Ben’s face tightened for an instant, then softened as another blow struck the ship. He whipped around the other way and pointed toward the east. “Ye want to ken what’s going on? There it is.”
Ellen’s heart spasmed when she saw a frigate under full sail, heading straight for them. A Union Jack fluttered from the jib stay. As she watched, a puff of smoke billowed from her sides. A second later, a cannonball whistled through the Prometheus’s rigging. It shattered one of the crosstrees, and the timber came hurtling down to the deck. A length of rope and torn canvas caught it before it landed, dangling the length of timber above everyone’s heads.
Across the water, a sailor on the ship’s rail raised and lowered two flags in a series of movements.
Ben held a spyglass to his eye and cursed. “Bastards! They’re ordering us to lower sail and surrender. That’ll be the day.”
“What do they want?” Ellen asked.
He jabbed his finger at the vessel. “Cannae ye see? They want to take us into custody. They ken this ship belongs to the pirate Niall Lewis and his notorious band of brigands from the high seas.” He chortled at his own joke, but all of a sudden, he froze. He whipped his spyglass up and read the semaphores one more time. “Well, I’ll be!”
“What?” Ellen hated to ask. She had a bad feeling about this whole thing.
“They’re after ye. I thought they wanted Niall, but it’s ye they’re after.”
Louis whipped around and bellowed up from the deck. “What?”
“Aye.” Ben paced back and forth. “They say we’re to surrender ye, or they’ll sink the ship.”
“No!” Louis thundered.
At that moment, another ball came screaming over the water. It hit the starboard rail and smashed the wood to smithereens. It hurtled across the deck but lost momentum and bounced off the port rail and rolled onto the desk.
Ben leaned down and roared at the top of his lungs. “First battery—fire!”
Men swarmed all over ten cannons harnessed to the deck. The crew heaved the guns through the loopholes, and the gunners touched their torches to the fuses. All ten guns let out a deafening boom, and the heavy iron weapons slammed back into their places.
In a split second, the men attacked the guns again, faster than ever. They swabbed out the barrels with sopping wet rags, and clouds of steam misted across the deck. One man poured gunpowder through the hole in the fat end while another dropped a cannonball down the muzzle.
Ellen whirled away in a frenzy. “That’s it. I have to use the spell. I have to go back. You can tell them I’m not on board, and when they search, they’ll find out you’re telling the truth. It’s the only way.” She bolted back toward the cabin.
Louis let go of the wheel and jumped into her path. “Don’t ye dare, Ellen! Ye’re not going anywhere.”
She shrieked into his face above the noise. “It’s the only way. There must be close to two hundred men on board this ship. They can’t all go down because of me. I can get out of here. I can leave you alone. Once they understand I’m not on board, you can keep on going. You’ll be safe, and so will I.”
He seized her shoulders. “I cannae let ye go like that, no’ after—”
A devastating concussion rocked the ship, sending Louis pitching into her. They hit the deck hard with him on top of her, his weight knocking the wind out of her. The next instant, another jolt sent him rolling away.
Ellen tried more than once to stand up, but every time, another blow shook her off her feet. She crawled across the deck. Ben braced himself against the railing and thundered at the top of his lungs. “Second battery—fire! Fire at will.”
One glance over the side told Ellen it was already too late. The British ship had glided closer. The two vessels gave each other one broadside after another, but the attacker returned three barrages for every one the Prometheus got off. The frigate carried three levels of guns going down her hull almost to the waterline.
The noise obscured all sense of what was happening. Ellen watched in dread as officers waved their sabers over on the other deck and sailors scuttled around the guns.
Ellen kept telling herself again and again, Get off the deck. Cast the spell. Get out of here. That’s the best thing. No matter how many times she repeated it, she couldn’t move. The ship rocked and rolled underneath her, but she couldn’t tear herself away from the rail.
The sailors threw boards across from one ship to the other. Soldiers swarmed onto the Prometheus and attacked the gunners. The pirates—or whatever they were—abandoned their guns and seized their weapons to defend the ship.
Ellen staggered away in alarm, then lunged for the cabin as a man in a blue uniform materialized in her path. The sun glinted off his brass buttons. She reacted on pure adrenaline to shoot out one hand and landed a punch in his face so hard that smarting pain jolted up her arm. She sucked in her breath and pulled back her hand but had no time to nurse her injury. His head whipped upright, and he snarled a row of half-rotten teeth at her, then launched toward her a second time. She dodged around him and dove across the deck, but he flung one arm around her waist and heaved her off the ground.
Ellen flew into a wild, kicking, screaming rage at her assailant, but she couldn’t free herself. He hauled her across the deck, toward the enemy ship. Panic took hold of her heart and mind, and she lost all sense of conscious thought. She flailed from side to side, but he only gripped her tighter. He passed the mizzen shroud, and Ellen’s head struck the taut rope. She caught hold of it, shrieking and struggling as she looked all around, desperately searching for anything she could grab to pummel her assailant with when her gaze lit on Louis, hemmed into a corner across the deck by three soldiers. He swatted their bayonets away with his saber in one hand and blasted a flintlock pistol in the other.
Ellen’s screeches caught his attention, but he couldn’t extricate himself. He tried once to slip around his oppressors, but they trapped him tighter against the cabin wall. The fray was demanding all his attention just to hold them at bay.
At that moment, the man jerked Ellen’s hands off the stay and the sudden movement sent him staggering against the rail. This was her last chance to get free before he threw her over to the other ship, but she couldn’t get loose. She redoubled her efforts, wriggling around in the man’s arms and clawing her fingernails into his face. She gouged his eye sockets until he bellowed in agony, bringing another man rushing over to help him. The newcomer strapped his thick limbs around Ellen from behind and did his best to restrain her arms against her sides.
The new attacker succeeded in manhandling her away from the shrouds and lurched her toward the planks as another soldier came at her from the front. She beheld her last shred of hope slipping from her grasp.
The first man bent down to grab her legs as a primal torrent of murderous rage swept over her. Without thinking, she kicked her foot with all her might and nailed the monster in the chin. His skull slammed back hard, and a dull crack sounded from his neck. He folded into a ball on the deck at her feet.
One success fed into another. These bastards wouldn’t get her off this ship alive if she had anything to do with it. Another massive struggle and she managed to knock the man behind her away from the rail. He staggered forward but maintained his grip on her. As soon as she sensed him swaying in midair, she hurled all her weight against him and sent him spinning back the other way, smashing his back against the rail. He grunted in pain, and his arms slackened around her shoulders.
Ellen bolted across the deck, dashing in between men fighting all around her. Gunsmoke and ash clouded the battle scene. She hurdled fallen bodies and an overturned cannon. Musket fire and screams deafened her but couldn’t interrupt the one thing dominating her mind. Get to the cabin. Cast the spell. Get out of here.
She raced across the deck and laid hold of the cabin door latch. She could only hope and pray the spell would work with all this noise and confusion distracting her.
More hands and arms closed all around her,
ripping the door in Ellen’s grasp off its hinges as they jerked her away from the cabin. She never saw her assailants’ faces. They crushed her in their iron grip and dragged her toward the invading ship. Her kicking heels pounded on the wooden floor, and she screamed to the skies, but she already knew it was hopeless.
They banged her up the steps to the deck where two more men restrained her legs. Slung horizontal to the deck now, she could see the six men carrying her three feet above the floorboards. She writhed in every direction and screeched to Heaven, her hair whipping across her cheeks.
A voice roared from her right side. “Ellen! Ellen, no!”
She turned toward the sound and saw Louis barrel through his opponents and swing his saber at her captors. Her heart soared in sudden exhilaration, only to crash into the depths of despair when another five soldiers blocked his way and drove him back.
All her desperate terror swept back over her. She could think of only one way to get off this ship. She panted out the words as fast as she could, “Eshmun Hamilcar hanno ashtzaph byblos rae; Zephon anana akilokipok silatuyok anik toe; Takiyok keorvik suluk yo— Aaargh! You bastards! Let me go!”
The ship, the men, Louis, the ocean—everything—fell away below her so fast the cataclysm nearly tore her very skin off. She rocketed into the sky at a terrific rate, watching the Prometheus, the water’s surface, and everyone around her zip away to an infinitesimal speck before they blinked out altogether.
Chapter 20
Louis, the other pirates, and all the British soldiers stood stock-still and stared at the spot where Ellen used to be. The soldiers exchanged shocked glances and looked all around for the missing woman.
Louis’s sword arm flopped to his side. In a heartbeat, all the energy seething through him died to nothing and drained his will to live. She was gone, just like that. She must have cast the spell to send herself back to her own time. One minute, he’d held her in his arms and thought he couldn’t live without her. Now he had to. What difference did it make if the British captured him or if the Falisa killed him? So what if he would see her again in three hundred years? He didn’t have her now, and the thought of returning to his lonely pain for another three centuries was more than he could bear.
In a fit of spite, he flung his sword onto the deck. Nothing in this whole miserable world was worth fighting for if he couldn’t fight his way back to her. Unable to stand against this devastating emptiness, he slumped onto the upset cannon and his chin fell to his chest. The British officers held a whispered conference amongst themselves, but Louis didn’t care if they took him back to Aberdeen and hanged him.
One of the officers approached Gilias. “Which of you is Niall Lewis?”
“Niall Lewis isnae on board this ship,” Gilias replied. “He’s halfway across the country on the Isle of Lewis, the last I heard.”
The man cast a scowl around the pirate crew. “Without Niall Lewis, we cannot charge you all with treason and piracy, since we cannot prove the identity of any other man on board. Instead, you’ll follow us back to Aberdeen to stand trial for resisting arrest and attacking a British vessel.”
“Attacking!” Ben snapped. “Ye attacked us, if I’m no’ mistaken.”
The officer locked eyes on the big Highlander. “You have a choice. You can follow us back to Aberdeen to stand trial, or I’ll set your ship to the torch right now. I leave it up to you.”
Gilias indulged a sideways glance and met Louis’s gaze finding him at the same moment. In that look between brothers centuries old, the two men silently acknowledged their good fortune that none of these soldiers recognized the Major of the Aberdeen garrison in their midst. To them, he was just another kilted Highlander.
“Aye,” Gilias growled. “We’ll follow ye.”
The officer called out to his men to return to their own vessel. They helped their wounded over the sides and picked up their dead. In a few moments, the two ships parted and the Prometheus set sail for Aberdeen.
Gilias set Duncan at the helm but waited until the frigate plowed ahead before he came to stand at Louis’s shoulder. He kept his voice low, even though no one on the frigate could hear him at this distance. “Are ye hurt?”
He mumbled down at the ground. “No, I’m no’ hurt.”
“Where did she go?”
“How the devil should I ken?” Louis muttered.
Gilias scanned the horizon. “It’s mysterious, no? I dinnae understand how these women keep coming and going.”
“What’s to understand?” Louis returned. “She’s gone.”
“Aye.” Gilias sighed. “I fancy she’s safe wherever she’s gone. I didnae expect her to just up and poof! Ye ken?”
Louis squeezed his eyes shut. The last thing on the planet he wanted to discuss was Ellen disappearing, but at least he didn’t have to worry about her anymore. “Aye. She’s safe.”
“That’s a mite better than we’ve got,” Gilais remarked. “We cannae go back to Aberdeen, now that they’re watching us. I dinnae like to leave without Niall, but that’s the size of it.”
“They didnae recognize me.”
Gilias gave him a stoic nod. “Aye.”
“But they will in Aberdeen.”
“Aye.”
“I’ll need to slip away before we get there.”
“Aye,” Gilias said, rubbing his beard.
Louis frowned. “Thanks for yer input.”
Gilias grinned. “Yer welcome!”
He kicked Louis’s foot. “Come down to me cabin with me. I’ve something I want to discuss with ye.”
“Tell me here,” Louis grumbled.
“Och, lad,” Gilias chided. “Are ye sore about the lassie? Ye ken she did it to save her own neck, and ours too. Come down and have a dram with me. Ye’ll feel better.”
Louis scowled at the ship and the crew bustling about at their work. He cared for none of it and even less for the comforting presence of one of his oldest friends. What was his life worth? Ellen’s story flashed into his mind. How could he be so thick as to fail to realize what she was made of? He’d seen her in Aberdeen, on the road, and in Inverness. He’d seen her in combat; she’d destroyed two men saving his sorry life. Why, oh why didn’t he see how fine and noble she was? She had to tell him her story before he’d really learned to value her.
Gilias hooked one beefy hand under Louis’s armpit and hoisted him to his feet, then marched him across the deck. When Louis came to the captain’s cabin and the door lying on the deck, he paused to look in. The place yawned cold and lonely and desolate without her in it. He indulged in a brief fantasy about the night before and her immaculate breasts swaying in his face while she straddled his hips. Her delicious black hair draped her glowing face, and her lips quivered with every shuddering breath when his rock-hard length slid inside her.
The next instant, he squashed that memory under his heel. He would never permit himself to remember that night—never again! What good could it do him except to grind his nose in the awful reality of his loss? He shoved it away behind a wall of impenetrable stone.
He followed Gilias down to the lower deck where they entered the mate’s cabin. He sat on the window bench overlooking the sea while Gilias poured two glasses of whiskey. When the mate crossed the room and held out the glass to him, Louis didn’t see him. Impressions and images from the last few days paraded before his eyes.
Gilias set the drink at his elbow and sat down across from him and sipped his drink. At last, he broke in on Louis’s thoughts. “Urikki.”
Louis glanced up, then immediately looked at the floor, afraid he would break down. Already, the tsunami of emotion threatened to inundate him and submerge him in a deluge he could never overcome.
“Tell me,” Gilias murmured. “Tell me who she was and where she came from.”
Louis didn’t look up as replied to his friend. The endless ripple behind the boat soothed him, even as the words tore his guts out. “She’s one of ’em, lad. She’s one of the ones we’ve been look
ing for, and now she’s gone who kens where. I cannae explain to ye more than that. Perhaps one day ye’ll understand what I mean.”
Gilias didn’t reply.
Louis let the silence linger, but Gilias sat so still he eventually looked over to find him staring in wide-eyed wonder. “What’s amiss, lad?” he asked. “Do ye no’ believe me?”
Gilias tried to speak but failed and had to swallow hard before he could choke out a single word. “Ree.”
Louis frowned. “What about her?”
“That’s what he said,” Gilias croaked. “Dagar said those same words about Ree. He said she’s one of the ones we’ve been looking for. He wouldnae explain more than that, but he used the exact words.”
Louis snapped his head away. This conversation had already gone further than he could stand. Thank Heaven, Gilias didn’t try to keep him talking. After a few more minutes in silence, the big mate got up and left Louis alone in the cabin.
Louis sighed in tortured relief when the door clicked shut, then leaned his head against the bulkhead and closed his eyes on life. He must have fallen asleep there because he woke in pitch darkness to voices shouting. The door blasted open, and Gilias charged into the room carrying a lighted lantern.
Louis sat bolt upright just as another man stepped into the room. He gasped in surprise when he recognized Malcolm Gunn.
“Och, ye’re here, lad,” he said to Louis. “I wondered where ye’d disappeared to.”
“Wheesht, man!” Louis exclaimed. “How do ye come to be out here in the middle of the ocean?”
“I’ve been on board the frigate,” Malcolm replied. “When I heard they were putting out from Inverness to intercept ye, I came along to see if I could catch a word with ye, to warn ye. We anchored in the mouth of the River Dee just before dark, but I had to wait for night to sneak off with a jolly boat.”
“Warn us about what?” Gilias asked.
“Ye mustnae let them take ye back to Aberdeen. If they put ye on trial or even in jail, it could go badly for the rest of us. Ye must slip away now, in the dark.”
Spellbound by the Angui (Cipher's Kiss Book 2): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 14