Long after the sun had set...after the moon had risen and the stars had come out to dance with it a ship floated into the shallows of an isolated cove at the mouth of the Saint Mary’s River under full sail and dropped anchor. Then it launched a skiff over its side.

Two men awaited the skiff on the beach standing next to the wagon they had ridden hither. One was a small boned man with a terrible limp who leaned on an iron headed staff. The other, who had used a lantern to signal the ship, was tall and barrel chested with a thick neck and a rolling confident gait.

It was fall, and the evening was cool without being unpleasant. Each man wore a waist coat, dark pants and dark tri-cornered hats.

Above the men on the bluff that over looked the beach a lone figure slipped safely into the shadow of a live oak and shouldered the curved club that Indians carved into the shape of a flintlock rifle’s stock and stared down at them.

The figure was that of a tall woman with incongruously broad shoulders, a lean waist and powerful arms and legs.

“Disease, guns, slavery and whiskey,” she hissed to herself and leaned against the massive tree, “each of these things the white man brought with them, and none of them are as dangerous as sorcery.”

She laughed and lightly fingered the handle of the flintlock pistols stuffed in the waist band of her buck skin pants, “Tina Cezanne, your hypocrisy knows no bounds.”

The woman watched a skiff row to shore. Its sailors pulled a small cask and what looked to be a coffin from it and laid them ashore.

After that the sailors, save for an officer and one other, grabbed the skiff and splashed through the surf back into the sea.

When the water arose past their knees they climbed back into the skiff rowed back towards the frigate.

Cezanne ignored the skiff. It was leaving and was no longer her concern. The men on the beach were another matter. Unless she missed her guess they were a problem that was awaiting a propitious moment to happen. The questions remained what sort of problem, and when?

The lame man, Stanislaus Grey, was the sorcerer whose movements she had been paid to track. The burly man was his right arm, Roosevelt Grimes.

She had followed the two of them for nearly three days and each night they had returned to this cove awaiting, she guessed, the ship that had appeared only this evening.

Who, though, were the sailors? Where had they come from? Why had their ship dropped anchor in an isolated cove in the middle of the night without flying colors? What had they delivered into Grey’s clutches and what would he use it for once he possessed it?

There was only one way to find out. While Grimes kneeled over the cask and broke it open she picked her way down the bluff through briars and bushes and pines until she came to the edge of the beach.

When she reached the sand she knelt in the shadow of a dune, studied the men once more and wished she could hear their voices over the crash of the waves.

Next to the foamy water, the contents of the broken cask shone brilliant yellow in the light of the lantern. Grey stared at the cask as if it were a long lost lover before he turned towards the casket.

Grimes pushed himself to his feet and ripped the casket open with his bare hands.

Grey stood over it a moment before the officer, a squat man with powerful shoulders, spoke with him. Grey nodded as if whatever he had found was quite satisfactory.

Then he turned to Grimes and pointed at the casket and pointed towards his wagon.

Cezanne added what she had seen to what Tristan Russell had told her three days past and decided she would stop Grey and his man and these sailors.

If she was right and this was a situation that she and the Thaumaturgical Society should be interested in she could end a danger before it took form.

If she was wrong...if Grey and the rest of these men were smuggling mundane, yet expensive, items into the country in an effort to avoid tariffs and duties she would apologize to them after they were all quite incapacitated.

Cezanne pushed her self out of the shadows and padded towards the party while Grimes and the sailor shoved the casket into the wagon.

When he was finished Grimes sniffed the air, squealed and turned to face her.

Cezanne broke into a run and switched her gun stock club to her right hand and pulled a pistol from her waist band with her left.

Without pausing she aimed the pistol at the sorcerer and pulled the trigger.

Grey muttered something to himself and threw an arm in front of his face as if he were cringing. The bullet she had aimed towards his chest collided with some unseen barrier and ricocheted off into the surf.

Cezanne cursed herself a fool for not having brought a rifle so that she could shoot the bloody wizard from cover while he was unaware of her and yanked the next pistol from her belt and aimed it at Grimes and pulled the trigger.

The gun roared and Grimes pitched backwards firing his own weapon into the air while he fell. After that he did not move.

Cezanne continued her advance and the sailor drew an ugly curve bladed sword from his belt and leapt towards her. Cezanne chanced a quick glance at the wizard and the officer.

Grey leaned against his staff, “Carve her all you want, but do not kill her. I would see her suffer before she dies.”

The officer grimaced at the wizard and placed his hands upon his hips. Grey smiled back at him unapologetically.

Cezanne turned back to the sailor and readied her club. Grey was going to be disappointed. She had yet to meet a man that was her equal.

The sailor circled her and lunged and Cezanne twirled her club blocking his thrust. Then she drove the butt of her club into his head and staggered him backwards.

Before he could and reach into the red sash tied about his waist for a pistol. Cezanne sidestepped another thrust and slammed the club into the arm that pulled the gun free.

There was a satisfying snapping sound when the club hit home and the sailor dropped the pistol and cursed in a language that she did not under stand.

Before he could recover and drive his blade towards her once more she pivoted and cracked his skull with a two handed strike and left him lying on the sand.

Then she scooped up his gin in one hand and turned it on the officer and the wizard, “Grey,” her voice was confident, “You might protect yourself from musketry but I’m not at all convinced you can protect your friend.”

If Cezanne had ruffled the sorcerer’s feathers he didn’t show it, “Why would you think I value this man’s skin more than my own.”

The wizard mouthed another spell and pointed towards her.

Cezanne growled. The officer might have deserved shooting, but he wasn’t a threat to her at the moment and she had never been keen on harming men, even evil men, without reason.

She shot the wizard, and again the bullet ricocheted off into the night. Then the sand rose up beneath her and knocked her head over heels to the ground.

She dropped the pistol and rolled to her feet, readied her club and stared up at a column of sand and dirt shaped vaguely like a man.

She had seen these before. It was a being made of earth and it would be as strong a grizzly and nearly impossible to kill.

“I don’t suppose you would be on my side?”

The shambling pile of dirt’s answer was a massive punch aimed at her head.

Cezanne ducked that easily and drove her club into it in a wide and powerful arc. The handle thudded into its dirt side uselessly.

Cezanne sighed, “This is a bad sign,” and the dirt man back handed her to the ground and raised one foot to stomp her flat.

Cezanne rolled to one side narrowly avoiding the thing’s foot and clambered to her feet. Then she drove the stock of her club into the middle of its head.

It ignored the blow as if it were a soft spring rain and charged into her, looped its arms about her and crushed her against its chest with the strength of a dozen strong men.

Cezanne groaned when the air was driven from her lungs and cried out when her ribs buckled beneath the elemental’s inexorable grip. Spots danced in her vision and darkness closed in on her from all sides, but inexplicably the creature’s grip slackened.

Then it lifted her above its head and slammed her into the sand.

Cezanne cried out when she landed and laid in the sand trying to scrape her self back together before the elemental could finish her.

The thing raised one foot and prepared to drive it into her chest. Cezanne’s head rolled to one side and she studied the waves crashing ashore, and developed an idea.

She reached out with her left hand and pulled her club back into her grip and rolled to one side, avoiding the creature’s foot.

Then drove the club into the elemental’s planted leg and pushed with all the strength in her shoulders and arms.

Surprised by the woman’s strength the elemental wind milled its arms in an effort to regain its balance, but it was too late.

It toppled backwards and splashed into the surf and rolled to one side like a man that had landed in liquid fire.

Cezanne ignored the misery in her ribs and charged into the thing and drove her shoulder into its waist. Then she wrapped her arms about it and using the big muscles in her legs and lower back lifted the it off the ground and staggered a half dozen steps into the surf and dove forward driving the elemental into the water.

If the elemental could have screamed it would have. Instead, it struggled as if it were possessed and punished Cezanne’s damaged ribs while it dissolved.

When finally it struggled no more Cezanne struggled to her feet, and staggered back towards Stanislaus Grey.

Grey was breathing hard. Blood had begun to trickle out of his nose. Summoning the elemental had cost him, but he forced himself to laugh while he pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve and dabbed at the crimson on his upper lip, “If nothing else you are always entertaining. Not one man in a hundred could have stopped an earth elemental.”

“I dance and sing a little too,” Cezanne bent at the waist and scooped up her club and started towards the sorcerer again, but she stopped in her tracks when the officer, a bearded man with a smile that flickered gold, pulled a pistol from the sash about his waist and aimed it at her chest.

Grey pulled the officer’s gun aside, “I owe this one a slow death,” he said and spoke a single command.

Cezanne screamed like a child trapped in a horrible nightmare. Then she collapsed to the ground and contorted grotesquely.

Her muscles contracted until she thought they would burst. Her bones felt as though it they were shattered. Her skin burned like dry kindling. When she could stand no more she went limp and groaned.

Abdul Sokollu walked over to her and dug a boot into her side, “Satan’s eyes,” he hissed “It is a woman.”

It was a strange thing to notice, but Cezanne, still barely conscious noted that the officer’s skin was swarthy and his eyes dark. He spoke with a thick accent. He was a Persian, but he was dressed like a European.

“It is,” Grey nodded, “and she is the toughest man I have encountered.”

“Very impressive,” Sokollu referred to the spell that had felled her, “and quite deadly I would suppose.”

“No,” Grey leaned against his staff heavily and sucked air into his straining chest, “Terribly painful but only incapacitating, and only for a short time. She’ll be on her feet shortly.”

“Then perhaps I should put a musket ball in her brain.”

Grey shook his head, “No carry her to the wagon. We will tie her up. I have scores with her that should be evened. I’ll see to Grimes.”

Abdul Sokollu raised an eyebrow at the wizard, “This one has slain two strong men and defeated your sorcery. Leaving her alive would be a terrible mistake.”

Grey’s thin features turned venomous, “She has killed one man and no one has defeated me.”

The hand in which Sokollu held his pistol fluttered at his side. He had never liked commands, and though he would tolerate them when they were given by the Pasha he did not have to endure them from this one.

The woman was a complication that he could not tolerate. Sorcerer be damned. She would die.

Abdul Sokollu aimed the pistol at Cezanne’s head, “I have payed you in gold, Grey. I am the one who gives orders.”

Grey took a step towards Abdul Sokollu, “Kill that woman and you shall follow her into the great darkness, Saracen,” he said between clenched teeth.

Abdul Sokollu’s finger trembled against the trigger. He cocked an eyebrow at the wizard, “After I have made you a rich man you would dare?”

While Grey formulated a reply Cezanne’s muscles finally answered her brain once more and she reached for her club.

In one motion she scooped up the club and swung it at the hand in which Abdul Sokollu held his gun.

There was the soft thud of wood on flesh and the Saracen grimaced and his gun flipped through the air away from him and into the surf.

While he watched the gun tumble away Cezanne rolled to a kneeling position and whipped her club into his right leg.

There was a dry snapping sound when the club hit home and Abdul Sokollu was on the sand clutching at his right leg.

Cezanne turned to Stanislaus Grey, “What say we finish this wizard?”

Grey staggered backwards. Even a strong man would not have recovered so quickly from the spell he had turned against her, but recover she had and now he was forced to defend himself.

He took a deep breath and gritted his teeth against the pain he knew would follow and mumbled urgently.

A clear barrier rose up between him and Cezanne. Cezanne charged into it and nearly collapsed backwards before she regained her balance and gave the wizard a savage grin, “You can’t hide from me, Stanislaus. I know you too well.”

She pulled a silver chain and crucifix out of her shirt and from about her neck and pressed the cross against the shield that barred her path.

There was a smoky hiss when the sanctified met the mystical, and Stanislaus Grey bent double and groaned as if he had been dropped into the lake of fire.

Then his barrier, the one had had formed with a bit of himself, began to crack as if a giant hammered at it with a sledge hammer.

Cezanne’s grin widened. Each spell a sorcerer cast cost him something... a trace of blood, a bit of flesh, a touch of bone. Thus wizards rather than dying in bed often disintegrated in the midst of one last spell when their time on earth was done.

Grey had all ready used too much of himself fighting Cezanne, and if he lived he would use even more. When he was finished there would be very little of him left.

Cezanne guessed Grey wondered how much of himself he would consume before he stopped her. If she had her way it would be all of him, every last miserable drop.

“I’ll be right there, Stanislaus,” the cross turned hot and chewed the barrier into nothing, “and then I’ll break your other leg so that you have a matching set.”

While Grey struggled to formulate a reply Roosevelt Grimes suddenly squealed and sat bolt up right as if a bolt of lightening had struck him.

Still squealing, he turned towards Cezanne and pushed himself onto all fours, and wire like hair sprouted on the back of his hands and his broad shoulders writhed and twitched over newly formed sinew.

While Cezanne bore down upon Grey Grimes’ face grew a snout and his eyes receded deep into his face and tusks sprouted from the corner’s of his mouth.

He squealed once more. Then he threw himself at Cezanne.

Cezanne was about to offer to hurt the wizard only a little if he would tell her what he was up to when she heard a shriek behind her and turned.

Grimes slammed into her and flipped her backwards through the decaying remains of Grey’s barrier and to the sand.

“God,” she rolled onto her side, “my ribs.”

If could have looked at the situation analytically she supposed she would have considered herself fortunate. She hadn’t been impaled on Grime’s tusks and ripped open.

Intense pain, though, renders analytical thought quite useless. Her ribs were broken and the battle with the elemental had left her exhausted. Suddenly, she was not impressed with her chances.

When she tried to struggle to her feet Grimes drove the toe of his boot into the middle of her stomach.

Then he gripped at her long, dark hair with one hand, pulled her to her feet and sent her reeling back to the sand at Grey’s feet with a round house right.

Grey smiled down at her malevolently and wiped sweat from his brow with a trembling hand, “After you slew Burns I decided that my new servant should be more formidable. I have labored over him most diligently in that regard. I trust you will enjoy the results.”

Grimes didn’t give Cezanne time to think of a witty reply. He was upon her before Grey had finished, wrapping his meaty hands about her throat and squeezing with all his strength.

Cezanne gagged and worked her feet beneath Grimes’ chest and pushed him away from her and to the sand. After that, she rolled into Grey’s legs and tired to press the crucifix into him.

Grey leaned on his staff and staggered away from her and rammed his good foot into her ribs.

While Cezanne gasped he mumbled another cantrip and while blood ran from his eyes a cloud of green vapor formed over his palm.

He blew it into Cezanne and her vision blurred and she curled up on her side choking for air.

“Sadly, I hadn’t the strength to produce a fatal vapor,” Grey stepped past her and began to limp towards the wagon, “but it doesn’t have to be. Grimes will attend to your demise, and as much as I would enjoy observing I have preparations to make,” he cast a glance at Grimes, “Kill her as slowly as possible then walk back to the house. Bring me her head, and make certain that her mouth is twisted in the midst of a scream.”

He turned to Abdul Sokollu who had finally worked his way to his feet and was hopping towards the wagon, “Come, Saracen, we have things we must do.”

Grimes turned back to Cezanne and watched her crawl out of the cloud that Grey had cast about her. While she gagged he drove his boot into her ribs and rolled her onto her side.

Cezanne curled up on the sand like a dying bug, but Grimes gave her no respite. He kicked her again this time in the middle of her chest then kicked her in the stomach and rolled her onto her back.

Cezanne lay there floating some where between sentience and darkness. In the distance she heard Grey snap the wagon’s reins. The wagon began to clatter away.

She concentrated on that noise pulling her self out of the darkness towards it until Grimes drove the heel of his boot into her mid-section and she saw stars once more.

She heard grimes snort echo about her as if she were at the bottom of a well. Then she felt him lean over her and grab the front of her shirt and pull her to her feet.

While her shirt ripped he drove his ham sized fist into her ribs twice and coiled to throw a hay maker into the middle of her face.

Cezanne shook away the cobwebs that filled her skull and reached up with her left hand clumsily and blocked the blow and drove her knee into Grimes’ groin and threw her self to one side, shredding her damaged shirt and tearing herself out of his grip.

Then she fell to her hands and knees and scrambled to the crucifix and chain.

When she pulled it into her grasp Grimes drove his boot into her again and curled her up on the sand and reached for her throat.

Cezanne rolled onto her back and ignored the misery in her side and drove the crucifix into the middle of Grimes’ face and listened to him squeal.

He staggered backwards, both of his hands clenching the spot where the silver had stuck him, and she rolled to her feet raggedly and drove the heavy cross into the back of his skull.

Grimes shrieked again and staggered forward and Cezanne leapt onto his back and looped the chain about his throat and squeezed.

Grimes staggered backwards gagging and drove his elbow into her ribs and made her see stars. Cezanne closed her eyes, blocked out the pain, and squeezed the chain about Grimes’ neck until he fell into the sand.

Cezanne fell across him and continued to pull on the chain until she was certain Grimes would not rise again.

Then she rolled away from him and wrapped her arms about her ribs and stifled a sob.

Painful minutes later, after she had scraped herself back together, she crawled to the sailor. He was dark skinned and dark eyed and had carried a scimitar, and wore a tri-cornered hat.

He was a Saracen, but exactly what he had been doing here they would never tell her. She hit him hard, too hard.

“No man deserves to die alone and unmourned on a distant shore,” she whispered to herself.

Then she pushed herself to her knees, hung her crucifix about her neck and said a prayer for the sailor’s soul.

When she had finished and crossed herself she pulled her tattered shirt about her and tied it in a knot about her waist leaving her lean stomach bare.

“Man,” Cezanne’s voice was soft when she spoke to the dead sailor, “why have you traveled across an ocean to die?”

There was no answer. She was alone in the darkness with the moon, the stars and the crashing surf.