25th May Coming early

"Why is t' water not right?" Pye couldn't see how a river would mean something might be bad. Very bad. "Is jus'.... water." He whispered and then seeing he might have been desired rather to be quiet, he was. Still all the river did was drown some of the other sounds.

"Ain't the water that's off."

Newbury stepped carefully down to the stream bank, doing his best to make as little noise as possible. There were some bushes close to the bank which afforded him some cover. It wasn't much of a stream, but... "Well now," he muttered. "They ain't far from here at all. Look." And he pointed at the light tinge of colour in the water. Somebody had stirred up the water somewhere upstream.

"Might've crossed it, to do that to it," Cotton said. "Just fillin' their calabashes wouldn't go to do that, not with there just bein' ten of 'em. Well. Unless they'm real clumsy."

And they had to be close now, or that slight discolouration would have dissipated already.

There was a loud crack of a dry branch that had been broken perhaps a few weeks ago if not a summer ago. Something sounded as if someone stumbled. There was some splashing then a sound of a gun being cocked.

It didn't sound more than one man, but whoever it was, was close and they were nervous. Pye turned around abruptly. "Gabe! Joe!" He said sharply , catching sight of a face shielded by fern and a barrel pointed at them. Trembling. Then a finger pulled a trigger.

Oh damn. Newbury turned sharply, his rifle coming up automatically to his shoulder. There was no more than a heartbeat in which to spot the musket, recognise it as a threat, and react. One step to the right, closer to the enemy, too late? He tugged at his rifle's hammer and tried to get his finger back around the trigger in the same motion.

Two shots.

Cotton spun around and dropped to one knee, belatedly pulling Pye down with him before fumbling at the flint of his rifle. Too late; he saw the muzzle flash from the musket the Frenchman was aiming at them, and braced himself for the impact of the bullet, even as he brought his own rifle up into his shoulder to return the favour.

The man fell back, the musket flew from his grasp. The cry was sharp, pained. Nothing else moved. Pye stood crouched, jerkily gazing back and forth , to the side. He searched for another muzzle, another coat that would suggest a French man. "There.." There was one at the ground, crouched or perhaps seated. He was concealed more by the undergrowth, so it couldn't be clear how he was turned.

The musket ball fanned close past his head, a lucky miss. Newbury's shot, however, had apparently its mark. He went forward, uncaring that he had not yet reloaded, and covered the ground immediately around them. Just that one bold idiot, apparently. Shaking his head, he kicked the Frog's musket safely away and reloaded his rifle as quickly as he could.

"They'll know somebody's about now, sure."

Cotton put his hand up to his head, to find that his shako was missing. "That was close," he said, turning to see it lying on the ground. "Too close. Maggie'll never forgive me if I get me head done in by a musket ball 'cause I warn't lookin' out." He put the hat back on and started reloading, looking around to see if anyone was coming to see what all the firing had been about.

"Couldn't have sent 'em a clearer message we'm here without sendin' up a red rocket," he said, slipping the ramrod back into its pipes.

The Frenchman jerked and tried to roll to his side and then to his front so that he could pull himself away from the rifleman. He groaned in pain and clutched at his wound. It hadn't killed him out right, his fortune being in the shape of his stolen ware , sewn into his coat and worn beneath. There was some of it, that belonged to the Portuguese that the riflemen earlier met and freed.

"Non." The Frenchman said lifting his hands up slowly. Pye observed the other figure that he could see propped against the tree. It hadn't moved since they arrived. "..She don't want you hurt, that's fer sure, Gabe."

Cotton had just missed it, hadn't he? If Newbury had been only a little faster... it was over and done now, and they hadn't come to grief.

Newbury kept walking slowly forward, wrinkling his nose as he went. The air here smelled heavy and almost coppery. Unnatural. This really wasn't right. Then he saw why.

"We found 'em all, seems."

Cotton walked forward, cautiously, and stopped short. "That... ugh."

This was the ugly face of war. No wonder the other man had been so jumpy, and was hiding in the bushes the way he had been. "You reckon these are the guys we'm lookin' for?" he said, wondering where Hunter had got to, if that was the case.

Pye stepped forward last and stared at the dead men. They were strewn about. Some seemed to have been dragged together. They must've been moved by the last surviving man. He could not have buried them but perhaps it was the only thing he knew to do. He needed something, something that was more normal, that was safe. Amongst the rest of the dead and dying there were 8 in total, which, with the one the riflemen had shot and wounded came to be 9. There was still a man missing, and then there was the prisoner who was also not amongst the fallen.

"...Who.. did that?" They had slash wounds for the most part. One had the sort across his back, another had a bad wound at his side or belly. One had been trampled, kicked to death by what appeared to be a horse, judging by the marks.

"Dunno. I'd guess it was the Portuguese, only I ain't seen no sign of 'em and they ain't usually so... quick." There wasn't anything to be done for the poor things, and there was something they could do for their prisoner. He turned back to where the man was sitting huddled by the bush. He looked as though he'd only been winged, which was no surprise, really, considering they'd been taken by surprise.

"Here, would one of you get me a strip of cloth, please? Rip up one theirn shirts or summat," he called over his shoulder. "Here, mate, no shootin' now. I want to help you," he said, approaching the Frenchman much the same way he'd approached the horse earlier.

"I dunno if I want to know who's done it," Newbury said, surveying the stirred-up ground. It was impossible to tell if there were any new tracks. No. Hoofprints, there.

"This'd prolly be them. But they won't be tellin' us nothin'..." his voice trailed off, since he'd mostly been muttering the observations to himself anyway. Cotton was tending to the wounded Frenchman. Another waste of time, he thought, and slipped off silently to follow the hoofprints.

Pye stood in the middle. He was torn between following Newbury, to cover his back - as ably as he could - if there were more Frenchmen or if there were others who might think Newbury or Cotton, the enemy of the Portuguese on one hand. On the other hand, the live Frenchman could cause trouble too, and Cotton could as well be left to his devices, with his back to the wood, to tend to the Frog.

The Frenchman looked to try back away, saying another:" Non.." to him, to Cotton. These were uniformed men. Soldiers, and they spoke English. He was fortunate, for if found by the Portuguese, finding him alive would be the joy of those who would've enjoyed to enact revenge for all the hurt they had had to suffer.

He spoke in French then, quickly, abruptly then groaned, as his wound did still hurt. "Gabe..." Pye began then walked to the few bodies. Dead, dead, nearly dead. That made three. Also dead, dying or atleast gravely injured across his back. Not his spine though, just bleeding. He saw the man and knelt at his side. Checked and saw he was unconscious, but made to feel a breath at his moistened palm, when he placed it over his mouth. "Joe's gone." He mumbled and wished there was a fourth man to follow the other rifleman, or allow him to do that.

"The others'll be up soon enough," Cotton said. They'd be wondering what had happened, of course, hearing those shots. Even as he spoke, the advance picquet came up, and he directed them to where Pye and Newbury were. "Think we found our Frogs," he said, and turned back to trying to help the wounded Frenchman.

He smiled encouragingly. "English, me. Sorry I don't speak French," he said. "Where does it hurt?" He tried to mime what he meant, patting himself down, frowning as if in pain and shrugging, indicating the other man, who frowned back then moved his hand so Cotton could see where the rifle bullet had winged his arm.

The stitches in his side were burning. Newbury tried to ignore them as he moved cautiously along, following the narrow trail left by the single horse. The horse was carrying something heavy. Two riders, maybe? He paused to look ahead, his gaze wandering down-field, and wondered where the devil the horse was going.

They've attempted escape one, and this is where they ended up. Back with the people who had taken them as prisoners of war the first time. Atleast it was them though, much better than if the Portuguese would've gotten them. The Frenchman began to relax and slowly pointed to where his injury was. He talked onwards in French, even if he knew that the soldier private would not understand him. Merci could be understood and a few simipler words perhaps as well.

"They've got lots o' food." The young lad commented, as he'd discovered - unsurprisingly - more bags of food that the men carried with them and had laid down when they had wanted to interrogate (and rest) for the evening and night.

"..Fresh food." The youth peered into one of the bags. "..most of it." He added. Some men turned to follow the trail of the horse and the newly made, and very fresh one of Newbury who followed the first.

"You'm safe now. Safe," Cotton said, carefully tying the makeshift bandage around the Frenchman's wound. He smiled at him before standing up. "I have to go. The others'll look after you. Maybe they can talk to you, if you speak German. Deustch?"

The man nodded slowly as he saw that Cotton stood. He might not have understood the words, but as he saw that there were other men, and that Cotton looked as though he was getting to go, he understood what they meant.

He did not know to speak German, though he recognised the word. Turning his head side to side, he answered that question.

Pye came from his discoveries and rejoined Cotton silently. "..they's found fabric... like a dress with 'em." He murmured. "..Maybe that's t' way they....'scaped." He looked on.

"A dress? You mean, a woman's dress?" Cotton blinked. "What don't make sense is that it don't look like the Portuguese done 'em in. And I don't see how one man could kill nine soldiers like that. But why would one of 'em help kill his mates?"

He took Pye over to the first of the clear hoof-prints Newbury had followed. "Ignore Joe's footprints an' just look at the horse's tracks. They'm deeper than they should be, see, as though it's carryin' summat heavy. Mebbe two people. Looks like one of 'em's helpin' our Captain Hunter, though I can't say why."

"Where'd he get a horse? We didn't see horse hooves earlier, I think." He peered at the marks. Deeper than those of a horse that carried noone or one tha carried merely another man. The mud did give easily, but he reckoned not so much.

He straightened up a little, after he'd had his own study of the marks. "More dresses aye. They were real dirty now, so I dunno if they didn't use them t' tuck under their heads or summat. But real woman dresses." He didn't think they were the sort of people who'd have worn them generally. That would after all be terribly wrong! But if they were prisoners who had escaped, maybe? He didn't want to pass a judgement which would be wrong later. Just look at the facts, that was all he was good to do!

"Why do you think they weren't the Portuguese?"

"I didn't see any horse hoof-prints earlier, neither. So mebbe someone met 'em here." The only way to find out if that was the case would be to circle round and try to find hoof-prints or footprints coming to where they were. "If someone met 'em, how did they know to meet up here?"

He looked at the corpses again. "What the Portuguese do to 'em ain't... pretty." He'd heard a bit of what Sharpe's men had found, and had seen for himself the sort of thing they did. "You get... well, it's not nice to say it, but you sort of get used to it. This was... Well, it was clean an' quick, that's what it was."

"Maybe somebody.. crossed them? Tricked them?" But why would anyone want to do that, and who would ever have considered Hunter - whom they probably didn't even know would happen to chance upon that house - valuable enough to kidnap. And even more, why? Why would they cross someone to do so. The lad shook his head. The longer he thought about it, the stranger the ideas and reasonings for what had happened were. And they always say, that the simplest explanation is usually the right one.

"Would.. would the Portuguese have lingered with the bodies even after they'd killed them?" He asked after a moment of thought, and a few glances at the corpses. Clean deaths, quick deaths. No torture, which was probably what Cotton meant!