The Rosetta Key

And now as I cocked my arm for a final swing, Najac’s eyes wide with terror, there was a flash in the pan and a roar, a blast of heat and smoke, and my own rifle, ramrod still in it, fired straight at my breast.

I sat down hard, knocked backward. But before I could die, I swung low and my bar hit the thief in his ankles, shattering them. He went down too, troops surging over us, and realizing I still wasn’t dead I crawled forward, wheezing, and seized him by the throat, cutting off his shrieks of pain. I squeezed so hard that the tendons in my own neck swelled with the effort.

His look was hopeless hatred. His arms thrashed, looking for a weapon. His tongue bulged out obscenely.

This is for Ned, and Mohammad, and Jericho, and all the other fine men you’ve cut down in your miserable, roach-scuttle of a life, I thought. And so I squeezed, as he turned purple, my blood dripping t h e

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onto my squirming victim. I could see the ramrod sticking out from my chest. What was going on?

Then I felt his hands on my waist and a tug as he grabbed my tomahawk. Having failed to finish me with my own rifle, he wanted to stave in my temple with my own hatchet!

Hardly thinking, I leaned forward so the ramrod he’d fired was against his own chest and heart. Its tip was shattered and sharp as a knitting needle, and finally I realized what must have happened.

When he’d fired, the arrow-like projectile had hit me all right, but exactly where the cylinder holding the Book of Thoth was tucked into my shirt. Its blunt head had stuck in the soft gold, knocking me backward but not breaking my skin. Now, as he worked my tomahawk free and cocked his arm to strike, I leaned into him so I was pushing the ramrod with the cylinder, straight against his chest. The effort hurt like hell but it cracked the devil’s breastbone and then slid easily as a fork into cake. Najac’s eyes widened as we embraced, and I pierced his heart.

Blood pumped up out of him as if from a well, a widening pool, and hissing like the viper he was, he died, my name a red bubble on his lips.

Cheering, but in English this time. I looked up. The French assault was breaking.

I jerked the ramrod out, swayed upward to my knees, and at long last reclaimed my custom rifle. This was the worst charnel yet, a ghastly tangle of limbs and torsos of men who’d died grappling with each other. There were hundreds of bodies in the breach, and scores more in the soggy moat in either direction, assault ladders shattered and the walls of Acre dented and cracked. But the French were retreating.

The Turks were cheering too, their cannon barking to bid the French good-bye.

Smith’s and Djezzar’s men didn’t dare pursue. They crouched, stunned by their own success, and then hastily reloaded in case the enemy came again. Sergeants began ordering a crude barricade at the tower’s base.

Smith himself spied me and strode over, the bodies compressing 2 5 6

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slightly as he walked across them. “Gage! That was the nearest-run thing I ever did see! My God, the tower! Looks like she could come down in an instant!”

“Bonaparte must have thought the same, Sir Sidney,” I said. I was gasping, trembling at every muscle, more exhausted than I’d ever been. Emotion had wrung me dry. I hadn’t caught breath in a century.

I hadn’t slept in a thousand years.

“He’ll see it rebuilt and braced stronger than ever by the next dawn, if British engineering has anything to do with it,” the naval captain said fiercely. “By God, we’ve bested him, Ethan, we’ve bested him!

He’ll throw every cannonball he has at us now, but he won’t come again after this thrashing. His men won’t allow it. They’ll balk.” How could he be so sure? And yet he was about to be proved right.

Smith nodded. “Where’s Phelipeaux? I saw him lead the charge right into them. By God, that’s royalist courage!” I shook my head. “I’m afraid they’ve done for him, Sidney.” We picked our way over. Two bodies lay across Phelipeaux’s so we dragged them aside. And miracle of miracles, the royalist was still breathing, even though I’d seen half a dozen bayonets pierce him like a haunch of beef. Smith pulled him up slightly, resting the dying man’s head in his lap. “Edmond, we’ve turned them back!” he said.

“The Corsican is finished!”

“What . . . retreated?” Though his eyes were open, he was blind.

“He’s scowling at us right now from that high hill of his, the best of his troops gutted or sent running. Your name will know glory, man, because Boney won’t take Acre. The republican tyrant has been stopped, and political generals like him don’t last past a bad defeat.” He looked at me, eyes gleaming. “Mark my word, Gage. The world will hear little of Napoleon Bonaparte, ever, ever again.”

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