by Eric Flint
The impact generated a crack like a wood-splitting lightning strike, and the surrounding planks buckled or sheared, broken ends sticking up like sawed-off toe tips. The chaotic spray of wood dropped several deckhands and those who remained fought to keep the mast up. Either orders or a greater understanding of the damage reversed those labors; now they were trying to ensure that its fall would not bring down the foremast.
They managed that, but settling back into the divot dug by the carronade’s ball, the mainmast tilted and then rushed down sternward, stripping the gaff clean off the mizzen as swiftly and surely as an axe trimming a dried branch.
“She’s done!” Svantner said enthusiastically, loudly. “They’ll strike colors any second, now.”
Eddie crossed his arms and frowned. This captain had persisted when most others would have accepted the inevitable. “We’ll see,” was all he said.
Three minutes later, the Frenchman’s starboard stern cannon roared defiance at her three opponents; the six-pound ball missed Zuidsterre by thirty yards. Not bad shooting, given the range of two hundred fifty yards. On the shattered deck, men were moving with purpose: making repairs, passing out muskets, adjusting the foresail to renew their attempts to escape the twisting shallow, and tossing the dead over the side.
Eddie shook his head; just what he’d feared.
Svantner was outraged. “What instructions for the Master Gunner, sir?” he almost shouted, although the cannons were still that moment.
Eddie sighed. “Starboard Battery One is to load with canister.”
“To bring down their foresail, sir?”
“Svantner, it’s not their foresail that keeps them fighting.” Eddie sighed more deeply. “Aim low. Sweep the length of the deck. Stop when she strikes her colors.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then keep firing until there’s no one left to shoot back.”
* * *
As his longboat’s prow touched the sand with a grating hiss, Eddie glanced past the white flag fluttering over its transom: Intrepid looked deceptively small at this distance. It was the first time since coming to the New World that he’d been in potentially enemy territory while outside of her protective umbrella and stout hull. It was not, he decided, a particularly enjoyable sensation.
He rose from the seat as the team of Marines in the bow—armed with percussion cap rifles and revolvers—jumped into the knee-deep water on either side and made their way out of the lazy surf. There was no indication that anyone in the small encampment a hundred yards east and just beyond the margin of the beach had noticed their arrival. Nor was there a Kalinago war party waiting for them, either. About which he had to wonder: was that a good sign or the calm before a storm?
Since being lowered down from Intrepid’s aft davits, Eddie had thought more than once that maybe Svantner had been right: mount the outboard motor for this mission. Probably wouldn’t be needed, but if it was, there was nothing like a thirty-horse-power engine to ensure a quick getaway. But mounting it and testing it would have meant a delay, and following up the decisive defeat of the French bark with a prompt, confident visit under a flag of truce was the best way to keep the initiative.
Which, Eddie acknowledged with a sigh, would not be achieved by remaining on Intrepid’s skiff. As he made ready to stand—not easy with a prosthetic foot and ankle, even one of up-time design and manufacture—Lieutenant Gallagher jumped out and pulled the boat a foot or two further up the strand. The young Irishman—one of the Wild Geese mercenaries—smiled back at him. “Mind, there’s a wee undertow, Commodore.”
Eddie nodded, pushed down two resentments. First, that he didn’t have two feet of his own any longer. And second, that he’d agreed to having the commander of his elite troops accompany him as a personal guard, the notion of which fit Eddie’s view of himself and the world about as well as kneepads fit a chicken. But Svantner’s objections had bordered on insubordination: it was his role to make landfall instead of his CO. And, under other circumstances, he would have been right.
But these circumstances were not typical, and required a diplomatic touch that Svantner sorely lacked. So Eddie had suggested that one of the Wild Geese could look after his safety. Even that failed to mollify Svantner until Gallagher overheard the debate and promptly volunteered himself for the duty.
Which left Eddie with three choices. Decide against a guard from the Wild Geese (no good; it had been his idea); insist upon another of the mercenaries (a slap to Gallagher’s face), or reverse his order and refuse any guard at all (probably stupid and a CO can’t even appear to waffle).
With a nod to the two ship’s troops who were remaining behind to guard the skiff and maintain visual contact with Svantner (who was probably about to have kittens), Eddie threw his good leg over the side, waited for the slack in the space between the tide’s ebb and flow, got his prosthetic solidly on the sand, and marched toward the tents to the east.
* * *
Eddie had anticipated many possibilities when he had seen the cluster of tents and lean-tos from the deck of Intrepid. It could have been the starving survivors of a failed colony; a camp of invalids, weakened by malnutrition and struck down by a local disease; cripples who, after fleeing from retribution after their failed attack on St. Eustatia, had lost their health along with the limbs taken by a combination of gangrene and the surgeon’s saw. The only thing that seemed certain was that its inhabitants were neither numerous nor vigorous; forty-five minutes of observation through a spyglass had yielded only a few signs of brief, labored movement.
But none of that prepared him for what he discovered as he approached the tents. For the first few moments, he couldn’t even come up with a mental label for it. But then one emerged: The Colony of Lost Women. Almost all of whom were malnourished, sickly, or both.
At the center, one thin, well-featured man—pale, dark-haired, bearded—was sitting on the remains of a sun-bleached crate. He stood unsteadily and said, “I am Jacques Dyel du Parque. Nephew of Pierre d’Esnambuc, late the governor of the French colony on St. Christopher, whose ship and life you have just erased from this world.” His smile was both sardonic and rueful. “I suspect you wish our surrender.”
Chapter 9
Petit Cul-de-Sac Marin, Guadeloupe
Even after the French survivors had all been removed to Intrepid, the Kalinago didn’t emerge from the forest until she lowered a longboat carrying the warriors they’d left behind when fleeing St. Eustatia.
Two of them rose into view and approached at a brisk walk. As Eddie and Gallagher went to meet them, the Kalinago seemed to take notice of the unevenness of Eddie’s gait; he noticed that they were both missing an eye. They stopped when they were ten feet away.
The taller, and considerably older one—still impressively muscled and with the chiseled features of a movie star—pointed at the longboat and unleashed a stream of French.
Which Eddie had been expecting, and for which he had studied, but which now flew out of his head under the pressure of the situation. “P-pardon,” he stammered—great strong start, Eddie—“mais je ne parle pas français.”
The two Kalinago glanced at each other. The smaller one jerked his head at Eddie and whispered, “Mais il le fait!”
Uh, what? Eddie was conscious of the seconds ticking past as he struggled to remember words which resembled those. It didn’t help when Gallagher whispered, “Y’don’t parlez vous, Commodore?”
“Geez, Gallagher, does it sound like I can?” Wait. “Do you?”
“I’ve been known to aggravate a few Flemish gentlemen by doing business with them in that language they love so well.”
“So . . . what’d he say?”
“Ah. So, when you said, ‘Pardon, I don’t speak French’ that confused ’em, and the little one said, ‘But ’e does!’”
Under other circumstances, Eddie might have laughed, but the look in the remaining eyes of the two Kalinago made him suspect that it could be perceived as a grave insult.
With the emphasis on grave.
The taller of the two Kalinago pointed at the oncoming longboat. “Our mans.”
Wait. “You speak English?”
“Small of it.” He jabbed his finger at the boat again. “Our mans. You keep otage?”
“Gallagher . . . ?”
“Asks if they’re being held hostage by you. Shall I make introductions, sir?”
“You go right ahead with that, Gallagher. You are now our designated interpreter.”
Gallagher presented Eddie and learned that the tall one was the cacique Touman, and the smaller his nephew Youacou. The tarnish of disuse rapidly fell away from the Kalinagos’ surprisingly good English. “We were taught by Tegreman, the last cacique of Liamuiga,” Touman explained.
“Who your people killed,” Youacou added.
“Whoa!” Eddie objected, hands raised. “I didn’t kill anybody! And I’m here to make sure that none of our people ever kill each other again. So, let’s start with this: the men on the boat just coming ashore are not hostages. They were wounded warriors left behind when you fled St. Eustatia—uh, Aloi.”
The first of them were already leaping over the bows of the longboat and racing toward their cacique. Touman held up a palm against their rush: they stopped as if they’d struck a wall. He looked at Eddie. “My people—they are free? Without, eh, conditions?”
“Free, yes. No conditions.”
Touman waved sharply at the forest behind him; the twelve Kalinago prisoners sprinted for the trees. His one eye narrowed as he reconsidered Eddie. “You have not come from Liamuiga—St. Christopher—just to return these men.”
“No, but I would have, had that been my only business with you.”
Touman looked unconvinced but also seemed willing to listen. “Speak your other business.”
Eddie nodded. “Firstly, we appreciate that you allowed the French innocents to live here until someone came to remove them from Guadelou—eh, um, Karukera.”
Touman’s eye softened for the briefest instant when Eddie used the Kalinago name for Guadeloupe. “They are the last of the French who came here. After our attack on Aloi, the ship of d’Esnambuc, one of their leaders, was pushed away by storms. When he returned, we met him before he came ashore and told him that the other French chief, du Plessis, had fled. He said he shared our anger.”
Touman shrugged. “We knew that d’Esnambuc might be lying. But we also knew that he truly loved his nephew, he whom you met at the camp. So we told d’Esnambuc he would be welcome to come ashore again if he returned with the coward du Plessis. He sailed away to find him.
“Many months passed. The other Frenchmen tried to steal food from us. Du Parque, the man you met, was good and honest but could not control them, so they were killed. We brought the others—the women and the children—to this shore.” Touman sighed. “Many became sick and died. We do not know why.
“Two days ago, d’Esnambuc returned, but he had not found du Plessis. Still, he wanted to take away his nephew and the other survivors. We were considering this when your ship arrived and destroyed his. Now, all matters are settled.”
He fixed his one eye upon Eddie. “You say you came to make sure that no more Kalinago would die fighting your people. Are you a cacique, that you can make such a promise?”
Eddie shook his head. “I am not. However, my leaders have made it a law not to harm your people, and they will punish any who do so.”
“And this applies just to the Kalinago of Karukera, or to all the Kalinago?”
Eddie nodded. “All the Kalinago. And not just them. All the peoples of all these islands and the lands beyond.”
Touman narrowed his eye again. “In the places where both our peoples live, your people take land and then refuse to share it or even let us walk upon it. How then will there not be war?”
“Actually,” Eddie said uncomfortably, “after we remove the last few French remaining on Martinique, there will be no islands where both your people and those of us from over the sea have communities. We have searched carefully and found no more Kalinago on any of what we call the Leeward Islands.”
Touman shrugged and nodded. “That seems true, yet you do not speak of leaving those islands so that we may return.”
Eddie had known this moment would come, but had not expected it to arrive so quickly. “Cacique Touman, just as no leader has the power to undo what has been done, those people no longer have homes to which they may return. Here is what we propose: unless we are invited, we shall not visit the lands where your people still live, the ones we call the Windward Islands. My people shall live only on those lands where your people no longer dwell: the Leeward Islands.”
Eddie leaned back. So now, Touman, it’s raise, call, fold—or kill me where I sit.
When Touman did not answer immediately, Youacou glared at him. “You cannot—”
“I am cacique. I ‘can’ whatever I wish,” Touman interrupted quietly.
Youacou’s lips sealed into a rigid horizontal line.
Touman’s one eye had not left Eddie’s two. “What you say is not pleasant to hear. That is why I am inclined you mean what you have said, and that you are an honest man. But there is another matter: our ancestors.”
Eddie nodded. “Cacique, we know that many of your people trace their roots to Tegreman’s tribe on Liamuiga. We shall set aside a haven for them on the windward side of the island, which they may visit at any time, and from there, travel to all other parts of the island.”
Touman could not keep his face completely free of the telltale hints of surprise.
Eddie wasn’t done. “We also know that you have burial sites among the Leeward Islands, where you go to honor your ancestors—”
Touman leaned forward sharply. “And you mean to allow us to return to those places?”
“As often as you like.”
“And we would be the only ones allowed to go there?”
“We presumed anything else would desecra—er, destroy their holiness.”
“And when we go to such sites, none will intrude upon us?”
Eddie hadn’t even thought of that. “No.”
Touman looked suddenly, even ferociously, suspicious. “Then how may you be sure that we will not use such places and permissions to gather a force and attack one of your nearby settlements?”
Eddie shrugged. “Because it wouldn’t achieve anything, Cacique Touman.” He gestured toward Intrepid. “You are a wise man. You understand the significance of the changes you see around you. That is why you were willing to help the French attack the radio on St. Eustat—uh, Aloi.
“So you must also know that sneak attacks such as you describe would only bring retributions and hardship. There are those among my people who might then be able to convince my leaders that you cannot be trusted and so, should not be allowed to live on any of these islands. Or anywhere else.”
Touman nodded soberly, stood, and faced back where his invisible entourage was waiting. After a moment, they rose. He pointed at Eddie and started speaking loudly in French.
Gallagher whispered the translation over Eddie’s shoulder. “This pale man from over the sea has come with words and proposals of peace and respect”—and he rattled off what Eddie had proposed.
At the end of that list, he paused for a moment to let the gathered warriors reflect on it. “He is the first pale man who has even tried to understand the ways in which we honor our ancestors in their old places. I have looked into his eyes as he said these things. He respects our ways, and as a war leader of his people, has come to seek an agreement that shall not only end the wars between us, but keep new ones from arising.”
Touman’s tone became slightly more grave. “He knows that what he offers cannot right all the wrongs that have been suffered. But if his leaders honor his words, then we shall regain through peace what we can no longer reclaim by war. Our numbers are too small, and their weapons are too powerful. Two of you: send word. Despite the cannons we heard today, we have peace.�
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He sat and then smiled at Eddie. “And now you will tell me what your leaders want, Edd-ee Kant-rell.”
“It’s that obvious?” Eddie said miserably.
“I am a cacique. I know leaders always want something. What is it that yours want?”
Trying to feel like he wasn’t in kindergarten, Eddie shrugged. “At this moment, a great fleet of ours is in battle with the great fleet that the Spanish send every year.”
“Ah-mm,” Touman said with a nod. “La Flota.”
Eddie wondered just how many languages Touman spoke. He also wondered how the Europeans had even thought to label indigenous peoples as “ignorant.” “Yes. Messages through our smaller radios tell me that we shall win. However, the victory will be so great that we will have more prisoners than we can care for. Far too many.”
Touman looked perplexed. “How is this a difficulty? They are your enemies.”
And here comes the cultural disconnect. Eddie pointed to the longboat that had brought the former Kalinago prisoners. “When we take prisoners, we do not kill them later. There is a word—a French word, I think—that explains this rule of war among us: parole.”
Touman nodded. “Yes. We know this word. But among us, this honor is only given to those of the same people. Otherwise, prisoners live only if a cacique wishes it.”
Eddie nodded. “I understand. Among us, if one side signals that it wishes to surrender, the leaders of both armies meet and, if they can agree to terms, those losers become the prisoners of the winners. Or they are given parole.”
Youacou’s voice was careful. “From what I have heard and seen, many of your leaders kill those who attempt to surrender.”