Chapter 312: Fuego Según Apunten

The old man brought his hand down.

Three Spanish words fell across the deck, and twenty-three gun captains had their lanyards in their fists.

"?Fuego según apunten!"

The painted ports flew open across the whole flank. The hillside had opened its eyes, and the King’s soldiers were about to learn what a mistake that had been.

On the lead sloop, a lad who had spent the whole morning staring at green walls watched them open. His mouth opened with them, but the surprise was too much for speech.

Behind the lad, the lieutenant’s composure tore, and what came out of him was a screech a full octave above his rank. "Run ’em out! Run out, damn your eyes, you dawdling sons of... God, the whole blasted hill’s alive! Run out the guns, run ’em out, for the love of God, for the love of..."

His voice split down the middle on the last love, and nothing came after it but breath.

The Dame’s foremost gun fired just as the sloop’s bowsprit crossed its range.

The next gun fired close behind it, and the next followed, the shots spreading down the flank and each one striking a little farther aft as the sloop drifted past. The whole galleon jumped within her hiding place until her rigging groaned, and every bird in the pines took flight at once.

Across the water, a dozen guns heard the volley and joined in.

The thunder washed down the channel and carried on.

Smoke poured from every port and rose over the flat water, where there wasn’t enough wind to move it. The King’s ships had come looking for a hidden bay, only to discover that it had found them first.

The chain shot flew high, tearing the lead sloop’s mainsail from the gaff and cutting her foretopmast off at the cap, killing the sailors who had been standing beneath them. Three redcoats at the main shrouds were cut across the belly and fell in six pieces, the pieces twitching for a heartbeat after the men were finished with them.

The round shots went low. Each sloop brought around fourteen guns, and not one had been run out, so their crews were packed behind their pieces when the cannonballs came through the planking at cable’s range.

Splinters burst out, some as long as oars, and some guns broke loose from their tackle and careered across the deck, carrying the redcoats in its path down.

The leadsman had just called the water clear, but a moment later the boat was gone, leaving a pink mist, a few planks, and a lead rope still swinging in the air.

"Mam? Mam! Mam, I can’t find me legs!"

A redcoat sat up on the deck with both legs gone at the knee and looked around for them.

"They was right ’ere, Mam, I ’ad ’em a minute ago, I swear on me life!"

A sergeant sat against the mainmast with his belly open, cursing the hill. "God damn you, you hill-hiding, whore-bred, gutless sons of bitches! Hid behind a bloody hedge like poachers! Come down and fight like Christians, you cowards! God rot you! God rot you all!"

The last guns along the flank fired late, but their shots reached farther, punching straight through the middle sloop’s bowsprit and tearing the rear sloop’s foresail to rags. Both ships lost a few more sailors, and that was all.

At the fourth gun, Tuck flung both arms around the barrel, still hot as a stove, and planted a smacking kiss on the muzzle. "God bless yer iron arse, me darlin’! Look at yer, me great black beauty, I’ll rub yer down twice, I will, twice, with warm oil an’ me best shirt, I’ll..."

The iron bit back. He leapt away with his lip smoking, and what came out of him next was not fit for a lady, even one made of iron.

Roberts remarked while he watched the sloops.

"Tuck. Four shillings for the language, boyo. The Articles make no exception for ironwork, see."

The faintest warmth crept into the corner of his mouth. "But she’s let off lovely, mind, shot beautiful, that lady. I’ll enter it as a fine and a compliment, and we’ll say no more about it."

The middle sloop managed to get three guns out, while the rear managed one. Their retaliation shots went into the mud, the pines, and the water.

A lucky shot passed through the old admiral’s hedge and cut a bough off a hand’s breadth from his head, sending splinters and pine needles raining across the quarterdeck.

The conquistador didn’t even twitch.

The parrot shook out its feathers, looked up at the sky, and finally said the one word it had been saving all morning.

"?Llueve!" It rocked on its perch, delighted with itself. "?Llueve, llueve, llueve!"

Roberts plucked a pine needle from his collar, inspected it as though it had been submitted for his approval, and flicked it over the rail.

"Only splinters, Admiral, nothing to trouble yourself about."

He took out the tin cup with a small flourish. "Tea’s gone cold, I’m afraid, and there’s a shame. But there it is, see. Couldn’t light a fire with the whole ship tucked up in a wood, could I? We’d have been a beacon, and a roasting one."

The old man took the cup and drank.

He returned it empty, and Roberts tucked it into his coat.

The two sloops behind the lead had their sweeps out already, long oars poking out as the ships crawled toward the bend against the stream in the flat calm. The lead sloop drifted the other way, having run out of sailors who could steer her.

"Like the rabbits to the hole, they run from their predator."

The old man kept his eyes on the sloops.

"Chain for the sweeps. Take the legs from the beast, and the beast does not run."

Roberts replied. "Chain it is, Admiral. Chain in the aft six, to chew up them oars, and round shot for the lead one. Put her in the mud where she belongs. Lovely."

He turned a little sandglass on the rail. "Swab out your pieces, you lot! Sponge ’em clean, mind, I want ’em clean enough to eat from! Cartridge in! Shot in! And ram it home once, once I said, not twice, or you’ll blow the lady’s arse off and your own along with it!"

The sand ran quickly. When the last grain fell, Roberts closed his hand around the glass.

"Loaded, Admiral. The whole flank, ready and waiting and wanting."

"Fuego."

The next broadside came out of the Dame like the end of the world, and the damage from the previous volley made matters worse. The boughs and mats along her flank had already been scorched, and now they caught fire from end to end.

The round shot went low into the lead sloop, striking near her powder room and bursting her planks inward. Spilled cartridges caught fire from the match tubs her crew had lit for guns they had never managed to fire, and the entire deck went up with a flat roar.

Redcoats came out of the hatches with their coats burning and went over the side still alight, while fire raced up the tarred rigging and climbed her mast like a rat up a rope.

The sloop burned and settled by the stern, slowly enough for everyone to watch.

The crackling carried to both banks.

The chain shot struck the retreating ships. Some burst beneath rowers hands, driving the shaft through their chests and pinning them to the thwart. The middle sloop’s mainmast buckled and leaned, while the rear took a shot through her side above the waterline.

A dozen redcoats aboard each ship lay dead or screaming, but both ships remained afloat.

The fortifications’ next salvo followed a breath behind the Dame’s and struck hard. The brush mats caught fire, and a thin Frenchman climbed out of a ditch to beat it with his hat.

"Je l’avais dit! Onze fois, je l’avais dit! Le branchage, ?a br?le, imbéciles!"¹

No one on the headland saw any reason to disagree.

Aboard the Dame, Roberts called for buckets, and the fire party set about the burning boughs. When the last of them hissed into the channel, the Grand Dame sat in her hiding place plainly.

Barrel watched the paint peel from the nearest port in long black curls.

"Who pay for the pretty paint?"

"Admiral," Ox replied.

He looked toward the quarterdeck. The old man stood in the smoke with his back to them.

"I ask later," Barrel decided.

The old conquistador spoke one word, gently enough that no one needed to be told twice.

"Hold. Quietos."

Every gun along the flank held its fire.

The lead sloop burned like a barn.

Sailors jumped over her side in ones and twos, wearing red coats and tarred trousers, their heads surfacing in the water as they struck out for the banks with their coats dragging them down.

Roberts leaned on the rail. "Nineteen, Admiral. Eleven for our bank, eight for the headland, and every last one of ’em in a wet red coat. Very obliging of them, the coats, makes the sums easy."

A redcoat in the shallows, chest-deep and hatless, flung both hands to heaven.

"Quarter! Quarter, in the name o’ God! Mercy, sirs, mercy!"

The soldier beside him copied the gesture a half-second late. "We’ve struck! Gawd’s sake, we’ve struck, ye old bastard! We’re beaten, we’re beaten! Look at me ’ands, look, I ain’t got nuffin’!"

Don Rodrigo didn’t so much as glance at the raised hands. His eyes stayed on the channels, and his voice was mild, almost courteous.

"Ninguno, not one of them reach the trees, Se?or Roberts. Sin cuartel."

Bran swung up onto the rail with a pistol in each fist and a grin that showed every tooth. "You heard the Admiral, boys bach! No quarter, is it. Pistols flat across the water, and every last one of ’em that so much as touches mud! Come on now, Crows, let’s be having them, Duw!"

The Crows fired their pistols flat across the water, a dozen shots at once.

The redcoats reaching for the roots had their hands blown off at the wrist, only to reach again with the other, and only for the next shot to go through their heads. Swimmers kept their head down as they made for the bank, were shot through the crown, and floated face-first with the red coat spread around them.

Across the narrows, hog hunters emerged from the mangrove roots with mud up to their eyes and hatchets in their fists. They waded out to meet the eight men heading for the opposite bank, and the hatchets rose and fell through the smoke until the water around them turned the red of the coats.

The burning sloop’s mainmast fell across her deck in a shower of sparks. Her smoke spread along the channel, held there by the dead air.

Roberts laid the sandglass on its side. "Between the fire and the noise, the navy’ll have a fair idea where we’re lying in these channels. Fair idea indeed."

"Is as I expected, Se?or Roberts."

Don Rodrigo looked beyond the bend, beyond the reef and the pines, toward the open water.

"La batalla... it will not be only here. No. Not only here."