Pirate Wolf Trilogy (97 page)

Despite her resolve, a
faint sound escaped her lips as the tip of the knife pressed again
and the skin gave with a small pop. Almost instantly a small bead
of blood welled and parted in twin rivulets to trickle down either
side of the knife point.

"A pity to damage such
perfection," he murmured. "Are you certain you have nothing you
wish to tell me?"

Muertraigo’s voice was
smooth as silk, almost paternal in its concern, while hers came out
a dry, scratchy whisper. "I know nothing more than what I have
already told you. No matter how many times you ask, I cannot tell
you what I do not know."

He smiled and leaned close,
hissing softly against her ear. "How I wish I believed you,
puta
, for it will
be a shame to destroy something so... magnificent."

He straightened and nodded
to someone in the gloom. An iron rod had been placed in the fire,
the tip glowing red. As the man lifted the rod from the flames and
walked slowly forward, the silence became so ominous she could hear
the tiny grains of sand beneath his boots cracking and
grinding.

Muertraigo took the rod and
brought the tip close enough to her cheek to make the fine blonde
hairs at her temple sizzle and melt.

“I am told your father only
has one eye. Is it the left?” He moved the glowing rod to the other
cheek. “Or is it the right?”

“No,” she whispered, her
voice shaking as badly as her body.

Muertraigo smiled… and
brought the iron closer.

CHAPTER ONE

The Florida Straits

It had been a good day to die.

Gabriel Dante had convinced himself of this
when he had been bound hand and foot to the rigging of his own
ship. The Spaniards had captured the
Valour
and used her
crew and captain as hostages in a battle that had appeared to be
lost before it had ever begun. Flanked by two galleons bristling
with cannon, laden with soldiers, the Spanish commander had led his
small force into a confrontation with his sister Juliet’s ship, the
Iron
Rose
. Gabriel and his crew had been tied to the
shrouds and used as human shields against any attempts to attack or
rescue. Spitting in the face of horrendous odds, Juliet had ordered
her ship and crew forward to what should have been certain
doom.

Despite the hopelessness of their situation,
Gabriel’s chest had swelled with pride as his men had hurled
insults at their captors. Even when their Spanish captors had fired
grapeshot into their midst, slicing them to shreds, the crew had
not stopped jeering and baiting.

A good day to die with good men to die
alongside him.

The words had been echoing in his head as
Gabriel watched in amazement and disbelief as his sister brought
the
Iron
Rose
cutting in recklessly beneath the
Valour’s
guns to lay a full broadside into the hull. Timbers
had splintered, guns had been blown off their carriages and
Spaniards had screamed as bloody body parts flew through the air.
The Spanish gun crews, unaccustomed to the design of the English
mountings, had fired wild and wide, allowing Juliet Dante the
precious time needed to turn her ship and ram the
Valour
.

While her crew launched a spider's web of
grappling lines to the
Valour
, a second Dante ship, the
Avenger
, came streaking out of the clouds of smoke and
sulphur to rake the Spaniards on the larboard beam and from one
blink to the next, the tide had turned. The captors had become the
captives. They had thrown down their arms and fallen to their knees
begging for quarter.

Gabriel, bloodied from savage beatings and
barely able to stand on his own, cheered alongside the survivors as
they watched two more ships from the Dante fleet emerge from hidden
ambush to slice across the turbulent waters and attack the hastily
retreating escort galleons. Further along the miles of scattered
islands, more ships, more privateers eager to engage the heavily
laden ships of the Spanish treasure fleet, ran with the wind in
their sails to win a resounding battle and declare a victory that
would firmly entrench the day in legend.

When the smoke cleared, the survivors had
been transferred off the crippled
Valour
and onto the
Iron
Rose
. Simon Dante, the patriarch of the clan,
had paced from one side of the great cabin to the other, his steps
slow and measured, his head bowed, his hands clasped tightly behind
his back. On each turn he glanced at the berth where the ship’s
carpenter-cum-doctor was in the process of sewing a deep gash in
Juliet Dante’s temple.

"Skull might be cracked," Nog announced
casually. "Nay doubt she’ll be hearin’ bells and walkin’ into walls
the next few days, dizzy as a wench on a whirligig. Shoulder is
blacker than Lucifer’s hoary arse too, but if she’s not plannin’ on
t’rowin’ herself at any more Spaniards wearin’ steel breastplates,
she should heal up nice."

"She will have plenty of time to heal back at
Pigeon Cay," the Pirate Wolf declared. He saw his daughter’s eyes
swim open and he narrowed his own in a warning. "There will be no
arguments either. Your quartermaster has a hole in his ribs. Half
your crew is licking wounds. Gabriel’s ship is bound for the bottom
of the ocean and between the pair of you, we couldn’t manage one
captain with enough common sense to know when to run and when to
fight. Which brings me to the other demented female in this
family."

He turned the full power of his silvery blue
eyes on his wife Isabeau, who was sitting on the corner of the desk
winding a clean strip of bandaging around the stump of her left
arm. She had lost half the arm in a battle several years earlier
but the disability rarely slowed her down.

"That I, of all people," Simon muttered,
"should have been cursed with two addle-witted women who—"

"Love you dearly," Isabeau said sweetly, "and
tolerate your bouts of ill temper with enduring patience."

"
My
ill temper?
Your
patience?
Madam! You took my ship into battle! You risked your life, the
lives of my crew, the well-being of my
Avenger
—"

"To go to the rescue of
your
daughter
and
your
son."

"To go to the...?" He stopped and clamped his
jaw tightly shut. When he found the patience to loosen it again, he
snarled. "I should send you back to Pigeon Cay in irons."

Isabeau smiled. "You could certainly
try."

He muttered a curse and aimed the silvery
glare at the next victim. The cabin on board the
Iron
Rose
was crowded and he had plenty to choose from. Gabriel
and his brother Jonas stood in one corner slouched against the
wall, the former almost unrecognizable beneath a swollen, closed
eye, multiple cuts and bruises, and lips that looked like two slabs
of raw meat. Jonas had fared little better. He had a gash down his
cheek, another on his arm; his hand was wrapped in a wad of linen
and was cradled against his chest. A grin a mile wide split the red
fuzz of his beard, however. His good arm was draped over Gabriel’s
shoulders and every now and then, he ruffled his brother’s dark
chestnut hair as if he still could not believe the Hell Twins were
alive and together again.

"You find something amusing?" Simon
asked.

"Aye, Father, I do," Jonas boomed. "A brother
who smells like a vat of pickled herring, for one thing. For
another, a sister who has ballocks the size of Gibraltar, inherited
from a mother who can outsail, outshoot, and outwit any bloody
papist on the Main. Add to that two fat prize galleons loaded to
the hatches with treasure, and I’d say we have a fair bit to put a
smile on our faces. Oh, and did I mention a father canny enough to
find the wife to give him the sons and daughter able to accomplish
these feats?"

Simon glared at his eldest son a moment
longer.

"Oh, do strut over here and sit down, my
love," Isabeau said, patting an empty corner of the desk beside
her. "You’re as proud as a peacock and you damn well know it."

"I will be even prouder when we get these
ships back to home port. There is still a fleet of Spanish galleons
out in the Straits, any one or ten of them could come upon us at
any moment. The
Valour
is sinking faster than we can offload
her cargo."

Jonas nodded. "Of the two galleons we
captured, the strongest looks to be the
Santa
Maria
,
which will have to serve my little brother for the time being. At
least until we get back home."

Gabriel spoke up through a frown. "I have no
intentions of returning to Pigeon Cay and even less of running
before the wind. As you say, there is still half a plate fleet out
in the Straits."

Simon Dante shook his head. "We are all going
home, Gabriel. Captain David Smith has already led a fleet of
fifteen privateers north to blockade the exit from the Straits.
More of the Brethren have been attacking in deadly skirmishes up
and down the line, picking off the galleons and scattering the
remnants of the
flota
. My guess is the ships that have been
unscathed will turn tail and run back to Havana rather than risk
further losses. Chances are we'll not see another Spanish flag
between here and Pigeon Cay."

"From your lips to God's ears," Isabeau said
quietly.

“God gave us a victory today,” Simon told
her. “We should accept it with grace and not test His
generosity.”

~~

Two hours later the
Santa Maria
weighed anchor and unfurled her sails to catch the wind that would
carry them south and east through the Providence Channel and home.
Dawn was painting the horizon a watery pink and as Gabriel leaned
on the upper rail, he drew a crisp, clean lungful of the salty air.
All that remained of his beautiful
Valour
was a wide ring of
iridescent bubbles marking the spot where she had given a final
sigh before slipping to her silent grave in the deep blue waters.
She had been a fearsome, spirited lady who never balked at a good
fight whether the odds were in their favor or not. She had been
sleek and fast and had flown over the waves like a seabird.

The galleon by contrast, swayed and creaked
with every crest that rolled beneath her hull. She was heavy and
awkward, hampered by square-rigged sails that sent her plowing into
the trough of each wave like a lumbering sow. Gabriel had already
set the carpenters to work on the
Santa
Maria’s
yards
and rigging in the hopes of improving her steerage, but there was
nothing to be done about the towering fore and after castles that
made her so unwieldy.

Gabriel had personally torn down the huge
square of white silk emblazoned with the former
capitan's
coat of arms. High on the main mast, the galleon now flew the
distinctive flag bearing black wolves on a crimson background that
identified the ship as a prize of the Dante clan. The crew had set
to work clearing the decks of debris and scouring the oak surfaces
free of bloodstains. The gilded letters across the stern had been
hastily covered with a sheet of black canvas upon which her new
name,
Endurance
, was being painted in tall, bold characters.
There was not an idle hand below or above decks, for each man knew
the importance of becoming familiar with every aspect of the
galleon, as well as the need to prime her for any potential trouble
that might cross their path.

The former quartermaster, Riley, had died on
board the
Valour
and Gabriel assigned one of his best gun
captains to the position. Stubs MacLeish—so named because of the
three half fingers on his left hand—was short and stout, with a
face that resembled crumpled canvas. He had been in the thick of
the fighting and half of the dark cropped curls on his head had
been scorched off by an exploding shell, making him look like two
different men, depending on which profile was in view. He had
proudly assumed Riley’s place beside the captain, relaying each of
the Dante’s orders with enough vigor to make Gabriel's head pound
like a drummer’s snare.

"Full and by, Stubs," Gabriel ordered
quietly. "Take us home."

"Aye Cap'n!" Stubs formed a cup with his
hands and shouted aloft. "Man the braces! Look alive there! Full
an' by, lads, full an' by. We be goin' home!"

The men on the yards cheered as they strained
on the lines, heaving and panting until the great sheets of canvas
were unfurled and lashed to the rigging. The sails luffed like
curtains in an open window until the wind became trapped and began
to bell them forward. Lines were winched tight and whined like a
throng of sin-eaters. The men heaved on the braces again and with
sequential booms of thunder, the sails exploded full-bellied before
the wind, curling out hard as marble.

The
Endurance
balked a moment, as if
unsure of her new masters, but in the end, she responded and glided
forward, groaning and creaking her way toward the southern
horizon.

The distance of a pistol shot ahead, the
Iron
Rose
was making similar headway. Off the
starboard bow, the
Avenger,
carrying the Pirate Wolf and his
wife Isabeau, and the
Tribute
, captained by Jonas Dante,
were both surging forward, tall pyramids of white sail against the
shocking blue of the sky.

"You have the helm, Stubs," Dante said
wearily. "Try to keep this beast apace with the others and on
course, east by southeast, until we are well into the Providence
Channel."

"Aye Cap'n." Stubs touched a finger to the
melted stubble on the left side of his head. He scowled a moment as
he groped the singed patches, then cursed and turned his attention
back to the setting of the yards.