by D. J. Butler
“Fine,” Sarah said. “Then for right now, your job is jest to watch the windows, and iffen anybody as ain’t William Lee or Obadiah Dogsbody sticks his head in, you knock it clean to Baton Rouge.”
“I reckon I can do that.”
“I know you can,” Sarah said, “so I’ll git to cogitatin’ about what to do when we git to the Mississippi.”
And for good measure, she kissed him.
* * *
Daniel Berkeley felt a cold ball of fear in his stomach. His hand was steady, his eye fierce, his men would never have detected his uncertainty, but there it was, lodged deep in his bowels.
Why had the Witchy Eye gone back to the Palais? Why had the chevalier excluded him and the parson? Was it, as the chevalier had implied, merely for money?
Daniel Berkeley feared he was about to be exposed.
He didn’t know for certain what would happen if he was unmasked, or if Thomas Penn’s guilt was known. The emperor might lose his throne, but then again, he might not. The Cahokians might want to withdraw from the empire, and that was a potential nest of vipers—it seemed to him, not being a political man—but then, Cahokia had no king, had not had one for fifteen years. Would the other Ohioans withdraw over the death of one of their fellows? Could the Ohioans do anything at all, really, with the Pacification troops encamped in their lands and all their commerce in the hands of the Imperial Ohio Company?
Would the Electors be so offended at the murder of one of their number that they would call a new election and replace Thomas? Would Thomas simply lose prestige and therefore power and be vulnerable to some rebel upstart, some minor figure in the Penn family or even some outsider? Berkeley didn’t know, but he knew Thomas would want his secrets kept. For the same reason that he wanted the girl captured.
So he had had to kill the bishop. He hadn’t wanted to do it, but the priest was threatening to expose Thomas Penn and Daniel Berkeley, and that had forced Daniel’s hand.
Surely, the fact that he had had no choice must mitigate the bad luck, mustn’t it?
But a little bad luck might be worth it. If Daniel Berkeley could continue to keep the stain on the Penn family shield hidden, all would be well—he would remain Captain of the Imperial House Light Dragoons, his own secrets would stay hidden, he would prosper. But if he failed, he would not survive the ensuing storm. He might finish at the bottom of a rope, or at the wrong end of a revenge drama, or even as his master’s scapegoat in front of a firing squad, but, short of turning and running right now into Texia, his death was certain.
And Daniel Berkeley was not a man to turn tail and flee.
He itched to cast the Tarock—the parson had returned his cards to him with a haughty sniff. Addicted to card-reading like some gypsy crone, but as the Andalusian gray beneath him surged through the dark New Orleans streets, and the heavy carriage ahead somehow pulled away, Daniel Berkeley felt the heavy hand of fate closing about him.
He had sins to pay for, and his Tarock these days seemed to contain nothing but Simon Sword. Judgment, judgment, judgment.
“Gee yap!” he shouted, spurring his horse harder.
He’d seen the Andalusian foaled and raised it himself, on his family lands. They were too high above the Chesapeake to be any good for farming, but they had plenty of good pasturage for horses, and as horse people the Berkeleys had thrived. Their horses had thrived, too, and were prized by discerning riders from Champlain’s Acadia to Igbo Montgomery. Now this animal responded magnificently, straining and accelerating.
But Berkeley could see it would not be enough.
“Can you do nothing, then?” he turned to shout over his shoulder at his two spell-wielding companions.
Father Angleton shook his head and shouted back. “I am spent!”
“Blazes!” Berkeley shouted, wishing the Blues rode with a real combat wizard.
The witch will tire, the Lazar reassured them both in his mindspeech. Do not fret, she cannot last. All the same…The white-skinned dead man seemed to focus his mind for a moment, and then two horses, the mounts of his two dead companions, burst forward ahead of the pack, closing the gap with the coach.
* * *
The Englishman didn’t look well.
Several fingers were splinted, making his grip on the reins awkward. He bled from at least two wounds Bill could see, one in his thigh and a more disturbing one in his chest. Blood soaked his waistcoat and breeches and he sat in a sticky pool, giving hee-ya! to the horses as vigorously as a man in perfect health, though pallor crept into his face under all the stubble.
The man had animal qualities. He’d have been a good soldier.
Bill himself had been lucky not to be shot. Surely, this luck could not last.
Not hatless as he was.
He finished loading both pistols and tucked them into his belt, then looked back at the pursuit. The Blues had fallen behind but were still visible, a spectral posse comitatus slipping in and out of pools of light in the distance.
For a moment, Bill entertained the notion of trying to hide the carriage somewhere, perhaps turn a sharp corner and plunge into the thick trees of a park, or into some alleyway. Maybe Sarah could disguise their coach, make it appear to be some other wagon.
He dismissed the idea. It would be a gamble on a single throw of the dice, and if they were caught, they were doomed; no, their best hope lay in flight. They were outnumbered five to one, not even taking into account the Lazars.
As if his train of thought had brought it on, Bill noticed that two of the horses following them were drawing nearer, and that their two riders were Lazars: the burnt one missing an eye and Tom Long-Knife. Bill shuddered. Only hours earlier he’d chopped the fingernails off Black Tom and left him incapacitated, and now the undead rebel was riding again.
“We’re about to receive visitors, suh,” he informed Obadiah. “Are your pistols loaded?”
“Aye, an’ primed.” The Englishman laughed a death-defying chuckle.
Bill watched the two undead edge closer; as they splashed through a pool of yellow light he saw the white of their three eyes between rotting hat brims and moldering scarves. He hated to risk a bullet on any shot from such an unstable platform, but the thought of fighting two of the Lazars simultaneously soured his stomach. Bill knelt, bracing himself on the coach roof, and fired.
Bang!
Some irregularity in the street’s paving jostled the carriage at the wrong moment, throwing off his aim.
“Damn,” Bill muttered.
The Lazars grinned and leaned lower over their mounts.
Bill looked over his shoulder at the inky road ahead. “Try to avoid the potholes, suh.” Obadiah laughed in answer and cracked the reins. Bill took aim again, carefully. The Lazars were closer now, twenty feet behind the carriage’s rear wheels, fifteen, ten—
Bang!
Bill hit his target between the eyes. The recipient of his attention—the horse of the burned Lazar—plowed into the stone of the street, throwing its rider to the ground.
Bill tucked both pistols into his belt and drew his sword as Tom Long-Knife jumped, flying through the air like a grasshopper and alighting on the coach roof.
Bill slashed at the Lazar’s knees. Tom shuffled back and drew his famous long knife, and Bill pressed his attack, leaping onto the roof to swing again. The Lazar took the blow on the shoulder with a grin, then slashed repeatedly at Bill, Bill barely managing to parry the hard, swinging blows. Then Bill battered the long knife aside and plunged his own blade deep into the Lazar’s chest.
The wound would have instantly killed a living man, but in the moment he inflicted it, Bill knew he’d made a mistake. His face inches from Tom’s, he saw in stomach-unsettling detail the pallid flesh of the creature’s face, his bulging white eyes, and the worms boiling in his eyesockets. Death-reek hung like a cloud about him, and where Bill expected gushing blood, there was none.
There was only a yellow-toothed, humorless smile, and then the Lazar swung his knife aga
in.
Bill stepped in closer to the dead man to make his attack ineffective. He yanked on his sword’s hilt to no avail—he had buried his own Excalibur in a stone of necromantic flesh.
He stepped too close; Black Tom bit Bill’s ear.
Bill yelled, punching the undead and separating the two fighters. They both tottered, a long pace apart, each struggling to regain his balance. Spanish moss-hung oaks flew by in the darkness like half-seen trolls and the cool, damp air of the night whipped away Bill’s stolen perruque.
Beelzebub’s topknot. Where’s my hat when I need it?
He saw Calvin’s red head peeping out from the window of the coach. “Stay inside, Cal!” Bill yelled. “Watch the queen! There’s no room up here!”
Black Tom lurched forward, stabbing at Bill’s stomach.
Bill narrowly managed to step aside, his heels slipping at the edge of the coach roof but not quite losing their grip. He grabbed the Lazar’s knife hand in both his own, stepping with his left foot inside the dead man’s stance. They grappled for control of the blade, the hilt of Bill’s own weapon teasingly poking against his shoulder.
He felt the long sharp fingernails of the dead man; how had they grown back so fast? That was what he needed to do, ideally, chop off the thing’s nails off again. On the top of a rolling coach, though, was not a great location to attempt such precise maneuvers.
Worms dropped from Black Tom’s eyes onto his arm, and Bill felt faint from breathing in the grave-like exhalations.
Bang!
The Lazar staggered from the bullet’s impact and Bill took the opportunity to kick his foot out from under him. He dropped the Lazar bodily to the rooftop.
“I’ve done for you now, you rotten bugger!” Obadiah roared, and laid his empty pistol beside him on the seat.
The dead man had fallen back with the point of Bill’s sword aimed down at the rooftop, pushing the weapon out of his chest. Bill took the hilt and jerked it clean, staggering to his feet and slashing hard at Black Tom, aiming for the right hand of the walking corpse.
The Lazar sprang to his feet, avoiding the blow and raising his guard again. No blood, no black ichor dripped from the gaping hole in his chest where he’d been impaled, nor from the bullet wound Obadiah had put in his cheek.
How to kill such a monster?
More trees whizzed by, and Bill looked at the dark ground. He smelled the river and knew they were getting close. He didn’t know what Sarah planned to do when they arrived, but he was sure her plans couldn’t include having a Lazar aboard.
He engaged with Tom again, parrying a flurry of attacks, and in the repeated clash of steel Bill let himself be backed into a corner. He carefully felt out his footing on the rumbling, jittery coach rooftop, preparing to grapple his enemy again, careful not to back too close to Obadiah, who had enough to do with handling the horses, and didn’t need Black Tom Fairfax falling on top of him.
When he was ready, Bill feigned an overextension and dropped to one knee—
the Lazar stabbed for Bill’s exposed head—
Bill twisted, parried, and got his basket hilt and his free hand pinched around Tom’s sword hand. He threw his body back toward his own shoulder and pulled, meaning to yank the Lazar over his own back and throw him to the street.
But Tom Long-Knife was more cunning than Bill had planned, and had kept his center of gravity low. When Bill yanked, the Lazar dropped to one knee himself and jammed a sharp elbow into Bill’s throat, knocking Bill onto his back, gasping, vision spinning, and perilously close to falling off the top of the coach.
The Lazar raised his blade overhead to deliver a killing blow. Bill held his own weapon up to parry, but his arm was weak and his fingers nerveless, and he felt himself staring into the rotten white eyes of death. Hell’s Bells, just when life was beginning to get interesting again.
Someone had said those words to him. Who was it?
Something crashed into the Lazar, grabbing the dead man and dragging him by sheer impetus away from Bill. He felt the carriage slow and drift, and Bill realized semi-consciously that Obadiah had left the reins to attack the dead man. He choked and coughed, trying to gasp out words of encouragement and warning, but could say nothing other than “O…badi…ah!”
“Now I’ll finish the job, you bloody stinkink ’eathen!” Obadiah headbutted Tom Long-Knife in the nose. The Lazar punched him back and then bit the Englishman in the shoulder.
Bill struggled to sit up, his breath coming in gasps, and faced an immediate choice. Obadiah Dogsbody might or might not be able to handle the Lazar by himself. On the other hand, the horses, left to their own devices, would either run amok or stop, neither of which was acceptable.
Bill looked past Obadiah to see their pursuers. Did he have the time to split the difference by helping Obadiah and then taking control of the horses? He saw the Blues, less than half a mile behind, and he knew he had no time to spare.
He sheathed his sword and slid awkwardly down off the front of the rooftop and into the coachman’s seat, where Obadiah had left the guiding lines wrapped around the seat rail. Bill took the reins.
But on the blood-smeared seat, wedged between its leather cushions, he saw Obadiah’s two pistols.
Bill snapped the reins to get the horses back to speed, though it seemed to him that they weren’t going as fast as they had been. Maybe Sarah’s magical burst of speed was exhausted. Sitting at the front of the coach, he now knew where they were—coming down Canal, with a left turn onto Decatur just ahead.
The quickest route to the river would be down Decatur and to the docks.
Fortunately, Canal had a variety of light traffic, foot and the occasional horse but no other vehicles. “Scatter!” Bill roared at the pedestrians in his path. He took the turn onto Decatur wide, cutting through the traffic and sending strollers flying in all directions.
The horses neighed in objection—
the coach creaked and lifted briefly onto two wheels—
Bill made the turn without slowing down—
crash!—
the raised wheels of the carriage slammed down again onto the ground, and Bill found himself staring down the straight shot of Decatur at the Mississippi Gate.
Bill wrapped the reins around his left fist, grabbed one of Obadiah’s pistols in his right (one of them, he knew, had already been fired, and he hoped he’d grabbed the loaded gun), stood, turned, and looked for a shot.
Obadiah grunted and swayed, locked in a mortal embrace with the decaying Tom Fairfax. Blood pooled on the rooftop, and one of the dead man’s thumbs lay twitching in the pool. Blood poured down the Englishman’s chest, and from his mouth, where he seemed to have lost teeth, and out of one gaping eye socket, but he looked indomitable in his rage, shouting obscenities as he pushed his dead foe’s neck back with both hands.
The dead man struggled to bring his knife down in a chop on Obadiah’s neck, but could not quite do it.
Bill took careful aim at Black Tom’s knee and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Damn gun. Bill shoved the pistol into his belt and cast a glance forward as he picked up the other.
Decatur Street, being the southern border of the Quarter, was thick with evening traffic, traffic that leaped and skidded out of the way of Bill’s six rampaging white horses. The Mississippi Gate loomed nearby; it was recessed from the street, creating a plaza, and Bill intended to try to turn his carriage and race through the gate without stopping. If any gendarmes expected to stop him and exact a toll, so much the worse for them.
The Blues were gaining ground, his old lieutenant Berkeley in front, beside the Martinite and the third Lazar. The Prince of Shreveport’s teams were tired and their magical enhancement had definitely ended. The Blues might be only a quarter mile behind. He had to take the gate at a run, and he hoped Sarah had a good plan, because the only idea Bill had was to commandeer a boat and flee on the river, and he didn’t think he had the time or the firepower to pull it off.
<
br /> Obadiah was hunched down, now, with his hands around Tom’s wrists and his head pounding into his foe’s chest, so Bill had a clear shot at the Lazar’s face, and almost took it. At the last moment, though, he remembered Tom’s nails, lowered his aim and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Bill’s bullet tore through the walking corpse’s long, gnarled toenails, breaking them and scattering them to the dark night winds. Black Tom stumbled, spinning awkwardly on one suddenly useless leg—
but as he staggered away, Obadiah lost his grip, too, and slipped forward—
and the Lazar rammed his knife into the Englishman’s chest.
Obadiah roared as the tip of the blade poked out between his shoulderblades. “You miserable nuffink!” He lurched forward to headbutt the Lazar one last time.
Crack!
Tom lost his grip on his knife and fell off the back end of the carriage. He hit the cobblestones at a bad angle with a sickening crunch! and lay in a heap. Obadiah collapsed to the rooftop of the coach, blood gouting from his chest.
“Hold on, suh!” Bill tucked the fourth pistol into his belt and turned to pay all his attention to the team of horses and the Mississippi Gate.
The pistol shot had helped scatter the crowd. Also, the gendarmes didn’t have the heart to get in Bill’s way, maybe because he wore the Prince of Shreveport’s clothing and drove his coach. For all the chevalier’s men knew, he was some servant of the cotton prince on an urgent errand, and they stood away as he turned the horses in the direction of the gate.
The horses were tired, and didn’t respond as quickly as he’d like. Bill hauled on the reins with all the strength of his upper body, the horses whinnied, they turned, the coach rose up onto two wheels, Bill pulled, and the lead left horse barely, just barely, missed the stone wall of the gate and made it inside.
But the wheels of the coach were not gripping the wet stone, and as Bill turned into the short tunnel that was the Mississippi Gate, the carriage slid left.