Caribbee Part 62

"Look around you." Atiba turned and gestured. Out of the palms emerged a menacing line of black men, all carrying cane machetes. "My men are here. We could kill all of you now, senhor, and simply take your muskets. But you once treated me as a brother, so I will barter with you fairly, as though today were market day in Ife. I and my men will seize this branco fortress and make it an offering of friendship to you--rather than watch you be killed trying to take it yourself--in trade for these guns." He smiled grimly. "A life for a life, do you recall?"

"The revolt you started is as good as finished, just like I warned you would happen." Winston peered through the rain. "You won't be needing any muskets now."

"Perhaps it is over. But we will not die as slaves. We will die as Yoruba. And many branco will die with us."

"Not with my flintlocks, they won't." Winston examined him and noticed a dark stain of blood down his shoulder.

Atiba drew out his machete again and motioned the other men forward.

"Then see what happens when we use these instead." He turned the machete in his hand. "It may change your mind."

Before Winston could reply, he turned and whispered a few brisk phrases to the waiting men. They slipped their machetes into their waistwraps and in an instant were against the breastwork, scaling it.

As the seamen watched in disbelief, a host of dark figures moved surely, silently up the sloping stone wall of the breastwork. Their fingers and toes caught the crevices and joints in the stone with catlike agility as they moved toward the top.

"G.o.d's blood, Cap'n, what in h.e.l.l's this about?" d.i.c.k Hawkins moved next to Winston, still holding a grapple and line. "Are these savages .

"I'm d.a.m.ned if I know for sure. But I don't like it." His eyes were riveted on the line of black figures now blended against the stone of the breastwork. They had merged with the rain, all but invisible.

In what seemed only moments, Atiba had reached the parapet along the top of the breastwork, followed by his men. For an instant Winston caught the glint of machetes, reflecting the glow of the lighted linstocks, and then nothing.

"By G.o.d, no. There'll be no unnecessary killing." He flung his grapple upward, then gestured at the men. "Let's go topside, quick!"

The light clank of the grapple against the parapet was lost in the strangled cries of surprise from atop the breastwork. Then a few muted screams drifted down through the rain. The sounds died away almost as soon as they had begun, leaving only the gentle pounding of rain.

"It is yours, senhor." The Portuguese words came down as Atiba looked back over the side. "But come quickly. One of them escaped us. I fear he will sound a warning. There will surely be more _branco_, soon."

"d.a.m.n your eyes." Winston seized the line of his grapple, tested it, and began pulling himself up the face of the stone wall. There was the clank of grapples as the other men followed.

The scene atop the breastwork momentarily took his breath away. All the infantrymen on gunnery duty had had their throats cut, their bodies now sprawled haphazardly across the stonework. One gunner was even slumped across the breech of a demi-culverin, still clasping one of the lighted linstocks, its oil-soaked tip smoldering inconclusively in the rain.

The Yoruba warriors stood among them, wiping blood from their machetes.

"Good Christ!" Winston exploded and turned on Atiba. "There was no need to kill all these men. You just had to disarm them."

"It is better." Atiba met his gaze. "They were _branco _warriors. Is it not a warrior's duty to be ready to die?"

"You bloodthirsty savage."

Atiba smiled. "So tell me, what are these great Ingles guns sitting all around us here meant to do? Save lives? Or kill men by the hundreds, men whose face you never have to see? My people do not make these. So who is the savage, my Ingles friend?"

"d.a.m.n you, there are rules of war."

"Ah yes. You are civilized." He slipped the machete into his waistwrap.

"Someday you must explain to me these rules you have for civilized killing. Perhaps they are something like the 'rules' your Christians have devised to justify making my people slaves."

Winston looked at him a moment longer, then at the bodies lying around them. There was nothing to be done now. Best to get on with disabling the guns. "d.i.c.k, haul up that sack with the spikes and let's make quick work of this."

"Aye." Hawkins seized the line attached to his waist and walked to the edge of the parapet. At the other end, resting in the mud below, was the brown canvas bag containing the hammers and the spikes.

Moments later the air rang with the sound of metal against metal, as the seamen began hammering small, nail-like spikes into the touch-holes of each cannon. That was the signal for the Barbados militiamen to advance from the landward side of the breastwork, to provide defensive cover.

"A life for a life, senhor." Atiba moved next to Winston. "We served you. Now it is time for your part of the trade."

"You're not getting any of my flintlocks, if that's what you mean."

"Don't make us take them." Atiba dropped his hand to the handle of his machete.

"And don't make my boys show you how they can use them." Winston stood unmoving. "There's been killing enough here tonight."

"So you are not, after all, a man who keeps his word. You are merely another _branco_." He slowly began to draw the machete from his belt.

"I gave you no 'word.' And I wouldn't advise that . . ." Winston pushed back the side of his wet jerkin, clearing the pistols in his belt.

Out of the dark rain a line of Barbados planters carrying homemade pikes came clambering up the stone steps. Colonel Heathcott was in the lead. "Good job, Captain, by my life." He beamed from under his gray hat. "We heard nary a peep. But you were too d.a.m.ned quick by half.

Bedford's just getting the next lot of militia together now. He'll need . . ."

As he topped the last step, he stumbled over the fallen body of a Commonwealth infantryman. A tin helmet clattered across the stonework.

"G.o.d's blood! What . . ." He peered through the half-light at the other bodies littering the platform, then glared at Winston. "You ma.s.sacred the lads!"

"We had some help."

Heathcott stared past Winston, noticed Atiba, and stopped stone still.

Then he glanced around and saw the cl.u.s.ter of Africans standing against the parapet, still holding machetes.

"Good G.o.d." He took a step backward and motioned toward his men. "Form ranks. There're runaways up here. And they're armed."

"Careful . . ." Before Winston could finish, he heard a command in Yoruba and saw Atiba start forward with his machete.

"No, by G.o.d!" Winston shouted in Portuguese. Before Atiba could move, he was holding a c.o.c.ked pistol against the Yoruba's cheek. "I said there's been enough bloodshed. Don't make me kill you to prove it."

In the silence that followed there came a series of flashes from the dark down the sh.o.r.e, followed by dull pops. Two of the planters at the top of the stone steps groaned, twisted, and slumped against the stonework with bleeding flesh wounds. Then a second firing order sounded through the rain. It carried the unmistakable authority of Anthony Walrond.

"On the double, masters. The fireworks are set to begin." Winston turned and shouted toward the seamen, still hammering in the spikes.

"Spurre, get those flintlocks unwrapped and ready. It looks like Walrond has a few dry muskets of his own."

"Aye, Cap'n." He signaled the seamen who had finished

their a.s.signed tasks to join him, and together they took cover against the low parapet on the landward side of the breastwork. Heathcott and the planters, pikes at the ready, nervously moved behind them.

Winston felt a movement and turned to see Atiba twist away. He stepped aside just in time to avoid the lunge of his machete--then brought the barrel of the pistol down hard against the side of his skull. The Yoruba groaned and staggered back against the cannon nearest them. As he struggled to regain his balance, he knocked aside the body of the Commonwealth infantryman who lay sprawled across its barrel, the smoldering linstock still in his dead grasp. The man slid slowly down the wet side of the culverin, toward the breech. Finally he tumbled forward onto the stonework, releasing his grasp on the handle of the lighted linstock.

Later Winston remembered watching in paralyzed horror as the linstock clattered against the breech of the culverin, scattering sparks. The oil-soaked rag that had been its tip seemed to disintegrate as the handle slammed against the iron, and a fragment of burning rag fluttered against the shielded touch hole.

A flash shattered the night, as a tongue of flame torched upward. For a moment it illuminated the breastwork like midday.

In the stunned silence that followed there were yells of surprise from the far distance, in the direction of the English camp. No one had expected a cannon shot. Moments later, several rounds of musket fire erupted from the roadway below. The approaching Barbados militiamen had a.s.sumed they were being fired on from the breastwork. But now they had revealed their position. Almost immediately their fire was returned by the advance party of the Windward Regiment.

Suddenly one of the Yoruba waiting at the back of the breastwork shouted incomprehensibly, broke from the group, and began clambering over the parapet. There were more yells, and in moments the others were following him. Atiba, who had been knocked sprawling by the cannon's explosion, called for them to stay, but they seemed not to hear. In seconds they had vanished over the parapet and into the night.