Across a Moonlit Sea (43 page)

“Full sail, Mister Carleill; bring us in across her bow.”

They would have to look sharp if they were going to cut the
Santa Ana
off, and when there was no immediate
response from the helm, he whirled around and stared at the white-faced Edward Carleill.

“Helmsman! Did you hear my order?”

“Sir … she’ll ram us!”

“Not if you bring her in fast enough!”

“There is no room behind her. You’ll drive us into the shoals!”

“Either relay my order, helmsman, or I’ll bring her in myself!”

The
Santa Ana
had manned her guns. A full broadside erupted from her beam, sending shot screaming through the
Scout’s
tops, tearing sail and rigging and adding a curtain of thick smoke to further cloak her movements. She was gathering speed. Men were in her yards unreefing sail, others were on deck running out more guns, bringing her lower tier to readiness. A blast from a second broadside found a man on the
Scout’s
mizzen, sweeping him off the yard and showering the afterdeck in red droplets. Carleill looked aghast at the spatters on his mustard-colored doublet and reeled back in horror.

“Mister Carleill!”

It was no use and Dante furiously took command of the helm himself, shouting orders to the tops, spurring the men—who were themselves not accustomed to working the lines with iron shots zinging by their heads—into realigning the sails to grab the windage. His one small advantage was the momentum he had carried forward from the initial run into the harbor, and at his orders the
Scout
took a noticeable leap forward, shaking off her lethargy as if coming to realize she would have no choice with a madman at her helm.

Dante brought her streaking in, drawing heavy fire from the
Santa Ana.
Pitt returned two broadsides to each of her one, and the combined noise of their exchange finally
brought Drake’s attention swinging around, with the
Revenge
and
Golden Lion
following as quickly as they could break off from the galleys.

Lucifer had joined Dante on the afterdeck, summarily growling aside the man who held the tiller. He looked intently to his captain for orders and, when they came, responded without a flicker of hesitation.

Dante sheered the
Scout
across the
Santa Ana’s
bow, close enough to see the sweat glistening on the faces of the Spanish gunners. The flagship had no choice but to turn off her course and, in doing so, sailed straight into the path of Drake’s gunners. Together with the
Revenge
and the
Golden Lion
he started to pour round after round into the Spaniard, pounding her hull to bits, sending men, guns, sails, masts, pitching into the water. She was soon holed beneath the waterline in a dozen places and was sucked under by the weight of the sea flooding into her holds. She kept firing her guns to the last, however, with shot and flame and a cauldron of boiling steam marking her swift descent to the bottom of the bay.

Dante, meanwhile, had narrowly missed running into the rocky teeth of the shoals. He came so close, in fact, his keel scraped sand and a jagged scream of stone against wood juddered the length of the
Scout.
But he skimmed free and shook out her nerves, leaving the
Santa Ana
to Drake as he circled and set his sights on a fat-looking Levantine who was trying desperately to steal away with the clouds of smoke and cut out of the harbor, into the freedom of the open sea.

On the deck of the
Talon
Victor Bloodstone’s eyes narrowed as he tried to peer through the veils of drifting smoke. He had watched the
Scout’s
run against the
Santa Ana
and he had been cheering for the huge Spanish argosy,
hoping De Tourville would underestimate the speed and handling of his ship. He had wanted to see the bow of the Spaniard crush into Dante’s beam, to see it shatter apart like kindling, sending the French bastard screaming into the sea of fire.

When the
Scout
had disappeared behind the galleon, there was still a hope she might smash herself against the shoals or, better yet, be caught in the crossfire from Drake and the three Royal Navy galleons.

But no. The
Scout
had emerged intact, beetling away from the confusion with hardly more damage than a few torn sails.

“The bastard is like a cat with nine lives,” Bloodstone muttered. “What will it take to kill him?”

Horace Lamprey, his nose a mass of angry red scabs over a swollen and miscolored glob of crushed bone, glowered after the
Scout
and cursed her master with equal warmth. He cleared a smear of ash out of his throat and conjured a pleasant picture of the Cimaroon with stakes driven into his eyes.

“I’ve a few debts I’d like to repay myself,” he growled. “Too bad she doesn’t cut in front of us. I would not mind catching her in the crossfire.”

“Maybe,” Bloodstone said slowly, “we can arrange to do exactly that.”

Lamprey followed Bloodstone’s gaze and just caught a glimpse of the Levantine merchantman sidling away into the whirling wisps of smoke. Her sails were fully shaken out and she was gathering speed. What the encroaching dusk and the haze could not accomplish, the outer lip of the bay would surely do, hiding her from all searching eyes inside the harbor.

Trailing in her wake, stalking her like a predatory wolf, was the
Scout
with Simon Dante de Tourville at her helm.

“Bring us about, Mister Lamprey. The Levantine is far too big for one ship to take on. The captain may require our … assistance.”

“Aye.” The broken face split into a malevolent grin. “Aye, Captain, that he might.”

Dante ran the length of the main deck and took the steps to the aftercastle in a single leap.

“Well come in alongside her and try to hold the Levantine against the land,” he said to Pitt. “If we can squeeze her out of the wind, we might have a chance of herding her right into the cliffs.”

“Sir? Captain?”

Dante turned and saw Edward Carleill standing behind him, still gray in the face, but rigid with his own mortification.

“Sir, I don’t know what happened back there. I cannot explain it, I can only promise it will not happen again. In fact, if—if I delay in following an order by so much as a blink, sir”—he fumbled to draw his sword from his belt— “you would do me a favor by running me through.”

Dante studied the taut young face and could not stop himself from thinking of Beau, wishing she were there with all her stubbornness and pride.

“This … is my first real battle sir, and—”

Dante cursed out a breath, then tilted his head. “Stand by the rudder and be prepared to relay my orders to the letter. And you had best believe I will run you through, Carleill. Without hesitation.”

Young Edward swallowed hard. He resheathed his sword, then took up his position by the tiller, his feet braced wide apart, his hands laced tightly behind his back.

Dante caught the look in Pitt’s eyes. “Don’t say it.”

“Not a word. Not about the helmsman or the guns you left behind.”

“She’s still a woman, dammit,” Dante hissed.

“It doesn’t seem to bother her. Why does it bother you?”

Dante scowled. “Are your gunners ready?”

“Ready.”

“Then stand by the goddamn boards, she’s coming into range. Mister Carleill …?” “Aye, sir?”

“Hands to the sheets. Bring her in close and fast on a course to intercept across the bow. Same maneuver as before, only this time, let’s see if we can crowd her into the reefs.”

Clear of the bay, the
Scout
took the wind on her stern quarter and chased down the Levantine. Iron-gray water curled off her bow as she tacked onto a parallel course, then started leaning over degree by degree. The master of the Levantine tried frantically to put on more speed, but the
Scout
was lighter, faster. She drew alongside and loosed a full broadside, rocking the huge merchantman and driving her toward the land in a futile effort to evade. Smoke blossomed from her guns and the high-pitched wail of stone balls passed in an arc over the
Scout’s
sails, most of them bouncing harmlessly into the sea.

Dante’s guns thundered and the decks shuddered as he poured another volley into the Spaniard. The
Scout
had built up too much speed, as it happened, and threatened to shoot right past the galleon, but Carleill brought her smartly to heel and veered close enough to the giant for the next broadside to bring gouts of shattered wood spraying across their own decks. An explosion, followed by a boiling black corkscrew of smoke, curled upward from the Levantine’s powder magazine, and it was a mild disappointment a
few minutes later to see her haul down her flags and pennants and signal her surrender.

Dante ordered the
Scout’s
sails backed so that she almost came to a halt in the water. The gunners on the larboard beam cheered and threw their caps and bandanas in the air. Those on the starboard battery started to do the same when a blast of incoming shot exploded through the rail, sending shattered timbers in a lethal spray across the deck. Two guns heaved up on their carriages, one of them crushing a man to pulp beneath the barrel when it landed. The second was torn free from its tackle and crashed through the deck boards, its nose pointing straight up to the sky.

Through the smoke and the screams of wounded men, Dante saw the
Talon
bearing down on them. He cursed and shouted a warning, most of it lost to the roar of another crushing broadside.

But Pitt had already seen her and ordered what was left of his starboard guns loaded. He shouted for the crews to fire at will even as Dante ordered the sails reset and tried to pick up the wind again.

The Levantine must have been just as surprised as the
Scout
to see another ship emerging from the clouds of smoke clogging the mouth of the bay. More so when the ship began firing on its own countryman. She was not about to be caught up in their argument, however, and veered closer into the land, leaving the two to pound each other to splinters if that was to be their intention.

It certainly appeared to be Bloodstone’s, for he was standing well off, using his demis to soften the
Scout’s
hull and rigging before he moved in for the kill. Dante ordered evasive maneuvers and the privateer made a valiant attempt to obey, but she was now the one effectively trapped
between the land and the open sea. Bloodstone kept pace, kept the great bronze teeth of his guns firing, chewing away at the sails, rigging, and masts, turning the sea around her into a mass of spouting fountains.

And enjoying every bloody minute.

 “W
e have to do something!” Beau shouted. “Aye, daughter, aye. I see what’s happenin’ an’ we’re movin’ as bloody fast as we can! Ye’ve put everythin’ in the tops except the shirt on yer back!”

Beau cursed and paced the length of the Egret’s fore-deck, her fist pounding the rail every two or three feet. It may have been the decision, unanimous, of the entire crew to bring the
Egret
around and chase after Drake’s fleet. But it had been Beau’s and Spence’s to stay far enough back they could not be stopped and dispatched home again, their tails tucked between their legs. For two weeks they had dogged the English sea hawks, always keeping their sails barely in sight on the horizon ahead. They had only put on sail and picked up speed when the bleak thread of the Spanish coastline began to take shape.

The
Egret
had streaked in fast, pushing the miles of sea-water behind them as they cut cleanly through the rolling swells. They were a good two, maybe three, hours behind the fleet when it sailed into Cadiz Bay, and as the mouth
of the harbor grew closer, the dirty gray sky above it was cloaked in a massive cloud of smoke and cinder.

“He did it,” Spence had muttered in awe. “Drake has set the King’s bloody fleet on fire!”

“And don’t think the King won’t know it in short order,” Beau had countered, pointing to the sudden flaring of signal fires that were coming alight, one by one, a mile or two apart along the darkening shoreline.

Then she had noticed something else ablaze, farther along the coast, well out of the harbor. Two ships were engaged, one an enormous Levantine cargo vessel, the other…

“Christ Jesus,” she had exclaimed. She had recognized the
Scout
, looking like nothing more than a pesky hornet buzzing after a lumbering giant.

“He promised he would stand off a thousand yards,” she quoted sardonically. “He vowed he would be the soul of discretion, that he would offer support, nothing else.”

“Calls anythin’ he’s done so far discreet,” McCutcheon remarked, spitting over the rail, “I’d sorely hate to see what he calls reckless.”

Spence chuckled. “Ye already have. Ye saw him kiss our Beau right smack on the open deck.”

Beau wasn’t listening. She did not even hear the jest over the sudden loud pounding of her heart.

“Father … there! Another ship has come out of the harbor! It—it’s the
Talon!”
She gasped and swore again. “It’s Bloodstone’s ship and … I don’t even think Dante knows he’s there!”