Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
Under their burdens they staggered out into the sunlight. Hal was the last to leave. "Get out of here, Ned!" he ordered, and handed him the weapons he carried as Ned ran for the door. Then Hal turned on the three Dutch soldiers, who were cowering on the bench. Ned had disarmed them their weapons were thrown in the corner of the guard room.
"I'm going to blow this place to hell," he told them in Dutch. "Run for the gates, and if you're wise you'll keep running without looking back. Go!" They sprang up and, in their haste to get clear, jammed in the doorway. They struggled and fought each other until they burst out into the courtyard and raced across it.
"Look out!" they yelled, as they sprinted for the gates. "They're going to blow up the powder store!" The gaolers and the other common convicts who, until this point, had stood gaping at the carriage and the hostage Governor in Aboli's grip, now turned their heads towards the armoury and stared at it in stupid surprise.
Hal appeared in the armoury doorway with a sword in one hand and a burning torch that he had seized from its bracket in the other.
"I am counting to ten," Hal shouted, "and then I am lighting the powder train!" In his rags, and with his great bushy black beard and wild eyes, he looked like a maniac.
A moan of horror and fear went up from every man in the yard. One of the convicts threw down his spade and followed the fleeing soldiers in a rush for the gate. Immediately pandemonium overwhelmed them all. Two hundred convicts and soldiers stormed the gates in a rush for safety.
Van de Velde struggled in Aboli's grip and screamed, "Let me go! The idiot is going to blow us all to perdition. Let me go! Run! Run!" His shrieks added to the panic, and within the time it takes to draw and hold a long breath the courtyard was deserted except for the group of seamen around the carriage and Hal. Katinka was screaming and sobbing hysterically, but Sukeena slapped her hard across the face. "Keep quiet, you simpering ninny, or I'll give you good reason to blubber," and Katinka gulped back her distress.
"Aboli, get van de Velde into the carriage! He and his wife are coming with us," Hal called, and Aboli lifted the Governor bodily and hurled him over the top of the door. He landed in an ungainly heap on the floorboards and struggled there, like an insect on a pin. "Althuda, put your sword point to his heart and be ready to kill him when I give the word."
"I look forward to it!" Althuda shouted, dragged van de Velde upright and thrust him into the seat facing his wife. "Where should I give it to you?" he asked him. "In your fat gut, perhaps?"
Van de Velde had lost his wig in the scuffle and his expression was abject, every inch of his huge frame seeming to quiver with despair. "Don't kill me. I can protect you," he pleaded, and Katinka started weeping and keening again. This time, Sukeena merely held her a little tighter, lifted the point of the dagger to her throat and whispered, "We don't need you now we have the Governor. It won't matter at all if I kill you." Katinka choked back the next sob.
"Daniel, load the powder and the spare weapons," Hal ordered, and. they piled them into the carriage. The elegant vehicle was no wagon, and the coach work sagged under the load on its delicately sprung suspension.
"That's enough! It will take no more." Aboli stopped them throwing the last few powder kegs on board.
"One man to each horse!" Hal commanded. "Don't try to board them, lads. You're none of you riders. You'll fall off and break your necks, which won't matter much, but your weight will kill the poor beasts before we have gone a mile, and that will matter. Lay hold of their rigging and let them tow you along." They ran to their places around the team of horses, and latched onto their harness. "Leave space for me on the larboard bow, lads," he called, and even in her excitement and agitation Sukeena laughed aloud at his use of the nautical terms. His men understood, though, and left the offside lead horse for him.
Aboli leaped to his place on the coachman's seat, while in the body of the carriage Althuda menaced van de Velde and Sukeena held her dagger to Katinka's white throat.
Aboli wheeled the team and shouted, "Come on, Gundwane. It's time to go. The garrison will wake up at any moment now." As he said it they heard the flat report of a pistol shot, and a garrison officer ran from the doorway of the barracks across the square waving his smoking pistol, shouting to his men to form up on him. "Stand to arms! On me the First Company!"
Hal paused only a moment to light the slow-match of one of his pistols from the burning torch, then tossed the torch onto the powder train and waited to see it flare and catch. The smoking flame started snaking back through the doors of the armoury into the passageway that led to the main powder magazine. Then he sprang down the steps into the courtyard and raced to meet the overloaded carriage as Aboli drove the horses in a circle and lined up for the gates.
He was almost there, raising his hand to seize the bridle of the leading grey gelding, when suddenly Aboli shouted in agitation, "Gundwane, behind you! Have a care!" Hugo Barnard had appeared in the doorway where he and his hounds had taken shelter at the first sign of trouble. Now he slipped both dogs from the leash and with wild yells of encouragement sent them in pursuit of Hal. "Vat horn! Catch him!" he yelled and the animals raced towards him in a silent rush, running side by side, striding out and covering the length of the courtyard like a pair of whippets coursing a hare.
Aboli's warning had given Hal just time enough to turn to face them. The dogs worked as a team, and one leaped for his face while the other rushed for his legs. Hal lunged at the first while it was in the air and sent his point into the base of the black throat where it joined the shoulders. The flying weight of the hound's body drove the blade in full length, transfixing it cleanly through heart and lung and on into its guts. Even though it was dead, the momentum of its flight drove it on to crash into Hal's chest, and he staggered backwards.
The second hound, snaked in low to the ground and, while Hal was still off balance, sank its fangs into his left shin just below the knee, jerking him over backwards. His shoulder crashed into the stone paving, but when he tried to rise the animal still had him in its grip and pulled back on all four braced legs, sending him sprawling again. Hal felt its teeth grate on the bone of his leg.
