Julian Stockwin - Tenacious

"Press my men!" the lieutenant stared in amazement and began to laugh. At Kydd's glare his mirth tailed away.

"We must secure th' dockyard, board all ships in harbour and attend t' any prisoners," Kydd said, in a hard voice. "I don't think fifty men overmuch f'r the task, d' you?"

He looked past the officer at the weary men coiling down the drag-lines, pulling off encamping kit and flexing tired muscles. He strode over to them, leaving the lieutenant to hurry along behind. "I say, this is out of order, sir! You may not—"

"If I have t' ask th' colonel he'll make it a hundred," Kydd snapped, without looking back. He had spotted Dobbie from Tenacious.

The stocky seaman's face creased with pleasure as Kydd went up to him. "Sir! Never thought ter see yez again, goin' ashore with them dagoes."

"Dobbie—I want fifty good men f'r particular service in Mahon. Seamen I must have, knows the difference between a buntline and a bobstay an' can be relied on in a fight."

"Aye aye, sir."

"Have 'em mustered here for me in an hour."

There was one further matter he had to attend to. There was every prospect of his meeting the enemy on the morrow and the quartermaster had offered him the loan of a heavy sabre or a token small-sword, but neither appealed. He went to an arms chest on the limber of one gun and helped himself to a cutlass; this would be of use only in close quarters fighting, but a defensive action was all that he expected for the seamen. It was not the fine sword he had now grown used to, but the heft and balance of the plain black weapon was familiar and pleasing, and he slipped the scabbard into its frog, settling it comfortably on his belt.

Later that night, after he had seen to his men, Kydd dined with the officers in their mess-tent. It was both strange and comforting. The singular appearance of the red check tartan of a regiment of Highlanders, with their arcane mess rituals and free-flowing whisky, was another world to the ordered uniformity of a naval wardroom. But the loyal toast was sturdily proposed and the same warmth of brotherhood reached out to Kydd. "Give ye joy of y'r victory, sir," Kydd acknowledged to the army captain sitting to his side.

The officer raised an eyebrow. "You think so?"

"Why, yes! I know nothing of y'r military affairs but t' land and take a town seems t' me to be a fine thing for such numbers."

The captain examined his whisky, holding it to the light so the glass twinkled prettily. "It was fine done the landing, I'll grant— but the general must have had inside intelligence to change the place of landing at such notice. Quite took the dons on the hop."

Kydd glowed, but now was not the time to claim recognition.

"But then I don't envy Quesada—an impossible task, I'd say."

"Quesada?"

"Their commander. One can feel pity for the man. His soldiery has rotted from too much garrison duty and they're near useless. And reinforcements? All he got before you fellows cleared the seas of 'em was a couple of battalions of Swiss."

"The Swiss?" Kydd was hazily aware of the tangled complexity of allegiances in Europe but had not heard they were at war with Switzerland.

"Yes, German-Swiss mercenaries. Austrians took 'em prisoner, then sold them to the Spanish for two thaler a head. Not my idea of a bargain. When we landed at Addaya they were opposing us. Then your frigate let fly a broadside or two and in twenty minutes they broke and ran."

"Still runnin'?" Kydd chuckled.

"In fact, no. We took a hundred deserters and told 'em that if they could bring in their friends we'd see them right in the matter of employment. Gen'l Stuart is thinking of forming up a foreign corps of some sort, and now we have the lot—a thousand and more."

Kydd agreed. With rabble like that Quesada could do nothing to stop the English. Then he remembered, with sudden apprehension: "Did ye see the Spanish fleet at all? If we're beat at sea ..."

"The fleet? I'm not sure about that. I did catch a sight of the Spanish, but they weren't your big fellows, only one line of guns." Frigates, realised Kydd, with jubilation.

"And last I saw of 'em was the gallant commodore haring off over the horizon, tally-ho, after them with all flags flying."

Kydd grinned. "So we c'n sleep tight tonight but y'r Gen'ral Quesada has a mort t' reflect on."

"He has. Without command of the sea of any kind he can't get supplies or reinforcements, nothing. And he'll never get the Minorcans to fight for him."

"So ye'd say we've won?" Kydd said cautiously.

"By no means. Quesada is off with the bulk of his troops to Ciudadela—their major town with city walls and fortifications. A siege will be a tedious thing with no certainty at the end of it. And tomorrow we march on Mahon, which is even more heavily fortified. While we hold the country, Quesada will hold the towns—and we can't wait for ever."

It was another kind of war but in the warmth of the evening's cordiality it seemed far removed. Yet here he was, enjoying the regiment's hospitality not only in the middle of enemy country but presumably on a battlefield with enemy soldiers perhaps creeping through the night.

"What's out there? I mean, what's to stop th' Spanish coming suddenly while we're enjoyin' our supper?" Kydd did not mean it to come out so nervously but he preferred the direct ship-to-ship fighting at sea where the foe was visible rather than the uncertainties of land.

"Well, armies don't fight at night as a rule," the officer said, with only the glimmer of a smile. "But if the Spanish see fit to counter-attack in the dark—presuming they have precise knowledge of our position—then first they must find a way to get past our vedettes and outer pickets before our sentinels can take alarm, but even then you may sleep soundly, I believe."

The brass baying of trumpets woke Kydd. Before he had struggled into his clothes the stillness was rent by hoarse cries of sergeants and shouts of command from impatient officers as the camp came to life. First light appeared as the soldiers bolted down their breakfast and prepared for the march, buckling on equipment and loosening limbs.

The damp smoke of breakfast fires still hung about in the grey-ness of the pre-dawn as Kydd drew up his men to address them. "I'm L'tenant Kydd, and this is th' Port Mahon naval detachment. You're not going t' pull the guns any more—but you are going t' march. This is what th' lobsterbacks call a 'flying column,' which is to say we're going to move fast. We're heading f'r Port Mahon, an' there we'll find a harbour and dockyard fit f'r the whole o' Nelson's fleet. But only if we take it from them—there could be quite a deal o' fighting before we're done, but I've got no doubts about that with English hearts of oak by m' side."

His hand dropped unconsciously to his cutlass hilt as he continued, "We're not here t' do the assault. That'll be the lobster-backs' job, an' they're good at it. What we'll be doing is t' wait until they've got a breach and marched into the town. Then we'll follow and go to the harbour an' set about any shipping we find—not forgettin' the dockyard, that the Spanish don't start fire-raisin' there."

He regarded the men dispassionately. Lithe, intelligent, these were the skilled seamen who were achieving more at sea than any before them and he felt a deep pride. "So we'll be on our way— this is Kane's highway to Mahon an' it was laid by us eighty years ago. Now let's use it!"

But they had to stand aside as the professionals formed up. Scouts clattered off ahead into the early morning and others fanned out to each side of the line-of-march. Yet more galloped urgently backwards and forwards for some arcane military reason. Finally, officers on splendid horses took their place at the head of their men and with a squeal and drone of bagpipes skirling and the rattle and thump of drums the column set off.