The Barbary Pirates

by William Dietrich

  We hesitated then, silently debating what to do with the two unconscious guards, until I reluctantly drew my naval cutlass from under my robes and thrust it through both their bodies, finishing them. Fulton gave a little groan.

  “We are at war, gentlemen, with fanatics who are holding hostage my innocent son and who hope to declare war on all civilization,” I said. “Steel yourselves. It’s going to be a long night.”

  “They won’t show us mercy, either,” Pierre said.

  “Certainly they haven’t yet.”

  “Let’s get on with it, then,” said Fulton, swallowing as he looked at the dead. Apparently practicing war close-up was not the same as designing its machines, and the deadly consequences of his genius were just occurring to him. I wondered if Archimedes had discovered that, too? Had the old Greek ordered the dismantling of his mirror to not just keep it from the Romans, but from mankind itself? Could his own king have killed him in frustration?

  “But first we take their pistols,” said Pierre. “With the mood Ethan’s in, I have a feeling we’re going to need them.”

  “And their keys,” I added. “Help me drag the bodies out of sight.”

  I felt nauseated as we crept back into the labyrinth of dungeon tunnels under Yussef’s castle. The smell of earth, sewage, and lightless corruption came back like a slap, triggering old fear, and we could hear moaning and the occasional insane scream. Then I reminded myself of Astiza and little Harry, captive somewhere in the harem far above, and resolved to blow this mouth of Hades permanently shut by bringing Yussef’s fortress down on top of it. Let slip the dogs of war!

  We passed several iron corridor gates, locking them again to discourage interference or pursuit. Then a flight of stairs upward that I recognized as the way I’d been taken to Yussef’s palace to meet Astiza.

  “I think our army of three needs to divide at this point,” I said. “Robert, somehow we’ve got to get your torpedo, or mine, to where the mirror is and set it off.”

  “Archimedes might have used a catapult,” he said. “Perhaps something similar will occur to me. How do I get within view?”

  “If we can get you to the roof of Yussef’s storage rooms you may be able to look across. Follow this tunnel and hunt for stairs, if you don’t meet a sentry.”

  He drew his own cutlass. “Or kill one if I do.”

  “What is your assignment, donkey?” Pierre asked.

  “Go to the harem where the women are.”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s where Harry and Astiza should be. I’ll slip in, find them, and bring them down to go out the way we came.”

  “And brave Pierre, who never seems to be given the job of rescuing harems of young, nubile, enticingly captive women?”

  “Brave Pierre has the most important job of all. Take these keys and release as many prisoners as you can. When we retreat, their escape will create confusion while we make for the plunging boat. Beware, Pierre, an ogre lives in these tunnels. He’s a brute known as Omar the Dungeon Master and we want to avoid him.”

  “A presumptuous title. Is he big and ugly, like you?”

  “Bigger. And uglier, I dare say. Even homelier than our late giant friend Magnus Bloodhammer.”

  “Then I shall be David to this behemoth’s Goliath. I am the great Pierre Radisson, North Man and voyageur, who can stroke twenty hours in a single day and travel a hundred miles before sleeping! None can portage more weight than I, or drink more, or dance more splendidly, or jump higher, or run faster, or more quickly charm a woman! I can find my way from Montreal to Athabasca with my eyes closed!”

  I’d heard all this several times before. “Then you’ll do fine in the darkness down here. Quickly, Pierre, and quietly, and run like a deer if Omar hears you. We need you in our submarine to remind us again of your prowess.”

  “Of course you need me! Those two savants you left there, while they have undoubtedly concocted eight new harebrained theories of the history of the earth, have probably by now lost all sense of direction, if they haven’t sunk already. Well, Pierre will do all the real work as usual, and meet you at the gates that lead out of this dung hole. Then we will work on your reform!”

  And so I turned to climb the castle steps and rescue my son and the woman (I realized with a jolt that I had unconsciously come to think of her this way) who was, for all practical purposes, my wife.

  The climb was familiar, taking me up to the reception hall where I’d met Astiza. I passed with disquiet a side tunnel that I remembered led to Omar’s torture chamber. Then I opened the wooden door, pushed aside the concealing tapestry, and entered the throne room. This, I guessed, was close to the harem. The royal chair and pillows were as I remembered them, shadowy in the darkness. Even the African cat was there, locked for the night in its brass cage. I could see the fire of its eyes as I quickly passed through, and the beast made a rumbling purr. I wondered if Dragut’s dragon was lurking about, too, a lizard with the appetite of a polar bear.

  In the rear of the cage a third eye gleamed, and I realized a smaller cage held Yussef’s turban and emerald, ably protected by his cat. Even the leopard earned his keep.

  At the far end I slipped out into a quiet hallway hung with old brass medieval shields. There was a forbidding stillness to the castle as if the building was waiting, and I puzzled that I hadn’t encountered more guards. It was midnight, yes, but was I really this lucky? Where was everyone?

  Up a flight of marble stairs—I must be at the top of the palace now—and there a eunuch doorman, conveniently asleep in the depth of night. There was a flask nearby, and if he was caught in this dereliction he’d no doubt be bastinadoed on the soles of his feet, or hung from a hook on the castle wall. I hesitated, thinking of killing him, but couldn’t do it to a man already cruelly castrated. Instead I tore a drapery and jumped, clouted his head, gagged him, and tied him tight. Another sharp clout put a stop to his squirming.

  Then I went to the wood and brass harem door and listened. No trill of female laughter; the harem was asleep. I was ready to smash its lock with a pistol ball if need be, but instead this door opened, too. Clearly, Yussef was either not expecting an imminent American attack—or had faith in his eunuch guards. I slipped inside cautiously, not wanting to risk a riot by startling the girls. Could I find the duo I was looking for? If we could just creep away, I hardly cared about the mirror. It couldn’t really work after all this time, could it?

  But it had, burning that Spanish ship. As it could burn ours.

  The harem was empty, too.

  I passed through an antechamber and entered the lovely harem court, far more opulent than the merchant’s attic I’d once broken into in Cairo. This room had a central pool and a domed roof pierced by inserts of colored glass. In daytime, a rainbow of colors would filter down. Pillars ran around the chamber’s periphery to form an arcade beneath and balcony above, and doorways opened to what I presumed were the separate bedrooms and kitchen of the women who lived here. Flowers filled a score of vases, and lotus petals floated in the pool. The place smelled of perfume and incense. What would it be like when the concubines lounged and laughed, the beauties of a dozen nationalities just lightly clothed? Limbs dangling in the pool, breasts casually exposed, gossiping as they brushed each other’s glossy hair, smooth shoulders, sweet hips, their great almond eyes lined with kohl, their lips picked out with…

  Focus, Ethan!

  You’re worrying about just one woman now.

  And suddenly I had company. There was the light tread of a slipper behind me to which I might have turned, but at the same instant there was a growl ahead, the bass rumble of a heavy muzzle flecked with saliva and blood. Sokar! The grip on my pistol was suddenly slick as I realized why the castle was so quiet. I’d walked into a trap.

  “Ethan, Ethan, so predictable,” Aurora’s voice came from the shadows where the dog regarded me with its piss-yellow eyes. “We’ve been waiting for weeks.” And there emerged the wolflike bulk of her brutish
mastiff, head lowered, shoulders bunched.

  “We were going to let you turn the mirror on your own navy,” another voice said behind me. Dragut! “You could have proved yourself to us, Gage. But now, we’ll just try it on you.” His tone was anticipatory as a gun muzzle as wide as a dog’s mouth nudged my back. “Please don’t move, because I’m holding your friend’s blunderbuss. If my finger slips, the blast will cut you in two.”

  “Hell of a mess in this pretty pool.”

  “We’ve slaves enough to lick it clean, if necessary.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Aurora stepped into better light, holding my longrifle in a hand that also grasped Sokar’s leash. In her other fist was a second leash, this one tied to two figures coming miserably into view. The line led to a leather collar around the neck of Astiza, whose eyes were flickering to search for a means to fight back. And then from her to little Horus, who was walking with a limp and looked tearstained and traumatized.

  He brightened a little as he recognized me across the pool. “Papa! Dog bit me!”

  I wanted to shoot the damned beast right then, but if I did the blunderbuss would go off and Astiza and Harry would be finished. My naval pistol was damned inaccurate at that distance anyway, and the one I’d taken from the dead guards no better. I might shoot and miss.

  “Serves you right for stabbing my foot, you wretched cretin,” Aurora snapped.

  Her foot still bore a bandage, I saw, and I couldn’t help but smile. The apple didn’t fall so far from the tree, did it? Less than three and Harry already made me puff with pride. First he’d stabbed a little mouse, and then a bigger rat!

  “That dog won’t frighten you much longer,” I called.

  “No, it won’t,” Aurora said, “because you’ve doomed your bastard to the most hideous kind of slavery. This slut who spawned him is going to be roasted by the reflected rays of the sun. You can watch her catch on fire, Ethan, just before we test the mirror on you. That’s what you get for killing Osiris! Then we’ll let whatever boat dropped you here come in close to rescue your blackened husk, and set them ablaze as well. Bright as a bonfire.”

  “You really should have been a dramatist.”

  “A month ago I offered you the world and myself. And now? We only had to wait for you to come. Omar sent word that he had intruders. That eunuch you trussed was playacting. Janissary guards let you stupidly slip by. Any friends foolish enough to accompany you should already be dead. Everything you touch turns to disaster, and every person you befriend comes to grief. You do not control the lightning but are lightning yourself, a bolt of misery everywhere you alight.”

  “Which explains why I’m more than a little baffled by your attraction to me. Of course, you’re not exactly a Saint Nick yourself.”

  “Oh, I will be revered, never doubt. Winners are always honored by posterity. The most powerful become gods and goddesses. It’s the ruthless who are worshipped.”

  “Brave words when you sic a mongrel on a near infant and have me outnumbered a hundred to one. You’ve never been anything but a bully, Aurora. Too much the tart to ever win a real man, a dabbler in the wilderness dependent on her brother, a female with the mothering skills of a Gorgon, and a sportsman with the shooting expertise of an English fop.”

  She stiffened, her habit when hearing the truth. “You saw me shoot this gun in Canada!” And she held up my own beloved rifle. It had traveled perhaps fifteen thousand miles since its forging in Jerusalem, and my heart quickened when I saw it. “I can outshoot any man in this fortress!”

  “You can’t outshoot me. Remember what I did to your brother, twice.”

  She flushed. “The one shot at Cecil was lucky and the other almost point-blank.”

  Astiza had gone still as deep water during this exchange, waiting for me to make a miracle. I saw one, or at least a tiny chance.

  “I’m still better than you.”

  “It’s my rifle now, Ethan.”

  “Let me prove it. You’ve never shot against me.”

  “You propose a competition?”

  “I’m just saying it’s easy to boast when your opponent has a blunderbuss in his back and a hundred soldiers stalking him. But at anything like fair terms, you’d never win. Especially in a shooting match.”

  She laughed, and Sokar barked. “Pick a target!”

  “Aurora, we’ve no time for this nonsense,” Dragut protested.

  “Now that we have him, we have all the time in the world. Pick a target!”

  I looked, and pointed upward. “That glass pane in the dome, no bigger than a hand. I’ll hit it before you, and when I do…you have to give us a minute head start.”

  “That’s so absurd, given your situation, that I’d spit on it and you if I wasn’t so certain I’m the better marksman! Let’s make it interesting, instead. I’ll bet the head of your son.”

  “No! Leave Harry out of this!” But I secretly knew this monstrous idea of hers that I’d triggered was our only hope.

  “Yes,” she said, almost speaking to herself, “his terror from your absurdity. Hamidou, keep your gun on Gage because he’s full of tricks! Ethan, we’re going to put a glass flute on your little monster’s head and aim for its stem. I’ll go first, and I guarantee I will completely miss the boy and clip the stem if his mother holds him still enough. Then you can have a turn, and if by a miracle you break the glass more times than I do without blowing off the head of your child, I’ll give you your little race, with Sokar in pursuit. It will be amusing to watch him run you all down and hear the screams, since I had to hear my brother’s.”

  “I like a girl with enthusiasms.”

  She tied my family’s tether around a pillar with the assuredness of a sailor, testing its tightness. “Whore, crouch and hold your child like a statue,” she ordered Astiza. “If he twitches an inch, one or the other of us might miss.”

  Trembling, her expression toward Aurora exhibiting the purest hate I’d ever seen, the woman I loved kneeled, noose at her neck, and took our two-year-old darling into her arms. “Horus,” she whispered, “you must be very, very still. Mama will hold you to be safe.”

  My boy was crying again, completely confused by what was going on. Aurora put the goblet upon his head, which wobbled as he snuffled, and walked around the bathing pool to where I waited, bringing my rifle. She brushed my cheek with a kiss—it was like the lick of that reptile in her satanic ship’s hold—and took my pistols from my belt, tossing them into the pool. With a plonk, they sank out of reach. Then she turned and raised my gun with the assurance of the trained marksman. The muzzle of my weapon was steady as a rock as she aimed.

  I held my breath, terrified that Harry would bolt into the path of the bullet. There was a flash, roar, and a high ping as the glass stem was clipped in two by the ball. The cup of the goblet fell and shattered while poor Harry screamed and wept. Astiza clung to him even tighter, whispering in his ear.

  There were shrieks and cries from the harem’s concubines, no doubt jammed into the back of this complex by their anxious eunuchs. The bullet had ricocheted above them.

  The woman I’d once lusted after slammed the butt of my rifle onto the marble floor, took out a cartridge of powder and shot, and reloaded with the efficiency of a deadly huntress. Then she handed my weapon back to me, first drawing her own pistol to aim at my head.

  “Put the next glass on his head!” she called to Astiza. Then she turned to me. “I warn you, if that rifle barrel strays even minutely away from your wretched offspring, we’ll kill you in an instant and turn the two of them over to the slavers.”

  “What’s the matter, Aurora? Afraid I might equal you and that you can’t get lucky a second time?”

  “Just shoot and miss. And then beg for my mercy.”

  Astiza and Harry had absolutely frozen, mother murmuring into her son’s ear. The glass flute was bright as a diamond.

  “Remember, if you do miss, the game is over,” Aurora said.

  I aimed as car
efully as I ever had, drawing breath, holding, and then letting a slow hiss escape as I pulled the trigger, the gun aimed at a target I could barely see in the gloom.

  I fired, the flash and bang cacophonous in the marble chamber. The harem women screamed.

  And the leash of my loved ones snapped, cut in two by the ball as I intended! The end of their collar flapped loose in the harem air.

  Our ears rang with the report of the gun. For the briefest fraction of time everyone was frozen, surprised at my shot.

  Then I popped the stock atop my shoulder and rammed my rifle backward, catching Dragut full in the face with its butt. He reeled, his blunderbuss swinging away. I twisted to grab it and deliberately fell to the floor as Aurora’s pistol went off, the ball singing over my head. I then swung my own piece like a scythe to try to break her ankles. She jumped and fell, both our guns empty now.

  I scrambled up, wrenching the blunderbuss from the stunned Dragut. “Run!” I cried. I longed to use the gun on our tormentors, but guessed I’d need it on the stairway outside. The blunderbuss in one hand and the longrifle in the other, I waited for my lover and son.

  Astiza tucked Harry, frozen and mute, under one arm and dashed past us, the end of her tether flapping. Then I was up and after her before Dragut or Aurora could recover their wits. My longrifle felt as if a lost limb had been restored, even if the weapon was empty. In my left hand was Smith’s loaded thunder gun. We burst out the harem door, slammed it shut, and hurdled the tied eunuch. Janissaries sprang up from where they’d waited in ambush on the marble stairs and I cut loose with the blunderbuss. The gun bucked, there was a spray of bullets, and the gang of them parted like the Red Sea, men screaming as they somersaulted down the stairs. I swung my rifle for good measure, knocking aside a couple of obstinate ones like tenpins. Then we were plunging down the stairs past them to the royal reception room below, even as all the eunuchs began screaming.

  Behind us came Aurora’s sharp command: “Sokar! Kill!” And then to Dragut: “Get to your ship, idiot, and cut off whatever boat they have to escape!”