Scalpdancers (31 page)

“Yes, my captain?”

“Remain here with our friend, Captain Penmerry,” Vlad said. “Allow no one to approach him.”

Abdul flexed his powerful physique. “It shall be as you command, my captain.”

Demetrius Vlad looked up at Morgan, pausing as if there were more to say. But he could think of nothing else. He turned and studied the stockade walls yet again and the silhouettes of the marines arrayed along the walls.

As if daring them to open fire, Vlad sauntered along the slope until he stood within easy range of the muskets leveled at him. He did not even need to shout to be heard.

“I and my men will soon be gone. As long as you do not interfere, your captain will be as safe as if in the arms of his own mother. Remain within these walls. Venture forth and Captain Black and the others will have their throats slit from ear to ear. Is that understood?”

“We hear you, mate,” a sullen voice drifted down to him.

“Good.” Vlad turned his back on the marines, many of whom were sorely tempted to blast the man from the earth. But no one wanted to be responsible for the death of Captain William Black, who came from a family of wealth and influence.

Morgan watched helplessly as Vlad continued from the stockade up the path worn into the hillside that led to the front steps of the Sea Spray Inn. He sagged against the cross-beam and turned to watch as the marines were dumped like so many sacks of grain into the wagon. Black's eyes were ablaze with hatred.

Morgan noticed a familiar figure among the raiders who had come from the longboats. Jorge Rossi, the Portuguese commandant of Macao, lowered his head and tried to avert his face from Morgan.

“Capitano Rossi, you've come a long way from China just to turn pirate,” Morgan said in a voice thick with pain.

Rossi held out his hands in a gesture of helplessness and drew close. He glanced nervously at the Moroccan, who took the opportunity to urinate in the shadows beyond the wagon. Rossi and another guard, a quarrelsome sea wolf named Oberon, had been left to guard the wagon with Abdul.

Rossi was thinner now and his flesh had a sickly pallor. His hands trembled, betraying his desperate need for a tankard of rum. His former aristrocratic bearing had crumbled beneath the weeks of abuse he'd endured as a common seaman.

“I have fallen among hard men and unpleasant circumstances,” Rossi said.

Oberon, who had no use for aristocrats or Englishmen or anyone but himself, leaned on his musket and munched a hard biscuit, ignoring Rossi and the man on the cross.

“You don't have to stay among them.” Morgan groaned. His arms felt as if they were on fire; his shoulder joints throbbed. His spine felt as if it were slowly being pulled apart. But none of it could match the horrible feeling of helplessness that was his as he watched Vlad take Julia's arm and lead her toward the darkened blockhouse.

“Demetrius murdered Chiang Lu,” Rossi said. “It doesn't matter, my telling you. I think you are a dead man.” Rossi shrugged. “I am a part of it all. There is no going back.”

Rossi turned and ambled over toward the camp fire a few yards from the wagon. He was never warm enough these days and wished he were in warm country. Maybe with his share of Vlad's booty Jorge Rossi could find his place.

Boudins Reasoner held Rossi in his rifle sight. Reasoner stood in the shadows beneath the walls of the stockade and tried to steady the weapon in his hand. He'd chosen Rossi because, outlined by the camp fire, the Portuguese offered the best target. Reasoner had watched the capture of Morgan and Julia from the safety of the church. But he'd sated himself with too much drink to be able to offer assistance. A douse in the cold waters of the Columbia had cleared most of the cobwebs from his head and enabled him to follow the trail left by Vlad and his prisoners.

He had no plan. A simple man who rarely thought beyond the next sunrise, he thought it made perfect sense to pick off one of the thieves, run and hide, and return to kill another—and to keep doing that until the bastards weighed anchor and departed. They'd pay for his pelts in blood, by heaven. The gruff old trapper sucked in his breath and slowly exhaled. His finger tightened on the trigger. A hand shot out and closed over the flash pan and forced the barrel down.

Reasoner whirled, dropped his rifle, and reached for his knife. He was filled with dismay that any man could have sneaked up behind him, especially a damn pirate fit only for the rolling deck of a ship. Heart pounding, he struggled in his attacker's imprisoning grasp. He gasped as a demonic face peered into his own grizzled visage. He started to cry out, but a second hand cut him off, closing around his windpipe.

He waited for the killing blow, the whisper of a knife blade, the sudden fatal pain of cold steel in the pit of his stomach … maybe a crushing blow to the skull … a muffled gunshot and the numbing bite of a lead slug slamming into his heart.…

Nothing.

Then he caught the smell of buckskin and smoke, and the demon's face became a set of war-painted features. He recognized his attacker. Lone Walker had come to kill, but not Boudins Reasoner. He was painted for war: Half his face was black, the other half a sulfurous yellow. He caught up Reasoner's rifle and handed it back to the trapper.

“Not yet, old one,” the Blackfoot signed.

The man on the cross would be helpless if a fight broke out now. Mor-gan must be freed and the white men in the wagon as well. But Lone Walker's eyes were fixed on the cross.

This had been part of the vision he had followed to the edge of the world. He had arrived atop the hills above Astoria as Vlad returned with his prisoners. Lone Walker waited and watched as darkness settled over the land. He had prayed and sung a song of war and preparation for battle and applied war paint to his features. He had placed a black hand and a yellow hand upon the rump of his gray to protect the animal in battle. And when all these things had been done, he had cleared his head of dreams and come down from the mountain.

Reasoner was no fool; he quickly grasped the brave's intentions. He pointed toward the British soldiers imprisoned in the wagon. “You free them there lads and I reckon the other'll feel free to come out and join the fight,” he whispered. “You got your horse?”

Lone Walker led the trapper back along the stockade wall. They crept around a corner and a few seconds later arrived at the ground-hobbled mare.

The gray lifted its head and softly neighed at the scent of a stranger, then quieted under the Blackfoot's gentle hand. Reasoner climbed upon the animal's back while Lone Walker held the animal steady. He paused only once, curiosity getting the best of him.

“Tell me, bucko, I got to know. Why are you mixing in this?” He spoke in English and signed along with the words. “What is Morgan Penmerry to you?”

Lone Walker pondered a moment, wondering how best to describe in words what he knew or what he had seen of the long knife and the man outstretched upon the cross,
Mor-gan
.

“He is part of my song,” the Indian said.

Reasoner scratched his nose, then patted his raccoon-head pouch for luck. He stood on the mare's back and stretched his thin body until his bony fingers found a handhold, and he hoisted himself up and over the wall.

Lone Walker quickly, quietly, stole away from the stockade, and ran like a panther straight for the river.

Julia Emerson was much too proud to show fear to the ruffians who surrounded her. Their watchful eyes appraised her like one of the pelts they hoped to steal. To such men as these the missionary's daughter was something to be sold or traded and in the process used. She had no illusions as to the treatment she would receive at their hands. Demetrius Vlad was the worst of the lot, of that she had no doubt.

The Russian came to her side and bowed courteously with a flourish of his dark-green cape. “How good of you to wait for me,” he said, the soul of refinement.

“Sweet words from a foul heart.” Julia stood proud and erect, her head held high. She refused him the satisfaction of even one single tear, though her own heart broke every time she looked to the river and Morgan hung upon the cross. “What blasphemous cruelty,” she said, fixing Vlad in a venomous stare. “Your sins will find you out.”

“And until then I shall enjoy them, as shall you.”

At a gesture from Vlad, fifteen pirates arrayed along the hillside readied their weapons and took aim at the windows and door of the Sea Spray Inn. The Russian forced Julia into the glare of the sputtering torches. The wind had begun to gust now and the flames of the torches flickered like banners, fluttering in the night. A handful of stars glimmered through the cloud cover; then they too disappeared, winked out one by one.

“You see who I have, yes?” Vlad shouted. Julia struggled in his grasp, but her wrists were bound and there was little she could do. He reached out and caught her hair and with his right hand jabbed a gun in her side.

“I will count to five, my friends. If the door does not open, permitting us to enter, then I shall leave her here for you to bury.” He leaned in toward the young woman. “Don't worry, I'll count slowly,” he added, a smile scrawled across his ruined face. “One!”

The Russian's voice carried through the solid walls Reap McCorkle had built. Smoke from the black-powder rifles clung to the cross beams and rafters above the heads of the inn's defenders. Reap McCorkle, Faith McCorkle, Temp Rawlins, and the trapper Hector Stout sat by their firing ports and watched Emile Emerson, who slumped forward in defeat, his head in his soot-streaked hands. The missionary's resolve collapsed the moment he had recognized his daughter in the clutches of the renegades.

“Only one thing to do,” Temp muttered. “But it's like salt in a wound.”

“Two!”

Reap McCorkle slammed his fist against the wall alongside the shuttered window. Faith jumped at the sound. A Klatsop tribal mask clattered to the floor.

“I built this place, to last. It's a fortress,” Reap said. “I figured to be able to hold out against anybody.” He set his rifle against the wall.

“Three!” the voice intoned, tolling ominously the last few seconds of a young girl's life.

Emile Emerson heard the rasp of wood on wood and glanced up as Reap unbolted the door, sliding a length of timber out of the door latch. He pulled on the latch and the door swung open. He retreated from the doorway and headed for Emerson's table.

The missionary looked up at them in gratitude, his eyes red rimmed.

“Well, hell,” said the trapper by the window. Stout tossed his gun aside and headed for the jug of rum on the bar. He uncorked the jug and gave it a shake to reassure himself of its contents. He wiped his round cheeks and pale lips on his forearm and hefted the jug to his mouth and began to drink. After a couple of swallows he lowered the jug and belched. “Just 'cause they take my pelts don't mean I have to watch.” He tilted the jug and began to drink himself into sweet oblivion.

“Four!” a voice cried out.

Boots clattered on the porch, commands were shouted, shutters were battered aside, and muskets jabbed through the open windows. Then a trio of hard-bitten rogues crowded the doorway and shoved their way into the room, eyes wary and pistols cocked. Lamplight flickered along the curved blades of their cutlasses.

And behind them, Demetrius Vlad strode into the tavern, brushed his own men aside, and dragged Julia forward and hurled her into her father's outstretched arms.

“Five!”

Morgan dreaming, reflecting images on the cold, clear surface of his mind. Pristine images shimmer, re-form, become the mother who had loved him, who had tried to care for him, and who died, in poverty, crushed beneath the wheels of a runaway carriage. He sees a boy alone. It is himself and watches the lad steal aboard an American merchant ship leaving England forever
.

Morgan dreaming, sees a storm-tossed sea and the violent spin of the ship's wheel as the pilot is driven to his knees by a wall of water. Lightning in slow motion melts down the sky and covers the sea and the ship in its fiery sheen. Flesh becomes bronze in color and the air is thick to breathe as the ship fights for its life
.

Morgan dreaming, watches the swollen sea solidify, transformed into forest-covered hills. The boy is gone and Morgan, the man, stands in his place. There is a wild rushing river. There are mountains beyond mountains. There is a woman made of sunlight and shadow hidden in ethereal mists. Her auburn hair billows out to frame her features in roan-red beauty. Morgan calls her by name, Julia. Julia
.

Beyond her a speck of crimson expands, slowly, inevitably engulfing everything in its path. Julia is the last to go no matter how Morgan strives to spare her. And yet even this is not the end, for the void itself frays and tatters and parts like a threadbare blanket to reveal a hilltop and a solitary figure outlined against the purple hills. The warrior's song reaches out to Morgan, draws him closer, binds the visions to the man, and the man to the Great Circle
.

“Lone Walker!” Morgan shouted.

His head snapped forward, popped his neck, and Morgan woke to the gentle caress of a pattering rain. He gasped and gathered his faculties and tried to make sense out of the world around him. The hemp rope binding him to the cross beam cut into his flesh. How long had he been unconscious? His shoulders and arms were numb. But the misting rain felt good on his face and with the gusting wind revived him. He could hear the distant thunder. Morgan spied movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his head toward the dancing shadows on the edge of the firelight. Someone or something stirred on the edge of night; this lurker in the dark, unseen, waited, biding its time, no,
his
time. Suddenly Morgan knew. He didn't know how, but he knew just the same. A vision from his tortured mind had materialized and come to kill.

One of the johnboats was already on its way to Vlad's ship. The men who had loaded it started up the hill path, filing back to the inn for another load. McCorkle, Hector Stout, Rawlins, and Emerson had been impressed into service and had just deposited a load of pelts, two barrels of gunpowder, and a larger barrel of salted fish in another of the boats. They heard Morgan cry out. Emerson and Temp started over toward the man on the cross.