Dangerous Dreams: A Novel by Mike Rhynard Read Free Book Online Page B

his own design during the voyage from England. It was in the shape of a polygon, with a series of cortynes— straight sections of wall with angled shooting towers, called flankers, that jutted outward from the walls like star points. The flankers joined each cortyne, or side of the polygon, to the next cortyne and allowed defenders to shoot their muskets and arrows at attackers both head-on and from the side. The latter shots were achieved by the shooters positioning themselves on the sides of the flankers and firing through narrow firing ports that exposed only a small part of their bodies, and through which an attacker could not crawl. His decision to adopt this design in lieu of parapets and scaffolding, which would require shooters to climb ladders or ramps to access firing scaffolds and probably take more time to build, gave him a deep feeling of accomplishment which he hoped the governor would share when the fort was complete.
    All of the men on the palisades crew had weapons nearby, and four soldiers stood guard around the work area. Hugh Tayler and several other civilians, inexperienced at felling trees, stripped, split, and carried the logs to the trench, stood them upright, and backfilled dirt to hold them in place. When enough posts were set in line, others would bore and mount the cross braces. The heat and humidity had taken their toll on the men, drained them as if they’d been without food and water for a week. Their faces were gaunt; their clothing drenched in sweat, covered with dirt; their numb,slow movements and labored breathing vivid symptoms of their exhaustion. Having watched the pace of the operation slow, Waters now noticed the growing sloppiness in the men’s movements and concluded a rest was needed to avoid an accident, particularly with so many inexperienced cutters. Experience was a relative word when it came to the colony’s woodcutters, for only a handful of civilians and a couple soldiers had ever wielded an axe against a standing tree, and only one of them had done it more than a few times. So, given that a cutter’s or trimmer’s axe glancing off a trunk or a branch and slicing a leg was the most common tree-cutting accident, such was Waters’ greatest worry.
    Suddenly, he heard shouts from the tree, saw that two axe men had come dangerously close together, and someone had yelled at them to reposition themselves farther apart. He shook off a fearful tremor and recalled a long-ago day when he and his best friend, Douglas Murray, both sixteen, had been doing exactly as the two axe men were doing today. Each of the friends had been paired with another partner, and the two pairs raced to see which could fell their tree the quickest. As he caught a quick breath, Waters had glanced at Douglas and his partner to see if they were ahead of, or behind, his own team. He saw that Douglas’ team was slightly ahead; but as he’d quickened his swing, a gnawing discomfort had rooted in his murky subconscious: Douglas and his left-handed partner were too close together, and their axe swings were within glancing range of each other’s legs. A moment later Douglas had screamed in agony as his partner’s axe glanced off the hard oak trunk into his thigh, sliced it to the bone. The three boys had knelt over Douglas, watched the blood spurt from his wound as he screamed, convulsed in wild agony. Partially unnerved, Waters had shouted at one lad to go for help, told the other to hold the leg, keep Douglas from thrashing. He’d pulled off his shirt, wrapped it tightly around the leg, but the blood immediately seeped through and under the wrap. Blood everywhere. He’d pulled the other boy’s blood-stained shirt from his back, wrapped a second bandage around the wound, again to no avail. As he’d wondered what to do next, the color had suddenly drained from Douglas’ face like water into sand. His convulsing had abruptly lessened, then stopped, as he lay still, eyes wide, locked in a vacant