Return to Paradise (Torres Family Saga)

by Shirl Henke

  “The time has come, Aaron, my old adversary, for me to drive you from Espanola, once and for all!” He rang for a slave and instructed the cowering Indian to send for Vincente Yarros. The leader of his raiders would not be pleased with the early summons. “If I must be awakened before dawn, so can he.” Elzoro threw Brienne's message onto the table and took a deep drink of watered wine, then sat back to think.

  Suddenly the hounds erupted in frantic baying and yipping, as if on the trail of a runaway. He dropped the goblet and raced from the dining hall to the front entry.

  Yarros was approaching with half a dozen armed soldiers. At least three of the men, including Vincente, were bloodied. Two of them were dragging a captive. Rigo Torres.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Rudolfo watched the procession wind its way sinuously across the jungle floor. “They are widely spaced, easy prey for the darts. Have you the Caribee poison?”

  Caonu nodded silently, then said, “I will position a dozen men with blow guns in those candlebushes and another high in the silk cottons ahead. They can take down at least half of the men in front and in back of the prisoners.”

  “Good. I will have my men ready to attack the guards around Benjamin, Bartolome and the girl right there, after they have crossed the stream.”

  “We must time this most carefully, Rudolfo, else your brothers-in-law will be in grave danger.”

  “When I give the signal, strike. Remember, act at once.” Rudolfo smiled, then said, “Repeat the call to Benjamin and Bartolome, just to reassure them.”

  Caonu smiled. The trill of the aliyah bird had long been a means of communication between Taino boys at play, hunting in the jungle.

  Benjamin and Bartolome heard the trilling sounds and exchanged glances. Somehow their companions had found them. Knowing that they and the Tainos were far more at home here than the seamen gave them an advantage—yet Benjamin dearly wished he knew Rudolfo's exact plan. And above all, he wanted Rani out of harm's way.

  His eyes scanned the dense vegetation around the shallow stream ahead. Then he looked up toward the tall canopy of silk cottons beyond. He smiled, guessing Rudolfo's plan, then whispered in Taino to Bartolome, “Be ready. I'll push Rani to the ground when all hell breaks loose in the water.”

  The first mate came up behind Benjamin and jabbed him roughly with the hilt of his sword. “No talking in that heathen tongue. No talking at all!”

  Brienne had walked briskly at the front of the line, but for some perverse reason, suddenly decided to fall back. Benjamin swore to himself, then saw Piero, who was dawdling near the Taino prisoners. That puto might try to kill Rani out of jealous spite!

  The first dozen pirates crossed the stream and the guards prodded their captives into the water. Benjamin turned and gave an eye signal to the Taino captives. As soon as they crossed the stream and stepped into the underbrush, the hissing noise of blow guns filled the heavy air like a swarm of angry greenflies. Men's screams and curses mingled with orders from Brienne to regroup around the prisoners. All the men caught in the open of the stream had been downed by darts.

  “Caribee poison,” Benjamin said as he rammed his body headlong into the guard. Bartolome and Rani, along with the Taino prisoners, fell to ground and took cover. The corsairs broke ranks, terrified of the sudden death raining from the skies and impenetrable foliage around them.

  Rudolfo appeared from behind a large fern, and his sword made swift work of one pirate. Then, while two of his Spaniards held off the others, he quickly freed Benjamin's bonds and tossed him a sword and dagger. Another Spaniard freed Bartolome and all of them closed around Rani. The chaos was over as suddenly as it had begun. Pirates lay around them, either dead or paralyzed by the poisoned darts.

  “Cut Rani free and guard her,” Benjamin called to Bartolome and Rudolfo as he saw the gleam of Brienne's bald skull vanishing into the jungle. He raced after the captain.

  Brienne could hear Torres behind him. He damned Reynard and then damned him again for splitting their forces. Plunging ahead, he ran blindly, uncertain of his course in the trackless jungle. Then he tripped on a gnarled tree root. When he scrambled back to his feet, Benjamin appeared directly in front of him, sword drawn.

  “How the devil—?”

  “I grew up here, raised with the Tainos. You have run in a circle.”

  A bitter smile curled Brienne's lips. “Tis a pity we are not at sea where I could navigate better, but I still can fight.” With that he raised his sword. “Engarde, Monsieur Torres.”

  The shorter man was lightning fast and amazingly strong as he went on the offense, thrusting and slashing with deadly accuracy. “Let us see if you are half as good a fighter as your brother, physician.”

  Benjamin parried one wicked pass that nearly slipped under his guard, then made a feint to the left and inflicted a wide red slash on Brienne's arm. Unperturbed, the corsair concentrated on his opponent's blade.

  Torres was not the swordsman Brienne was. He had far less occasion to practice the art, but he did have a longer reach and he knew a trick or two. He studied the Frenchman's face, watched his cool, impassive moves. Even though he knows my men will catch up and kill him, he fights as if this contest were all that matters.

  Behind them the large oak tree rose, and on the ground its twisted roots spread out like tentacles. Smiling grimly, Benjamin remembered the big root on which Brienne had tripped. He began to go on the offensive, maneuvering them in a circle until he felt it at his heels. Then, seeing a light of triumph flash for an instant in the corsair's eyes, he tripped, stumbling backwards. Brienne lunged for the kill, but Benjamin did not fall. He twisted to the right in midair as the Frenchman thrust. The captain's blade dropped an instant later as he fell to the earth. Benjamin's dagger had caught him squarely beneath his breastbone.

  Benjamin stood, gasping for breath and looking down at the dead corsair. “You were a worthy foe, seawolf,” he murmured regretfully. Before he could turn he heard a fierce inhuman wail and felt the sting of a blade slash a glancing blow across his back. He whirled, only to find Piero crumpled on the ground, a small deadly knife protruding from his back. Rani ran into the clearing and threw herself into Benjamin's arms as the boy crawled with his dying breath to sprawl grotesquely across Luc Brienne's chest.

  “Oh, Benjamin, Benjamin! He was going to kill you,” she wailed, clinging to him, burying her head against the curve of his shoulder.

  He picked her up off the ground and held her with one arm, stroking her hair. “Tis all over now, Rani, and you have saved my life twice. How do you think I shall ever repay you, eh, little one?”

  * * * *

  Miriam sat with her head in her hands, beyond weeping. What will Rigo say when he learns of this? And Aaron? Again one hand ruffled through the letters, then fell upon the now closed ledger. It was all there, the ink long dry on the brittle pages.

  Shouting at the compound gates roused her from her lethargy. Then as she rose and walked toward the library door, it burst open and one of Rigo's men dropped to his knee in front of her.

  “My pardon, lady, but Don Benjamin's wolf is here.” As if to prove the assertion, Vero bounded past a cluster of men in the hallway and stopped before Miriam. She knelt by Vero and ran her hand over his thick, glossy fur with dread. Her palm came away bloody. Quickly she examined the wolf and found a long, shallow furrow across his right side. “He has been grazed by an arbalest bolt. Something has happened to Benjamin.” She pulled a linen kerchief from her pocket and dabbed at the blood. The wolf seemed not to mind the superficial wound. What could she do? Rigo and Guacanagari had gone to capture Elzoro. Aaron was half way to Santo Domingo. But Benjamin and Bartolome were at the mercy of that corsair!

  “Saddle the gray filly for me. I will ride to my husband and tell him evil has befallen his brother.” And warn him of the other as well...

  Rigo felt the sting of warm, fetid water slapping him in the face. The large, bearlike man standing over him had dumped a bucket o
f brackish water on him with malicious gusto.

  “So, you are awake at last. I did not intend to addle your wits. Don Esteban has other plans for you,” Yarros said.

  “I can well imagine. Somehow I doubt my wits will matter.” Rigo made no attempt to arise, just sat, watching to see what the big, brutal man they called Yarros would do. He prayed that Guacanagari and the other men would make no precipitous move. If they stormed the compound, the raiders would slaughter them.

  Yarros looked at the half-caste who had proven so elusive over the past months. Soaking wet, his shirt bloody and clinging transparently to his skin, he looked puny to a man of Vincente's girth. Yet there was a pantherish grace and suppleness in him that Yarros would never underestimate.

  Rigo studied the small hut where he was being held. Windowless and foul, it had no furniture in it, just a pile of filthy rags that served as a sleeping pallet in one corner. He would have to wait and gauge his opportunities to use the small dagger hidden in his boot. If he could not escape, then at least he could try to kill the renegade Frenchman who called himself Don Esteban Elzoro.

  As if conjured, Elzoro strode into the hut. “At last, we meet under the circumstances I have so long tried to arrange. You are devilish difficult to kill, half-caste.” He walked around Rigo, as if inspecting a piece of livestock.

  Rigo slowly stood up as Yarros watched him warily. He saw the savage gleam of triumph in Elzoro's eyes. “I know you disdain Indians in general, but why the vendetta against me in particular, Don Esteban? You have risked much to kill one worthless Taino.”

  “I have my reasons for wishing you dead, you mixed-blooded cur, but I need not explain myself to such as you.” Elzoro walked around Rigo, noting his unbroken, arrogant stance. “You have doubtless not come alone, but this compound is well fortified. Aaron Torres and all his stupid savages can storm it until hell freezes. Twill avail him nothing. That is why you attempted such a fool's errand, sneaking inside alone. Is it not?”

  “I would think by now a man who has been so soundly trounced by Guacanagari's savages would learn not to underestimate them,” Rigo said with cool contempt.

  Elzoro lashed out with a small riding whip, slapping Rigo aside his head. When Torres lunged for the planter, Yarros and another of his men seized him, holding him as Elzoro laughed.

  “You may serve some useful purpose ere you die, you half-blooded bastard. Yes, I do believe,” he paused to consider the small trickle of blood on Rigo's cheek, “you will prove far more amusing than the usual fellows. Even the most recalcitrant of my slaves cower and await their fate, like that stupid boy Juan who betrayed me. There was no sport in his death at all. You will go down fighting. Bring him to the pit.”

  Yarros nodded. As they shoved him from the hut and began to walk across the wide yard, Rigo considered his options. What kind of fiendish contest did the renegade plan? When they neared the pens where the baying hounds were kept, his skin began to prickle. He is going to feed me to his dogs!

  But they bypassed the large pen filled with snarling canines and turned a corner to where a large thatch-roofed shelter stood. Elzoro walked into the shade and crossed the floor, then took a seat on a crude wooden dais that overlooked a circular pit of smooth, hard-packed clay. The sunken arena was nearly twenty feet in diameter and a good fifteen feet deep. Stretching out his legs in front of him, he surveyed Rigo indolently.

  “I was awakened early and have been most out of sorts. It would seem your foolish younger brothers have been very careless.” With great satisfaction he watched Rigo blanch. “Yes, both Benjamin and Bartolome have been captured by the corsair, Luc Brienne.”

  “If he harms them, there will be no place on this island you can hide from the wrath of Aaron Torres.”

  The renegade laughed. “Never fear. The white members of the Torres family will not be killed, only driven from this island, forced to return to Marseilles. Tis just the tainted scum like you who must be eliminated.” He made an abrupt signal and a small, grizzled man bowed, then trotted off toward the dog pens.

  “This is where I train my hounds,” Elzoro said, gesturing to the pit in front of the dais. His eyes flashed dark and deadly as he added, “It is also where I punish runaway slaves. Watching a hound tear the entrails from a man is a most effective lesson for the runaway's fellows. Sometimes I allow them to watch. Other times they merely hear the screams.”

  “You have a sense of cruelty worthy of any Spanish mercenary. How comes a womanish Frenchman to enjoy such sport?” As Rigo spoke he could hear Yarros' men bringing the hounds.

  Elzoro laughed, then his eyes turned murky with remembrance. “Half my blood is Spanish. My mother was born of an old and impoverished noble house in Galicia.”

  “Yet you betray the Spanish with this pirate Brienne.” The sound of the dogs grew louder, more frantic.

  “I said my mother's house was impoverished. My father was a great favorite at the court of King Louis, but he fell into ill favor with young Francois. Something about a mistress the king fancied. Suddenly, at a most tender age, I found myself banished, shipped back to my grandfather's crumbling castle in Galicia. I have made my way by my wits ever since. I owe loyalty to neither France nor Spain, only to Reynard.”

  As he spoke, two of his men lowered a long, narrow plank over the side of the pit and stood by it, smiling. Six hounds were brought beneath the shelter, all of them leashed, bloodlust in their burning, reddish eyes.

  Elzoro stood up, a slow smile showing his large white teeth. Predator's teeth. He stroked his beard and considered the dogs and the infuriatingly calm, arrogant mercenary. “Twill be most interesting to see how long you can last. Perhaps, one dog at a time, just to test your mettle?”

  Yarros grinned and drew his sword, pointing the tip of it at Rigo's throat. “Walk the plank into hell, half-caste,” he whispered in coarse guttural Spanish.

  “I might prefer to die quickly and cheat your leader of his amusement,” Rigo said, unflinching and unmoving.

  “Ah, but then I would have to have Vincente throw you into the pit. Tis a fearful drop. You might break your leg and be immobilized when the hounds come at you.” Elzoro's voice was soft, persuasive.

  Silently Rigo allowed himself to be led to the plank. How many dogs could he kill before the renegade tired of the farce and unleashed the pack on him? If he could put on an unexpected show with his hidden dagger and kill a few, might he lure Elzoro near enough to the edge to throw the knife? A slim chance, that, but it was all he had left. He walked the plank.

  One hound was unleashed at the edge of the pit. Obviously conditioned for this arena sport, the beast ran to the plank and plunged down it toward the man waiting at the bottom.

  Rigo had only a split second to free the slender dirk from his boot before the hound threw itself at him. He raised his arm and deflected those deadly, ripping teeth while his blade flashed in his other hand, splitting the hound's soft underbelly from breastbone to groin. The dog screamed and fell to the hard, blood-darkened floor where it lay writhing until Rigo quickly cut its throat.

  The sound of clapping from Elzoro echoed eerily in the silence. “Always a trick left. Your resourcefulness does you credit, half-caste.” He turned to Vincente with a scathing look and several inventive oaths. “You mother of all fools! He had a blade and you did not search him to find it. I stood close enough—” He stopped his tirade just as suddenly as he had begun it. Stroking his beard, he let the toothy smile wreathe his face once more. “Now that you are safely down in the bowels of hell, with your blade, let us see how long you can continue to wield it. This is proving most diverting...most diverting.” He. nodded and another hound was unleashed, racing down the narrow plank toward the blood-spattered combatant below.

  * * * *

  Miriam huddled beneath the canopy of a large oak tree several hundred yards from Elzoro's compound with Vero sitting quietly by her side. Guacanagari knelt beside her, explaining all that had befallen since Rigo vanished into the fortress.
No, no, no! He cannot be dead—he cannot be dead! The thought kept hammering inside her head, even as she forced herself to attend his uncle.

  “My men watched them drag him unconscious to a hut near the dog pens. Then but a few moments ago they brought him across the yard to the place where a large thatched palm roof keeps us from seeing what lies beneath.”

  “Elzoro will kill him,” she whispered, then froze as the death shriek of a hound rent the air. Vero growled low in his throat.

  Guacanagari arose and faced the large group of Tainos and Spaniards. “We will attack the compound. They have few sentries watching. If you ride swiftly on your horses and my warriors use stealth to creep near the walls—”

  “No! You will all be cut down by shot and bolts.” Miriam looked from Manolo, her husband's friend who was in charge of the hato's stable, back to Guacanagari. “Those walls are ten feet high and well guarded. You yourself said there are several dozen heavily armed raiders within beside the regular inhabitants of the hato. They outnumber you. You cannot save Rigo by getting slaughtered.”

  “We can not stand here and do nothing while the hounds feast on his bones,” Guacanagari replied. Several of the men who had fought by Rigo's side and ridden with him chorused agreement.

  “I will go in first. Alone. There are things I have learned that I have no time to explain. The one called Reynard will not harm me.” She walked swiftly to her horse, the wolf dogging her heels, then took her medical bag from the saddle. Extracting a small, wickedly sharp scalpel, she turned to Guacanagari. “Have you any Caribee poison?”