Chapter 60: Leap of Faith
The last few feet fought him harder than everything that had come before.
His numb arm lagged behind every command, slow enough that it barely felt like it belonged to him anymore. Sweat slipped into the cut inside his cheek, adding another sharp sting to a long list of aches.
He reached for the next handhold and found wood that had nearly rotted away, more moss than timber. It groaned the moment he trusted his weight to it.
The stake beneath his boot snapped without warning.
A wet crack vanished into the darkness below before his mind caught up with what had happened. His stomach lurched. His good hand found another grip less than a heartbeat before the rest of him could follow the broken timber into the night.
For one long moment he dangled from a single fist, one boot toe jammed into a gap barely large enough to hold it.
"Bloody hell." The words barely rose above his breath. "Ye’d think one fight a night was plenty."
He hauled himself the rest of the way up, forcing his good arm to do twice the work, every breath rough in his throat. At last he rolled over the top of the palisade onto the narrow walkway beyond before his body could find another excuse to stop.
He flattened himself against the timber, chest heaving, and watched the walkway in both directions.
Nothing moved.
No lantern swung toward him. No boots scraped across the planks.
Whatever luck had carried him this far had decided to stay with him a little longer.
Beyond the wall, the fort spread beneath him the way an anchorage revealed itself from the top of a mast. Everything lay in plain sight for a man willing to look closely.
Low buildings stood in neat rows, barracks by their shape, with sheds and storehouses scattered between them. Near the center, a cook-fire had burned down to glowing embers that barely lit the ring of stones around it. One shuttered window leaked lantern light.
Everything else lay dark.
Smaller than it had looked from outside. Poorer too, judging by the roofs.
For a place that had bought the French a coastline’s worth of native goodwill, it looked like it couldn’t even afford fresh shingles.
He eased down from the parapet onto the firing platform without a sound and moved on.
He kept to the deepest shadows between the buildings the way he would have hugged the lee side of a ship in a storm. It wasn’t something he had to think about anymore.
A snore exploded from somewhere inside the barracks, followed by a sputter, a fart, and then another snore even louder than the first. James had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. Anyone making that much noise clearly wasn’t expecting trouble tonight.
Near the main gate, one sentry leaned against his musket instead of standing properly with it, using the weapon like a fence post to hold himself upright.
Another stood farther along. James heard the man shifting his feet, more interested in staying awake than watching the darkness.
Cudjoe would’ve taken one look at this lot and declared them ripe for surprising.
James almost wished the man were there to say it.
"Ye watchin’ this?" he murmured into the darkness, more from habit than expectation.
No answer came.
He hadn’t expected one. The voice in his head was still there whether it spoke or not, waiting until the worst possible moment to offer its opinions.
By the time he had crossed a good chunk of the fort, he’d learned what he needed.
A garrison like this would never stand against an organized attack. Its real purpose was to look dangerous from a distance and hope no one ever came close enough to discover the truth.
The building that caught his attention stood apart from the others, low and solid where everything else had been thrown together from thin planks and hurried work.
Earth had been packed against its walls and covered with scrub. It sat well downwind of the cook-fire, too far away for that to be an accident.
A sentry stood several respectful paces from the door instead of right beside it, the way any sensible man kept his distance from an open powder keg even while guarding it.
James didn’t need anyone to tell him what the building held.
He would have built it the same way.
One wee spark inside would do more damage to Mobile’s harbor than every cannon aboard the Rose could manage together.
He tucked the thought away without dwelling on it, alongside the other useful things he remembered and never bothered boasting about.
He had seen enough.
The ships were counted. The powder magazine was found. The garrison wasn’t worth losing sleep over.
Time to leave before the night remembered it still owed him another stroke of bad luck.
He worked his way back toward the water-facing wall, moving from shadow to shadow with the very patience that had gotten him inside.
He was perhaps thirty yards from the rotten pilings when the first hint of trouble reached him.
Light where there shouldn’t have been any.
Voices drifting from exactly the direction he needed to go.
Too many voices, moving with an urgency that didn’t belong to men waking from an ordinary night’s sleep.
James slipped closer, staying low until he had a clear look.
Lanterns bobbed along the foot of the wall, at least three of them, gathered around the very stretch of timber he had climbed less than half an hour earlier. Soldiers moved through the light with tense purpose.
"Regardez! Les pieux sont cassés!" one of them called, loud enough to carry.
Another lantern swung toward the wall.
James understood none of the words.
He didn’t need to.
The broken stake had given him away. Once one man noticed it, the scraped moss and disturbed timber were enough to bring the rest.
His escape route had just become the one place everyone else was guarding.
He let out a quiet breath. "Wonderful timin’, that."
He backed away from the lantern light and headed along the inside of the wall in the opposite direction. His numb arm still answered half a beat too slowly, and his legs weren’t much happier after everything the night had already demanded of them.
The stakes here stood taller, packed tightly together. There were no leaning pilings to help him, no gaps wide enough to trust with a boot.
This stretch had never been built for climbing, from either side, and it showed.
Behind him came more light, closer now. Boots thudded in a line that left him only one way to run.
Forward along the parapet.
Unfortunately, the parapet ended much sooner than he wanted it to.
His pulse hammered in his throat.
Everything suddenly felt sharp and painfully clear. The kind of clarity that only arrived after a man had completely run out of clever ideas.
A shout rose behind him.
James looked over the edge.
Far below, beyond the reach of the lanterns, a low mound rested against the wall near what looked like a service gate.
It could have been anything.
It could have been nothing.
The darkness refused to answer, and he didn’t have time to find out.
"Leap of faith, is it."
His voice was as dry as old rope. "Aye. Because that’s worked out so bloody well for me every other time."
He didn’t give himself another chance to reconsider.
He jumped.
The world vanished beneath him.
Air tore past too fast for thought. It felt as though his stomach had stayed behind on the parapet.
The mound caught him before the ground did.
It gave beneath him all at once, soft, wet, and several feet deep before finally stopping his fall.
The impact drove every breath from his lungs in one ragged gasp, and darkness took over.
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