It was going to be a long night.
* * *
Ebba jolted upright at a mighty crack from above.
“Whadsit?” she mumbled, throwing her legs over the side of the hammock.
“Sumpin’ went,” Stubby muttered hoarsely, already moving too.
The bilge door swung open, and the roar of the storm multiplied ten-fold.
“All hands on deck,” Plank bellowed down.
They leaped into action. In less than a minute, Ebba was following Stubby up the ladder, Peg-leg and Locks close behind.
“My ship,” Stubby bellowed over the wind. His stance was wide, like hers, to combat the violent lurching underfoot.
The starboard tip of the lowest boom hung on by a few splinters. The broken end of the horizontal beam swung wildly in the gale, threatening to splinter off completely at any moment.
Their sails were already furled, but that wasn’t the problem.
The problem was where the beam fell when it fell, who it might take with it, if the falling boom would damage the ship good and proper, and most importantly, what was attached to the boom.
The rigging and sheets, lacking their usual anchorage on the broken beam, whipped in the powerful wind, lashing out in the air. One of those ropes across the head or throat and the person would be out for the count. Or carried overboard.
“We can’t work with those lashin’ about,” Locks shouted, watching the ropes whip wildly across the deck.
They had to regain safety on deck if they were getting through this storm. If they couldn’t move for fear of being lashed or thrown overboard by the sheets or killed by the falling tip of the boom, they were as good as dead.
Ebba wiped her eyes, dislodging the rain that had already soaked her to the bone. She yelled over the wind to her fathers. “I’ll go up and break the broken tip o’ the boom off. Best if we decide when it happens. And it’ll pull all the loose sheets and riggin’ down with it to the deck so we can collect it all up.”
No one answered, their wet faces grim.
“Ye know it be the only way,” she pressed. Ebba was the best rigger here. And there wasn’t any way her fathers were going up there.
“I don’t like ye up there in this,” Peg-leg called, blinking rain out of his eyes. “The swell is near vertical, lass.”
Aye, and it wasn’t going to get better.
Plank joined them, skirting wide around the flailing sheets and rigging.
Ebba shouted a warning as the rigging swept across the helm. Barrels, at the wheel, barely managed to duck in time.
Someone was going to die if she didn’t do something.
“I’m goin’ up,” she shouted to them, quelling the rioting school of fish in her gut.
Peg-leg looked ready to argue, but he didn’t, snapping his mouth closed instead. He jerked his head in a nod.
“Be careful, little nymph,” Plank said loudly, squeezing her forearm. “The loose riggin’ ye can see comin’, but those sheets are whippin’ around fierce-like. Protect yer head.”
Avoiding lashing ropes and netting on her way to break off the tip of a broken boom? No trouble.
She exhaled shakily and edged closer to the mast. The ropes swung in a chaos of swirls and snaps, and Ebba poised on the tips of her toes, waiting for her window.
The wind surged, throwing the ropes south to the helm and out of her path. Ebba sprinted to the sole intact rigging left on the port side. The wind battered at her as she scurried up to the boom as quickly as possible, knowing a mistake would likely send her overboard.
Ebba straddled the boom, looking back at the mast, and past it to the other side of the boom where the broken tip still swung.
The wind changed, and Felicity suddenly heeled from port to starboard. She yelped, pressing herself flat against the boom and hugging it with all her strength. A rope whistled over her head, skimming her dreads.
Ebba stared down at her fathers with wide eyes until Felicity stabilized again. As much as she would anyway.
She had to get to the other side. Quickly.
Ebba dared to lift her head to scan the ropes below. Nothing would be gained from waiting for errant changes in wind. She had a dreadful feeling only luck would determine her success. Keeping flat on the boom, she began to shimmy toward the mast in the center. Rain pelted her back as the wind sought to get beneath her body to pry her off and fling her into the black watery abyss.
In her peripheries, the vertical wall of the next swell loomed. Ebba was only halfway to the mast when Felicity began to tilt back, back, back, traveling up the side of the wave. She choked on a curse, realizing the tilt of the ship didn’t bode well for her at all.
Stopping her shimmy, Ebba locked her arms and legs around the boom to wait out the swell.
The ship navigated the slope of the wave, sailing higher and higher until her angle was almost perpendicular to the sea. Before the swell, Ebba was flat on top of the boom. With Felicity’s bow now aimed at the sky that was no longer the case. Now, Ebba was supporting her entire body weight and clinging onto the beam for dear life. If she fell while the ship was vertical like this, she’d topple directly into the black waters of the Dynami churning below.
Her arms burned from the effort of holding on as Felicity continued up to the peak of the swell. Shite, this wasn’t good. Ebba was used to climbing, but even with the help of her legs around the boom, the unabated strain on her arms was not something her muscles were used to. And they were certainly letting her know.
Gasping for breath, some morbid curiosity led Ebba to turn her head. Her eyes widened at the sight of the black ocean looming far, far beneath her.
Just as her arms began to shake, Felicity crested the top of the swell and began the stomach-lurching plummet down the other side.
But they were in a storm. That meant huge swell after huge swell. Ebba’s arms wouldn’t be able to hold out indefinitely. Shuffling frantically, she continued on to the slippery mast and pulled herself upright. She hugged the thick beam and took a deep breath.
She glanced to the starboard side at the splintered tip she’d need to snap off.
Halfway there. She lowered flat again, forcing her complaining arms to pull her out toward the tip.
Scalding pain erupted across her back, accompanied by the crack on a sheet as it struck her. Ebba shrieked, blinded from the white spots across her vision.
There wasn’t time to regain her senses. Felicity began to tilt upward again, up the next swell, and Ebba moaned low through the agonizing hurt.
Through the haze, she had the presence of mind to hook her ankles under the boom, like before. Gripping her hands together under the boom, Ebba attempted to breathe through the fiery pain on her back. She panted, squeezing her eyes shut as the ship tilted vertically. White-hot flames licked her back, and this time, her arms began to shake immediately.
Ebba focused on clinging to the beam, certain that if Felicity tilted even one degree farther back, they’d capsize anyway, and it would all be over. The pain in her back was sapping her strength. The shaking in her arms became steadily more violent, and soon, as her upper body fatigued to the point of uselessness, the insides of her thighs began to burn and shake also.
When Felicity plateaued this time, Ebba remained gasping for breath, lying still to recover. She couldn’t hold on through another one of those.
She couldn’t move.
A strong hand gripped her calf. “Come on now, Viva. Up with ye afore the next one be upon us.”
Ebba braved the screaming protest in her back to peer wearily over her shoulder at Jagger, who was flat against the boom behind her. He lifted his chin in a ‘go on’ gesture.
She wasn’t alone up here, and that made all the difference. Arms feeling as heavy as leaden weights, Ebba dragged herself forward, somehow finding the strength to oblige the flaxen pirate behind.
During the chaos, Ebba had almost made it to the broken tip of the beam. She assessed the damage to the ship. The end wasn’t
hanging on by much. She should be able to snap it off.
Checking her fathers were well clear of the area, Ebba, still flat, reached forward and pushed down on the base of the broken section. The swinging tip lowered with her pressure but didn’t snap off.
Bugger.
She looked at the looming swell and desperately tried again. “It ain’t budgin’,” she shouted back at Jagger.
“I’m goin’ to pull on it from beneath. Ye push as hard as ye can from the top,” he yelled.
She was still processing what he meant when Jagger swung underneath the boom. Willingly. She saw immediately what he intended to do.
Head pointing inward, Jagger monkey-climbed out to the splintered tip, directly below her position. Ebba lifted slightly to let him wrap his arms around the beam under her stomach.
She stole another peek at the next swell. “Quick,” she called down.
He lifted his legs and looped them halfway along the broken tip. She flinched as a rope belted close to his head, drawing her reaching hand back when the sheet missed him.
“Push,” he shouted.
Gripping on with her thighs, Ebba pushed down on the broken part of the beam with all her might, bellowing wordlessly against the agony in her back.
The boom didn’t budge. At first. With a cracking groan, the tip began to respond to their pressure, the remaining tendrils splintering.
She doubled her effort, teeth clenched, feeling Jagger doing the same on the underside.
They were rewarded with an almighty crack as the beam gave way. Devoid of the support of the splintered end, Ebba lurched forward, arms flailing in thin air for one soul-dropping moment. She squeezed the beam with her thighs, managing to arch her upper body back and correct her balance.
The broken tip hit the deck below, taking the flailing rigging and sheets with it. Her fathers began drawing in the lashing ropes without delay.
They did it. She sagged against the boom, exhausted, her back throbbing.
Jagger was still suspended below her, only hanging on with his arms. Ebba hurried to shuffle back so he could swing back on top to join her.
There wasn’t time. The next enormous swell was upon them. Ebba felt the change of the ship’s angle and panic crowded her chest.
Jagger quickly worked backward and then swung his legs up to grip the underside of the beam just as she was gripping the topside. He crossed his ankles right in front of her face, and she couldn’t have cared less.
Ebba pressed her forehead into the wood and drew in large gulps of air, terror filling her at the immediate burning and shaking in her arms as Felicity slanted sharply. She squeezed her eyes shut as her thighs joined in.
“Jagger, I won’t be able to hold,” she panted his way, fear forcing the admission out of her.
His reply carried to her from where his head was located by her feet. “Ye ain’t got a choice, Viva.”
“It won’t be a choice to let go,” Ebba snapped. Or she meant to snap. Instead, she just sounded desperate.
Her arms shook violently. Even as she tried to keep her hands clasped together, to put the pain aside, her grip steadily weakened. Her fingers began to slip even as she willed them to keep her alive.
“Jagger, I’m goin’ to fall.” Doom clawed at her face, her chest, her mind.
Ebba’s hands lost contact. With a terrified scream, she slid off the beam, knowing that if she missed colliding with the hull, the odds weren’t great for her to survive the impact with the black ocean below. And if she did survive that, she certainly wouldn’t survive the storm.
Too scared to make a sound, Ebba plummeted through the air. To her death.
With a fierce roar audible over the crashing, howling storm, Jagger lunged. His hand wrapped around her extended wrist, almost ripping her shoulder from its socket.
She came to an abrupt stop and threw back her head, wide-eyed, to look at him. Past him, the angry sky bore down from above.
“Please don’t drop me,” Ebba begged him, choking on her panic.
“I’ll never drop ye, Viva,” he said through gritted teeth. “Never.” The muscles in his arm strained through his wet tunic. His other arm and legs remained tight around the remaining section of the boom.
Call her a stupid sod, but Ebba believed him, taint, dubious morals, and all. Tears poured down her face as she swung her other hand up to clasp above his wrist.
The storm swirled around them, but she couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t see anything but his determined, high-boned face as he clung to her and her to him. Her body swung freely in the air beneath him and, oddly, though death was a scant whisper away, there was a peace to the moment. An acceptance that her fate was now in Jagger’s hands and that clearly, on some buried level, she trusted him.
He tightened his grip on her hand, staring into her eyes.
“Not far now. Ye’ll be okay,” he said. His calmness was at odds with the shaking of his arm though.
Yet Jagger proved right again.
Felicity peaked and started the plummet down the other side. The dragging downward pull was gone and Jagger circled himself around the boom, towing her with him. She fell into his arms, chest heaving.
“Ye need to get back down to the deck and get yer back looked at,” he whispered in her ear.
Mind buzzing, Ebba pulled back, glancing around her. “One o’ the sheets is still lashin’ about.” She had to make the deck safe. She—
“It’s done, Viva,” Jagger said. “I’ll get this last bit, but if ye’re up here with that wound when the next swell hits, ye’ll kill us both.”
Shock had clouded her judgment. She’d become a liability.
Ebba nodded mutely and extracted her limbs from where they’d tangled with Jagger’s. Knowing her arms couldn’t haul her back to the rigging on the port side, she braved her shaking legs to run across the boom to the mast and then to the far tip.
Half climbing and half falling, she descended the rope squares to land on deck.
Arms enveloped her, and Ebba screamed. The arms immediately let go.
“Shite, she did get hit,” Plank called over her head.
“Where are ye injured, lass?” Stubby asked.
She winced at the stinging wounds on her back and choked out, “Nothin’ to be losing yer head over. A sheet got me good.”
“Locks,” Peg-leg bellowed through the bilge door.
“I’m okay,” she said, shaking off their hands.
They weren’t taking that for an answer, though. Ebba let herself be tugged to the door, past a white-faced Caspian. If the pain was any indication of the wound, she really should get it looked at.
Just before going through the bilge door, she turned and tilted her head back.
Jagger had secured the last flailing sheet and now crouched by the port-side rigging, peering down at her. Another swell fast approached, but he was seemingly unworried as he held her gaze.
Thank ye, she mouthed at the silver-eyed pirate.
Lightning flashed as he dipped his head.
Thirteen
She woke flat on her stomach, a throbbing ache covering her back that was sore but bearable.
“The sheet got you bad.”
Ebba cracked open an eye, recognizing the deep voice, and spotted Caspian sitting on the opposite hammock. “Feels like it,” she said hoarsely.
“You nearly died,” he whispered.
Aye, she had. “Naw,” she winked at him. “Just a bit of fun.”
Wincing, she swung one leg down and sat in the middle of the hammock. A few of her fathers were slumbering lumps on their creaking hammocks in the sleeping quarters.
“How goes the storm?” By the lurching feel of it, they were still in the thick of it.
“Still the same, but nothing else has broken.”
Felicity was holding up. Ebba exhaled slowly. “How long was I asleep?”
“Only six hours or so. Locks put something in your drink to help you sleep. We’re part way into the last day of th
e storm.”
Thank the seas for that.
She glanced at Caspian and saw that although he stared at her face, it was like he wasn’t seeing her at all. “What’s the matter?”
A small furrow appeared between his brown brows. “If I’d been up there with you, I wouldn’t have been able to save you. If I’d reached to catch you, I would’ve lost my hold on the boom. I’m trying to believe that I’m still the same as everyone else, capable of the same things, but it’s just not true.”
“Ye are; ye just need to do it in a di’ferent way. With a rope, ye could’ve been secured to the boom and reached to catch me. I don’t plan to be in that s’tuation often in the future, matey. And if I am, I’m plannin’ to use a rope. Foolish o’ me not to.”
A wry smile twisted his mouth. “If you wear a rope in storms, I will too.” He shuddered. “I really thought you were going over the side.”
Ebba recalled the swirling black water far below as she’d clung to Jagger’s hand. She shivered. “Me too.”
Caspian stood and sat on the hammock next to her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and she lifted her right arm to hug him back, grimacing at the twinge between her shoulder blades from the motion.
“I never want to lose you, Ebba-Viva,” he whispered.
He so rarely used her actual name. It was always Mistress Pirate this, Mistress Pirate that.
She shifted closer to the heat of his body, relaxing in his arms. “The same to ye. No repeats of any taint shite, please.”
His shoulders shook. “Well, hopefully they don’t take my other arm if that does happen.”
Joking had to be a good sign. “Maybe they’ll give ye two more. That’d be a sight.”
He choked back a laugh and pulled back. She smiled up at him as he lowered his head and pressed his mouth to hers.
The kiss was over before it had begun, but though his mouth wasn’t touching hers any longer, she could still feel where he’d been. She reached up to touch her tingling lips, staring at him in the dim light.
He’d kissed her again. And the kiss still gave her the same thrill as the first time, forbidden and new.
Dynami’s Wrath Page 12