout pistol from his boot top and fired at the bullock. The marine let out a horrible howl and clutched at his shoulder. Rodney stared at the pistol in delighted surprise. He'd hoped to scare the man in the red coat. Hitting him was an unexpected bonus.

He wanted to recharge both his guns. He wanted to, but he had no chance. Jackson was shouting for freebooters to come up and join them. The wounded marine's roar of pain brought his comrades at the double. They did look after one another, no doubt about it.

Marines and pirates smashed together in bloody collision. Red Rodney hacked and slashed. He threw one pistol in a bullock's face. The marine went down, clutching at his nose. Radcliffe kicked him. Not far away, beset by three men at once, Ben Jackson fell, blood spurting from a belly wound and from his throat. Rodney feared he would never get up again.

Pirates and marines fell, clawing and biting at one another till they could fight no more. Red Rodney's band had more men in it than did his foes' party, but one marine was worth more than one corsair in this kind of brawl.

A bayonet had pinked Radcliffe's leg. A sword had scored a bleeding line down his right arm. He wasn't quite the last man standing, but the marines who still lived were hurt worse than he was, and drew back out of range of his cutlass.

Backed by three hale marines, a middle-aged man with a rapier came around the corner. When he said, "You are Rodney Radcliffe," each individual word might have been chiseled from stone.

"Damn right I am," Red Rodney snarled. "Who the bloody hell are you?"

The stranger bowed. "I have the honor-if that be the proper term-of being your cousin. William Radcliff, at your service." He bobbed up and down again.

Rage ripped through Rodney. "You filthy bugger! You've ruined me!"

"Good," William said coolly, "for that was my purpose. If you yield now, I promise you a quick end. I regret-though not very much-I have nothing better to offer."

"I'll give you something to regret!" Red Rodney shouted. "You'll regret coming up against me face-to-face, by God! You won't gloat over my carcass, that's for sure." He swung up his sword for a limping charge.

William Radcliff appeared unwounded. He also knew how to handle that long, thin, straight sword-a stop thrust almost skewered Rodney. Well, there were ways. Red Rodney smashed at the rapier. If he could break the blade, the other man was his meat.

But William proved a better man of his hands than the pirate had dreamt he could be. He took the slashes and turned them without batting an eye. He ran the point of his blade into Rodney's left shoulder. And Rodney could not reach him, no matter how he tried.

Then one of the marines fired at point-blank range. The bullet slammed into Red Rodney's chest. Blood filled his mouth. He knew it was a bad wound. Then he took another one, this time in the belly. He slumped to his knees.

"You don't fight fair," he choked out.

Through growing darkness, he saw William Radcliff nod. "Indeed not," the merchant admiral replied. "I fight to win. Nothing less is worth fighting for." A third musket bellowed, and Rodney knew no more.

William Radcliff eyed Ethel Radcliffe like a man eyeing a beautiful but poisonous snake. She'd already tried to knife him once. Now she was-he devoutly hoped-disarmed. "What am I to do with you?" he asked.

"You'd better kill me," she answered matter-of-factly. "Christ knows I'll kill you first chance I get."

"I have no stomach for slaying children," he said, "and we are kin, of sorts."

"My shame, not yours," Ethel said.

"If I send you to Stuart-"

"I will hunt you down," the pirate's daughter broke in.

She meant it. Whether she would mean it a few years from now was a different question. For the time being, though, she was as dangerous as a hogshead of gunpowder in a fire. "I have no quarrel with you," William said. "Mine was with your father."

"Well, I have one with you, for my father's sake," Ethel said. "Look to your life-more warning than a scorpion like you would give, Radcliff." She somehow contrived to make him hear the missing e that separated his name, and his kind, from hers.

William thought he would laugh at a death threat from a child. At such a threat from most children, he would have. From Red Rodney Radcliffe's daughter? No. She'd called him a scorpion. To him, she seemed to have all her father's venom in a small, innocent-looking exterior. A strawberry-blond coral snake, he thought uneasily.

Trying to calm her, he said, "We've been merciful where we could. Ordinary pirates, men of no rank, who yielded to us may go free. Many of them will make good enough honest sailors. Nothing will happen to you, nor to… Is that your mother?"

"Who? Jenny?" Ethel Radcliffe laughed in his face. "Jesus, no! Just one of my father's doxies. He had enough of 'em." She sounded as proud of Red Rodney as one of his men might have.

"Indeed," William said stiffly. Where Ethel spat defiance, Jenny had offered anything she had to give to keep from meeting the gibbet. And she had a lot, as he'd found out to his pleasure and perhaps even to hers. He'd never intended hanging her, but she didn't need to know that. What Tamsin, back in Stuart, didn't know wouldn't hurt her a bit. William made himself return to the business at hand. "What shall I do with you?" he asked Ethel again.

"I told you once what I aim to do. If you don't care to listen, it's your funeral." She punned with vicious relish. She would probably kill the same way. It had to run in the blood.

He made up his mind. "I will send you to New Hastings," he said. The old town was far enough from Stuart to leave him feeling safe. "You may learn a trade there, or pursue such education as fits your pleasure and abilities. And I will dower you, richly enough to let you marry and enjoy the blessings of domestic felicity." Or as many of them as a hellcat can enjoy, at any rate.

Ethel Radcliffe looked him in the eye. She didn't spit in his face, but he thought she wanted to. "Salve your conscience all you please, old man. I'll kill you anyhow."

He had her taken away then. She went peaceably enough. He wasn't going to worry about her any more. He told himself he wasn't, anyhow.

It wasn't as if he didn't have other things to worry about. Elijah Walton wanted to place all of Avalon-indeed, the whole west coast of Atlantis from Avalon northwards-under the direct rule of the King of England. "He provided the wherewithal by which it was won," he said.

"Piet Kieft will be surprised to hear it," William remarked. "So will the House of Orange. And so am I. Did my armed merchantmen do nothing here? Did my backwoodsmen not take this town with the Royal Marines?"

"They made their contributions," Walton said with a grace both easy and, Radcliff reckoned, false. "But truly, what difference does it make unless you are a damned Dutchman? His Majesty already rules the Atlantean settlements. This would but extend that rule."

"It would not, for we have our longstanding rights and privileges to guard against tyranny and misrule," William said. "Land ruled straight from London would not."

"Say you that his Majesty is a tyrant?" Walton no doubt thought he sounded dangerous, but he'd had little to do with Ethel Radcliffe.

"I said nothing of the sort, sir, and will style you liar and knave should you publish it abroad that I did," William replied. "But king follows king as autumn follows summer. Who knows what the next reign may bring, or the one after that?"

Elijah Walton waved his words away. "You quarrel over the shadow of an ass."

"I think not," William Radcliff said. "Nor will the English settlements here. As for the French and the Spaniards here in this western land…"