and more compulsive than such attractions customarily were. Why a woman he’d never even met should so effortlessly capture his attention—fix his senses and hold his focus—he couldn’t explain.
“I haven’t been able to count all the mercenaries yet,” Phillipe said, “but Diccon’s number of twenty-four in camp at the moment, plus Dubois, seems about right.”
Reluctantly eschewing his thoughts of Katherine Fortescue, Caleb jotted the number in his notebook, then looked down at the compound once more.
Four of the male captives—none of them the officers, all of whom had vanished into the mine—had hung back in a group to one side of the mine entrance. As Caleb watched, two mercenaries ambled out from the central barracks and, each holstering a pistol, walked to join the group.
Nearing the four captives, one of the mercenaries waved the men to a cart parked nearby. Two large water barrels and four large cans for filling them sat on the cart. The four men fell in; they lifted the cart’s axle and started the cart rolling across the compound toward the gate.
Caleb watched the men angle the cart through the gate, then turn in the direction of the lake. “Hmm.”
The animal track they used to reach the rock shelf, if followed in the opposite direction, ultimately led down to the lake. On the previous day, they’d joined and later left the track halfway up the hillside and hadn’t noticed the proximity of the lake, but that morning, a glimmer of light off the water had flashed through the trees and drawn their collective eye. They’d made a brief detour; they hadn’t wanted to be there when the men with their guards came to fill the compound’s barrels. They’d lingered only long enough to fix the scene in their minds. The lake was fed by a stream rushing down the hillside; it was small, but from its intense color, it was reasonably deep. A short, narrow wharf jutted out along one bank, no doubt built to facilitate drawing water for the camp; on all the other banks, dense vegetation crowded the shoreline.
Caleb, Phillipe, Norton, and Ellis continued to watch the compound, but captives and mercenaries alike seemed to have settled to their morning’s duties. The only people coming and going were the children who occasionally emerged from the mine, lugging woven baskets filled with loose rocks that they added to the pile the girls were sorting, then returned to the mine.
Letting his thoughts about the lake slide to the back of his mind, Caleb spent some time drawing a detailed map of the compound, marking in all the buildings and structures and noting the position and direction of the tracks, including the animal track leading to the rock shelf, plus the location of their camp in the jungle clearing and the position of the lake.
After a moment, working from memory, he added a crude sketch of the lake itself. He studied the sketch for several minutes, then glanced at Phillipe. “Those weapons we took from Kale and his men.” They’d gathered all the weapons before burying Kale and his crew, and had searched and removed more from the buildings in the slavers’ camp, then they’d bundled the weapons up and brought them along in case of future need. “There are far more than we could ever use ourselves. What about creating a cache nearby—somewhere those in the compound could get to when the time to fight arrives?”
Phillipe lightly shrugged. “Why not? Better than just discarding them when we leave—no sense wasting good weapons.” Briefly, he studied Caleb’s eyes, then faintly smiled. “Where were you thinking of burying this cache?”
Caleb grinned. “The lake. There was a mound just beyond the end of the wharf.” He pointed on his sketch; Phillipe, Norton, and Ellis leaned closer to look. “If we buried the cache there, it would be easy for those in the compound to get to. And they only send two lackadaisical guards with four men—that’s not bad odds.”
Phillipe nodded. “That’s also an easy place to describe to those in the compound.”
“And as we’re only talking of a month,” Caleb said, “two at the most, before a rescue force arrives, then even with light wrappings, the powder should still be useable.”
Norton pointed down into the compound. “There are the men bringing back the water barrels.” They watched the men haul the now-laden cart through the gates.
“The guards have returned, too,” Phillipe noted, “so from what Diccon told us, the lake should be safe for us to visit from now through the rest of the day.”
“Perfect.” Caleb glanced at Ellis. “Go back to camp and tell Quilley to take three men, wrap up the excess weapons and ammunition, and go to the lake and bury the lot behind the mound at the end of the wharf. Go with him and make sure he chooses the right spot.”
“Tell Ducasse to take two of my men and help,” Phillipe said. “More hands and it’ll be done that much faster.”
Caleb endorsed the order with a nod.
Ellis snapped off a salute and scrambled off the ledge, heading for the track down the hillside.
Caleb, Phillipe, and Norton settled to watching the compound again.
After some time, Phillipe said, “I take it we’re watching for Diccon to leave.”
Caleb nodded. “We came upon him about noon, and he’d already half filled his basket, so I would expect him to leave fairly soon.”
“I saw him go into the kitchen,” Norton said. “He helped the women take the plates and bowls back, but he didn’t come out again.”
“Ah, but there he is now.” Phillipe sat up and nodded down at the compound.
Caleb watched as the skinny figure of Diccon, readily identified by his bright mop of hair, skipped out from under the palm-thatched overhang shielding the kitchen. He was swinging two baskets, one from either hand. But instead of heading for the gates, Diccon circled the guard tower. Caleb frowned. “Why two baskets, and where is he going?”
They had their answer in another minute. Diccon went to the cleaning shed. He climbed the steps to the door and knocked. The door opened, and he waited a moment. Then he backed down the steps, and Katherine Fortescue joined him.
Caleb blinked. He watched as Miss Fortescue took one of the baskets, then, side by side, she and Diccon headed for the gates.
The guards saw them coming and didn’t react in any way; they watched the pair walk out of the compound and into the jungle.
Caleb stared at Diccon and his Miss Katherine as, heads high, they blithely marched on. Then they disappeared from view. He frowned. “That seems just a tad too good to be true.”
Phillipe looked faintly grim. “The boy said nothing about anyone else coming out with him.”
It fell to Caleb, as commander of the mission, to weigh every factor that might prove dangerous to their men. That Miss Fortescue might have told Dubois what Diccon had told her...
He didn’t want to believe it, but...he grimaced. “Let’s watch and see if anyone else follows them.”
But no one did. No one seemed to have any interest whatever in the whereabouts of the pair who had, supposedly, gone foraging.
After thirty minutes, Caleb looked at Phillipe.
Phillipe looked back and shrugged. “I would point out that women make excellent traitors, but...who knows?”
Caleb
