"Them, damn 'em," Peel spat.
"Oh." Lewrie cringed.
A little beyond Choundas, at the top of that grassy slope sat a troop of French dragoons-heavy cavalry. It wasn't 150 yards off, but it might as well have been the distance to the moon! A column of blue-coated infantry could be seen to the north, at the head of the small valley, marching for the low, bouldery ridge they'd left.
"Goddamn the man's shitten luck!" Peel cried. "After all we've done, got so close on his heels… now this] It's as if he's in league with the Devil, damn his blood."
"Still a chance," Lewrie muttered through a dry mouth. He alit from his horse, trotted to the tumbled ruin of a rock fence just beside the road, and unslung his Ferguson rifle. He'd killed Lanun Rovers at 200 yards with it-winged 'em, anyway.
One complete turn of the trigger-guard lever, to lower the screw breech and open the barrel's hind end.
"Lewrie, it's over," Peel pointed out. "We sit here, this dumb and happy, they have the slope of us. Sooner or later, they'll charge. And lancers ain't meant to tangle with heavy cavalry, head-on."
"It's not over yet, Peel," Lewrie snapped. "Sooner he's dead, the sooner you and Twigg leave me the hell alone."
He bit off the folded end of a premade cartouche, the powder bitter on his tongue. Bullet end up the spout. Crank the breech shut and pull the flint striker's dog's jaws back, checking to see that the flint was firmly seated and didn't slip against the leather under the clamping screw's face. At half cock, he flipped open the frizzen, to bare the pan, and primed it with a measure from the powder flask that held the very finest, talclike igniting powder.
"Er, sir?" Mountjoy bickered. "The Herr Baron von Losma says we should hightail it. Soon, sir. He's found the Frogs, so…"
"A minute." Lewrie sighed. "A minute."
He pulled the Ferguson back to full cock and put it to his eye, resting the barrel on the rocks, settling himself. It looked to be at least 200 yards, maybe more? And there was Choundas, stopping beside a French dragoon officer, pointing back to the valley. Smiling like everything, he suspected. Bragging about his escape, too!
There was the wind to consider; it was blowing from behind the cavalrymen on that far slope, and a little to Lewrie's right. A shot uphill, almost into the wind? He held high, aiming a foot above his nemesis's hat, a touch to the right, maybe a foot beyond Choundas's shoulder.
"Might as well shoot at the moon, sir, the herr leutnant says," Mountjoy interrupted. "With a musket, at this range…?"
"Shut up, Mister Mountjoy!" Lewrie barked. "Not a musket."
There was a raven's caw off to his left, so near his ear that he almost jerked the trigger. Tramp of marching feet, thud of a drum. Another column of infantry emerging far to left of the slope where the cavalry sat and stared. At least a battalion, coming to use the road they were on.
The raven swooshed past, zooming upward, gliding and tilting to gain altitude before beating its wings, again. Flying toward Choundas. Once it was past, the wind faded, the grass tips before Lewrie stilled their slight wavering, and he inched the barrel a bit more left. Took a quarter-inch more elevation.
"My congratulations on your breathtaking escape, Capitaine," the dragoon officer enthused, offering Choundas a silver brandy flask. "Though it is not every day we see our Navy among us. Do you wish me to sweep those Austrian scum who chased you away? Just sitting there, counting heads, the damned fools. Lancers… they're insane!"
"Their infantry is not far behind them," Choundas cautioned as he slurped down a restoring measure of brandy.
"We wait for the rest of the squadron, then," the dragoon said in disappointment. "For the infantry to flank them away." "We march on Vado Bay, at last?" Choundas beamed. "Indeed, Capitaine. Soon, your ships will anchor there." Choundas turned to look at the Austrian troop, and at the men in civilian dress who'd accompanied them, hoping that one of them was his bкte noire, Lewrie. Was that him, kneeling down? So close, at last, so far from his ship, and all aid. With a word, he could urge this cavalryman to gallop down and take him for him. He could have Lewrie in chains in his cellars at Nice by the next evening, to begin the exquisite revenge he'd planned so long. Just a word, and…
There was a puff of smoke from the fence, from the kneeling man. "It is him!" Choundas crowed. "The desperate fool!" "Far past even the best musket shot," the dragoon officer cried in derision, and his troopers guffawed at the hopeless gesture. "Capitaine Jonville, perhaps…" Choundas began to say. A raven came soaring up the slope, flaring and riding the thermal off the hillside, climbing, climbing, then beat its wings, beginning to circle- to Guillaume Choundas's right hand. He raised his right arm in supplication, remembering what the old people had told him…
"… couldn't hit a house, at that…"
A second or two in flight, arcing up, then down, as it lost its momentum, plummeting like a howitzer shell and regaining velocity…
The.65-caliber ball slammed into Guillaume Choundas with the impact of a heavy, hard-swung cudgel, smashing into the flesh and bone of his upraised right arm, just below his armpit! His horse screamed, almost as loud as he did, as he was flung sideways in the saddle, and dragged to the right and down by the force of it! His horse whirled as if to bite its own haunches, rearing and backpedaling for balance and slinging Choundas's total weight onto that weak left leg caught in the stirrup, shuddery and nerveless from his desperate gallop, caught by the iron brace that stiffened the thick left boot. He flailed to stay in the saddle, but his right foot was free, and he was falling, to land on that right shoulder and arm, and the back of his head, get dragged for a few paces in a maddened circle before a trooper sprang down to grab the reins, and another rushed to free his foot.
"Merde alors!" The dragoon officer breathed in stupefied awe. "Miraculous!"
"Eatttt thatt, you bassttardd!" Lewrie screamed as he rose to his feet, his face mottled, and split by a feral, heathen grin. Alan trotted back to the horse Mountjoy held, took the reins, and slung the Ferguson over his back before mounting. "That's all for him!"
"Gott in Himmett" Lt. Baron von Losma peeped, turning pale.
"Good shot, hey?" Lewrie crowed, riding in an impatient circle.
There was a sudden sputter of musketry up the valley, among the trees. A platoon firing, at first. Then what sounded like a whole regiment lit off. The flat bangs of a three-gun battery of light artillery joined them… followed by another regimental volley.
"Heraus!" Lt. von Losma shouted, waving his arm in the air in a signal. "Mach schnell, heraus! Wir zuriickziehen. .. zur ruck, jetzt!"
The French infantry column on the road, still 300 yards away, lumbered out from column to line, four deep, and began to load for a volley of their own, their skirmishers out in front already firing.
"Time to scamper, sir," Mountjoy translated as the lancers with them wheeled away, almost in a headless panic. As the French dragoons came flowing from the trees, down off that far slope's crest.
"Lewrie," Peel breathed, half in awe, but his face hellish-dark with concern. "Just what the bloody hell have you started?"
They sawed at the reins and kicked their horses to a gallop, back the way they'd come, whooping to scare them to greater effort, eating a shower of flung clods from the rapidly retreating lancers. The French helped, whooping and keening with blood lust. As they began to climb that bouldery bare ridge, Lewrie looked behind, to see the dragoons in full charge, sword points hungry, and not fifty yards astern!