Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

  The child scampered down the low slope to the pool where she had been bathing when she sighted the craft, and snatched up the slippers, stockings and dress she had left lying on the sand. She skipped back up the ridge, hopping grotesquely as she donned them in mid-flight.

  Francoise, anxiously watching the approaching sail, caught her hand and they hurried toward the fort.

  A few moments after they had entered the gate of the log stockade which enclosed the building, the strident blare of a bugle startled both the workers in the gardens and the men just opening the boat-house doors to push the fishing boats down their rollers to the water’s edge.

  Every man outside the fort dropped whatever he was doing and ran for the stockade, and every head was twisted over its shoulder to gaze fearfully at the dark line of woodland to the east. Not one looked seaward.

  They thronged through the gate, shouting questions at the sentries who patrolled the firing-ledges built below the points of the upright logs.

  “What is it? Why are we called in? Are the Indians coming’?”

  For answer one taciturn man-at-arms pointed southward. From his vantage point the sail was now visible. Men climbed on the ledge, staring toward the sea.

  On a small lookout tower on the roof of the fort, Count Henri d’Chastillon watched the onsweeping sail as it rounded the point of the southern horn. The Count was a lean man of late middle age. He was dark, somber of countenance. His trunk-hose and doublet were of black silk; the only color about his costume were the jewels that twinkled on his sword hilt, and the wine-colored cloak thrown carelessly over his shoulder. He twisted his thin black mustache nervously and turned gloomy eyes on his major-domo-a leather featured man in steel and satin.

  “What do you make of it, Gallot?”

  “I have seen that ship before,” answered the majordomo. “Nay, I think-look there!”

  A chorus of cries below them echoed his ejaculation; the ship had cleared the point and was slanting inward across the bay. And all saw the flag that suddenly broke forth from the masthead-a black flag, with white skull and crossbones gleaming in the sun.

  “A cursed pirate!” exclaimed Gallot. “Aye, I know that craft! It is Harston’s War-Hawk. What is he doing on this naked coast?”

  “He means us no good,” growled the Count. The massive gates had been closed and the captain of his men-at-arms, gleaming in steel, was directing his men to their stations, some to the firing-ledge, others to the lower loop-holes. He was massing his main strength along the western wall, in the middle of which was the gate.

  A hundred men shared Count Henri’s exile, both soldiers and retainers. There were forty soldiers, veteran mercenaries, wearing armor and skilled in the use of sword and arquebus. The others, house-servants and laborers, wore shirts of toughened leather, and were armed mostly with hunting bows, woodsmen’s axes and boar-spears. Brawny stalwarts, they took their places scowling at the oncoming vessel, as it swung inshore, its brass work flashing in the sun. They could see steel twinkling along the rail, and hear the shouts of the seamen.

  The Count had left the tower, and having donned helmet and cuirass, he betook himself to the palisade. The women of the retainers stood silently in the doorways of their huts, built inside the stockade, and quieted the clamor of their children. Francoise and Tina watched eagerly from an upper window in the fort, and Francoise felt the child’s tense little body all aquiver within the crook of her protecting arm.

  “They will cast anchor near the boat-house,” murmured Francoise. “Yes! There goes their anchor, a hundred yards offshore. Do not tremble so, child! They can not take the fort. Perhaps they wish only fresh water and meat.”

  “They are coming ashore in long boats!” exclaimed the child. “Oh, my Lady, I am afraid! How the sun strikes fire from their pikes and cutlasses! Will they eat us?”

  In spite of her apprehension, Francoise burst into laughter.

  “Of course not! Who put that idea into your head?”

  “Jacques Piriou told me the English eat women.”

  “He was teasing you. The English are cruel, but they are no worse than the Frenchmen who call themselves buccaneers. Piriou was one of them.”

  “He was cruel,” muttered the child. “I’m glad the Indians cut his head off.”

  “Hush, child.” Francoise shuddered. “Look, they have reached the shore. They line the beach and one of them is coming toward the fort. That must be Harston.”

  “Ahoy, the fort there!” came a hail in a voice as gusty as the wind. “I come under a flag of truce!”

  The Count’s helmeted head appeared over the points of the palisade and surveyed the pirate somberly. Harston had halted just within good ear-shot. He was a big man, bare-headed, his tawny hair blowing in the wind.

  “Speak!” commanded Henri. “I have few words for men of your breed!”

  Harston laughed with his lips, not with his eyes.

  “I never thought to meet you on this naked coast, d’Chastillon,” said he. “By Satan, I got the start of my life a little while ago when I saw your scarlet falcon floating over a fortress where I’d thought to see only bare beach. You’ve found it, of course?”

  “Found what?” snapped the Count impatiently.

  “Don’t try to dissemble with me?” The pirate’s stormy nature showed itself momentarily. “I know why you came here; I’ve come for the same reason. Where’s your ship?”

  “That’s none of your affair, sirrah.”

  “You have none,” confidently asserted the pirate. “I see pieces of a galleon’s masts in that stockade. Your ship was wrecked! Otherwise you’d sailed away with your plunder long ago.”

  “What are you talking about, damn you’?” yelled the Count. “Am I a pirate to burn and plunder? Even so, what would I loot on this bare coast?”

  “That which you came to find,” answered the pirate coolly. “The same thing I’m after. I’m easy to deal with-just give me the loot and I’ll go my way and leave you in peace.”

  “You must be mad,” snarled Henri. “I came here to find solitude and seclusion, which I enjoyed until you crawled out of the sea, you yellow-headed dog. Begone! I did not ask for a parley, and I weary of this babble.”

  “When I go I’ll leave that hovel in ashes!” roared the pirate in a transport of rage. “For the last time- will you give me the loot in return for your lives? I have you hemmed in here, and a hundred men ready to cut your throats.”

  For answer the Count made a quick gesture with his hand below the points of the palisade. Instantly a matchlock boomed through a loophole and a lock of yellow hair jumped from Harston’s head. The pirate yelled vengefully and ran toward the beach, with bullets knocking up the sand behind him. His men roared and came on like a wave, blades gleaming in the sun.

  “Curse you, dog!” raved the Count, felling the offending marksman with an iron-clad fist. “W by did you miss’? Ready, men-here they come!”

  But Harston had reached his men and checked their headlong rush. The pirates spread out in along line that overlapped the extremities of the western wall, and advanced warily, firing as they came. The heavy bullets smashed into the stockade, and the defenders returned the fire methodically. The women had herded the children into their huts and now stoically awaited whatever fate the gods had in store for them.

  The pirates maintained their wide-spread formation, creeping along and taking advantage of every natural depression and bit of vegetation-which was not much, for the ground had been cleared on all sides of the fort against the threat of Indian raids.

  A few bodies lay prone on the sandy earth. But the pirates were quick as cats, always shifting their positions and presenting a constantly moving target, hard to hit with the clumsy matchlocks. Their constant raking fire was a continual menace to the men in the stockade. Still, it was evident that as long as the battle remained an exchange of shots, the advantage must remain with the sheltered Frenchmen.

  But down at the boat-house on the shore, men were
at work with axes. The Count cursed sulphurously when he saw the havoc they were making among his boats, built laboriously of planks sawn from solid logs.

  “They’re making a mantlet, curse them!” he raged. “A sally now, before they complete it-while they’re scattered-”

  “We’d be no match for them in hand-to-hand fighting,” answered Gallot. “We must keep behind our walls.”

  “Well enough,” growled Henri. “If we can keep them outside!”

  Presently the intention of the pirates became apparent, as a group of some thirty men advanced, pushing before them a great shield made out of the planks from the boats and the timbers of the boat-house. They had mounted the mantlet on the wheels of an ox-cart they had found, great solid disks of oak, and as they rolled it ponderously before them the defenders had only glimpses of their moving feet.

  “Shoot!” yelled Henri, livid. “Stop them before they reach the gate!”

  Bullets smashed into the heavy planks, arrows feathered the thick wood harmlessly. A derisive yell answered the volley. The rest of the pirates were closing in, and their bullets were beginning to find the loop-holes. A soldier fell from the ledge, his skull shattered.

  “Shoot at their feet!” screamed Henri, and then: “Forty men at the gate with pikes and axes! The rest hold the wall!”

  Bullets ripped into the sand beneath the moving breastwork and some found their mark. But, with a deepthroated shout, the mantlet was pushed to the wall, and an iron-tipped boom, thrust through an aperture in the center of the shield, began to thunder on the gate, driven by muscle-knotted arms. The massive gate groaned and staggered, while from the stockade arrows and bullets poured in a steady hail, and some struck home. But the wild men of the sea were afire with fighting lust. With deep shouts they swung the ram, and from all sides the others closed in, braving the weakened fire from the walls.

  The Count drew his sword and ran to the gate, cursing like a madman, and a clump of desperate men-at-arms, gripping their pikes, closed in behind him. In another moment the gate would burst asunder and they must stop the gap with their living bodies.

  Then a new note entered the clamor of the melee. I t was a trumpet, blaring stridently from the ship. On the crosstrees a figure waved his arms and gesticulated wildly.

  The sound registered on Harston’s ears, even as he lent his strength to the swinging ram. Bracing his legs to halt the ram on its backward swing, his great thews standing out as he resisted the surge of the other arms, he turned his head, and listened. Sweat dripped from his face.

  “Wait!” he roared. “Wait, damn you! Listen!”

  In the silence that followed that bull’s bellow, the blare of the trumpet was plainly heard, and a voice yelled something which was unintelligible to the people inside the stockade.

  But Harston understood, for his voice was lifted again in profane command. The ram was released, and the mantlet began to recede from the gate.

  “Look!” cried Tina at her window. “They are running to the beach! They have abandoned the shield! They are leaping into the boats and rowing for the ship! Oh, my Lady, have we won?”

  “I think not!” Francoise was staring seaward. “Look!”

  She threw aside the curtains and leaned from the window. Her clear young voice rose above the din, turning men’s heads in the direction she pointed. They yelled in amazement as they saw another ship swinging majestically around the southern point. Even as they looked, she broke out the lilies of France.

  The pirates swarmed up the sides of their ship, then heaved up the anchor. Before the stranger had sailed half-way across the bay, the War-Hawk vanished around the point of the northern horn.

  Chapter 3: The Coming of the Black Man

  “Out, quick!” snapped the Count, tearing at the bars of the gate. “Destroy that mantlet before these strangers can land!”

  “But yonder ship is French!” expostulated Gallot.

  “Do as I order!” roared Henri. “My enemies are not all foreigners! Out, dogs, and make kindling of that mantlet!”

  Thirty axemen raced down to the beach. They sensed the possibility of peril in the oncoming ship, and there was panic in their haste. The splintering of timbers under their axes came to the ears of the people in the fort, and then the men were racing back across the sands again, as the French ship dropped anchor where the War-Hawk had lain.

  “Why does the Count close the gate?” wondered Tina. “Is he afraid that the man he fears might be on that ship?”

  “What do you mean, Tina?” Francoise demanded uneasily. The Count had never offered a reason for this self-imposed exile. He was not the sort of a man likely to run from an enemy, though he had many. But this conviction of Tina’s was disquieting, almost uncanny.

  The child seemed not to have heard her question.

  “The axemen are back in the stockade,” she said. “The gate is closed again. The men keep their places on the wall. If that ship was chasing Harston, why did it not pursue him? Look, a man is coming ashore. I see a man in the bow, wrapped in a dark cloak.”

  The boat grounded, and this man came pacing leisurely up the sands, followed by three others. He was tall and wiry, clad in black silk and polished steel.

  “Halt!” roared the Count. “I’ll parley with your leader, alone!”

  The tall stranger removed his morion and made a sweeping bow. His companions halted, drawing their wide cloaks about them, and behind them the sailors leaned on their oars and stared at the palisade.

  When he came within easy call of the gate: “Why, surely,” said he, “there should be no suspicion between gentlemen.” He spoke French without an accent.

  The Count stared at him suspiciously. The stranger was dark, with a lean, predatory face, and a thin black mustache. A bunch of lace was gathered at his throat, and there was lace on his wrists.

  “I know you,” said Henri slowly. “You are Guillaume Villiers.”

  Again the stranger bowed. “And none could fail to recognize the red falcon of the d’Chastillons.”

  “It seems this coast has become the rendezvous of all the rogues of the Spanish Main,” growled Henri. “What do you want?”

  “Come, come, sir!” remonstrated Villiers. “This is a churlish greeting to one who has just rendered you a service. Was not that English dog, Harston, thundering at your gate? And did he not take to his sea-heels when he saw me round the point?”

  “True,” conceded the Count grudgingly. “Though there is little to choose between pirates.”

  Villiers laughed without resentment and twirled his mustache.

  “You are blunt, my lord. I am no pirate. I hold my commission from the governor of Tortuga, to fight the Spaniards. Harston is a sea-thief who holds no commission from any king. I desire only leave to anchor in your bay, to let my men hunt for meat and water in your woods, and, perhaps, myself to drink a glass of wine at your board.”

  “Very well,” growled Henri. “But understand this, Villiers: no man of your crew comes within this stockade. If one approaches closer than a hundred feet, he will immediately find a bullet through his gizzard. And I charge you do no harm to my gardens, or the cattle in the pens. Three steers you may have for fresh meat, but no more.”

  “I guarantee the good conduct of my men,” Villiers assured him. “May they come ashore?”

  Henri grudgingly signified his consent, and Villiers bowed, a bit sardonically, and retired with a tread as measured and stately as if he trod the polished floor of Versailles palace, where, indeed, unless rumor lied, he had once been a familiar figure.

  “Let no man leave the stockade,” Henri ordered Gallot. “His driving Harston from our gate is no guarantee that he would not cut our throats. Many bloody rogues bear the king’s commission.”

  Gallot nodded. The buccaneers were supposed to prey only on the Spaniards; but Villiers had a sinister reputation.

  So no one stirred from the palisade while the buccaneers came ashore, sun-burnt men with scarfs bound about their heads and
gold hoops in their ears. They camped on the beach, more than a hundred of them, and Villiers posted lookouts on both points. The three beeves designated by Henri, shouting from the wall, were driven forth and slaughtered. Fires were kindled on the strand, and a wattled barrel of wine was brought ashore and broached.

  Other kegs were filled with water from the spring that rose a short distance south of the fort, and men began to straggle toward the woods. Seeing this, Henri shouted to Villiers: “Don’t let your men go into the forest. Take another steer from the pens if you haven’t enough meat. If they go tramping into the woods, they may fall foul of the Indians.

  “We beat off an attack shortly after we landed, and since then six of my men have been murdered in the forest, at one time or another. -hhere’s peace between us just now, but it hangs by a thread.”

  Villiers shot a startled glance at the lowering woods, then he bowed and said, “I thank you for the warning, my Lord!” Then he shouted for his men to come back, in a rasping voice that contrasted strangely with his courtly accents when addressing the Count.

  If Villiers’ eyes could have penetrated that forest wall, he would have been shaken at the appearance of a sinister figure lurking there, one who watched the strangers with resentful black eyes — an unpainted Indian warrior, naked but for a doeskin breech-clout, a hawk feather drooped over his left ear.

  As evening drew on, a thin skim of grey crawled tip from the sea-rim and darkened the sky. The sun sank in a wallow of crimson, touching the tips of the black waves with blood. Fog crawled out of the sea and lapped at the feet of the forest, curling about the stockade in smoky wisps. The fires on the beach shone dull crimson through the mist, and the singing of the buccaneers seemed deadened and far away. They had brought old sail-canvas from the ship and made them shelters along the strand, where beef was still roasting, and the wine was doled out sparingly.

  The great gate was barred. Soldiers stolidly tramped the ledges of the palisade, pike on shoulder, beads of moisture glistening on their steel caps. They glanced uneasily at the fires on the beach, stared with greater fixity toward the forest, a vague dark line in the fog. The compound lay empty of life. Candles gleamed feebly through the cracks of the huts, light streamed from the windows of the manor building. There was silence except for the tread of the sentries, the drip of the water from the eaves, the distant singing of the buccaneers.