Pirate Wolf Trilogy (80 page)

One by one he
went through the ranks. The circle was thickening, the combatants
attracting more and more onlookers, some of whom began to grow
resentful as each of their mates fell victim to one trick or other
that saw them disarmed and chased away at the point of the duke’s
elegant rapier.

“It could get
ugly down there, lass,” Nathan murmured, standing by her
shoulder.

“It could,” she
agreed.

The crowd
parted to a rousing cheer and Juliet smiled. Big Alf had been
fetched from the lower deck, undoubtedly dragged away from his
regular duties in order to have him teach a lesson to the pretty
duke. Big Alf was deserving of his name, for he was a tower of
bulging muscle with hair sprouting from every conceivable pore on
his arms, back, and shoulders. His favored weapon was the short,
broad-bladed cutlass, and every man on board had seen him take the
head off an opponent with one effortless swing.

As solidly
built as Varian was, he still could have fit three of himself
inside Big Alf’s galligaskins and canvas pinafore with room to
spare. And no sooner had Big Alf appeared at the edge of the circle
than the glowerings and grumblings turned to excited laughter.
Here, then, was someone who would show this lubber the color of his
flag!

Varian merely
took the measure of his opponent for a moment, then walked to where
Beacom was sweating himself into a puddle. He exchanged his elegant
rapier for a thicker, flat-bladed cutlass and returned to his
quadrant, working his wrist back and forth as if to accustom
himself to the heavier weight.

To the
encouraging whistles and hoots from his mates, Big Alf lunged
forward. He had a grin on his wide, hairy face as his first few
hacking slashes forced St. Clare into a defensive stance, but the
grin quickly turned into a grimace as the duke held off every blow,
deflected every strike that would have sent any other normal man
scrambling for cover. Alf’s face turned red and his swings became
broader. It was only practise and the intent was not to kill or
maim, but it was a fine line that marked the difference.

Not that it
mattered in the end, for within four more strikes, Big Alf’s blade
was slicing through the thin air where Varian’s head should have
been and was buried instead into two inches of solid oak. It bit
deep and stuck fast but before he could pull it free, the edge of
Varian’s blade was lying along Alf’s jugular.

The men fell
instantly silent, their champion defeated.

Up on the
quarterdeck, Nathan read the expressions on their faces and his
warning came out like a low growl. “Lass... ”

“Wait,” she
whispered. She was watching Varian; his mouth was an inch from Big
Alf’s ear and his lips were moving, so slightly she almost missed
it herself.

“Ye say what?”
Alf perked his head up, then to everyone’s surprise, began to roar
with laughter. He dropped his hands from the blade he was trying to
extricate from the mast and doubled over, slapping the tops of his
thighs as if the joke was the best he had ever heard. Varian was
grinning as well. He stepped back and ran a thumb along the edge of
the cutlass. He turned to hand it to Beacom, who had fainted, and
tossed it instead to Johnny Boy who was as owl-eyed and dumbstruck
as the others.

When Alf
stopped laughing, he straightened and wiped his hands across his
eyes to catch the streaming wetness. He clapped the duke soundly on
the shoulder, which very nearly accomplished what the bout of
swordplay could not, then glared a challenge around the circle.

“Aye, then.
Who’s next? A doubloon from me own pocket to the man who can at
least make the bastard break into a sweat!”

“I’ll take your
doubloon. And two more from the duke for my trouble.”

Varian turned
to track the source of the voice. Juliet stood at the edge of the
circle, her hands on her hips, her legs braced firmly apart.

“Well sir? Will
you make it worth my while?”

“Only if you
make it worth mine,” he countered smoothly.

Juliet’s slow
smile caused some of the men to chuckle in anticipation. “If you
get the best of me, your grace, your pockets will be heavier by a
hundred gold doubloons... nay, two hundred. But for that much, I’ll
want to see the weight of your wager beforehand.”

Varian smiled.
“As you well know, Captain, my pockets are empty. You will have to
trust me for the amount, which I will be happy to deduct from the
two hundred you will owe when we are done.”

A murmur
rippled through the men, some of them laughing, some of the more
enterprising among them beginning a hot exchange of private
wagers.

“I’ll take it
out in trade instead,” she said with narrowed eyes. “You lose and
you’ll fetch and carry like a cabin boy for the rest of the voyage.
You will go barefoot and scrub the decks alongside the rest of the
crew, and you’ll learn how to set a sail, how to tie off a reef,
how to boil up a pot of burgoo to the crew’s liking.”

Varian took his
rapier back from Johnny Boy and raised the blade in a salute to
accept the terms.

The men raised
a cheer and some spread their arms to usher the others back and
widen the circle. Juliet drew her sword and flexed the thin,
tempered steel once before slashing it down in a glittering arc and
touching the point to the deck.

Varian assumed
a similar stance, then after exchanging a nod with Juliet, both
blades came up and tapped lightly together to start the
flirtation.

They started to
move, taking deliberate, prowling steps clockwise around the
circle. Their eyes were locked, their smiles fixed. The sun was
almost directly overhead, eliminating any advantage to one opponent
or the other. Similarly the wind was warm and steady, lacking any
gusts that might cause a man to squint or a lock of hair to blow
across the eyes.

Juliet gave her
wrist a small flick, scraping metal against metal. She saw his eyes
flicker but his arm remained rocklike and steady, fully extended. A
split second later, his blade was in motion, clipping hers through
a volley of short thrusts that were so fast, the two lengths of
steel moved in a blur. With his forward foot pacing out his attack,
he came half way across the deck before she was able to reverse the
momentum of the thrusts and drive him back to where he had begun.
She did not let up, but continued to parry and thrust, lunging
forward and back, to and fro, even leaping to the top of the
capstan to deliver a flurry of ripostes from a superior angle.

When she jumped
down, she landed on soft knees and went into an immediate crouch,
slicing her blade parallel to the deck and forcing him to leap like
a scalded cat in order to avoid the cut.

When the
exchange ended, she strode back to take up her position in the
first quadrant, her blade extended, the tip etching small circles
in the air.

Varian came
away from the wall of grinning men and moved back into position. A
glance down confirmed the source of the laughter, for the front of
his shirt had been sliced open in half a dozen places. It was
loose, but not overly so, yet she had cut the cloth without so much
as scraping a pink line in his flesh.

“My
compliments, Captain,” he murmured. “You show a deft hand.”

“Do I? Shall I
show you another?”

To his genuine
and immense surprise, she tossed the blade from her right hand to
her left and without waiting for him to recover his shock, came in
on the attack again. Their blades clashed, thrusting and slashing,
seeking openings to the left, then to the right. Both adversaries
were leaping and weaving their way through the sea of parting men
now. The fight carried unceasingly across the deck to the bottom
step of the ladderway, then with a graceful, spinning leap, to the
top of the quarterdeck and all the way to the crutch of the
bowsprit before the tide turned and the aggressor was driven back
to the opposite ladderway. Varian had his back to the stairs and
knew they were close, but he dared not glance away for the smallest
breadth of a second. It was time, he thought. Time to end it while
he still had the wits and wrist to do so.

Juliet saw the
small spark in the midnight eyes and knew it was coming. She had
watched all of his previous matches, studied his wrist, his
shoulder, his footwork, the muscles in his jaw—all points where a
minute signal might betray what was coming next. And there it was.
The slight downward twist of his wrist as he braced for the next
lunge. With each and every challenger who had gone before, this
slight bend had allowed him to cut the edge of his blade beneath
theirs, then to run it the length of the steel while moving his own
sword in a tight spiralling motion. The resulting pressure caused
his opponent’s fingers to flex open and the hilt to fly out of the
hand.

Juliet saw his
thumb slip back on the guard, a prelude to executing the ‘fillip’
as Gabriel had called it. There was not even a tenth of a heartbeat
between the shift of the thumb and the bend of the wrist, but she
used it to bring her sword up and snap it down hard when his
balance was momentarily suspended. Instead of coming up beneath her
blade, Varian’s was forced down with a sharp biting cut that
brought the hilt springing forward out of his startled fingers and
turning a silvery somersault before landing solidly in Juliet’s
outstretched hand.

There was a
moment of deafening, awed silence before the crew broke out in a
clamorous roar. She raised both swords in triumph to acknowledge
their cheers, then drove Varian’s point down in a flare of
sunlight, embedding the tip in the deck before releasing it so that
the shaft quivered upright between them.

The look of
absolute astonishment on his face could not be feigned. His hand
was poised in the air as if it still held the hilt, and the only
thing that moved was the fat bead of sweat that rolled down his
cheek.

Juliet
resheathed her sword. “I believe that gives me the win, sir.”

Varian
recovered enough to offer a deep bow. “Your servant, Captain.”

“Indeed you
shall be, sir. As for you,” she said and moved to the rail to
address Big Alf. “Mr. Crisp will make a note to deduct the sum of
one gold doubloon from your share of the profits before you drink
and wench them away.”

“Well spent it
was too, Cap’n! Well spent!”

She waved her
hands to bring an end to the hurrahs, and beside her, Nathan’s
voice boomed out, ordering them back about their tasks. All save
Johnny Boy who was called to the quarterdeck with a tilt of
Juliet’s head.

“Take his grace
down to the galley and show him where he might find the victuals to
prepare me a tray for supping. Oh, and fetch him a pot of
bootblack. I seem to have won a few scuffs that need polishing
out.”

She smiled at
Varian, then handed the helm off to a snickering Nathan Crisp
before going below.

Once inside her
cabin, she closed the door and leaned heavily against it. She had
got the better of him, but only by a hair’s breadth, for he was
lightening quick and more resourceful than she had anticipated.
There was dampness between her shoulder blades, more curling the
fine hairs across the nape of her neck—the humid price of
pride.

Shaking her
hands to ease the ache in her wrists, she went over to her desk. On
a normal day, at noon, she would carry the backstaff up on deck and
take a reading to determine their position, but since they were
only a few hours north of Pigeon Cay, the need was not pressing.
She looked at the new journal she had brought on board. She had
entered their time of departure and the date, September 3, but
otherwise the pages were blank. Chewing thoughtfully on her lower
lip, she pulled out the chair and sat down. She stood a moment
later and removed her swordbelt then sat down again, wondering how
busy she should look on the first day of a voyage.

Opening a
drawer, she took out a quill and a small knife, and trimmed the tip
to a fresh point. She unscrewed the pot of ink and set it in the
well then ran her tongue across her teeth a few times between
thoughtful glances at the door.

Leaning back in
the chair, she propped her boot on the edge of the desk.

A distraction,
that was what he was. Just a distraction that would be gone from
her life soon enough.

~~~

Varian only
bumped into two bulkheads on his way from the galley to the
captain’s cabin. He balanced a wooden tray in one hand and carried
a jug of ale in the other. The captain liked ale with her noon
meal, Johnny Boy had informed him, then proceeded to show him where
the wooden ladle was hung and which barrel had been marked for the
captain’s personal consumption. Not watered down, he had confided
in a whisper, not like the weaker brew allotted for the crew’s
ration of two quarts a day. They’d all be drunken sots
otherwise.

Varian
was still prickling over the laughter that had followed him below
deck. How the devil a mere slip of a woman had bested him with a
sword was completely and incomprehensibly beyond his ken. Johnny
Boy had winked and told him it was a good thing he had let the
captain beat him, and he had wanted to box the boy’s ears.
Let
her beat him? The thought had
not even occurred after the first exchange of ripostes; in truth,
he had been hard-pressed to keep her from slicing more than just
his shirt into ribbons.

He arrived at
the captain’s cabin and, having no spare hands, knocked with the
rounded shoulder of the jug.

“Come.”

He worked the
latch with his elbow and pushed the door open, stumbling through
with just enough balance left to keep the tray from tipping onto
the floor. She was sitting behind the desk, a leg propped on the
corner. A quill was in her hand, the feathers brushing her lips as
she twirled the shaft between her thumb and forefinger. The bank of
gallery windows was behind her, glaring brightly with the
reflection of the sun off the water. She had taken the thong out of
her hair and the dark auburn curls spilled loosely over her
shoulders, the finest strands glowing fiery red against the
light.