As he ran through the open gate he could hear muffled shouts and thuds on the catwalks behind and to either side. The town itself still appeared to be asleep.

This is a complete surprise.

The squat thatched-roof cabins crowded the wall and the narrow muddy tracks to either side of the cobblestone street he was now on. The street itself was perhaps 20 feet wide. To his left was a cabin with a wooden shingle roof and a lantern hanging above the open door.

That must be the guardhouse.

He grabbed the lantern just as the Cherokees poured in around him and began heading up the street. Fire arrows were already being dipped in the open fire pit where the slain guards had kept their hands warm.

Arrows were now whistling into the underside of the thatched roofs where the eves hung beyond the walls. RavenSong slapped him on the butt and he ran side-by-side down the cobbled street with the savage war chief. They approached what appeared to be a set of two barracks, one to each side of the road. A soldier was stepping out of the right one and received three arrows in his face for his trouble.

Its time!

T.T. roared and threw the blazing twenty pound cast-iron lantern filled with oil through the doorway and listened to is woosh within, and then there were groans and screams. He turned and crashed through the door of the left hand barracks with a hideous scream. There were shadows darting about as a flint began to spark over to his right. He just began screaming and chopping, kicking over bunks as little screaming monkeys scattered about. They were so small and soft that the pole-axe seemed to meet no resistance when it cleaved through them. It was like swinging a bat through a stream of water from a garden hose. He never stayed in one place, but leaped, chopped, pounced and stabbed. He knocked two heads off in the dark. He saw the match from a musket light and he crashed through the oak plank outer wall; the splintering of the wood accompanied by the crash of the musket charge igniting.

When he emerged from the building it was already burning from the outside and something—a squirrel—leaped onto his neck and grasped his collar as it chattered. He ran back to the main street and saw a scene out of nightmare as scattered warriors were sinking arrows into half-dressed sailors and unarmored soldiers, many of them already wounded and bandaged. Up the street to his left, headed towards the house on the hill, was a group of perhaps 60 Cherokees, led by tall gaunt RavenSong. He raced to catch up. Discipline was already breaking down. The group ahead should have been 90 strong.

Pump those legs T.T. No more ducking into barracks. Stay to the street.