The Far Horizon

by Marsha Canham

  Not while he was alive, at any rate.

  The Dantes' vast collection of books and charts had been torn from the shelves and heaped into a pile in the middle of the room. Someone had tried to set the pile on fire, for it showed signs of charring. But there was also evidence of water damage, probably due to rain coming through the shattered windows and doors.

  Hearing an agonized cry from somewhere on the second level, Jonas tucked the carving of the Avenger into his jerkin and ran back to the main entry, then took the stairs two by two ignoring the shaking and groaning of the timbers.

  "Varian?"

  "In here."

  Jonas followed the sound of Varian's voice to what had been the duke's bedroom, the one he shared with his wife, Juliet. The bed was soaked in blood, so much that it was impossible to think that whoever had lain there could have survived. There were two bodies in the corner of the room, neither of them recognizable through the bloating from the heat and flies, but enough to show they were both male.

  The rest of the room was in shambles. The double french doors were smashed and hanging off their hinges, the sheer fabric used to discourage mosquitoes was in shreds, moving listlessly in the breeze.

  Jonas turned on his heel and strode the width of the house to the far wing where his father and mother slept. Like Juliet's room, it had been utterly destroyed and anything of value carried away. Even the clothes in the wardrobes and chests had been ransacked and emptied.

  Prizes. Spoils. The personal belongings of the Pirate Wolf and the Black Swan would be valued trophies.

  Dante's rage had grown with every breath he took and now he needed an outlet before his head exploded. He went out onto the balcony and gripped the rail with both hands. Simon, Isabeau, Lucifer… gone. Gabriel and Evangeline… gone. Juliet, Christiana, Geoffrey Pitt… the children… gone. Gone where? Were they alive or dead? Captives or corpses?

  He threw his head back and let his disbelief and fury break free. The sound was pain-filled and fearsome, the cry of a wounded beast. It reverberated through the trees, bouncing off the walls of the valley, the echoes doubling back into one agonized, unbroken roar.

  Chapter Twenty

  At some point, Jonas's scalding rage was transformed into a cold, terrible calm. There would be time for mourning later and for tallying the cost of each loss and how much retribution it would demand. But for now, they had to find out exactly what had happened.

  He returned to the east wing, where Varian was standing before a partial wall that had once divided the sleeping quarters from a small nursery. The nursery, where his daughter Lily Rose had slept and played was gone, blasted away down to the foundation.

  "How the hell did they get in here?" Varian asked, his voice jagged with pain. "How did they even get close to the island without someone sounding the alarm?"

  Dante's jaws were clenched so tight he could hardly speak. "It would seem your ambassador was not all hot air and braggadocio after all. Someone on this island told them how to navigate through the reef. And that same someone had to have been planning this for a very long time."

  "Even more curious… after such a ferocious battle to take the damned island, why would the Spaniards just leave? Why would they not leave a garrison behind?"

  Jonas shook his head. "At least two of their galleons were sunk, but we don't know how many ships they came with. And where are the rest of the bodies? Out of a thousand men, we've seen perhaps a hundred. I cannot conceive of the rest simply surrendering."

  Artemis Franks came into the room, his ravaged profile showing where streaks of tears had flowed through the grime. "From what I have seen, they might not have been able to spare enough men to defend the island after they took what they wanted. As for the bodies, I warrant there were so many the Spaniards got rid as best they could." In his hand, he clutched a wad of torn cloth. He held it out, still dripping with water from the harbor. "Those were not weeds that snagged the longboats."

  Varian stared at the scraps of clothing and his face drained of color. "The sharks."

  Artemis nodded. "They must have dragged most of the corpses down to the harbor instead of burying them. Sharks caught the scent, came in for a feast."

  "Good sweet God," Varian muttered. "Even their own dead?"

  "No sign of fresh graves anywhere."

  "Then we've no way of knowing who…or how many…" Varian could not finish the sentence.

  Jonas was looking past him, up to the treeline. "If there are survivors they may be hiding in the caves."

  Artemis followed his gaze up the slope. "Might be Spaniards up there too. Seems odd they would just sail away without leaving some of their men behind."

  "Our thought as well. They wouldn't have just left… not unless they had a damned good reason."

  "It does look, however, like they took everything they could carry," Varian added, "save for the bodies."

  Dante nodded grimly. "Organize some armed search parties. Scour the high ground from one end of this damned island to the other. If there is anyone hiding up there, I want them found."

  Artemis checked the weight of powder in his horn and the number of musket balls in the leather pouch hanging from his waist. "You made enough of a howl to wake the Devil himself. Friend or foe, they will know we are here."

  "It will be dusk soon so make sure each man is given a signal so they don't shoot each other."

  "Aye, Captain."

  A footstep crunched on broken glass and all three spun toward the sound, pistols cocked and aimed at the doorway. It was Young Pitt, his face the color of bleached sand. His father, mother, and eleven siblings would have been in port when the attack happened.

  "M-master Grundy sent me to fetch you, Captain. He says it was Auzzy Follett on the anvil. The men are bringing him back now. He's near to dead."

  Jonas uncocked his pistol and stuck it back into his sash. He strode past Young Pitt and descended to the main floor. Once outside again, he started to run down the long slope and made it back to the line of beached longboats in under two minutes.

  Bella was there, having come across on one of the longboats. She was kneeling beside what looked like a filthy bundle of rags. Auzzy Follett had been a handsome, robust man fawned over by the women because of his boyish smile and fine white teeth. At the moment, his face was gaunt, the skin burned and blistered from prolonged exposure to the sun. His eyes were swollen shut and his lips were cracked raw in places.

  "How bad is he?"

  Bella looked up with wide, dark eyes. "He is half-starved and badly in need of water. I… I think the heat and the sun have done the worst, for I cannot tell if it is sunburn or fever burning him up."

  Dante laid a hand on her shoulder. "Just do the best you can for him."

  She nodded and laid a wet strip of cloth across the man's brow. The coolness of the cloth shocked him and his eyes opened a slit.

  Jonas crouched down beside him. "Auzzy? Auzzy, can you hear me, lad?"

  His eyes opened a little more, but he could not focus. "C-captain Jonas? Captain Jonas… be that you?"

  "Aye, Auzzy. Aye, it's me. And I've brought all the lads from the Tribute with me. Can you tell us what happened?"

  "Happened, aye." His voice was a dry rasp and Jonas had to lean close to hear. "Aye, it was a turrible thing. Turrible. We put up a good fight though. We tried. Aye, we tried. Too many. Just too many. And our guns… they were spiked! Our guns up top o' the cliffs were spiked, an' the sentries poisoned! Dead! The lot of them! We had nay warning. There was naught we could do! They were in the harbor afore we knew it. Four bloody galleons. Four! And two bloody galleyasses on t'other side of the reef, too fat to make it through the passage but not too fat to sink any vessels what tried to escape."

  Each word was uttered on a grated breath, his eyes rolling this way and that as if he was reliving the horror and trying to remember. Bella held a pipe of fresh water to the cracked lips and dribbled a few drops onto his tongue. Follett groaned as if it was the sweetest thing
he had ever tasted. She was about to dribble more but Dante's hand stopped her.

  "Too much at once will only make him sicker. Just a few drops to wet his lips."

  Bella licked her own lips nervously, but nodded again as he gave her an encouraging smile before questioning Follett again.

  "When was the attack?"

  "Tried to keep track o' time, I did. Scratched lines in the rock. Fighting lasted four days. Bloody fighting it were too. Took our fair share of Spanish bastards down, we did. But they had the harbor. They sunk our ships!" His eyes welled with tears and he clutched a fist around Jonas's shirt. "Our lads fought bravely, but they couldn't hold 'em. Big house was full o' the dead an' dying. That's when Capt'n Gabriel sent me up to the anvil. Dropped my cask of water shinnying down the rope. Couldn't get back up."

  A massive shudder shook through him and his head started to loll.

  "Auzzy! Auzzy, stay with me. What happened to my brother? To the others… Captain Simon? Captain Juliet? Did the Spanish take prisoners?"

  Follett's eyes rolled, showing only the whites until he could bring himself back around.

  "Aye. Prisoners. Manacled… chained… beaten. Wounded were… fed to the sharks." He sobbed one last time before his head rolled to the side and he fell unconscious.

  "Bella!"

  "You have pushed as far as you can push him for now, Captain. He needs to rest and recover."

  "We need to know more. We need to know exactly what happened here! When it happened! How it happened!"

  "You cannot get information out of a corpse and that is what you will have if you badger the poor man."

  Frustrated, Jonas stood and moved back a step. Dusk was settling over the valley, lending a purplish tint to the air. He could see groups of men starting to spread up the slopes to search for survivors, their lanterns throwing off circles of light.

  A commotion further down the beach caught his eye. A cluster of five crewmen were dragging something between them… a sixth man, who was kicking and fighting them every step of the way through the sand.

  "Captain! Captain Jonas! We caught one of the bloody bastards! He was trying to hide in a grain bin!"

  ~

  Enrique Batistahad come ashore in the bloody aftermath of the main assault, his sense of conquest fever-high on the success of the surprise attack. Like most of his fellow shipmates, he had lived in the sour stink of his own fear for weeks while they awaited the signal to attack. No one had ever launched an assault against the Pirate Wolf's stronghold. No one had even known where it was! Children were raised to fear the name of el pirata lobo, for it was said he was half man, half demon-ghost. The thought of attacking his home port, of engaging all of the Dante clan at once turned the crew's bowels to liquid every night.

  Wonder of wonder, the attack had succeeded. The spy who had been living amongst the pirates for two years had poisoned the sentries and spiked the heavy siege guns to render them useless. El Cazador, the brave and intrepid wolf hunter who had planned every move like a chess game, had stolen out of the harbor in the dead of a moonless night and led the row of black-sailed warships through the coral reef like a lethal cobra. Four galleons holding nearly two thousand soldiers had been inside the harbor before the first alarm was sounded, catching all of the vaunted Dante ships riding lazily at anchor, each with only two or three crewmen on board.

  Gaining control of the harbor had taken less than an hour, but the fighting on land had raged for several days! At the end of it, with the surviving captives in manacles and their stronghold in flames around them, the victors were set free to loot and pillage, rape and kill at will. Whatever treasure they could find and carry on board was theirs to keep as a reward for their savagery.

  Enrique Batistahad been determined to fill his pockets and pouches with spoils, for who, in all of the Main, was not aware of the vast wealth of the Pirate Wolf? His house was rumored to be made of gold, his windows framed in jewels; the chests from a hundred captured treasure ships were said to fill rooms from floor to ceiling.

  Alas, the house had not been made of gold, nor were there jewels strewn about for the plucking. The general in charge of the attack had ordered any captured treasure taken to his own cabin on board the galleon. Officers of rank selected from the sweetest riches next, followed by the rush of common soldiers and sailors. Batistahad found a heavy cache of gold coins but the fever of greed was running as hot as the sense of triumph and a pack of soldiers had cudgelled him, taken his gold, and left him for dead.

  He had lain unconscious for days before regaining enough of his wits to know where he was or what had happened. By then most of the dead had been thrown into the bay… so many the water had been stained red for a week! There were fires burning everywhere, and explosions where the ship's gunners were bombarding the cottages and outbuildings to rubble. One such explosion happened just as Batistawas attempting to stagger down to the shore and he was blown off his feet and sent tumbling twenty feet in the air.

  This time, he landed on a broken boarding pike and the pain was so great he could not even scream. When he regained consciousness—God only knew how many days later—the fires were reduced to smoldering piles of rubble and the Spanish victors were gone. The harbor was empty, the shoreline looked like a scene from some charnel hell. Gulls by the thousands had descended to feast on the dead, and herds of sharks were in the bay gorging on ravaged body parts.

  Not knowing who else might have been abandoned on shore, Batistahad dragged himself up to the treeline to hide as best he could. He lay there for two days tending the deep wound in his side. When he could walk he crept down to the ruined settlement at night to scavenge for food and clean water. He knew there were others in hiding, for he heard sounds at night… sometimes whispers, sometimes screams. On one of his nocturnal ventures he found a small barrel of rum, and to ease his suffering he drank himself into blissful oblivion.

  He had not seen the Tribute enter the harbor. He had been roused out of a drunken stupor by a terrible howling that echoed across the water, and, fearing he had been discovered by wild ravaging animals, he had crept into an oaken bink to hide.

  ~~

  When the crewmen from the Tribute found the cowering Spaniard, their first impulse had been to castrate the bastard and stuff his balls down his throat while they gutted and eviscerated him.

  It was Bullnose Charlie whose cooler head stayed their blades and ordered the men to take him to their captain. He could not stop them from kicking, punching, and slapping the bastard every foot of the way, and thus, after a final kick to the gut, their captive was dumped at Dante's feet, his face awash in blood. The five crewmen backed off a pace, but stood in an angry semi- circle at the feet of the Spaniard while Jonas, Varian, and Artemis Franks waited for him to finish puking a gullet full of rum in the sand.

  Jonas glanced at two of the crewmen. "Get him on his feet."

  They hauled him upright and slapped the side of his head for good measure. The slap brought out a whimper and a round of Spanish curses.

  Jonas's eyes were like shards of ice. "We have some questions for you."

  The Spaniard's head jerked up when he heard his own language. Seeing the circle of unfriendly eyes, he spat out a mouthful of blood and said nothing.

  Jonas smiled. "We can do this the easy way… or the not so easy way, but I would advise you to choose wisely, for my men would dearly love you to tear you apart inch by inch. We'll start with a simple question first: your name."

  "Why should I tell you anything? You are going to kill me anyway."

  "Very likely so. But you can die quickly, or you can die with your skin hanging off in shreds, screaming all night long."

  The Spaniard shuddered involuntarily. "I am but a simple, humble seaman. I carried no weapon, I killed no one. I was on board my ship, in the hold, for the whole time."

  "Hiding in the hold? A coward, then?"

  "A cook. A simple cook, señor."

  "Even a simple cook knows his name."


  "Enrique. My name is Enrique."

  "And your ship's name?"

  "M-my ship? The San Lorenzo. P-please, señor, I know nothing--"

  "The capitán's name?"

  "Estrada. Capitán Manuel Estrada."

  Artemis leaned over and murmured in Jonas's ear. "The San Lorenzo's a cargo ship, ten guns at most."

  The Spaniard heard him and nodded vigorously. "Si, si! A cargo ship. Ten guns. We carried supplies only."

  Artemis had his pistol in his hand and swung it hard, the barrel catching Batistabefore he could duck, knocking the side of his jaw sharply enough to send a tooth flying out of his mouth.

  Artemis brushed away a fleck of red spittle that had landed on his sleeve. "Do you think we live in a cabbage patch, my good man? The San Lorenzo is a galleyass. She carries forty guns on three decks, if memory serves, plus a crew of one hundred and forty sailors, an additional five hundred soldados, as well as sixty slaves to row her."

  Jonas narrowed his eyes. "Tie him up to that beam, strip him down and get a fire going."

  "Wait! Wait, señor, wait! A foolish moment. I will be truthful. My ship was the Florencia and her capitán was, indeed, Don Manuel Ramirez Estrada."

  Jonas glanced at Artemis, who shrugged, then nodded.

  "Are you alone, or are there more of you here?"

  "I was left for dead, señor. I have seen no others from my ship."

  "What about from other ships? How many were involved in the attack?"

  Batistablinked several times to clear his thoughts. "We sailed from Santo Domingo with six ships, but only four could come through the passage. The San Lorenzo and one other was too wide and had to wait beyond the reef."

  "Then how did you come to be on shore?"

  The Spaniard blinked to clear the blood from his eyes. "Every able bodied man was ferried ashore in longboats. The conquistas were eager to fight. Others were not."

  "How long ago did the battle take place?"

  Batistashook his head sadly. "Oh, señor, I have lost count of the days. I lay near death for many, and then there were many more. Three weeks… four? Perhaps you can ask one of the others."