Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
The courtyard was a killing ground in the dust.
Maddox came through the breach with the Springfield up and the wind screaming around him.
The stone walls funneled the storm into the courtyard and turned it savage, sand blasting off the ancient blocks and whipping across the open ground in horizontal sheets that stung the skin and blinded the eyes.
The sound was immense, and the wind in the courtyard was a living roar that swallowed voices and gunshots alike, a noise so constant and so deep it became the texture of the air itself. The sand drove horizontally through the gap in the wall and scoured the courtyard stones.
Visibility was arm’s length. He pressed against the inside of the south wall and waited for his men to come through behind him, counting the seconds, feeling each one stretch.
Danny came next, moving low, his Winchester in both hands. Then Cobb, pale and tight-jawed, gripping his captured rifle. Boone was last, his bulk filling the breach, and he came through fast and dropped into a crouch beside Maddox without a word.
Four men inside the walls of a fortress held by a hundred.
The storm raged above them, turning the sky into a solid mass of brown that blocked the stars and the moon and any light that might have helped or hindered.
The only illumination came from the lanterns inside the main building; their glow diffused through the dust into a pale, sick yellow that turned the courtyard into a world of shadows and moving shapes.
Maddox pointed left. Boone nodded and moved along the south wall toward the east side of the compound, Cobb following. Maddox pointed right. Danny followed him along the south wall toward the west, toward the main building where the lights burned and the sounds of men carried through the storm.
They had covered twenty yards when a sentry stepped out of the dust five feet in front of Maddox.
The man was coughing, his bandana pulled over his face, his rifle slung on his back. He was not on watch. He was moving between buildings, probably looking for shelter from the worst of the wind.
He saw Maddox at the same instant Maddox saw him, and his mouth opened to shout.
Maddox hit him with the stock of the Springfield.
The blow caught the sentry across the jaw with a crack that the wind immediately swallowed, and the man dropped into the dust. Danny grabbed the man’s rifle and slung it across his back, adding another weapon to their thin arsenal.
They kept moving, stepping over the unconscious body, pressing against the rough stone of the wall.
Maddox’s pulse hammered in his throat. Thirty seconds inside the walls and already the fight was beginning.
The alarm came anyway. Not from the sentry but from the east wall, where Boone and Cobb had run into a group of fighters huddled around a sheltered fire pit.
The fire’s glow had betrayed their position, and the fighters had seen Boone’s bulk emerging from the dust before he could close the distance.
The crack of a Winchester split the wind, then another, then the sharp, flat report of Cobb’s captured rifle. Shouts erupted from the east side, confused and angry, and the camp came alive.
Men spilled out of the buildings with rifles and lanterns.
Some were half-dressed, pulled from sleep by the shooting, their shirts unbuttoned, and their boots unlaced.
Others were fully armed, the night watch, but the storm had driven them into shelter, and they had to fight through the wind just to reach the courtyard.
The dust swallowed them within feet of the doorways, turning them into shadows that moved and shouted and fired at sounds they could not see. The gunfight that followed was like no battle Maddox had ever fought.
No lines, no formations, no clear targets. Just muzzle flashes in the brown murk and the crack of rifles and the screams of men hit by bullets they never saw coming.
Maddox fired at a muzzle flash twenty yards to his right. The Springfield kicked against his shoulder and the flash disappeared. He worked the action and fired again at a shape that moved across the yellow glow of a lantern.
The shape fell. Danny was firing beside him, his Winchester working in a steady rhythm, each shot aimed at a flash or a shadow or the sound of boots on stone.
The dust was their ally. The defenders could not see the attackers, could not count them, and could not coordinate.
Every shot from the Rangers came from a different angle as they moved along the wall, firing and repositioning, firing and repositioning, creating the impression of a force that surrounded the mission on all sides.
Panic spread through the defenders faster than the dust. Men fired at their own comrades. Shouts contradicted shouts. Orders were given and lost in the wind.
On the east side, Boone’s Winchester kept barking. The big man had found his position and was pouring fire into the east courtyard with the systematic precision that made him the most dangerous man with a rifle in the company.
Every shot was aimed and every shot hit something. Between the reports, Maddox heard Boone shouting to Cobb, short, clipped commands that cut through the chaos.
Then the sound changed. From the east wall came a grinding crash of stone on stone, deep and resonant, and a section of the east wall gave way.
The damaged wall, weakened by the fire three nights ago and battered by the wind, collapsed inward in a cascade of pale stone blocks that sent dust billowing across the courtyard.
Boone was through the breach before the dust of the collapse had cleared, charging into the east compound with his Winchester up, and the defenders on that side broke and scattered before him like quail flushed from brush.
“Boone, left!” The shout came from Cobb, high and young. A fighter had emerged from behind a collapsed pillar, rifle leveled at Boone’s back. Boone was too far forward, too committed to the breach, and the man behind him had a clear shot.
Danny saved him. The Winchester cracked across the courtyard; the round crossing seventy yards of dust-choked air to strike the wall six inches from the fighter’s head. The man flinched hard; his shot went wide, and Boone spun and put a round into the pillar that drove the man back into cover.
Cobb was there a second later, coming around the pillar from the opposite side, and the fighter threw down his rifle and raised his hands.
It was not the only time that night that the four of them saved each other’s lives. In the dust and the dark and the chaos of the mission courtyard, the difference between living and dying was measured in fractions of seconds and the trust that a man behind you would see what you could not.
They fought as a unit, each man covering the others, each man trusting the others to be where they needed to be, and the trust was earned by every hour of shared hardship since the canyon.
A bond forged in the dirt of a foreign country, tested by fire and ambush and desert heat, and now held together by the simple, wordless understanding that they would not let each other fall.
Maddox pushed toward the main building. The courtyard was littered with debris from the earlier fire: charred wagon timbers, collapsed canvas frames, the blackened ribs of supply crates.
He used them for cover, moving from one piece of wreckage to the next, the Springfield’s barrel hot against his hand.
Danny moved beside him, covering his left flank, both firing and moving through the courtyard in a steady advance that drove the defenders back toward the church.
Spent brass clinked and rolled on the courtyard stones.
The smell of burnt powder filled the air, sharp and bitter beneath the dry taste of the dust.
The resistance stiffened as they neared the church.
The core fighters had rallied there, forming a rough line across the courtyard entrance with overturned tables and supply crates for cover.
These were not conscripts. These were Calderon’s hand-picked soldiers, the men who had planned the canyon ambush, who had run the supply lines, who believed in the gold crown and the kingdom it represented.
They fired with discipline, covering each other, holding the line with the grim competence of men who had chosen their king and intended to die for him if the night demanded it.
Maddox dropped behind a stone water trough and reloaded the Springfield. His fingers were thick with dust, and the cartridges slipped in his grip, so he had to wipe his hands on his trousers before each round would seat properly.
The trough smelled of stagnant water and algae. A bullet struck the stone rim above his head and sprayed fragments into his hair. Fourteen rounds fired, fourteen rounds loaded from the captured pouches. Danny was behind a pillar to his right, trading shots with the barricade.
The dust was thinning as the night deepened. The storm was weakening; the wind dropping from a scream to a moan, and with each passing minute the visibility improved and the advantage of surprise faded.
They needed to break the line before the storm cleared, or the hundred men inside the walls would see that the attacking force was four, not forty.
Boone solved it. A crashing volley from the east, rapid fire, six shots in eight seconds, poured into the right side of the barricade.
The defenders swung to face the new threat, and Danny fired into the gap.
Two men behind the barricade fell. The rest pulled back toward the church doorway, and the line broke.
Maddox charged. He covered the open ground in a dead sprint, leaping the overturned table, his boots hitting the courtyard stones in a drumbeat rhythm that matched the pounding of his heart. A bullet tugged at his sleeve. Another cracked past his ear, close enough to feel the heat.
He did not slow down. Danny was beside him, stride for stride, firing his Winchester one-handed at the retreating defenders. They reached the church steps and flattened against the wall on either side of the open doorway, chests heaving, the stone rough and cool against their backs.
Inside, lanterns burned. The main hall of the mission church was a long, vaulted space with stone columns and a floor of packed earth. Wooden pews had been pushed against the walls to make room for bedrolls and equipment; it smelled of sweat and oil and the sharp tang of spent powder.
Men crouched behind the stone columns with rifles. The air was thick with dust and powder smoke, and the light was dim and wavering, turning every shadow into a threat.
At the far end of the hall, a figure descended the stone steps from the bell tower.
He wore a gold crown. Even in the dim light, through the smoke and the dust, the crown caught the lantern glow and burned.
Calderon walked down the steps with his saber drawn and his pistol in his other hand and the crown on his head, and his presence filled the hall the way the storm filled the sky.
Total, overwhelming, and impossible to ignore.
He stopped at the base of the steps and looked toward the doorway where Maddox stood.
Their eyes met across the length of the ruined church, through smoke and dust and the bodies of fallen men. The distance between them was forty feet. The saber gleamed in the lantern light, and the pistol was steady in Calderon’s hand.
Calderon smiled. Not the theatrical smile of a man performing for his army.
A different smile. Private and sharp, and hungry.
The smile of a man who had been waiting for exactly this moment, who had engineered it, who had let his prisoner escape and watched his army shrink and sealed his gates and waited because this was what he wanted.
Not victory by numbers. Victory by will, face to face, king against the man who dared to challenge his crown.
The king had come to meet his challenger.