The Red King (4 page)

He was taken by both hands and shaken hard.
“You will, Andrew, if you want to pay for your place on this
ship.”

“I can’t!”

“It is your help I demand for payment,” he
was told, “or you’ll be ransomed to Maarten for his pleasure
without the means to protect yourself, and without your precious
purity intact.”

“You…you would not…”

He was pulled against the man’s hard, muscled
chest. “I will, Andrew. I assure you it would be quite to my liking
to pluck your tender cherry.”

The feel of the captain’s thighs pressing
Andrew’s did not provoke the same fear as before. He trembled,
unprepared for the sudden heat low in his belly as those long arms
wrapped around him. He closed his eyes, tried to clear his mind
with a deep breath. “Let me go. I cannot kill. I will not. Do not
ask me.”

“I don’t have to ask, Andrew. You will aid
me, either way.”

His lips were crushed, then, beneath the
captain’s bruising kiss. Andrew had never been kissed thus, by man
or woman. It was alarming, the feeling of the other man’s tongue in
his mouth. His heart raced, his breath caught in his throat, and
his neck bent back, yielding, submitting. He felt teeth scrape
against his, a jarring sensation that caused him to jerk within the
embrace. When Rory drew on his tongue, sucking it into his mouth,
Andrew moaned and slid his hands up to clutch at the man’s
shoulders.

The captain pulled away. He looked down at
Andrew, lips parted. Andrew could feel him breathe, taste his air.
The man’s eyes were dark and heavy lidded, but his brows were
raised as if in surprise. They were frozen together, locked in each
other’s arms. “You...” the captain began; then stopped.

“Yes…” Andrew whispered, not fully aware of
what he wanted to agree to.

“Do you…” the captain paused, swallowed. “Do
you accept my terms?”

Andrew tried to push away but was yanked
back, falling entirely into the captain’s body.

“I will not…:” he began, only to see the
captain’s face close off, become distant. Andrew straightened,
raising his chin. “I’m not a soldier. I cannot fight.”

“When you spoke of yourself as a prize, you
came closer to the mark than you knew. You don’t have to fight if
you are willing to use your other gifts.”

“What gifts? You speak nonsense. I have
nothing!”

The captain backed him into the wall, hands
roaming, sliding down, clutching, pressing. “Your
gifts
,
Andrew, are driving me to distraction. I see you with my men. One
frightened glance from you and they soften, like clucking hens.
They want to comfort you, make what is to come easy and
painless.”

“I don’t ask for that!” Andrew cried. “What
of you? What do you want?”

“What do I want?” the man repeated, his smile
stretching to reveal his wicked, sharp teeth. “What I want is to
feel your sweet lips around my cock and see your rosy ass raised
and ready for fucking. I want to loose my come into your bowels
while you cry and beg. I want to taste your tears, lick them from
your cheek and know I put them there.”

“Stop,” Andrew whispered, trembling, his
untutored imagination painting the images as well as it could.

The man took Andrew’s mouth again, biting,
tearing into the softness. Andrew yelped at the pain and pushed him
away. “And there…your blood…I want your blood,” he muttered,
lapping at Andrew’s lower lip. His fingers dug into Andrew’s hips
now, leaving bruises, marking him.

Andrew was stunned, frightened; unmoving and
gasping. “Why are you saying these things?”

“I won’t be the only man to want these
things. More than your pretty face and youthful form, the coquetry
of your eyes and lips, it is your innocence that makes you a prize
beyond measure. Outside your abbey walls your very presence
provokes the animal in men.”

“I tell you I do not do this!” Andrew
protested.

“Oh, but you do.” The captain shifted his
weight, drawing his hips across Andrew’s stomach. The hard heat
pressed against him made Andrew jerk and shudder. “For most, they
turn into clucking hens. The worst of us want all of you, down to
your soul. This is your power.”

Andrew said nothing. He could tell how wide
his eyes were, could feel the air across his lips as he panted. He
lowered his head and swallowed, closed his eyes tight and tried not
to feel the man’s strength, his warmth. His desire.

“Only now do you guess what men feel when
they look at you. You make them crazed. Ready to sacrifice any and
all they have to possess you. I want you to use it. Use it to
avenge us.” The captain’s voice had taken on a raspy note, as if
his throat, too, was dry.

Andrew did not know where the words came
from, perhaps a bit of wisdom taught him by one of the monks.
“Vengeance is a miserable price, no matter how richly deserved. It
leaves nothing in its wake save an empty soul.”

“Don’t give me your doctrines, I want none of
them. What I want is to make Maarten Jans de Worrt suffer and die.
I will use any tool at my disposal to make this happen. That
includes you; whether you are willing or not makes no difference to
me,” the captain said, releasing Andrew and stepping away. “It
would be more pleasurable for you were you to submit freely, but in
the end, it will not matter. Think on this as you go through your
day’s labor. Find Malik. He will give you work.”

He turned and went to his desk leaving Andrew
against the wall, panting, staring open mouthed.

“Get out. Now.”

Andrew ran out of the cabin, back into the
warm sun, shaking, sweating, and weak-kneed. He rested against the
gunnel for a moment before seeking out Fleming, instead of Malik.
“Oh,” the man said, looking up from where he wound rope around a
bitt. He seemed surprised. “You’re back.”

“Tell me what you want from me.

Fleming shook his head. “If he didn’t say it,
I will not.”

“He told me some. I wish to hear the rest of
it.”

Fleming ignored him. He nodded to another
post. “See that pin? When I take this line, I want you to pull the
pin out.”

Andrew took the wooden pin from its place and
watched Fleming as he secured the line. “Tell me the truth.”

The man’s pale blue eyes regarded him
shrewdly. “Do you really want to know the truth?”

Andrew did not answer, but waited, his brows
rising slightly with expectation.

Fleming crossed his arms across his
chest.

“
Who
are you?
What
are you? I
hear the words pirate, guardian, protector…to my knowledge they are
not the same ilk. You claim to be pirates yet I’m given clothes,
fed, even cared for. I’m ripped from death by a…a spy, your spy…and
dropped into a plot to kill a man that I’ve never heard of because
Roo-au-ree
has a…vendetta. I do not know this story, let
alone my part in it. I only know for sure that I’ve no life or
family to return to, and the man who rescued me is named Malik, and
that no one will tell me what I ask!” Andrew had begun at a regular
volume, a moderate tempo, but by the end he was shouting, shaking
with suppressed emotion. He should have felt foolish, ashamed at
losing his temper, but he was beyond such restrictions. His heart
was racing and he felt strangely elated.

Fleming stared at him. There were other men
on deck, and they stared, too. At last Fleming ventured, “Was there
a question in there?”

Andrew had never felt the desire to do
violence before in his life, but as he stood there, scrutinized
with such disinterest, his hand tightened on the belaying pin. With
a ferocity that surprised himself and Fleming, Andrew threw the pin
straight at his head. If the man had not ducked he would have been
injured, perhaps even unconscious.

Righting himself, Fleming smiled broadly.
“You’re stronger than you look.”

Andrew closed his eyes. “Why won’t you just
answer my questions?”

“My name is Fleming. I was in the King’s Navy
when our ship was taken by Danish brigands. I should be dead.” He
turned to the man picking hemp from the deck joints and who looked
up at Andrew with eyes that were alternately hard and wounded.
“That is Joshua, from Gravesend. His family’s home was burned and
his pregnant wife taken. He was left for dead on the beach.”

Pointing towards the men at the portside
lines, he continued. The first was a dark skinned man with raised,
grey scars circling both of his forearms and had a welcoming,
white-toothed smile. “Yousef was bought in Tunisia and chained to
an oven for three years before he was sold to do the same on a
corsair ship.” Beside him was a pale haired, wiry youth. “Jack was
taken from his parents’ arms and sold on the block in Morocco. He
is only four and twenty, and twenty of those years he spent a
slave. ” Andrew was shocked by the young man’s drawn, haggard face,
and met his stare with difficulty.

Fleming pointed to a bent figure, quietly
mending fishing nets. He seemed no older than Andrew, though his
back was bent low like an old man’s. There was a different air
about him, a silence that went deeper than just his voice. “Johnny
there was in a room, just like yours, but he wasn’t kept in such
pristine condition. When they tired of his screams, they cut out
his tongue and fucked his mouth, just the same.”

Andrew took it all in; meeting each man’s
gaze in turn despite feeling as if would retch at any moment. He
felt they deserved that.

“Every man on this ship has a story and
they’ve come to the same place.” Fleming came up behind him, his
words softer, but as intense. “There are a hundred other tales, but
their voices are silent. Maarten must be stopped or the stories
will never end.”

“But what part do I play in this?”

Fleming looked Andrew straight in the eyes.
“You have something…alluring… about you. You would be allowed to
get close, to distract him and leave him without defense.”

“Yes, I have been told it is my appalling
innocence. I don’t understand what that means. What exactly do you
think I can do?”

“Appalling?” Fleming snorted, amused. “I see
the point. You can seduce him, boy, get him unawares. He would find
you very much to his taste.”

“What?” Andrew asked, incredulous.

“Seduce him, take him to bed, and kill him,”
Fleming clarified.

Andrew’s mouth opened, closed, and opened
again. Fleming waited. “I can’t do that,” he said at last, very
faintly. “I cannot.”

Fleming took him by the shoulders. “We will
teach you. We’ll teach you to fight. We won’t be sending you in
there unprepared, or unprotected.”

“And your captain…what has he to do with
this?” Andrew shook him off and moved away.

“He’s the man who saved us all. He took this
ship from Maarten’s men then came to release us from the chains,”
Yousef answered, coming closer.

“He was enslaved, same as we were. When he
was starved for refusing to pull the oars, he grew thin enough to
wrench his feet from the shackles,” Jack continued.

“He broke his feet to fit them through, but
he still rose to kill the men who held him,” Joshua added from his
place on the deck.

“We owe him our lives. We will follow him
into Hell.” Fleming said. The other men agreed with a unified
“Aye.”

Andrew scrubbed his face with his hands,
trying to keep the tears from coming.

“How is it that I’ve become your only hope?
Surely there is someone else, someone better.”

“You were taken before Maarten could have
you. He’ll find that a personal affront.”

Andrew looked around at them. “I…cannot…I
am…not whom you seek.”

“The captain does have some claim on your
person,” Fleming began, but Andrew turned away from him.

“Your captain with no name?” he snapped.
“Your
Roo-au-ree
?”

“My name is Rory.”

Andrew started, looked to the stern rail to
see the captain. Rory.
Ruaidhri
.

“Like you, my family name was lost. It means
little, where we stand. What you heard is
Ruaidhri
, meaning
red king in the language of my father. It is a title bestowed upon
me by the prisoners I ransom. This is the ship I was condemned to
and I took the night I freed myself. I call it
Taibhse
,
ghost. I use it to disrupt Maarten’s trading routes, his personal
cargos, and his raids. For that he has had us declared criminals,
pirates, so that other corsairs will attack us for the Danish
king’s reward. We are hunted, even as we hunt.” He looked to
Andrew. “So, all that you heard is true. Does it matter so much in
the end?”

“Why couldn’t you tell me this before? Did
you not think an explanation was necessary? Deserved?” Andrew
asked, moving closer.

“Hearing from the men serves a better
purpose. A small taste of the magnitude of this man’s evil goes a
fair distance.” Rory’s eyes fell upon him, no longer swimming with
heat and hunger. Instead they were bright and anxious. “Will you
help us now? We’ll teach you what you need to know. You have a
strong arm, sharp eyes, intelligence. And you’re beautiful. He will
want you.”

Andrew felt more pressure in that gaze than
all the others combined. He could read the death and suffering
there, see the desire for revenge. There was, within Andrew, an
answering cry for justice, but still he hesitated. There was
something else at play, something at stake, and he could not puzzle
it out just yet. “I’m not sure. I need time,” Andrew said.

Rory looked back to the horizon, silent. Then
he cast a slanted gaze at Andrew. “For every hour you take to
decide, another life is destroyed by this man’s evil. There is but
one way to stop him.” Turning to face Andrew now, he moved until he
was so close Andrew could feel the warmth of his body. “I’ll tell
you all you need to know. I’ll teach you—”

“To fight? To kill?” Andrew interrupted,
clenching his teeth. He did not look up at Rory’s face but stared
forward, his eyes on a small tear in the shoulder of the man’s
shirt. Fingers wrapped around his throat and Andrew gasped. They
did not threaten, no squeeze or bruise came, only a tantalizing
weight and presence that caused his flesh to ripple with chills
down his chest and arms.