Pirate Wolf Trilogy (130 page)

It took two full hours for the longboats to
bring the majority of the Spanish pirates ashore. The first group
to land went to inspect the dead boars and did not seem overly
concerned that the men who had chased them out of the caves had
retreated there again. Some of the more enterprising—and
meat-starved—among them shed their bulky armor and set to skinning
and butchering the beasts.

As the beach filled with Spaniards, Rowly
and Giddings cast anxious glances in Gabriel’s direction, but he
stood motionless on the top of the bluff, using the Spaniard’s
arquebus like a staff. Now and then he squinted up at the lowering
sun to judge the slow passing of time, but it was not until he
recognized the plumed and armored glory of Estevan Quintano
Muertraigo alighting from one of the last longboats, that he turned
to Rowly and unleashed hell with a single, deliberate nod.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Eva had promised her father and Gabriel that
she would remain in the forest camp with Douglas Podd. It was
either that, both had declared, or she would be bound hand and foot
and tossed into the nearest blue hole as a sacrificial offering to
the Lusca, creatures Eduardo had warned her about that were half
shark, half octopus.

They needn’t have bothered to threaten her.
Eva had no desire to be near the beach when the fighting erupted.
As much as she may have changed over the past few weeks and adapted
to new situations, she was neither foolish nor brave enough to
think she had suddenly become a brazen warrior princess.

She had helped where she could over the past
few days. Her fingers were raw, her nails cracked and broken to the
quick from peeling and cleaning coconut shells. She filled water
pipes, she tended cuts and scrapes, she even managed to keep her
stomach while she cauterized the stub of Giddings’ finger, blown
off while he was testing the design of his hand cannons. She ate,
slept, joked and sweated alongside men she had come to admire more
each passing day but the most she could do now was to have rum
ready, bandages rolled, and pray that none of them were carried
into camp broken and bleeding.

At the sound of the first muffled explosion,
she shot to her feet and stared at the path that cut through the
forest to the beach. On the second and third salvos she twisted her
hands together and bit on her lower lip. When the thunderous booms
became almost continuous, she broke into a run and was halfway
through the forest before Podd shouted a curse and ran after
her.

Swift as a gazelle, she broke clear of the
woods and came up behind one of the catapults. Two men were pulling
back on the ropes, straining to force a pair of slender trees to
bend back far enough for them to loop the ends of the rope around a
pair of wooden hooks. As soon as the sling was set, one of the
powder-filled coconuts was fitted into the pouch and launched by
releasing the hooks. Giddings had refined his designs and some of
the coconuts were fitted with a short fuse, lit and timed to burst
and ignite the powder inside the shell, causing it to explode and
spray the air with hundreds of jagged pebbles.

Men on the beach screamed as the razor-like
missiles slashed into exposed flesh. Other shells that flew over
their heads were filled with oil and were struck with flaming
arrows so that when they cracked apart, they rained liquid fire.
The Spaniards scattered and ran for the shelter of the caves only
to be met with rounds of lead shot spit from a line of Dante’s
arquebusiers who were crouched in the shadows. As their comrades
dropped, the Spaniards veered in a wild panic away from the caves
and scrambled for the cover of the rocks. But there too, men rose
up from behind the boulders and fired point blank, and at such
close rage, the lead balls punched through armor like it was no
thicker than wool.

At one end of the beach, some of
Muertraigo’s men attempted to regroup. They formed a line, propped
the long barrels of their arquebuses in the vee of their forksticks
and fired blindly at the rocky slope. Before they could reload the
cumbersome weapons they were confronted with a sight that made them
drop their jaws and nearly lose their bowels. Creatures made of
sand rose up from the ground itself and lurched toward them. To a
man the Spaniards turned and fled toward the boats, trampling over
the dead and wounded, shoving slower men out of the way. Some were
mad with fear and headed straight into the surf, where the waves
carried them out and the weight of their armor dragged them
under.

~~

Muertraigo could not believe his eyes. The
beach was exploding around him. Men were on fire, screaming and
rolling in the sand, clawing at their eyes and hair. The dead and
dying were everywhere, littering the beach, floating in the tidal
pool, draped in grotesque shapes over the driftwood.

It had happened so fast it was barely
comprehendible.

“What the hell is happening? What the bloody
hell is happening?” Lawrence Ross was beside Muertraigo, his
pristine doublet spattered with mud and water and blood. He had
lost his plumed hat in the confusion and while he clutched a sword
in one gloved hand, he could only use it to swipe at Muertraigo’s
own men who were threatening to trample them in their panic to
reach the longboats.

“What the hell is happening?” he screamed
again. “Tell them to turn around! Tell them to fight!”

Several men came running toward them from
the base of the slope, their faces terror-stricken. Ross cursed and
shouted at them, but they knocked him aside and scrambled into the
boats. He caught a glimpse of the figures made of sand and felt his
own belly clutch with fear as he saw the creatures stoop to pick up
the weapons his men had dropped.

Something hot sliced through his cheek,
stinging him back to his senses. He kicked at the crewmen and
soldiers, he hacked at them with his sword but he could do nothing
to stop the retreat. He looked for Muertraigo but the Spaniard had
already been swept along in the crush and thrown into one of the
boats, his helmet knocked into the surf, his gloriously ornate
armor pitted by stones and lead shot.

Out in the bay, one of the gun captains saw
the chaos and slaughter and took it upon himself to order a
broadside. The heavy culverins, already run out and loaded, had
been sighted to fire upon the beach and in the confusion, the
elevations were not changed. The massive guns fired a volley and
the shots plowed into the shoreline, cutting a crimson swath
through their own men, striking at least one longboat and sending
the occupants exploding upward in bloody pieces.

Muertraigo’s boat narrowly escaped the same
fate. Gouting water and human debris fell all around him and,
stunned by the concussion, he looked up to the top of the bluff
where he had last seen Diego Castellano waving the all-clear. The
solitary figure was still there, silhouetted against the brilliant
blue of the sky. As Muertraigo and the rest of the stunned,
bleeding survivors watched, the figure fastened something to the
barrel of the arquebus and raised it over his head, waving it
slowly back and forth.

It was a pennon, a fifty foot long slender
streamer of silk. As the wind snatched the end and unfurled it the
retreating pirates gaped and crossed themselves repeatedly babbling
to their God to save them.

~~

“Nice touch, that,” William
Chandler said, chuckling. “Hoisting the flag we salvaged off
the
Nuestro Santisimo Victorio
should spook whatever is left in their spines to
spook. Good thing you told your own men about it last night or
their hair would be standing on end as well.”

Dante turned as Rowly joined them. “Have all
our men withdrawn from the beach?”

“Aye. Last of the “sand people” are comin’
up now.”

“Good. Have everyone pull back to camp. As
soon as the bastard is back on his ship and collects his wits,
he’ll be blasting this ridge to kingdom come. How many wounded do
we have?”

Rowly grinned through the flaking mud on his
face. “None. Not a single blessed one so far as I know. Not unless
you count No-Nose who got his arm gored by a tusk when he was
trying to keep them boars penned in the cave.”

Gabriel plucked at the leather buckles on
the breastplate, discarding the slain Spaniard’s blood-smeared
armor and helmet as he walked. As ambuscades went, this one had
been a total, undeniable success, but in his fury, Muertraigo would
bombard the beach and bluffs until his cannon glowed red hot. He
would likely not attempt another landing today, but come morning,
if he could convince his men that sand creatures did not know how
to load and fire weapons, they would be back. There would be more
of them and they would be better armed, better organized, better
prepared. Dante had a few surprises left, but his men were still
badly outnumbered.

Their camp, a mile into the dense woods, was
safe enough for the time being. Chandler had shown him caves and
entire abandoned villages hidden deeper inland where they could
move if need be.

As he walked along the line of men slapping
one another on the back and cheering their victory, he caught sight
of Eva standing near one of the catapults helping to gather up the
unspent coconut bombs. The blood of victory was coursing too
strongly through his veins to be angry at seeing her there, but not
quite strongly enough to return the grime-streaked smile she wore
when she saw him stride past.

He quickened his pace, following the curve
of the bay around to the far western tip of the crescent where he
bellied up flat to a vantage point to watch the activity out in the
harbor.

As predicted, Muertraigo sent broadside
after broadside thundering from his guns. He blasted the beach and
the shoreline, he blew apart stands of rock and obliterated half
the slope, causing the caves to collapse under piles of rubble.
Shot after shot from the two galleons levelled trees and left huge
smoking craters in the sand. The scores of bodies strewn on the
beach were turned into red mush with no regard for the wounded who
attempted in vain to crawl to safety.

“As soon as it’s dark enough and they’ve
grown weary of shooting at the beach,” Dante murmured, “have the
men mud up again as we discussed.”

~~

The bombardment continued until dusk, until
the cannon barrels became too hot to handle and there was danger of
them cracking or blowing apart. The Spanish crews slumped into
exhausted heaps on the decks, their ears bleeding from the
implosions, their hands scorched and raw. Through it all,
Muertraigo stalked from one side of the quarterdeck to the other,
his rage so great that few of his officers dared approach.

“Dante. It has to be the bastard,
Dante.”

“But how could he have
arrived here before us?” Ross asked. “We saw his ship leave the
island. We watch it destroy the
Asuncion
and sail south.”

“I don’t know how!” Muertraigo screamed, the
veins pulsing like blue snakes in his temples and neck. “But it is
Dante. I feel it in my blood and in my bones. There can be no other
explanation.”

“The pennon—“

“The pennon was his way of
mocking us and informing us that he has found the
Nuestro Santisimo Victorio
.”

“But your men believe—“

“My men are
fools
! They are addled
half-wits if they believe sand and rocks can come to life and fire
guns. Come first light we will land a greater force, we will take
the beach and we will find Dante, Chandler, and the whore-bitch.”
With foam and spittle flying from his lips, Muertraigo stalked to
the rail and gripped it hard enough to gouge his nails into the
wood. “They will take us to the treasure and then I will take the
greatest pleasure in peeling the flesh from their bones one strip
at a time!”

A wail rose from the maindeck. Darkness had
descended, cloaking the ghastly slaughter on the beach, but here
and there, stepping out from behind rocks or seeming to rise from
the surf itself, glowing shapes of the dead were coming to life.
They were not whole men this time, but skeletons. Some were
stationary and to everyone’s horror, appeared to be headless and
holding their own skulls in their boney hands. Others moved along
the top of the ridge, and across the beach, their bones gleaming
blue-white against the night sky.

“Fire,” Muertraigo commanded, but his voice
was reduced to a hoarse whisper and none of the gun captains heard
him. Even if they did, there was not one man willing to open fire
on a crew of ghosts.

~~

The smaller galleon,
El Gato
, was the first
to winch the anchor on board and set her sails. Her captain ignored
the hails and threats from the quarterdeck of the
San Mateo
, and when
Muertraigo gave the order to turn their guns on her, his officers
refused to obey.

“Cowards! Fools! Get back to your posts or
I’ll have the skin flayed from your backs!”

But no one was listening and no one obeyed.
And a moment later, Estevan Muertraigo found himself staring down
the barrel of a loaded pistol.

~~

From their vantage point on
the bluff, Dante and Rowly watched with amazed interest as a
scuffle took place on board the
San
Mateo
. They heard a multitude of soft
popping sounds as pistols were discharged on deck and minutes
later, men—or bodies—were being flung over the side of the ship
into the water.

“What the f—?”

“Poke my arse an’ call it love,” Rowly
muttered. “They’re fixin’ to tuck tail an’ run.”

Dante knuckled his eyes to clear his vision
and peered through the spyglass again. The deck of the galleon was
well lit and there was no mistaking the livid features of the
pirate captain as he was hustled by force to the gangway and pushed
through. He fell into the water, his arms windmilling and legs
kicking, sending up a soundless splash.