A King`s Commander - Dewey Lambdin

A quick halt for Peel to study clues in the wheel ruts and hoofprints that went in every direction, those partly obliterated by boot marks of the soldiers who'd left the village.

"Sir!" Mountjoy yelped, having ambled down the Finale road for about two musket shots' distance. He came cantering back, waving something aloft. "Tricolor cockade, sir. Just lying in the middle of the road. Off a Frenchman's hat, do you think, Mister Peel?"

"Yessir, I do." Peel squinted down the road. "You stayed in the middle, or on the verge, sir?"

"Middle, sir." Mountjoy groaned. "Did I err?"

"Well see. You wait here for a bit."

Peel walked his gelding down the left side of the road, peering at the ground. He stopped where he saw fresh shoe prints that Mister Mountjoy had made when he dismounted, then crossed over to the right-hand side, kneed his mount through the brushy undergrowth, and disappeared! Minutes later, though, he emerged; on the northwest road!

"Clever, this Choundas!" Peel laughed, waving them to join him. "For a sailor, I'd not expect it. Tossed his cockade to lure any pursuit down the Finale road, then doubled back through these woods to hide his prints. With that uniform he wears, under a cloak, he could almost pass as an Austrian artillery officer. Or Genoese, Piedmontese… as little as most have seen of 'em. Yet, here's his prints, leading right up this inland road. There's still a chance! Must we kill our horses, so be it, but we can still catch him! Follow me!"

Capitaine de Vaisseau Guillaume Choundas was not a horseman. He had never owned one. His father couldn't afford one when he was growing up; even if their principal diet came from their catches at sea, grain for a horse's nourishment was better put in the bellies of the Choundas family, than such an extravagance.

Yet a man who'd aspire to the level of the aristocracy or those untitled rich, as his father had schemed for him to do, the brightest of his sons, must ride. There'd been a retired Norman cavalry officer who'd drilled him, hours and hours in a paddock or the countryside of St. Malo, for a small fee, but young Guillame had never taken to it as he had the skill of the sword, pistol, or mathematics. What need had a naval officer-to-be with a good "seat," except to impress the ladies? Equipoise was nothing to him but a regrettable means to an end, an onerous task to perform until he'd been deemed reasonably competent, and quickly abandoned as he focused on the knowledge necessary for a naval career. His time at the Jesuit school as an impoverished charity student, pretending to espouse their vows of poverty, chastity… Bretons made the world's best seamen, perhaps stout infantry. Let the rest of the Franks, Normans, and effeminate Gauls who had come to dominate the ancient, original pure Breton race have their love of horses! Let the other lads prate and pose on their expensive living toys! He would be a Breton, with his feet firmly planted on the ground, or an oak deck.

So he sat his horse lumpishly, his crippled left leg too weak to tolerate a trot. He could post with his overdeveloped thighs, but a few minutes' work with his calf created a burning, engorged numbness before it went slack and nerveless. A canter or lope was much better, but even a poor horseman such as he could see that this horse was not up to a fast pace for long. After the road junction, he'd rested his gelding, gone down the Finale road and torn off his Republican cockade to leave a false scent, as he'd read that Rousseau's Noble Savages did. He'd then loped for three-quarters of a mile inland, until his horse began to toss its head, and slowed to a steady, long-legged, distance-eating walk. Once on the northwest road, the going was more level and easier, the inclines gentler among the rock-bound pastures filled with goats and sheep, the gleaned-over fields of stubble, the orchards and patches of forest. Easier on the horse… and him.

"Maniac," Choundas whispered in uneasy awe, recalling again the tartane driving ashore, with that madman Lewrie at her helm. Choundas had recognized Jester after their first tack, from three miles off, and had known at once who it was pursued him. But he'd bested Lewrie one more time, in spite of his best efforts. He'd gotten ashore, and then gotten away! But why, he asked himself, would such an idle rakehell turn manic, insane? Was it possible that Lewrie's hatred was just as hot as his own for him? Even though it had been Guillaume who'd suffered at his hands? No, someone must be ordering him, driving him to chase me. Even at two hundred yards, he had smelled defeat, and fear, the last time their ships had dueled off Alassio. But for that damned frigate, he'd have had him, at last. Lewrie would not come after him so lustily, unless pressed to it. For at heart, he was surely afraid of him, by now! A cowardly English gentleman-"aristo" weak-wrist!

British agents? How pleasurable it had been, to send Pouzin's spies off on a false errand, knowing from the first which ship carried the gold. His next report would damn Pouzin for being led astray by a "Bloody" plot, for failing, as he had concerning Alassio, and the loss of the convoy and warships. Choundas suspected British agents, and a vague description of a Jew from London, a banker-he sounded like a cadaverous butcher who'd confounded him in the Far East-Twigg! It was more than possible. And with Pouzin gone, himself installed as a replacement, he could recall that whore Claudia Mastandrea to France-to answer questions! Lewrie had had her, so he must. Then lure Lewrie to his death, with her the bait, this time. His bait!

But that death would be a long time coming, Choundas vowed to himself. Oh, yes! First he must scream for mercy, for forgiveness, that he'd maimed me, and made me so ugly! Months, it could last, no torment, no agony too great. Then leave him just as ugly, crippled, and abhorrent! A slug, trailing useless legs behind him, so ugly his pretty English wife and adoring children would shriek to see him, and that handsome, cocksure, swaggering brute slashed and carved into so hideous a creature, he'd be as repulsive as a leper! His whore from Corsica-Mastandrea, too?-have them in front of him, make Lewrie wail and gnash his teeth in impotence? Was death too good for him?

Choundas was so intent on his revenge, so rapt in savage dreams, that he missed the fact that the road began to curve north as it wound through a stretch of wooded hills, and did not wind back, but kept on trending more to the east, following the path of least resistance.

"Only one horse has been along here, this morning," Peel stated with certainty as they took a rest at the northern edge of a copse of wizened trees so interlaced and convoluted they looked woven together. Before them stretched about a half mile of small woodlots and orchards, some small grain fields, to the beginnings of a series of winding hills covered in tall pines. "Were I out on vedette, I'd say some guns were along here yesterday… perhaps a troop of cavalry."

"Yes, but whose?" Lewrie asked, beginning to question what he was doing away from his ship, this far inland, playing at soldiers with the French Army in the offing. As far as he was concerned, if Choundas wanted to keep on riding, he'd be more than happy to let him. As long as he never heard from the bastard again.

"Well now, that's the question, isn't it, sir?" Peel chuckled.

"Another good'un would be 'where does this road go,' sir?" Mister Mountjoy muttered, sounding as if he was experiencing his own reservations about their little outing.

"Perhaps your captain might know, Mister Mountjoy," Peel hinted. "After all, he's been staring at more maps of this coast than we."

"Charts," Lewrie corrected, shifting his saddle to ease an ache. It had been two years since he'd been astride, and his inner thighs and buttocks were reminding him of it, rather insistently. "Sea charts, do you see, Peel. Prominent stuff to steer and navigate by. But what's behind 'em, out of range-to-random shot, don't signify. I haven't the faintest clue where we are, much less where this road goes. Frankly, I was hoping you did!"

"Well, all roads lead somewhere." Peel frowned. "If it's good enough for Choundas to follow, it's good enough for us."

He heeled his mount and clucked, and they lumbered into motion once more, working their way back to an easy lope for those far woods.

CHAPTER

10

Guillaume Choundas emerged from the woods at last, after a serpentine journey in the shadow of the pines. The day was warming up, and he threw his boat cloak back over his shoulders. Before him was a wide valley with low hills to either side, covered with broader grain fields and shrouded on three sides with bush-covered boulders, with more woods to the north and east. The road led straight on. Wary of being out in the open, he checked the priming of one of his three pistols, then rode into the sunlight. About 300 yards off there was a wayside shrine, at a crossroads. He rode to it, warily looking about, but he was quite alone. The shrine was footed with a stone watering trough, but it was dry, filled with crumbly leaves and a green-brown rime. His horse nuzzled it, snuffling disappointedly. A tapering stone column at a list as it sank into the ground, a small altar covered with brittlely dry flowers, surrounded by fluted columns and topped with a steepled roof. It had a cross, but that was a recent addition, he thought, for the moss-filled inscription was Roman, like some legionary burial sites he'd seen in his childhood Brittany. The figures, though, on the original stele, much effaced by time, were far older. They were Celtic! he gasped with pleasure. He took that as a good sign. Till the raven came.

The raven glided in from his right, flared its wings and alit atop the steepled roof that was streaked with bird droppings. One of Lugh's birds, he shivered; old Bretons still knew who'd built the dolmens, and worshiped at them. Lugh was the greatest old god, and his raven was a harbinger-an ominous one! It preened its feathers, shook and settled, then cawed once at him, silhouetted against the morning sun.

The sun! Choundas sat bolt-upright, twisting his head to scan the empty valley. It was a bit past midmorning, yet the sun was in his eyes! He was facing southeast! All the time in the woods where the sun didn't reach, had he missed a trail, gotten turned around? His stomach chilled as he saw a patch of blue through a notch in the woods-the sea. Vado Bay! The cart track by the shrine led down to Porto Vado; or back to the west. But it might take him back where he needed to go. He strung out a rein to guide his thirsty horse, as the raven cawed once more, spread its wings, and lifted away, not six feet over his head, winging off to the west. Choundas then heard what had disturbed it-the thud of hooves, the jingle of chains and scabbards, and the clomp of feet. In the woods there was movement, shakoed infantry, and a troop of cavalry on the tracelike Vado road, lance pennants fluttering and points glittering above their heads. Austrians!

The raven's flight was the only clue he needed to turn away, and begin to ride off again, a good sign, he thought; that here in the land of the Roman conquerors of his ancient people, he was not alone, that a Celtic influence still resided. He dug in his heels, to urge the horse to get him out of sight before those lancers spotted him. A shout…?

"View halloo!" Peel cried as they left those maze-y woods, loped out into the broad valley. "There's our fox, gentlemen! Tally ho!"