Выбрать главу

"Vous!" Choundas screamed, beating his breast and striding easily through the surf toward Alan. "Timonier a mois, I think 'e slay ze wrong man in zat alley! En garde! I eat your brains and shit in your skull!"

Lewrie waded shoreward to meet him, to avoid the clumsy fate of the younger officer, sword held at third, waiting for Choundas' first move. It was like an explosion!

Choundas had no grace, no elegance to his swordplay, coming from a rougher school. With howls he was upon Alan with his smallsword swinging like a cutlass. Blades rang, not in beat, but with the rasp of a farrier's hammer, and the shock sang up Lewrie's arm like a bell's echo with each blow. Try as he would to thrust and counter-thrust, to slash with the point and cut over from defensive guards to direct or even indirect cuts, Choundas was always there, quick as lightning, all attack and very little defense of his own.

Lewrie was forced to give ground, half a step at a time, and the sea swirled higher up his body. From the ankles to his shins to his knees, then to mid-calf.

Captain Osmonde warned me I'd meet a truly dangerous man if I kept this up, Lewrie frowned, recalling the Marine officer aboard his first ship, the one who had taught him the true rough and tumble of steel, and guided him through his first adult duel on Antigua.

Choundas was pressing forward, both of them up to their waists in salt water and being buffeted by the incoming surf. Lewrie swung down and left to ward off a chest cut, felt a leg reach out to tangle with his to bring him down and stumbled right and away, into shallow water. Choundas' sword came arcing up out of the water glistening in the dawn light with water droplets, and he met it high left, the beat of steel on steel forcing his own blade back to touch his left cheek!

A shoulder lunging forward, and Lewrie stumbled again, reaching back with his left hand to steady himself. Falling sideways into the surf, with Choundas splashing forward to tower over him, and a wicked razor-honed blade descending in a powerful two-handed overhead strike!

He got his hanger up to parry at fifth, got his left hand under his hip and swept out with his legs. Cut directly down and forward under the off-balanced Frenchman's blade to clash with the hand-guard!

Choundas reeled back, almost going down himself. Lewrie came up soaking wet with his left leg under him and thrust with all of his might to leap like a porpoise with sword arm extended as rigid as a pike-staff. And missed!

His sword's point went over Choundas' left shoulder as the man ducked. Their bodies slammed together, and Choundas was going over backward, but he hefted Alan high enough over his shoulder to heave him a few feet away, to splash into water deep as his waist!

Drowning! Lewrie's mind screamed as he tried to get his feet under him, tried to fight the rush and shove of another wave. Tried to find a breath of air for lungs thumped empty by Choundas' body!

Lewrie lurched erect, coughing on the water he'd taken in, his eyes burning with salt and his hair streaming down his face.

Choundas! The final thrust! DEATH!

Arm across his chest to defend, sword point held low at prime, the blade pointing down as the thrust came for his throat. A sting on his left hip as the smallsword's point bit him, and he was going over backward again, and could feel Choundas' feet near to his own!

He kicked with his right foot as he landed on his left hand and knee. The heel of his shoe took Choundas in the nutmegs, making him hiss like a serpent! Choundas bent over with the sudden agony, and Lewrie came up with all he had left.

Bright steel and sterling silver came sweeping up from the sea bottom, under Choundas' guard, under his upraised sword drawn back for a killing hack. Salt water streamed in a glittering arc as the hanger swept upward. Choundas flinched back to avoid it.

Lewrie could feel the shock in his wrist, up his arm, as his sword made contact, flicking point-low to point-high following the angle of the razor-sharp edge as he straightened his wrist and turned it. And Choundas was falling backward, his sword hand to his face!

A wave of surf surged high as Alan's shoulders as he got to his knees following that stroke, and Choundas was tumbling about in the water, rolling and tumbling shoreward like a piece of flotsam.

"Don't tell me I actually killed the bastard!" Lewrie gasped in surprise, retching saliva and salt water as he rose to his feet and shuffled onto the beach, sword ready at fourth slightly across his body should Choundas be shamming.

But there was red in the water, pink on the man's shirt.

And when Choundas managed at last to crawl ashore on hands and knees, his sword forgotten, he was screaming. Screaming and writhing like a worm in hot ashes, moaning and whimpering pitifully between his screams and patting his face. Rolling over and over, twitching like a serpent.

"Strike, you bastard!" Lewrie hissed, prodding that body with the tip of his sword. Choundas kicked out with his left leg and hit Lewrie painfully on the kneecap, and without thought, Lewrie slashed down hard into the back of Choundas' left calf, which raised another howl of pain and set him rolling and thrashing again.

"Sir!" someone was yelling. "Sir, we done fer 'em, sir! They struck, sir!"

Lewrie stepped back from Choundas and looked up to see Cony coming toward him, limping from a sword-cut across the outside of his thigh, and blood matted in his sweaty blonde hair.

The beach was littered with dead and wounded, and the most of them French, Lewrie was happy to observe. The rest were sitting in a fearful knot, covered by his men's weapons.

"You failed!" Lewrie crowed at Choundas. "You failed at everything you tried, you bloody murdering bastard! We beat you, understand me?"

"Alan, what's all the shouting about?"

"Hey?" he said, swiveling to see Captain Chiswick coming down the beach, leading two spaced ranks of his troops. His hat was gone, his sword was slimed with blood and he winced with each step, but he was whole. "Bloody Hell, where did you spring from? Took you long enough."

"Were you impatient for my arrival, dear Alan?" Chiswick said with a rasp of gunpowder in his throat. "Had to clear this damned eastern palisade first. Had a busy morning, have you?"

"Tolerably busy, yes," Lewrie replied. Now that the fight was over, now that they were safe in the hands of the sepoys of the 19th Native Infantry, he could allow his usual weakness to creep over him as he loosed the awful tension of mortal combat. A moment later and it was all he could do to stand.

"Much hurt?" Chiswick inquired anxiously after wiping his sword clean and sheathing it to come to his side.

"Pinked in the hip," Lewrie allowed, sinking down on his haunches to let Cony undo his breeches and take a look at it.

"Not deep, sir," Cony assured him as he laved it in the sailor's universal nostrum, fresh seawater. "T'ain't bleedin' much, neither, so 'e didn't get ya nowhere vital. Make ya stiff fer awhiles, sir. Could I 'ave yer breeches, sir, I could bind it Er if ya got a clean handkerchief in yer pocket, sir, I could fother a bandage over'n it fer now."

"The bandage, Cony," Lewrie said with a shaky laugh. "Damned if I want to go back aboard bare-arsed."

Chiswick dug into his tailcoat pocket and offered a small silver flask, which Alan drank from gratefully. "Urn, a lovely brandy you have there, Burge. I was half-expecting some of that corn whiskey I remember from Yorktown. Are those bloody pirates beaten yet?"