She glanced back to the stern, catching a brief glimpse of square sails, just as the bow swept up over a swell, and then the pirate ship was gone from view once more. She already knew what she was going to do, but she needed to continue the charade for as long as she could. Truth was, there was no magical incantation to revive the immortal pirate. No spell, potion or ritual. Her grandmother was right. He would wake up when it was time for him to wake up, and not a minute later or sooner. The question was whether or not she could hasten his timetable, and to do what she had in mind would require a great deal of risk. If she failed, Captain Reardon and Finkle would have no further need of her. She would surely be cast overboard for failure to live up to her end of the bargain. That would definitely put the nails to her carefully laid plans, and she would have none of it. This would simply have to work.
“Very well,” she said, nodding to the crate. “Remove him, and place him on da deck.”
Reardon instructed his men to do as she said, and within minutes, the mummified pirate was sprawled across the tar-covered planks. She knelt down beside him, reached into her medicine bag and withdrew a bottle of red dye she’d concocted from a variety of tropical flowers on the islands she most frequented. Opening the bottle, she dipped her index finger into the warm, sticky liquid.
“Remove his shirt.”
The sailors stared at her in horror. Two of them took a step back.
“You two.” Captain Reardon pointed to the two who had backed away. “Thanks for volunteerin’, lads. Get to it.”
Scrunching up their noses in disgust, the two sailors shuffled forward, bent down, and began the repulsive task of cutting away the pirate’s linen shirt. Surprisingly, the shirt was relatively dry, and clean—save for a healthy coating of dust. It was not at all covered in the viscous bodily fluids of a corpse desiccated over time. Still, one sailor’s mouth clamped shut and swelled with nausea, before he dashed over to the rail, vomiting over the side. His partner finished the task, and Asherah shooed him away before inscribing a series of symbols over Lanme Wa’s upper torso with her dye-covered finger. The symbols were meaningless, of course. Simply for show. But no one on board the Mark would know that. When she was satisfied with her work, she looked up at the captain. “Now is da time you’ll be needin’ to trust me. Trust me more than you have so far.”
“What? What do you need me to do?”
She looked down into Lanme Wa’s pruned, cloudy eyes, closed his flaking eyelids and frowned. “You be needin’ to keelhaul him.”
“Keelhaul!” Finkle blurted. “Are you mad, woman? The reason you’re here is to revive him—if possible. Not kill him.”
“It da only way, cher.”
“But even if keelhauling him doesn’t tear him apart, those waters are crawling with sharks.”
“Aye,” Reardon agreed. “Needles just saw a school of hammerheads about two miles to the south. In his condition, they’ll be drawn to him like flies to molasses.”
Asherah shook her head. “I’m sorry. It truly be da only way. He be needin’ da salt and water of life to revive him bones. Without dat, he just a shriveled up corpse on da deck of dis ship.”
“Captain, I really must protest,” Greer said. The man had seemed to materialize from nowhere.
“Why am I not surprised?” Reardon said, shaking his head.
The quartermaster ignored the comment. “Keelhauling was abolished more than twenty years ago. What kind of example would we be setting…”
“The pirate’s as good as dead anyway, Mr. Greer. As far as I’m concerned, that is. Keelhaulin’ ain’t that much of a punishment to him, now is it?”
“But…”
“Spratt! Smally! Front and center!” The captain shouted. Two sailors rushed up, and stood at attention. “Let’s get this man ready for a keelhaul, gentlemen. If nothin’ else, we’ll at least be feedin’ the local fish.”
The two sailors procured a long coil of rope, and began barking orders at their fellow crewmen. Asherah watched as they tied Lanme Wa to the center of the line, while another group of sailors dragged the other end of the rope over the bow, then brought it to the center of the ship.
“Be sure to give it some slack, gents.” Captain Reardon bent down to help his men pick up the corpse, and carry it to the port side rail. “Don’t want his leathery hide gettin’ scored by the razor-sharp edges of barnacles down below, now do we?”
Reardon, gripping the pirate’s right arm, looked over at Asherah.
“Give him a dagger,” she said. “Tuck it in his belt.”
He cocked his head at her.
“Dis won’t be no typical keelhaul, mon cher. Once you get him directly under da ship, you’ll be needin’ to leave him dere for a bit.”
“For how long?” Finkle asked, dabbing a handkerchief against his perspiring forehead.
“Til he uses dat knife to cut away da rope, and climb back on board.”
Each man on deck stopped what they were doing, and stared at her. She couldn’t resist the urge to smile at their obvious discomfort. For the first time since finding Lanme Wa, the sheer gravity of what they were attempting to do had finally hit home. They were, in fact, attempting to resurrect the decomposed corpse of a long dead pirate. And if this worked, that same pirate would be scrambling back on board their very ship. If Asherah was honest with herself, she would have to admit that the thought sent a twinge of fear down her spine, as well.
“And if he doesn’t?” Reardon broke the silence in a low, conspiratorial voice.
“Den dis has all been in vain, no?”
The captain glared at her for a split second, then nodded at his men. The corpse was thrown over the side. There was a muffled splash, and suddenly, the rope pulled taut as Lanme Wa was dragged helplessly under the ship.
9
The darkness embraced him. Blissful oblivion wrapped its cold, apathetic arms around his emaciated frame, protecting him from the life he’d begun to despise. How long had it been this way? A day? A month? A millennium? It was impossible to say, but he welcomed it with all his heart.
His mates—his friends, yes, that was the correct word—would say he’d given up. But they couldn’t possibly know. Couldn’t possibly understand. Then again, he wasn’t entirely certain if he even had any friends. Not anymore. They’d gradually started to become lost to him through time. Just as an adult has only the vaguest of recollections of childhood friends long gone, his own memories had begun to fade centuries ago. Only the faintest of recollections could bring them to mind…and then only by chance. The briefest whiff of a fragrance. A particular shade of red. A shadow of a large man standing before the sun. These triggered those fleeting memories he so longed for. But they were growing far too dim for any sustainable accuracy.
There were only two faces from his First Life—as he had begun thinking of it—that were ingrained deeply within his soul, though even now he struggled to recall their names in the form of English he’d not spoken in over two thousand years. The woman, he loved dearly. Had been faithful to her all this time. Had not given his heart to another—not even been tempted to do so. The girl was something else entirely. She wasn’t his daughter by birth. That much he could remember. But his heart ached for her more than it would for a thousand daughters. He missed her bright, intelligent smile. That glimmer of mischief in her eyes when she’d done something she wasn’t supposed to. They’d shared so much together in her short few years, but he couldn’t imagine his life without her.
Only, he had been without her. And the woman. And it had been eating him alive for centuries. When even their faces had begun to fade, he knew it was time. Time to…
He felt a crushing weight against his chest, twisting his thoughts back to the present. Something pushed against his body. A dull throbbing, vibrating up and down every one of his nerves. Then came a burning sensation. A white-hot fire searing into his lungs. He’d experienced this sensation before—on multiple occasions. But he couldn’t gather enough wits to remem
ber what it had been.
Something… What was the word? Liquid. Wet. Salty. Was rushing past his lips, flooding his throat and pouring down into his…his…lungs? Is that the right word? Yes. Lungs.
He was submerged. Underwater.
His eyes snapped open. Something hard and flakey cracked as his lids pulled back from his cloudy eyes. The world around him was hazy. Dark. The saltwater burned at his eyes, and he blinked back the pain, trying to clear his vision. But his eyes had been useless within the sarcophagus for far too long. It would take some time to recover his vision. For now, however, he knew the important thing was to pull himself to the surface. Though he knew he wouldn’t die, his brain did need oxygen to function properly. It wouldn’t do him much good to survive, if he spent his immortality on the bottom of the sea, unable to rise from a watery grave.
He tried moving his arms, but they were stiff. Felt brittle, like two old pieces of lumber charred from a campfire. He pushed through it, bending his elbows and hearing the sound of atrophied muscles and tendons tearing and popping as he moved. Instantly a white, hot fire burned at the inside of his elbows, and he winced. Or at least, he made a reasonable attempt. He clamped down on his dry, cracked lips, trying to prevent himself from taking in any more water than he had already. After several long moments, his hands pulled up to his waist to find a thick hemp rope tied with a slip knot. Blindly, he grabbed at the rope and pulled. Immediately he felt the pull returned. Someone was most definitely on the other end of the line. He jerked down on the line again, and felt a second reply from the other end.
Suddenly, he jerked forward in the water as the rope pulled taut around his waist, and he began to be pulled up toward the surface. For the first time since his mind awakened from its slumber, he felt the cool water rush over his cheeks, and through his long tangled hair. It was unnerving to him just how refreshing the sensation was. How it soothed his flaking desiccated skin. He could feel the cells of his body already mending. Already healing the damage that had been done by allowing himself to drift off into undeath. It hadn’t been the first time he’d tried it, but it evidently had been the longest amount of time he’d spent in the grave. The way he felt, he told himself he’d never do it again, but he wasn’t sure that was the truth. It ultimately depended on how much time was left. How much longer he’d have to wait to return to…to…
He screamed a silent scream over the frustration of not remembering their names. Of all people to forget, how could he forget them? They were the reason he’d managed to go on for as long as he had, and…
Something sharp and powerful crunched down on his leg, and yanked him back toward the ocean floor. His ascent to the surface abruptly stopped, and he felt the sharp sting of his tibia splitting in two from the impact. He twisted in the water, focusing his eyes as best he could. He saw a ghastly serpentine shape thrashing through the water on the other end of his leg. The shape was long—easily larger than fifteen feet—with a sharply pointed fin jutting up from its back. A powerful, two-pronged tail whipped back and forth, as its massive hammer-shaped head wrenched at the flesh of his useless leg.
Son of a…
He let go of the rope, and his right hand brushed past something cold and metallic tucked into his belt. He reached for it, and felt the bone-carved handle of some type of dagger. Forcing the pain into the back of his mind—a trick he’d perfected over the centuries—he grabbed hold of the knife, yanked it from his belt and blindly slashed down at the massive hammerhead. The blade glanced across the shark’s rough skin to little effect. But the blow startled the animal enough to ease up on his leg. It was just enough for him to jerk himself outside of the creature’s immediate reach. As he did so, he watched as the unfocused object that could only be his lower leg drifted away and slowly sank to the ocean’s floor.
The hammerhead, sensing the limb’s descent, dove headfirst toward it. Its tail wagged frantically to propel it toward its leathery meal. Fortunately, the old pirate had very little blood left within him to bleed out. He watched as only a small, six-inch cloud of dark fluid leaked from his leg wound.
Sensing this was his chance, he tugged on the rope once more with his free hand, and felt it jerk him toward the surface once more. He glanced up. Though his vision was still hindered by years of slumber, he could just make out the darkening sky above him. It appeared that clouds loomed overhead. The makings of a storm. And rocking from side to side, just a few feet to his right, was the keel-shaped shadow of a small ship—a cutter of some kind, not his own frigate.
As he ascended, propelled by reformed muscles and sinews, he peered down again just in time to see the hammerhead rushing hungrily toward him. Even worse, two others were approaching from just under the ship. The puny purge of blood that had seeped from his leg had drawn the creatures straight to him. Tethered to the rope as he was, he was little more than fish bait with no room to move around. The sharks had the advantage of the sea at their disposal, but he had millennia of experience. It was he, not these creatures, that was the apex predator here, and before this day was out, he was going to show them.
With a flick of his wrist, he cut through the rope securing him to the cutter, whipped around in the water, and immediately began swimming toward the closest shark. The grin on his face matched those of the animals he faced. Sharp and infinitely deadly.
“Cap’n!” cried one of the sailors on the other end of the line.
Reardon turned to see the man gripping the sliced end of the rope.
“Bloody ‘ell.” He stalked over to the man, and took the rope from him with a jerk. A brief glance revealed what happened. “He cut the blasted thing.”
Finkle moved over to them, and examined it. “Now, why on Earth would he do something like that?”
Reardon shrugged. “Maybe he saw the Hound? Maybe he’s attempting to swim his way to them?”
“I don’t think so, Cap’n,” another sailor, Mr. Leighfield, said. “We felt him pullin’ on the line. We begun draggin’ him back up, then something yanked him back down hard. Figure he was maybe bein’ attacked by one of them sharks we seen earlier. Then a minute later, he tugged again. We began pullin’ him back up… Then we had nothin’ on the line.”
Reardon whipped his head around toward the mambo bokor. “Witch! What do you think this means?”
“Got no idea, Capitaine,” she said, cocking her head to the left, as if listening to something. “But I think your sailor dere be on to something. If dere be sharks in dose waters, and dey be after Lanme Wa for supper, den Lanme Wa is likely to fight back. Leashin’ him to da ship will only hinder his power. Make sense for him to cut hisself free. It why I insisted he be given da dagger.”
Reardon rolled his eyes. He was beginning to wonder if the rewards from this expedition would ever outweigh the ordeal itself.
“Mr. Winfield!” he cried.
“Aye, Cap’n!” Mr. Winfield responded from behind the wheel.
“Turn us about! We need to go back for our cargo!”
“But Captain, I have to protest.” Greer jogged up to the captain, dabbing a handkerchief across his brow. “Those pirates out there will blow us from the water if we stray too close. It’s foolish to go back for that…that corpse.”
“Beggin’ pardon, sir,” Leighfield said, raising a hand humbly. “Wasn’t no corpse tuggin’ on the line. Wasn’t snagged on anythin’ either. There was intelligence behind the pull, I can tell ye that much. Whatever he is down there, he ain’t dead. Least, not when he gave the tug anyway.” Then, as if the concept fully dawned on the young sailor, he crossed himself, bowed his head and mumbled a quick prayer to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors.
“Your misgivings have been heard and duly noted, Mr. Greer,” Captain Reardon said with a sneer. “And also ignored. The Presley’s Hound’s no’ moved an inch since we submerged Lanme Wa, and there’s no reason to expect ’em to attack now, while their captain is in such a harrowing position. Now return to your post, and keep an eye on that man-o-w
ar, sir. Just in case.” The quartermaster sniffed, and then returned to the port side rail to keep watch on the frigate. Reardon watched him leave, then turned back to the bokor. “You realize if he was attacked by sharks down there, there’ll be little left of him to collect, lass.”
She shrugged, but maintained her usual cool smile.
“And you also know what happens to you should our cargo become unusable to us?”
“What are you suggestin’, mon cher? You brought me on to awaken him. From your own men’s account, I did what I was employed to do.”
“I’m suggestin’ you may want to start prayin’ to those heathen gods of yours. Work whatever vile magicks at your disposal to see that walkin’ corpse keeps a’walkin’.”
Her smile broadened. “Der’s no need to fear ‘bout dat. You just go back to where we lost him, and Lanme Wa will handle da rest. You just watch ’nd see.”
10
The first of the sharks rolled over on its side, a jagged gash stretching underneath its jaw and gushing a crimson fount into the water. The man once known as Jack Sigler, callsign: King, the immortal leader of a twenty-first century black-ops group known as Chess Team, who was sent back and lost in time, tried yanking the dagger out of the creature’s rough hide. The blade, however, snagging against cartilage, snapped in two, rendering it useless. Unperturbed, he dropped the knife handle and whirled around to face his two other attackers. His lungs throbbed. His vision, still cloudy but improving, was dotted with splotches of red and green. The oxygen in his blood was running low, and his lungs were filled with water. If he didn’t do something about that now, he would pass out soon. He’d been through a great deal throughout his long life. Being eaten and digested by a large, hungry predator was not something he wanted to experience again. He wasn’t certain either, how exactly he’d regenerate if his pieces were scattered between two different creatures.
Patriot (A Jack Sigler Continuum Novella) Page 5