Raised By Wolves 1 - Brethren (50 page)

Julio and Davey followed Pete to the prisoners.

Gaston had continued probing. He stopped. “I think I have it all.

Some of the wounds will need stitching.”

I swore vehemently. All was quiet for a moment, and I listened to a man protesting in Castilian that there was nothing of value on the ship to us other than what was in the hold. I wondered what she was carrying. I was staring at the pile of dead bodies.

“What occurred?” I asked.

Gaston sighed. “I cornered those three. They were without pistols.

I looked back for you and saw you engaging with a sword.” He smiled ruefully.

“Imagine my surprise,” I chuckled. “I was trying to follow you when Pete ran into me.”

His fingers found my lips again. “You do not need to explain. It is battle. Situations occur that we cannot foresee.”

“Still, I will endeavor to stay closer to you next time.” I gestured to the pile of bodies.

“I had thought I was doing well,” he said somberly.

“You seemed calm before,” I said.

“Non, non, not with my madness, with… you. I have rarely cared these past years if the men about me lived or died. And now I have you to worry about. I told myself that I would not be a fool and hang on you, worried that you might be harmed. Yet you engage in battle and I watch like a daft cow, all the while telling myself that you are competent. That if I have chosen to feel this way for another, at least I have chosen a man who is competent.”

I tightened my embrace around his chest and kissed his cheek.

“Thank you, though I feel I do not deserve such praise. After all, I was pushed into glass like a boy with a toy sword.” I chuckled. “Because I did not feel as brave, or foolhardy, as I usually do. I feared injury and death, as I feel I have much to lose. I wanted to get to you as quickly as possible, because I feared losing you.”

He smiled. “Then we are both fools and we should quit this profession.”

“Perhaps we should.” I found myself gazing at the bodies again. “So you were watching me and…”

“Then the fool hits me with a whip and I killed him… and his companions.”

“We would have killed them anyway.” As if to punctuate my words, one of the prisoners wailed with pain.

“Oui,” he sighed.

“Do you think they have any valuables on them?”

“I sincerely doubt it. I will check.” He pulled his cutlass and first pushed the arm with the whip overboard. Then he probed through pockets and pronounced them poor. He tossed the rest overboard for the sharks. He helped me work my way down-ship, and we joined the others.

The one man was still wailing, “We have nothing of value to you.”

I sat on a cannon next to Pete. “What is the ship carrying?”

“Dyewood An’ Hides.”

Bradley and Striker seemed intent on questioning the prisoners.

Matches had been lit between the protesting man’s toes. As my feet ached, I could not watch.

“Is that odd?” I asked. “The cargo?”

Gaston shook his head. “For a ship in the Flota. This one was crossing to Cuba early, alone. True, it could have come up from Campeche with this cargo, but she is very far north.”

I regarded the crying prisoner curiously.

“There is nothing of value to you,” he whined yet again.

“To us,” I said loudly in Castilian. “What is there of value on this ship to others?”

The man’s eyes shot wide with surprise, and he became very still.

Julio translated what I said very quietly for Striker, who turned to give me a triumphant smile.

“What?” Pete asked. I explained. Pete grinned. “Thought They Was Wastin’ Time. Thought There Was Nothin’ Here.” Pete crossed to the prisoner, and braced his arms on either side of the man. I could not see Pete’s eyes or hear what he whispered, but whatever the man saw or heard caused him to lose control of his bladder. Amusingly, this put out the matches that had been burning his toes.

“Books,” the man stuttered. “In the barrels.”

Gaston and I exchanged a look. He understood enough Castilian to understand, and he hurried below to look. I wished to follow, but decided against it. He and two other men returned a few minutes later with armfuls of books. I snatched one from him and paged through it. It was some sort of religious treatise. Gaston was paging through another. He grinned and we exchanged books. This one was a romantic adventure and quite racy. Another in the pile was like it, only with etchings of a clearly salacious nature. I took up the religious one again, and read a paragraph; it seemed to be speaking out against something.

Everyone was watching us. I smiled.

“I believe they are smuggling books of a salacious nature and possible some heretical material as well.” I was greeted with confused stares. “They are dirty books in Castilian,” I said and passed about a particularly naughty drawing.

Our men were amused, but not pleased at all. The prisoner confirmed my theory, though. They were indeed carrying books printed in Terra Firma to Cuba, where they would be smuggled back to Spain.

Other than amusement value for those of us who could read Castilian, they were worthless. To someone with access to Spanish markets, they were probably worth a fortune.

Mystery solved, I took up samples of each book, and with Gaston’s help, made it back to the North Wind. I gave a naughty book to the Bard.

He was amused. He also had an appreciation of the ironic value of the cargo.

Gaston handed me a bottle of wine from the Spanish ship and went to rummage through his bag. I took several pulls and found it quite admirable. He snatched it back from me. “Do not drink it all. I need it for your feet.”

I sighed. And again when I saw him unwrap a small surgeon’s kit.

“Lie on your belly,” he said.

I did not wish to do that. The thought of lying on my belly with my back exposed while someone caused me pain made my heart race. He must have read it in my eyes, as his face softened and he said gently,

“It is the best position for me to get access to the bottom of your feet.

Where would you feel safe in that position?”

“Nowhere.” I held up a hand to ward off discussion. I looked about and crawled onto the quarterdeck, and situated myself above our alcove facing the rails so I could see what was going on. He let me have another pull on the bottle. Then he gave me a leather wrapped stick to bite. I needed it.

While he worked, I tried to concentrate on what little I could hear of the roaring argument above us regarding the prize. There seemed to be some disagreement over what to do with the vessel. I finally turned to Gaston when he finished with my right foot, and spit the stick out.

“What is that about?”

He shrugged. “With a normal prize, the quartermaster sails her, along with part of the crew; and she will be used in concert with the first ship to take any additional prizes, and then sailed into port to be handed over to the English admiralty court. Then she will be auctioned off and the proceeds split with the Crown. But this one is not worth sailing in pursuit of anything; she will just slow us down. And she is not much of a prize. Her cargo, the dyewood and hides, are worth money….”

“But at a relatively low yield per ton,” I said.

He nodded. “So I would guess that Striker does not want to sail her back to port. He would rather stay aboard to take bigger prizes. I would also guess Cudro is thinking the same.”

“Ah, do the men who sail a prize into port forfeit anything captured after?”

“I do not know. That would be up to all to decide. I would say oui.

They will not risk their hides with the rest of us. I also think it fair they split either the value of the cargo or the ship amongst themselves if they are to take her in alone. It is a gamble for someone, any way it is done.”

“Who else is capable of sailing her to port?”

“I would imagine Hastings.”

“So anyone who volunteered to be quartermaster.”

He nodded. “I need to finish your other foot.”

“Will this affect us?”

“I feel we should stay with Striker.”

I nodded and bit the stick again. I was not sure how much use I would be in crewing a ship, if I was actually expected to do something involving sailing. I realized I should probably continue the education I began on the King’s Hope.

I waited until he finished a stitch and removed the stick again to ask, “Can you navigate?”

“A little.”

“Would that be comparable to the little you know of medicine?”

“Possibly,” he grinned.

“And you call me competent,” I teased and bit the stick again. I had indeed married well.

He finished with my other foot, and bandaged both of them. They ached. Gaston cleaned his tools with the remainder of the wine. He mentioned he would need to have Michaels boil the needles before he used them again.

For a moment I considered licking the last drops from the bottle.

“I would like some wine,” I said. Gaston frowned and went to find some on the Spanish ship.

Most of the men were returning from the flute, some only to retrieve their belongings. There was a great deal of ill will in the air. In the strange post-battle anxiety I often experienced, I was concerned that the ship would cast off and Gaston and I would be stuck on different vessels. I knew it was absurd, but I found myself eyeing my musket where it was wrapped in the alcove. If I had it in hand, I could shoot anyone attempting to cut the ropes. Thankfully Gaston returned before I could crawl down to get it. He had rum and news.

“There will be a vote,” he said. “Hastings will sail her to port. The vote is over the division of the prize.”

I was relieved. I did not like Hastings, and sending him off with a load of wood seemed fitting. In the end, that is what we did. The vote was close; but it was even decided that he, and any who went with him, could retain the money for the cargo. The ship herself would be sold at auction; and that money would be shared amongst everyone who returned to Port Royal on the North Wind or any other prize she took.

Ten men went with him, leaving us with fifty-five and considerably more deck space.

Bradley was concerned about the number of men remaining. He wished we had started with more. I could scarcely imagine how we could have crowded more on the sloop to begin with. And as it was my understanding that the North Wind could be sailed with six or so, that left a good fifty of us to take other vessels. After what I had witnessed today, it did not seem very hard.

That night there was a great party with the alcohol the Spanish had been carrying. I could not stand, let alone dance. So I sat with Gaston in our alcove and drank, while I looked at the dirty pictures in the one book and he watched the stars. When all finally quieted, I had been hard for hours, despite the pain in my feet.

Our wolves joined us, and we all bedded down. I waited patiently until they slept, lying as I often did, with my forehead against the wall, Gaston against my back, and my member firmly in hand. I felt him stir, and immediately stopped and waited to see if he was just rolling in his sleep. A perverse part of my soul wanted him to know what I was about, to see if it garnered any reaction. The rest of me was terrified that he should see or hear my dissipation.

I felt his hand in the center of my back. I held still, knowing him to know that I was awake. I withheld a sigh. His hand stroked tentatively.

“Will,” he whispered, “am I helping or hindering?”

My relief was so great I would have found release then and there if my hand had been in motion. “I do not know yet.”

“Is it a matter of touching?”

“At the moment, it is a matter of condemnation.”

“Oh.” He was silent a moment. “What can I do to show you I approve?” He moved closer, his body pressing along mine, his weight on my back. This position would normally have engendered fear, but at the moment, in the grips of arousal, it engendered quite the opposite.

“That will do,” I gasped; and stroked a dozen times and came harder than I had in months.

I slept better than I had in months, as well. I dreamed of the River Arno, running blood-red. But this time, it was because it ran red with blood, not because it reflected the setting sun. I wondered what the Gods were trying to tell me now.

Wherein We Descend Into Hell

Hastings sailed away with the prize, and the North Wind returned to working her way up and down the path the Flota would take to Havana.

We were at it for the next two weeks, and it was very much like looking for a needle in a haystack. The prisoners we interrogated on the prize had not even known when the Flota would sail from Vera Cruz. The Spanish were very secretive about such matters. However, as it was the second week of May, and the Flota usually spent a month in Havana before sailing for Spain in June, we knew they should be en route now if they had not already slipped by us.

If we missed them going to Havana, we would be forced to wait a month until they departed, as we obviously could not attempt to take a ship in Havana’s harbor. Tales were told of many a rover taking one just outside the forts’ cannons, though. This seemed madness to me. Tales were also told of rovers missing a fleet they had waited weeks for, due to misjudging the time and careening or provisioning when the great ships passed. So we did not stop looking. Thankfully we had refreshed our water a few weeks before, and the boucan was holding up admirably.

We had been reduced to rationing fruit, though.

It was decided that, if we did not spy the Flota in the next week, we would sail to Havana and take a look at their port to see if the fleet had slipped by us. If they had, we would find a place to provision along Cuba’s northern shore or in the cays of the Bahamas, and then catch the Flota in the Straits of Florida. If that failed, we would be forced to make a decision between returning to Jamaica empty-handed or sailing Raised By Wolves - Brethren

back around Cuba to await the Galleons coming up from the Main. They usually arrived in Havana in July.

I had begun to understand why no one could tell how long a roving voyage would be. We were at the mercy of so many variables that it was impossible to extrapolate a duration, unless one set limits on it in some fashion. I personally, probably owing to coming from cooler climes, hoped that with or without further prey we would return home by winter. I was actually beginning to become a little obsessed with this idea. The dreams I had on the King’s Hope, of sailing forever with sharks in our wake, had returned.