Blood and Oak- Wolves Will Eat

by Garrett Bettencourt

  Buford shook Al-Musa’s hand, and the bargain was struck. The slave master rose from the table and nodded for his guards to follow. “I must be off to my estate. The streets are too rough today for men of station, yes?”

  When the tavern door slammed closed and Buford was alone, he sat quietly for several minutes. Of all the terrible things he had ever done in his life, what he must do next was surely the worst. Miss Kaitlin would never forgive him for the loss of her brother. But then, if Buford sought absolution, he wouldn’t be a tavern keeper on the Barbary Coast. He decided to dig that beautiful iris out of this poisoned earth and plant her among souls as gentle as her own. And she would hate him forever.

  A fair trade.

  Buford rose to his feet. He stepped behind the bar and faced the shelves. His eyes traced up to the weapon, resting across a pair of wooden pegs. A display piece only, he often told inquirers.

  The proprietor of the River Falls reached for the seven-barreled gun.

  Chapter 47

  The East Minaret

  The Palace of the Bey

  Time Until Low Tide: 8 Hours, 43 Minutes

  The sounds of the battle raged all over the city. Kaitlin peeked over the edge of the minaret roof. Four tall doorways, flanked by columns, opened onto the tower veranda. Though the tower was empty, the palace grounds were alive with Djedid troops marching back and forth. The guards on the outer palace walls kept a vigilant eye. In broad daylight, there was no way Kaitlin could leave the minaret unseen.

  Hours had passed since she signaled for help with her palm-sized mirror. The return signal from the Janissary docks filled her with hope. For all she knew, John, Ethan, and Buford would be climbing the minaret any minute. After all, the masts of the Wolf of Tunis were still visible over the harbor walls, which meant Da hadn’t left yet. But why hadn’t they signaled again? What was taking them so long? What if they gave her up for dead and simply left?

  No, thought Kaitlin. Johnny wouldn’t do that. Another terrible thought occurred to Kaitlin. What if John had been captured on the Silver Road? What if Naim had set a trap for them? What if her brother was dead?

  The screams of a woman cut through the din. Screams of despair, as if something irreplaceable had been lost. Kaitlin scanned the streets below but couldn’t find the source of the voice. The horror of it all overwhelmed Kaitlin. She buried her hands in her knees again, arms shutting out the sun. When would it end? How much more could she take?

  “Mam,” Kaitlin sobbed. “I need you so much. I’m not strong enough.”

  “What’s the matter, love?” Nora asks.

  Kaitlin looks away, hiding her tear-streaked face. She is seven years old, and her mother has found her hiding below decks on the Wandering Hart. The ship is at anchor in a bay with sparkling waters and white sand. But she’s retreated to her favorite hidden place, among the coils of rope in the darkness of the hold. “Isaac and Johnny wouldn’t let me go ashore with them. They said I’m a silly girl and I’ll scare off the fish, and then they won’t catch anything.”

  “Oh, love.” Nora climbs down beside Kaitlin. She nestles close to her daughter, gathers up her skirts, and puts an arm around her. “Boys can be cruel sometimes. Especially older brothers. But they don’t mean it—they only want to be left to their silly games.”

  “They do mean it! They hate me because I’m too little to play with them.”

  “They don’t hate you, Katie darling. And I don’t see a girl who’s too little.”

  Kaitlin lays her head against Nora. Her mother is gently stroking her hair.

  “I see a girl who’s brave, and smart, and can out-climb both her brothers.”

  “You mean it?”

  “I wish I didn’t,” Nora laughs. “Scares me to half to death every time I find you up in a tree. I’m afraid I’ll have to catch you like a falling cat.”

  Kaitlin giggles in spite of herself.

  “Let me tell you a wee secret about boys. They love nothing so much as to show their bravery and their brawn. They want everyone to think nothing can hurt them. And sometimes, they even start to believe it themselves. But whether it’s a scraped knee when they’re little, or a hurt they’re afraid to show when they’re grown, it’s us women who see them through the storm.”

  Nora touches a finger to Kaitlin’s chin. She smiles, and Kaitlin knows that she’s the most beautiful woman in the world. Kaitlin wants to be just like her when she grows up.

  “One day,” Nora says, “Your brothers are going to realize how much you mean to them. They’re going to see what a special girl you are, and they’re going to be so proud.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the three of you are going to learn that the world can be a frightful place. That we sometimes face cruelty from those we thought friends. That tragedy strikes when it’s least fair. But you, and Johnny, and Isaac, you share the bond of kin. For each of you, there will come an hour of need, when silly arguments about fishing are long forgotten. In that hour, when it counts most, I know my children will stand for one another.”

  Kaitlin wipes away a tear. She feels her mother’s arms envelop her. “I love you, Mam.”

  “I love you too, my darling Kait.”

  They hold each other for a long while, listening to the gentle music of the ship.

  “And there’s one more thing you should know.”

  “What?”

  Nora gives a playful smile. “Boys aren’t the only ones who know how to fish. What do you say we get out of this stinky hold and find our own secret place?”

  Kaitlin’s face lights up. “Aye, all right!”

  “I’ll pack us a picnic of tea and scones.”

  “I’ll pack the butter and jam!”

  “Well, now!” Nora plants her hands on her hips. “You better hop to it.”

  Kaitlin jumps out of the cables, a big smile on her face.

  In the middle of her greatest sadness, Kaitlin broke into a smile. That day of fishing with her mother was among her favorite memories. How strong her mother had been. How wise. Even now, Kaitlin could feel her presence. She lifted her head, eyes raised to the sky.

  “I won’t give up, Mam. Johnny will be here. And I’ll be ready.”

  The sound of harsh words drew Kaitlin’s gaze to the courtyard of the seraglio. Far below, among the birdbaths and flowering hedges, a man and a woman were arguing. It was Nejat, the lady of the seraglio, being interrogated by two Nizam-I Djedid. At this height, the words were only sounds, and Kaitlin couldn’t make out what they were saying. Judging by the distress in Nejat’s voice, she was pleading with them. They grabbed her arm, yelling at her as she cowered.

  Nejat pointed toward the seraglio. Kaitlin jumped, her panic rising. Nejat was pointing to the very window she had climbed out of a few hours ago. The soldiers looked over the roof of the harem. One of them looked toward the minaret. Kaitlin dove onto her stomach, hiding behind the parapet. She could only hope he hadn’t seen her. Risking a peek down at the courtyard, Kaitlin saw the men storming toward the seraglio.

  Kaitlin despaired. It was only a matter of time before they found her. She looked around in a panic. Every wall was guarded by soldiers. Every nearby street filled with fighting. No way out.

  A flash stung her eyes. She looked south, and she saw the flash again. It was coming from the rooftops beyond the bey’s granary. On the roof of a rookery—a glint of sunlight.

  “Johnny!” Kaitlin fumbled through the tools at her belt. She used her mirror to return the signal. Hopefully, it wasn’t too late.

  ###

  The Silver Road

  Near the Granary

  Time Until Low Tide: 8 Hours, 20 Minutes

  The journey across the Silver Road took longer than John hoped. For nearly three hours, he and Ethan half sneaked, half dashed across the rooftops. Even with Kaitlin’s map, the search for each crossing from one block to the next slowed them down. Searching for a ladder between buildings or a rope spooled in a barrel took prec
ious minutes. Once or twice, they made a mad dash under a hail of gunfire.

  All the while, there were eyes on them. None that could ever be seen—only felt. Often John would look over his shoulder, only to see a shutter clicking closed. Or a shape disappearing into a doorway. John couldn’t help but think of the warning scrawled on Kaitlin’s map. Beware: The Silver Road is not meant to be traveled during the day. A decree that grew more ominous by the minute.

  They stopped near a pigeon rookery. Ethan stood guard outside while John stole into the roost and climbed the ladder between wicker cages, the curious black eyes of the birds watching him ascend. He threw open the trap door and climbed on top of the hut. To the north, he saw the walls of the bastedan half a mile distant. Beyond that, the distinctive windmill blades of the River Falls Trading Post, a half hour away by city streets. But the meandering path of the rooftop highway had taken much longer. A quarter mile to the west, the domes and towers of the bey’s palace were white as bleached bones. He opened his mother’s watch.

  Half past eleven.

  John held up the concave lid and angled sunlight toward the tallest minaret. After several minutes with no response, John began to worry. What if Kaitlin had moved? Worse, what if she’d been found?

  There was a flash from the minaret. Then two more, just below the spire. John smiled. Kaitlin was still up there. Still safe.

  A moment later, John emerged from the rookery. “Good news. I got a signal back—Katie’s still up there.”

  Ethan was looking at the doorway leading into an attic. “John, I think we better get moving…”

  There was a man standing in the doorway. He was old and wiry, with a white beard and fierce scowl. In a flash, John’s pistol was out of his belt and fully cocked.

  “John!” Ethan pushed the pistol down. “What are you doing?”

  A young boy appeared from behind the old man, likely a grandson. The man glowered at John and Ethan, not intimidated by the weapon.

  “You going to shoot an old man in his home?” asked Ethan.

  Indeed, John had no such desire, and he holstered his pistol. When he looked back at the doorway, the man and the boy were gone. “We better hurry.”

  For another hour, the two of them followed the nebulous path of the Silver Road. All along the way, they had to carefully avoid rooftop skirmishes between the Janissaries and the Djedid. Soldiers took pot-shots at each other from windows. Once, John and Ethan snuck through a house where men were bayonetting each other in the next rooms. The repeated detours cost them precious time.

  In the streets below, Nizam-I Djedid fought a brilliant war of attrition, using spiked barricades as bottlenecks against the larger number of the Janissaries. The bey’s troops often attacked in undisciplined waves, hacking through the spikes with swords or tripping over each other as they retreated. The Djedid replied with organized volleys—one line of riflemen firing in unison, then allowing the next rank to step forward and fire. Still, the less adept Janissaries often forced the Djedid to retreat to another defensive barrier. Blood ran in the cracks between cobbles. Corpses were scattered in the streets. It seemed only a matter of time before the Janissaries prevailed, though their victory would come at a cost.

  The day was wearing into afternoon when John and Ethan reached the rooftop veranda of a three-story manor. Beyond the manor, dead ahead, lay their goal: The bey’s granary. But first they would have to cross the terrace, where half a dozen Janissaries moved among the potted gardens, aviary cages, and plush carpets. The Janissaries traded shots with Nizam-I Djedid on a roof across the street—a distraction John took full advantage of.

  No words were needed between John and Ethan. After hours of silently traversing the Silver Road, they moved with quiet efficiency, signaling each other with simple nods or looks. John moved first, ducking behind a lattice crawling with vines, stray musket balls whipping through the leaves. Ethan moved up next, rifle in hand, crouching against a potted palm. John held up a hand, signaling Ethan to wait until the soldiers were distracted. There were two musket reports as the Janissaries fired at the next building, and John was in motion.

  He dashed to the next potted palm, firing both pistols. One of his shots struck a Janissary in the forehead, puncturing a silver-plated hat with a ping. The other shot missed, and a Janissary with a livid scar through his right eye fired a rifle. John felt the ball whistle past him as he ducked behind the planter.

  And then Ethan was on his feet, musket leveled. His shot ripped through the chest of the scarred Janissary, and he broke into a run. His next rifle flew off his shoulder and fired, taking a third soldier in the stomach. He dove behind the rooftop parapet, listening to shots from across the street snap against the limestone.

  A Janissary with a decorative bronze pauldron charged around a trellis of vines, scimitar raised high as he charged Ethan. John skidded between them, his rapier flying out of the sheath and deflecting the blow in a single motion. The two traded slashes as John drove the Janissary back. A bald Janissary with a pipe in his teeth charged at John’s flank. Ethan didn’t bother to aim—just fired his rifle at hip level, the point-blank shot blasting a hole in the pipe smoker’s stomach. John thrust Ace below his opponent’s pauldron, straight through the lung. He sank his dagger Spade into the meat between hip and navel. The Janissary grimaced, sword tumbling across the floral-patterned carpet.

  With his opponent dispatched, John pulled the linstock from his back and lit one of the iron grenades. The fuse sizzled as he lobbed it in the path of two charging soldiers. The Janissaries skidded to a stop, shouting in alarm. There was a detonation, a rain of iron shards on clay shingles, and then silence.

  A minute later, John and Ethan were on the west side of the manor, peering over the edge into the alleyway. A pair of clotheslines spanned the thirty feet between the manor and a chute in the granary wall. Below, a group of Janissaries and pirates were hacking at three Djedid on horseback. The dappled brown horses whinnied as their riders slashed scimitars at the attackers.

  Ethan said, “We’ve got to get across that?”

  “Just like crossing a yardarm, mate.” John was pouring a cartridge of powder into one of his spent pistols.

  “I don’t cross yardarms.” Ethan gave a wry expression as he pulled the ramrod from his first musket. “I stitch wounds and set bones.”

  “Good. It’ll be nice to have you around if we lose our grip.”

  “Not funny.”

  John grinned.

  The thunder of cannon fire wafted off the lake. John looked east, toward the island fort. The triangular lateen sails of multiple pirate sloops and gunboats circled the island. Their shots were still scattered and disorganized, variously hitting the castle walls or skipping harmlessly in the dirt nearby. But the shots were far more frequent—a bombardment that the ragtag defenders would only be able to resist so long. John felt like a man torn apart. The closer he got to Kaitlin, the farther he got from Dominique. And with every passing hour, he came closer to losing them both.

  “Dominique will be all right.” Ethan rammed the wadding down his second rifle barrel. “But you can’t lose focus now.”

  “I know. Doesn’t make it right that I left her.”

  “Is that how she saw it?”

  “Not exactly…” John thought of the last time he spoke to the woman he loved.

  Before the secret door closes, Dominique says, “I know something too, Sully. This isn’t your fault. You had every right to fight back against Naim’s son. So get going and do what you’ve gotta do. The sooner you get us that ship, the sooner we can all go home.”

  “She told me to do what had to be done,” John said. “She was…brave.”

  Ethan slid his ramrod back into its channel on the rifle barrel, then stood and slung it over his shoulder. “Dominique’s a capable woman. Maybe you ought to trust her.”

  “It’s not that, Ethan. This is the second time I’ve left her. I went into hiding without a word after my duel with Tindall…” H
e trailed off, reading the solemn look in Ethan’s eyes. The mention of that name brought back the specter of John’s betrayal. Eager to move off the subject, he added, “I can’t fail her again. Every minute I’m out here is another minute Declan could fall apart.”

  “Declan will come through, John. And considering the Hell he’s been through, maybe you could show him some damn forgiveness. Maybe you could stop hating him for what the Barbary Pirates did!”

  “I don’t hate him.” John pulled the ramrod from his last pistol, surprised at his own words. His eyes drifted to the walls of the Janissary docks, now far across the city. He thought of his craven father, on whose shoulders rested all their fates. “But I can’t look at him without seeing the man he was—my captain, who I admired. He was everything I wanted to be as a man. Until he was on his knees for my brother’s murderer.”

  “But it wasn’t his—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Ethan. Let’s just get moving.” John threw a leg over the parapet and climbed onto the clotheslines. Kaftans, veils, and rugs fluttered in his face. The ropes wobbled for a moment and then steadied. Ethan soon followed, sweat dripping from the wraps of his turban. They inched along, careful not to drop any clothes on the fighting soldiers far below.

  “Since you brought up Tindall,” Ethan said, “I’ve been thinking about that duel.”

  John was surprised to hear Ethan revive the subject.

  “Yes, it turns out you were fighting for pride’s sake. But you were also fighting for mine. That counts for something.”

  The comment caught John off guard. Feeling a pang of guilt, he said, “Ethan, you don’t have to be out here…doing this. Fighting for me and mine after…”

  “I know that, John. But I choose to. So while we’re out here, you could do me a favor and keep something else in mind.”

  John edged over a drying robe. He didn’t look at Ethan—only listened.