Pirate Wolf Trilogy (45 page)

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 guns. 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
discolored 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.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN

“
We
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 leagues 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!”

“Doubt if
anyone knows he’s there, what with the smoke an’ all.”

“
Jonas!”
Spit was
leaning forward over the rail as if the few added inches gave a
better view. “Look at the bastard! He’s opened with all
guns!”

Beau and
Spence watched in horror as the
Talon’s
guns erupted in seemingly endless tongues of
orange flame. They were still four or five miles out and the sound
reached them as muted thuds, dampened further by the rapidly fading
light. In another few minutes they would only have the throbbing
glow of the burning harbor and the fire from their own guns to give
the ships any kind of silhouette against the darkness.

“We have to do
something!” Beau insisted.

“Aye. Spit—load
the demis with fifteen-pound shot; it will carry farther. We’ll
fire a round as soon as Beau can pull us into position to give him
a broadside. Let the bastard know someone is seein’ what he’s
doin’, at any rate.”

McCutcheon
sprang away, his eyes still on the two ships as he calculated
speed, powder weight, and distances. Beau was half a step behind,
shouting orders as she ran.