Pirate Wolf Trilogy (122 page)

“They are not tears,” she insisted. “The sun
is in my eyes.”

“The sun will be beating down on your head
without mercy if you accompany us.”

“Is that your final word on it, Sir? I can
say nothing more to sway your decision?”

“Evangeline…Eva… look at yourself and try to
see what I see: A young, beautiful woman of gentle breeding who has
already been through hell and survived by the grace of God alone.
One who is totally unsuited to tramping across miles of rock and
forest and swamps in the scorching heat.”

“One who spent the night in your bed and thus
must surely have been rendered helpless and witless and incapable
of buckling her own belt thereafter?”

“That has nothing to do with it,” he said
after a moment.

“I’m glad to hear that, Captain, because if
you do attempt to leave me behind, I will buckle more than just a
belt around my waist and I will set out on my own and you may have
my thanks for having brought me this far. I came here to find my
father and find him I will, with or without any further help from
you.”

Dante’s expression did not change by so much
as a blinked eyelash. “I could bind you hand and foot and toss you
into a cargo bay.”

“You could certainly try.”

Her words so closely echoed Isabeau Dante’s
when his father had threatened much the same thing, that Gabriel
raked his hands into his hair and looked away. When he turned back
again, his face was hard, his eyes flat and cold. “I do not, for
one moment, believe you can keep up or that you will last longer
than half a day, but if it will serve to prove my point, then by
all means, you’re welcome to join us. You will carry the same
weight in weapons and water as the rest of the men. You will rest
only when we rest, and by God’s ballocks, if you lag behind we’ll
leave you where you fall. Is that quite clear?”

“Brilliantly clear,” she said.

He growled deep in his throat, more at his
own lack of common sense than anything else. Confronted with the
choice of taking her into his arms and kissing that magnificently
stubborn mouth, or turning and walking away to maintain some
semblance of authority, he chose the latter. He reached over and
snatched his hat back, squashing it on his head before he turned
and retraced his steps along the rocky path.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The insects were unbearable. They swarmed in
clouds and feasted on any exposed, sweaty flesh. Second only to the
sucking gnats was the scorching sun. It was directly overhead by
the time Dante had organized his landing party, hot as the fires of
Hades, and turned the rocky ground into vaporous embers beneath
their feet.

When Dante called for volunteers, every last
crewman stepped forward, even the wounded He selected a hundred and
twenty of the strongest, promising the others they would not miss
out on any action against the Spanish; there were more than enough
of the bastards to go around.

Two groups were dispatched ahead of the main
force. The first was lightly burdened to move fast as the men
scouted the terrain ahead and marked the best path for the rest to
follow. Another group of twenty, with the master gunner, James
Giddings, in command, was charged to set up a system of runners to
carry the alarm forward when Muertraigo began to move through the
bight.

Every available jolly boat and longboat rowed
back and forth to the little beach offloading men and supplies and
weapons. When the last crewman had been set ashore, Stubs ordered
the same boats to take up tow lines and start the laborious process
of dragging the
Endurance
back to open water.

Gabriel set off across land, leading the
seventy armed men who followed, all of them with water pipes slung
across their backs, pouches of powder and shot tied to their belts,
and whatever food they could tuck into their shirts. The strongest
of the burly lot carried arquebuses on their shoulders, cumbersome
trumpet-nosed weapons but deadly at close quarters. The rest were
armed with cutlasses, pikes and pistols.

Eduardo had found Eva stout boots to protect
her feet against the sharp rocks and pebbles. She balked, at first,
at the thick woollen stockings he advised her to wear, but after a
mile of tramping up and down the hills, she came to appreciate the
buffer between her heels and the coarse leather. She mimicked the
other crewmen and wore a kerchief tied around her head over which
sat a hat with a brim of sorts, not nearly as wide or dashing as
the one Dante wore. Her hair was plaited into a long, glossy braid
that hung down her back over a loose white shirt with tight-fitting
cuffs and collar, both of which helped deter the bugs from crawling
up her arms and down her neck.

A swordbelt was strapped around her waist and
a leather bandolier criss-crossed over her chest, hung with an
assortment of pouches containing shot and powder and dry biscuits.
A skin of water hung at her waist and bounced against her hip with
each step she took.

True to Dante’s warning, the landing party
moved swiftly up and over the hilly land, staying as close to the
shoreline as possible. They waded across the mouths of swampy
estuaries and passed through forests so thick they had to hack a
path with their cutlasses. The patches of dense mahogany and pine
forests gave some relief from the sun, but they paid the price with
thicker clouds of insects.

Eva stayed close on Eduardo’s heels.
Determined not to fall behind, she pushed herself to keep apace,
her jaw set, her expression grim and stubborn. Dante paid her no
heed. He strode in the lead, calling a halt only when a messenger
came back from the scouting party.

Eva felt fairly confident of her abilities;
she had been on many a hunting party with her father since she had
been old enough to ride a horse. She enjoyed hiking and fishing in
the country, and while she was no expert, she could parry a sword
thrust, load and shoot a pistol without blowing herself off her
feet. If she needed motivation, she had only to think of her father
possibly being somewhere up ahead and her stride lengthened and the
aches in her limbs were pushed aside.

The men seemed to develop an easy gait that
swallowed the miles under the bright sunlight. Most of the
bastards, she noted, did not even show a bead of sweat. The gnats
appeared to leave them alone as well and at one of the infrequent
stops, Eduardo plucked the leaves from a particularly noxious
stinkweed and crushed them with spit, then smeared the juice across
her neck and cheeks.

In the late afternoon, when the sun was the
hottest, they came across another wide blue hole, the water so
clear they could see a hundred feet down into the depths. Dante
marched right past it, barely pausing to scoop a hatful of the
water over his head. Most of the men did likewise, dipping their
hats or soaking their kerchiefs before moving on. Rendered bug-free
by Eduardo’s disgusting concoction, Eva was reluctant to splash her
face or neck, but she took the opportunity to have a long drink of
warm water from the skin hanging from her belt. It was almost
empty.

Feeling a tickle across her nape, she looked
up to see Dante watching her. She smiled as sweet a smile as she
could muster and replaced the bung in the skin, adjusted her
various pouches, and continued walking.

By the time darkness forced a halt for the
night, her shoulders had gone beyond agony into numbness. Her back
felt like one large blister and when she sat to remove her boots
and stockings, there was barely enough strength in her arms to do
so.

There would be no fires on such a dark, clear
night, so the men sat on the rocks and chewed on hard biscuits and
strips of dried beef. Thankfully they had stopped beside a stream
of fresh water and most drank until their bellies sloshed when they
walked. Water pipes and skins were refilled before most of them
wandered off to find a flat patch of ground to sleep for the
night.

The sky overhead was a brilliant swath of
stars so bright and clear they cast a faint glow over the
landscape. Eva was exhausted but curiously exhilarated. She waited
until most of the men had moved away from the stream before she
knelt and scooped handfuls of the fresh, cool water over her face
and across her neck. She leaned over like she had seen the men do
and sucked the water straight into her mouth, thinking she had
never tasted anything half so sweet and pure. She sat back and let
the water trickle down under her shirt, then unlaced the collar to
let her skin breathe.

Wriggling out of her boots, she pulled off
the stockings and sank her feet into the water, almost whimpering
with the pleasure. She swished her feet back and forth, dug her
toes into the soft, sandy bottom, and used the starlight to assure
herself there were no masses of open blisters on her heels or
ankles. Remarkably, there were none.

“You did well today, Mermaid.”

Eva accepted the compliment without looking
up. “Thank you, Captain. I’m sure you are disappointed to have to
say so.”

“On the contrary.” He chuckled as he sat
cross-legged beside her. “I am never reluctant to give praise where
praise is due. And praise, in this case, is most definitely due. I
estimate we’ve covered at least ten miles with all the ups and
downs and wading through bogs.”

“Only ten miles?” She grimaced, for it had
felt like twenty times that much.

His grin gleamed white under the starlight.
“Are you up for another short jaunt?”

“In the dark?”

“Not far. Just to the top of that rise. There
is something I thought you might like to see.”

All Eva wanted to do was lay back where she
was and sleep with her feet dangling in the river.

“I guess I could manage it,” she said
reluctantly.

He waited while she dried her feet and put
her boots back on, then stood and extended a hand to assist her
up—for which she was thankful as her legs protested mightily at
having to move again and she might have ended up face down in the
stream.

He kept hold of her hand and started walking
up the nearby rise, moving around trees and brush with a lightness
of step that made Eva want to smack him.

At the top of the shallow hillock, he took
his hat off and combed his fingers through his hair, letting the
night air cool his scalp.

“Look over there,” he said, pointing
west.

Eva followed his finger and saw nothing but
the rocky landscape stretching out before them like a stark black
etching against the starlit horizon. Further inland, to their
right, was a dark band of forest.

“You’re trying too hard and looking too far.
Look there… in the crack between those rocks.”

This time when he pointed his finger, he
stood directly behind her and touched his hand against her cheek.
The phenomenon he was pointing to became clear at once. It was a
faint bluish-green dome of light seeming to rise in fan-like
streaks. The source was perhaps two hundred long paces away and as
she watched, the light undulated and rippled, growing stronger in
places, weaker in others.

“What is it?” she asked in a whisper.

“I am not entirely sure. I was going to have
a closer look when I came across you sitting by the stream. Care to
join me?”

Every one of her aching muscles stabbed her
in protest as she nodded.

“Excellent. Watch your step and follow
me.”

He led the way, his eyes as keen as those of
a cat as he picked a path down the far side of the slope. He took
her hand several times as they navigated through thick patches of
gorse and around clusters of jagged rock. As they approached the
shimmering light, it seemed to grow stronger. At the same time, a
second and third glowing fan appeared behind the first, smaller and
much brighter, emanating from similar crevices in the rocks.

“I have heard of underground caverns and
caves where water collects,” Dante said. “Something in or on the
surface of the water reacts with the starlight or moonlight to
produce the glow, much like the effect certain sea creatures have
in the following sea behind a ship.”

Eva could see it clearly now; a long jagged
crack in the rocks that extended fifty paces or so and emitted the
tallest of the glowing streaks.

“It’s beautiful. Can we get closer?”

Dante studied the ground between them and the
crevice. It was black as pitch and revealed no visible path through
or around it, nothing that reflected the starlight. He was about to
caution her against barging ahead when she did exactly that, and in
the next instant he heard her cry out and saw her drop straight
down into the blackness.

He reached out to grab her but was too late.
His foot slipped and he felt his weight cracking through the porous
rock, taking him in a belly-lurching plunge down a steep, almost
vertical incline. The sliding fall lasted long enough for him to
hear his own voracious string of curses before the ground—and
Eva—came up abruptly beneath him.

Slammed together, they rolled in a tangle of
arms and legs, coming to halt at the edge of a wide ledge of rock.
A foot beyond was what looked like another blue hole, this one
formed in the basin of a vast underground cavern. The ceiling was
at least thirty feet high, spiked with pale cone-shaped
stalactites, which were eerily mirrored by rising stalagmites on
the cavern floor. The surfaces of the walls and ceiling were wet
and shimmering with millions of tiny blue and green lights.

Dante tested his arms and legs, finding
nothing broken, then reached over to help Eva. “Are you hurt?”

“I…don’t think so. I scraped my arm when I
fell, but nothing is broken.”

He helped her stand, which elicited another
whimper as she rubbed a bruised rump. Her shirtsleeve was torn and
bloodied where a layer of skin had come off on the rocks, but she
seemed otherwise fine.