Chapter 158: And The Fine Art of Being Hunted
The alley took a sharp turn to the left, and James’s boot went skidding across stone slick with thrown-out wash water. He caught himself against the wall with his good arm and locked his teeth around a curse.
The wounded shoulder was already screaming loud enough to drown out most everything else, and it seemed poor manners to give it assistance.
Behind them, two turns full of shouting away, Ambrosio’s own voice still rolled through the streets, high and furious, throwing orders faster than any of them could follow.
"Keep movin’!" Sam called back, without slowing.
James shoved himself off the wall and rushed forward. His wound had gone from white fire to duller and worse pain, a steady throb that marched along with every footfall.
He managed to speak between breaths, "Bloody hell, a man forgets how much runnin’ hurts once he’s gone and got himself shot."
"Come on mate, ye’ll live."
"Aye, that’s the plan."
The alley narrowed further, the walls close on either side. Behind them, more men joined the chase. It was closer now, which was all the information James required.
The streets spat them into a covered market row, the canvas awnings overhead, gray with the day’s dust, while crates and coils of rope stood stacked against both walls. The stallholders had abandoned their wares at the first sound of gunfire, which was a sensible business decision and perhaps the best one anybody had made that afternoon.
The crew had gone less than twenty feet when three men stepped out from behind a wall of stacked casks, cutlasses already bare.
Sam rushed out first. He closed the distance before the man could raise his guard, and drove his knife into the side of the man’s throat, ripping it free in a spray that painted the nearest awning red.
The man crashed backward, hit the casks, and folded hard onto the stones. Sam was already reaching for the fallen cutlass, coming up with it in his hand as he turned forward.
Meanwhile, the big sailor met the second. He caught the first swing on his forearm before it could gather enough strength, letting the steel cut across the muscle there, blood welling dark and fast. He answered with a snarl, driving his knife up beneath the man’s arm before the fellow could swing again.
The Spaniard cried out. His blade dropped from his hand as he staggered sideways, then collapsed against the casks and slid heavily to the ground.
The sailor shook the blood from his own arm and kept going, apparently having decided that one more injury was no reason to interrupt the afternoon.
The third came at Kit from the side, blade raised, and Kit’s foot caught on a fallen crate. He went down hard on one knee and the Spaniard was already over him, leaving no time left for Kit to find his knife.
James’s pistol came up in his good hand.
[Counterargument] barked once.
The shot punched into the man high in the chest and threw him backward. He crashed onto the stones a stride short of Kit, his cutlass clattering away across the ground.
For one breath, Kit was frozen.
Then he scrambled upright, breathing fast, staring at the dead man’s boots lying inches from his own.
"Christ, Cap’n, did ye see how close that was? I’ll be tellin’ that one for years!"
"Save the tellin’." Sam had already secured the way forward. "Lets go."
They came out into an alley bent around a low stone wall, garden walls on one side and shuttered houses on the other, and found two more men already waiting for them there.
One went straight for Jim, who had nothing but his knife and nowhere near enough room to make proper use of it.
The Spaniard’s cutlass caught him across the ribs before he could turn the blow. The cloth tore, steel cut flesh beneath it, and blood came hot through his shirt, the red already smeared down the front.
"Another one for my fine collection," Jim gasped. "I’m runnin’ out of room."
He stumbled back, one hand clamping over the wound, looking more offended than afraid.
The Spaniard stepped in to finish it.
Sam was already there.
He drove his stolen cutlass up the man’s ribs from behind and twisted hard. The Spaniard jerked, the fight leaving him in one long shudder.
Then he crumbled down.
His dying arm swung as he went down, and the cutlass caught Sam across the cheekbone. A shallow cut bit beneath his eye, blood running warm down his jaw.
Sam did not flinch.
He ripped his weapon free, tore the cutlass from the man’s loosening hand, and threw it across the gap.
Jim caught it by the hilt.
The rat-faced sailor took the last man himself. He ducked beneath a wild swing that would have cut his throat and drove his knife into the fellow’s gut twice before the man had time to understand that the fight was already over.
He staggered back against the garden wall and slid down it. The sailor stood over him for a moment, breathing hard, spat once, and turned away.
"More comin’," Sam said, blood tracking down his jaw and dripping from his chin.
From there they rushed into a narrow street, just as a squad of Spanish soldiers came around the far corner at a run, muskets already up. The shots and screaming had been rolling through this part of the city long enough to draw anybody with a uniform and a gun.
One of Ambrosio’s own men came pelting around the same corner half a step behind them, cutlass still bloody in his fist, and the nearest soldier swung his musket square onto him instead.
For one ragged breath, neither side seemed entirely certain who they were meant to shoot, which was not an ideal condition for a street full of loaded muskets.
James did not wait for anybody to improve it.
"THIS WAY!"
He was already breaking for a side alley while soldiers and thugs alike were still sorting out whose side they were on. Somewhere behind them, a musket went off wild and took a chunk out of a wall well clear of anybody.
The path they chose dead-ended at a small stone well, its bucket rope hanging still in the afternoon heat. Some iron grates barred every window around the little square, and there was not so much as a doorway offering a way through.
James put his back to the well’s stone lip, chest heaving, his good hand braced against it while blood from his shoulder went warm down inside his shirt.
Behind them, the boots on cobblestone had split into two distinct rhythms, one closing from the street they’d just left, the other cutting in from beyond.
"Bloody hell."
James looked around at the grated windows and the one door too far to reach in time. "This is either the part where we die, or the part we write up a new legend. Reckon it’s a toss of the coin which."
Kit’s knife hung loose in his hand. Jim pressed against the wall with one hand over his bleeding ribs, and the boots kept coming from both directions at once.
A shutter above them banged open.
A hand appeared first, pale against the dark of the window, waving hard enough to catch every eye in the square.
"Señores! Here, quickly, before they see you!"
A woman leaned out over the sill, dark hair loose around her shoulders, and jerked her chin toward a door two houses down that had not been there a moment before, or had not been open, at least.
Her tone was slightly urgent, "I would not ask twice were I in your boots! The soldiers do not extend courtesy to men found bleeding in a stranger’s square."
James looked at the party.
"Well, there’s our luck."