Pirate Wolf Trilogy

THE PIRATE WOLF
TRILOGY

by Marsha
Canham

Smashwords edition published 2012

Ebook copyright © Marsha Canham

Cover Copyright 2012 © Marsha Canham

ISBN 978-0-9877023-8-8

All right reserved. No part of this trilogy
may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are either products of the
author’s imagination or used with fictitious flair. All rights
reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
without permission in writing from Marsha Canham.

Book One:
Across A Moonlit Sea

Book Two:
The Iron Rose

Book Three:
The Following Sea

ACROSS A MOONLIT
SEA

by Marsha
Canham

Original Copyright 1994 © Marsha Canham

Ebook copyright 2011 © Marsha Canham

Cover Copyright 2011 © Marsha Canham

ISBN 978-0-9866872-5-9

Dedication

This Ebook version is dedicated to my three
main munchkins, Austin, Payton, and Carter, to my son Jeffrey who
makes me proud to be a mom every day, to my daughter in law,
Michelle, my adopted son in law Kevin, and my other daughter in law
Cindy. I hope they all know how much they mean to me.

PROLOGUE

There were six
of them strung out along the horizon. Six India guards in full
suits of sail, riding easy on a south-southwest wind that was at
least twenty knots in strength—a square-rigger’s wind and one that
would push them straight past the small crust of an island that
was, at the moment, shielding the two English sea hawks from
sight.

“Damn our
luck,” said Victor Bloodstone, gripping the galleon’s toprail with
his powerful hands. “First the bloody storm out of bloody nowhere,
ripping us to bloody shreds. Now this.”

Bloodstone was a tall, elegantly lean man with sharp,
handsome features that attested to his noble English ancestry. He
was captain of the
Talon
, an
eighteen-gun privateering vessel that currently sat at anchor a
hundred yards to larboard. He had just been rowed across to
the
Virago
,
responding to the alert sounded from the lookout posted high on the
mainmast. The
Virago
was
similar in size and general silhouette to the
Talon
, though she carried four extra guns in her main
battery and flattered them with half a dozen smaller-caliber
chasers in her bow and stern.

The
captain of the
Virago
was Simon
Dante, Comte de Tourville. He stood half a head taller than the
Englishman and although there were fourteen generations of French
aristocracy flowing through his veins, he had the massive shoulders
and dark determination of a man who cared less for titles and
estates than he did the sound of heavy cannon and booming
sail.

Both were
a thousand miles from home, at the helm of ships that had suffered
potentially crippling damage from the storm that had wreaked havoc
upon them for the past seven days and seven nights. The
Virago
had borne the worst of it with
damage to her rudder and a cracked mizzenmast that had cost her the
use of her topgallants. More pressing was the gurgle of water that
flowed through the wide gash in her hull, the result of being
rudderless and wind-driven across jagged reefs.

The two
crews had spent the last four hours transferring the
Virago’s
cargo onto the beach of a small
island. Everything not bolted down or deemed necessary for making
repairs had been off-loaded, including excess barrels of food and
water. There were already cables attached to her hull in
preparation for heeling her on her side to raise her wound above
the waterline. On the island, huge black cauldrons of pitch bubbled
in readiness. Fresh timber and a patching compound of oakum and tar
was waiting to repair and caulk the gash as soon as she was
careened.

It was a job
requiring at least half a day, more if the caulking was expected to
set properly. But with a strong twenty-knot wind warping their
sails, the six squat Spanish mercenaries would be on them long
before then.

“Those bastards
are at least a hundred miles off course themselves, if they are who
you think they are.”

Simon
Dante narrowed his silvery blue eyes in an attempt to separate the
distant galleons from the dancing points of sunlight that reflected
off the surface of the water. He saw nothing to make him change his
earlier guess. The India guards were small, stubby vessels carrying
three masts and a deck bristling with armaments, designed for only
one purpose: to discourage raiders and privateers of any
nationality from attacking the rich plate fleets that sailed
regularly between Spain and the New World. They were usually part
of an escort of fifty zabras or more, protecting as few as twenty
treasure ships at a time. The fact there were only six surging
along at full sail suggested they had become separated from the
main body of the fleet they were protecting, probably during the
same storm that had battered the
Talon
and
Virago.

“
Three
masted,” Dante reiterated grimly. “Most likely ten guns apiece,
demi-culverins at best, sakers at the least. We should have no
trouble with them.”

“
No
trouble?” Victor Bloodstone arched a sand-colored eyebrow. “It will
be like sailing into a nest of enraged hornets. And in case you
haven’t noticed, my dear Comte, we are somewhat at a
disadvantage—the result, I might also add, of another of your rash
decisions, made without any consultation or discussion.”

Dante’s gaze
remained fixed on the horizon for a moment before turning coldly to
Bloodstone. It was the kind of stare he normally reserved for
scullions and fools, or for very large bugs that made a very sticky
mess under his boot, and it did not take but a heartbeat for
Bloodstone to interpret the look and flush warmly under the deep
bronze of his tan.

Over the past
three months it had become blatantly obvious the two men could
barely abide each other. Both were brilliant seamen, and equal only
to each other as far as nerve and boldness in battle. Both struck
terror as well as awe in their crews for having dared to go where
none had ventured before, and for coming away with their holds
bulging with bars of Spanish gold and silver.

But where
Bloodstone was eager to return to England, to bask in the praise
and reap the rewards for his success—fully anticipating a
knighthood would be in the offing—Dante had no such aspirations. He
had already earned more accolades than he could reasonably
tolerate. Moreover, the Comte de Tourville was not yet finished
with the Spanish. He and the
Virago
would, in fact, have parted ways with Bloodstone a full
week earlier had the storm not intervened and forced them to remain
together. Now there were six enemy warships bearing down on
them—odds neither captain would have hesitated to defy alone had
his ship been in prime condition—but they needed each other again
if they were to emerge with their ships and their prize
intact.

“Very well,”
Dante said, the huge muscles in his shoulders rippling as he folded
his arms across his chest. “My ship is rudderless and leaking like
a sieve; yours is storm damaged with a crack in the mainmast and no
spare canvas. What do you propose we do?”

Bloodstone
pressed his thin lips thinner in an imitation of a smile. “I expect
we have little choice but to fight our way past them.”

“We have no
choice,” Dante said flatly. “And we will have to destroy them in
order to keep our presence here quiet, at least until we can finish
our mission.”

“Your mission,”
Bloodstone corrected him succinctly. “Mine is finished. We did what
we set out to do, and we did it well enough to set Philip of Spain
spinning around on his royal papist heels. Whatever business you
now deem to have unfinished is yours alone. I agreed to one raid
and one raid only.”

Dante’s
opinion of the Englishman sat on the back of his tongue, souring it
like the taste of stale beer. Bloodstone was nephew to Sir Francis
Walsingham, the Queen’s first counsel and chief advisor. He had
sailed with Sir Francis Drake—another arrogant strut of a man—and
was reputed to be one of Elizabeth’s favorite supper
companions.

Fawning over
popinjays and seducing aging queens did not rank high in Dante’s
estimation of character qualities, and the sooner he was clear of
Bloodstone, the sweeter the air he would breathe.

His cold
eyes flicked back to the growing pyramids of sail. “If they have
any eyes at all on board, they will have seen the
Virago
by now. The
Talon
, luckily, is still out of view and should remain
so until they are almost on us. The wind is behind them and they
will keep it to their advantage as long as possible. I propose,
therefore—” he looked back at Bloodstone—“to sail the
Virago
across their bows and draw
their attention away from this islet. We will engage and hold them
long enough for you to bring the
Talon
around and come at them from upwind. We won’t have to try
very hard to appear to be mortally wounded, and should present a
prize too tempting for the bastards to resist.”

Bloodstone nodded
. It was an audacious and risky plan, and Dante would
undoubtedly draw heavy fire from all six zabras. There were few
Spaniards on the Main who did not know the
Virago
by sight. Seeing her wounded and apparently
running away in distress would, indeed, attract them like leeches
to blood. It would be up to the
Talon
to come to his rescue and blast the Spaniards in a
crossfire.

Bloodstone
reached up and tugged on a gleaming gold forelock. He wore rings on
all four fingers of both hands, and the jewels glittered as
brightly as the sudden avarice in the liquid brown eyes. “My
compliments, Captain Dante. It should be like picking ducks off a
pond.”

~~

Four
hours later, with the sun glaring in the westerly sky at eye level,
Captain Dante ordered his men into the shrouds. With a temporary
patch sealing the gash in the
Virago’s
hull, they had left the shelter of the island and started a
run south by southeast and, as Dante had predicted, the India
guards had turned, almost as one, and set after him with their
noses high and the water sheeting off their hulls in scrolls of
blue-white spume. Dante had set his own suit carefully, leaving
slack in the square mainsails so they appeared full and straining
to catch every ounce of strength and speed from the wind. He had
fore and aft
maneuverability
in the remainder of his sails, but those, too, he kept on
an angle not favorable to the
Virago’s
reputation as a flying sea witch.

Standing
on the foredeck, his hair whipping in the breeze like black silk,
he passed quiet, steady orders to his helmsman, who knew better
than to question why he should make the
Virago
seem erratic and unsteady, when he also knew, even
with a jury-rigged rudder, they could have sailed circles around
all six of the charging Spaniards and left them reeling in their
wake.

Dante’s
second-in-command—Geoffrey Pitt—stood amidships, his feet braced
wide apart to counter the increasing roll of the deck. His tawny
hair was lashed in a tail at his nape and his face, beneath the
weathering effects of the sun, was nearly as green as his eyes. He
was not a sailor by profession, nor even by choice, and was still
battling the galling effects of the week-long storm. But he knew
guns and was in charge of the
Virago’s
teeth: ten bronze demi-cannon capable of firing
thirty-two-pound lead balls a distance of three hundred yards and
more, supplemented by fourteen cast-iron culverins that fed on
seventeen-pound shot. There were also the falconets at the bow and
stern, long elegant guns of a smaller caliber reserved for special
surprises at close range.