Dewey Lambdin - The King

The beach was littered with dead and wounded, and the most of them French, Lewrie was happy to observe. The rest were sitting in a fearful knot, covered by his men's weapons.

"You failed!" Lewrie crowed at Choundas. "You failed at everything you tried, you bloody murdering bastard! We beat you, understand me?"

"Alan, what's all the shouting about?"

"Hey?" he said, swiveling to see Captain Chiswick coming down the beach, leading two spaced ranks of his troops. His hat was gone, his sword was slimed with blood and he winced with each step, but he was whole. "Bloody Hell, where did you spring from? Took you long enough."

"Were you impatient for my arrival, dear Alan?" Chiswick said with a rasp of gunpowder in his throat. "Had to clear this damned eastern palisade first. Had a busy morning, have you?"

"Tolerably busy, yes," Lewrie replied. Now that the fight was over, now that they were safe in the hands of the sepoys of the 19th Native Infantry, he could allow his usual weakness to creep over him as he loosed the awful tension of mortal combat. A moment later and it was all he could do to stand.

"Much hurt?" Chiswick inquired anxiously after wiping his sword clean and sheathing it to come to his side.

"Pinked in the hip," Lewrie allowed, sinking down on his haunches to let Cony undo his breeches and take a look at it.

"Not deep, sir," Cony assured him as he laved it in the sailor's universal nostrum, fresh seawater. "T'ain't bleedin' much, neither, so 'e didn't get ya nowhere vital. Make ya stiff fer awhiles, sir. Could I 'ave yer breeches, sir, I could bind it Er if ya got a clean handkerchief in yer pocket, sir, I could fother a bandage over'n it fer now."

"The bandage, Cony," Lewrie said with a shaky laugh. "Damned if I want to go back aboard bare-arsed."

Chiswick dug into his tailcoat pocket and offered a small silver flask, which Alan drank from gratefully. "Urn, a lovely brandy you have there, Burge. I was half-expecting some of that corn whiskey I remember from Yorktown. Are those bloody pirates beaten yet?"

"Slaughtered like rabbits," Chiswick assured him with a harsh laugh, which made Lewrie look up at his face. There was something odd about Chiswick now. Some new-found brutality he hadn't had when they'd put him ashore the night before.

"And how did your regiment fare?"

"Main well," Chiswick replied, shrugging and taking a sip of brandy himself. "I got my light company in a hellish predicament. Shot my bolt a bit too soon and had to melee with the bayonet. But the boat-guns cleared the way for us, and your father sent reinforcements to our flank. We lost about fifty dead and wounded, it looks like. Fourteen of them from my company, I'm sad to say."

"Sorry to hear that."

"Aye, they were damned good lads," Chiswick added, nodding and getting to his feet. They could hear the pipes skirling as the regiment took the village at last, and the guns fell silent. They could also hear the braying of Lt. Col. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby as he issued some new command and laughed at something that amused him.

"Seems I'm still blessed with a father," Lewrie smirked.

"Here, what's the matter with this bugger?" Chiswick demanded, toeing Choundas in the ribs, which brought on another bout of howls. "Hmm, hamstrung neat as any Indian'd do a straying slave. He'll be a 'Mister Hop-kins' from now on, if I'm any judge. Don't take on so, you bloody bastard. You'll hang before it heals!"

Chiswick used his foot to roll Choundas over.

"My word!" Chiswick gulped.

"Kill me!" Choundas pleaded in a harsh whisper. "Kill me!"

"Our captum done fer 'em, sir," one of the sailors boasted.

Choundas had taken the hanger's edge across his lips, and the hard steel had knocked out several teeth-knocked them out, or cut them out, for the upper gums were laid open on the right jaw. The right cheek was pared back to show the chipped bone beneath, and the nose was hanging free on the right side. Choundas' right eye teared blood from the slice that had chopped it in half like a grape. And a ragged patch of eyebrow and forehead hung open, matted and gory with clotted blood and sand.

"Well ain't you the pretty young buck, now, Captain Beau-Nasty?" Chiswick drawled, once he had gotten over his shock. "I say, Alan, you do bloody nice carving when you've a mind. Remind me to have you for supper next time we have roast beef!"

"Kill me!" Choundas croaked. "Messieurs, je implore…!" Chiswick drew a pistol and checked the priming. "No!" Lewrie shouted, reaching up to put a hand on Chiswick's wrist. "Leave him the way he is. Let him live with it."

"Yes, I suppose Mister Twigg'd prefer a hanging at that," Burgess sighed, putting the pistol back into his waistband.

"I think he'd prefer M'seur Choundas go back to France as he is," Lewrie replied. "As a warning. An example of failure. Of what the next bastard'll get should they dare cross our hawse in future!"

"Well," Chiswick nodded, seeing the wry sense to it, "s'pose he could always do himself in later."

"My dear Burgess," Lewrie chuckled, "the way this poor wretch's luck is going, he'd probably miss with a pistol to his skull! Failure has a way of staying with you, don't ye know." There was a dull boom that sounded across the harbor, making them turn to look seaward. A cloud of smoke wreathed Culverin as she sat higher and dryer as the tide ran out. But coming into the bay was a frigate.

"Almighty God!" Lewrie snapped, getting to his feet and doing up his breeches. "Cony, get the hands back to the boats. We have to defend our ship!"

"Flag, sir," Cony said instead. "T'ain't Frogs, sir." "What are they?" Chiswick asked.

"Well, Goddamn, I do believe it's a Spanish ship of war!" Alan blurted as the white-and-gold flag curled out lazily.

"Bet they're going to be mightily displeased with us," Chiswick prophesied. "Poaching in their private preserve and all."

"Back to the ship, anyway. Burge, I trust I'll see you later. After Captain Ayscough and Mister Twigg talk their way out of this."

"Think you they can, Alan?"

"Burgess, Twigg is half a politician," Lewrie replied, smiling. "He can talk his way out of anything!"

The Board Room at the Admiralty was blessed with a huge fireplace trimmed in wooden carvings of navigational instruments. Tall candles lit the chilly chamber against the gloom of a late February afternoon. As they huddled in front of the fireplace, lifting the tail skirts of their uniform coats to warm their frozen backsides, Lt. Alan Lewrie studied the white-and-gilt ceiling, the light-toned wood paneling and the parquet floors.

He'd only been inside the Admiralty once in his life, back when Shrike had paid off in '83, and then only to the first floor, to cool his heels for hours in the infamous Waiting Room before going to the basement to wrangle for even more hours with a clerk in a tiny monk's cell of an office, perched on tall stools to stay out of the two inches of water that had seeped in from a recent Thames flood. All to balance the ship's books and military inventory.

"Ahem," Captain Ayscough grumbled as the double doors opened and two elderly officers entered. First was Admiral Lord Howe, First Lord of the Admiralty, followed by Admiral Sir Samuel Hood. In their retinue were several civilians. Lewrie was amazed to learn during the introductions that they were Secretary of State Lord Sydney, and the first Secretary to Admiralty, Phillip Stephens. They took their seats behind a long table, and Ayscough, Percival and Lewrie were seated on the opposite side.