Dewey Lambdin - The King

"Once we incline towards the beach, sir, do we let the enemy flee into the paddies and jungle?" Major Gaunt asked.

"If they seem to be in great disorder, sir. You may find it necessary to torch the southern palisade and houses, then form your half-battalion as a screen to prevent any counterattack from that quarter, facing south, once we've taken the beach and the east wall," Sir Hugo stated after a moment's thought. 'The fire should guard your back well enough, and discourage anyone left in the village."

There were no more questions. Sir Hugo dug his watch from his breeches pocket and held it up close to his nose, swiveling in the faint moonlight to try and read it. "It lacks a quarter-hour to three, gentlemen. And the Navy tells me true dawn is at a quarter to six. False dawn, a quarter past five. I wish to be in position at least half an hour before that. Then let the Navy have first honors. Return to your companies. Good luck, God speed and let us be on our way."

Time to do what they pay us for, Cony," Lewrie said decisively, shoving away what was left of his cold breakfast. "Damme all Banyan Days."

Gruel, cheese, hard biscuit and small beer, with a banana for something sweet in place of a duff. Several days of the week were meatless, according to the strictures of the Victualling Board, and Lewrie felt no desire to end up paying for anything he wasn't given permission to issue, even in foreign climes.

"Seems t' me, sir," Cony said with a rueful expression, "if'n they warnts us t' fight strong an' all, they'd make allowance fer a battle, they would."

"Wish to God somebody would," Alan grinned in return. He put on his coat, squared away his sword and donned his hat.

He stepped out onto the quarterdeck, just forward of the sweep of the tiller, and leaned one hip against the after capstan-head. The crew had stowed their hammocks away already, and stood swaying to the motion of their little ship. Evidently, they were not very hungry this morning, either. The cook was shoveling coals into the sea off the lee side, and his assistant was hauling up a bucket of seawater to put out his galley fire.

"Good morning, captain," Hogue said from his station to leeward.

"Good morning to you, Mister Hogue. Any signal from Telesto?"

"Nothing yet, sir."

But even as Hogue spoke, there was a tiny, shielded light that appeared on Teiesto's taffrail far ahead of them, a tiny spark from a single lantern to show them where she was, followed by another from Lady Charlotte.

"Mister Hogue, prepare to put the ship about onto the wind," Lewrie ordered. "We shall tack in succession."

"Aye, sir!"

"Second light, sir," Murray pointed out. "Her helm's down." And the two weak glims swung slowly into line as one, then ghosted to the right across their bows. A minute later, Lady Charlotte did the same. And when Lady Charlotte's faint glimmer was directly on their starboard beam, so, too, did Culverin.

"Shake out our night reefs, Mister Murray. Mister Hogue, beat to Quarters," Lewrie ordained. "And hoist the colors now." Furniture, chests, provisions, livestock from the manger and any flimsy temporary partitions were struck below out of harm's way. The decks were sanded for better traction for the gunners and brace-tenders. Fire-buckets were filled, and slow-matches lit in case the flint-lock strikers of their carronades did not function properly in the damp of a tropic dawn. The guns were run in on their wooden recoil slides, the tampions were removed from the muzzles and stowed out of the way. Serge powder cartridges were rammed firm, then heavy twenty-four-pounder solid shot were trundled down the barrels and seated with a thump from the rammers. Charges were pierced with metal prickers to give vent for the ignitions to come, and the secure lashings on the gunports were uncleated. They would wait to prime their guns until they had the enemy in sight, since the humidity might spoil the powder in the pans. With the pans empty, they check-snapped the flints to see if they had a good edge that would spark well against their checker-scored metal frizzens, then covered them with leather flaps to keep them dry.

"Stand easy," Hogue instructed from the gun deck. "Mister Owen, I'll see to those swivel-guns now."

The night was still dark as a boot, with the island and its harbor a faintly heavier darkness ahead of their starboard bows. A thin line of charcoal grey heralded the false dawn to come, against which the masts and sails of the leading ships could almost be seen now and again. For a lookout gazing to seaward, they would still be invisible, their wakes lost in the general roil of offshore waves, to leeward of the rising sun.

" 'Ope this last'un'll do fer all, sir," Cony muttered, fetching Lewrie one last bracing mug of coffee.

"This coffee, or this battle, Cony?" Lewrie asked, amused in spite of the circumstances.

"Be nice t' see England agin, sir." Cony smiled. "Be damned nice to see tomorrow's sunrise."

"The battery to our rear is silenced, Sir Hugo," Chiswick told his commanding officer, breathless from a quick jog-trot. " Mindanao pirates, mostly, with four Frenchmen to supervise. We lost four men."

"Oh, I am most dreadfully sorry, sir," Sir Hugo replied, but it was a perfunctory sort of sorrow. He dragged out his pocket watch and read the face with more ease. "False dawn. Quarter past five."

"Yes, sir."

"No enemy to our rear? No scouts or sentinels along our front, to your determination, Captain?" Sir Hugo went on.

"No, sir."

"Very well. Rejoin your company and stand by."

Sir Hugo paced out in front of his command. He could barely see most of it. The grenadier company lined up two deep, spaced out wider than he'd like, instead of shoulder to shoulder, but they would have to suit. The bandsmen with their drums and fifes, and Ayscough's borrowed pipers, tricked out in cast-off red tunics. The six-pounder field guns, and behind them, the coehorn mortar crews. The color party nearest him. The other companies were too far away, too deep in the fringes of jungle.

He could see them in his mind's eye, though. Could imagine the formed ranks standing easy with their muskets, with their officers to the front. One word of command and they would be erect as ramrods, ready for what this bloody morning would bring.

It was hot and close, the air like a steaming barber's towel, and just as moist. There was no hint of rain, and the ground across which they would advance was dry and firm. It was simply the humidity of these climes making a slight mist that tried to hide the village from them. And hid his regiment from the foe.

Willoughby paced farther out in advance, with his subadar- major, the senior native officer, and his bearer, Chandra, by his side, until he was about twenty paces forward of his color party.

He consulted his watch again.

"Sah!" his bearer gasped with a quick, indrawn breath.

Willoughby looked up to see a woman and a boy child, not fifty paces off. They had arisen early, perhaps to fetch water or firewood for the morning cooking. They froze in place, almost froze in mid-step, as they might at the sight of a tiger. Then the woman gave out a shrill yelp and turned to run back to the village.

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Sir Hugo groaned, "You brainless old bitch! They're not even friends of yours, and you'd warn 'em?"

"Mebbe jus' frighten, sahib" Chandra commented, outwardly calm though his luxuriant white mustaches quivered as he chewed the lining of his mouth.

"Either way, she'll give the alarm," Sir Hugo sighed. He took a deep breath and opened his mouth.

"Reg'ment!" he boomed out loud as Stentor, and could hear the bushes in the jungle shiver as his men awoke from their standing doze.

" 'Tal'ion!" came the answering shouts from Gaunt and the other half-battalion commander.

" 'Shun!" Sir Hugo roared as he drew his smallsword from its scabbard. Lush green stamping of feet, muffled by vegetation. "Uncase the colors!"

Two color parties came forward from the jungle, the flag-staffs held low like pikes, until they were out in the open. The leather condoms were stripped off, and the colors rolled out to hang limp in the light breeze. Two British ensigns, one borrowed from a warship; the King's Colors. Two Regimental Colors, one real, and one made up from light canvas and painted to resemble the pale yellow silk of an authentic regiment.

"Light companies will advance, fifty paces forward!"

The light companies left their extreme flank positions to trot out ahead of their line companies as skirmishers. Once in position, Sir Hugo turned to face the front, raised his sword on high and gave the decisive order. "The regiment will advance!"

There was a ruffle of drums, an eldritch wailing moan, a thump of a bass drum, and then came music-of a sort. It would be the first time anyone on this island, any Lanun Rover, had ever heard it-perhaps the first time French seamen had ever heard it-as the pipes began "All the Blue Bonnets Are O'er the Border."

And the regiment emerged from the jungle. Two light companies. Two color parties. What seemed to be two grenadier companies massed in the center. And two ranks of men in red coats and white puggarees, with their muskets held at shoulder arms, legs moving to the lilting skirl of the pipes and the crash and roll of the drummers' sticks, more urgent, more compelling than the stately one hundred steps a minute of a usual line battalion. As the ranks approached, Sir Hugo could see the expressions of his sepoys. First the same sort of alarm he wished to see on his foes, their eyes rolling at this strange new invention, and then the grins of delight. It wasn't feringhee tootles on fifes, this strange new music. It was wild, heathen, barbaric and brutally martial. They seemed to like it.

A Lanun Rover was making water off the parapet of the low palisade. He had roistered with his fellow pirates all night long, drunk deep of coco-palm arrack. Had had his way with a frightened Filipino girl, who had known better than to complain, not if she knew what was good for the health of her family, and her own life.

She'd wanned from fear to resigned sullenness to his play, and he'd left her one tiny Spanish coin.

In the midst of his plashings, though, here had come a woman and child running for their lives from the forests. And he could barely see some strange men standing out in the open by the edge of the jungle. Oddly dressed men, but he had shrugged it off. There was no telling what the French would do next. And then had come a great shout. A series of shouts. And the most hideous screeching and howling he had ever heard in his life. A whole raped village or ship had never made such a noise!

And then he could see men. A lot of men, all dressed in red, with muskets at their shoulders, and between groups, he could see a cannon or two! Just like the tale the survivors had told of the slaughter on the island. He realized he'd forgotten his original order of business entirely, and had pissed down the entire front of his pareu. He drew a trembly breath and gave a great shout.

Capitaine Guillaume Choundas liked the Orient, liked Oriental women. They were so tiny compared to the Breton girls back home, or the languid cows he'd had in Paris, all beef to the heel as if they had to emulate some artist's reproduction from the classics. Tiny, childlike and helpless. Chinese girls were all right, he supposed, but he much preferred the fine-boned slim-ness of these Filipino natives. Indian whores in Pondichery were fine, but sometimes too European in their features, too wide across the beam, and cursed with heavy thighs.