Pirate Wolf Trilogy (2 page)

Pitt’s
chief gunner was almost as awesome as the guns he fired. Nearly
seven feet tall, black as ebony, the former slave was possibly the
only man on board the
Virago
more feared than the captain himself. The Cimaroon’s first
greeting to the enemy had become traditional. Wearing only a
loincloth and a leer of impending pleasure, he climbed barefoot
into the shrouds and sent a hot yellow stream of contempt in the
direction of the approaching vessels. The men on deck and in the
yards cheered, waving their fists and hurling insults even as an
answering puff of smoke erupted from the guns of the forerunning
galleon.

Although
smaller than the
Virago
and not
as heavily armed, the galleons had the wind to their advantage, and
bearing down like vultures, they formed a fighting crescent and
trimmed sail. The ship that had fired the opening salvo commanded
the starboard point of the crescent. Seeing that the
Virago
seemed willing—and foolhardy
enough— to turn and put up a fight, he pulled arrogantly ahead of
the others and opened the attack.

“He thinks we
are so bad off, he can take us single handed!” Dante shouted.
“Shall we correct his impression, Mister Pitt?”

“Ready on your
command, Captain!”

“On my
command.” Dante nodded and turned to the helmsman. “Bring her hard
to larboard and keep her as tight as you can.”

“Aye, sir!” The
helmsman positioned himself at the makeshift tiller and swore. “I
can’t say how long this bloody oar will hold, but she has spirit in
her yards and she’ll take it up with the wind, sure enough.”

“Just give me
one long, smooth pass, Mister Brighton. She’ll take it up with her
guns.”

“Aye, sir! That
she will, sir!”

Dante
felt the blood surging through his veins. The Spaniard was closing
fast, full sailed and hull up, carving through the iron-gray swells
like a cleaver. The
Virago
was still
feigning unsteady knees and with only a third of her gunports open,
she lured the Spaniard into a show of bravado. The zabra fired
another salvo from her two bow guns, one ball spouting harmlessly
in the privateer’s wake, the other bouncing insolently off her
three-foot-thick hull. At less than a quarter mile, Dante could see
men on the Spaniard’s deck, clustered on the stubby forecastle,
fingers pointing at the
Virago
as if they were already arguing over the division of
spoils.

His wide,
sensuous mouth spread in a slow grin.

“
Mister
Brighton—!”

The helmsman’s
lips parted, his fist clenched on the tiller.

“—Now! Bring
her hard about!”

Tackle
clattered and rigging lines sang as cables were loosened and reset
to turn the sails. Canvas boomed overhead and the towering masts
heeled far out over the rising sea as the
Virago
slewed into the wind, throwing up long plumes of
spray in her wake.

“Mister Pitt!
Guns away! Open us up and show all of our fine teeth. Fire when
ready!”

On deck,
Pitt’s crews opened the remaining gunports and hauled the cannon
into position for firing. Pitt raised his arm, waiting for the
initial roll to subside as the
Virago
completed her turn. The Spaniard was directly on their
beam, cleanly in the sights of all twelve heavy guns that comprised
their larboard battery. Gunners stood with wicks soaked in
saltpeter and spirits of wine, the fuses glowing red hot. Others
stood at the ready with wadding, shot, and powder, ready to reload
the instant the gun was discharged.

“Now!” Pitt
brought his hand down with a vengeful roar. The wicks were lowered
to the touchholes and ignited the charge of powder in the cannon
breeches. An instant later the guns erupted almost simultaneously,
the deck juddering underfoot from the tremendous impact of the
carriages jumping back with the recoil.

A cloud
of gray, acrid smoke creamed back over the deck, engulfing the men
as they scrambled to haul the guns inboard for reloading. Two
hundred yards away, gouts of splintered wood exploded from smashed
rails and bulkheads. Men screamed and died where they stood or were
thrown in bloody fragments as high as the topsails. A second salvo
from the
Virago
struck
before the crew of the stunned galleon could loose a single shot,
and now the added chaos of falling shrouds and blasted spars
created bedlam on the shattered deck.

The
Virago
raced
past, reloading as she ran. An order to the helm had her sheering
hard to larboard again, cutting around behind the burning galleon
while at the same time bringing all of her heavy, and now
double-shotted, guns on the starboard battery to bear on the five
remaining ships in the crescent.

The five
had already begun to fall out of their orderly formation, but
the
Virago
managed
four hot rounds before the closest galleon could gain position to
return fire. The zabra’s guns erupted in fiery rosettes, clouding
the sea in boils of smoke, sending a volley of shot across
the
Virago’s
beam.
Canvas screamed overhead as it was gashed and torn from its spars,
but even as the sails collapsed, men swarmed aloft to cut away the
damage. A second volley exploded deck rails and cracked the
bowsprit, a third swept two men over the side and blew half a dozen
more out of the smashed tops.

Simon
Dante paced the afterdeck, shouting orders and encouragement. His
cheek was bloodied from a flying fragment but it was nothing more
than a scratch. His ship had taken some hits, more than he had
anticipated, but not nearly as devastating as the damage his
Virago
had wrought. One Spaniard
already sat low and broken on the churning sea, her decks enveloped
in flames, her masts and rigging dragging behind her like drooping
wings. Two more showed damage in their tops; another had had one of
its guns blown from its carriage and it hung over the smashed
remains of the gunport, the snout pointing straight down to the
sea.

But the
zabras were regrouping. They would know what to expect this time
and not stay so obligingly clumped together. Moreover, they would
load with chain and aim high for the sails, hoping to cut
the
Virago’s
speed
and maneuverability.

Dante’s
pale blue eyes scanned the clouds of smoke that still obscured the
tiny island they had left behind. The
Talon
should have emerged from cover by now and with the wind in
her favor, would be racing up on the Spaniards with swift, lethal
surprise.

A warning
shout from Pitt drew Dante’s attention back to the Spaniards. The
two largest galleons were closing fast, coming up on either side of
the
Virago
, clearly
intending to take her in a crossfire.

“
Mister
Brighton, bring her about! Hard to starboard. Hard to
starboard
now
!”

The
helmsman had anticipated the order and was already straining
against the tiller, throwing all of his weight into turning the arm
that controlled the rudder. A loud crack and tearing of timber sent
the tiller arm swinging hard against the bulkhead, the sudden
freedom throwing Brighton with it. He fell hard onto his knees and
scraped a layer of skin off his chin as it made contact with the
planking, but he was on his feet an instant later, cursing orders
to the topmen to correct their trim to compensate for the lost
rudder.

The
Virago
faltered
briefly off her course, allowing one of the galleons to gain
way.

“Mister
Brighton—!”

The banshee
scream of chain shot cut through Dante’s orders, cut through the
helmsman himself in a fanning red spray. Dante was knocked to the
deck by a section of rail and lay there, stunned, for almost a full
minute. Lines and rigging were torn from their stays and the
screams of his men echoed the shrill tearing of canvas
overhead.

Dante
fought to regain control of his senses and his body. He struggled
to his feet as another wailing salvo struck his ship. He limped to
the rail, his left leg numb from the knee down and awash in blood.
Pitt was below, struggling to clear bodies and debris away from the
guns. The deck was littered with wreckage. Cables swung free and
sails hung in shreds from yards that were broken and dangling free
of their braces. Blood ran from one side of the planking to the
other following the roll of the ship, tracing spidery patterns on
the sun-bleached oak.

Cold,
silent rage filled Dante’s soul and he whirled, shouting orders
aloft. If he could coax one more pass out of the
Virago
, surely
the
Talon
would be
there, beating in to support them. And wounded though she was, the
valiant privateer responded, tacking with a graceful slide against
the wind, taking herself away from the one vulture who had found
his range and throwing herself under the guns of another who had
not. Pitt fired his cannon, kept his crews swabbing, reloading,
tamping, and firing until their hands blistered from the
heat.

Dante made his
way to the bow and manned one of the falconets, swiveling it on its
mount and taking aim on the target, now less than a hundred yards
off the larboard side. His eyes were burning from the smoke but it
was his ears that brought him the vindictive satisfaction of broken
timbers and dying men. He breathed through clenched teeth and
watched as the Spaniard returned fire. His eyes narrowed and he
wiped at them savagely to clear them of sweat and blood, and when
he looked again, such a roar came out of his throat, even Pitt
heard it over the thunder of the guns and came running up onto the
foredeck in panic

“The bastard!
The filthy yellow bleeding bastard!”

It took a
moment for Pitt to see what was causing such rage in Dante’s face,
and when he did, he stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped
time itself from intruding between one heartbeat and the next.

Far off
in the distance, the wind filling every sail she could mount on her
masts and tops, the
Talon
was racing
across the blue of the horizon.

Racing
north.

Racing
away
from the
smoke-filled arena.

She was
fleeing to the safety of wide open sea, leaving the
Virago
and her crew to face the circle
of predators alone.

PART ONE

IN HARM'S
WAY

CHAPTER
ONE

She emerged
from the receding bank of mist like a ghost ship. The air was dead
calm, the water smooth as glass. The lines of her rigging were
frosted with dew and glistened with a million pinpricks of light as
the first rays of the morning sun found her. She had originally
carried four masts, but the mizzen and fore were badly damaged, the
latter cracked off halfway up the stem and folded over on itself,
suspended in a harness formed of its own ratlines. What few scraps
of canvas she carried were reefed, as if she knew she was going
nowhere fast. The huge mainsail hung limp, half of it in tatters,
the rest valiantly patched wherever it was possible and bolstered
by a new array of lines and cleats to give it some hope of catching
any breeze that might whuff by. There was more damage scarring her
rails and hull, and she was listing heavily to starboard, weary
with the weight of all that hope.

Captain Jonas
Spence frowned through the thick wire fuzz of his eyebrows. “I see
no lanterns. No signs of life on any of her decks.”

His
second-in-command, Spit McCutcheon, duplicated the frown but he was
not looking so much at the silent galleon as he was the dense gray
wall of fog behind her.

“
There
could be a dozen ships out there, lyin’ in wait, an’ we’d not know
it,” he muttered through the wide gaps of his front teeth. “’Tis
just the kind o’ trap a bloody-minded Spaniard would set. Use one
of our own as bait to lure us in, then—” he leaned over the rail
and spat a wad of phlegm into the water twenty feet below—“pepper
us like a slab o’ hot mutton.”

Spence’s frown
deepened, the lines becoming crevices in a face already as
weathered and hardened as granite. He was a tall bull of a man, as
broad across the beam as his ship, as bald as the pickled gull’s
eggs he ate by the crockful. “Mutton?” He glared at McCutcheon.
“Did ye have to say mutton, ye flat-nosed bastard? Now I’ll be
havin’ the taste of it in my throat the whole blessed day
long.”

As if to verify
the prediction, his stomach gave an angry rumble, one heard by most
of the group of crewmen gathered behind them on the forecastle.
Several smiled, despite the tension. Their captain’s appetite and
capacity were infamous, and when his belly protested a lack, it was
like the ominous grumbling from a volcano.

“Mutton.”
Spence snorted again and raised his hand to his eyes, shielding
them against the molten silver glare of what little dull light did
manage to break through the dissipating clouds. He took a slow,
careful sweep along the half of the horizon that was clear, halting
when he came upon the ghostly galleon and the gray miasma of mist
behind it.

“We’ll send the
jolly across,” he decided. “If there are a dozen papist bastards
out there, they’ll be goin’ nowhere, either, in this cursed calm.
An’ if she’s genuine, there might be souls aboard who need our aid.
Helmsman! Ye’d best haul us in. Keep a square or two aloft for
steerage in case a wind does come along.”