The Shadows of God by Keyes J. Gregory

Author:Keyes, J. Gregory [Gregory, Keyes, J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, General, Historical, Fantasy fiction, Franklin; Benjamin, Alternative histories (Fiction)
ISBN: 9780345439048
Publisher: Ballantine Pub. Group
Published: 2001-07-03T05:15:36+00:00

THE SHADOWS OF GOD

“Knives, not guns!” Oglethorpe cautioned.

But when the figure came up from its belly and swayed to two feet, Oglethorpe was barely able to restrain a whoop of joy.

“Chief!” he whispered, clasping the old Indian to him. “Are you impossible to kill?”

“So they say,” Tomochichi replied, grinning. “The knife arm cut me away, but he had no interest in me. I swam to shore, then saw you arrive. You will take the fort?”

“And turn their own guns on their blockade.”

“Good. That is good.” Tomochichi paused and looked down at his feet. “I lost the devil gun. I swam down seven times, but could not find it.”

Oglethorpe took that grim news with a shrug. “It’s done. You’re the more valuable of the two, and we have you back. Now, we’ll go.”

They passed through the courtyard like hunting owls, dressed again in the stolen uniforms they had obtained from the amphibian boat’s crew.

Two guards at the gate by the spur paid their silent passage into the sleeping battery, and they reached the guns without much trouble at all.

In the East, the sky grew rosy as dawn spread her fingers.

“Now comes the trick,” Oglethorpe told his men. “We need enough light to see, so we can find their blockade, get our r lge, and put their ships below the water. If not before, when the first gun is fired, we’ll have to hold these guns until Azilia’s Hammer is through.”

“And after that, sir?”

“After that, we do as we can. If we can fight free, we’ll try and rendezvous with our companions. If we can’t, MacKay will know what to do. Finding the fleet THE SHADOWS OF GOD

from Venice is the most important measure, as we all know.” He clapped Unoka on the shoulder. “You see the plan of the fort? This battery sticks out from the rest of it, an arrow pointed at the sea. We have to hold the gates and the walls. See about constructing some sort of cover for us, and set all of the smaller guns facing back into the rest of the fort. They don’t know we have only fifty men. I have no idea how many they have, but I’ll guess at least twice that, and taloi besides, which we have no good defense against now.”

“You sayin”‘t’ey will win this.“

“I’m saying we can only hold out for so long, but the longer the better. Are you good for it?”

“T’at I am, mad General,” Unoka said.

Satisfied, Oglethorpe nodded, then stared back out over the river, waiting for the light, hoping that there would be no mist.

They fired their first shots an hour later, letting loose with the eighteen pounders. The big guns roared like titans and exhaled a black brimstone fog, snapping the brittle morning. A thousand cormorants lifted in a cloud from the trees, and the air itself felt as if it had cracked.

By then they could see what Azilia’s Hammer was up against: two steam galliots and a line of barges chained together. They

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