murky water course. Somewhere to their left lay the oak- trees that constituted the favorite dueling ground outside the city, and the dark buildings of Monsieur Allard's plantation beyond those. Across the Bayou, January thought he could make out the glistening track of the towpath, hugging the water's edge and slippery with rain.
Shaw was right. They wouldn't be making much time. Even with well over an hour's start, they'd be skidding and falling in the mud, unable to get a footing against the weight of the keelboat, blind with the hammering water: It said a great deal for Roarke's command over his men that they hadn't abandoned their task thus far.
"There." January pointed.
"I see 'em." Shaw squinted through the flooded darkness at the firefly twinkle of lights. "Though where the hell LaBranche and his boys got to-"
Under the rain the snap of a shot sounded like a breaking twig, then another and a third.
"Damnation!" Shaw started to run, startlingly graceful and astonishingly fast. "I told that idjit not to brace 'em!"
January ran, too, knowing what Roarke was bound to do if attacked.
Hooded lanterns bobbed under the dripping canopy of overhanging trees. LaBranche and his reinforcements ranged along the Bayou Road, firing down at the keelboat in the narrow confines of the channel. By the single light fixed on the boat's prow January glimpsed two or three forms moving back and forth along the towpath on the other side, though now and then a belch of flame showed up a gun muzzle in the blackness. Over the rain he thought he heard a ball tear into the tupelo thickets between the shell road and the water's edge. One such flare from the top of the keelboat showed him H?lier's face, and the red splash like blood that was his shirt; by the lantern light January saw the water seller throw down his pistol, unable to reload, and tug another from his belt. Men ran back and forth along the catwalks of the gunnels, dodging and shooting; January saw the jitter and sway of lantern light in the cargo box below and heard a muffled voice yell, "Hold 'em off, boys!"
January plunged down from the road, hearing the tear and whistle of bullets but knowing himself nearly invisible in the rain. Shaw was somewhere to his right. The Bayou was deep hereabouts, twelve feet or more. He flung himself in, black water and the black loom of the boat above him, and men in the lantern light, firing down.
Someone grappled him as he scrambled up onto the gunwale catwalk and they rocked and struggled, a hand digging at his forehead and eyes. He seized the man's wrist and wrenched it over, driving his whole weight against the arm-heard the man scream. He flung him into the canal, then plunged and fought his way toward the doorway of the cabin, hearing as he did so the sodden crack of an ax. Someone grabbed him, dragging at him. He wrenched and twisted, knowing there had to be a knife in play and saw by the flare of the lantern light the crippled H?lier's handsome, boyish face. He pulled the knife free of H?lier's hand-the man had no more strength to his grip than a young lad-and pushed him aside. Later he thought he should have held him. But he knew what Roarke was doing in the cabin and knew, too, that he had to get there first.
One of the City Guards made a grab for the water seller. H?lier sprang, scrambling, staggering, to the catwalk at the nose of the boat. Afterward January didn't know whether the sheer weight of struggling men on the keelboat was responsible, jerking and bobbing the vessel so that the cripple could not keep his balance, or whether H?lier flung himself into the water with some notion of swimming ashore.
If the latter, he should have known better. If the former, he never had a chance. January saw one arm thrash wildly above the surface of the water as H?lier tried to bring his twisted body around to some position that would permit swimming, but it was hopeless.
Below him, January heard again the strike of an ax on wood.
In panic fury he kicked his way through the cabin door and ducked as Roarke swung around on him, ax in hand. Had Roarke dropped the weapon and gone for the pistol in his belt then he'd have had January cold. As it was his hands were both full and the cabin,