by Steve White
“What’s going on?” Nesbit whispered.
“I don’t know,” Jason replied. “Evidently something has come up that requires Romain’s and Ahriman’s presence elsewhere.”
“Maybe even somewhere off-planet,” Zenobia speculated.
“Wherever they’ve gone,” said Mondrago, “they’ve taken the Kestrel’s sensors with them.” His eyes met Jason’s. “It’s now or never, sir.”
“You’re right. After we’ve been fed breakfast, start working on your bonds whenever no guards are watching.” Jason worked his way around and whispered to the others. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do . . .”
* * *
One-Ear must have gotten renewed warnings about Zenobia from Romain, for he largely stayed away from the prisoners. That, and the fact that he was now somewhat shorthanded, gave Mondrago frequent opportunities to inconspicuously saw at his bonds, awkwardly grasping the knife behind the small of his back and maintaining a stoic silence whenever he inadvertently cut his wrists. After his hands were free, he kept them together, underneath him, whenever a guard came by. When no guard was about, he worked his way up against Jason and freed his hands.
That was as far as they had gotten when darkness fell and one of the guards approached with their nighttime rations. This had become so routine that the guard was unarmed, save with a knife thrust through his belt-rope, and had no backup. One-Ear and the rest of his men were in the distance, around a flickering fire. As always, the guard carried a tray with five bowls of glop about the consistency of thin gravy, which they were to grasp with their bound hands and slurp down. When he came to Mondrago and bent down, the Corsican raised his hands as usual. As far as could be seen in the night, they were still bound. And they concealed the knife held under Mondrago’s right wrist.
With a movement of almost invisible swiftness, Mondrago flipped the knife up. His left hand went up and behind the goon’s head and pulled it down and forward, while simultaneously he thrust the knife under the chin and up through the tongue and into the brain.
It probably wouldn’t have worked, given the goon’s genetically upgraded reflexes, had it been anyone but Mondrago. As it was, the goon never made a sound. There was the merest trickle of blood, as usual in cases of instantaneous death.
Mondrago lowered the goon to his knees and, using a nearby stick, propped the body into a kneeling position. Swiftly, before anyone could notice anything amiss, he handed the goon’s knife to Jason. The two of them swiftly cut the ropes binding their ankles, then freed the others, cautioning them to silence. The last was hardly necessary in Grenfell’s case, although awareness seemed to be awakening in his eyes.
“All right,” Jason whispered. “Before anybody over there at the fire notices that this goon hasn’t moved in a long time, let’s crawl—very slowly and quietly—over to the edge of the clearing.” He activated his map display. “Once we’re in the jungle, we’ll head in that direction, which is south. Zenobia, lead the way. Irving, can I depend on you to make sure Roderick keeps moving?”
“Yes, you can,” said Nesbit steadily.
“Good. Alexandre and I will bring up the rear.”
They were beyond the clearing, and up and running on their stiffened legs, before they heard the sound of shouting from behind.
* * *
Following Zenobia, they were able to outdistance their pursuers, who were blundering through the darkened jungle with the aid of torches. But Jason was only too well aware that in daylight they would lose that advantage, and that One-Ear’s cult adepts, escaped slaves all, were more jungle-wise than any of them except possibly Zenobia. He also knew that One-Ear would never give up the pursuit and face Romain’s wrath for losing the prisoners. So he urged his people ever onward through the night, gaining as much of a lead as they could. Nesbit was as good as his word, keeping Grenfell running whenever the historian seemed about to sink into vagueness.
Still, Jason couldn’t free himself of the feeling that, given the Transhumanists’ lack of scruples about bringing high-tech equipment into the past, One-Ear might very well have a means of communicating with the Kestrel. He could only hope that One-Ear, in the immemorial way of underlings everywhere, would try to recapture the escapees on his own rather than immediately summoning the spacecraft, lest Romain conclude that he couldn’t handle his own problems.
Instead of brooding about it, he concentrated on their route. The tiny port of Ocoa lay about fifteen miles south-southwest. He had no intention of actually going there, given how the Spaniards felt about pirates. But Grenfell had said that Morgan was due to land raiders in its vicinity to supplement his water and meat supplies, although he had been unable to be precise about locations or dates. So Jason led them down the slopes into the coastal lowlands along the eastern shore of the Bahia de Ocoa, where there were ranches the pirates might raid.
“Of course,” said Zenobia as they made one of their occasional stops for water along the Rio Ocoa, which they dare not follow consistently for fear of discovery, “they might raid on the other side of Ocoa, further southeast.”
“But that would put them closer to the Spanish stronghold of Santo Domingo,” Jason argued. “No, my hunch is that they’ll land north of Ocoa.”
“Unless they’ve already come and gone.”
“I prefer not to assume that.” Jason stood up. “All right. Let’s go. Irving, is Roderick in shape to get moving?”
“Yes, I think so.” Nesbit murmured something in Grenfell’s ear. The historian nodded slowly and got to his feet.
They resumed their trek, leaving the Rio Ocoa behind and following a smaller stream southwestward, occasionally glimpsing the Bahia ahead whenever the vegetation grew thin enough. Finally they entered the fringes of the coastal plain, and Jason turned out to be right that there were ranches here.
Unfortunately, those ranches showed signs of having already been raided. There were burned-out sheds, and fly-swarming carcasses of cattle and horses lying about.
Jason had difficulty meeting his companions’ eyes, especially Zenobia’s. “This all looks very recent,” he said. “Maybe—”
All at once, a sound of shouting and musketry was heard. They ran behind a ruined building as a ragged line of men, apparently Spaniards, broke into the cleared area, plainly beating a retreat. Their retreat turned into a rout as another line of men—clearly pirates this time—appeared behind them, pausing to fire their expensive muskets with their famous marksmanship, bringing several Spaniards down and then breaking into a charge.
Jason stepped around a corner of the ruin and started to wave his arms in the direction of the pirates. “Over here!” he shouted . . . then doubled over, breath whooshing out, as the butt of a laser carbine smashed into his stomach.
Before he could straighten up, he was shoved back behind the wall among his companions. A goon stepped quickly around the corner, covering them all with the laser carbine. “No one move or make a sound,” he commanded.
Jason sensed rather than saw Zenobia bunching her muscles to spring. The goon smiled lazily and pointed the laser carbine at her midriff. “Don’t be a silly bitch. Nobody’s that fast.” He sounded almost bored. One muscle at a time, Zenobia uncoiled. The goon smiled again, then moved his lower jaw in a way that Jason recognized: he was activating an implanted short-range communicator. “I have them. I’m at—”
With a roar, a large figure burst around the corner of the ruined wall, waving a cutlass overhead. The goon swung around. Before he could bring the laser carbine into line, the cutlass came down, smashing the weapon out of the goon’s hands. At the same moment, Zenobia leaped forward. She grasped the Transhumanist’s left wrist and wrenched the arm back up behind him, while clamping her right arm around his throat. With a bellow of triumph, the new arrival thrust his cutlass into the goon’s midriff, gave it a vicious twist, and yanked it out, trailing a rope of guts.
As Zenobia let the body fall, their rescuer wiped his sweat-soaked dirty-blond hair back,
revealing the Neanderthaloid countenance of Roche Braziliano.
I never thought I’d be grateful to see a face like that, Jason thought.
“Zenobia!” rumbled the pirate in his almost impenetrable Dutch accent. His scowl almost entirely smoothed itself out, which Jason suspected constituted his version of a toothy grin. “It’s you! And you—Jason, ja?—I remember from the Oxford. How come you to be here?”
“It’s a long story. We were blown free of the Oxford and got ashore. Some renegades who still have a grudge against Zenobia from her time here in Hispaniola have been chasing us. This was one of them. We’re in your debt.”
“Well, Captain Morgan will be glad to see you. Come along, we’ll be heading back to the beach as soon as we’ve finished whipping these dogs of Spaniards back to their kennels.” As he turned to go, he noticed—seemingly for the first time—the wrecked laser carbine on the ground. His scowl returned, and his pale-gray eyes blinked repeatedly as he gazed at something that had no business existing in his world. He gave a puzzled grunt. “Ah . . . what is . . . ?”
“Never mind,” said Zenobia, and Jason realized she had activated her vocal implant. “It’s nothing. Let’s go. Captain Morgan will want to see us.”
“Uh . . . ja,” grunted Roche Braziliano as the subsonic wave did its work. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
* * *
“We landed a party near here a few days ago,” explained Henry Morgan, leaning on the side of a beached boat as the returning pirates filed past. Zenobia had already returned to Rolling-Calf and a rapturous reception by her Maroons. “They gathered in a lot of good meat. The Dons took exception. They brought in three or four hundred men from Santo Domingo and gathered in all the animals from the farms we hadn’t raided, so when we landed again this morning we found nothing. So we sent fifty men further inland. The Dons thought they’d be clever. They left a great herd of cattle where it would be sure to be found, lying in wait nearby. After our men had killed a large number of the beasts and were starting to haul the meat away, they attacked from ambush. They probably thought we’d flee in disorder like they would. But our men know how to retreat in good order, pausing at every opportunity to take toll with their muskets. Eventually the Spaniards, being Spaniards, lost heart and started to retreat themselves. We pursued them and wiped out most of them, although we’d had to abandon all the meat. It was in the course of that pursuit that Roche ran into you.” He grinned. “What excellent fortune! Of course, it’s too bad about Henri; he was a good man, and it’s always a shame to lose a ship’s carpenter. And I gather Roderick isn’t quite himself—that sometimes happens to men who go through great hardship, but they often get over it. And it’s a pity about your mistress drowning, Jason. A good-looking piece, in a Portuguese sort of way.”
“Yes,” said Jason noncommittally. They hadn’t been forthcoming about Pauline Da Cunha’s death, merely saying that she as well as Boyer had gone down with the Oxford.
“Still,” Morgan continued, “the rest of you had the luck of the Devil, being blown clear and then washing ashore and finding each other on the beach. And then you walked all the way here! That story ought to be good for free drinks for the rest of your lives! You must have made very good time.” Morgan’s dark eyes narrowed, and Jason reminded himself that, whatever else he was, this man was very shrewd. “You know, there’s one thing I still don’t quite understand. You headed east at best speed, toward the Spanish-settled region around here . . . like walking into the lion’s den, you might say.” Morgan’s eyes narrowed still further. “If one didn’t know better, it’s almost as though you knew I was going to be here.”
Very, very shrewd. “It was just a lucky guess, Captain. I figured you’d need to raid the southern coast of Hispaniola to replenish your supplies, so I thought this offered the best chance of encountering you somewhere.”
“Hmm. It was still what people call a long chance. It’s almost enough to make you believe what fools say about Zenobia!” Morgan laughed, just a trifle uneasily, then abruptly dismissed the subject. “Anyway, as old Will Shakespeare said, all’s well that ends well. Tomorrow, I’m going to lead a couple of hundred men back here to finish off those Spaniards from Santo Domingo. Then we’ll start working our way east—damn these contrary winds!—toward Saona Island, off the southeast tip of Hispaniola, where I’ve called a second rendezvous.”
Nesbit’s curiosity seemed to overcome his hesitancy. “Er, Captain, didn’t the destruction of Oxford cause any of the Brotherhood any, well, misgivings about following you, for fear of bad luck?”
Morgan looked at him as though he considered the question an odd one. “Of course not. The fact that I survived it was a sign of excellent luck! Any pirate worth his salt would want to follow a captain who got out of that alive along with only ten others, when over two hundred went down!”
“But all those dead men!”
“Well, it helped that a lot of them were still floating the next day.”
“Ah,” Nesbit nodded. “You mean you were able to give them Christian burial.”
“No! We were able to get their rings and other jewelry off.” Morgan roared with laughter. “Oh, yes, a few of the Frogs crawled away, but only the ones who’d been looking for an excuse to do so anyway. As far as the others are concerned, I lead a charmed life!”
Jason nodded to himself, recalling that Grenfell had said much the same thing about the seemingly paradoxical effect of the Oxford disaster on Morgan’s reputation. Now the historian was only fitfully able to supply such insights. Their reunion with Morgan’s company had seemed to rekindle his awareness of—and interest in—his surroundings, which gave Jason cause for cautious hope. But for now, at least, they were going to have to get along without the foreknowledge of events that he had provided.
“But,” continued Morgan, his mood visibly darkening, “there’s no denying that the loss of Oxford is a heavy blow. Without her, I suppose we’ll have to pick a destination less tough than Cartagena.” He shook his head sadly, then stood up straight. “Well, we’ll deal with that at Saona Island. For now, let’s get back to Dick Norman’s Lilly, my new flagship, where a man can get a drink!”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The next day, Morgan’s landing party found no Spanish troops and had to content itself with some random vandalism in the region. It proved a harbinger of frustrations to come.
Behind schedule and seething with impatience, Morgan set his course for Saona Island. It took weeks, tacking and beating against particularly foul contrary trade winds. It was hellish aboard the small ships, rolling and pitching and exposed to the whipping spray. Jason could only give thanks that all members of his party were, like himself, not susceptible to motion sickness. He had insisted on it as a special qualification for this particular mission, hoping (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) to exclude Nesbit.
Finally arriving at Saona Island, they found that none of the other ships Morgan had summoned from Port Royal and the other buccaneer centers had arrived yet. Those had also had to sail to windward, and they had further to come. As they began to straggle in, word came that some had simply given up.
So Morgan, lest his fleet run low on supplies again, had sent an expedition of a hundred and fifty men back to Hispaniola, to pillage the rich environs of Santo Domingo itself. But the Spaniards were forewarned as they so often were—it was a chronic problem, with coastal settlers and fishermen and Indians eager to report sightings of pirate ships in hope of reward. And by now Morgan’s diabolical reputation as the nemesis of the Spanish empire was such as to make him a particular target. So the party found well-prepared troops in a strong defensive position, and returned empty-handed.
At last, all the ships that were going to come were assembled at Saona Island. Morgan received reports that three of them had turned back, unable to make further headway against the trade winds because of stress to their hulls or exhaustion of their crews. He also learned that the Spaniards of Cartagena had rejoiced at the new
s of the Oxford disaster.
“The silly papist fools claim their city’s patron saint, Nuestra Señora de Popa, set off the explosion,” one of the captains told the council Morgan had called aboard Lilly. “They even say she was seen emerging from the water, her clothes all wet, after swimming back from Cow Island!” Jason, who knew the real cause, dutifully joined in the chuckles.
Morgan was not amused. He looked out over the rail at the other ships. “Well, it’s clear we can’t expect any more ships to come. So we’re only nine ships and less than six hundred men. And this one, with only fourteen light guns, is the most heavily armed ship we’ve got. We all know we can’t attempt Cartagena without Oxford. I say, let’s set our course for Caracas and the towns along the coast of the Spanish Main to the east of it.”
“But,” someone objected, “that’s to the southeast of here. It would be a long haul to windward. And after the beating our ships have already taken . . . !” A murmur of weary agreement arose. The accented voice of one of the French buccaneers who had stuck with Morgan interrupted it.
“There’s another possibility, mes amis. I was with L’Ollonais when he sacked Maracaibo. True, the approaches are treacherous, but I know them well. And small, shallow-draft ships like ours will be ideal for them.”
“But L’Ollonais picked it clean!” Zenobia objected.
“Ah, but that was more than two years ago, non?”
“That’s right!” said Morgan, suddenly charged with the predatory eagerness he knew so well how to instill in others. “You know how it is with Spanish cities. Even after we pillage them, the ruling groups are still stuck there—they need the king’s permission to relocate somewhere else. So they build their wealth back up, which doesn’t take long. There’s always a new mule train coming in with more silver. Maracaibo will be a fat prize again.” Jason, from his experiences in the twentieth century, recalled that burglars who had robbed an affluent house would often hit the same house again after giving the insurance company time to restock it.