The Following Sea (The Pirate Wolf series) (32 page)

Could she, Evangeline Chandler, distant cousin to the king of England, ever learn to live for just those moments as well?

Would a man like Gabriel Dante even want her to share those moments with him?

He tipped his head and smiled as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. As she watched, he stood and casually scuffed over the markings in the dirt, then walked across the firelit clearing to the path that led into the forest.

Eva knew where he was going. Every drop of blood that was racing through her body wanted her to follow, wanted to sink with him into the misty waters of the pool, wanted to feel him surging strong and potent within her.

It was a moment that would not come again, and knowing this, accepting the consequences—regardless of the consequences—she rose from her bed of palm fronds and followed him into the forest glade.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

The beach was deserted, the wide strip of sand yawned in a lazy crescent with a rocky slope framing the shore and leading up to a higher bluff crowned with graceful palms and tall fir trees. Nothing moving on land save the tiny swirls of sand spun by the breeze. The skeletal remains of a broken hut was at one end of the beach along with evidence of old firepits near the base of the slope where former crews had landed to fill their barrels with fresh water. Stranded lengths of twisted driftwood had collected in a shallow tidal pool, used as perches by a small flock of pelicans. Gulls squatting on the rocks had seen the three tall-masted ships gliding toward the bay and they left their crevices and nests to start screaming a welcome as they circled overhead.

There were no visible footprints in the sand, no signs that anyone had landed recently for water or any other reason.

Estevan Muertraigo lowered the spyglass and pursed his lips thoughtfully. He had been staring through the glass so long, studying the beach from one end to the other, there was a circular pink imprint around his eye.

“Anything?” he asked.

“The lookouts report nothing, Capitan,” said a senior officer. “Just the flying rats and the pelicans.”

Muertraigo nodded with satisfaction. “Lower away a boat and send a landing party ashore. I want men up on that high point—” he indicated the position with the end of his spyglass—“and for half a mile back along either side of the cliffs overlooking the bight in both directions. I want ample warning if anything moves on land or in the water.”

“Si, Capitan.”

Muertraigo glanced sidelong at Lawrence Ross, who had remained on board the
San Mateo
, not so much by choice as by no choice whatsoever. The Spaniard had been caught unawares once by a cunning Englishman. He was not about to be double-crossed by this one, especially after discovering that the lovely blonde whore on board the Dante ship was Ross’s former fiancé. Having seen the beauty up close, he could not believe a man would be stupid enough to cast her aside and Muertraigo was now suspicious of every word, every vow of assurance that came from Ross’s lips.

“Tell me again, my friend, how you were to contact William Chandler.”

“I was to land in the bay, build a tall signal fire on the highest point of the bluff, and he would contact me. This leads me to believe his camp cannot be too far away.”

Muertraigo curled his lip and studied the narrow, aristocratic face without any effort to conceal his disdain. “On these islands, the nights are so dark you can see a small flame from many miles away.” His ferret-like eyes flicked to his first officer, Diego Castellano. “Why are you still standing here? Dispatch the landing party at once.”

Within minutes a longboat was lowered away and carried sixteen impressively formidable Spanish pirates ashore. Since most of them had been recruited from the ranks of the garrison at Havana, where Muertraigo had once been in command, all of them wore metal breastplates over heavily padded doublets. Their curved steel helmets were decorated with plumes. They wore balloon breeches and tall boots; swords were sheathed in leather scabbards belted around their waists, and each carried an arquebus weighing twenty-five pounds with a barrel nearly four feet long. Slung crosswise over their chest was a bandolier holding more than a dozen dangling wooden pipes filled with gunpowder and shot.

They landed on the beach and while the oarsmen dragged the boat onto the pebbled shingle, Castellano led the wary soldiers across the sand to the base of the slope. There, they spread out and studied the ground closely, searching for any sign of fresh tracks or recent visitors. Six of the men were charged with investigating the two visible caves that opened onto the beach; the others, after sending an all-clear signal to the ship, found a path that would take them up to the top of the ridge and started to climb.

As much as it could be called a path, it was only wide enough for the men to climb in single file and wound between and around clusters of rocks and gorse which blocked the view of the bay for brief stretches. The bulk of their armor and weapons slowed their progress further, much to the impatience of those watching from on board the
San Mateo
.

Diego Castellano, in the lead, had sweat running into his eyes and soaking through his doublet. The mid-day sun was beating down on the metal helmet and despite the woollen cap he wore beneath, his hair was running wet, his scalp was itching like an infestation of a thousand fleas, his face was flushed as red as raw meat. The metal armor acted like an oven, trapping the heat against his chest. Adding to his misery, he had been suffering for nearly three weeks from a salt-water rash between his thighs and the climbing was chafing the raw skin so badly his ballocks felt like they were on fire.

Halfway up the slope he slung the cumbersome arquebus over his shoulder. He was trying to focus his thoughts anywhere but on his groin when heard one of the men in the rear give out a startled cry. He turned in time to release a strangled gasp of his own as the rocks on either side of the path appeared to move, to detach themselves from the rest of the boulders and take on human shape.

The arquebus slipped out of his grip and clattered onto the ground. He had but a moment, before feeling the sharp slice of steel through his neck, to watch in horror as the human rocks produced daggers, using them to swiftly and efficiently slit the throats of every man along the line.

At almost the same time, on the beach below, the men who had been dispatched to search the caves came to a similar, terror-struck end as the dark walls of the caves came alive with Dante’s men.

As quickly as the Spaniards were slain, their bodies were stripped of their armor, helmets, weapons and scarlet breeches.

~~

Muertraigo had the spyglass stuck to his eye again as he watched the glinting line of soldiers climb behind an obstructing tumble of rocks. They were out of sight for an inordinate amount of time and he was on the verge of sounding the alarm bell when he saw them reappear. Castellano had a canteen swinging from the end of his arquebus and Muertraigo shook his head, cursing the officer’s lack of discipline to stop and quench his thirst at such a time.

“They were better soldiers when their heads were not filled with thoughts of gold,” he muttered.

“Look there!” Ross said sharply, pointing. “On the beach!”

Muertraigo trained the glass on the base of the slope. He had seen his men go into the caves, but once again, they had taken their sweet time inside. Now there was movement but not the kind they were expecting to see as three, four fat boars came charging out of the caves at a run. The soldiers were not far behind and while three of them ran across the sand to keep the boars circling, two unslung their arquebuses, setting them quickly on the fork-sticks before taking aim and firing at the wildly screaming boars. The fattest, slowest animal thudded snout-first onto the sand sending up a plume of dirt, after which the men converged and finished it off with their swords. Another one was brought to ground with a second explosive shot, causing the crew watching from the deck of the
San Mateo
to give a rousing cheer.

Muertraigo only grunted at the sport, for he knew the men would relish a good meal cooked over an open fire, but he reserved his enthusiasm until he saw Castellano wave an all-clear signal from the top of the bluff.

“Lower the rest of the boats,” he ordered. “Signal the
Gato
and the
Cormorant
that we will be going ashore. They are to hold their positions and stay alert.”

~~

High on the bluff, Gabriel Dante’s grin cracked through the drying mud on his face. Dressed now in the fancy breeches and armor of the dead Spanish officer, he watched through gleaming amber eyes as the big longboats were lowered over the side and began ferrying more Spaniards ashore. Hidden along the crest of the ridge, his men were laying flat, their weapons loaded and ready. A dozen coated with the slime from the cavern were on the beach and even though he knew exactly where they were positioned, Dante could not distinguish their bodies from the sand.

Behind him, the makeshift catapults were ready, carefully camouflaged by palm fronds. Supplementing their firepower were hand cannons that Giddings had constructed from fat, hollowed-out cane stalks, rudimentary throw-backs to the destructive weapons used a hundred years before by the very Conquistadors whose descendants were making ready to land on the beach now.

Billy Crab was ready with his crossbow; Eduardo was with him to light the rag-tipped bolts. Being one of the most powerful men in the group, William Chandler was behind the catapults eager to throw his strength into bending back the trees once the slings were released.

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.