Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(236)
Its leading lines of skirmishers slain, the main body of the Kalinago broke and ran for the rear, suddenly silent in retreat. But they did not go far. Upon encountering the musketeers behind them, they formed up into a mass once again. Voices that both berated and encouraged them in two foreign languages—Kalinago and French—soon had them turned back around, crouching as they sorted themselves into archers and skirmishers. Soon, arrows were sailing across the two hundred yard gap. The whining shafts did not find any victims—it was well beyond the optimum range of what were essentially self-bows—but they were keeping the defenders pinned down. Hearing the dying gasps and shuddering cries of even those who had been modestly wounded by the arrows, the allied defenders were unwilling to expose themselves, making communication and movement difficult.
Sophie turned around, a long bang of sweaty hair hanging down in front of her face. “I do not think we will survive the next attack,” she commented with what Anne Cathrine heard as her surreal Norn-calm.
“Why?” asked Leonora.
“They know where we are, they know what weapons we have, and they will bring up their musketeers, this time. When we rise to fire at them, they will no doubt fire at us.” Sophie shrugged. “How many times can we afford such an exchange?”
The Kalinago, now aided by the French, were obviously eager to find the answer to that very question. With the rain of arrows still coming in at a shallow arc, the skirmishers began arranging themselves into rude ranks.
As they did, one of the most plainly dressed loaders rose up from her position further down the trench to dig a pistol out of a bag she had left unattended a few yards away. When her plain workman’s hat fell aside briefly, it revealed the smoke-smudged face of Edel Mund.
“Lady Mund!” Anne Cathrine exclaimed. “What are you—?”
“I am doing the same thing you are, Lady Anne Cathrine. I am fighting to defend this town.”
“Then get down, Lady Mund! One of the native arrows could easily—”
Edel’s mouth was a brittle-lipped line as she muttered. “I do not fear that.”
“Granted we might die here, but none of us deserves to—”
Edel Mund wheeled on the younger woman. “You are wrong. Some of us do deserve to die. Particularly those of us who caused the deaths of others.”
Leonora gaped. “But what—what are you saying—?”
“Do you really not understand? Do you not see that it was I who killed my own husband?”
Anne Cathrine blinked, then realized she’d half forgotten about the regrouping Kalinagos. “You—?”
“A fief on Iceland. A generous gift, I suppose, your father intended it to be. But—Iceland. As grim and lifeless a place as God or devil ever conceived or created. And then, Pros was given the chance to come here, to lead a fleet to the New World. To please your father, the king. Perhaps we would have been given land somewhere near Skaelskor, or maybe even here in the New World.”
“And how,” Leonora asked as the native war cries began rising again, “did that hope kill him?”
Edel Mund glared at her. “The hope didn’t kill him, because it wasn’t important to him.” She closed her eyes. “It was my hope, mine alone. And I was what was important to him. Me and my happiness. Pros was determined to do anything to please me, to allow me to escape our fief on Iceland forever. And I”—her eyes became fixed and bright—“and I let him. Did I forbid him to take the risks that I knew—knew—he planned to take? To seize Spanish ships for his king to purchase my happiness with those war-prizes? No. I allowed him to destroy himself. All because I wanted a little more sun, and a little less ice, I allowed my husband to go to his death. As fine a man, as good a man, as caring a man as ever lived, despite his stoic silences. And my pettiness killed him, just as certainly as had I driven a dagger into his back myself.”
“But Lady Mund—” began Leonora.
Whatever Anne Cathrine’s sister had intended to say was lost when, with a single shout that sounded a great deal like “Tegreman!” the Kalinago skirmishers started forward. Now in loosely organized ranks, they came on at a slower trot, closely followed by almost two-hundred native and French musketeers. To Anne Cathrine’s eyes, the French were armed with quite modern weapons—snaphaunces and even a few percussion-cap rifles, from the look of them—whereas most of the natives were armed with older Spanish pieces. They would not fire so quickly or so accurately as their French allies, but given their numbers, it would hardly matter.
Even now, as the leading Kalinago skirmishers reapproached the stubble of the last canebrake, the reloaders were just finally passing weapons back into the hands of the shooters. The Wild Geese had taken cover among the crates surrounding the radio shack, and both they and McCarthy were busy reloading. Sophie was right. The defenders would not fire so many times, nor so well, this time, and would be facing a hail of musketry while doing so.