Pirate Wolf Trilogy (93 page)

~~~

“Gabriel,”
Juliet whispered. “Dear God, it’s Gabriel... there, in the
shrouds.”

Crisp’s lips
moved but the oaths were either too foul to vent or the air in his
lungs suddenly too sparse to give them sound.

They had
fired another shot to alert her father and Geoffrey Pitt that more
company was imminent, but there had been no quick way to warn them
of the fact that one of the four ships was the
Valor
. Juliet had sent a messenger back in a jolly
boat, but that was before they bristled out to meet the oncoming
threat and saw the human shield. Neither the
Avenger
nor the
Dove
had come through the channel yet and Juliet had to assume
they were still dealing with the first two galleons. There would be
prisoners to disarm, perhaps even set ashore under guard to ensure
they would not retake the ships and strike from behind.

Juliet
knew she could not strike out alone against four ships, she simply
did not have the firepower. And if the
Valor
had been taken over by the Spaniards, she would
not even have speed as an advantage, for the two ships were well
matched and any attempt she made to come in fast would be met with
an equally nimble counterattack from her brother’s ship.

Not that any of
that mattered now. As soon as she saw the crew tied to the shrouds,
it changed everything. Every scrap of nerve, courage, and bravado
sank to her toes and she knew the mind-numbing shock of real
fear.

“What are yer
orders lass?” Crisp asked softly. “The men are lookin’ to ye.”

“Dear Christ,”
she muttered. “If we fight, we’ll be killing Gabriel and every
other man in his crew.”

“They’ll be
killed anyway. An’ if we run, the bastards will make straight for
the channel. They’ll know the men on shore won’t fire an’ neither
will yer father, then we’ll all be in a fine mess.”

“Wait,” Varian
said. “Look... they’re slowing down, they’re splitting up.”

The trio
watched as the warships took down sail and carved wide swaths
through the water to line up in a blockade formation a mile
offshore. The only ship that continued to move forward was
the
Valor
, and
inside half a mile, it too presented a broadside, gliding parallel
to the shoreline.

It was not the
most gracefully executed insult, for there were yards aligned wrong
and the ship turned far too slowly, something Juliet noted but was
helpless for the moment to know how to use to their advantage. All
she could think of at the moment was her brother tied helplessly to
the shrouds. She wasn’t quite ready to dismiss his life as easily
as Crisp, though she understood emotion had no place on the deck of
a fighting ship. They had all understood the risks before they left
New Providence. They understood the risks each and every time they
sailed out of Pigeon Cay.

She
glanced quickly over her shoulder, but there was still no sign of
the
Avenger
. Turning
back, she caught Varian’s eye and held it a moment, wondering if
he, with his annoying ability to read her every thought, could read
them now.

“The Spaniards
are soldiers,” he said quietly. “They think like soldiers, not like
seamen.”

“What of
it?”

“A parlay,” he
advised.

“
What?”

“Ask for a
parlay. Find out what they want, what they are prepared to do to
get it.”

“I already know
what they want,” she snapped. “And I know damned well what they are
prepared to do to get it.”

“Then use it to
buy some time. Send me over under a white flag and let me talk to
them.”

“
You
? Why the
devil would I send you?”

“Because I am
the king’s emissary and still have the power to negotiate a
truce.”

“A truce?” She
nearly spat the word. “They don’t want a truce, they want blood.
Mine and my father’s.”

“
Just so,
but they also don’t know if it is just you and your father they
have to deal with. Thus far, they have only seen the
Iron Rose
and the
Avenger
. For all they know, there could be a dozen more
ships lying in wait behind the cays.”

“
You want
to try to
bluff
them?” She
looked at him even more aghast, if that was possible. “If they
don’t believe you—which they won’t—they will kill you. At the very
least, there is no guarantee they won’t tie you up in the shrouds
alongside my brother.”

“I am not that
easy to kill, you should know that by now. And if they tie me in
the shrouds beside your brother, I will be in excellent company.
Lower a boat and show a flag,” he urged gently. “Let them know you
want to negotiate. It is what any good general would do, and what
any well trained soldier would expect.”

Her eyes
remained lock to his in an unrelenting grip while a hundred
different reasons for denying his request flashed through her mind.
One above all set the blood pounding in her temples, not loudly
enough however, to drown out the grim command she gave to Nathan
Crisp to ready a jolly boat and find a white flag.

“Give me five
minutes,” Varian said, glancing over her shoulder at the glowering
quartermaster. “And four of your strongest oarsmen so I don’t have
time to change my mind.”

He looked at
Juliet one last time, then dashed below to find clothes more
suitable for a king’s emissary. The royal blue velvet doublet and
breeches he had worn to impress the privateer captains were crushed
but wearable, and he was struggling to fasten the starched ruff
around his neck when he heard the cabin door open behind him.

When Juliet saw
how badly his fingers were fumbling the task, she took the ruff and
the ruby brooch gently out of his hands. “Let me do that before you
stab yourself. I would have thought you had acquired some skill in
dressing yourself since Beacom’s departure.”

“Pressed to
speed, I am much more adept at un-dressing, as you well know.”

She looked up
and caught the intense look in the midnight eyes.

“Just between
you and me,” she admitted softly, “ I do my shaking afterward.
Especially when I have done something truly stupid and realize how
lucky I am to have survived.” She smiled softly and touched his
cheek with a fingertip. “You won’t do anything truly stupid, will
you?”

He would
have answered, but he was distracted by her hands moving around to
the nape of his neck, tying a narrow leather strap beneath the
starched white ruff. Sheathed in the strap was a knife that slid
beneath his doublet and hung against the clammy skin between his
shoulder blades. She then knelt down in front of him and unfastened
the garter below his knee, shoving his breeches up high enough to
allow her to strap a second, needle-thin
filleting
knife to the inside of his
thigh. Another went around his left calf before she adjusted the
cuff of his boot. The last, a short double edged serrated blade,
she slid inside the front of his breeches.

“I doubt there
are too many men—even Spaniards—who would search there for a
weapon,” she said. “But I would have a care how you sit.”

After passing a
critical eye over his form to see if she could detect any of the
knives, she helped him strap on his baldric, giving the polished
hilt of his rapier an extra touch for luck.

“If you can get
close to Gabriel—” her voice faltered and he tucked a forefinger
under her chin, tilting her face upward.

“I’ll tell
him.” He studied her face a long moment, as if committing every
pore and eyelash to memory, then kissed her lightly on the mouth
and straightened to indicate he was as ready as he was ever going
to be.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

Isabeau Dante
stared at the messenger and asked him to repeat what he had just
said.

“
It’s
Captain Gabriel’s ship, Cap’n Beau. It’s the
Valor
. Spaniards are at the helm, coming in fast with
three more galleons on her flank.”

“And Captain
Juliet?”

“She’s standin’
fast, Cap’n, waitin’ on orders.”

“
Oh dear
God.” Beau glanced at the closest of the two smoldering galleons
they had herded into the elbow of Spaniard’s cay. Simon had gone on
board the first to dictate the terms of surrender; Pitt was on
board the second, several hundred feet away. Neither ship was close
enough for a hail to be understood and she called upon one of the
fastest swimmers, dispatching him over the side with the urgent
news. Before he had cut ten clean strokes through the water, Beau
had ordered men into the tops and by the time the swimmer reached
the hull of the first galleon, the
Avenger
had shaken out every scrap of canvas she could
carry and was under way, with Beau at the helm, heading toward the
southern point of the cay.

When the
pirate wolf heard the gasped message from the lips of the soaked
crewman, he was livid enough to fire a shot from a handy swivel gun
across his wife’s bow. She did not stop and he hailed Geoffrey Pitt
with a savage bellow. Within minutes, they were both on board
the
Dove
, piling on
sail but were out of position and were forced to make a wide, slow
turn, hampered by the lack of wind coming over the crest of
Frenchman’s Cay.

The Spanish
captains, their ships reduced to smoking ruins, saw that they were
being abandoned and screamed at their officers to find enough sail
to hoist into the broken spars and affect an escape. Both ships
beat a retreat due east into open water, hoping to put as much
distance as they could between them and the ferocious teeth of the
pirate wolf.

They would not
get very far.

Isabeau,
meanwhile, had rounded the point of Spaniard’s Cay. She took in the
scene at a glance, the three warships formed in a staunch line and
the
Iron
Rose
drifting almost at
a standstill, looking small and vulnerable and as valiant as David
must have looked facing Goliath. There was a jolly boat making its
way across the choppy water to the
Valor
, and even at that distance, the white flag on the stern
was clearly visible.

~~~

“An English
duke?” Recalde paced a slow circle around Varian St. Clare, the
sunlight glinting off the cone-shaped peak of his helmet. “I
confess I am intrigued to know why you would be keeping company
with such a notorious band of pirates.”

“It was not by
choice, I can assure you,” Varian said. “My own ship was recently
waylaid by Dutch privateers, who planned to hold me to ransom. The
Dantes apparently paid what they demanded, thinking to rescue a
fellow Englishman from the clutches of the cheese-eaters, but I
have yet to find a reason to thank them. Especially now,” he added,
tugging on a cuff to straighten it, then brushing an annoying fleck
of lint off the velvet. “I dislike being forced to do anything at
gunpoint, whether the hand holding the gun is English or
Spanish.”

Recalde pursed
his lips. “You are saying they forced you to come and parlay?”

“They thought a
proposal delivered by me would carry more weight than if it came
via a filth-encrusted sailor.”

“Ah. From one
gentleman to another?”

“My dear
captain, while you might wear the veneer ably enough,” he paused
and glanced pointedly at the naked, bleeding men that were bound to
the rigging lines, “I see nothing that would lead me to believe you
were anything quite so elevated as a gentleman.”

Recalde, whose
head had been tilted to the right while he listened, now tilted it
slowly to the left as he studied Varian’s face. “Unfortunately,
señor, gentlemen do not retain their manners long in the jungles of
Nombre de Dios,” he murmured. “Particularly when one deals with
criminals and misfits, one quickly learns that they do not respond
to manners, only to a show of strength and a willingness to be
completely ruthless. As for this... proposal you bring, while I am
amused and flattered by the Dante audacity, I can assure you that
nothing less than a complete surrender will suffice.”

“
If that
is the case, then it may be perceived that we do indeed have a
problem, for the captain of the
Iron
Rose
—”

“
The
captain of the
Iron Rose
will
present herself to me within the hour, señor, or she will not only
be condemning her brother to death, she will be responsible for the
deaths of every man who served on board this ship.”

“
Whereas
I have been empowered to tell you that unless you stand down at
once, the rest of the Dante fleet—” Varian actually blinked when he
turned and saw sails to the north, coming around the point of
Frenchman’s Cay, and sails to the south where the
Avenger
was now standing off Spaniard’s
Cay— “will show no mercy when they raze your ships to the
sea.”

“I believe a
situation such as this would be called a standoff, would it
not?”

“You may be
sure Captain Dante is sincere in her threats.”

“As am I,
señor.” He raised a hand and one of the scarlet-clad soldiers
touched a glowing fuse to the touch hole of a swivel gun mounted on
the deck rail. “Shall we see who blinks first?”

~~~

Juliet reacted
without thinking.

She had
watched the jolly boat take Varian across to the
Valor
, had
followed the splash of blue velvet as he climbed up the hull and
went through the gangway. After that, she had only been able to
catch glimpses of royal blue amidst the sea of scarlet tunics and
molded leather breastplates.