Seize the Fire (45 page)

She put her hand over her mouth. She could feel herself shaking. Sheridan slashed at the last man standing, cut his forearm, feinted aside and then drove for his heart. Olympia watched the sword point go in—halfway to the hilt—while the pirate grabbed the blade with his hand as if he could stop it as he fell.

Sheridan knelt swiftly by the man Olympia had shot. For an instant he slanted a look back at her, and in that moment she knew for certain she had killed a man. Sheridan's face was frightening: fixed in calm, and yet alight with a cold flame of excitement. His mouth curved, almost a smile. It was as if the devil stared out of his eyes, not a human being at all. He turned back as though she didn't exist and stepped over the body.

With a casual move he bent over another robed figure that lay curled and groaning on the deck. Sheridan jerked back the pirate's head and cut his throat.

She watched him rove among the bodies like an avenging angel making sure of retribution. Olympia realized the noise from above had ceased sometime when she hadn't noticed. There were a few shouts—not in English—and she began to shake worse than ever.

Sheridan stood at the foot of the ladder, looking up. His chest rose and fell, and his face was still a devil's face—his eyes light gray and inhuman. He waited. The shoulder of his coat gaped, showing a long slash of bloody white shirt, but he gripped the sword as if his hand were welded to it.

Olympia felt as dizzy as if she'd been wounded herself. Her ears hummed. She saw Sheridan raise the sword and yell at someone above, but could make no sense of the words. She had to concentrate on each breath to keep herself from fainting.

It seemed that a long time passed with just the rushing sound in her ears and a haze with Sheridan at the vague focus of it in her vision. The next thing that came clear was Sheridan in the passage with her, taking the pistol from her cramped fingers. There was blood all over his hand; it smeared on her skin; she could smell it. She shrank back, looking up at him in horror.

He met her eyes. The weird calm suddenly vanished, and confusion seemed to overtake him. "What is it?" he asked.

"Don't!" she cried. "I don't want you to touch me."

As soon as she said it, she wanted it back. It was wrong; it was unfair—and she saw by his face that the words were deadly.

He turned white. His hand dropped.

"You're all bloody," she said, in weak and desperate explanation. "Please—I'm afraid!"

A scowl made his face into a mask. His teeth showed in a terrifying grimace. "Afraid of
me?"
he shouted. "I'm protecting you! I killed 'em for you; I slaughtered those bastards! What do you think I did that for?" He grabbed her arm and hauled her out of the passage. "Look at me, damn you!" His shout echoed all over the gun deck. "Christ, you can't even look at me—what's the matter?"

Olympia stood trapped in his crushing grip, aware that they were surrounded by a gathering audience of silent Arabs, and that Sheridan's voice had gone to pleading. He didn't even seem to see the pirates, but stood there with his back to them, shaking her.

"What—do—you—want?" he cried in time to his jolting clench. "I had to do it. That wasn't me, do you understand?
That wasn't me!"

In her numbed haze, she saw that the
teskeri
hilaal had appeared around his neck. Now it was flashing gold, swinging free against his chest. "It wasn't me," he moaned, and then suddenly let go of her and dropped to his knees. He took an awful, sobbing breath, trying to wipe the blood onto his breeches with furious moves. One of the Arabs came forward, speaking quietly as he reached to take Sheridan's arm.

Sheridan lashed out instantly, up and swinging the gun. It was empty, but he aimed a murderous blow at the pirate's head. The man ducked, and suddenly the circle had closed, arms clutching Sheridan from all sides as he fought bare-handed. Olympia was past screaming, expecting at any second to see him cut down and slashed to death by the jeweled daggers.

But the Arabs had not drawn their weapons. By sheer number, they fought Sheridan to a standstill and held him. When he stopped struggling, the multiple grip on him relaxed to a surprising gentleness. He closed his eyes and threw back his head, panting.

"You are the princess," said the man who'd reached for Sheridan first. Olympia turned toward him with a start, astonished to hear him speak English. She wet her lips, making no response.

"This ship is mine," he said. He grinned, displaying gold-capped teeth. His dark eyes were feminine soft beneath kohl-black lashes, but his face was old with sun lines. He nodded toward Sheridan. "He has announced that he takes you as a gift to the Sultan Mahmoud. Is this true?"

She stared at him, at a loss to know what was the safest answer. She didn't dare look toward Sheridan.

The pirate leader waited patiently. At length he said, "An English ship. An Englishman. I first say no, it is not true. But he wears this
teskeri.
He speaks the tongue of Allah like a brother. He fights as a whirlwind and then turns his back on the enemy to dispute with a woman. It is a puzzle. I dislike a puzzle." He reached out and lifted her chin with one long finger. "I like an answer."

She turned her face away.

Sheridan spoke suddenly, something in Arabic. It caught the pirate's attention. There was a rapid exchange, and Sheridan tried to shake off the hands that held him.

The pirate leader laughed. "Let us speak in your tongue, my friend. Our beloved sister should hear that you wish to sell her into the Sultan's service. My experience is that English ladies do not consider it such an honor."

"What does a female's preference matter?" Sheridan snapped. "Take us there, and you'll have the Sultan's reward."

"Perhaps." The Arab turned his bead and spat. "What good does the Sultan's reward do to me? The great Mahmoud holds little sway here—the Wahhabis fight him. We take this ship in
jihad,
to kill the infidels and purify our land and water—not for the paltry honors of a Turk."

"Kill these English, and others will come to level the town and hunt you with their warships until there's no one left."

The pirate jerked his chin upward. "The English are less than grains of sand."

"Aye, and the number of their guns is greater," Sheridan said grimly. "They have no honor. They'll stand off in their ships beyond reach of your little boats and rain fire on you until ten of your women and children have died for every one of these sailors you kill. And then they'll come ashore and kill the rest. Aden will not exist. It will burn to the ground. I know this." He set his jaw. "I've done it."

For a long moment, the pirate leader regarded Sheridan. Then his dark gaze slid over the bodies sprawled on the gun deck. There were seven that Sheridan had killed, not counting the one Olympia had shot. A slow grin grew on the pirate's face. "Join us instead," he invited. "You are a good fighter. We will give you enemies to the ends of the earth and all the blood you wish to drink."

Sheridan's mouth grew queer and tight. "I don't want that."

The Arab chuckled. "Allah has truly touched your head, O killer of women and children. I will call you II-Maguún—The Crazy One—who slays like ten devils and then shows us his back merely to plead with a woman as if this were his hareem." He waved toward Olympia with a negligent, graceful flick of his bejeweled hand and looked aslant at Sheridan. "Why did you do that?"

Sheridan stared at him coldly, not answering.

"Why did you turn your back?" he persisted. "Are we so little and weak to you, warrior? Can you kill us all with one sweep of your sword?"

"No."

"You thought we loved you so much, then. You were unafraid. We are such women, you expected no revenge for the deaths you have dealt us."

"No!"

"Why, then?" The pirate tilted his head speculatively. "I would know what makes a man so brave."

Sheridan wet his lips. "It doesn't sound brave," he said, as if he were talking of someone else. "It sounds stupid." He moved uneasily in his captor's hands. "I don't know why I did it."

The pirate looked at Olympia. "He is mad, is he not?"

The question seemed utterly serious. She sensed an underlying point, some issue that the pirate leader was turning over in his mind. With the dark, soft eyes holding hers, she made a headlong decision to tell him the truth. "He has bad dreams. Sometimes he talks strangely," she said,

"and seems to think he's somewhere else."

Sheridan glared at her.

The pirate nodded, as if it confirmed his own opinion. He glanced around at the other men and spoke in Arabic. A debate broke out. Sheridan said nothing, but she saw his body grow stiff as he listened. Suddenly he jerked, freeing himself on one side, and flung himself toward a blue-robed pirate a few feet away.

"No!" he shouted. He seemed to disappear under a tangle of robes and then broke away, sending one man sprawling with a vicious kick. Somehow he'd gotten a dagger, and before they could catch him he had his blue-robed quarry backed up against the mast, the knife tip pressed beneath the pirate's ear. "You sell her and I'll butcher you." Sheridan's face was a calm devil-mask again. "I'll cut you apart and feed you to the jackals, and all your friends with you; don't touch her, do you hear me?" The pirate's head jerked as the dagger pressed harder, drawing a bright trickle of blood. "Do you hear me, you son of a bitch?"

The man's lips were drawn back in a tight grimace. He might not have understood the English words, but the intent was clear enough. Anyone could see that Sheridan was fully capable of driving the knife into the man's neck at any instant, right in front of all his comrades.

The leader called out a question in an amused voice. The trapped pirate answered, short and gruff. Sheridan flung him aside and faced the others with the dagger at the ready. "Who else?" he snarled.

"Be calm," the Arab leader said. "Leave the sound of battle and the groans of the dying and let your enemies breathe, O father of assassins."

Sheridan's fingers squeezed restlessly on the knife hilt. He lowered it a fraction, but he did not move. He stood in front of Olympia as if he could single-handedly protect her from the horde of armed men. The pirate looked around at the company and spoke an inquiry in Arabic. The others murmured assent.

He glanced aside at Olympia. "We are agreed—we will not kill these English sailors or burn the ship—not because we are
afraid
of their revenge, but because we honor Allah, who speaks in this mad Englishman's voice. Nor will we sell you away from him, since all have just witnessed here that it is not the will of God that we do so."

Thank you,
she thought.
Thank you, thank you, God
—
whatever name you go by here.

Sheridan still stood taut, the knife in his hand. He showed no sign of recognizing the truce that had been called, so Olympia summoned her courage and said steadily, "I think that is very wise."

The pirate gave his quick, gold-capped grin. "Little dove, do you know who you meet here?" He tapped his chest. "Salaa'ideen, who is called the Scorpion of the Sea, and I have not heard you wailing yet."

"I have not seen where it would help," she said honestly.

He gave a bark of laughter, though she'd hardly meant it as a joke. When he spoke to his men, she had the feeling he was relaying the comment, for they all looked at her and nodded, and several of them grinned like wolves. Sal-aa'ideen gestured toward Sheridan. "You have traveled far with him?"

"Very far."

"He is your protector. So he said."

She bit her lip. "Yes."

"Yet he fears you."

Olympia looked at the pirate in confusion. "Fears me? I'm sure that's not the case."

"He does." Salaa'ideen said it matter-of-factly. "A woman. And he such a fine killer. But the ways of Allah are inscrutable, blessed be His Name." The pirate leader shook his head and went on talking to her, turning from Sheridan as if he weren't there. "If it is so willed that we give up our victory, we obey, but there are still the affairs of men to attend to. Now I ask you, English princess—you have seen that we honor the instructions of God through your protector—tell me, how can these English sailors be prevented from turning on us when we release them?"

She automatically looked toward Sheridan. "I'm sure he could tell you that better than I."

"When he speaks, we will listen, of course. But I am no magician who presumes to put questions to Heaven." Salaa'ideen smiled slightly. "Then I could not dispute the answers."

Olympia glanced uncertainly toward Sheridan, expecting him to take over the discussion. He didn't. He just stuck the dagger in his belt and looked back at her, his expression completely unreadable.

It seemed she had no choice but to provide an answer. The whole scene became more and more like a bizarre dream, to be consulted by pirates on the most prudent move for them to make in a delicate situation. She felt, absurdly, like laughing. But Salaa'ideen was waiting, his hand resting on the golden handle of his scimitar, and the rest stood around her like a ring of sun-browned lions.

She tried to think of it as a political problem, separating wishes from reality.

"Have many men been killed?" she asked tentatively.

Salaa'ideen waved his hand. One of the robed figures swept up the ladder, spoke rapidly to someone on deck and returned to report to his leader.

"Thirty-five infidels," Salaa'ideen informed her. "Nine of the faithful—eight of them called to Paradise by the wrath of II-Magnuún," he added with a touch of pride. She took a deep breath. "And the captain?"

"He is alive. Injured. But not badly, I think."

Olympia closed her eyes and let out the air slowly. Then she looked up at Salaa'ideen. It felt treasonous, what she was about to suggest, but she could think of no other way to avoid more killing. Certainly, if the pirates simply released the ship, Francis would exact revenge, and she wouldn't put it past him to bombard the innocent residents of the town as Sheridan had predicted.

"Does anyone else know that you speak English?" she asked.