Chapter Twenty-Three

“Behold their armada in mighty array,” Doc said.

The baron’s fleet had come across the strait in the late afternoon, just as predicted. They hovered offshore waiting as the setting sun turned from gold to orange. J.B. watched the invasion force through his binoculars with more than a little trepidation. The fleet was a hodge-podge of whalers and fishing feluccas and a pair of barges. He had been expecting that, but it was the flagship that was making J.B. nervous. It was a small tramp steamer, but you could fit a lot of men inside the hold. The sides of the ship were strung with heavy nets for the invaders to climb down. The port side deck was lined with cannons in heavy wooden running carriages.

Jak sighed unhappily. “Gunship.”

“Indeed,” Doc agreed. “They have configured the vessel for shore bombardment. Note the devices amidships.”

J.B. took a look at a series of oversize wheelbarrows loaded with long wooden racks. His heart sank. “Dark night.”

“Any culture that can produce black-powder cannons and small arms has the capacity to manufacture artillery rockets,” Doc stated.

J.B. imagined rockets screaming into the men standing and slinging in the dunes. “Our boys aren’t ready for rockets.”

“No choice,” Jak said.

Doc continued his discourse. “Note also toward the back of the steamer, six more cannons up on field carriages. Our enemy intends to bring artillery upon the shore.”

J.B.’s brow furrowed in thought. “Whole lot of powder on that deck.”

“Ryan demolished the enemy gun emplacements upon the main isle with incendiary rifle fire,” Doc mused. “However, I fear we have no such armament to hand.”

Jak looked at the ville men in their long black coats and broad hats swarming the deck. “I can.”

“Can what, Jak?” J.B. asked.

“Get close. Wear black. Battle starts, go aboard. Burn it.”

“You got black?”

The islanders were using blankets to transport their stockpiles of sling stones and supplies. Jak unfolded the one closest to him and revealed his stolen cloak, a pair of shades and Father Joao’s hat.

“You figured on this all along,” J.B. concluded.

“Figured mebbe,” Jak admitted.

“My friend,” Doc said concernedly, “you may well be subject to friendly fire. No one shall be calling friend or foe whence we are engaged, and you may well be misidentified, particularly by the slingers at a distance.”

Jak shrugged. “Better’n facing cannons like you.”

“Hmm, well, yes, perhaps.”

J.B. had to admit Jak might actually have the easier job. Except for one little detail. “Jak, you blow that boat, you’re taking that boat west.”

Jak tapped his temple. “Do it smart.” He shrugged fatalistically. “If I can.”

They both knew Jak would blow the boat up any way he could even it if cost him his life. J.B. looked around at his forces. The dunes were full of islanders lying out of sight in the sea grass. The center was one hundred yards from the beach. The right and left flanks were at fifty. Some of the leading elements were even closer. It was a classic crescent formation. He looked long at the left flank. “Who’s going to lead your men, Jak?”

Krysty piped up from right behind them. “How about me?”

“Ryan wouldn’t like it.”

“Ryan isn’t here, and we only get one shot at this. They release the nightwalkers, and mebbe our boys see a woman going forward with the flag, mebbe taking one or two out?” Krysty flashed her smile. “Might be enough to keep them going.”

J.B. looked at Jak, who shrugged. “Right,” J.B. agreed. “But, Krysty, you take the center.” He looked at their dwindling supply of blasters. “Take the longblaster with the bayonet. Doc? You take the left flank. Give them the swivel blaster and the nails if they charge our center. Jak, get in black, take one of the auto-blasters and start creeping forward. Do it careful, let our boys see your hair till you get close. Don’t want any itchy sling finger accidents.” J.B. took a final look around. Once the action started just about every contingency plan they had would probably go out the window. They all had to get it right the first time. “Let’s get in position.”

Jak was already dressed and began kneeing and elbowing through the dunes toward the beach. Krysty moved to take the center with the flag. J.B. put a hand on Doc’s arm. “Doc, you tell Ago he sticks with Krysty, and sticks with the flag, no matter what.” It wasn’t much of an insurance policy, but it was all J.B. could do for Ryan. “Issue him the last two short doubles.”

“Color Sergeant Ago, then.” Doc nodded. “So be it.” Doc grabbed Ago by the shoulder and had a short exchange with him. Ago nodded confidently, took the weapons off the blanket depots and crawled after Krysty with the war banner.

“What about me?” Mildred asked.

J.B. sighed. Everyone was sneaking up on him today. “Field med.”

“We only get one chance at this.” Mildred pointed out. “You need every gun you can get.”

Everyone seemed to feel that J.B. needed reminding of that.

J.B. looked at the remaining auto-blaster and the two bolt-actions. “Take the auto, deploy the bipod, fire from right here. Rake the decks till you’re out of ammo. Then you run. Take one of the bolt blasters with you. If we lose, you manage the surrender, and you surrender.”

Mildred gave J.B. a hard look.

J.B. couldn’t help but remember their night in Ago’s hut. He looked out at Barat’s fleet and knew all too well it might have been their last. “Promise.”

“I promise, J.B.” Mildred crossed her heart. “Cross my heart and hope to die. Now give me the goddamn blaster.” J.B. deployed the blaster’s bipod and handed over it and the spare mag. Mildred took a prone shooting position on the dune. J.B. took a long last look at her. Mildred smiled back from her shooting position. “J.B.?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re going to be all right. Now get to your people and let’s chill these ghost-faced sons of bitches.”

J.B. scooped up the remaining bolt-action blaster and began weaving through the dunes toward the right flank. He reached his position just as the steamer’s foghorn lowed three times. The whalers plied their oars and ground right up onto the beach. Sec men leaped into the surf with bayonets fixed. The right flank’s second in command was a strapping blond islander named Davi. Davi was shaking in his sandals. J.B. clapped him on the shoulder as more and more sec men deployed. “Sons of the Sun.”

“Sons of the Sun,” Davi replied, but without much enthusiasm.

The afternoon breeze seemed to die of its own accord. Except for the sounds of the debarking sec men, the shore was eerily quiet. A sec man stood alone at the front of the beachhead. He carried an auto-blaster and wore white cross-belts over his black tunic, and had a plume in his hat. The scout was one of Sylvano’s elite cadre. The scout scanned the dunes, but there was nothing to see. J.B.’s army didn’t need much encouragement to lie as quiet as rabbits in sea grass. They were scared out of their minds. The scout turned back to the steamer and made a cutting motion with one black-gloved hand. Davi flinched as a sound like a thousand hissing snakes came from the deck of the steamer.

Hundreds of rockets streamed up into sunset on plumes of smoke.

They flew in a very high trajectory over the dunes. They were unguided and other than high and up, their trajectory was close to random. They looped and spun crisscrossing as high as their rocket motors would take them and as their propellant burned out they nosed over and began falling back to earth. J.B. saw their glittering points as they fell from the sky. The enemy was using rocket arrows. They would be much more effective fired at a flat trajectory in a mass of men but that was not the ville men’s tactic. They were firing for effect.

Davi screamed as a falling arrow sank into his shoulder.

More screams tore out among the dunes. Some islanders rose and tried to dodge the arrow shower. A man ran away inland.

“Dark night!” J.B. snarled. They had just lost surprise. J.B. rose and fired his Uzi three times on semiauto. “Now! Now! Now!” J.B. shouted. He didn’t wait. He dropped to one knee and began emptying his blaster into the milling sec men in the surf. His men rose around him, putting stone to sling. The air thrummed with their massed casting. The center rose as a unit as Ago raised the sun banner. The left flank rose at the same time, and J.B. could hear the flat booming of Doc’s LeMat. A deadly rain of rocks answered the rocket arrows and sec men fell. They answered by unlimbering their blasters. Men standing and slinging at one hundred yards or less weren’t difficult targets. J.B.’s men began dying all around him. J.B. kept firing in short bursts as another salvo of rockets sizzled skyward. More sec men kept spilling over the side of the steamer and down the netting. Some fell to the surf as stones struck them, but not enough. Many of those hit didn’t go down but kept loading and firing.

Doc had told him you could teach a man to sling in a day but it took a long time to get accurate, much less to develop the cast for maximum power. For true killing power they were going to have to get closer. J.B. wondered when the cannons would open up. Instead one of the barge’s ramp clanged down. Sec men spilled out in a black-clad wave. Each one had a plume in his hat and white cross-belts strapped their torsos. Each man carried a longblaster with a fixed bayonet. J.B. guessed there were over a hundred of them. By Mildred’s description, J.B. knew that Sylvano Barat led them, carrying the biggest sword he had ever seen. The chosen men spread out behind their prince in a phalanx as they came out of the surf and onto the sand. War whistles shrilled and screamed. Sylvano’s men didn’t bother to fire their blasters.

They leveled their bayonets and charged straight for the kill.

DOC COCKED AND FIRED his blaster as rapidly as he could. Rocket arrows fell. Sec men to either side of Sylvano’s charge loaded and fired their single-shot blasters with precision. The battle was turning very quickly. Doc raised his cocked pistol, holding his last round. There would be no time to reload before the lines met. The chosen sec men charged the dunes in a 150-man wedge and Sylvano Barat was the tip of the spear. He had abandoned his blaster and rapier and hurtled forward with a great, two-handed sword held aloft. From point to pommel it was nearly six feet long. Doc knew it was a weapon Sylvano had forged for slaying nightwalkers. Pointed sticks would stand no chance. Sylvano would reap the Sister Islanders like wheat, and his men knew it. Held aloft in sunset, the shining sword was all the war banner the sec men required. They charged in good order, bayonets bright as they followed Sylvano’s gigantic burnished blade into battle.

Doc took careful aim at Sylvano. He put his front sight on Sylvano’s center body mass and squeezed the trigger. The LeMat revolver cracked in his hand. Sylvano jerked slightly but didn’t even break stride. Sling stones struck him and bounced off. The islanders began to panic. Sylvano came on like an unstoppable juggernaut. The wave of sec men behind him came on like a deadly tide. Doc cursed himself as he remembered Ryan telling him that Sylvano and his father had worn body armor during the battle in the manse.

The scholar could feel the courage of the men around him failing. His sword cane was a toothpick compared to the Goliath-size weapon in Sylvano’s hand. No man would follow it into the rolling line of sec steel rumbling down upon them. Doc holstered his LeMat, saving the shotgun barrel for the melee. Doc could see only one course of action. He took a deep breath, sighed, and pulled the sling from his belt. His men shouted in alarm as Doc began walking across the sand toward Sylvano and his thicket of bayonets.

“Doc!” Nando howled for him to come back. “Doc!” Yet none of Doc’s men followed or made any attempt to pull him back. The islanders were heartbeats away from breaking. Doc was at his limit, as well, and knew it was only the Blood of the Lotus he had been fortifying himself with all day that was allowing him this bravado. Doc comforted himself with scripture.

“‘And it came to pass,’” Doc quoted. “‘When the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.’”

“Mine!” Sylvano saw Doc stalking forward and bellowed. “Dr. Tanner is mine!” Sylvano shoved his sword skyward and the blade seemed to catch fire in the sunset. The sec men roared as their champion ran forward, hastening to meet the scarecrow the despised Sister Islanders had sent against them.

“‘And David put his hand in his bag—’” Doc spiked his swordstick in the sand and put a hand into his pocket “‘—and took thence a stone…’” Doc loaded his sling. Sylvano suddenly saw what Doc was about. He kept his sword aloft but his right hand clawed for the blaster strapped to his hip. The piercing Doc had given that hand made it a second too slow. Doc’s sling hummed as he ripped it through the Z-shaped windup that had impressed his schoolmates as a child and awed the islanders. “‘And slang it’!” Doc shouted. The polished white sea stone hurtled through the air straight and true. Sylvano’s black hat was torn from his head from the concussion.

“‘And smote the Philistine in his forehead,’” Doc continued. “‘And he fell upon his face to the earth.’” Sylvano stumbled two more steps forward and collapsed. The reflected red light of the sunset left Sylvano’s great sword like a snuffed candle as it fell to the sand. “Samuel, Book 1, Chapter 17, Verses 48 and 49,” Doc concluded.

The charge faltered as some sec men stopped to defend their fallen captain and the men behind piled into them. Others ran past but looked backward and slowed. The amazed islanders sent a great roar of triumph rolling through the dunes and renewed their slinging. The range was now much shorter and their target a compact mass of men. Only a few of Sylvano’s front-rank men had predark body armor or flak vests beneath their cloaks, and they began to fall as sling stones broke bones and cracked skulls. Doc knew if there were to be any moment, it was now, before the sec men could reform. “Nando!” Doc shouted back to where Nando stood by the swivel blaster. “Now!”

Nando yanked the cord and three hundred nails blew out in a bee swarm into Sylvano’s stalled charge. Sec men screamed and flailed. Islanders slang. Those who had run out of stones shook their spears. Doc pulled his swordstick from the sand and drew the rapier, thrusting the steel point skyward. “They are unmanned! Their formation is broken!

“Sons of the Sun!” Doc shouted. He turned and stalked down out of the dunes, pointing his blade ever forward, daring his men to follow.

“Sons of the Sun!” tore from every islander’s throat left, right and center. The right flank came rumbling out of the dunes like an avalanche in Doc’s wake. The left and the center followed within heartbeats. The islanders charged the invaders’ blasters in a human wave. “Sons of the Sun!”

“OH…MY…GOD.” Mildred hunkered down behind her rifle. For good or ill, a broken-minded man from the nineteenth century had bet the entire battle on a single roll of the dice. Not that it was ever going to come down to anything but this, but Mildred would have been a lot more confident if it had been J.B., Jak or, better, Ryan who had called the charge. Still, Mildred had to admit that Doc was cutting quite an impressive figure marching down upon the beach, pointing his blade like a judging finger from God on High.

A short series of whistle blasts stopped Sylvano’s men in their tracks. As a unit they took to a knee, aimed and fired en masse into the charging left flank. The wave of islanders rippled like sea grass. Untold scores of islanders fell. Mildred couldn’t see what became of Doc through the powder smoke. The sec men had no time to reload. Instead sec whistles shrieked the battle order and the ragged wedge of black cloaks formed themselves into a square. Howls, shouts and screams lifted to the sky as the lines met and the battle went hand-to-hand.

Mildred cut loose.

She ignored the beach bash and concentrated on the gun crews along the steamer’s rails. For some reason the ville men had been husbanding their cannons. Her first shot sparked as it caromed off the black iron cannon barrel. Her second took one of the loaders. The gun crew noticed the flash of her blaster and suddenly took a very dim view of her activities. They raised their aim slightly and traversed the gun a degree in its wooden track. Mildred shot the man cranking it and the man who took up the task. The other three cannons all began traversing her way. Mildred began to feel panic as the gaping black muzzles looked her way. She fired three more times and one of the gun crew twisted and fell. The gun captains yanked their cannon lanyards and the iron guns belched smoke and fire.

“Bastard!” Mildred yelped. She rolled down the back of dune as the crest exploded like a volcano. The slings had been a surprise, but the mission of the enemy artillery remained the same. Sylvano’s men would deal with the pointed sticks. The gunners would pound any snipers in the dunes with explosive shells. Mildred found herself drowning in sand as the dune was violently rearranged and a great deal of it fell on top of her. She did a push-up and shook her plaits, spitting and blinking at the grit invading every exposed orifice. She hacked and coughed in the burning, brimstone fog of black powder smoke enveloping her. She scrabbled blindly for her rifle.

“Shit!” Mildred clawed about in the sand but it was nowhere to be found. “Shit! Shit! Shit!” She found the bolt-action rifle, but the spare ammo was lost in the sand slide. Mildred had five rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. She crawled back up the sundered dune. The beach was one big brawl. Mildred lay in a firing position. She took aim at the steamer once more, and despite his disguise she made out Jak climbing up the invasion netting draping the side of the steamer. It looked like he was hurt. Mildred settled in and kept her sights on him.

Jak’s one-man boarding party now had a guardian angel.

ROCKS FELL OUT of the sky like rain, and now that the battle was engaged Jak was just one more black-cloaked and hated sec man. Two stones had struck him. One had grazed his face and it was swelling magnificently. He no longer had to fake the limp he had adopted as he retreated toward the ships. Stones clanged off the side of the steamer’s steel hull and rattled down on the decks. Sec men swarmed down the nets as the invaders deployed their reserve into the battle. Jak splashed through the surf and began climbing up the side. A sec man stopped in midclimb and pointed at him and his auto-blaster and began to shout. Jak didn’t see any way around it. He had to get on deck. Jak nodded and handed the man the weapon and kept climbing up the net. The climb was difficult. No bone was broken, but Jak felt like someone had hit him in the thigh with a hammer.

Jak looked up as he reached the top and found himself staring up the barrels of a double blaster. He doubted this one was loaded with salt. The sec man shouted and shoved out his hand. Jak’s long platinum hair was tied back and shoved up under his hat. All the sec man saw was a face as pale as his own, half swollen out of all recognition behind smoked lenses and struggling up the net with an injured leg. The sec man grabbed Jak’s arm and hauled him aboard. He shouted something encouraging and rejoined his gun crew.

For a moment Jak had freedom of the deck.

Almost every sec man without an artillery task was deploying down the netting. Two men stood in the steamer’s wheelhouse, but their eyes were on the battle. The cannon men kept their weapons trained on the dunes. A team of four men had reloaded two of the rocket batteries and were swiftly stuffing rocket arrows down the smoking racks of the third. Jak considered his options. He limped over to the rocketeers. He picked up a rocket arrow and helpfully began to assist in loading. The rocket captain nodded and said something. Jak responded by shoving the barbed arrowhead into the sec man’s throat. The other three gaped in shock at the sudden violence. Jak took the opportunity to put a throwing knife into the throats of two more. The fourth rocketeer shouted, and his sword rasped from its sheath.

The man flew backward as though he’d taken a huge invisible fist to the chest.

Jak smiled. Someone out there liked him.

The albino youth went to one of the loaded rocket racks. Ignition was fairly simple. Each row of rockets rested against a wooden tray with a runnel carved in it. Each runnel was laid with fuse cording. A coil of slow cord smoldered in a bucket on the deck. Jak considered the possibilities. The entire device was basically a wheelbarrow loaded with arrows. Jak lifted the handles and found it surprisingly light. He lifted the handles to maximum declination and kicked the wooden elevation stop so that the rocket rack was level with the deck. Jak aimed the rocket battery at the cannon crews. He took the burning slow cord and touched it to the master fuse hole and prudently stepped out of the way. The lines of fusing hissed down each row of rockets, igniting their motors. The rocket arrows hissed out of the racks in a rippling, random swarm. The weapon was hopelessly inaccurate, but it made for quite a deck sweeper. Gun crewmen fell pin-cushioned across their cannons or flopped to the deck. The arrows slammed against the cannons and even the explosive iron shells, but lacked the velocity to detonate anything. The far gun crew escaped most of the carnage. Jak put the cord in his teeth and took his Colt Python in both hands. The remaining gun crewmen died beneath Jak’s blaster as they went for their swords. Jak ran to the partially loaded rocket rack.

The wheelhouse door slammed open and the captain and his mate came out with swords and short blasters in hand. Jak aimed the rack at the wheelhouse stair. The captain and mate screamed and ran back up. Jak took the slow cord from between his teeth and lit up. Only seventy-five arrows had been loaded, but they shrieked satisfactorily against the wheelhouse landing. The captain dived through the door. The mate took a dozen arrows in the back and ate stairs. Jak quickly reloaded his blaster.

The captain stood in the arrow-studded wheelhouse and yanked a handle in the roof. His foghorn boomed three times. He staggered backward and half flopped out the window as Jak’s guardian angel smote him. Jak looked around. There had to be more crewmen below, at least in the engine room, but for the moment he owned the deck. Jak ran to the side. The battle was still raging. The sec men square had taken a horrific toll. The sand was a sea of dead islanders, but the numbers game had told the tale. The sec men square was down to one-third its number. The reserve from the middle was completely deployed. The crews of the feluccas and whalers were rushing to reinforce them, but sling stones rained down among them and Jak could tell they wouldn’t be enough. The square was crumbling and inexorably being pushed toward the sea.

Jak wondered what the captain’s horn signal had meant.

He got his answer as the ramp of the second barge slammed into the surf. The belly of the barge gave birth to abominations. The nightwalkers came screaming out of the hold. They were half naked or naked, and their fish-white flesh gleamed like ivory in the dying light. Most carried clubs or spears of astounding size, often inset with sharpened pieces of iron or nails. Others carried stolen picks and axes, and they wielded them in their huge hands like a norm would hold a hammer or a hatchet. The leader was smaller, and still had a veneer of human proportion in comparison to the screaming grotesques he led. He carried a great whaling harpoon in one hand and a crude wooden shield in the other. A net was wrapped over one shoulder.

Jak estimated there were fifty of them.

He ran to the last loaded rocket battery and rolled it forward to the rail.