"Oh, hell!" James exclaimed. He was an idiot. He should have realized the kids would be as scared of the Boomers as they were of the Spaniards. They obviously belonged to some sort of primitive Indian tribe. The boy, not more than eight years old, already had decorative tattoos on his face. Not many-nothing compared to the tattoos that had adorned the corpse of his father. But not even lifers in a maximum security prison tattooed their faces that way. The older girl had had a small tattoo also, on her chin. God only knew what they made of the firearms. Geoffrey's murderous gunplay must have seemed like black magic to them. Boyne came up. "Do we go after 'em, boss? Maybe we oughta. They won't last long in the woods, just by themselves. Not with dinosaurs and who-all knows what else roaming around out there."
James hesitated. That had been his immediate inclination also. But the children would just think they were being pursued, and would race still further into the woods. "No. That'd backfire, I think. Let's just make camp here, and hope the kids will come back eventually."
By the time the Boomers got Elaine there, on her litter, James had been able to move the bodies to one side of the clearing. But that was about it. He didn't know what to do with the corpses, though. Digging a mass grave would be a lot of work for people who were already tired from a long day's march. Even if they had shovels, which they didn't.
Gathering enough wood for a big funeral pyre wouldn't be much less work. They didn't have axes. Those weird-looking half-spear/half-axe things of the Spaniards didn't really look like they'd serve too well for the purpose. They were obviously designed to chop flesh, not wood.
When her litter was set down, Elaine stared at the small pile of corpses. Then, stared up at James. "Did you…?" "Well, no. Not exactly." Kidd came up, grinning. At least, "grinning" was the technically correct expression. Personally, James thought that grin would send a great white shark racing for deep waters. "I shot 'em,"
Kidd explained. "It's what I do, girl. Well. Did, anyway. But it's like riding a bicycle. Once you learn, you never forget." Amazingly, the grin widened. By now, the great white would be looking for an underwater cave to get away from the monster. Elaine might have swallowed. It was hard to tell, in the dim and flickering light throw out by the campfire. But all she said was, "Yeah. I guess." Geoffrey turned to James. "Me and John found a decent sized creek just a little ways off. Probably why they made camp here." "Good. We need water."
Boyne came up in time to hear that. His grin wasn't much better than Kidd's. "Better get what we need now, then. Pretty soon, that creek's gonna be where these bastards sleep with the fishes. You won't want to be drinking from it after that, I guarantee you." "Huh?" "Think about it, boss. With all the damn critters running around, we can't just leave the bodies here. And there ain't no way we're digging a big grave. We got no shovels. Come morning, there's likely to be some huge dinosaur chomping on 'em-and not being any too particular whether what he chomps is dead or alive." "It's a big creek," Kidd chimed in. "Not big enough to carry the bodies downstream, but at one spot nearby there's a good sized pool in it. We weight the bodies down with some rocks-we can use the same rope they used to tie up the kids-and they should all wind up sinking below the surface. Maybe not more than a few inches, but we'll be gone soon enough that shouldn't be a problem." It was a grisly proposal, but it seemed the most practical.
And it wasn't as if James had any sentimental attitude about the corpses. Those men had been as vicious as they come. Serve them right to wind up as fish food. James looked over at the corpses. "Okay, fine. But I want to save the rope, if we can. Rope's likely to be useful. I think we can just loosen that body armor they're wearing, stuff some rocks in, snug 'em back up, and that'll be enough." "We don't want the armor?" asked Boyne. "Boss, that's a lot of steel. We could make stuff out of it." "With what?" demanded Kidd. "We ain't got no tools that'll work metal." He shook his head. "Fuck the armor, John. We can't do anything with it and just the way it is, as armor, you saw how much good it did them. I got some great big dinosaur chasing me, the last thing I need is to be hauling around thirty-forty-fifty pounds of steel on my body. I bet I can dodge a dinosaur, if I have to-but not wearing that crap." James was doubtful that dodging dinosaurs was all that easy. But Geoffrey did have a point. It wasn't likely any dinosaur's jaws would be slowed down all that much by the armor. Whatever it was called. He thought the term might be "cuirass," but he wasn't sure. "Okay, let's do it. As far as the steel goes, John, if that creek's not big enough to carry bodies downstream, it sure as hell won't be carrying any steel armor either.
If things work out right, we can always come back and get it out later." Carrying the six bodies to the creek took about ten minutes.
Loosening the armor and weighting the corpses with rocks stuffed inside took at least twenty minutes. They had to hunt around for suitable rocks. But, eventually, it was done-and into the creek they went. Fortunately, Geoffrey's estimate concerning the pool's depth was about right. They had to shove the bodies around a little bit with one of the spear things. What Morelli said was called a "halberd." But it didn't take long before all of them were submerged. Before they pitched them in, of course, everybody drank their fill and they topped off the leather pouches the Spaniards had possessed in the way of canteens. Nobody wanted to drink from that creek afterward, not even upstream. That night, again, James slept alongside Elaine. He insisted on keeping her wrapped up in the sheets. Between that and her wound, there wasn't going to be any sex involved, of course. Still, they could cuddle and kiss plenty well enough. It was frustrating, maybe. But James was just as glad that, willy-nilly, they'd have some time to get to know each other better. Mostly, they talked about their former lives. Elaine chuckled, at one point. "I think you're supposed to go out on at least one date first. You know, before you get engaged." When Morelli woke him up before sunrise, to take his turn standing guard, the tall convict was grinning. "Take a look," he said, pointing to one side of the clearing. James looked over, and couldn't help from laughing. The children had returned, some time during the night. All three of them were bundled up under one of the Spanish blankets with Geoffrey Kidd. "Guess they figure he's their magic protector," said Dino. "Yeah, some. But I think it's more the tattoos.
Black or not, he must seem like something a little familiar." Kidd's eyes opened. He stared at James and Dino, without moving a muscle otherwise. If he had, at least one of the kids would have been dislodged. They were pressed as close to him as puppies. "It's a strange world," he observed, and closed his eyes again.
Chapter 40 The weeping willow stood tall in the midst of weeping cherry and dwarf apple trees, its long tendrils stretching to the ground in a curtain of green. "How the hell…" Hulbert looked at Jeff Edelman. "Can you explainthis? We haven't seen anything since we left the town except ancient vegetation." Edelman shook his head. "I have no idea, Rod. But this isn't the first time I've seen something like this. Whatever the Quiver was, it seems to have moved some other pieces of land besides the one Alexander sat on and scattered them all over the place. Nothing very big, though, not even close to the size of the prison's area." He pointed a finger. "Look at the terrain. It's not just the trees that are out of place. That land doesn't really match the surrounding landscape either. It looks tilted a little, and you can see where that stream undercutting the bank is recently formed." "Will they bear fruit?" Andy asked. "The dwarf apples should.
I'm not sure about the weeping cherries. Some do, some don't. Whatever fruit they do bear won't be very big, though, and probably won't taste that good." "Who cares? That's what the word 'horticulture' is for."
Andy smiled wryly. "Not that I know much more than that about the subject. But what I do know is that if we have something to start with, we can eventually breed fruit trees that will bear good fruit."
"Take a few generations," Hulbert said doubtfully. "And what else have we got?" Andy was half-tempted to leave some people behind, to guard the small grove of precious fruit trees. But he didn't want to run the risk of weakening their forces before the upcoming battle with the Spaniards. He still didn't know exactly how many men were in de Soto's expedition. They might be outnumbered as badly as three to one. "Too bad they're not maples," said Rod. "I love maple syrup." "And what would you pour it over?" asked Jeff. "No wheat, remember? No pancakes." "Don't be silly. If that corn the Cherokees found survives, you can make pancakes using cornmeal. That's how the Mexicans do it, usually. Except they call them hotcakes instead of pancakes. I've had some. They're not bad. If you've got maple syrup." "So we'll make corn syrup instead," Andy said, a bit impatiently. "That's assuming we live past tomorrow. Speaking of which, let's get moving again." He almost said "let's get the column moving again," but refrained out of a lingering sense of embarrassment. He was hardly William Tecumseh Sherman leading the march to the sea. Andy had served a tour of duty in the Marines, but he'd never been in combat. He hadn't been old enough to join until the first Gulf war was over, and had left the service before the second one started. By one of those odd quirks of fate that seemed to be inseparable from military service, he'd wound up spending half his time in the Corps guarding the U.S. embassy in Paris. Boring as hell, while you were on duty, sure-but once you were off duty, you were a young man in gay Paree. "And you can have your maple syrup," he said. "Me, I wish I was back in Paris chowing down on a croque-monsieur. God, I loved Paris." "What's a croque-monsieur?" asked Jeff. "Grilled ham and cheese sandwich, basically. It's the French equivalent of a hamburger, except it's maybe eight times better." Hulbert looked sour. "I don't like the French." "Have you ever met a single Frenchman in your life, Rod? They're pretty thin on the ground, in southern Illinois." "No. So what? I know what and who I don't like." Even if they hadn't been on campaign, there would have been no point to pursuing the debate. Andy liked Rod, but like most survivalists Hulbert's political attitudes tended to be somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan, insofar as Hulbert was interested in politics at all, which he generally wasn't. Still, Rod knew the basics. Liberalism was the work of the debbil, the right to own guns was maybe second to godliness but a long way ahead of cleanliness, both coasts were dens of iniquity inhabited by wimps and fops-never mind that one of the men on the extraction team came from Oakland originally-and the French were the ultimate source of the world's wickedness. Well, the world's liberalism anyway, and the difference couldn't be pared with a razor. On the other hand-such are the quirks of human nature-Hulbert didn't have any problem with abortion, and had serious doubts about prayer in school. "Let's get going," Andy said.
Hulbert nodded, and turned his head. "Form up the column!" he bellowed. "We're moving out!" Hedidn't have any qualms about playing soldier. Barbara Ray's name tag said she was an L.P.N., but for the last five days she had been doctor, nurse, councilor and mother to sixty-three worried, frightened prison guards, a downed lieutenant, one newborn baby and an overworked, ill R.N. And at this moment she was playing the role of pastor, praying with two C.O. s whose faith had been shaken by all that had happened. Frank Nickerson watched her and sent a short prayer of thanks of his own. Without the woman's calming effect things would be a lot tougher to handle. She had been the one who patched him together after that bastard Taylor got him with the toothbrush. As she sewed him up, she had done a good job calming his nerves with jokes about the scar's location and the stories he could tell. An occasional gentle pat had let him know that she was genuinely glad it wasn't any worse than it was. She was old-school, tough-a thing to be proud of. But everyone had their breaking point, and Frank was guessing she was getting pretty close to hers. Marie Keehn was another woman who was old-school tough. But a lot of the guards were newbies, including Frank himself. They were getting anxious from the wait. They had too many hours on their hands and too many worries on their minds. They needed something to do. The truth was, so did he. Nickerson crossed the clearing; it was time to check on the guards posted at the camp's perimeter. Judith Barnett would need to be relieved. She wasn't old-school. She was too busy grieving to be reliable for more than a short stretch, and that pissed him off to the point he hated to talk to her. And he sure as hell didn't want to look at her. She hadn't stopped crying since Marie Keehn left. It was like the plumbing in her eyes had let go and she had a leaky faucet. Drip. Drip. Drip. Frank wasn't natured up like the L.P.N. He was more like Lylah Caldwell. Barnett's wet face, bloodshot eyes, and snotty nose made the R.N. mad every time she saw the C.O. He had pretty much the same reaction. Barnett was driving him nuts. He was grieving too. He'd lost a wife who was barely more than a bride.
They were all grieving. There was no one here who hadn't lost someone.
There was no one here who hadn't been torn away from everything that meant something to them. But letting yourself collapse wasn't going to accomplish anything. And neither would being short with the C.O., he reminded himself, trying to restrain his temper. It was hard, though.
Especially when Frank thought about Joe Schuler. Now there was a man who was not only old-school tough, he was a real leader. Here the lieutenant was fighting to take every breath, and what was he worried about? Everyone else. He wanted to know how the food was holding out, if there were any signs of the prisoners, if there had been any signs of wild animals. He wanted to know how everyone was holding up to the pressure. If he had been told about Judith Barnett's steady stream of tears, he wouldn't be impatient. He would simply be concerned about her. Nickerson increased the length of his stride. A middle-aged guard with short hair and a wide face turned toward him as he approached the outer edge of the clearing. He watched as a tear rolled slow motion, from her right eye, slid down the side of her nose, dripped from her top lip to her bottom lip, and then down her chin. The drop of salty liquid fell to her shirt in what seemed to be the same slow pace it had used to travel the length of her face. He reached out and patted her shoulder. Gently, he said, "I'm your relief. Try to get some rest, Judith." But what he thought was: Marie, hurry up and get back with Captain Blacklock. I'm not cut out to be the boss-man. "Lylah,"
Lieutenant Joe Schuler whispered. The R.N. moved close enough to hear what the man had to say. "How is everyone doing?" Lylah Caldwell shrugged. "They're okay. A little antsy, but they'll get over that."
"I'm cold." "It's the fever, Joe. My guess is you're at about a hundred and three." She wet his forehead with a damp rag she had made by ripping her undershirt. Using his good hand he reach for her hand and the water-soaked rag. "You said there was a stream. Does it have rocks in the bottom of it, or is it sand or mud?" She gently pushed his hand away and said, "A little of each. Some sand, some mud, and then a lot of rocks." "Are the rocks good sized?" The nurse nodded.
"Throwing size, like a baseball?" "Yes, I think so. A lot of them are bigger than that, and some smaller. But there would be quite a few that size." She waited a couple of minutes for him to continue; when he didn't say anything more she asked, "Why did you ask?" He closed his eyes and said, "It might be a good idea to stack some of them in piles around the camp… in case wild animals…" He gave a small cough and grabbed the nurse's hand. "Damn, this hurts." Five minutes later his grip on her hand relaxed, and his breathing slowed slightly and became a little deeper. She waited until she was sure the lieutenant was asleep and then crawled out of the cave. Marie had put Frank Nickerson in charge, so he was the one she would tell about the rocks. Marie Keehn spotted a tree the size she was looking for and jogged toward it. It was about eighteen inches in diameter; plenty big enough to hold her weight, and tall enough she could get fifteen to twenty feet off the ground. That was high enough the mosquitoes wouldn't follow her. Best of all, it was the first tree she'd spotted in the last two hours that had the right spread of branches, creating a sort of hollow cup in the fork that-she hoped-would be big enough and deep enough for her to sleep in without falling out of the tree.
She needed the rest. Badly. And as much as she didn't like the idea of sleeping in a tree, didn't think she had a choice any longer. The terrain she'd been passing through for the last two days was flat. She hadn't seen anything close to a cave and didn't expect to. She'd been traveling for five days and, except for that first night, had not slept much. The only "caves" she'd found hadn't been much more than rock overhangs. She'd only been able to sleep fitfully under them, waking up constantly at the sound of anything. She hadn't slept at all the night just past, since she hadn't even been able to find an overhang and was unwilling to sleep out in the open. As stupid as it might be, that nightmare image of being accidentally squashed in her sleep by a passing dinosaur had never gone away. She'd had little to drink for the last twenty-four hours, and nothing to eat in the last forty-eight. She couldn't afford the time to hunt and process the food while she traveled. Besides, she had nothing to hunt with but her walking stick. And so far she hadn't seen anything small enough to club to death with it that wasn't too fast to catch. She shuddered.
She'd seen somebig animals, though. Four times. They'd look to be the size of eighteen-wheelers, although she knew that was probably a trick of her imagination. They certainly couldn't be as heavy as a fully loaded tractor-trailer. Luckily, they were all herbivores. None of them seemed to mind her walking past them. In fact, only one of them had seem to notice her at all. That hadn't reassured her any. In fact, it made her nightmare scenario seem less irrational. If the dinosaurs she'd seen were oblivious to her presence in the daytime, while she was moving, they'd pay no attention to her at all at night while she was sleeping. She'd looked like a pancake. No, worse. A squished little bug on a windshield. Better to fall out of a tree. Using the branches like rungs on a ladder she made her way up the trunk of the tree. When people starved, they tended to sleep more. It was a way to charge their battery. She knew she was a long way from starvation, but the lack of food combined with the intense exercise she had endured over the last few days was enough to sap her energy. Even a couple of hours napping would help. And if she were lucky the wind would pick up a little and then when she climbed back down she wouldn't have to fight off the swarms of mosquitoes she'd encountered once she entered the lowlands. Who ordered mosquitoes in Jurassic Park, anyway? she thought sourly. You'd think dinosaurs would be enough. Mosquitoes could-and did-kill. She'd heard from her father about elks in Alaska being drained down to skin and bones by the bloodsuckers. That would have been enough to make her wary, all by itself. But once, while in Canada, she'd seen a young deer lying on its side, covered in mosquitoes, too weak to get on its feet. That memory was enough to scare her silly. According to what Hulbert had told her, and her own best guess, she was not much more than a day's walk from where the Cherokees were supposed to be. She was hoping like hell that Hulbert and Blacklock were there. If they weren't, she hoped whoever it was she found was friendly because she needed food, water and rest. The water was the most important thing. She'd managed all right, at first, when it came to finding water. But once she reached the lowlands, she hadn't done so well. Unarmed, she was unwilling to risk getting near any large bodies of water. Leaving aside the danger of predators, most of those bodies of water were surrounded by treacherous-looking soil.
Her nightmare about being squashed by a dinosaur might be a new one, but she had other nightmares that went back a long ways. Even as a kid, the thought of getting caught in quicksand had been frightening.
Drowning, she could handle. Drowning in mud was a little much. She was dehydrated enough she had started to run a fever. And her reflexes had slowed considerably. And she was starting to get dizzy spells. She settled into the fork of the branches. As she'd hoped, the cup they formed was big enough to hold her. She leaned back against the trunk, and looked toward the sky. She ached all over. The day before, while working her way around an area of steaming, sulfur-laced geysers, she'd taken a tumble. She'd managed to crawl out of the hollow, easily enough, but she knew she'd been lucky. She was scraped and bruised, but not broken. She was so tired. She wasn't sure what she was running on now. She figured it was stubbornness or habit. It didn't matter which one, though. When a person got down that low, they either got help soon or they didn't make it. Where are ya, my fella? I need ya.
Ignoring strange sounds coming from somewhere in the distance and the occasional tear of exhaustion that dripped down her face, she tried to picture the way Hulbert looked when he left the prison. A moment later she was asleep.
Chapter 41 Jerry Bailey hissed between gritted teeth. A little over two weeks back. the soft-spoken guard hadn't so much as twitched when Hulbert, Carmichael and Keehn used him as bait when they were hunting. But today, looking across the open area toward the pre-Mound Indian village, his face was pale and he'd broken into a sweat. The village was less than a hundred yards from where he and Rod lay hidden. And even though things were quieter now, the screams of the children and the sobs of the women could be heard too well. The Spaniards had beaten them to the village. Hulbert didn't bother answering or use the binoculars tucked into a leather case attached to his belt. They were close enough he could see every gory detail of what was happening. The smell of burned flesh was heavy in the air, mixed with the stink of whatever the Indians had used to make their huts instead of grass. Two of the huts were burning fiercely. De Soto's men must have tossed the bodies into the huts and set them aflame, as a quick and simple way to get rid of them. Knowing the bastards, Rod was sure they hadn't bothered to make sure everyone they tossed in was dead already. Now, the same bastards were busy ensuring the people they had captured would remain docile slaves. They'd only kept alive the younger adults and the children, to begin with. Old slaves-even middle-aged ones-were of no interest to them. It looked as though they'd beaten all four of the males with whips, and at least one of the women. The six women had been separated out from the rest of the captives, who were all tied together with ropes around their necks. They'd be providing entertainment for the conquistadores that evening, presumably. "We need to move, Rod," Bailey said. "Now. Those people can't take any more." The lieutenant shook his head. "No. We wait for the signal. They've stopped whatever killings and atrocities they were carrying out because they're getting ready to leave. But it'll be at least twenty minutes before the Spaniards start moving out." Andy Blacklock had divided his forces in half and placed one group-they were calling them platoons for lack of a better term-under Rod's command. Hulbert and his platoon had been ordered to stay in place, just out of sight behind the screen of trees surrounding the clearing where the village was located. They were to hold their fire until the captain signaled. Privately, Rod thought Andy was being too cautious, but he hadn't put up an argument. Right or not, the man was the boss, and these were battlefield conditions. Still, he thought his own platoon could have handled the situation by themselves. They had modern repeating rifles and Rod knew from personal experience just how slow and clumsy matchlocks were. Besides, leaving aside the weaponry, the more Rod saw of these famous conquistadores, the lower became his opinion of them-militarily, not simply morally. They might be tough as nails individually, sure, but they seemed no more disciplined than a street gang. And even less well organized. The one group of Spaniards milling around closest to Rod numbered about sixty or seventy men.
They seemed to be under the command-if you could use the term at all-of a committee of four or five sergeants. And the sergeants seemed to spend most of their time arguing with each other. Arguing about what, it was hard to know, given the crude nature of the operation.
Probably arguing about whether to rape the women now or wait until nightfall. Hulbert, realizing he was holding his breath out of sheer anger, forced himself to resume his normal slow, easy breathing. Andy, where the hell is that signal? Blacklock had gone one way, off to Hulbert's left, and Watkins and his Cherokees and the U.S. soldiers off to the right. The two leaders were working partway around the big clearing, far enough to encircle it as much as possible without running the risk of getting into a crossfire. The plan was simple enough. Andy figured-with Watkins' smile confirming his guess-that the Cherokees could get in position faster than his own people. So, once Andy was ready, he'd give the signal. The signal would be as simple as the plan. Blacklock and his platoon would just start shooting. No warning, nothing. Whatever lingering thoughts any of them might have had about negotiating with the conquistadores went up with the flaming huts. Even Andy, with his incredible self-control, had reached the limit. "I want all of them dead," he'd said quietly. As even-tempered as the man was-he was something of a legend, that way, among the prison guards-there was no mistaking the fury lurking beneath the words. "As many as we can manage, anyway. And we're not taking any prisoners, either. We never did get anything worth getting out of that one shithead we caught." Rod had spotted Watkins' expression, when Andy said that. The Cherokee chief seemed to be suppressing a smile.
Ross didn't have any trouble figuring out the reason. Not knowing what else to do, Andy had decided to leave the prisoner in the town when the expedition set off. Stephen McQuade was still back there too. The man's wounds were healing, well enough, but he wasn't in good enough shape yet to participate in any battles. On the other hand, he wouldn't have any trouble using a knife. For that matter, neither would Susan Fisher, on a trussed-up prisoner. Between the two of them, had Rod been in that Spaniard's boots, he'd have much rather faced McQuade. There was something implacable about the little Cherokee medicine woman. By the time they got back, McQuade and Fisher would have discovered whatever it was that Spaniard knew. Their notions of suitable interrogation methods were decidedly nineteenth-century frontier. Rod was quite sure of that. He was just as sure that the man would be dead. He'd come to like the Cherokees, as he'd gotten to know them. But he didn't much doubt that under that sophisticated surface, at least when it got provoked, there was a spirit just about a savage as any Apache or Comanche's. A fusillade erupted, coming from the area where Blacklock had taken his people. An instant later, the gunshots sounding much deeper, came a fusillade from the Cherokees and Sergeant Kershner's men. "Fire!"Bailey shouted. Rod had told Jerry to give the signal. He didn't want to be distracted from his own immediate task.
Moscoso was there. Rod had spotted him almost at once. Not hard to do, since he was one of the arguing sergeants. Hulbert had never stopped tracking him with his rifle since. He was tempted to gut-shoot the bastard, as angry as he was. But he didn't break training and habit.
The sniper's triangle was his target. The shot took Moscoso right above the breastbone, rupturing the aorta. Blood spouted everywhere as he went down. He wasstill tempted to gut-shoot the bastard. But that was pointless. Moscoso was dead and they didn't have ammunition to spare. In the distance, maybe a hundred yards from the village and over two hundred yards from Hulbert's position, there was a man on horseback surrounded by several other horsemen. That might be de Soto himself. It was worth hoping for, anyway. Rod had kept him under surveillance also. He went down. Then, the horseman next to him. Then, the one on his other side. Shooting from a prone position with a rifle at this range-about two hundred and twenty yards-Rod Hulbert might as well have been called the Grim Reaper. He took down two more of the horsemen in that center group, before the rest scattered. Thereafter, it was slower work. Hulbert concentrated on the horsemen he could see at a distance, ignoring the bulk of the Spanish troops milling around outside the village. The closest of those soldiers weren't more than a hundred yards away, and the farthest not more than two hundred. Any guard could hit that target, especially as bunched up as they were.
Hulbert did take a moment to survey the battle, to see how it was going. "Battle, my ass," he muttered. "This is a turkey shoot. Iknew we could have handled it on our own." "Quit bragging," said Bailey. He aimed, and fired again. "Even if you're right." Rod estimated there were somewhere between four and five hundred Spaniards in the little army they were facing. That meant the numerical odds were worse than two to one, abstractly. But that was reckoning "numbers" by a crude head count. Once you factored in the force multiplier that the repeating rifles gave the prison guards, the odds switched drastically. In the same time it took a conquistador to fire and reload one of their matchlocks, a guard could go through a ten-round magazine-aiming every shot, not just blasting away. Measuring by firepower instead of men, the advantage was actually five to one in favor of the prison guards. That wasn't even counting the Cherokees and the U.S. soldiers, who were also firing. Much better than five-to-one, actually, since you also had to factor in the much greater accuracy of the modern rifles. A sixteenth-century matchlock wasn't accurate beyond fifty yards, if that far. A number of shots had been fired by the Spaniards since the fighting started, but Rod was sure that if anyone on his side had been hit, it was pure bad luck.
They were all sheltered behind trees and logs, and the Spaniards were out in the open. At least one person in charge over there seemed to have finally realized it, too. Out of the swirling chaos of hundreds of conquistadores caught completely by surprise, somebody was managing to bring some order and discipline to a group of about thirty of them.
And then-ruthless bastard, but smart-he was moving the group behind the tied-up villagers, using them for a shield. Several of the guards were now yelling at the captives to lie down, but those poor people were even more frightened and confused than the Spaniards. Most of them were children. Besides, throwing yourself to the ground when you were tied to the person next to you by a rope around the neck was a good way to get strangled unless everybody did it in unison. "Fuck,"
Rod hissed. Bailey was looking off to the right, where Watkins and the Cherokees had taken position. "What the hell… Rod, what are theydoing?" Hulbert looked over. Sergeant Kershner and his squad had moved out into the open area surrounding the village, and were forming up into a line. Then, at a shouted command from Kershner, they started marching around to the side. "They're going to get behind the Spaniards, so they can't use the villagers for a shield. Jesus. Talk about raw guts." Seven men against perhaps thirty-and Kershner's men were armed with muzzle-loading muskets, not semiautomatic rifles. As firearms, shot for shot, their Harpers Ferry Model 1816 flintlocks were considerably superior to the Spaniards' matchlocks. But they couldn't be reloaded all that much more quickly. Once those U.S. soldiers fired a volley, they'd be dead meat if the Spaniards charged.
All they'd have to counter the Spanish halberds and swords would be nineteen-inch bayonets. Rod's low opinion of the conquistadores as a military force did not extend to sneering at their ability to use edged weapons at close range. In that situation, they'd be murderous.
"Come on," he said. He rose and waved his hand at the rest of his platoon. "Follow me!" He started trotting. Not directly toward the looming confrontation between Kershner's men and that one group of Spaniards, but in a looping route that took him around the still-milling mass outside the village. He thought he and his men could get there before the Spaniards charged Kershner after that first volley was fired. But it soon became clear his crude flanking maneuver wasn't going to work. The problem wasn't any shrewd countermove on the part of the enemy, it was just the sheer chaos of the situation.
Ragged groups of conquistadores were peeling away from the big mob in the center-that was just a killing zone by now-and heading toward the shelter of the trees. Some of them were confused enough to run toward Rod and his men instead of away from them. "Oh, fuck." Rod stopped and gestured for his platoon to come to a halt. They were going to have to fire what amounted to their own volleys just to clear a path.
Kevin Griffin gave Geoffrey Watkins a sly little smile. "Itold you he'd be strong-headed." Watkins didn't respond. He was chewing on his lower lip, trying to decide what to do. On the one hand, he didn't have that many more men than the Spanish group Kershner was going at.
And the muskets they had weren't much better. On the other hand…
"Let's go," he growled. "I don't want to have to listen to my niece yelling at me for the next year or two." Griffin chuckled. "She yells pretty good." He stood up and waved the Cherokees forward. Andy Blacklock was trying to decide what to do also. His battle plan had worked just about the way he'd hoped it would, until those Spaniards started using the villagers for a shield. Now, what had been a completely one-sided fight-not even a battle, so much as huge firing squad in action-was likely to become a hand-to-hand melee. Up close, he was quite sure the Spaniards would be a far deadlier opponent. But he didn't see where he really had much choice. So, he too rose and waved his people forward. Then, when they were more or less lined up, they advanced on the enemy in a formation that wasn't much better organized than the shattered Spanish army. The training that prison guards got did not include battlefield tactics. It sure as hell didn't include precision marching. "Go, Salukis!" Brian Carmichael shouted.
Within two or three seconds, more than half the guards in Andy's platoon were shouting the same slogan. Then many of the guards in Hulbert's platoon started doing the same. Just before they stopped, more or less lined up, and started firing into the mob of Spaniards at close range. And most of them kept shouting the slogan as they fired.
"This is nuts," Andy muttered to himself. But the shouting was contagious, and it impelled everyone forward at a much quicker pace.
"Go, Salukis!" he shouted. "Go right at 'em!" Whether it was the strange slogan-which couldn't have made any sense at all to de Soto's men-or simply the sight of dozens of guards in blue uniforms charging at them after they'd already seen half of their own forces gunned down, or whether it was Hulbert's platoon's deadly close-range fire coming from another angle, Andy would never know. Nor care. All that mattered was that the Spaniards broke. Not more than a dozen shots were fired from their matchlocks, and they were off and running. A goodly number of them threw their heavy guns away as they ran. "Halt!
Halt!" he shouted. "Goddamittohell, come to a screeching fucking STOP!
Right now!" After a second or two, his people obeyed him. Andy pointed at the fleeing Spaniards. "Shoot them. Now. While they're still in range." That was just murder, really. Andy had read a little military history and knew that what he was doing came under the euphemism of "pursuit," even if his people were standing still and just shooting.
But what the term really meant waskick 'em when they're down and keep kicking until they're meatpaste. It didn't occur to him, until the shooting had almost stopped because there weren't any enemies still in sight, to wonder what had happened to Kershner and his squad. "I knew they'd break," Kershner told Watkins calmly. "These men might have been soldiers once, but they're nothing but killers now. One good volley taking down three or four of them, and they ran." Geoffrey still thought the youngster was probably a lunatic. But… The Spaniardshad broken. By the time Watkins and Griffin and the Cherokees arrived to save Kershner and his men, they didn't need saving. They'd just been reloading their muskets. He looked at the villagers. By now, they'd managed to get themselves all on the ground, out of the line of fire. So far as he could tell, not one of them had been shot. That was a minor miracle, in itself. "Cut them loose, Kevin." Griffin nodded and trotted over to the villagers. They flinched, when they saw him pull out his knife, but relaxed once they realized he was just cutting the ropes away. "Now what?" asked Kershner. Watkins surveyed the scene. The open area around the village was piled with bodies. Piled high, in some places. You could literally walk across it stepping only on Spaniards, except for a few clear patches here and there. This had just been butchery-and it wasn't over yet. "Captain Blacklock said he doesn't want any prisoners. But I don't think he's really got the stomach for it. Do you?" Kershner's blue eyes scanned the field. "I'm Swabian, you know. Wasn't born there, but I know all the stories. For centuries, men just like these slaughtered and murdered and pillaged and raped back and forth across my people's lands. Any time some villagers got their hands on some of them, they didn't take any prisoners either. So, yes, I've got the stomach for it." He turned to his men. "You heard him, boys. This is what bayonets are for."