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“I’m going to talk to Captain Accompong.”
“ALONE, SIR?” FETTES WAS APPALLED. “SURELY YOU CANNOT MEAN TO GO up there alone!”
“I won’t be,” Grey assured him. “I’m taking my valet, and the servant boy. I’ll need someone who can translate for me, if necessary.”
Seeing the mulish cast settling upon Fettes’s brow, he sighed.
“To go there in force, Major, is to invite battle, and that is not what I want.”
“No, sir,” Fettes said dubiously, “but surely—a proper escort . . . !”
“No, Major.” Grey was courteous, but firm. “I wish to make it clear that I am coming to speak with Captain Accompong, and nothing more. I go alone.”
“Yes, sir.” Fettes was beginning to look like a block of wood that someone had set about with a hammer and chisel.
“As you wish, sir.”
Grey nodded and turned to go into the house, but then paused and turned back.
“Oh, there is one thing that you might do for me, Majo
r.”
Fettes brightened slightly.
“Yes, sir?”
“Find me a particularly excellent hat, would you? With gold lace, if possible.”
THEY RODE FOR NEARLY TWO DAYS BEFORE THEY HEARD THE FIRST OF THE horns. A high, melancholy sound in the twilight, it seemed far away, and only a sort of metallic note made Grey sure that it was not in fact the cry of some large, exotic bird.
“Maroons,” Rodrigo said under his breath, and crouched a little, as though trying to avoid notice, even in the saddle. “That’s how they talk to each other. Every group has a horn; they all sound different.”
Another long, mournful falling note. Was it the same horn? Grey wondered. Or a second, answering the first?
“Talk to each other, you say. Can you tell what they’re saying?”
Rodrigo had straightened up a little in his saddle, putting a hand automatically behind him to steady the leather box that held the most ostentatious hat available in Spanish Town.
“Yes, sah. They’re telling each other we’re here.”
Tom muttered something under his own breath that sounded like, “Could have told you that meself for free,” but declined to repeat or expand upon his sentiment when invited to do so.
They camped for the night under the shelter of a tree, so tired that they merely sat in silence as they ate, watching the nightly rainstorm come in over the sea, then crawled into the canvas tent Grey had brought. The young men fell asleep instantly to the pattering of rain above them.
Grey lay awake for a little, fighting tiredness, his mind reaching upward. He had worn uniform, though not full dress, so that his identity would be apparent. And his gambit so far had been accepted; they had not been challenged, let alone attacked. Apparently Captain Accompong would receive him.
Then what? He wasn’t sure. He did hope that he might recover his men—the two sentries who had disappeared on the night of Governor Warren’s murder. Their bodies had not been discovered, nor had any of their uniform or equipment turned up—and Captain Cherry had had the whole of Spanish Town and King’s Town turned over in the search. If they had been taken alive, though, that reinforced his impression of Accompong—and gave him some hope that this rebellion might be resolved in some manner not involving a prolonged military campaign fought through jungles and rocks, and ending in chains and executions. But if . . . sleep overcame him, and he lapsed into incongruous dreams of bright birds, whose feathers brushed his cheeks as they flew silently past.
Grey woke in the morning to the feel of sun on his face. He blinked for a moment, confused, and then sat up. He was alone. Truly alone.
He scrambled to his feet, heart thumping, reaching for his dagger. It was there in his belt, but that was the only thing still where it should be. His horse—all the horses—were gone. So was his tent. So was the pack mule and its panniers. And so were Tom and Rodrigo.
He saw this at once—the blankets in which they’d lain the night before were still there, tumbled into the bushes—but he called for them anyway, again and again, until his throat was raw with shouting.
From somewhere high above him, he heard one of the horns, a long drawn-out hoot that sounded mocking to his ears.
He understood the present message instantly. You took two of ours; we have taken two of yours.
