Chapter Thirteen

Alan Dash sat in his small room, listening to the argument raging outside his door and wondered, not for the first time since the Frenchman had arrived with his cohorts, if the decisions that had led to this point were the best he could have made.

Six months ago, Alan’s father, called by all and sundry Old Dash, had fallen ill. Over the course of the summer the old man had mostly recovered. But it had brought Alan the realization that when his father did pass on, the lease on Triple Creek Freehold would expire and Alan would find himself homeless. As freeholds were crown properties, granted to ungifted men that had performed some extraordinary task for the crown, but only for a set number of generations. Old Dash’s death would be the end of the three-generation grant and the land would return to crown control.

The unfairness in the system was like a bitter draught to the man that had given his life to the farm. It was more than labor he had given. No woman of worth would marry him as he had no future prospects, save begging for a tenant farm on some landowner’s estate. He had always despised the laws that limited good men who were born wholly human. For most of his adult life he had been active in the Ordinary movement, marching and protesting. But after his father’s illness, he knew he had to do more.

He met the Frenchman, LaFontaine, at a rally in London. The young émigré had invited the disaffected farmer to stay at his house. It was there that he had met others that felt it was time to do more than march and sing. The Ordinaries had to act. And LaFontaine had a special weapon that would strike terror into the hearts of the English ruling class.

Alan could never afterwards say if it was the revolutionary furor, the comely lasses, or the potent brandy, all of which were in plentiful supply at the Frenchman’s salon, that had most influenced his agreement to bring a band of what LaFontaine called ExtraOrdinaries to Triple Creek. Meryton seemed like a good place to start the revolution. So, as summer came to a close, LaFontaine and four fellow travelers arrived.

The Frenchman was the son of an aristocratic family who fled the French Revolution to come to Britain in 1792 when he was only seven years old. He dressed and acted the gentleman, and even had the gift necessary for him to bear the title legally, but was full of zeal against his own class both in France and in England. He saw the need for violence to effectively change the entrenched social system that punished or rewarded a man for the circumstances of his birth rather than the condition of his character. LaFontaine’s very rare ability allowed him to temporarily instill gifts into those born without. This gift offered the opportunity to turn the tables on the entrenched establishment.

He brought with him Mansfield, Reilly, Jenny, and Fitz. All had been granted gifts in the past and were trained in their use, though they were without these abilities when they arrived. It was explained that they could only last for a few weeks and the group was not yet ready to act. The four ExtraOrdinaries were as different from each other as they were from Alan, or from LaFontaine. But each had their reason for wanting to bring down the giftocracy that repressed the working class.

Alan had spent weeks helping familiarize the group with the local area while informing them of the best targets to cause unrest. He pointed them particularly at the principle landowning families in the area – The Bennets, The Lucases, and The Gouldings. These were the families that had shunned his father and grandfather before them. They were the ones that had made him feel ashamed of his beloved home. And they were the ones who had spurned his interest in their precious daughters. Attacking these families would send a terrifying message to the gentry throughout the county and beyond. All men were equal. All men had rights. And gift or no gift, no man was above the judgement of his fellows.

A week into November, LaFontaine informed the team it was time to take action. He had specific intelligence on where and when two high value targets would be found alone and vulnerable. It was time for the team to receive their gifts and prepare for action. The transformation process was agonizing. It took a full day for Alan to recover. The Frenchman had agreed that the farmer would join the ExtraOrdinaries for this mission.

“Boy what’re ye doing with these freaks and frogs?” Old Dash had asked after seeing how Mansfield now sported four extra arms. The former sergeant major was training his new limbs to load and fire muskets at a rate Alan had never imagined. The querulous old farmer was chomping on his favorite clay pile and brandishing his ever-present walking stick.

“Just shut yer gob, old man. This has nothing to do with you.” The son had replied angrily. His own transformation had left him anxious and full of uncontrolled energy.

“It’s my farm and I want them gone, ye hear me!” Old Dash began to pummel his son with the stick, as he had so many times before. Alan reacted with all his pent-up anger, knocking the stick from his father’s hand and grabbing him by his frail throat. Electricity surged from Alan’s hand at the contact, arcing into his father’s head and chest. The old man danced to St. Vitus’ tune as he died.

Alan looked down at the still smoking body of his progenitor and realized the Rubicon had been crossed. He could keep his father’s death a secret for a short while. But as of this moment, they were all trespassing on crown land and Alan had no home.

Reilly, whose strength had been increased twenty-fold, helped Alan dig a grave. “I remember when I killed my old man. He had took to beating my mother one night after coming back from finding the traps empty. I didn’t like it, and knew I was likely next, so I brained him with a shovel. Buried him with it too.” He paused, leaning against the shovel, to fill Old Dash’s pipe. The matches crumbled in his fingers. He gestured to Jenny Red. The flame-haired beauty sauntered over, every step an enticement to debauchery, and pointed her finger at the bowl. A flicker of flame shot out and soon the scrubby former poacher was happily puffing away.

He continued his tale with both Alan and Jenny now listening, ignoring the shrouded body at their feet. “I took over his lines and managed to feed my mother and brothers for three more years before getting caught.”

“He escaped though,” Jenny said proudly, patting the older man on the chest. “They’s never been able to hold him more’n a month or two, right?”

“Never have, never will.” He agreed.

“What about you?” Alan asked, just to hear her speak. Her voice was as enticing as her body. “Have you been in prison?”

Both of them looked at Alan silently for several heartbeats. He began to realize that was the wrong question to ask. Finally, she replied with a voice drained of all its earlier warmth. “I have been in one prison or another almost all my life. I was a prisoner of my mother’s until I was old enough to be a scullery. I was a prisoner of the unjust system that lets a ‘gentleman’ order any serving girl to his bed and not call it rape. I was a prisoner to the procurer who bought me from my former master and the madam that kept me a whore in a two-bob market town. I was a prisoner until I carved my way free through the bloody flesh of the last ‘gentleman’ that rented my favors.” Flame crawled up her hands and arms as she spoke. At the end, a corona surrounded her like the sun. “But now I am free, and the world is going to burn!” She let off a blast of fire that ignited a gate in the stone fence surrounding the herb garden.

Alan determined never to anger her again, possibly by never speaking to her again.

LaFontaine had left by this time. He had left very specific instruction on when and where they were to attack, but never said who their targets were. The two attacks were timed almost an hour apart, but on different sides of Meryton. They would have to move quickly and with great stealth to avoid being seen.

“I can run ahead if’n you’d like,” Fitz offered. He looked like what he was, a scrawny street urchin with a whiskerless face and a high, reedy voice. His new gift let him move quickly and silently and Alan had seen him dance with his knives. He never thought of the boy as harmless.

“No. You stay with us.” Mansfield barked. That was almost the only manner Alan had ever heard the old soldier speak. Years of raising his voice to be heard on battlefields and training grounds around the world had left him incapable of anything else.

“LaFontaine’s information is always spot on. We need to be where he told us exactly on time.” He checked the three watches he wore at various places on his body. Seeing his two eyes looking at separate timepieces simultaneously was disconcerting to say the least. “Now let’s jog down to the two locations one more time. Proper planning prevents piss poor performance. And I don’t want any of these bloody freaks leaving alive because of your piss poor performance, do I?”

On the day of the attacks, Dash joined his compatriots at the tree line at 11:15. It was raining steadily, but that did not delay them. They settled ourselves behind separate trees. Fitz was gnawing on a roasted rabbit that Reilly had acquired from the Netherfield estate. The old poacher started to light his stolen pipe when Mansfield lashed out with one of his many arms, slapping the pipe away before he could get it lit. The stem snapped when it hit the tree. “No smoking, idjit! We don’t want the target to see us.”

At 11:28, according to the old sergeant’s watches, a young woman on a palfrey rode out of the woods from the southwest. She had some sort of invisible shield raised that kept the rain from falling on her or the horse. Mansfield had two muskets at the ready, aiming each with one eye and a pair of hands, and third loaded in his spare hands. Alan could feel the lightning straining inside his body, ready to unleash on the rider. Jenny was fretting that the downpour might extinguish her flaming attack. Reilly and Fitz stood ready to charge out once the attack began as their gifts were not useful at range.

When the old soldier’s whispered countdown reached zero, he, Alan, and Jenny unleashed their barrage. Both of the musket shots and Alan’s lightning struck their target, while the jet of flame was washed away before it connected. Jane Bennet, for Alan had recognized the unobtainable beauty that had featured in his most lurid dreams from the first moment she exited the woods, cried out then fell silent in her saddle. The horse galloped away from the unexpected noises, removing their target before they could be certain of her death.

“After her?” Fitz asked.

“No, damme,” Mansfield responded. “We barely have time to make the next rendezvous, and someone may have heard our shots. Move out!”

The next attack went off exactly as planned, though Alan was chagrined that his attack had struck the horse rather than the young prig riding him. Still he knew that the young Mr. Goulding took immense pride in that hunter and would have been devastated had he survived its death.

Their next assignment was to be at main room of the Red Lion at 1:15 in the afternoon of the 14th, or so it said in the Frenchman’s note. The current argument was over who, if anyone, should be on the inside while the others attacked from the outside. They did not know for certain who the target would be, but word was out that the Colonel and Mayor had planned a meeting of all the local landowners for that time and place to discuss the current crisis. If they played their cards right they could leave such death and devastation from which the county might never recover. Alan had pointed out that he was known and might be welcomed inside, then he left the room to allow Mansfield to make the decision. The old soldier was in tactical command, a fact that Jenny, Fitz, and Reilly had not fully acknowledged.

In the end, Mansfield decided that Alan and Fitz would be inside, while he would approach the troops outside while in uniform, but cloaked to hide his extra arms. He would get as close as possible while Jenny and Reilly would push a cart loaded with stone under a covering of straw.

When the soldiers finally attacked Mansfield, or he got close enough to fire, they would all attack. Those on the inside should attack the Colonel and his officers first, then the gentry. Reilly was to crash the cart through the wall of the inn if possible and Jenny to burn everything down. Mansfield would call the retreat, if necessary. If he was taken down, the rest would retreat and regroup at the farm.

As the morning of the 14th dawned, each of the five settled into what Alan recognized as their pre-battle rituals. His own seemed to be checking on everything in the farm. A familiar task but bittersweet as he knew this was likely the last time he would ever be there as, win or lose, it was no longer his home.