Chapter 325: Carnage Unbound

The drum started to ramp up, and the ladders began taking soldiers.

The sailors went up first, black with tar and yelling, and the redcoats accompanied until the curtain was covered with privates climbing over one another. The corner filled quickest, as the ground was lowest there, and every sergeant with eyes knew it.

Battle cries shook the fort until dust came streaming down the wall. On the platform of the eighteen-pounder, Don Rodrigo raised his hand.

Then he brought it down, and the old conquistador’s voice, scraped by years, spread across the platform. "Las picas a los travesa?os, hijos míos, a los travesa?os! Empujen, empujen, por la Virgen! Que esos herejes bajen a besar el fango!"¹

Roberts translated with a bellow. "Pikes to the rungs! Shove ’em back down where they came from, back to the mud, and the Lord have mercy on the poor devils!"

The pikes caught the rails and the boat hooks caught the rungs, while pistols fired into faces at arm’s length and hoes came down on the hands reaching over the top. Steel smashed fingers against the timber, split knuckles to the bone, and tore open palms clinging to the rails.

The climbing ranks recoiled beneath the blows, their dead and wounded tumbling backwards into the press below, crushing the privates still coming up.

The whole wall shook under the weight of the redcoats trying to climb it.

"Push, ye whoreson buggers, push! Shove ’em off, shove ’em off!"

"Empujen, carajo, empujen! Que no suba ni uno!"

"Poussez, nom de Dieu, poussez! Poussez, mes enfants, poussez!"

An unlucky ladder, full of redcoats, swung away from the curtain. It hung there for a moment, as a sail that had lost its wind, before coming down across the stakes in the ditch.

The sharpened stakes punched through coats, bellies, and chests, lifting bodies clear of the earth. The falling ranks crashed across the ditch in a tangle of limbs and splintered timber, their screams rising above the drum as blood ran down the sharpened wood.

The ditch took them all and still had room.

"Up, damn your eyes, up! Every ladder, every last man!"

"I’ll not see a single rung standing empty! Up, up, UP, I say!"

The ladders filled again, and at the corner the first hands reached over the earth section.

Then came the heads, the tar-black shoulders, and finally the boots on the parapet. The Royal Navy, at last, had managed to get soldiers standing on top.

"El rincón... Llénenlo! Llénenlo con el pecho, con el hierro, con la rabia de Dios, pero llénenlo."¹

"The corner, fill it, fill it! Crows! Bonebreakers! There’s King’s sailors on our step, and I’ll not have ’em making themselves at home!"

The Crows arrived with their billhooks, and the Bonebreakers left the cannons and put their shoulders into the work. They went at it with sheer brute force, catching redcoats by their belts and throwing them back over the earth, where the ditch received them.

"Hook ’em off, Crows! Hook the bastards off the top, look you, afore they dig in like ticks!"

Bran’s voice cracked over the noise.

"Off! Off with ’em, Duw, off with the lot, an’ let the ditch have its dinner!"

Boarding axes crashed into the ranks at the top, splitting fingers, smashing wrists, and biting deep into forearms still gripping the parapet.

Cutlasses split faces from brow to jaw, while musket stocks broke teeth and caved in noses. Hatchets and cleavers struck necks and shoulders, chopping through coats, flesh, and bone, and beneath all that, blood poured over the bastion, turning the parapet into a slick red mess beneath the boots.

Bayonets came up behind the storm party, driving into the defenders’ bellies and ribs wherever the crush permitted a thrust. Crows were gutted against the parapet, their shirts splitting open and their entrails spilling over the step as the fighting surged around them.

More privates behind kept climbing, shoving the wounded into the melee and trampling them beneath the advancing ranks. The foothold grew, and the wall pushed it back.

Then it grew again. The defenders dragged their dead off the step by the belts, while the navy kicked its own dead onto ditch.

There was nowhere else to put them, and the soldiers below needed space.

A corporal at the foot of the ladder, face striped with blood and powder, bawled. "Hold what you’ve got, you bastards! Hold it with your teeth if you must! Send the next lot up! There’s a whole army at my back, and it’s no friend to waiting, so it’s not!"

Behind the storm party, a fuse began to hiss.

A grenade came over their heads trailing smoke and landed on the wall. Some pirate grabbed it and threw it back over the edge before the fuse had burned out, and it burst in the ditch among the feet of the ladders, blowing open the packed ranks beneath the wall.

The explosion flung redcoats against the stakes, ripped bodies apart, and showered the ranks with blood, mud, and burning flesh.

The redcoats learned, the next grenade burst where it landed, and a whole stretch of the step disappeared beneath smoke, splinters, and mangled bodies. The blast swallowed the fighting cries, leaving the parapet buried beneath a choking cloud and the torn remains of the defenders.

"Light ’em an’ chuck ’em! What d’ye think they’re for, pretty ornaments? Chuck, I said, CHUCK!"

"Pioneers, to the wall! Hew ’er down, lads! Spade an’ axe, till she’s naught but a muckheap!"

Picks and spades went into the earth section, axes into the timber section, and the storm party began digging and chopping away at the wall.

Vallon watched the earth slide off his wall in brown sheets and didn’t so much as lift an eyebrow. "Let them dig, Monsieur Roberts. All the day, if they like. It’s a tedious wall, this one, and I made it tedious on purpose."

The militia brought kettles up from the cookhouse and emptied them over the edge. Boiling water crashed down across the ladders and the packed ranks beneath them, and screams burst from the redcoats as the scalding liquid struck faces, necks, and exposed hands.

Then came the pitch, black and hot, sticking to coats and skin. It poured over shoulders and helmets, beneath collars, and glued burning cloth to flesh. The redcoats clawed at their clothes, tearing away strips of skin with the fabric, while the flames spread through the compressed ranks and the ladders became pillars of smoke and fire.

The battlefield soon started to stink of of burnt flesh and tar.

Blocks from the stonemason’s stack came off the unfinished sections, followed by rubble, while slings whirred overhead and hunters leaned out from the shoulders of the bastion to fire straight down.

The stones crashed into the ladders and the ranks below, crushing skulls, breaking backs, and pushing men into the ditch beneath the weight of falling masonry, while scalded soldiers lost their grip and plunged from the rungs, their burning bodies striking the earth and those still climbing.

Everything went into the ditch, which swallowed the bodies with a sated appetite.

The stakes disappeared beneath the bodies, and what had been a hole was now a floor made of corpses.

The rear ranks walked down into it and crossed over the dead, their boots finding bellies, faces, and the soft places in between. Broken ladders were laid across as bridges, then raised again and filled with soldiers once more.

"Step on the fallen, laddies. Aye, step on them. They’ll not be mindin’, the poor souls."

"Close up, damn you! The ladders want feeding, gentlemen, and they’ll not be kept waiting!"

The sergeants stood behind the formation with their halberds laid across like a bar over a hatch. No one was permitted to retreat.

At the top, the parapet was crowded. The ranks behind pressed into every space, and living soldiers took the places of the dead.

There was hardly room to raise a weapon, so pirates and soldiers used their knees, heads, teeth, and knives. The fighting collapsed into a savage crush of bodies as knees smashed into groins, foreheads split noses, and teeth tore into cheeks and throats.

Thumbs were driven into eyes until they burst, while bayonets thrust upwards beneath jaws, the points breaking through mouths and emerging in sprays of blood.

With weapons trapped beneath the press, the combatants clawed at faces, bit through ears, and tore flesh from cheeks while blood washed down from open mouths and broken noses, soaking collars and sleeves.

The whole length of the wall turned into a gritty melee.

Smoke washed over the hill, and the sun showed red through it.

Either Concordia or the Royal Navy would break soon.

The drum kept its rhythm and the fort replied in every language on the island, the roar crashing down the hillside.

Across the ditch, a lieutenant’s voice cracked over the drum, while on the platform the old conquistador’s voice rose in the same breath.

"Up again, laddies! Up and over, up and over! Don’t look down, don’t look back!"

"Aguanten, hijos míos, aguanten! Por Dios, por la Virgen, por esta tierra que nos ha dado de comer!"¹

"Hold the step, boyos! By the Lord Jesus, hold it, or we’ll all be sleeping in that ditch tonight!"