Pirate Wolf Trilogy

by Canham, Marsha

  Eva raised a hand and patted it across her cheeks, which were, indeed, feeling warm and tight. Dante snorted, reached over, and plopped his big hat on her head. "You're not curious about what we saw?"

  "Of course I'm curious. I didn't think it was my place to ask, however. Not right away, at any rate."

  He leaned back and stretched his long legs out, crossing them at the ankles. "We stand about a mile in from open water. The channel is curved enough to conceal us from view, and there are a dozen others just like it winding around the atolls like paths in a maze. The chances of our Spanish friends stumbling upon this particular one—if they are intent upon searching for us—are about ten to one. Fair enough odds in our favor."

  "Then you saw the galleons?"

  He studied her face, admiring the effect of his hat perched on a pale cloud of yellow hair. He glanced below and saw the other men in the landing party stripping down naked and diving into the water.

  "Are you fit enough for another climb?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  "Then come. Have a look for yourself."

  He stood and Eva followed as he led her along another rocky path. She saw crawly things scurrying away into the gorse, and stayed close to Dante. He helped her up the steeper inclines and held her hand as they covered the last twenty yards or so up toward the top of the highest point of solid rock. There he directed her to stand behind a boulder and handed her the spyglass.

  The view, even without the benefit of the glass, was breathtaking. From this height, she could see the distinctly deeper blue of the channel and the paler turquoise stripe that indicated the treacherous shallows above the long and jagged line of the reef. The latter seemed altogether too close to the surface to have allowed a ship the size of the Endurance to pass across with only a few scrapes and bumps.

  "High tide would have raised the level a few feet," Gabriel explained, seeing where she had the glass trained. "But as you can see it was sheer mermaid luck that led us through one of the gaps in the reef rather than into a solid bank of coral."

  "I thought you said you were not a superstitious man, Captain, yet you believe in luck?"

  He chuckled. "Not as much as I believe in a clever captain who sent extra jolly boats probing into the fog."

  She had to tip her face up to see from under the brim of his hat. "A ship caught in gale force winds would not have had that luxury," she said softly.

  "No. But the storm swells might have been high enough to carry her over."

  Eva looked back at the ragged stretch of coastline extending miles in either direction. She found it difficult to believe a ship could pass over the wide ledge of the reef in a raging storm and not end up smashed to bits against the hostile shoreline.

  Something else caught her attention and she directed the glass out into the Tongue. Two of the galleons had already passed through the reef and a third was making for the gap, leaving the damaged ship listing badly with sails reefed and no signs of activity on deck. She was about to compliment Gabriel for having destroyed one of Muertraigo’s ships when she sent the glass flying back to the two ships that had crossed the reef.

  Her mouth dropped open on a sudden intake of air. Her knees gave way and the spyglass clattered onto the rocks.

  Dante caught her around the waist. "Eva? What is it? What's wrong?"

  "It's my father’s ship," she gasped. "It's the Cormorant."

  "Your father?"

  "No. No, not my father. But it is his ship. The one Lawrence Ross brought down to search for him."

  "The hell you say." Dante steadied her against the boulder and took up the glass again, focussing on the carrack. "Are you absolutely certain?" He looked down when there was no immediate answer and saw that she was leaning forward, her head in her hands. "Eva! How can you be certain it's your father’s ship?"

  "I know the Cormorant well enough," she said without looking up. "I've been on it a hundred times. Look closely at the figurehead in the bow and you will see two sets of wings on the bird. It was damaged and repaired in haste but my father thought the double wings made the creature look more mystical.” She lifted her head out of her hands. “It is his ship, the one Lawrence Ross took out of Portsmouth after sending his henchman to steal the coins and leave me for dead in a burning house.” Her face was hard, her lips were pressed into a thin, grim line. “You wondered how Muertraigo knew to search here, Captain? There is your answer. Lawrence Ross brought them here. He betrayed me and now he is intent upon betraying my father.”

  “But how would he know Muertraigo?”

  “He has been to the Indies several times. You said Muertraigo had been in command of the garrison in the port of Havana for many years before turning pirate. It is entirely possible their paths crossed back then. More than possible in fact,” she added, rubbing her temples as if to clarify a memory. “I remember hearing Lawrence and my father arguing over the enormous bribes they were forced to pay in order to get the Spanish to honor their letters of marque.”

  She stopped rubbing and looked up. “The letters. He took my father’s letters along with the coins and the baker’s letter. Perhaps he made the connection to Spanish Wells sooner than we did.”

  Dante nodded as more of the puzzle pieces fell into place. “Or with Muertraigo’s help.”

  He peered through the spyglass again, aiming it west along the bight. There was still no way to be certain the Nuestro Santisimo Victorio had come this way, though the evidence was piling up in an ever-convincing array.

  Gabriel rubbed a hand across the nape of his neck. His instincts were telling him Eva had been right all along. Her father had found La Fantasma, and the treasure galleon was somewhere in the maze of islets and atolls.

  “Come,” he held out his hand. “We need to get back to the ship.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  He quickly outlined the plan he had discussed with Stubs and when he was finished, she planted her feet into the ground and forced him to stop.

  “I’m coming with you,” Eva said.

  “Back to the ship? Absolutely.”

  “No. I’m coming with you when you follow Muertraigo.”

  “Like hell you are.”

  “Like hell I’m not.”

  Dante’s cheek twitched. The faintest hint of a breeze was lifting strands of silvery blonde hair and making them glitter against her throat; one strand in particular clung to her lower lip and drew his eye like a compass pointing the way to remembered pleasures.

  “We are not going for a stroll in the park. We will be moving fast and hard over terrain as treacherous as anything I’ve ever seen before. We will be wading through swamps filled with snakes and leeches and there will be no time to worry about sore feet or aching backs.”

  “You will not hear me complain.”

  “We will eat and drink only what we can carry ourselves, and that above heavy weapons, powder, and shot.”

  “I will carry my share.”

  “If you get blisters on your heels or if you fall down a crevice in the rocks we can spare no time or men for hauling you out.”

  The green of her eyes sparkled ominously as she stood steadfast in front of him, her face tipped stubbornly upward. She planted her hands on her hips, mirroring his. “If I am blistered, Captain, I will walk on bloodied feet. If I fall down a crevice it will my own fault and I would expect you to leave me there. I have not come all this way and endured all that I have endured only to stay behind and wave a handkerchief over the rail of the ship.”

  Dante glared. It was not often a man stood up to him and argued much less a yellow-haired wisp of a girl. “Tears, madam, will not strengthen your plea, nor will they sway my decision.”

  “They are not tears,” she insisted. “The sun is in my eyes.”

  “The sun will be beating down on your head without mercy if you accompany us.”

  “Is that your final word on it, Sir? I can say nothing more to sway your decision?”

  “Evangeli
ne…Eva… look at yourself and try to see what I see: A young, beautiful woman of gentle breeding who has already been through hell and survived by the grace of God alone. One who is totally unsuited to tramping across miles of rock and forest and swamps in the scorching heat.”

  “One who spent the night in your bed and thus must surely have been rendered helpless and witless and incapable of buckling her own belt thereafter?”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” he said after a moment.

  “I’m glad to hear that, Captain, because if you do attempt to leave me behind, I will buckle more than just a belt around my waist and I will set out on my own and you may have my thanks for having brought me this far. I came here to find my father and find him I will, with or without any further help from you.”

  Dante’s expression did not change by so much as a blinked eyelash. “I could bind you hand and foot and toss you into a cargo bay.”

  “You could certainly try.”

  Her words so closely echoed Isabeau Dante’s when his father had threatened much the same thing, that Gabriel raked his hands into his hair and looked away. When he turned back again, his face was hard, his eyes flat and cold. “I do not, for one moment, believe you can keep up or that you will last longer than half a day, but if it will serve to prove my point, then by all means, you’re welcome to join us. You will carry the same weight in weapons and water as the rest of the men. You will rest only when we rest, and by God’s ballocks, if you lag behind we’ll leave you where you fall. Is that quite clear?”

  “Brilliantly clear,” she said.

  He growled deep in his throat, more at his own lack of common sense than anything else. Confronted with the choice of taking her into his arms and kissing that magnificently stubborn mouth, or turning and walking away to maintain some semblance of authority, he chose the latter. He reached over and snatched his hat back, squashing it on his head before he turned and retraced his steps along the rocky path.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The insects were unbearable. They swarmed in clouds and feasted on any exposed, sweaty flesh. Second only to the sucking gnats was the scorching sun. It was directly overhead by the time Dante had organized his landing party, hot as the fires of Hades, and turned the rocky ground into vaporous embers beneath their feet.

  When Dante called for volunteers, every last crewman stepped forward, even the wounded He selected a hundred and twenty of the strongest, promising the others they would not miss out on any action against the Spanish; there were more than enough of the bastards to go around.

  Two groups were dispatched ahead of the main force. The first was lightly burdened to move fast as the men scouted the terrain ahead and marked the best path for the rest to follow. Another group of twenty, with the master gunner, James Giddings, in command, was charged to set up a system of runners to carry the alarm forward when Muertraigo began to move through the bight.

  Every available jolly boat and longboat rowed back and forth to the little beach offloading men and supplies and weapons. When the last crewman had been set ashore, Stubs ordered the same boats to take up tow lines and start the laborious process of dragging the Endurance back to open water.

  Gabriel set off across land, leading the seventy armed men who followed, all of them with water pipes slung across their backs, pouches of powder and shot tied to their belts, and whatever food they could tuck into their shirts. The strongest of the burly lot carried arquebuses on their shoulders, cumbersome trumpet-nosed weapons but deadly at close quarters. The rest were armed with cutlasses, pikes and pistols.

  Eduardo had found Eva stout boots to protect her feet against the sharp rocks and pebbles. She balked, at first, at the thick woollen stockings he advised her to wear, but after a mile of tramping up and down the hills, she came to appreciate the buffer between her heels and the coarse leather. She mimicked the other crewmen and wore a kerchief tied around her head over which sat a hat with a brim of sorts, not nearly as wide or dashing as the one Dante wore. Her hair was plaited into a long, glossy braid that hung down her back over a loose white shirt with tight-fitting cuffs and collar, both of which helped deter the bugs from crawling up her arms and down her neck.

  A swordbelt was strapped around her waist and a leather bandolier criss-crossed over her chest, hung with an assortment of pouches containing shot and powder and dry biscuits. A skin of water hung at her waist and bounced against her hip with each step she took.

  True to Dante’s warning, the landing party moved swiftly up and over the hilly land, staying as close to the shoreline as possible. They waded across the mouths of swampy estuaries and passed through forests so thick they had to hack a path with their cutlasses. The patches of dense mahogany and pine forests gave some relief from the sun, but they paid the price with thicker clouds of insects.

  Eva stayed close on Eduardo’s heels. Determined not to fall behind, she pushed herself to keep apace, her jaw set, her expression grim and stubborn. Dante paid her no heed. He strode in the lead, calling a halt only when a messenger came back from the scouting party.

  Eva felt fairly confident of her abilities; she had been on many a hunting party with her father since she had been old enough to ride a horse. She enjoyed hiking and fishing in the country, and while she was no expert, she could parry a sword thrust, load and shoot a pistol without blowing herself off her feet. If she needed motivation, she had only to think of her father possibly being somewhere up ahead and her stride lengthened and the aches in her limbs were pushed aside.

  The men seemed to develop an easy gait that swallowed the miles under the bright sunlight. Most of the bastards, she noted, did not even show a bead of sweat. The gnats appeared to leave them alone as well and at one of the infrequent stops, Eduardo plucked the leaves from a particularly noxious stinkweed and crushed them with spit, then smeared the juice across her neck and cheeks.

  In the late afternoon, when the sun was the hottest, they came across another wide blue hole, the water so clear they could see a hundred feet down into the depths. Dante marched right past it, barely pausing to scoop a hatful of the water over his head. Most of the men did likewise, dipping their hats or soaking their kerchiefs before moving on. Rendered bug-free by Eduardo’s disgusting concoction, Eva was reluctant to splash her face or neck, but she took the opportunity to have a long drink of warm water from the skin hanging from her belt. It was almost empty.

  Feeling a tickle across her nape, she looked up to see Dante watching her. She smiled as sweet a smile as she could muster and replaced the bung in the skin, adjusted her various pouches, and continued walking.

  By the time darkness forced a halt for the night, her shoulders had gone beyond agony into numbness. Her back felt like one large blister and when she sat to remove her boots and stockings, there was barely enough strength in her arms to do so.

  There would be no fires on such a dark, clear night, so the men sat on the rocks and chewed on hard biscuits and strips of dried beef. Thankfully they had stopped beside a stream of fresh water and most drank until their bellies sloshed when they walked. Water pipes and skins were refilled before most of them wandered off to find a flat patch of ground to sleep for the night.

  The sky overhead was a brilliant swath of stars so bright and clear they cast a faint glow over the landscape. Eva was exhausted but curiously exhilarated. She waited until most of the men had moved away from the stream before she knelt and scooped handfuls of the fresh, cool water over her face and across her neck. She leaned over like she had seen the men do and sucked the water straight into her mouth, thinking she had never tasted anything half so sweet and pure. She sat back and let the water trickle down under her shirt, then unlaced the collar to let her skin breathe.

  Wriggling out of her boots, she pulled off the stockings and sank her feet into the water, almost whimpering with the pleasure. She swished her feet back and forth, dug her toes into the soft, sandy bottom, and used the starlight to assure herself there were no masses of open blis
ters on her heels or ankles. Remarkably, there were none.

  “You did well today, Mermaid.”

  Eva accepted the compliment without looking up. “Thank you, Captain. I’m sure you are disappointed to have to say so.”

  “On the contrary.” He chuckled as he sat cross-legged beside her. “I am never reluctant to give praise where praise is due. And praise, in this case, is most definitely due. I estimate we’ve covered at least ten miles with all the ups and downs and wading through bogs.”

  “Only ten miles?” She grimaced, for it had felt like twenty times that much.

  His grin gleamed white under the starlight. “Are you up for another short jaunt?”

  “In the dark?”

  “Not far. Just to the top of that rise. There is something I thought you might like to see.”

  All Eva wanted to do was lay back where she was and sleep with her feet dangling in the river.

  “I guess I could manage it,” she said reluctantly.

  He waited while she dried her feet and put her boots back on, then stood and extended a hand to assist her up—for which she was thankful as her legs protested mightily at having to move again and she might have ended up face down in the stream.

  He kept hold of her hand and started walking up the nearby rise, moving around trees and brush with a lightness of step that made Eva want to smack him.

  At the top of the shallow hillock, he took his hat off and combed his fingers through his hair, letting the night air cool his scalp.

  “Look over there,” he said, pointing west.

  Eva followed his finger and saw nothing but the rocky landscape stretching out before them like a stark black etching against the starlit horizon. Further inland, to their right, was a dark band of forest.

  “You’re trying too hard and looking too far. Look there… in the crack between those rocks.”