The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [70]
“Aye,” Parmenter shouted.
“And get this ship in motion!”
A moment later they were under way and they began to count the dead. Oglethorpe's momentary feeling of triumph at seeing the enemy ships sink was so far gone as to have belonged to a different age.
And Tomochichi, his friend and adviser for much of that age, was gone with it.
“Margrave?” Parmenter had given him the best part of an hour before interrupting his thoughts. Good man, Parmenter.
“Captain.”
“What do we do now, sir?”
“It's still night. We still can't see, and the Russian is no doubt correct—the way to open sea is no doubt well blockaded. I'm accepting suggestions.”
“There may be another way around the island. The map shows two passages.”
“Both are narrow enough to block, I think, even if they no longer have a way of finding us precisely.”
“Yes, but the north way is under Fort Marlborough's guns. The south way is not.”
Oglethorpe was stopped by that, and by the lightning of a sudden thought. “Parmenter, you served at Marlborough, didn't you?”
“Briefly, sir.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Margrave Montgomery built her to guard the Spanish border. She has four bastions and a spur out toward the narrows. The rampart ain't too high, but the wall is brick.”
“Details, Captain. More details.”
Morning was still a thought in the mind of God when Ogle-thorpe's booted feet came to rest inside the sandy keep of Fort Marlborough. Night birds whined in the distance, and the crickets, frogs, and other marsh singers filled the night with music.
The wall had proved little trouble. The earthen rampart was steep, but not too difficult to climb without shot flying down from the walls. Parmenter chose the spot where the rampart had been cratered once by Spanish mortars. After the the capital of Azilia had been moved inland, the wall had never been fully repaired, the gap patched only with un-mortared brick and rubbish. It had taken a little excavation to open a crawl-through, and meanwhile Yamacraw marksmen laid low the handful of men on the bastions.
“The spur is north,” Parmenter said. “That's what we'll want.”
“We shall have it, then,” Oglethorpe promised.
Parmenter suddenly whirled at a faint sound behind them.
“Someone else comes through the gap!” he hissed.
“Knives, not guns!” Oglethorpe cautioned.
But when the figure came up from its belly and swayed to two feet, Oglethorpe was barely able to restrain a whoop of joy.
“Chief!” he whispered, clasping the old Indian to him. “Are you impossible to kill?”
“So they say,” Tomochichi replied, grinning. “The knife arm cut me away, but he had no interest in me. I swam to shore, then saw you arrive. You will take the fort?”
“And turn their own guns on their blockade.”
“Good. That is good.” Tomochichi paused and looked down at his feet. “I lost the devil gun. I swam down seven times, but could not find it.”
Oglethorpe took that grim news with a shrug. “It's done. You're the more valuable of the two, and we have you back. Now, we'll go.”
They passed through the courtyard like hunting owls, dressed again in the stolen uniforms they had obtained from the amphibian boat's crew.
Two guards at the gate by the spur paid their silent passage into the sleeping battery, and they reached the guns without much trouble at all.
In the East, the sky grew rosy as dawn spread her fingers.
“Now comes the trick,” Oglethorpe told his men. “We need enough light to see, so we can find their blockade, get our range, and put their ships below the water. If not before, when the first gun is fired, we'll have to hold these guns until Azilia's Hammer is through.”
“And after that, sir?”
“After that, we do as we can. If we can fight free, we'll try and rendezvous with our companions. If we can't, MacKay will know what to do. Finding the fleet from Venice is the most important measure, as we all know.” He clapped Unoka on the shoulder. “You see the plan of the fort? This battery sticks out from the rest of it, an arrow pointed at the sea. We have to hold the gates and the walls. See about constructing some sort