Pirate Wolf Trilogy (128 page)

“But you believe he will.”

“I
believe
he will, yes, but he’ll be
wary of being caught twice with his breeches down around his knees
and will be more cautious going forward.”

“I see.” She sighed, watching him pull up
his own breeches and tuck himself away.

“Do you? Do you see that I
mean it, Eva.” He stepped close and cradled her face in his hands,
forcing her to look up into his eyes. “From here on out, you
must
do as I
say.”

“Yes, Captain.”

He made a low noise in his throat as if he
did not quite believe her sincerity. At the moment, however, he
could not bring himself to challenge her any further. Her mouth was
swollen from his kisses, her eyes were shining with an emotion he
dared not acknowledge too closely. He had to struggle to keep his
own face blank, although he was coming to realize that every time
he looked at her, he wanted to smile. His whole body wanted to
smile, if that was possible.

“Dangerous,” he murmured.

“What is?”

“You. Us. This.”

Her eyes shone even brighter. “I’m not
afraid. I know I should be, but I’m not.”

Gabriel felt something
twist in his chest. He brushed the back of his fingers down her
cheek and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. He was glad she was
not afraid… for the moment… which was why he had not yet pointed
out the fact that Muertaigo would have been foaming at the mouth
after the attack. He would have discussed the dinner on board
the
Endurance
with Lawrence Ross, and more than likely described in minute
detail the lovely blonde, green-eyed wife of the erstwhile Captain
Padilla, right down to the engraved silver locket she wore nestled
between her breasts. Ross would have to be a compilation of all the
fools in all the world if he failed to recognize his own former
fiancée… an obstacle to his greed that he believed he had arranged
to have permanently removed back in Portsmouth.

A furious Spanish pirate
and a foiled conspirator made formidable enemies even if they had
not joined forces. Toss the treasure from the
Nuestro Santisimo Victorio
into the
stew pot and Dante wondered if he, himself, was not a little
mad.

Stubs’ advice had been
sound. Watch and track and wait for reinforcements to arrive.
The
Avenger
,
captained by his father, Simon Dante, was the largest and most
heavily armed of the Dante fleet. Jonas would row his
Tribute
by hand if
necessary to come to his brother’s rescue. The problem was that
both ships had peeled off and sailed for New Providence. That only
left his sister’s ship, the
Iron
Rose
, and Geoffrey
Pitt’s
Christiana
at Pigeon Cay, neither of which had left the recent fracas in
the Straits undamaged.

No, he could not count on help arriving any
time soon.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The master gunner, James
Giddings, and two of the twenty men he had set out with after
leaving the
Endurance
arrived in camp mid-morning. Charged with following the
progress of the Muertraigo’s galleons and setting up a system of
runners to warn of their approach, Giddings had moved quickly along
the coast and was surprised to find Dante’s larger group had
arrived first at the Wells. He had left two men at each post, a
mile apart. As the galleons passed each position, one man would run
ahead to alert the next post, while one remained behind to build
the signal fires that would guide the other Dante ships through the
bight... should any of them arrive in time.

Giddings was pleased to
report the
Endurance
had safely left the inlet at dusk the previous night with the
wind in her sails and further, as a parting gesture Stubs had, to
the rousing cheer of the men listening, holed the crippled galleon
and sent it to a watery grave. Muertraigo’s remaining two galleons
along with the English
Cormorant
had been well into the bight by then, but not too
far that they would not have seen and heard the thunder of the
guns.

Rowly grinned. “Good on Stubs. The Spaniard
will think we’ve done our worst and are heading for home.”

Dante rubbed a hand across the nape of his
neck. “Perhaps. In any case we have a good deal of work to do.” He
cast around the camp and frowned. “Where is Chandler?”

“Right beside you,” said a voice, so close
on Dante’s shoulder he jumped back and put a hand to his sword
hilt. All he could see at first was a cluster of rocks and bush,
but then the rock seemed to move and take on the shape of a
man.

William Chandler stepped forward, hands on
his hips and laughed, a deep-bellied sound that brought most of the
crewmen who had been resting by the fire to their feet. He was
stripped down to a narrow loincloth and his exposed skin was
smeared head to toe with muck.

“You asked what was in the heavy barrels I
insisted we bring. Now you know. ‘Tis mud from the caverns, home to
the wee creatures that take on the appearance of whatever you stand
beside. I was told by the natives that they used it to turn
themselves invisible when the Spanish came to raid the island for
slaves.”

As soon as Dante’s wits returned, he reached
out a hand to touch Chandler’s arm. He studied the slime that came
away on his fingers, marvelling at the way the color and hue
changed as he moved his hand from rock to leaf. It took a few
moments for the little creatures to work their magic, but when they
did, it looked as if he had lost the tops of his fingers.

“I’ll be damned.”

“They don’t like cloth unless you piss on it
first,” William said with a toothy grin, then brusquely cleared his
throat when he saw Eva come up quietly behind Gabriel. “Beg pardon,
my dear, but a fact of nature is a fact of nature.”

“I noticed it in the cavern,” she said.
“That they faded when I wiped my fingers on my shirt. How long does
the effect last?”

“A couple of hours, no more. But ponder the
beauty of having half a hundred men lying on the beach and rising
up at once looking like living sand. The Spaniards will do more
than just piss down their legs. They’ll be afraid to step five
paces onto the shore afterward without shooting at it every inch of
the way! At night, what’s more, the little creatures glow, as
you’ve seen, and for that, we can use their own former crewmates
against them.”

He reached behind and picked up one of the
skulls he had brought from the macabre wall in the cavern. It was
smeared with the mud and blended, for the moment, with the rock it
had been sitting on. “In the caves, they glow off the light each
other makes, but under starlight or moonlight, they turn white as
ghosts. Imagine a score of them set on the rocks or on the
beach.”

“Aye,” Rowly muttered. “That would cause a
squirt or two.”

Dante’s men, who had been spooked once
already, saw the skull and took several steps back en masse with
some hurriedly crossing themselves.

“Spaniards,” William guffawed loudly raising
the skull in his hand, “who were afraid of what I had under my
loincloth.”

His attempt at humor was rewarded by a few
nervous chuckles and an arched eyebrow from Eva.

Gabriel was admittedly intrigued. He knew of
whole crews who had abandoned a ship after seeing the strange
lights known as St. Elmo’s Fire dancing across the yards and masts.
Seeing ghostly, disembodied skulls could very well send the
fervently religious Spaniards into a panic.

He turned to Rowly and Giddings. “Scout the
beach for the best positions to place the men, both the live ones
and the, ah, dead ones. I’d give a few fingers and toes to have a
couple of stout cannon to mount on the hills, but we’ll have to
make do with what we have.”

Another commotion at the edge of camp had
him turning in time to see Billy Crab emerging from the forest with
the carcass of an enormous wild boar slung across his shoulders and
two thirty-pound piglets dangling from his belt.

Rowly looked around at the clutch of crewmen
who still had not moved. He waved a hand and spurred them on with a
jovial bellow. “Don’t just stand around gawping, lads! Get those
fires going! Looks like we’ll be fillin’ our bellies with fresh
meat tonight.”

~~

While the boars were skinned, cleaned and
spitted over the fire to roast, Gabriel took most of the men down
to the beach. They worked hard until dusk, digging out trenches and
finding hidey-holes in the rocky slope that were ideal for the
ambush.

Giddings, after chewing on Gabriel’s comment
about the lack of cannon, came up with a clever, if somewhat
archaic alternative. He found pairs of slender, pliable palms and
tied ropes to the top. He then fashioned a sling out of a leather
pouch and while Dante watched with a skeptical eye, he had men haul
back on the makeshift catapult and load rocks into the sling. On
his signal, the ropes were released and the rocks were sent hurling
out over the ridge to the beach below, kicking up sprays of sand
where they landed.

“Why does that make me feel like David
flinging stones at Goliath?” Gabriel wondered aloud.

Giddings, a man of few words, only grinned
and beckoned Billy Crab forward. The next sling held a hollowed-out
coconut shell filled with pebbles and gunpowder. When it was
released, and before it struck the ground, Billy drew his crossbow
and fired a bolt tipped with a flaming rag. The bolt struck the
shell in mid air and the two halves, sealed with mud, broke apart,
peppering the beach with fiery little missiles.

Dante looked at the grinning gunner and his
new protégé.

“He hasn’t missed a shot yet,” Giddings
remarked casually. “I also plan to render the boar fat to use as
Greek fire. Burns as hot as pitch or tar. I’ll need to take a few
men off the beach to gather and clean out the coconuts.”

“Take as many as you need,” Dante nodded,
deciding he was glad Giddings was an ally and not an opponent.

The rest of the long afternoon was spent
stripped to the waist and working alongside the men. At one point
Gabriel stopped for water and saw Eva sitting with Eduardo and the
others who had been set to the task of cracking the coconuts and
scraping out the sweet white meat so the shells could be dried.
Another time he noticed her walking past carrying a kettle full of
melted boar fat, her face shiny with sweat, her hair flying loose
about her shoulders. He was about to call to one of the men to
relieve her of the heavy pot, when she lifted one hand off the
handle to toss him a smile and a wave.

He watched her until she rejoined the circle
of working men, none of whom jumped up to help her, but all of whom
approved of the fact the mermaid was willing to work as hard as
them.

Another thought occurred as
he watched her set the pot on the sand, for he could not remember a
cast iron kettle being among the critical items they brought along
on the trek across the island. The answer came when he saw William
Chandler dragging a timber sled out of the woods, the slats loaded
down with supplies. Over the past four years, Dante realized, he
must have anticipated the need to squirrel away caches of stores
and equipment in various locations along the way between the beach
and the wreck of the
Victorio
.

By nightfall, the men were exhausted and
hungry. Chandler had gone foraging again and come back with a sack
full of wild onions, roots, mangos, and peppers hot enough to scald
lips and tongues for hours after the meal. They were used sparingly
to season a broth made from the boiled heads and viscera, and by
the time the meat was roasted, the men sat down to a feast that
left them happily bloated and covered in grease.

~~

Eva ate until her belly protested. She sat
between Gabriel and her father listening to them exchange stories
about their privateering adventures, and when Dante excused himself
to set up the system of watches and lookouts, Eva remained with her
father. They talked quietly together, still trying to catch up on
what they missed in each other’s lives for the past four years. Of
most interest to Eva was how he had come to lose his eye, but after
several attempts to pry the story from him failed, she concluded
the memory was either too painful or too gruesome for him to talk
about.

When his remaining eye began to droop, she
gave him a warm kiss on the cheek and made the excuse that she,
herself, was tired. Wide awake, she curled up on a bed of palm
fronds and within moments heard him snoring from twenty feet
away.

She could see Gabriel from her pallet and
was content just to watch him for a while. He and Rowly and
Giddings were talking strategy, drawing out plans in the dirt with
some broken sticks. Her gaze went from there up to the umbrella of
surrounding trees, where she was lulled by the play of reflected
firelight on the underside of the swaying palm fronds. Here and
there through gaps she could see patches of starlit sky.

Two months, she thought. Two short months
ago she would not, in any of her wildest dreams, have envisioned
being part of such a scene with a belly full of wild boar, a bed
made of leaves and sand, tree branches for a roof, and crew of
rough-hewn privateers for company. She would not have imagined
wearing breeches and a man’s cambric shirt and feeling utterly
comfortable doing so. She would never have believed she would shed
her clothes in a forest pond and, naked, seduce a man into joining
her there. Most of all, she would not have imagined spending a
blissfully shameless night in the arms of a man like Gabriel Dante,
easily the most dangerous, most exciting, most enigmatic man she
had ever encountered.