Patrick and Denny moved forward on the port side, and the MacDonald and Diego on the starboard side. Patrick heard more orders being given as they moved up toward the helm. He almost crashed into a figure ahead of him. He took advantage of the man’s surprise to break his neck. He had no remorse, nor pity for any of them. They had chosen to sail on a hell ship, and now it was his life against theirs.
A grunt came out of the fog, then evaporated into the air. He knew one of his companions had killed another member of the crew. In truth, every man aboard had to be killed. There was no room for compassion even if he had wanted to bestow any. They were doomed men when they first entered this ship. Now they were mutineers as well—regarded as lower than animals by every civilized country in the world. There could be no witnesses to what they were doing. None. All the evidence must be forever lost at sea.
He had not mentioned it to the others, but most would be aware of the laws of the sea. And they shared Patrick’s hatred for their tormenters.
A cry rang out. This one sharp and piercing before it was quickly silenced. Then there was the splash of a body overboard.
A number of shouts quickly followed. Then a bell rang. And rang. Patrick took a deep breath. The time for hell was at hand.
He moved forward to the wheel. They had to take the officers first. Once the leadership was gone . . .
Night had turned into dawn. The fog had thinned, and he could see three figures by the wheel. One stayed at the wheel while the other two took positions to protect him. One had a sword, the other a club.
He heard a whistle and knew MacDonald was approaching from the other side. Holding the cutlass he’d appropriated from the dead guard, Patrick attacked the man on the left, the one with a sword, as MacDonald appeared to attack the second.
Patrick easily avoided the first wild swing; he’d trained all his young life with a sword. As the sword completed its momentum and went back, he countered it with the heavier cutlass, knocking it from the officer’s hand. The sword skittered across the deck and into the sea.
He took advantage of the brief second of shock and surprise to kill the startled officer, whose last thought, no doubt, was wonder at being bested by a galley slave. One still hampered by chains.
MacDonald was having a harder time. His opponent was a big man in far better health. Patrick took the dagger from his makeshift sash and thrust it into MacDonald’s opponent, then turned on the man at the wheel.
“No,” the helmsman cried in terror, and Patrick for one brief second remembered this was a merchant ship, not a warship.
He hesitated.
Diego did not. He emerged from the fog at that instant, wielding a sword in his hand. He drove it into the officer’s heart without the slightest hesitation.
The battle was in full action now. Screams tore at the morning’s silence, high-pitched shouts of alarm, death cries.
Patrick turned around. Denny was guarding his back. Crew members poured out of the hatches, engaging with the oarsmen in desperate battles. He went to the aid of one oarsman, using the cutlass. Another large sailor assaulted Patrick, thrusting a dagger at him. Patrick tried to block it and turned, but the edge of the blade caught his arm, leaving a deep red gash on his skin.
The crewman turned to attack again. Before he could reach Patrick, though, Denny hurled him overboard. He’d again saved Patrick’s life, though he seemed to make no attempt to save his own. He stood there as two sailors rushed him.
Patrick swung the cutlass. One went down, and the other was grabbed from behind by an oarsman who used a belaying pin to crush his skull.
Patrick nodded his thanks for the assistance, then looked down to see blood running from the gash in his arm. He felt no pain, though, only the compelling need to be free. Desperation had turned into hope and now hope into possibility.
His oarsmen were armed well now, having taken weapons from those they’d killed. He felt their anger, their bloodlust, the need to avenge months and years of abject misery.
Thrust and cut. It became as natural as the refrain that drove his body hours earlier.
Heave! Lift!
He had rowed to stay alive.
Thrust and cut.
Now he killed to live. To get home.
Gradually there was no one else to fight. A deadly silence fell over the ship except for the occasional groan or cry of pain. The deck was awash in bodies. The smell of blood mingled with the heavy moist air. It was not a stench easily forgotten.
The Spaniard, Diego, appeared at his side.
“How many of the crew live?” Patrick asked.
Diego shook his head. “We are still looking. Some might be in hiding.”
Patrick knew he should feel some sorrow, but he did not. Every slain man was here by choice. Every one was part of his slavery.
“And the oarsmen?”
“Eight dead. Nine wounded.”
He nodded. Far better than he’d dared hope.
He was alive!
And free!
Diego was covered in blood, his filthy loincloth a bright red. “And you.”
Patrick shrugged. “Some slices. No more.” He was silent for a moment.
“I do not believe it yet.”
Neither did Patrick believe it.
“We have to search the ship, cabin by cabin,” he said.
As if summoned, an oarsman came through the hatch. “There is a locked door. It is likely the captain’s cabin.”
“A coward as well as a villain,” the Spaniard said. “I cannot wait for him to feel my sword.”
“Nay,” Patrick said. “I have been here the longest. He is mine. Have two men wait outside the locked cabin,” he said. “Have others check the rest of the ship for anyone who may be hiding.”
“Why wait?”
“I want these chains off before I meet the captain of this hell ship,” Patrick explained.
The Spaniard hesitated. ’Twas obvious to Patrick that Diego wanted the captain as much as he did. It was a test now. Would the oarsmen follow him or dissolve into a mob that would make success a temporary thing?
“Si,”
the man finally said. “I will be at your back.”
Patrick nodded as relief filled him. They still had a nearly impossible task in front of them.
The Spaniard eyed him warily. “We have a slight problem. Who will sail the ship?”
“I know something about navigation and sails. The others can learn.”
ULIANA had never known such stark terror before. The new silence was more frightening than the screams of minutes earlier.
She sat on the bed, clasping an equally terrified Carmita. Her hands trembled.
When the first sounds came, she’d opened her door and a sailor told her to shut it and keep it locked. Apparently there was some kind of mutiny. . . .
She tried to still the trembling of her hands. It would do no good.
But why hadn’t her uncle come for her? Or a member of the crew? Even the face of the first mate would be welcome.
She looked around the cabin for something with which to defend herself. There was a small knife she had for cutting fruit and cheese that had been brought to her cabin.
She rose and went over to the small table where the blade still rested in a slab of cheese. The knife looked small and useless, but it was all she had.
She clutched it and went to the door, listening.
Then she heard her uncle’s voice. “Open.”
She threw the door open. He stood disheveled, the first time she had ever seen him that way.
“Come,” he demanded, grabbing her arm.
“What is happening?”
“The galley slaves. They broke free. Come to my cabin. It has a sturdier door. My crew will defeat them. They are nothing but rabble.”
“Carmita comes with me.”
“Bring her if you must, but hurry. We have only a few seconds, if that.”
She grabbed a trembling Carmita and followed her uncle down the corridor to his cabin. They were both thrust inside, then he slipped in with them before bolting the door.
“Should you not be out there with the crew?” she asked.
“My first duty is to you, my niece,” he replied. “I swore to your father that I would bring you safely to England.”
Voices grew stronger. Curse words in several languages. Some she knew but others she could easily guess from their vehemence. Accompanying their voices were doors slamming open and shut. Had the oarsmen somehow gained control of the ship? But how could that be? They were in chains. There were armed guards.
She shied when she heard a pounding at the door. Curses in a language she didn’t understand came through the door. More pounding. Then nothing.
Were they really going away?
Perhaps her uncle’s men had regained control. But then wouldn’t they have told her uncle?
The questions pounded at her when she heard a scream that ripped through her. It was one of terrible pain.
She clutched the knife in her hand. She would use it on herself before letting herself be violated.
Or maybe she would use it on someone else.
Her heart pounded, and her throat was dry with terror. Should she use the knife now? Or wait until she wouldn’t have a chance?
Madre!
Chapter 5
WITH a mighty stroke of the hammer, the blackmith once again broke the bolt that fastened the irons, this time on Patrick’s wrists. When the blacksmith finished, Patrick stood. Free of fetters. He spread out his arms in victory. Not in joy. He didn’t think he would ever be joyous. But the sheer pleasure of moving the way men were meant to move was intoxicating.
“You did it,” the blacksmith said. “I never thought . . .”
“Nor did I think we would succeed,” Patrick said.
His hands were free now to confront the captain unencumbered. The man who had made his life, and those of hundreds before him, a hellish inferno.
He took satisfaction from the fact that the captain, the man who had bought and sold human beings for profit, was apparently cowering inside his cabin, knowing that his life was nearing an end.
It did bother him that others may still be alive and trying to surrender. He’d thought the honor had been drained from him these last years, but something in him clenched at killing a disarmed man. Mayhap a tiny wisp of humanity remained in him. He didn’t know how much remained in the others who had shared the benches.
That was why he had asked for these few minutes, to let the bloodlust fade, for reason and conscience to return.
Patrick headed toward the captain’s cabin, passing exuberant oarsmen. He heard thanks in different languages, some he knew and some he didn’t, but the sentiment needed no translation. Even the sickest of them had been now pulled up on the main deck, and incredulity had been replaced by glee. Some had obviously attacked the food stores, others barrels of ale.
He took an offered mug of ale and tasted it, but nothing more. He had to be clearheaded for the day ahead, the days ahead. . . .
Patrick saw MacDonald, the only other Scot. “Weapons?”
“They be distributed among the oarsmen.”
Patrick only nodded. They would have to be collected. But first he had to finish this. “Have you seen a sword?”
“Aye. There was a cupboard full of weapons. I prefer a dirk, but the Spaniard took a cutlass. There were several left.”
“Take me there.”
MacDonald’s wrists were still bound by irons, but he smiled as he led the way to the weapons cache. The sound of laughter echoed along the corridors.
Patrick knew he would never forget it.
He found a sword, a rapier, among the clumsier cutlasses and balanced it with his hand. As a lad, he had trained mostly on the heavy Scottish Claidheamh Mor, the two-handed broadsword that relied on its mass to crush through the armor of an enemy. But during his years on the continent he had used the lighter rapier.
This one felt right in his hands.
Then he went with the MacDonald to the locked cabin.
“WHAT do you think has happened?” Juliana asked as she paced the large, elaborate cabin. The silence had grown ominous now.
Her uncle, obviously stunned, shook his head. “We should have heard something.” He looked at her. “Your father entrusted your safety to me, and I have no way to protect you now.” He hesitated, then handed her a dagger. “Do not let them take you alive.”
She closed her fingers around the hilt. Better than the small knife she’d grabbed earlier.
“They have been without women for a long time,” he said simply. “Go for your heart. I should kill you myself, but . . . I cannot. Perhaps I can bargain with them.”
She saw fear in his eyes, in his face, and she wondered whether he had stayed in the cabin to protect her, or to let his crew fight the battle for him.
He must have seen the question in her eyes.
“It was too late,
querida.
I came back to . . . but I cannot do it. I cannot kill my own niece. The Church . . .”
His hand trembled, and she wondered whether it trembled for her or himself. But his words struck less terror in her than the expression on his face.
Cries of jubilation came from outside. Then a pounding at the door.
Her uncle ignored the sound, though his fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword. Her own gripped the dagger. She knew the men roaming the ship must hate her uncle and, therefore, her. She remembered the fury glowing from the one oarsman.
All of a sudden, the pounding stopped. She heard loud voices, then indistinct voices. Languages she did not understand.
“They might listen to you,” she ventured finally, knowing they wouldn’t, yet unwilling to stand like a sheep to slaughter. “If you offer to free them . . . take them somewhere safe.”
He looked at her as if she had two heads, and she realized how incredibly foolish she must sound.