The Witch Hunter Chronicles 2
Page 28
No sooner has he said this than a dozen or so Dutch soldiers appear at the end of the tunnel, their muskets and pistols raised in preparation to fire. Calling for our English allies to take shelter in the cells, Armand races frantically towards me through the water, his head held low, a hand keeping his wide-brimmed hat in place. The BLAM! of firearms reverberates from the darkness at the far end of the passage, and musket balls zip past the French duellist. As he races into the cell in which I am hiding, I lean out and discharge my remaining pistol at the Dutch soldiers, blasting one of them off his feet with a direct shot to the forehead. The rest respond with hasty shots as they retreat down the tunnel.
Armand sheathes his sabre and draws the long-barrelled flintlock pistols from his belt. ‘Where are Christian and Francesca?’ he roars over the report of gunfire.
‘Somewhere up ahead with Captain Lightfoot,’ I yell back. ‘They have moved deeper into the dungeon. The Captain wants us to join Lieutenant Wolf and perform a delaying action. We’re to hold the Dutch at bay, granting the Captain the time he needs to blast through to the gaol.’
Armand’s eyes flash with alarm. ‘What? I thought we’d agreed against that. Didn’t we say that it would make too much noise and alert the prison guards?’
‘I know,’ I say as I start to reload my pistols. ‘But the Captain has changed his mind, and I can see his point. We no longer have time to carry through with our initial idea of chiselling through to the prison. We’ve lost the element of surprise – these dungeon tunnels are alive with Dutch city watch. We just have to hope that we can still break into the prison before the guards are alerted. The last thing we want is to get trapped down here, with the Dutch coming at us from both sides.’
Armand shakes his head. ‘This has gone from bad to worse. But what can we do? We’re stuck in this mess now. If Lightfoot wants to blast his way through, then so be it. I just hope to God he’s quick about it, because I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to hold the Dutch off; I think the entire city watch has come down after us.’
I had previously questioned the wisdom of joining forces with the contingent of English soldiers led by Captain Lightfoot. Armand, Christian von Frankenthal, Francesca and I had travelled to Rotterdam in the hope that my father – long thought dead – may have been captured by the Dutch some ten years ago and imprisoned within the Devil’s Bowels: the notorious gaol lying in the very heart of the Dutch city-port. Having entered a war zone – with the Anglo-Dutch War in its second year – we had kept our numbers to a bare minimum, believing that stealth and secrecy would be best suited to this mission.
Armand had only recently been promoted to the rank of lieutenant. Before setting off on this adventure, he had assured me that my resourcefulness, Francesca’s skill with traps and locks, von Frankenthal’s brute strength, as well as his very own skill with swords – not to mention his dashing good looks and charm, Armand had modestly added – would be more than adequate to deal with a handful of decrepit prison guards. If all went to plan, he bragged, we wouldn’t even have to draw our blades.
Famous last words if you ask me. For here we are now, having formed an alliance with a much larger English force, and engaged in a vicious skirmish with a Dutch patrol, deep in an abandoned dungeon.
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Version 1.0
The Witch Hunter Chronicles Volume Two: The Army of the Undead
9781742750569
Published by Random House Australia 2011
Copyright © Stuart Daly
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Random House Australia book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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First published by Random House Australia in 2011
National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry
Author: Daly, Stuart
Title: The army of the undead / Stuart Daly
ISBN 978 1 74275 055 2 (pbk)
Series: Daly, Stuart. Witch hunter chronicles; 2
Target Audience: For secondary school age
Subjects: Witch hunting – Juvenile fiction
Dewey number: A823.4
Cover illustration and design by Sammy Yuen
Maps by Stuart Daly and Anna Warren
Internal design by Midland Typesetters, Australia
eBook production by Midland Typesetters, Australia