by Mia Pride
“Where’d ye hear it?” one of the scheming swain asked.
“From one of his crew. They were bragging about how they’d be the first to find Santiago’s offspring.” He leaned closer. “So I shanked him.”
A plan started to formulate in Thor’s mind. A crazy idea.
If these men were willing to kill for the information, the promise of a king’s ransom had to be accurate. Why else would they gut each other for it? Aye, they were all a bunch of scoundrels, but they didn’t kill just to kill, not without cause.
How many years had Thor waited to exact his revenge on the bastard? Was it just coincidence that the perfect opportunity had just presented itself? Or was it fate?
Thor didn’t believe in fate. Nor did he believe in coincidences. But he did believe in luck, and today was turning out to be his lucky day.
A slow grin covered his face, and he pretended to throw back another swig from his empty cup—the contents of which he’d surreptitiously poured into each man’s cup as he clinked mugs with them. He tossed the barkeep a sack full of coins, which he always did to maintain the secrecy of his identity, then waited outside the tavern until the three men who’d been whispering about Santiago’s bairn stepped through the door.
Thor wasn’t a small man. Even as child of ten, he’d been taller than most men in his mother’s clan. She was a MacLeod, and after his bastard Viking father left his mother to the care of her family, Thor had repudiated any connection to the whoreson—but he couldn’t deny it when he glanced at his reflection. For a long time, he’d shaved the wheat-colored hair from his head, only recently growing it out because he realized how much more savage it made him appear. Being a pirate was all about appearances. The only physical trait he’d inherited from his mother was her blue eyes. Thank God for that, because it meant when he did peer at his likeness, he could still make eye contact with himself, for he saw her instead of his traitorous father.
He was well over six and a half feet tall, and weighed as much as an ox. Even still, he was quiet, and the three men didn’t hear him approach. He bashed one on the head, knocking him out cold, then he grabbed the other two by the scruffs of their necks and jerked them into the alleyway behind the tavern.
One of the men pissed himself before passing out. The other stared at Thor as though he were God or the devil, it made no difference.
“Tell me where I can find the bairn?” Thor demanded.
The scab’s eyes widened, knowing instantly to whom Thor referred.
“I…I dinna know.”
“Then how were ye planning to find him?”
“Might be a her.”
Thor tightened his grip on the back of the imbecile’s neck and leaned in closer. He spoke slowly, pronouncing each word in a clipped tone. “What was your plan?”
“We were going to put the word out. Offer a small reward for information.”
“And then take the larger reward.”
“Aye.”
Thor nodded. “Sounds like a solid plan. And what makes ye think that the child survived?”
“No telling.” The man was shaking so hard he vibrated Thor’s arm.
“Here’s your new plan—go home and pretend ye never heard of the bairn, or risk me finding ye and tearing your arms off and shoving them up your arse.”
“Aye, sir.” He nodded emphatically. “Aye, never heard of whatever it is ye speak of.”
Pressing his lips together in thought, Thor head-butted the scab and dropped him to the ground beside his friends.
Sounded like as good a plan as any.
Thor grunted and nodded to himself again. This was truly happening. Revenge for his mother, for himself, for every man, woman and child Santiago had ever harmed, was within reach. Retribution would be his. And he refused to think of the bairn as being one of those victims, though guilt did prick his gut for it was likely true.
He stepped over the sleeping shites and made his way down to the wharf. The sun would soon be rising, and he needed to make certain his crew was on board with this newest mission, and that the reward of a chest full of gold and the satisfaction of revenge was well received.
A slow grin filled his face. Aye, soon he’d have Santiago’s child tossed in the dark cell of The Sea Devil. He’d arrange to meet with the Spanish captain and toss the body at the man’s feet—for he absolutely could not let a child of Santiago live, not when the man wanted it badly enough to offer such a massive reward. Then, when knowing dawned on the bastard’s face, Thor would sink his blade deep into Santiago’s heart. Revenge complete. An eye for an eye. A loved one for a loved one.
Thor ignored the bitter taste his own thoughts left on his tongue. He was a pirate. This was what pirates did. They ravaged, maimed, stole, took lives. Part of the brethren code he’d vowed to keep was not taking a life unnecessarily. But there had to be someway to get around that.
As he marched toward his ship, anyone scurrying around the docks at this bleak hour leapt out of his way, not wanting to cause trouble with a man the size of a mountain. The rest of them stayed where they were, hidden in the shadows, waiting for someone more vulnerable to pass by. Bodies heaved. Moaned. They were all up to no good.
Thievery.
Assault.
Smuggling.
Debauchery.
Thor had seen it all. And honoring the code of the brethren, if he came across an innocent being abused, he always stepped in. While he thought on it, he watched a lass leap across several barrels as two wharf guards chased her, their swords clinking as they shouted at her about the promise of the hangman’s noose. She was dressed in breeches, but there was no hiding the feminine curves she was blessed with. The moon lit off her creamy skin and the flash of her wicked smile. Added to that, her hair fell loose of its plait in wild black curls that surrounded her face like a shroud of devilry. Och, Thor liked her. A lot. Had he not been on a mission, and she not running—quite well, might he add—from the authorities, he might have asked her to join him aboard his ship for a dram.
Thor grinned, watching her impressive dodging. She thrust one long leg out to catch the top of a barrel with a dainty foot, making running from wharf guards look like an elegant dance. The lass was clearly used to being chased by the authorities—and with getting away. She taunted them with lewd remarks he’d never heard come from a lass’s lips and made a rude hand gesture at them as she darted into a darkened alley.
That was a lass who could take care of herself. His kind of woman.
Chuckling, he sauntered off, thinking it might be fun to go after her and offer her that dram after all, but she’d likely take his offer of respect as him wanting something else, and he might end up with a knife in his gut. Or worse—his ballocks.
Better to mind his own business. And keep his precious parts.
The Sea Devil loomed before him, the Devils of the Deep flag safely hidden and the merchant’s flag swaying in the evening breeze in its place. Every time he saw her, his heart swelled as it had the first moment he’d found out the ship was his. It was after he’d escaped from Santiago. Shaw had seen fit to give him the twenty-two-gun galley in an effort to turn his mind from revenge and back on the brethren. The responsibility of being the captain had been exactly what Thor needed to get his head back in the game. His men respected him. He respected himself. He had more to focus on than just the revenge he’d lived and breathed for the better part of two decades. But that didn’t mean he’d forgotten. Nay, he’d been a wild animal in hiding. Hibernating that need for vengeance until the right time presented itself. As it just had.
Thor leapt the few feet to the rope ladder and climbed. They never left a plank out for any scoundrel to climb aboard. That was asking for trouble. Trouble they did not need. Or want. The ship deck was littered with swabs, half of them drinking and cavorting, and the other half dead asleep.
Thor picked up his bagpipes, licked his lips, blew into the pipe, setting the tone for the music and then gave it his all, playing the same ballad he
had in the tavern and longing for the seas to embrace them once more. Those who’d been asleep awoke, and those who’d been carousing quieted. They listened to their captain play, and when Thor was done, they waited for what he had to say.
“A treasure awaits us.” Thor met each of their gazes, nodding. “A bounty at this port that will lead us to a chest of gold doubloons.”
“Spanish gold,” someone muttered with obvious pleasure.
“What kind of bounty?” another asked.
Thor grinned, settling his pipes back in their case. “’Tis the bastard bairn of none other than Captain Santiago Fernandez.”
There were a few sharply indrawn breaths, and the men grew silent, waiting for their captain to expand on his words. He searched the sea of faces for Edgard, his first mate and second-in-command. Edgard’s face was guarded, but he did nod his support. The man had been with him for as long as The Sea Devil had been his, and Thor trusted him implicitly.
“I dinna know if ’tis a lass or lad, but I do know he or she would be twenty by now. We’ll put out the word for a small reward, and once we’ve the bastard in hand, we’ll set sail for Scarba, and then arrange to meet Santiago to claim the gold.”
“Ye’re not going to give him the child.” Edgard made the statement rather than asking, having picked up on Thor’s choice of words.
“Nay. I’m going to kill the wee bastard. Kill Santiago. And take all the gold on his ship.”
The men cheered, all except Edgard, who he suspected would remind him of the brethren code when his men wouldn’t dare. Thor took the large mug of ale they passed him, swigged it hard and then tossed it in the air.
He set his mouth to the pipes again and played a victorious tune, his hard gaze on Edgard’s all the while. Screw the code. Vengeance would be his. The taste of sweet retribution was already thick and delicious on his tongue.
* * *
Read the rest of THE SEA DEVIL by Eliza Knight
Excerpt from SEA WOLFE
by Kathryn Le Veque
Enjoy this except from Book 4 in the Pirates of Britannia series…
Prologue
Near St. Ives, Cornwall
He knew they were out here.
It was early morning and the sun was barely up, turning the fog that had rolled in overnight into shades of gray. Everything was still and quiet. Even the sea was quiet. So very quiet.
But he knew it was a ruse.
The pirate commander known as Lucifer stood on the deck of The Madness of Melinoe, or simply the Melinoe, a small but fast and heavily-armed vessel that was known to fight battles against ships twice her size and win. This lady was fiery, and she was commanded by a man that no sane man would tangle with. Any pirate named Lucifer was surely a man to be feared and avoided.
“What is wrong?” came a soft question. “What do you hear?”
The query came from a younger pirate, but a man who had proven himself indispensable on sea or on land. Felix d’Vant, tall and sinewy and blond, stood next to Lucifer, trying to figure out what had the man so fixated. He was simply staring out into the fog as if beholding a hidden enemy. But only tense, brittle silence filled the air. Lucifer simply shook his head.
“Hear?” he repeated. “I hear nothing. It is more a… feeling.”
Felix didn’t like that at all. Lucifer’s feelings were often truer than most men’s facts. Without a decisive command given by his leader, Felix took matters into his own hands. He turned to the men on deck, men who were on edge because Lucifer was seemingly on edge, and began to give them silent commands. His gestures were firm, bordering on panicky, and the men began to move. Something was in the air and they needed to be prepared. But before they could get to their posts, Lucifer suddenly bellowed.
“Hit the deck!”
Men began to fall, for a command of that nature wasn’t mean to be ignored. As they began dropping to the damp deck, a faint whistling could be heard that very quickly grew deafening, and the masts and wooden portions of the ship around them began to explode around them as nine-pound cannonballs hurled over the decks.
And just that quickly, they were in battle.
“Gun crews!” Lucifer roared. “Roll out the port side battery!”
Since the Melinoe was a smaller vessel, her gun deck was quite cramped and directly below the main deck. Lucifer found himself screaming commands to the gun deck officer, who in turn rolled out the five four-pounder cannons they had on the port side. The gun crews began to work furiously to load the long, iron cylinders.
They were very swift in their tasks. As the Melinoe continued north on her original course, the gun crews rolled out a strategic barrage of cannon fire in the direction of their enemy, hoping it would do enough damage to them before they could turn around and level off their other battery. The concussion was staggering, and the great blasts of smoke floated up onto the main deck, making the air toxic. As Lucifer rushed to the port rail with his spyglass to get a look through the fog, one of his men shouted to him.
“Lucifer!” Remy de Moray was a close friend and an excellent warrior. He was pointing up to the mainmast. “Look!”
Lucifer peered up through the damp, rolling mist to see a nine-pound cannonball wedged into the mainmast, not enough to collapse it, but enough to create an interesting situation. He shook his head.
“Damnation,” he muttered. “It is supporting the entire mainmast from the way it is sitting. We are bloody fortunate it stopped when it did and did not rip off the entire structure.”
Remy nodded, grinning. Young and handsome, with dark hair and jet-black eyes, Remy came alongside Lucifer.
“That’s a nine-pounder,” he said. Then, he looked out onto the fog. “That does not come from any ordinary vessel.”
Lucifer shook his head, his golden gaze still fixed on the mist. “There are only three ships that I know of that can fire off a cannonball of that size,” he muttered. “The French, and their main warship is near Lisbon last I heard, or the Spanish, or us. And I do not see the ships in our fleet firing on us.”
Remy wasn’t hard pressed to agree. “The Spanish, then?”
“The Spanish. Mayhap they are here to reclaim their glorious warship.”
Remy smirked. “Then they will have to find Shaw and his Devils,” he said. “The Leucosia belongs to the Scots now and they are welcome to the damned thing.”
Lucifer’s lips twitched with a smile. The Leucosia was the running joke between the English band of pirates, Poseidon’s Legion, and their Scottish brethren, the Devils of the Deep. Never was a ship such a hot commodity, a 22-gun beast of a vessel that the Spanish had stolen from the Dutch, the French stole from the Spanish, the English stole from the French, and now that beautiful vessel had been gifted to the leader of the Scottish pirates because Constantine had considered the vessel far too hot to handle. Only Shaw MacDougall, his dear friend and fellow pirate leader, didn’t know it.
But he surely knew it now.
“I am sure they are hoping to find her,” Lucifer said, “but their efforts shall be for naught. If it is Santiago and the Santa Maria out there, the Melinoe is faster. The Santa Maria has a heavy rudder and she cannot turn easily. She cannot outrun us and we cannot outfight her, so it is best for neither of us to try.”
“Then we run?”
“We run.”
They were nearing their port of Perran Castle. Once inside the cove that was protected by the enormous castle with its artillery facing out to sea, Captain Santiago Fernandez of the fearsome Spanish pirate gang, Los Demonios de Mar would be a fool to come within range of an entire battery of nine-pounder cannons. Lucifer and his men escaping into the safety of the cove was much like a child running from bullies and hiding in his mother’s skirts; the bullies were sure to run off when Mother threatened.
But Lucifer wasn’t concerned with turning tail from the Spanish warship; as he’d said, a ship the size of the Melinoe couldn’t outfight the big Spanish battle ship, so there was no shame in living to
fight another day. He knew that Santiago and his crew, if they even knew who they’d been shooting at, were possibly looking for men to interrogate about the Leucosia and perhaps even prisoners to exchange for the vessel, so he wasn’t going to make an easy target.
It was better to return home.
“Curtiz!” he bellowed. “Load the stern cannon and make haste for Perran!”
Curtiz d’Evereux, a rather cutthroat mercenary that had been with Poseidon’s Legion for almost a year, nodded sharply at the order and began moving the men, barking orders in a strict manner. He had a firm way about him and wasn’t afraid to jump in and work alongside the crewmen, something Constantine and Lucifer liked about him. But he had an edginess that was difficult to define, making him a somewhat mysterious character.
Had they known what the mystery was, they would have thrown his carcass to the sharks.
But they didn’t know, and probably wouldn’t until it was too late. They were nurturing a viper in their bosom. As happened with men who roamed the seas for wealth and adventure, Curtiz hadn’t disclosed much of his background, so no one knew much about him other than he’d once served the great mercenary de Nerra army out of Cumbria. The motto among the pirate brethren was “ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies”, so inquiring about a man and his background simply wasn’t done. Men proved themselves in the eyes of their commanders and comrades and that was all that mattered. Curtiz was capable and that was all Lucifer cared about.
But that trust would possibly be his undoing.
At the moment, however, all men were rushing to secure the ship so they could live to fight another day. The dark sails of the Melinoe were unfurled, even in the fog, to catch whatever breeze there was while, down below, a myriad of prisoners began the ancient rowing rhythm to the beat from the Row Master. Boom, boom… boom, boom. The Melinoe began to pick up speed, enough so that a second barrage of cannonballs did no damage at all, sailing harmlessly out of range as the Melinoe slipped up the coast.
