The Barbary Pirates (35 page)

“Hello?”

No answer.

“Pierre, I need a torch.”

Then there was a sudden agitation in the pit below, mute but frenzied, and suddenly a leap up the side. I got a glimpse of scale and lizard claw and then a chain yanked tight as the monster fell again into the blackness. I lurched backward. It was the nightmare from the ship’s hold! We’d found the dragon again.

Then my companion yelled. “
Mon dieu
! Even homelier than you!”

“The lizard?”

“Your jailer!”

I spun around. It was Omar, filling the doorway to this chamber like a swollen bull and holding my friend with a forearm the thickness of a log locked around Pierre’s chest and arms. The Frenchman was purpling. A heavy steel chain hung from Omar’s other fist, his bulk making its links look almost delicate.

“I wait for
you
,” the Dungeon Master rumbled. “I woke because the weeping stopped. Something is very different in my lair, I sense.” He sniffed the rancid air with his brutish, broken nose, as if freedom had a smell. “So I think, maybe the one they wouldn’t let me have has foolishly come back as they promised. Do you remember my table, pretty one?”

“We’re not as helpless this time, Omar,” I said as I raised my rifle. “Let my companion go.”

“All right.” He hurled Pierre at me to spoil my aim, the voyageur sprawling at the edge of the dungeon pit, and then quicker than a cobra strike—unbelievable speed for such a large man—the chain lashed out and caught my rifle muzzle. I fired, but my bullet just seared his shoulder. The chain wrapped my barrel and yanked the weapon from my hands, slamming it against the dungeon wall and snapping its neck. My precious longrifle fell into dust, the butt hanging like a broken hinge, held at the trigger by a single screw.

“You monster!”

Omar laughed, picking up the broken longrifle. “You miss, little man.”

“Little man!” Pierre cried in indignation.

He tossed my gun past us down into the pit and I winced as I heard it scrape and clatter. It was the gun I’d labored on for long days in Jerusalem with Jericho and Miriam, the weapon that had carried me through Acre and Egypt, the rifle that had defended us during the relentless chase of the Ojibway and Dakota on the American frontier. It made a greasy splash at the bottom. “You can share with dragon.” Then he laid his chain on his shoulders and picked up Pierre’s fallen blunderbuss. The torturer loomed like a titan, tendons inflated, his eyes a squint of hatred and triumph, his mouth a pitiless smirk as he stepped toward us. “This gun can hit both.”

A bellow came from that damned monstrous lizard, no doubt waiting for dinner. Yussef Karamanli had assembled a satanic zoo! The agitated animal bounced off the pit walls, trying to process in its primitive brain why the shattered rifle had fallen from our struggles above.

“You can jump into the pit and try your luck against the dragon,” Omar said. “Or you can let this shotgun knock you in.”

“Let us go, Omar,” I tried, “or there are two hundred prisoners that will take vengeance on you if they know you’ve harmed us.”

“What will they know? You will be in the lizard’s belly. Besides, the Christian dogs will be running the other way to escape. Yes, Omar has long planned this. I am not stupid like people think.” He gestured impatiently with his head. “Jump.” He fingered the links on his neck. “I do not like guns because they are too quick. If you don’t jump, maybe I will drive you in with my chain.”

“Don’t give the bastard the satisfaction, Ethan,” said Pierre, his eyes bright and watchful. “Make him shoot.”

“That gun will kill us instantly.”

“Exactly. A mercy.” Pierre’s eyes scanned the floor of the chamber and he picked up a chunk of stone. “You think us little men, giant?” He hefted the rock. “This is what a little man can do, Goliath!” And he threw with perfect aim, the missile bouncing off the Dungeon Master’s forehead. Omar actually stepped back, his eyes squinting in pain and confusion. Then another rock, and another.

“How many little men have you bullied in your lifetime, ogre?” Pierre challenged. Another rock, this one on Omar’s cheek, and I saw the white spark of a piece of tooth flying. There were roars below as the lizard thrashed and spun.

“How many have you never given a chance to fight back?”

Omar howled and lifted his fat gun. Blood was running from his forehead as he squinted at Pierre. The mouth of the blunderbuss looked wide as a cannon, and I tensed for the spray of balls.

Pierre seized me. “Turn away!”

There was a boom, flash, and crack—and the blunderbuss blew up. Pieces flew in all directions and Omar shrieked, hands to his blinded face, staggering in shock.

“Now, seize his chain!” We’d been stung with fragments from the explosion, but not seriously wounded. Each of us desperately seized the end of the chain draped on the Dungeon Master’s shoulders and threw a turn around his neck and pulled. He lurched and stumbled past us, blind, bleeding, and crying. The other end of the chain rattled down into the pit.

The lizard, enraged, leaped to take the metal in its jaws and fall back.

The weight jerked Omar over the lip of the chasm.

The ogre fell yelling. There was a thud and muddy splash as the Dungeon Master struck the bottom of his well, and then cries like the ones he elicited from his victims as the bizarre beast, ravenously hungry, went at him. Omar howled, and the two thrashed and snarled in the darkness below, chain rattling as they wrestled.

“It would have been easier for him if he’d died from the backfire,” the Frenchman said, peering over.

“My God, did you know the blunderbuss was going to explode?”

“Of course. I didn’t have a sling to deal with Goliath, but when he seized me I jammed a rock tight in the barrel. Then more rocks to throw, to annoy him enough to fire.”

“Couldn’t you have confided? I just aged ten years.”

“You’re terrible at keeping a secret.”

I staggered to fetch a torch, cautiously crept to the lip again, and looked over. Omar was sprawled on his back, eyes wide and sightless, face shredded, his mouth making faint mewing noises as the dragon fed on his torso. His hands had seized the barrel of my longrifle for a club but only bent it in agony.

“I’ve lost my gun again.”

“And I do not care to fetch it back for you,” Pierre added.

I watched the lizard tail thrashing back and forth as it gorged.

“The animal may eat his fill before the real monster expires,” the voyageur predicted with the harsh experience of the wilderness traveler. “He’ll chew out the soft parts first, the ones that kill slowly so the other meat stays fresh. The ogre will die in hours or days, but if not the muck will seep into his wounds and give him sepsis. That would be a more fitting end for a torturer, I think.”

“You don’t seem to like our Dungeon Master.”

“He should not have called a North Man little.” Pierre watched the lizard feed. “They have truly ugly animals here in Africa.”

“I think it came from the East Indies. And a leopard chewed a dog, upstairs.”

“Probably a giraffe in a tower, and a warthog in an antechamber. Too bad your zoologist friend, Cuvier, did not come ashore to catalog it all.”

I was recovering my breath and wits. “By the sling of David, how did you learn to throw like that?”

“A rock in the forest can save powder and gain dinner, too. Indians learn to throw. I was going to teach you, had you ever learned to paddle properly, but I cannot instruct everything at once. You know it remains amazing, donkey, how many unpleasant enemies you seem to accumulate.”

“I’m equally astounded. I try to be friends with everybody.”

“Yes, we are people of good will, you and I, but I suspect that by now there are hundreds more here in Tripoli hoping to kill us. If only everyone could be like Pierre Radisson! Well, come. We have many more things to destroy before we can make good our escape.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

It was almost morning. We told the prisoners to make their break
,
hoping the exodus would distract the janissaries as the alarm was raised. As those released stormed and staggered out the tavern gate and soldiers began to shout and fire, Pierre showed us the side tunnel that Fulton had taken to try to get closer to the mirror. We followed, Astiza confirming we were going in the right direction.

Little Harry had sensibly fallen into exhausted sleep in her arms.

I felt naked again without my rifle or any other weapon, but carried Astiza’s shield. There was a Greek Gorgon embossed on its surface, her hideous grimace and hair of snakes enough to turn any enemy into stone. The hero Perseus had used a mirrored shield so he didn’t have to look directly at the monster, cutting off her head and ultimately giving the trophy to Athena for use on the goddess’s armor. This piece, inspired by the story, might predate Arab manufacture and stem back to Archimedes’ time or before.

We emerged on a terrace that faced away from the town’s harbor and the coming sun. Yussef’s blocky castle loomed high behind us. The sky was aglow with approaching dawn, the last pink flushing away. Across a gap of flat-roofed houses was that smaller fort on a rocky knob that gave a clear view in all directions. Atop it was the mirror, its edge crisp as a planet, men hurriedly pulling tarps from its glittering surface. The weapon had been shined to a little sun itself, and its petal-like extensions were being unfolded. It was a bronze flower, set to embrace and reflect the coming morning.

“Ah, my necessary counterweights,” Fulton greeted. “Just in time!”

“Counterweights?”

“A way to prove useful.” The inventor had lashed together a tall trestle frame from pole lumber being used to repair a roof, and across this at right angles was a beam some twenty feet long. It was lashed in the middle so each end could bob up or down like a child’s seesaw, or a scale. One end was pointed skyward, aimed at the mirror. The other end, down on the ground, was being fussed over by the inventor.

“It would be most appropriate to build a catapult of Archimedes to combat the ancient Greek’s own mirror,” Fulton said. “But a true torsion device of the kind the mathematician most likely built against Roman ships would take far more time, tools, and craftsmanship than we can muster on this exposed balcony.”

There was a flash, and the sun cleared the eastern horizon. Even lit from the side, the mirror across from us began to shimmer.

“As you can see, to reach the fort where the mirror is, we’d have to leave Yussef’s complex, find our way through the winding streets of an aroused city, and somehow break into another fortress defended by hundreds of men. The only alternative I can think of is to hurl my torpedo through the air and have it fall at the base of the mirror. Fortunately, there seems to have been some tumult in the palace behind me and the sentries watching this terrace disappeared.” He raised a questioning eyebrow in my direction. “If we time the fuse correctly, it will explode shortly after landing and, if in exactly the right place, will damage the mirror beyond repair.”

“We’re working with Ethan Gage,” Pierre warned. “Do not expect precision.”

“No, he improvises. But that’s good, too. I see you have fetched your woman and child, Gage, and by the sound of it have woken half of Tripoli doing it, and maybe the dead as well. Perhaps the distraction will give us enough time.”

“We emptied their prison.”

“How helpful. Now, I’ve constructed a small version of a simple medieval war machine the French called the trebuchet. I attach the bomb to this end of my pivoting beam here, tie that end to the terrace floor, and weight the other end of the beam. When I cut the rope holding the lower end, the counterweight comes plunging down, the missile end goes flying up, and our mine with its fuse flies over these houses. We destroy the mirror, run to the harbor, and make our escape.” He counted us. “I thought by now that one or two of you would be dead. It’s going to be very crowded in my submarine.”

“My son doesn’t take much room.”

“Well, I’d include him before you in any event—and your pretty woman, too.” He grinned. “But we’ll squeeze in Ethan Gage as well! Now, the sun is climbing. Are you ready? They haven’t spied us yet.”

“Ready for what?”

“Notice that the opposite end of the trebuchet has no counterweight. Nothing came readily to hand. Then I realized three adults represent a good five hundred pounds. So what you must do is climb up to grasp the very end of my makeshift catapult. When I cut the rope from this other end you will crash down, the bomb will fly up, and my experiment will be completed.”

“Crash down?”

“Think of it as fun.”

Sunlight was flooding the rooftops of Tripoli.

“What about Horus?” Astiza asked.

“I’ll hold him,” Fulton said. “I’m good with children.”

She looked from one of us to the other. “Absolutely not. Not one of you men has been good for him yet. And this is just the kind of stupid device boys would invent.
You
three climb up there and
I’ll
cut the rope. I’ve already had to leave my son with his father, and he’s had so much misadventure it will be a miracle if he doesn’t grow up as disturbed and incorrigible as Ethan.”

“I’m not incorrigible. Just improvisational.”

“I’m heavier anyway,” Fulton conceded. “It’s as you say, Gage: your wife is smarter than any of us. Here, let me cut the fuse to length.”

She glanced at me. “Did you call me your wife to your friends?”

I swallowed, and grinned. “Possibly.” Had I? I couldn’t remember.

“Without informing me?”

“Just as you neglected to tell me I was a father.”

She considered our mutual miscommunication, her expression inscrutable. My grin was growing anxious. I worried that I’d annoyed her—or the opposite, pleased her! Both seemed risky, even calamitous. It’s easier for women, I thought jealously. In our world they need a provider and protector. So a man provides, giving up a variety of quim for one, and gets…what? Love, help, constancy, and a sum greater than its parts: a family. He gets a son, and a lifetime of pride, worry, and responsibility. He gets the half of him that’s missing.