Raised By Wolves 3 - Treasure (96 page)

“I do not blame the head wound,” I said sadly.

He awarded me a grim smile. “Perhaps you should. Perhaps it unseated him upon his Horse enough that he no longer controlled the animal.”

I could see that, and I sighed, “I do not wish to feel sorry for him.”

Gaston came to kneel before me on the bed. His mien was curious and teasing. “Why should you? It was his Horse. It was still him: unless he was truly mad. But even you will admit – once forced to – that he always loved you, and that it was ever a thing of his Horse and his Man in concert.”

I agreed with him, but his taking that side of the argument amused me. I chided, “Are you not the one ever concerned with your Horse’s horrible thoughts?”

He frowned and cocked his head before grinning. “True, but… Pete and you are correct: it is what a man does, not what he thinks. As you have often made mention, I never acted on those horrible thoughts. We allow our Horses to play together.”

I smiled. “Oui.” And mine had proven with Alonso that it did not wish to run for the sake of running, or down paths alone without me.

And I knew Gaston’s loved me. We rode in harmony with our beasts, and were better men for it.

Gaston sighed and awarded me a bemused smile.

“So, oui, I should not berate myself.”

He kissed my nose. “And you need not feel sorry for him.”

I shook my head. “Non, I should. He… never listened to his Horse, or truth: of his heart or any other. He was always enamored of the shadows on the wall – the world of men and lies – and he lost me because of it, and… His Horse regretted that; and perhaps made more of it than it would have, if he had simply let it have its head when we were together. He was a fool.”

“Pity him, then,” Gaston said. “But do not grieve.”

I shook my head. “Non, never that.” I gazed upon him and was filled with wonder at how very far we had come these last years.

He cocked his head again, in apparent curiosity at my expression; and then quickly seized upon this new angle to kiss me deeply.

“I love you,” I breathed when we parted.

“I know,” he sighed happily.

With that, I pushed him away. “Go tend your patients.”

He sighed and nuzzled me for a moment, our breath mingling, and then he climbed from the bed and finished gathering his things. He paused at the door and turned back to me, his face suffused with great regard. “Thank you.”

I did not ask him what for, I merely nodded and said, “You are always welcome.”

We remained in Gibraltar for over a month. The time passed pleasantly enough for me. My feet healed such that the stitches could be removed and I could walk upon them. My arm began to ache less, but Gaston warned me it would be another month before he would allow me to do much of anything with it. I began to teach Striker left-handed swordplay. Gaston and I trysted often, with great pleasure.

For others, the time passed in misery. We lost two-score men to the malaria; though, we did manage to save over a hundred lives before we ran out of quinine. I thanked the Gods daily that we were not afflicted, and Gaston wondered endlessly why we were not.

Those not ailing were sent out in large sorties for a week at a time; always returning with more men ill, more slaves, mules laden with treasure, and hundreds of prisoners. At the hospital, the days and nights were filled with moaning from the feverish and wounded, and distant screams from tortured men and women. Morgan himself led a foray in hopes of capturing the governor; but heavy rains and swollen rivers caused havoc with that and many of the other attempts to gain booty. One group was somewhat successful in capturing barges loaded with goods from Maracaibo, though.

Finally, in the last week of April, we loaded several Spanish barges with valuables, slaves and hostages – as Morgan planned to ransom them and the town – and sailed north to Maracaibo. We had left a small number of men there to hold the town; and we were happy to find them still alive and the place not overrun with vengeful Spaniards. However, we soon learned we would have preferred that to what actually awaited us. There were three galleons in the passage to the sea, and the Spanish had rebuilt and manned the fortress they abandoned when we arrived. The smallest of their warships had more guns than our largest vessel, and the largest of them had more cannon than our entire fleet.

They fired on the sloop we sent to investigate them; but they stayed stubbornly in the channel and were not so foolish as to come and chase us about so that we might have a slim chance of sailing past them. Of course, even if they had followed the ships we sent, the guns of the fort would have destroyed us as we tried to escape the lake.

We had given them nearly two months to summon aid of this nature and repair the fort: I knew not what else we should have expected. Yet, to a man – myself included – we could not have been more discouraged and frightened than if we had woken from a nightmare to a pistol in our faces.

When we learned of it, Gaston pulled me aside and said. “If we must, we will abandon the ship and go overland.”

“All of us?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Just our friends. It will be hard enough with only a few mouths to feed.”

“Oui,” I agreed. “I cannot see dying here.”

Morgan sent for me as soon as the investigating sloop returned. I was not surprised.

“What do you want to tell them?” I asked Morgan, as I joined him and the captains and quartermasters in the Maracaibo courthouse.

He led me to the office chamber in the back of the building where we had first spoken privately, and offered me a chair at the desk. There was a sheaf of paper, quill, and ink awaiting me.

“We are ransoming the town,” he said as I sat.

I regarded him with something between curiosity and incredulity.

“I wish to keep them engaged in discussion until we decide what we will do,” he sighed.

“That is probably best,” I said sincerely, and then we discussed the amount of his demand. I wrote the missive, and he took it to someone to find a Spanish messenger for it. I doubted we would have a response for days.

Morgan returned to the office after dispatching the note, and handed me a bottle before I could leave.

I took a pull of rum. “Do you have a stratagem in mind, might I ask?”

“Not yet,” he sighed. “Do you have any ideas?”

I shrugged. “I will ask Pete.”

“Pete? Striker’s Pete?” he asked.

“Aye. He is a genius at all things martial, and the best chess player I have ever seen.”

“Truly? I thought him somewhat an imbecile.” He shrugged. “The way he speaks.”

I snorted. “It is a good thing he is not your enemy.”

He snorted with amusement and then sighed distractedly. “I have been well educated, but not in things classical. You have. What would the great generals of antiquity have done? Alexander the Great?

Achilles?”

“Achilles was a character in an epic poem. Alexander was a real man, though; but I do not think he fought naval battles. The Caesars, though… I will think on it, and see what Gaston and I can recall.”

“Ah, aye, your matelot is a lord’s son, too.” He regarded the bottle he held speculatively, and I knew his expression had little to do with its contents. “And he is not at war with his father,” he said absently.

“Nay, he is not,” I said with curiosity.

He met my gaze and smiled slyly. “Let us see if we can survive this debacle, and then we should speak.”

“I shall be very happy to keep that appointment,” I said as I stood.

“You think I have something to say that you wish to hear?” he asked.

“Nay, it will require we both survive.”

He laughed and waved me out the door.

Cudro and Ash joined me in returning to the Queen. More than half our men were ashore, enjoying Spanish wine as if it might be their last night alive – which it very well could be.

Once our cabal was gathered on the quarterdeck, I told them of Morgan’s ransom demand and his request for any and all ideas or stratagems, including those gleaned from the antics of ancient generals.

“How’s that going to help?” the Bard asked. “They didn’t have cannon. Or sails.”

He was possibly the most melancholy of us all. He was always the one to stay with the ship; and despite whatever might happen ashore, the ships were always able to escape. Being trapped and truly in danger was new to him.

“Nay,” I said. “They had sails; they just used them very little. The principal means of moving the vessels about was rowing. They carried huge numbers of slaves, who rowed their ships, called galleys, about. At least the Romans and Egyptians did, during the time of Julius Caesar and the like. Before that, your fighting men would actually row the ships about; much like the Vikings. That is what is described in the Iliad and the Odyssey.”

“So how did they attack one another?” Cudro asked. “Chase alongside and board?”

“Aye, that, and they rammed one another. The Romans had their ships fitted with great bronze prows so they could split another ship in two. And you had archers. And they often used flame arrows; or flaming ballista bolts; or even pots of burning oil or pitch flung with catapults mounted in the front or back of a ship.”

“Fire ships,” Gaston said.

“Aye, aye,” I said. “And they would on occasion use a smaller vessel designed to burn, and sail it or set it adrift into the enemy vessels if they were in a tight formation.”

Pete laughed, and I met his eyes, and we smiled as I came to understand what had been said of import. I looked about; the others were lost in thought, but Gaston was smiling, too.

“What?” Striker asked as he caught sight of our expressions.

“A Fire Ship Like Will Were Sayin’. They Be AllTight In ThatChannel.

One Goes Burnin’ The Rest ’ll ’Ave Ta Scatter. An’ Iffn’ The One Blows Like The Oxford Did It’ll Make A Right Mess O’ That Channel An Any Ship Close To ’Er.”

The Bard was shaking his head. “Then how the Devil do we leave?”

Cudro was rumbling with amusement. “If they’re fighting fires and sailing amuck with their sheets aflame, they won’t be manning their cannon very well. We can sail in close with the sloops and board them.

Then we can take on the fortress by land or by sea.”

I grinned and exchanged a look of happiness with Gaston. I felt much better about our chances of survival now.

The next day, we told no one else, but we went about considering the small Spanish cargo ships at Maracaibo, assessing how much burning material could be packed onto one, and how it could be disguised to get it close enough to the Spanish without them realizing what it was.

The day after, a missive returned from the Spanish. I read it to Morgan privately in the office of the courthouse. We were dealing with one Don Alonzo del Campo y Espinosa, general aboard the galleon Magdalena. He was, of course, appalled at our audacity. He was angry with the cowards who had abandoned the fort and let us into the lake in the first place. And if we did not agree to his terms, he would keep us blockaded in the lake and send for smaller ships from Cartegena with which to ferry his marines ashore and hunt us down and kill us all.

His terms were that we surrender graciously all treasure we had taken, including slaves and any other hostages or prisoners. In return for our abandoning our ill-gotten gains, he would allow us to leave the lake unmolested. I found that incredible, as did Morgan.

“We have a stratagem,” I told Morgan after he stopped cursing the general’s ancestry. I told him of the fire ship. To say he was delighted would be an understatement.

He called for all our men to assemble in the town square; and once they were there, he had me read the letter in English, and again in French for those few among us from Tortuga. Then he gave a stirring performance, asking if they would rather fight for their treasure or surrender it and have nothing to show for their hardship these past months. The decision was unanimous in favor of fighting. I would have hated him, had I not known he now had an alternative. As it was, I still thought him quite disingenuous, in the manner of leaders everywhere.

Then he had me tell them of the fire ship and explain how she should be outfitted and how she would function. There were cheers all around.

Within the hour, men led by Cudro and Pete were gathering the materials we would need and starting work on altering the commandeered Spanish vessel. Meanwhile, Morgan and I were writing another letter to the general as a distraction. Morgan offered to forego ransoming any prisoners or towns, and to surrendering half the slaves, in exchange for our free passage with the remaining treasure.

Of course, in a day and a half we received a response. The good general refused to accept our proposals, and if we did not surrender according to his original conditions within two days, he would destroy us by all means at his disposal. Thankfully, the fire ship was almost finished.

The small commandeered Spanish ship had been gutted, so she would burn and explode more quickly. Her hull had been packed with pitch and tar; and barrels of gunpowder – stolen from the Spanish fortress when we arrived – had been placed below what was left of her decking. Hollow logs were positioned along her sides to look like cannon; other logs were propped about with caps on their tops to look like men at a distance. She would be sailed by twelve men, who were to get her as near as possible to whichever of the warships they could manage; grapple said ship; light the fuses, and dive overboard and swim away.

Pete stood proudly before her as Morgan and the captains came to inspect her. “I’llCommand’Er,” Pete announced.

“What?” Striker roared.

“I Can Sail’Er,” Pete countered. He gestured at the captains, who were regarding the flimsy little firetrap with trepidation and slowly inching back as if someone might suggest they do it. “No One Else Wants Ta. An’I ’Ave Na’ Done One FunThing This Raid. I’Aven’t Even ShotAMan. I’mGoin’

Ta Be ARoman For ADay!”

Striker swore and yelled, “She’s not going to be sailed! We’ll have to tow her there, if she doesn’t sink before we can even get to the mouth of the lake, and then she’ll only reach her target with luck, the current, and some rowing. The wind in her sheet will have little to do with any of it.