The Shadows of God (21 page)

Then the deck slapped him into the ceiling, and argent sparks flashed behind his eyes. The world briefly forgot gravity, and the quaking hull of
Azilia
s
Hammer
filled with shrieks.

“What in God’s name?” Oglethorpe shouted, his voice distant and thin even in his own ears. “Did we strike a mine?”

“Nay, General,” MacKay grunted. “Y saw it. It were twenty yards off the port bow.” MacKay craned his head up fearfully.

“So they’re dropping ”em?“

“I’d reckon, sir.”

“Be damned. It’s night above, and muddy thick down here besides. How do they know we’re here?”

“God only knows, sir.”

“Well, we can’t sit still waiting for morning anymore, that much is sure.”

“Shall we come to surface, then?”

“Right under the guns of Fort Marlborough? No, I don’t think so.”

“But, sir, we can’t navigate where we can’t see. We’ll run aground, or worse.”

“They see us. There must be a way.”

The ship shuddered again from an explosion a little more distant than the last.

“I think those be warnings, General. I think they know where we are exact.”

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Oglethorpe chopped his chin in agreement. “Very well. They have some alchemical means of locating us and, further, of knowing we are not friend.

But how? Can we confound it?”

Parmenter coughed. “What of the aether compasses of Franklin? They point the way to all sorts of things.”

“True enough. They point at what they’re tuned to. Sailing ships keep touch with one another that way. But that must mean that somewhere on the ship the matched needle is hidden.”

“Aye. But where?”

“Fetch that Russian pilot. Quickly.” Oglethorpe looked up to the watchtower.

“Captain Parmenter, can you make anything out?”

“Aye, sir. Above us, three ships with lanthorns blazing. They
want
us to know they’re there.”

“They want their ship back, I reckon.” He fingered his chin. “Should we release our charges, try to blast them from the water?”

“Beg pardon, Margrave, but I think that wouldn’t be wise,” Parmenter said.

“None of ”em are straight overhead, and they may have countermeasures we know nothing of. But they will surely finish us off if we prove dangerous.“

“What if we surface, then, and take our chances fighting from the deck?” But he shook his head. “No. Even I don’t like those odds.”

Tomochichi, who had slipped in from the next compartment as they were speaking, cleared his throat. “The devil gun. Could you not use it to make them sink, as we did those boats upriver?”

“No,” Oglethorpe said. “Fired here, it would only set loosg our own captive demon. Then we must all swim for it.”

“I know,” the old chief said. “But if someone took the gun and swam up, it could be done.”

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“We can’t open the hatch,” Oglethorpe explained. “Water would rush in.”

“Not the water underneath. We hold it at bay.”

“He’s right, sir,” Parmenter said, some excitement in his voice. “Remember?

The water will not force through the lower hatch, not as long as the upper is sealed. Someone can swim out from there.”

“Very good,” Oglethorpe said. “Mr. Parmenter, you’re elected.”

“Sorry, General. I —I can’t swim.”

“I’ll do it,” Tomochichi said.

Oglethorpe frowned, remembering the Indian’s fear of underwater spirits.

“No. I know you don’t like this below-the-water business.”

“What else can I do here?” Tomochichi asked. “Shoot my musket? No. Raise my war club? No. My younger brothers are already covered in glory. I will do this. This is mine.”

Oglethorpe hesitated only for an eye blink. “Very well, Chief, it’s yours.” He clasped the old man’s arms. “Good fortune.”

“If my allotted days are broken, it is so. No man can escape his fate. But I will end our enemies.”

A chill stalked down Oglethorpe’s back. He hated it when the Indians started talking like that.

“Go with God, Chief.” Oglethorpe turned to Parmenter. “Put the knife to the Russian pilot. No, bring him here so I may do it myself. I will know how his countrymen see us.” He turned back to Tomochichi, who was doffing his matchcoat, revealing the dark wings tattooed on his chest and torso. For a dizzying instant, the old Indian seemed not human at all but instead some Oriental combination of man and bird of prey.

THE SHADOWS OF GOD

Then the illusion vanished, and he again saw a vulnerable old man.

“Tie a rope to the chief’s ankle,” Oglethorpe commanded, “so he can find his way back.”

Tomochichi slipped into the opaque waters at about the same time they brought the sullen Russian captive before Oglethorpe. He was a young man, perhaps twenty-two, with a heavy beard and mustache. He still wore the green breeches of his uniform and a sweat-stained white shirt.

Oglethorpe already knew the fellow spoke English, from the earlier interrogation.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Feodor Yurivich Histrov.”

“Very good, Mr. Histrov. No doubt you are aware of our present troubles. It seems your friends have a method of locating us, and of knowing we are unfriendly to their cause. I’m sure you were aware that would happen, and I congratulate you on your bravery in keeping silent. You must have known you would die with us, or that we would kill you for your omission.”

Histrov did not answer, but his face pinched tighter.

“Come here,” Oglethorpe said softly. “I want you to see something.”

He pulled the Russian forward, then crowded with him into the watchtower, where one of the windows looked upward.

“There? You see them? What are they waiting for?”

“For you to surrender,” the Russian replied. “By now the narrows is blockaded as well, so you will not escape.”

“No? Then is it worth your life to keep the secret of our detection from us?”

“Yes.”

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Oglethorpe motioned to Unoka, who pulled an ugly-looking bone-handled dirk. With a swift motion, the little man cut off one of the Russian’s ears. The sailor’s shrieks were piteous until Oglethorpe stuffed a rag into his mouth.

“You think we have no chance of escaping. I think we have a slim chance, yet you know more of our situation than I do, yes? Let me help you. You are a brave man, and I wish every chance to give you your life. If you don’t tell me what I want to know, and we are captured, your countrymen will find your corpse floating in the water, if they find you at all. If you tell me, and they capture us, I will let you live to rejoin them. You say we will be caught no matter what. Tell me.”

He removed the rag from the fellow’s mouth.

“It’s—” He paused, and Unoka shrugged and brought his knife up again.

“No!” Histrov said. “It’s the aetherschreiber in the cabinet. In the captain’s room.”

“I saw no such device.”

“Yes. It is a secret. They would have schreibed you, and when you never answered they would know the ship was in enemy hands.”

“Tell me exactly where that is?”

“I don’t know. I was not the captain.”

Oglethorpe lifted an eyebrow. “Tear the room apart,” Oglethorpe told Parmenter. “Find that schreiber and throw it into the sea.”

At about that moment, the lights above them started to descend. Oglethorpe held his breath, almost, as they came level and then continued down.

“Well,” he said. “So much for those three. That gives us a breath to draw, I think. The chief met with success, it seems. MacKay, as soon as Tomochichi is back on board, move this scow.”

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“Aye, sir.”

“And put Mr. Histrov back in chains.”

Oglethorpe went back to the lower hatch, where his men were taking in the rope tied to the old Yamacraw’s leg. He waited with a small smile on his face, ready to congratulate his old friend.

But what rose up from the hatch was no Tomochichi, chief of the Yamacraw. It was a monster in the shape of a man, a construction of what resembled dull ceramic, but which bunched and knotted like the muscles of a man. Its head was a mirrored globe, and it had four arms. Two ended in sword blades, the other two in
kraftpistoles.

“Talos!” Oglethorpe shouted, but it was already too late for his men at the rope. The automaton sheered through both with its scimitar limbs so that each fell apart at the waist. Neither man knew he was dead, but pitched back, trying to find legs he no longer had.

Then twin searing
kraftpistole
bolts jagged through the crew compartment.

Oglethorpe felt the heat, stepped aside, and fired his own weapon at the thing.

Likewise, Parmenter drew a Fahrenheit pistol captured from one of the English officers and directed a white-hot spray of molten silver against the talos.

It rose up, giving no indication that it was hurt.

With a howl, Unoka leapt into the air and landed on the talos’ shoulders, hacking at the silver globe with his throwing ax. It rang like a bell, but did not crack. Sword blades shot up to pierce him, but he wrapped his legs around the monster’s neck and swung his body back to dodge, as nimbly as any acrobat.

Not completely distracted by this, the talos fired its
kraftpistoles
again, and more men died in flaming agony.

Parmenter suddenly lunged forward, not at the talos, but at something behind it. Just as Unoka finally dropped from it, dodging the scything arms, Parmenter came up behind, and Oglethorpe saw what he was about as the THE SHADOWS OF GOD

captain looped a long steel chain around the talos’ head. Bellowing, Oglethorpe rushed beneath the weapon arms and grappled with it, trying to keep it occupied while Parmenter finished.

Never in Oglethorpe’s life had he felt something so strong or relentless.

Though inside the reach of its guns, the arms scissored together, pinching the life from him.

Meanwhile, however, Parmenter finished his task. The anchor cable wrapped firmly around the unholy thing, he now released the anchor.

When it went, it nearly took Oglethorpe’s head off, but by a miracle, his long hair oiled the demon’s grip, and allowed him to slip away from it with no more than a bloody scalp. Down through the hatch the talos went.

“Cut that damned chain!” Oglethorpe shouted, “else it will just crawl back up.”

“Aye,” Parmenter shouted.

“And get this ship in motion!”

A moment later they were under way and they began to count the dead.

Oglethorpe’s momentary feeling of triumph seeing the enemy ships sink was so far gone as to have belonged to a different age.

And Tomochichi, his friend and adviser for much of that age, was gone with it.

“Margrave?” Parmenter had given him the best part of an hour before interrupting his thoughts. Good man, Parmenter. Captain.

“What do we do now, sir?”

“It’s still night. We still can’t see, and the Russian is no doubt correct—the way to open sea is no doubt well blockaded. I’m accepting suggestions.”

“There may be another way around the island. The map shows two passages.”

“Both are narrow enough to block, I think, even if they no longer have a way of THE SHADOWS OF GOD

finding us precisely.”

“Yes, but the north way is under Fort Marlborough’s guns. The south way is not.”

Oglethorpe was stopped by that, and by the lightning of a sudden thought.

“Parmenter, you served at Marlborough, didn’t you?”

“Briefly, sir.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Margrave Montgomery built her to guard the Spanish border. She has four bastions and a spur out toward the narrows. The rampart ain’t too high, but the wall is brick.”

“Details, Captain. More details.”

Morning was still a thought in the mind of God when Oglethorpe’s booted feet came to rest inside the sandy keep of Fort Marlborough. Night birds whined in the distance, and the crickets, frogs, and other marsh singers filled the night with music.

The wall had proved little trouble. The earthen rampart was steep, but not too difficult to climb without shot flying down from the walls. Parmenter chose the spot where the rampart had been cratered once by Spanish mortars. After the the capital of Azilia had been moved inland, the wall had never been fully repaired, the gap patched only with unmortered brick and rubbish. It had taken a little excavation to open a crawl-through, and meanwhile Yamacraw marksmen laid low the handful of men on the bastions.

“The spur is north,” Parmenter said. “That’s what we’ll want.”

“We shall have it, then,” Oglethorpe promised.

Parmenter suddenly whirled at a faint sound behind them.

“Someone else comes through the gap!” he hissed.

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“Knives, not guns!” Oglethorpe cautioned.

But when the figure came up from its belly and swayed to two feet, Oglethorpe was barely able to restrain a whoop of joy.

“Chief!” he whispered, clasping the old Indian to him. “Are you impossible to kill?”

“So they say,” Tomochichi replied, grinning. “The knife arm cut me away, but he had no interest in me. I swam to shore, then saw you arrive. You will take the fort?”

“And turn their own guns on their blockade.”

“Good. That is good.” Tomochichi paused and looked down at his feet. “I lost the devil gun. I swam down seven times, but could not find it.”

Oglethorpe took that grim news with a shrug. “It’s done. You’re the more valuable of the two, and we have you back. Now, we’ll go.”

They passed through the courtyard like hunting owls, dressed again in the stolen uniforms they had obtained from the amphibian boat’s crew.

Two guards at the gate by the spur paid their silent passage into the sleeping battery, and they reached the guns without much trouble at all.

In the East, the sky grew rosy as dawn spread her fingers.

“Now comes the trick,” Oglethorpe told his men. “We need enough light to see, so we can find their blockade, get our r lge, and put their ships below the water. If not before, when the first gun is fired, we’ll have to hold these guns until
Azilia’s Hammer
is through.”

“And after that, sir?”

“After that, we do as we can. If we can fight free, we’ll try and rendezvous with our companions. If we can’t, MacKay will know what to do. Finding the fleet THE SHADOWS OF GOD