Page 119 of Confounding Oaths
“We’ll trade.” The voice was not the captain’s. It belonged to the younger Mr. Caesar, dashing forth from the shadows with an air of panicked heroism and addressing himself to the major directly. “You’re not here for the gods, you’re here because I made you angry. You want to cut a throat, cut mine.”
“John,” the captain said with affectionate weariness, “don’t be such a fucking—”
“Done,” said the major. “You”—he indicated one of the masked soldiers—“seize him.”
The man did as commanded, but got only about halfway towards the younger Mr. Caesar before the elder, striding from theincreasingly empty hiding place of the Irregulars with pistol unerringly levelled, intercepted him. “Touch my son,” he said with the same level but authoritative tone that had made him so popular on the speaking circuit, “and you will die.”
All around the courtyard soldiers were raising muskets, but thus far nobody had risked being the first to fire. And despite the major’s bargain Lieutenant Reyne had yet to set down his knife. “The sacrifice,” he explained with the timeless patience that has, throughout history, characterised those shackled to incompetent superiors, “must be a virgin, and that mandecidedlyis not.”
The major sneered. “Really? Way I hear it he’s never been with a woman.”
“In the eyes of Artemis, that is not the criterion.”
And then, to my overwhelming joy, the major said: “Fuck Artemis.”
The bear growled.
“Major Bloodworth,” pleaded Lieutenant Reyne, striking a practised balance between entreaty and calm, “I strongly suggest that you recant that. Quickly.”
Strong suggestions, however, did not go over well with the major. “Fuck Artemis,” he repeated, “for a Grecian whore. I’m not here to play your petty games, Reyne. I’m here to teachthat man”—he pointed an accusing finger at Mr. Caesar—“a lesson, and I will do it with or without your pagan bitch goddess.”
Readers, you know that I love chaos. And what happened next I loved a great deal.
With a roar to shake rooftops, the bear—a vast American grizzly gifted to the king some years prior—broke free of its handler and rushed to defend the honour of its patroness as only a six-hundred-pound omnivore can. Several of the masked soldiersattempted to stop it, but, having no tools at their disposal save notoriously inaccurate black powder weaponry, they succeeded only in provoking a firefight.
The man who had been charged with apprehending the younger Mr. Caesar moved to make good on his orders and progressed a full two paces before the elder Mr. Caesar made good on his word and shot him full in the chest.
A volley of musket fire rang out from the Irregulars and then, through the smoke, they charged with war cries and bayonets. Boy William, hands tied, squirmed wormlike towards his companions, but Lieutenant Reyne—abandoning his knife and drawing a sword—reared above him like a praying mantis. This left me with something of a dilemma. I so enjoy seeing mortals dismembered, and now I needed to decide whether I watched a young boy get run through with a blade or an old man get ripped apart by a bear.
I chose bear, and I was not disappointed. The major had never insulted me personally, but he was such arudegentleman and watching King George’s pet grizzly bear him—my apologies, the pun in this case was truly unintentional—to the ground, clamp its jaws around his head, and then bite with a pressure in the region of a thousand pounds per square inch was eminently satisfying. Of all the Hellenes, I have always had a quiet respect for Artemis. Insult most gods and they will spin elaborate schemes of vengeance involving falling in love with your own reflection or being transformed into a spider or having your whole city burned down by men hiding inside a big wooden mammal. But sweet Artemis will usually just fucking kill you.
The bloody matter of the bear had distracted me just long enough that when I returned my attention to Boy William I expected him to have been stabbed already. Which would not necessarily have been a total loss; he might still have wriggled in anamusing fashion. But I had reckoned without the innate love of drama amongst almost all of the conflict’s primary belligerents. So Lieutenant Reyne had felt it necessary to repeat his dedication to the goddess before he struck, which had permitted Captain James to intercept his blade just in time, which had in turn allowed the younger Mr. Caesar to dash towards the boy, seize his hand, and drag him to safety. Or at least to something resembling safety given that they were still, variously: surrounded by armed men who wanted them dead, under the watchful gaze of a bloodthirsty deity, and eight feet from an angry grizzly.
“I said things’d be different if we crossed paths again,” said the captain in a matter-of-fact tone.
“They’re certainly more wasteful.” The lieutenant aimed a cut at Captain James’s head, but the captain turned it aside easily. “How many of my men have you killed already?”
“As many as it took. You shouldn’t have come for one of mine.” The captain fought with untutored grace and a strength born of something purer than vengeance. He thrust clean at the lieutenant’s throat, making him spring back.
With an almost piteous expression, Lieutenant Reyne shook his head. “If only you’d been a man of vision. We could have done remarkable things.”
The lieutenant was keeping a cautious distance from Captain James, which I thought showed a rather unsporting commitment to self-preservation. He circled widdershins to put allies behind him. And, perhaps more important, to turn the captain’s back to the bear.
An experienced swordsman, if an unpolished one, Captain James was keenly aware of the risks of being outflanked, but with the rest of his men engaged elsewhere there was little he could do about it. He risked a glance over his shoulder to make certain thathe wasn’t about to be torn apart by an enraged ursine, and in that moment of less than complete focus, Lieutenant Reyne was on him.
Watching from a scant few feet away with Boy William at his side, Mr. Caesar felt a deep swell of nausea. Despite all he’d been through, he still wasn’t used to the sound of gunsmoke, nor the sounds of men screaming, and most certainly not the roars of wild beasts, and it was a mystery to him how the captain and the others could go so heedless into danger.
Biting his lip and trying to do something, anything, to feel less helpless and useless, he did his best to untie Boy William’s hands, but he had never been good with knots. As it turned out, however, he was far better with knots than he was with bears.
The American grizzly, having had all it needed of the major, was returning to the fray guided by its hunger and the will of a goddess. It had avenged the insult to Artemis quite adequately, but there was still the matter of the sacrifice, of virgin blood offered up to the weaver of moonlight. And so it paced now towards Boy William with hunger in its eyes and a feral piety in its heart.
Barely able to move, Mr. Caesar had just the wherewithal to take two steps forwards and place himself between the beast and Boy William, although how much protection he expected his squishy mortal body to offer against the bulk of an apex predator I do not really know. Whatever his intended outcome, the tableau of the younger Mr. Caesar standing as tall as he could manage betwixt the boy and the bear was striking enough that it struck Captain James a fatal distraction.
Turning his eyes from his own enemy for just long enough to utter a frankly uninspired cry of “John,” the captain was knocked at once to his knees by Lieutenant Reyne, too close to bring thepoint of his sword to bear but well placed to drive the pommel into the back of the captain’s skull.
Whatever distress Mr. Caesar may have felt at watching his lover fall was swamped by the still greater distress of being charged by a third of a ton of fur, fangs, and flesh. With one hand he shoved Boy William backwards as far as he could while with the other he covered his eyes so that he would not need to look death in the face.
Thus he did not see the bear barrelling towards him, nor did he see Barryson charging past him in the opposite direction, his hair wild and his eyes wide and a war anthem of the old north on his lips.
