The Companion (9 page)

She gulped and nodded. “I suppose you mean very great splinters.”

“I have seen them two-foot-long and more.”

“So you have experience of battle at sea?”

He tried to keep his voice flat. “And of the unhappy issue of losing such a battle.”

At last the order came: “Wear ship! Prepare the starboard guns.”

“You must go below.” He hallooed the first mate and explained his plan for the women.

“I’ll see to Mrs. Pargutter and Jenny. You are needed here.” But she did not turn to go. She looked up at him for a long moment with those luminous eyes. She was afraid, and yet she wanted something.

“What is it?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know.

She cleared her throat. “I have never been kissed, you know.”

He almost smiled. She had obviously never been in mortal danger, either. Not so much to ask. He leaned down. She looked up, wide-eyed with expectation. The burden of that expectation could not be fulfilled. Still, he brushed her lips with his. A shock went through him, straight to his unruly member. Her mouth was soft, yielding. He did not intend to linger, and yet . . .

He pulled away. She stared up at him, unblinking.

She came to herself. “Thank you,” she said simply. She turned with almost a shiver and rushed away. Looking back over her shoulder, she called anxiously, “Be careful of splinters!”

He watched her hurry into the cabin. Why had he done that? Had he not forsworn women? What right had she to ask him for a kiss? It had seemed a simple request. But it was not. He rubbed his mouth, the feel of her lips still lingering there.

“Good job, mate.” A sailor winked.

“Aye, maybe she’ll need another!” A young man with a dirty face leered.

“She won’t,” Ian said roughly. Damn the chit!

The ship came slowly round. Men leaned over their guns. The sulfurous smell of powder and lit match drifted across the deck in trails of smoke.

“On my signal, fore to aft!” called the Captain. “Fire!” He missed the roll of the swell. Still, the squat guns fired off in a ragged, sequential bark that left the deck covered in smoke and Ian’s hearing deadened. The stout brass cannons jerked back against their housings. Crews heaved them up to their ports, rammed home a swab on a stick, and stuffed down more powder and ball. Ian heard answering booms from the pirate. Above him, sails shrieked as they split.

Their own guns spoke again in an irregular order. The xebec answered quickly. The pirates fired faster and they fired clean. Rigging fell across the splinter net. Sails flapped free and drooped over the waist. The
Beltrane
’s bowsprit was carried away in the third volley. She could not steer against the wind. A gunner screamed as his carronade broke its housing and crushed him against the opposite rail. The mast shuddered as it was hit. Their only hope was to sink their enemy before she closed. The xebec must be taking punishment, even with the inaccuracy of the carronades and the difficulty of aiming through the smoke.

They heard her before they saw her. The wash of water from her bow was clear in the silence between the speaking guns. Ian lurched for the pile of cutlasses. Above him, the mast finally fell across the deck, pinning several hands. There was no time to answer their screams, for the xebec appeared like a ghost ship out of the smoke. Was she going to ram them?

The master on the enemy deck could be seen spinning the wheel madly. Sails flapped down, and suddenly the ship backed and turned in her own length. The pirates, whatever their origins, were capital sailors. The ship coasted in, side to side.

“Prepare to repel boarders!” the Captain shouted. The call was repeated along the deck.

Across scant feet of water, the waist of the pirate ship was filled to overflowing with eager swarthy faces, many scarred, their hair wound in bandanas or hanging down in braids, their beards full and flowing. Ian was struck to the heart. Just such as these had taken him before.

And he would be damned if they were going to take him again! He hefted the cutlass, meant for brutal combat at close quarters. So be it. Wild life throbbed in his veins.

Ian glanced to the quarterdeck. The Captain whispered orders. The damned coward was going to strike his colors! Boarding lines were cast from the enemy to anchor the ships together. Around him men were confused, uncertain.

“If they take us,” Ian shouted, his voice booming over the din, “they’ll put to slavery any they don’t torture into conversion!” Men around him turned. “I’ll not be a slave again in this life or the next!” The ships were almost kissing sides. Several seasoned hands gripped their cutlasses. More picked up weapons. “There’s no surrender, here, even if the colors come down!” Pirates came pouring over the side. “For God and country if you like, or for yourselves and freedom!”

He lunged into the cascade of bodies, slashing madly. The first man to feel his cutlass’s bite lost an arm and fell shrieking. The second was cut half-through. Behind him, the
Beltranes
gave a shout. Several stepped up beside him, hacking. Something inside him wakened. Power surged up through his veins. He should have felt afraid; whether of the horrible odds or of the terrible gush of strength and joy that surged inside him, he could not tell. But he was not afraid.

In moments the deck was awash in blood. Ian shoved and cut about him with abandon. He felt a slash along his thigh from a fallen pirate and kicked him away. The pirates forged ahead with wicked recklessness, shouting in foreign tongues. Bodies piled. Ian’s shoulder took a pike whose owner spouted a fountain of red in the next instant. A small circle gave way and Ian whirled his heavy sword in a deadly swathe. Two heads toppled to the deck. Three.
Beltranes
screamed in triumph and filled the gap he’d made. The tide of battle changed.

A shout rang out. The pirates were falling back. Would they be able to regroup? He looked around wildly. The ships were side to side. Carronades might win the day! Ian sprang into action. The cannons were all askew. Several rolled about the deck, creating havoc, maiming men. Ian put a shoulder into a great gun as it careered by him. He rolled its fifteen hundredweight up to an empty gun port. A seaman with a grisly scalp wound bound it in place with rope strands from a ruined halyard. Ian swabbed and put the powder down. There was no match. He searched the deck.

He saw her, pressed against the quarterdeck wall, not safe in the hold below. She held a capstan bar like a club. Two pirates lay at her feet with bloody pates. He swore to himself. She saw him. Her eyes lit in recognition of his need. She plucked a lit match from the dead hand of a boy not old enough to shave and lunged forward. Ian heaved up the back end of the gun so it pointed down as far as the port allowed. Miss Rochewell handed him the match.

“On the downward roll!” Ian yelled. A pause for the swell; match to powder. The gun roared. The ball plowed into the xebec below the waterline. Ian took the brunt of the recoil in his shoulder as the damaged cat’s paw breeching broke. His shoulder buckled. The gun creaked to a stop.

“Get below!” he yelled to the girl. “Are your brains to let?”

Sporadic fighting ranged over the deck. He pushed her toward the companionway and turned back to the xebec. The pirates were regrouping for another assault. The merchant crew was hopelessly outnumbered. Their only chance was to sink the pirate ship. Sailors ran two guns up to their ports but could not lift their rear ends high enough to get their shot below the enemy’s waterline. Ian put his shoulder under the first and heaved, yelling, “Fire the damn thing!” The sailors protested that the recoil would kill him, but they fired anyway.

It did not. He could feel another crack in his shoulder, but the pain was distant. The second gun was served the same. The pirates still leaped from the waist to the merchantman. Motion to the left caught his eye and he swung round to see
the damned girl with a lantern. She swung it back and forth for momentum and heaved it over the side to the pirate vessel. It broke across a gun. The powder sack exploded. Flame leaped up the tarred ropes to the canvas above.

“Stand away, girl!” Ian bellowed. One of the pirates lunged for her and caught her about the throat. Ian strode across the heaving deck to jerk him away and run him through. Several
Beltranes
caught the girl’s idea and lanterns now hailed onto the pirate ship. Ian slashed and tossed bodies overboard, his cutlass running red. Bodies littered the deck, some groaning, others past all sound. Fire engulfed the xebec. The
Beltrane
’s Captain shouted to the crew to make what sail they could. Men scrambled up the rigging. The
Beltrane
began to pull away.

The pirates must board or die. Their vessel was wallowing ominously. The rigging was alight. A rain of grappling hooks caught the merchant’s railing and pulled the ships together once again. A crowd of desperate men prepared to leap across and fight for their lives.

Ian picked up the giant spar and waded through the fighting. He braced it against the corsair and heaved. The ropes of the grappling hooks narrowed and stretched with a clear creak behind the shouts and grunts of fighting. Ian felt a thump against his back, as though a horse had kicked him. A rope burst with a twang, and then another. He pushed himself against the spar. Other
Beltranes
joined him. The ropes gave a sproinging sound as they snapped, and the xebec drifted beyond the reach of the spar.

As the distance grew, a dozen pirates leaped into the water, a hail of bodies, rather than stay on their burning ship. The few remaining enemies on board the
Beltrane
begged quarter. Ian watched the flaming torch of a ship recede, even as his joy and strength ebbed. The
Beltrane
slowly pulled away again. At two hundred yards, the xebec exploded in a travesty of celebration fireworks as her powder stores caught.

The
Beltranes
roared amid the raining debris.

“Let that serve them for attacking free English vessels.”
Though Ian did not think he said it loudly, yet cries of “Hear him!” and “As the gentleman says!” rose around him.

They watched in silence as pieces of the corsair burned on the water. All hands left on that ship were lost.

“Get the wounded below!” the Captain bellowed. “Bo’-sun, rig the spare as mainmast!”

Ian took a breath. There would be no slavery this time. A strange lassitude came over him and with it, pain in a hundred parts of his body. He looked down and saw his coat, his breeches, both soaked with blood. His boots squelched with it. His hand on his sword hilt was red-black in the dim light where blood had dripped down his sleeve.

“You’d best get to the surgeon.” Resentment choked the Captain’s sentiment.

But with his returning senses, Ian knew he could do no such thing.

“It’s mostly pirate blood. I shall retire, with your permission.” He turned carefully, head spinning. He was hardly in command of himself by the time he reached the girl. He could do no more than nod to her before plunging into the common room and groping his way to his cabin. He shut the door, held out a shaky hand toward his cot, and collapsed.

Beth watched Mr. Rufford stumble past her, her senses overwhelmed. Small pieces of burning wood and ash hailed on the deck from the exploding pirate ship amid a pervasive scent of gunpowder. Sailors picked themselves up and began to loot the bodies of their enemies. Splashes sounded as some were heaved overboard. The ship’s officers were barking orders. Men who were able strode to the pumps. Others carried their fellows to the sick bay.
I hope the surgeon is not drunk
, she thought.

Wait! She turned to where Mr. Rufford had disappeared. Realization struck her. He had been covered in blood, with unseeing eyes and stumbling step. She pushed into the passengers’ common room. The lantern swung in lazy arcs above,
casting wild shadows. Mrs. Pargutter’s cabin was empty, Beth having bundled her and Jenny below an eternity ago.

Mr. Rufford’s door was closed. “Mr. Rufford?” There was no answer. She rapped hesitantly on the door. “Are you well, sir?”

Only silence was returned.

Biting her lip, Beth opened the door. It would swing but part way. Her heart beginning to race, she stuck her head round through the opening and saw what she had feared. Mr. Rufford lay slumped on his side across the bottom of his cot. His boots stopped the door from opening. She pushed the door in with her shoulder until she could squeeze through.

One look told her it was useless to try to revive him. Blood pooled on the floor, soaked the quilt, and covered his breeches and his coat in gore. She must get help! Yet while she ran for help he might bleed to death. What to do? At least she could get a tourniquet around that dreadful gash in his leg that welled so ominously. Glancing around, she saw a small kit that held a razor. She grabbed the ivory handle and used the blade to cut away his clothing, down to his boots. How had he held that massive spar with a shoulder so obviously dislocated? She stripped off his neck cloth, twisting it. She had never been squeamish and this was no time for thoughts of propriety. She pressed down her acute awareness of his masculinity, suffused with shame. She had seen naked humanity in a hundred hot lands. This man was no different.

She surveyed him resolutely. He had a bullet wound in his lower back. Nothing she could do there. The wound in his thigh seemed most pressing. Some artery was nicked. She pulled him onto his back and put her hands between his bloody thighs to thread the twisted neck cloth under his leg, just where it joined his loins. She pulled the cloth, already soaked red, tight, then put her knee where it crossed and tied it, the knot just above the wound to press against the artery.

What now? Surely his shoulder. The hole left by a pike was bleeding copiously, too. She ripped his shirt, made a pad of the sleeve, then embraced him as she slid a knotted strip under him and tied the pad in place. Pressing on the
wound, she felt the bones in his shoulder give, sickeningly. They were all broken, sure. She surveyed the rest through the smeared blood. Left chest wall was crushed, his forearm gouged, and his chest was slashed across. His scalp bled into his sandy hair. How could a man lose so much blood and live?