Phillipe paused, then went on, “For now, my friend, we need to remain focused on protecting the defenseless down there”—he nodded at the compound—“and to do all we can to facilitate their rescue. As for the backers...we will need to leave hunting them to others.”
Caleb snorted. He didn’t argue—couldn’t argue. He did, however, mutter, “At least for now.”
* * *
Muldoon was, as always, the last of the trio to set his tankard on the tavern table and sit down.
The instant he had, the first man stated, “I called on Undoto last night. He’d been to Kale’s camp.” In blunt, unadorned terms, the man repeated Undoto’s description of what he had found at Kale’s Homestead.
“No one?” Muldoon stared. “Where the devil have they all gone?”
The first man swallowed a draft of his ale, then set down his mug. “More pertinently, where is Kale, and what is he up to?”
“Up to?” Winton stared at the first man. “What do you mean—up to?”
The first man’s face hardened. “I mean is he playing some game with us? Is he truly gone, or does he just want more money? Or has he actually decamped for some reason?”
“And if so,” Muldoon said, “what was that reason, and is it something we should be concerned about, too?”
“Exactly.” The first man looked at Muldoon. “I’ve heard and seen nothing that would suggest any repercussions from Kale’s crew’s previous stumbles—the kidnapping of Frobisher’s lady and the one you sent them to take—Miss Hopkins. Have you?”
Muldoon shook his head. “Nary a whisper. If something’s happened to Kale—if someone has scared him off—then I can’t see how it could have anything to do with his work for us.” He paused, then added, “That might be it, you know. Kale worked for whoever paid him. Perhaps someone else offered him another job, in some other place, and he and his men have gone off to take it.”
The first man grimaced. “Sadly, that’s all too possible.” After a moment of studying the table, he went on, “Regardless of whether he’s gone off or been scared off, it appears Kale is no longer in our picture, which means we have no way of contacting Dubois short of one of us going all the way to the mine.” He glanced at Winton, then looked back at Muldoon. “Something I suspect none of us want to do.”
Muldoon snorted. “You have that right. However, Dubois knows who we are and where we are. I think we can be reasonably certain that he’ll be in touch.”
The first man nodded. “That’s true, but while Dubois making contact with us will re-establish communication, the significantly more important issue is how we supply him with the men he needs to open up the second tunnel and, also, the mining supplies he’ll continue to need.”
Muldoon swore and set down his tankard with a thump. “This is all so frustrating! Dubois is desperate for more men, and at last we have more men ready to be picked up—but now Kale’s vanished and not here to do the kidnapping and delivery.”
“What’s truly frustrating,” the first man said, his words clipped, “is that without Dubois getting those extra men, he won’t be able to open the second tunnel—not without moving men from the first tunnel and lowering overall production at precisely the time we’ve promised our backers that we’ll increase production.”
His expression grim, Muldoon nodded. “We’re finally poised to meet our targets—and get our final payments from our damned backers—and out of the blue this happens.”
A minute passed in tense silence, then Winton ventured, “We’re not going to have to kidnap men ourselves, are we?”
The first man humphed. “I’m sure Dubois will agree to take on that task—for more cash. He refused to at the outset because Kale was better placed to carry out that side of things, and Dubois would rather not risk operating inside the settlement. But with the entire scheme now resting on him getting more men, I’m sure he’ll see his way to overcoming his reluctance.”
Muldoon snorted in cynical agreement. After a second, he added, “We’ll have to pay Dubois more to send his men to fetch the mining supplies directly from Winton here, too.” Muldoon spun his tankard between his hands. “I can’t see any way around that.”
“Not if we’re to meet the demands of our infernal backers.” The first man drained his mug and set it down with a disaffected clunk. “Which is to say, not if we want to see a penny more of the money they’ve promised us.”
“At least the stones are still getting out,” Winton said. “The backers can’t complain about that.”
Another silence fell, this one longer and weighted with welling unease.
Eventually, the first man said, “There’s nothing we can do at this time. We’ll need to wait for Dubois to contact us, and proceed from there.”
“As best we can.” Muldoon continued to stare at his tankard. After another fraught silence, he said, “I’d still like to know where Kale went and why.”
The first man said nothing. Neither did Winton.
Yet uncertainty hovered over them all.
CHAPTER 8
A flicker of unease stirred in Katherine’s mind as she walked toward the gates, the basket she’d just fetched from the kitchen swinging from her hand.
Diccon had gone ahead. All had agreed that he should keep his distance from Frobisher’s camp, at least for today, when Katherine herself was due to return and give Frobisher the answers to his questions.
In response to that vaguest of vague premonitions—the sort one felt over tempting Fate one step too far—as she neared the gates, she mentally cataloged all the guards she’d seen.
All were at their usual stations. Not one showed the slightest interest in her and her mission—supposedly to fetch more of Dubois’s favorite nuts.
She passed through the gates and walked into the cool of the jungle’s shadows—and told herself not to be silly. Nothing had occurred to alert Dubois to Frobisher and his men’s existence. Instead, that spark of anxiety almost certainly sprang from her own concern over the man and his friends—her determination that they should not come to harm through their espousing of the captives’ cause, and that nothing she or the other captives did should result in such harm.
Indeed, if she hadn’t agreed to return with the answers Frobisher had wanted, she wouldn’t have risked venturing out today—or at least, she wouldn’t have ventured in his direction. Unfortunately, avoiding him today would contravene her “do nothing to cause him and his men harm” dictum; if having agreed to come, she didn’t arrive, she wasn’t at all sure he wouldn’t grow concerned on her account and do something rash. Like coming too close to the compound looking for her and getting captured.
Her feet followed the path to his camp without conscious instruction. As she walked through the prevailing gloom, she rehearsed the answers she’d come to convey. First, that if there was no further change other than more mining supplies eventually arriving, and specifically, no more men were added to their impressed workforce, then based on what Dixon had seen of the second deposit, he was confident that they would be able to stretch the productive life of the mine into September. As for Frobisher and his men doing anything directly to assist the captives, she’d been relieved when all the men, and Harriet, too, had reacted very much as she herself had; they’d all agreed there was no assistance Frobisher and his crew might render them that would be worth the risk of alerting Dubois to their presence.
She smiled and took the fork onto the disused path. Frobisher and his men simply being there had raised the confidence of all the captives and bolstered their inner strength—their determination to hold on until the rescue force arrived and to aid in their own liberation.
In a situation such as they, the captives, were in, hope wasn’t an insubstantial thing.
* * *
Caleb and Phillipe made their way as quickly as they dared down the
animal track and on toward their camp. They’d spent the morning lolling on the rock shelf, observing the routines of the guards and the captives, confirming that, day to day, very little in the compound changed.
They’d seen Diccon leave as he usually did, but no slender brown-haired young woman had walked out with him.
Caleb had frowned and sent Ellis to rendezvous with Diccon and learn whether Miss Fortescue was intending to meet with them that day. As it transpired, Diccon had headed for the area near the lake, so Ellis had been back in fifteen minutes with the news that it had been decided that Miss Fortescue would come out later, separately, to their camp, and that Diccon should keep his distance.
“A wise precaution,” Phillipe had opined. “No sense in risking both couriers at once.”
Caleb had nodded and continued watching.
Ten minutes ago, they’d seen Katherine Fortescue come out of the cleaning shed. Unhurriedly, she’d rounded the base of the guard tower and the end of the mercenaries’ barracks and had gone into the kitchen.
Caleb had scanned all the guards in sight, but none had shown any signs of especial alertness.
Katherine had ducked out from under the kitchen’s awning and, apparently carefree, had walked to the gates.
Caleb, Phillipe, Ellis, and Norton had continued to watch, searching for any suggestion of pursuit, but of course, there had been none. Not one of the guards had done more than yawn.
Eager to get down to meet with Katherine, who had, indeed, walked off in the direction of their camp, Caleb had tweaked Phillipe’s sleeve. They’d left Ellis and Norton on watch and headed down.
Caleb finally reached the flatter going of the jungle floor. Grinning in anticipation, not least of seeing the lovely Katherine again, he tacked through the palms on a more or less direct route to the camp.
* * *
Katherine kept her ears peeled as, her pace deliberately unhurried, she neared the side track to Frobisher’s camp; she half expected him and his friend Lascelle to appear out of the jungle to greet her. She’d stopped at a tree along the disused path to gather nuts, just in case any guards had thought to follow her, but she’d seen no one. Eventually, she’d picked up her basket and walked on.
Regardless of her concerns—or perhaps because of them—she wanted to see Caleb again. Just seeing him would be enough; she just needed to know he was safe.
She halted at the mouth of the narrow track and glanced back the way she’d come. All lay silent and unmoving in the jungle dimness. Reassured, she started down the track. Even if Caleb and Lascelle weren’t as yet in the camp, some of their men would be. She could wait with them.
The narrow track wended this way and that, as all tracks through the jungle did. Eventually, it led over a lip and dipped via a series of natural steps formed by the gnarled roots of trees down to the floor of the clearing.
She reached the lip and started down the more densely shadowed tunnel enclosing the steps. As she neared the bottom, she heard the tramp of footsteps approaching the clearing from the opposite side.
She stepped off the last root-step and into the clearing proper—just as Frobisher, with Lascelle at his shoulder, stepped into the clearing.
She smiled and knew the gesture was too bright, too brilliant—too revealing.
Frobisher met her eyes, saw her smile. His expression started to lift, to light in response—but then his features froze.
He froze.
Lascelle did, too.
She glanced around and saw that every man in the clearing had frozen, some even in the act of rising.
“Thank you, Miss Fortescue.”
The words—that voice!—sent ice streaking down her spine.
Before she could react—before she could whirl and face the monster behind her—an arm like steel clamped around her waist and jerked her back against a body like rock.
Her nerves shrieked.
Her stunned gaze fell on the tip of a dagger that suddenly appeared pressed against her right breast. Her scrambling wits informed her—screamed at her—that Dubois was holding the wicked-looking blade in the hand above her waist. That he’d followed her—somehow—and she hadn’t known. Caleb hadn’t known.
And now the monster had her...
Even as her panicking mind caught up with that reality, Dubois raised his other arm—his right—and leveled the pistol he held at Caleb’s chest. The sound of the pistol cocking rang through the clearing.
Thudding footsteps came racing toward the clearing, approaching along the same path as Caleb and Lascelle had arrived on.
Two men burst into the clearing—running into Lascelle and pushing him and Caleb forward.
“Dubois and his men—” The breathless warning cut off as the newcomers realized they were too late. Panting, they slowly righted themselves, their gazes fixing, like those of every other man in the clearing, on Dubois.
For one hysterical moment, Katherine felt as if she’d become invisible—then she realized the action was deliberate. Every man in the clearing did not want Dubois’s attention on her.
She could have told them that was a vain hope.
Sure enough, Dubois stated, in that tone of voice she’d long ago learned to hate, “Let me tell you what is going to happen. If you give me and my men the slightest trouble—show the faintest hint of resistance—I will slice Miss Fortescue’s so-lovely face.”
He shifted his hold, and the dagger flashed—a whisker from her cheek.
She squeaked in sheer terror and instinctively pushed back, but with Dubois behind her, his shoulder against her head, she didn’t gain so much as an inch of distance from the silvery blade. Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. Her breathing came in shallow pants. Every iota of her awareness had focused on the dagger’s blade—on the horrible promise it made.
Dimly, as if from a distance, Dubois’s hateful voice penetrated the fog of panic shrouding her brain. “Once—one deep, scarring cut for every little instance of resistance on your part. Just think of how she will look if you try to fight. And if you try to escape, I make you this promise: Once we have you captured again—and we will succeed in that—I will tie you up and tie her to a post, and inch by inch, I will strip the skin from her body—”
“Enough!” Caleb held up a hand in surrender. He met Dubois’s pale eyes. “You’ve made your point. What do you want us to do?”
For an instant, a depraved soul stared back at him—a monster denied his next feeding—but then Dubois blinked, and the pragmatic mercenary captain was back.
“Disarm. Every last weapon. Every last blade. Any weapon discovered later will earn Miss Fortescue a cut—on her breasts.”
Caleb clamped his jaw shut. Slowly, he withdrew his sword and crouched to lay it on the ground before him. He stripped the knives from his belt and pulled out those hidden in his boots. As he did, his mind raced—assessing, sorting through his options, searching for the best way forward.
This was what he was good at—what he was renowned for. Conquering the unexpected, especially when the unexpected appeared to be invincible.
The problem, his reckless brain informed him, was that in this case, he needed Dubois to continue to believe that he—Dubois—was invincible.
With an inward sigh, Caleb straightened. He glanced around at his and Phillipe’s men. “Every weapon as instructed.”
He didn’t think any of them would be fool enough to attempt to conceal anything, but Dubois might appreciate hearing Caleb’s capitulation repeated. Giving the man everything his warped heart might wish for was, at present, Caleb’s best way forward.
Aside from Dubois, Caleb counted at least six mercenaries with muskets trained on him and his men. Two stood on the track above Dubois, their guns leveled over his shoulders. The others had fanned outward, forming an arc of firepower to back up Dubois’s th
reats.
To Caleb’s mind, Dubois and his internal monster needed no support.
When the last blade had fallen to the scattered leaves covering the clearing’s floor, Dubois jerked his head at one of his men.
The man set aside his musket and walked into the clearing. He swiped up a loose canvas sheet, laid it down, and quickly collected all the weapons, efficiently checking the pistols to ensure they were unprimed before tossing them onto the heap, too. Finally, he gathered the edges of the sheet, creating a clattering bundle he then hoisted over his shoulder.
Dubois said, “Take those back to the armory.”
The man grunted and set off, cutting through the jungle rather than interfering with Dubois’s or the other mercenaries’ lines of sight.
That still left far too many men—far too many muskets—to consider any action, even if Caleb managed to separate Dubois from Katherine. Besides, his reckless and whirring brain informed him, joining the captives might actually prove the wiser long-term course.
Before he had a chance to examine that unanticipated thought, Dubois refocused his pale gaze on him.
“Is this all of your men?”
“Yes.”
Dubois held his gaze for a long moment, eyes narrowing as if by staring he might detect a lie.
He couldn’t, of course; Caleb had spoken the truth. This was all of his men in this area.
Sadly, Dubois wasn’t convinced. “If I discover you’ve lied to me, I will force you all to watch as my men take turns in raping Miss Fortescue, and then I’ll take my knife to her...” He paused, no doubt for effect. “Have you ever seen anyone flayed alive?”
Caleb clenched his jaw. Hearing the threat was bad enough, but the way Dubois delivered it, with a sort of chilling eagerness as if some part of him was relishing the prospect, made the conjured vision utterly vile. Without inflection, Caleb reiterated, “These are all the men I have in this jungle.”