The bullet zipped past his temple and snapped sharply off the rock next to his head, sending shards and fragments of shattered stone ricocheting off his stiff jacket. He checked his pockets to make sure he still had his prizes he'd pick-pocketed, best time to do it when people were distracted. The feel of goods in hand brought memories of better times. 'It had been how long ago since he was last at sea?' and now he was here? Where was here? Some remote sullen slopes of rock, high in the mountains forming the back bone of Italy? Or was this a skirmish with Bandits? He couldn't remember, it kept blurring... the exhaustion ... It felt more like ... it could just be .... another scuffle with the Gendarmes & Duty Customs Officers of the Mediterranean, in one of those dawn raids he had experienced whilst smuggling in a sleepy cove somewhere, he'd lost all is ill gotten gains once on one of those raids... He instinctively checked his pockets again to make sure nothing had fallen out... raids which so tormented smugglers; was now being used to fuel a fight against some oppressive opponent. Did this all really matter right now? Why aren't I concentrating? That's all that is key… stay in the moment… don't get killed ... the moment make’th the man, or kille’th the mouse. More shot zipped and cracked overhead. ‘Time to go!…’ was yelled at him through a smile that could only belong to a joker, a man who saw the world as one big jest. He followed his friend in a daze through the gunpowder haze that coloured the air grey and blue. His friend's colourful coat tails disappearing around the corner before him. This was getting real very quickly.
If he had felt distant and far removed, he was about to be violently slapped back by reality … he was, and it stopped him short. A second dull thump followed. The first bullet punched him right in the gut, a metallic sound rang out as it passed through a stolen pocket watch. The second snapping sound, broke a rib and sent rough flecks of blood spattering across his cheek. It knocked the wind right out of him and turning him through a half circle as his momentum continued to carry him round the corner in a spin with his staggering momentum. Smoke lazily rose from the neat little hole left in the crux of his abdomen, a second from his chest. He was left wheezing from the holes. He looked up at the two men who had just shot, emerging from the smoke like phantoms, watching him as he finished staggering in a full circle, both clearly frantically trying to reload, ball and powder in hand. Ramrod fumbled with inexperienced fingers. Nerves at breaking point, their sweat trickling down their cheek and foreheads... the world slowed down and he saw things clearer than ever. Then his legs gave way and he slumped to the ground, folding like a concertina blind, before teetering and falling onto his back. His legs folded, trapped under him. He sat then draped like a discarded puppet by the puppet master. Before his eyes, lay the vast open expanse of sky. In which he soon became lost; distracted by the quick successions of busy sweet nothings in his ears; suddenly and rudely he was interrupted by a face appearing calm and authoritative in demeanour, which looked down at him. He recognised the face instantly and remembered clearly from that very first voyage, when he had seen it aboard Jacopo's ship, and this very man whom now gazed down upon him. He had been standing grieving at the taffrail, sullen like a murderer after a kill, aching like Death who had been working his scythe for too long. He has come to collect me, it was true what the men had said about him! “I will take this my dear man…thank you … relinquish your grip. You will be avenged.” the pistol was removed from his loosened grip; he looked on and saw this face and ethereal body lift the pistol by the grip. Following its direction with his gaze, he heard the retort and roar. He did not see but indeed felt the floundering of the enemy, obscured briefly by smoke from the shots that had rung out, that skull white visage was obscured then revealed... revealed in obscene clarity with contortions of pain written across its face. This was satisfying, as satisfying as the warm feeling of water that was now flowing over him as though he were being submerging into a warm bath, fading, fading… as though it were time to sleep, time to rest….. at last. The day was growing cold and the colours drained slowly away like a washed out painting.
The trim, cleanly cut, well dressed individual stepped over the body of his employee, pistol gripped at his side, reviewed the wound with but a glance and the blood which clearly bathed the body and steamed slightly with the heat of the deceased. “Poor fellow. You will be missed.” Such closed, unfelt feelings of the man, expressed a self-control that clearly showed experience of many hardships; looked up from the object of his attention towards the direction of distant shots being fired “Move forward!” The Count of Monte Cristo called. He was close to his pray, he could sense it. The man he was looking for must just be around the next twist and turn of this debris field of boulders. His men flooded forward, surrounded him, flowing past him as the tide crashes amongst the rocks during a storm. Filling the gullies and crevices. The Count strode on.
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