There was no mistaking the order in Gustavus’ words. He retreated to his private rooms at the back of the apartment without waiting to see if Hal had a response. Hal waited in the darkened front room, listening anxiously for the sound of feet in the corridor outside. He would miss Captain Hayry’s presence—and his sword—as much as the merchant would.
Gustavus returned in little more than the moment he had claimed he would need. Over his nightshirt he wore a leather coat. A sword hung from his belt, and two pistols were shoved into the sword belt. He pulled a heavy cloak over all of it, hiding both the embroidery and the pistols, nodded at Hal, then disappeared again, this time toward Johanna’s room. When he returned, he was leading Johanna by one hand. Whether he was leading her or pulling her along was not clear.
“Where do you want to go?” Hal asked.
“There is a Nya Sverige ship in the harbor. When Harmsworth told me what he intended, I arranged for a boat to be ready at the dock by the Battery Keep. It seemed prudent not to rely too much on Percy Harmsworth’s proclaimed brilliance. In any assault from landward, that dock would be secure to the last. I had not, however, expected their troops to turn coat, nor fighting to start in the fort itself. The sooner we go, the better.”
Hal agreed. He did not want to become a target along with them, nor did he want to explain to Bel afterward why he had not kept the Swedes safe.
When they stepped out of the apartment, he was relieved to see the corridor still empty. Gustavus placed Hal at the front, himself at the rear, and Johanna between them. Hal thought that the idea of him leading them into the unknown would have been laughable under other circumstances, but he didn’t want to be at the rear either. He allowed himself a brief mental complaint that if Gustavus had been foresighted enough to plan for this situation, he should have stationed more of his guards nearby.
The upper levels of the fort were relatively free of dead bodies and completely free of live ones. On the ground level, however, the sounds of fighting grew steadily louder as they approached the exit. Hal felt his throat tighten. He wished he could be someplace else, but he could not leave Gustavus and Johanna. Gunshots and yells that did not quite coalesce into words came from just outside the walls. They stepped through a side gate into the open and found that a small melee had just ended. The winners were busy checking the bodies of the losers. It was impossible to tell who had been fighting for whom. Gustavus gestured with his sword toward the Battery Keep, and away from where the fighting had just taken place. They crept along the wall, hoping to use the shadows to hide them.
“You! Halt!”
Hal looked back to see a man in the street bellowing for them to stop. Two others joined him, but none of them made any immediate move to enforce their order.
“Retreat with me, sword point toward them,” Gustavus ordered. “Johanna, keep clear. Maybe they won’t be anxious for a fight.”
Swords out and facing the others, Hal and Gustavus backed down the side of the fort. Let us go, Hal prayed. Just say, why bother and let us go. The three men held a quick conference, then started after them.
“Run!” The order came from Gustavus.
Unlike their opponents, Hal and Gustavus had not spent the night in combat and could probably have outrun them. But Johanna could manage only a stumbling run, due in part to continually looking over her shoulder. Gustavus cursed at her but that only started her crying. Hal said nothing, telling himself that he should be sympathetic to the fearful.
Gustavus whirled to meet the pursuers rather than wait for them to catch up. Automatically, Hal turned with him. The three men were on them instantly. Hal parried a thrust almost without noticing it. The man lunged into thin air, lost his balance and sprawled onto the snowy ground. Hal turned to help Gustavus, but the merchant didn’t need it. His left hand dived under the cloak and emerged with a pistol. From barely four feet away, he fired into the face of one man, who fell dead at his feet. Gustavus spared no time to look. With his sword he leaped at the last of them, battering away at the man’s defenses with powerful slashes and forcing him away from Hal and Johanna. A scraping sound made Hal turn to find his man back on his feet, moving to attack. Hal was just fast enough to parry. The other blade scythed harmlessly into the air beside his head. Then they were body to body, separated only by the crossed swords. Hal thought his opponent would back off for another try, but the man grabbed Hal’s sword arm, then swung at Hal’s head with the hilt in his fist. The basket of the man’s guard smashed into the side of Hal’s jaw. Stars swam in the blackness in front of his eyes. It was the crack of a pistol that came next, though. Hal’s enemy fell to one knee in front of him. Gustavus was there, hacking with his sword until the man was a heap of bloody rags on the ground. Hal fought to keep his balance. He tasted blood, felt it sticky at the corner of his mouth. Something felt wrong to his tongue on that side, but otherwise he seemed intact.
Save for them and the three bodies on the ground, no one else was in sight. The sounds of fighting were distant. To the northeast of where they stood, a red glow could be seen above the buildings.
“Come on,” said Gustavus. “This may be the best chance we’ll have. I just hope those damned sailors are still there.”
He led the way to the south, one hand on Johanna’s upper arm to hurry his daughter along. Hal trailed them a few paces back. Part of him watched the sides of the street, another part paid attention to his tongue as it continued to report something amiss with one of his back teeth.
They detoured to the east to avoid the governor’s palace. If there was any place remaining on the island of Manhattan where the Provis would have troops, it was there, and they were likely to be trigger happy. Once past the palace, they turned back to the west and south. Ahead of them, the Battery Keep loomed dark even against the night sky. Far smaller than Fort Stuyvesant, its cannons faced out toward the sea, its purpose to dominate the approach to the harbor farther up the river. Hard by the fortification was a dock. A small boat was moored there, crewed by sailors wearing the badges of Nya Sverige. A Provi officer stood on the dock, engaged in conversation with one of the Swedes.
“God is kind,” Gustavus said softly when he saw them. Two of the men helped Johanna into the boat while Hal and Gustavus stood with the others on the dock.
“Do you know what is happening?” Gustavus asked the Provi officer.
“Not really.” The officer shook his head. “We have been stationed here, so what I know is more rumor than fact. They say the Lifeguards have been slaughtered. That seems unlikely, but more than one has said it. The fort itself may have fallen to traitors, rebels wearing our uniforms, or Dutch soldiers who have mutinied. The provisional governor holds out at the palace. There have been attacks at the city wall. Rebels tried the bastion at the East River, but we hear that reinforcements arrived and they were kept out. As long as the wall holds, rebels in the north city cannot unite with the traitors here. We may win yet.”
Hal missed whatever was said next. The rebels had been held off at the East River bastion by the timely arrival of reinforcements. That was where he had sent Anderson! Had it been Anderson’s small troop that had swung the battle in the favor of the Provis? Such a brilliant idea. I sent them to a safe place, out of the way of any fighting, and put them in the one place where they could block the rebel forces from uniting. I have caused the failure of the rebellion. It’s all my fault!
“It does not matter,” Gustavus was saying when Hal freed himself from the accusations circling in his head. “This is not our fight.” Gustavus spoke now to the sailor from the boat. “It is important only not to be caught in the middle of it. Please row us out to the King Olaf.”
“Ja, Herrn.”
Gustavus then turned to Hal, who had stayed where he was on the dock, no closer to the boat than when they arrived. “You are not being left behind, Hal. There is room for you.”
Go with Gustavus. That meant safety, away from the fighting. Why not? He had done what Bel had asked. But it
also meant, in all likelihood, leaving for Nya Sverige. It would be the end of his search for Magicals in Nieuw Amsterdam. Faint as the hope of going home seemed to be, he was not ready to give that up. He would not delude himself any longer with foolish fantasies about Johanna either. He knew the truth. Going with Johanna would be a chore now, and not a pleasant one.
“I can’t go,” Hal said.
Gustavus’ eyes narrowed. “You did tell me that you had business in Nieuw Amsterdam that you were unwilling to leave, didn’t you? I might say that pursuing it in the middle of a civil war is less than wise, and leaving for the King Olaf is not an irreversible decision, but so be it. I release you from my service and you will have my good word on your behalf in the future if you ask it. Since you are staying, however, I will charge you with one more duty before you leave my service. Will you accept that?”
Hal wished Gustavus had been more specific prior to asking for his agreement. “If I can, I will,” he said.
“Find Sergeant Anderson or whoever has succeeded him,” Gustavus said. “Tell him that my company is to be kept out of the fighting, or withdrawn if they are involved. They may defend themselves, of course, but this is not our fight. Tell them that.”
Hal swallowed hard. He had, apparently, just sent Anderson and his troops to the critical spot in the fight for Nieuw Amsterdam. Now, Gustavus, unknowingly, was asking him to go there and pull them out. Maybe he could undo his first mistake. Or maybe he could get killed in the process.
“I’ll do it,” Hal said.
“Brave man.”
If only you knew, Hal replied silently. I should learn to keep my mouth shut.
26
Bel’s Truth
NOT BAD ENOUGH I’m scared every time there’s a fight, I have to be stupid enough to keep getting myself into these situations. I’ve just agreed to cross a city in the middle of an armed rebellion, where I can’t even tell who is on which side, and pull a group of troops out of the most critical fighting of the night. Of course, if I hadn’t sent them there in the first place, there wouldn’t be a problem to fix. Is there any way I could fuck up worse than I’m doing?
To walk from the Battery Keep to the city wall would normally take him about an hour to an hour and a half, even heading all the way to the end of the wall at the East River. This was not a normal walk, however. The city was dark. Most of the street lamps had been extinguished and smoke from the fires—started either by the explosion or the subsequent fighting—blocked the moonlight. With little light to help him find his way, Hal moved slowly from street to street. Fear of running into armed men slowed his progress further. Another fear, that a small boy might be dogging his steps, looking to disclose him to the first group of soldiers he passed, also preyed on his mind. It made no sense, of course. The Pincher was more likely to be hiding from the fighting than looking to cause trouble, but in the dark and by himself, Hal’s mind did not pay much attention to logic.
His path took him past the Lifeguards’ barracks, or what was left of them. Small fires still burned in several buildings to help light his way. The barracks were a ruin, much as the soldier had told him at the start. The roof had fallen in and the south-facing wall had collapsed. Fire burned somewhere inside the building, revealing a deep crater. Bodies, or parts of them, were scattered across the courtyard and the streets. There was no smell, at least—the cold saw to that—but the sight of the dismembered corpses was enough to make him gag. He forced himself to go to the barracks occupied by the Nya Sverige troops. There would be no point in going to the wall if they had never left. That building was intact, silent and dark. Anderson and his troops were gone. Hal was thankful that they had not become casualties at the barracks but, at the same time, that meant that his errand to the wall had to be carried out. He hurried north. Once he could sight the river to his right, he had no worry about getting lost.
The streets past the barracks were quiet, with no sign of fighting. Most houses were locked and dark, although others showed signs of panicky flight, household items scattered on the ground and even a door left open. Hal wondered where they would have run to. The wall, and the fighting there, would block escape as surely as it would block the rebels to the north. He kept to the shadows and the pools of darkness, having no desire to encounter a homeowner with a loaded musket and a bad case of nerves. It didn’t matter how you died, dead was dead.
At last the wall rose in front of him. As he raced through the streets toward it, he heard shouts, then a volley of shots followed by a few cries, then silence.
The entrance to the ground floor of the bastion was as he remembered it. No one stood guard on the city side. Light showed through the gate from oil lamps inside. A cluster of wounded men lay on rude litters along one of the interior walls. They wore Provi orange and white stripes—no, one of them wore the light blue of Nya Sverige. So Anderson had brought his men here after all. But where was Anderson now, and how was Hal going to get them out of here?
The first part of the problem was solved by a loud argument coming from the direction of the gate that led to the northern half of the city. Hal could not quite make out the words, but one of the voices was Anderson’s. That worthy then stepped out of a guardroom just to the left of the gate, headed rapidly in Hal’s direction. He looked up and came to a dead stop.
“Well, I will be dipped in shit!” Anderson exclaimed. “I thought I would never see you again, Woodsey.”
Under other circumstances, Hal would have found the image of Anderson being dipped in shit amusing. Not now, not here. He ignored the chance for a smart comment. “Gustavus sent me to find you. He has new orders.”
“Gustavus did? Where is he now?”
“Safe on the King Olaf,” Hal told him. “Johanna is there, too.”
“And Gusatvus wants us on the King Olaf?” Anderson’s tone was as skeptical as his face. “That will be difficult at best, maybe impossible.”
“I didn’t say that.” Hal was sure he had not given that impression. “Gustavus said to tell you that this is not our fight. That he wants you and his troops to stay out of it.”
“A little late for that. I figured he must have known something was up because they hit the gate just after we got here. Not sure who they are—woodsrangers out there for certain, but others too, maybe Provis who mutinied. Might have taken the gate, too, without us reinforcing the Provis.”
Hal shuddered. He had screwed it up.
“Thing of it is,” Anderson continued, as though Hal had done nothing, “that deranged son of a pox-ridden whore who commands the Provis now thinks he has a brilliant idea. We’ve stood off the rebels twice now. That last try of theirs didn’t have much heart in it. So, he thinks it’s time to open the gate, sally forth and put ’em to flight, with my men leading the charge. Idiot! He’ll get us all killed and then in they come anyway. Fuck him and his mother! And now you say Gustavus sent you here to tell us to stay out of it. Did he say why he changed his mind?”
“No.” This was a bad time for the truth.
Anderson looked back toward the guardroom. “Don’t think he’ll take too kindly to me saying that we’ve changed our minds, beggin’ pardon, and we’re going to sit this one out. You bring any good instructions for that?”
Hal moved toward the gate, which was barred and covered by men in the guardrooms to either side. Other men were up on the wall, ready to fire through shooting ports at any attackers who would try the gate. If the rebels had cannon out there they would have blown the gate open already, so they didn’t have them. Unless they had scaling ladders to get up the wall, and enough men to withstand the casualties of such an assault, the gate would hold.
Unless the Provis charged out. That would get the Provis and the Swedes killed, just like Anderson said, but Hal could think of no way to stop it from happening. Not unless the Swedes ran away from the gate when it opened. But that was not something he was going to suggest to Anderson.
Off to the right was the corridor he had taken to the pos
tern gate the night he had met Jacob ten Eyck. The rebels had not attacked it; they seemed not to know about it. That was odd, but maybe it offered a solution.
“Sergeant Anderson, Gustavus was very clear that he does not want us in the fighting. Now, if we were to open the gate for the rebels, we could let them have their fight with the Provis and stay out of it. Am I right?”
Anderson laughed at him. “You’re as crazy as the son-of-a-bitch Provi. You going to walk up there,” he indicated the gate with a wave of one hand, “and just open the gate with him watching, and you think nothing’s going to happen?”
Then it was Hal’s turn to laugh. “No, there’s another way. There’s a postern gate down that corridor. There was nobody watching it when I went through it. We can let them in through that. Then they can settle with the Provis without us in the middle.”
Anderson gave him a hard look. “And what were you doing going through that? And how long ago was this?”
“Can we talk about that later? It was a couple of weeks ago.”
Anderson shook his head. “A couple of weeks? Has it occurred to you that with a battle going on, the Provis might be more vigilant?”
“Maybe. But do you want to charge through that gate?”
“No.” With that, Anderson waved one of his other men to join them, and stalked off down the corridor. Hal had to hurry to catch up.
The door was just as Hal had left it. As before, there was no one in the corridor or near the door. Hal pulled the bar back and shoved the door open. Outside, there was no noise in the bushes. It was quiet in the direction of the river as well. Only toward the main gate were there shouts and gunshots.
“Well, you’re right for sure about a back door. Idiots.” Anderson pulled a mostly white cloth out of the pouch on his belt. “This’ll have to do for a truce sign.” He handed it to the other soldier. “Find somebody down there we can talk to.” The man smiled, turned and dashed into the bushes. Surprising to Hal, there was little sound or disturbance to mark his passage.
Accidental Warrior: The Unlikely Tale of Bloody Hal Page 28