Arsene and Cripps grabbed handfuls of Caleb’s shirt, yanked, and tore the flimsy material, pulling the tatters away to expose Caleb’s chest and arms.
That was when Caleb glimpsed the thin knife Dubois was expertly twirling in his fingers. A flaying knife.
Instinctively, Caleb tensed, hands fisting against his bonds. Come on, Phillipe.
Dubois approached, a strange smile on his face, an almost euphoric look in his eyes...the monster was well and truly in control.
Caleb had finally given Dubois a chance—a reason—to allow the monster out.
Caleb’s stomach felt hollow as he focused on the knife.
Flaying, he reminded himself, was a lengthy process.
Dubois halted to one side. Almost lovingly, he laid the blade just beneath Caleb’s right nipple.
Then he sliced.
Caleb locked his jaw and endured. He’d be damned if he gave Dubois any satisfaction...but damn, the long, slanted, slicing cut stung well-nigh unbearably.
He had to hold on. It couldn’t be long now.
It couldn’t be.
He closed his eyes and felt his head rise, neck muscles straining as he fought against the searing agony as Dubois made another cut, this time all the way down the left side of his chest.
Pain shivered through him. His muscles quivered. How much longer—
“Fire!”
The hail came from the tower.
Dubois blinked, then spun away. “Where?” he barked.
“Supply hut!”
Every mercenary, as well as Satterly, Muldoon, and Ross-Courtney, swung toward the supply hut. Neill rose and came down the steps to look.
Pushing aside the lingering pain, Caleb craned his neck, but he couldn’t see the supply hut itself—only the smoke billowing out.
A series of popping explosions sounded, and he saw flames reflected on pans in the kitchen.
Dubois cursed and swung back to Caleb.
He forced himself not to notice—to keep looking toward the hut and the guards racing toward it and not meet Dubois’s gaze. He didn’t need to challenge the monster.
“Bah!” Dubois tossed his bloody knife onto the porch. “You will keep.” He strode for the supply hut. “Arsene! Cripps! À moi!”
Pandemonium ensued.
The captives hung back. Those unskilled in fighting drifted to the mine’s entrance and the picks and shovels stored there. Caleb’s and Lascelle’s men formed a knot between the milling mercenaries and the door to the women’s hut. Through the thickening smoke, Caleb thought he saw a dark figure slide out of the shadows and join the group before the women’s hut. Presumably Phillipe, so that group had at least one commander.
Everyone was in their assigned position—except Caleb. He swore, gritted his teeth, and tried to loosen Cripps’s knots.
* * *
At the first shout from within the compound, a section of the palisade behind the women’s hut had silently fallen outward.
Isobel had led the way through, Edwina and Aileen at her heels. They’d decided the women and children would be more reassured by other women, and had delegated the sailors assigned to their enterprise to direct the captives as the ladies sent said captives out.
The first face Isobel saw when she pulled open the hut’s rear door was Katherine’s.
Her eyes impossibly wide, Katherine stared, then she grabbed Isobel and hauled her inside. Katherine pointed toward the barracks. “That monster has Caleb—he’s strung him up, and he’s cutting him!”
Isobel seized Katherine and pulled her to the side, out of Edwina’s and Aileen’s path. They rushed past and started sending the other women and children out.
After one glance to ensure all was happening as it should, Isobel turned her attention to Katherine. “Royd is here—he’ll get Caleb free. Royd always gets Caleb out of trouble. Meanwhile, we stick to the plan.”
That was one thing she’d learned through her years of running with Royd—it was always better if everyone stuck to his plan. She looked into Katherine’s wide eyes. “We’ll rescue Caleb, but right now, we have to get the children out and to safety.”
Katherine blinked, then hauled in a breath, held it, and nodded. “Yes. You’re right.” She turned and joined the other women in reassuring the children and sending them out in batches, each batch with one of the women to watch over them.
The children had been ready to bolt; it was more a case of keeping them in some sort of order than having to urge them to move.
In less than three minutes, the hut was cleared. Of the captives, only Katherine remained. Isobel exchanged a glance with Edwina and Aileen.
Katherine had gone to the hut’s main door. Peering out, she frowned. “There’s so much smoke, I can’t see...”
Her lips firming, Isobel headed for Katherine. Edwina and Aileen followed.
* * *
Caleb was swearing ever more colorfully and twisting on the post, trying to get his fingers to the knots securing the rope, when he heard footsteps coming up behind him. He froze.
Royd said, “Hold still.”
Caleb heard a solid thunk, and the rope gave way. He slumped onto his heels, then Royd was there with a dagger, slicing through the coils binding Caleb’s hands.
He shook the remnants free and massaged his wrists.
Royd glanced at his chest. “How deep are those?”
“Not deep enough to slow me down. He’d just got started.”
“Dubois?”
Caleb nodded.
“Hey—squirt!”
Caleb looked up at the well-remembered hail—in time to pluck the dagger Declan tossed him out of the air.
“Stick to the plan,” Royd ordered and ran forward into the developing melee.
Caleb looked around. Frobisher sailors were pouring into the compound, sliding down ropes suspended from makeshift yardarms from three different points on the cliffs above, dropping directly inside the palisade, swords in their hands and daggers between their teeth.
Robert appeared, a company of men at his back. He flicked Caleb a salute and handed him a sword. “Where are the three from the settlement and Ross-Courtney and Neill?”
Caleb tipped his head toward the barracks. “In there.” He grinned. “Waiting for you.”
Robert grinned back. “I’ll take good care of them. Any mercenaries with them?”
“I don’t think so.” Caleb looked toward the cloud of smoke obscuring the supply hut. “I think they all ran toward the fire.”
With a nod, Robert strode for the porch steps. An instant later, he raised a boot, smashed open the barracks’ door, and, with his men at his back, plunged in.
Shouts and yells followed, but no gunshots.
Caleb looked down at his wounds. They were still bleeding, but it was more of an ooze than a stream. Dubois hadn’t got to lifting the skin, so the cuts were just cuts and not anything worse. They still stung, but with his senses distracted by the mayhem around him, he had to think to feel it.
Deciding the cuts could be left until later, he raised his head and scanned the action. Declan had led his men to join the group before the women’s hut; after they passed around weapons, their task was to ensure no mercenary got through and seized any hostage, or escaped through the gap in the palisade behind the hut.
Royd had marshaled his men into a cordon that was inching up behind the mercenaries, corralling them between the barracks and the supply hut, which was now aflame.
Enveloped in smoke, the mercenaries hadn’t yet realized they were under attack. At ground level, the billowing clouds were thick enough to screen the advancing forces, and the lookouts in the tower were fully absorbed trying to escape the flames, which, courtesy of Phillipe’s planning, were also licking higher and higher up the
tower’s frame.
For the first time when fighting with his brothers, Caleb had been named coordinator; Royd had ceded him the role on the grounds he was most familiar with the battleground and the enemy. He searched for weaknesses and spotted several.
Movement on the porch drew his eye. Robert’s men hauled Satterly, Muldoon, and Winton out of the barracks, followed by Neill and Ross-Courtney. All five prisoners had met with rough handling. Their arms were tied behind their backs, their clothing was torn and askew, their hair disheveled. Robert’s men weren’t gentle as they pulled them off the porch.
Robert paused beside Caleb. “We’ll keep them between the ore piles as planned.”
Caleb nodded. “Keep an eye on the rear of the barracks in case any of the bastards tries to get out that way.”
Robert nodded. “Will do.”
Caleb thumped Robert on the shoulder, and his brother strode after his men.
Hillsythe, Dixon, Fanshawe, and Hopkins were keeping the poorly armed captives back, gathered in a body before the mine. Caleb caught Hillsythe’s eye and nodded in acknowledgment.
Hillsythe raised a hand in reply.
Then came a faint creak...and a wide section of the palisade including the compound’s gates fell in.
It landed with a thump and hadn’t even settled before Lachlan and Kit led their men in.
Caleb grinned. Hefting the sword Robert had given him, the dagger from Declan in his left hand, he ran toward the gates.
Halting as he reached his cousins, he tipped his head to Kit. “You’re on the gates. Can you also send some men to hold a line from the end of the barracks to the ore piles?” He pointed. “Robert will keep an eye on the corridor along the rear of the barracks, but if any mercenaries try to get out that way, he’ll also need to hold his prisoners.”
Kit saluted. “Consider it done.”
Lachlan was scanning the increasingly smoke-fogged compound. “Where’s Royd?”
“This way.” Caleb couldn’t suppress his reckless grin as he headed toward the impending melee.
* * *
Enveloped in smoke, Royd held his men in position and waited for the mercenaries to realize they were under attack.
He hadn’t thought it would take them so long, but then neither he nor, he suspected, any of their planners had expected this density of smoke. But this was equatorial Africa; everything was damp. And setting fire to damp things invariably led to smoke—lots of it.
His men had foreseen some degree of smoke so had come prepared; all had dampened kerchiefs tied over their noses and mouths. The kerchiefs were also a reasonable badge of identification.
The mercenaries’ confusion had been compounded by the tower catching alight. That had been an inspired touch. As water wasn’t in ready supply, the mercenaries had grabbed hessian bags from the kitchen and attempted to beat out the flames.
By the time they’d realized that wasn’t going to work, smoke was everywhere, blocking their view of the rest of the compound, then the flames on the tower had flared and roared, and they’d got caught in the mayhem...
In truth, only a few minutes had passed since the first shout of “Fire.”
But Royd had felt the thump as—he assumed—the gates had fallen. Any minute now, Dubois was going to realize—
A bellow sounded from somewhere ahead. It took a second to decipher; Dubois or one of his lieutenants had ordered the mercenaries to fetch water.
Beneath his kerchief, Royd grinned. With one hand, he signaled his men. They gripped their weapons and slowly advanced.
The first clash came from Royd’s right.
Then it was on. Steel met steel; men grunted and swore. Bodies lurched through the smoke.
While happy to engage with any mercenary, Royd was intent on hunting down Dubois. The mercenary captain needed to die. Any other enemy, he flicked to his left or right, where his men waited to take them on. Steadily, he pressed forward. His men—the most experienced fighters—were the strike force. Lachlan and his men would fall in behind, ensuring no mercenary slipped past, and Kit would hold the gate—a last line of containment.
The mercenaries would fight to the death; for them, being taken prisoner wasn’t an option.
Finding well-armed sailors lurking in the smoke was a surprise the mercenaries hadn’t expected; Royd’s men encountered little difficulty disposing of those who came blundering into them.
The supply hut was aflame. Royd could hear the crackling roar above the shouts and the screams of those trapped in the tower. He could feel the heat, too, surging through the smoke.
A fitful breeze started to waft the smoke upward, allowing him to look around and ahead. He spotted Dubois in the instant Dubois realized there were armed men he didn’t recognize in his compound.
Dubois took a bare second to assess the seriousness of the attack, then he swung and ran toward the women’s hut.
The fire was burning hotter, cleaner; the smoke was thinning.
Dubois saw Declan and his men—and Caleb’s and Lascelle’s—all waiting with swords drawn across his path. He skidded to a halt and reversed direction.
Dubois waded into what was now a melee. Raising his sword, he bellowed, attempting to rally his men—but his forces were already greatly reduced, and those remaining were fully engaged.
His command was outmanned and about to be overrun.
Royd watched that realization sink its claws into Dubois and shake him.
His face contorting, Dubois swung out—vicious and powerful.
Royd started toward him.
The supply hut exploded, flinging everyone to the ground.
Royd coughed, confirmed nothing was broken or badly bleeding, and rolled to his feet.
His men did the same, rushing to get upright and claim any advantage—but the mercenaries were experienced and did the same.
Swords clashed anew, mercenaries and sailors re-engaged, and the fight raged on.
* * *
His hands on his hips, Robert surveyed his five prisoners. All looked distinctly the worse for wear.
He couldn’t find it in his heart to care.
A cohort of his most experienced men were ranged about the five, weapons drawn and ready for anything. Any attempt to even rise would be met with inhibitory force.
From where he’d been pushed to sit on the ground, wedged with the other four between two piles of ore, Ross-Courtney glowered and fruitlessly tugged at his bonds. “You’ll regret this—I promise you.”
Robert looked at him. After several seconds, he advised, “You should never promise what you’re helpless to deliver.”
Ross-Courtney made a frustrated sound.
Beside him, Neill looked daggers—at Ross-Courtney as much as at anyone else. Neill had already tried to bribe Robert—and had inexplicably tripped and fallen. He now sported several bruises and scrapes he hadn’t had before.
The three younger men remained silent—hunched, watchful, and wary. After their protestations of innocence had fallen on deaf ears, they’d given Robert and his men no real trouble. Satterly had stared at Robert enough for Robert to assume the man had recognized the resemblance to Declan, who Satterly had seen when Declan and Edwina had been in Freetown.
Robert turned to his quartermaster, Miller. “Keep them here. Make sure no one attacks them.” He glanced at the mine, then looked at the five prisoners with grim disgust. “Sadly, we need them alive...for the moment.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” Miller tapped his blade to his palm and stared down at the five. “We’ll make sure they don’t move.”
Leaving Miller to impress their new station upon the prisoners, Robert directed most of his men into a two-armed defensive cordon. He positioned one group to protect against incursion along the rear of the cleaning shed and the other
to cover the approach along the rear of the barracks.
If any mercenary thought to take Ross-Courtney or Neill hostage and came looking, they would come that way.
Satisfied there was no likelihood of matters getting that messy, Robert took his remaining men and went to confer with crewmen from Kit’s Consort. They confirmed they’d been sent to prevent any mercenaries from escaping around the barracks to the compound’s gates.
“Hmm.” Robert considered the dark corridor along the back of the barracks. The space was fitfully illuminated by the flames licking up the guard tower. “Given none of the mercenaries have yet come this way, I suspect Royd and his men are having a good time on the other side.” Robert cocked a brow at his men. “What’s say we join them?”
The men grinned.
Robert smiled and led the way.
But as he rounded the barracks, a man came jogging across from the mine. The man raised his hand. “Hillsythe.”
Robert nodded. “Robert Frobisher.”
“Is there anywhere you need reinforcements?” Hillsythe tipped his head toward the mine. “The men have no blades, but they have picks and shovels—and a score to settle.”
Robert looked toward the gates, then pointed. “You see that woman over there?”
Hillsythe peered, then blinked. “One could hardly miss her.”
“That’s Kit Frobisher. I suggest you take your men and merge them with hers. At some point, the mercenaries are going to try to flee. Tell her I sent you.”
Hillsythe saluted and headed back to the mine.
Robert didn’t wait to see what transpired. He led his men into the dissipating smoke—into the rear of an out-and-out melee.
Two paces in and he found Declan beside him. After dispatching a mercenary, Robert said, “I thought you were over at the women’s hut.”
“I was. But Lascelle’s there, and he’s more than able.” Declan grinned. “I came to join the fun.”