“Ian! Start the engine and get us out of here now!” He had seen the crossbow crew react to the bellowed commands of their officer. As the diesel coughed blue exhaust into the air, Morgan’s weapon sent a trio of rounds toward the forward gunner who twisted awkwardly then fell from his seat into the sea. The aft gunner released his giant bolt as his mate fell, but he had apparently not compensated for his own craft’s rapid settling. The shaft entered the water short of Geheimnis’s side. Even so, the sloop was struck and struck hard below the waterline. Such a blow could be as fatal in Caerwent Harbor as a clean hit, but Morgan had little time for speculation. Instead, he spared the aft gunner a reprimand by sending him to Cernunos’ Cauldron.
Then he relaxed his trigger finger. The dirty waters suddenly boiled with an explosive release of trapped air beneath the P-Boat’s deck, and Caerwent harbor closed a fist around the low craft and dragged her to the bottom.
“You can put the keys back into the Mirror, Ian,” Brigid said with the merest tremor in her voice. She put an arm around Morgan who felt her body release its tension and fear.
“Here.” He dropped his key into Connach’s hand. As the prince ducked down below, Morgan felt his own tensions begin to slip away. He gazed shoreward, past the debris and the floundering sailors that swam above the P-Boat’s grave.
Parts of the once subjugated city were aflame, Mercian strongholds, if the rest of the day’s plans had gone well. He prayed that they had. The staccato rattle of gunfire told him that the liberators were still at work. The Viks had owned Caerwent and the rest of the occupied lands for over five years, however, and he knew that they would not give up their rich slave territories without a fierce struggle. The battle for Caerwent was just the overture to a war that could grow and engulf nearly half a continent from the Shining Mountains to the waters through which Geheimnis moved. Those waters would be tinged with more than oil before the last notes were played. He closed his eyes for a moment, trusting his instincts to keep the sloop on a straight path. He prayed to all the gods that might be listening that the last notes of this war would be played by the men and women who wore the Celtic Wheel of Life.
When he again opened his eyes, Connach stood braced against the boat’s motion. The smile that creased his face was no longer the rictus of the past few weeks. “The boat is undamaged below; the wind’s freshening and is a Hell Wind no more. Bend on the sails and let’s bring her home properly.”
“Aye,” Morgan said and moved to the mast after handing the tiller to Brigid. As soon as he had said it, he knew that he now considered Reged and the bustling Verulamium as “home”. He had gotten drunk there, and he had found love there. He had bled for it and had killed for it. He and Verulamium had earned the right to claim each other. The thought lay warmly inside like a sip of a rare old whiskey.
“We’re going home,” he told Brigid as he loosened the mainsail halyard. He took two turns on the winch and began feeding the sail slides into the track as he heaved on the line.
On the pitching bow, Connach was clipping the big genoa jib onto the forestay. He ran it up to the masthead by the time Morgan had cleated off the main halyard.
The boat heeled as the wind filled the sails. Morgan kissed Brigid gently and took the living tiller from her hands, pushing the fuel cutoff knob to its stop for the last time. The tiller thrilled with the pressures of the moving sea and air currents on the hull and sails as the boat drove through abruptly clean water with a white bow wake. The shrouds hummed with the wind, singing of freedom. Morgan rejoiced.
“There’s one more thing we need to do after we get back,” Morgan said.
“And that is?”
Morgan told him.
EPILOG
The click of Jessi O’Hara’s heels on the parquet flooring outside the office door made Wiscombe start, and she almost dropped the small package onto the oak desktop. She shook her head slowly and allowed a wry smile to display a mere hint of the emotions she fought to keep beneath the surface of her skin. A female executive still had to out-tough her male counterparts in order to survive. That credo had enabled her to cope, at any rate.
“Any word from Hazlett on our little mystery?” She asked O’Hara without preamble.
“Yes, ma’am.” O’Hara handed her new boss two sheets of paper clipped together along with a finger-smudged digital photograph.
“I’m sure glad that...that…..”
“Me, too,” Gale Wiscombe said in a voice not entirely lacking in irony, understanding O’Hara’s unfinished sentence. “John Wiscombe’s honor has been restored and the company saved from its rapid slide into ignominy. Not that the bastard Ian Connach didn’t do his damndest to screw things up.”
“Miss Wiscombe!” O’Hara cried, her posture clearly defensive.
“Wiscombe sighed and softened the tight lines of her lips with an exertion of will.
“I know. I read the letter. I can thank Connach for the Density Differential engine and for his letter and picture from God-knows-where.” She held O’Hara’s gray eyes with her ice blue ones.
“What in hell does Hazlett think, anyway?”
“Ma’am,” O’Hare said deferentially. “Lieutenant Commander Hazlett said that the configuration of the boats positively checks out with the otherhulls of the 4-Ds that were presumed lost. But he has no idea where the picture was taken except to say that it was probably shot somewhere in the tropics.”
“Fantastic! The boys are out perverting the natives on some goddamn banana republic island and then they mail a postcard home. ‘Having a great time. Wish you were here. Please send money’.”
She tried to rub the strain of frustration from her face with the heels of her hands and was unsuccessful. She smiled wanly at O’Hara.
“Is my cynicism showing, Jessi? Sometimes, when I think I’m alone, I ask myself if it’s worth the effort of bucking the tide of culture. I could have had a lobotomy after the senior prom, gotten knocked up and taken on the role of contented breeder and happy housewife.”
“Is there anything else, Miss Wiscombe?” O’Hara asked patiently while obviously wishing herself elsewhere.
“Sorry, Jessi. The boss is feeling tired today. Just leave the papers here and we’ll go over them tomorrow.”
She took the package in her hand again and felt the curved shape of the object through the paper wrapping.
“Close the doors when you leave, Marti and hold my calls for an hour.”
O’Hara did not move. “Are you sure, Miss Wiscombe?”
“I’m not your old boss, and things are looking up here. Don’t mother me.”
Wiscombe waited until the doors had swung firmly shut and O’Hara’s heels had tapped their way into silence. Then she unwrapped the package, knowing what was inside, but she held her breath nonetheless. The paper fell, unheeded to the floor, and the gleam of the golden object it once covered held all of her attention.
The torc with its facing dragonheads stirred her once again in a manner she found difficult to understand. The heavy gold warmed in her hand, and the blue stone eyes flashed as she raised the Celtic neckpiece to her eyes. Yet it was neither the value of the torc nor the beauty of its primitive lines, which moved her. There was a power she felt when she held it in her hands, a power she was afraid to invoke, but which might be invoked if she placed the gift about her neck. There was the note, too...the note that had been wrapped around the torc. She picked it up and read it again in a whisper, fearing it might contain the words which would transform the torc into something that should not exist in this world of Gale Wiscombe’s experience.
“Wear this,” Ian Connach had written, “and become a Lady of a great House. Even though you can’t be here now, the torc will join you with me.” Then he had written, “Save PacSail and destroy the molds in Shed Four. Build no more to 24-Ds, ever.”
Gale smiled and clicked the torc open with trembling fingers. “You aren’t the only one who wants to run barefoot through some tropical paradise, you bastar
d,” she told the picture. “What you don’t know, Mr. Connach is that Jay Kettelmann had already destroyed all the 24-D. molds before I got here. But not before he had one last boat assembled. It was probably his insurance policy in case he sank the one he stole.
“I shall first become a ‘Lady of a great House’ then I will decide what to do with the contents of Shed Four.”
She closed the golden torc around her neck and her eyes widened in surprise.
She wondered if she would meet Ian Connach in paradise.
THE END
Louis Phillippi has been a journalist (both military and civilian), a television makeup man, and an educator. He sails in the Sacramento Delta, the San Francisco Bay and in the San Juan Islands.
He lives with his wife, Nancy, in Sierra City, California.
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