He hustled them through the soft sandy soil at the foot of the hill toward the sea, and for a while Madeleine was in such shock she could not think ahead to their destination. But when her feet hit the hard-packed ridges of sand that marked the high-tide line, her head snapped up and she saw the great hulk of ship looming against the silvery sky.
A cry of fear escaped her, and she dug in her heels and heaved back against the hard grip of the man’s hand. If they were taken on that ship, there would be no going back.
But resistance was futile, even had he not been so strong. The sword swept up against Matthieu’s neck and pressed until Matthieu was forced back against her. The pirate pressed his face into Madeleine’s ear and spoke to her with quiet menace. No bluster, only cold threat, and she knew beyond certainty that if she cried out again Matthieu would be dead.
Minutes later they came upon the dinghies studded on the wet sand.
THE TARZINES WERE no cowards, despite their preference for helpless prey. They fought with a fierce gusto bordering on glee, and they moved faster than any humans Féolan had encountered. Still, the garrison at Blanchette was large and well trained, and he had little doubt the pirates would soon be driven back
He was never sure what made him glance down the beach. The air was full of shouting and screams, groans and roared curses. Even his Elf-ears could not have picked out one young voice. Yet something carried enough to prick at him—perhaps just the hint of a sound in the wrong register for fighting men. Perhaps a drifting wisp of the children’s fear.
Precious seconds ticked by as Féolan fought his way clear of the worst press of battle. But once he gained the sidelines, the night swallowed him. Slipping behind a twisted little pine tree, he scanned the beach, his vague sense of “wrongness” swelling suddenly to sharp alarm.
There was a figure among the dinghies, he saw. Even in the dark, his sharp eyes noted the strange, hunched shape, the clumsy way it moved. A man with a large burden, perhaps, or...
The moon sailed free of the shredded clouds and, as though drawn to its own likeness, flooded down onto Madeleine’s hair, turning her golden curls into a gleaming beacon. She sat with Matthieu in a dinghy, her round, frightened face a pale moon on earth.
Féolan was running before his mind had taken in what he had seen. Someone, somehow, had Dominic’s children.
A dark figured heaved the dinghy into the water, hopping over the gunnel as he pushed off. The Elf’s long legs flew over the sandy ground. Even if the pirate made ship, he would be aboard without a crew. Féolan could have the children safely away while the battle ashore yet raged. He would swim to the god-blighted ship and haul himself up the anchor rope if need be.
MATTHIEU’S ARMS HURT so badly the pain almost blotted out his fright. Being hauled down the hill and across the beach had been worst for him, with his arms bound behind him. Every mis-step and stumble had yanked his shoulders backward from their sockets. Clambering into the little boat had been worse. Now, relieved at least to be sitting down, he pulled his left leg over the seat to straddle it sideways and take the strain off his shoulders. He wished he could look at Maddy. He wondered if she was crying. His own face was a mess of dribbling tears and snot—and no way to wipe it.
Now the tears threatened again and along with them a liquid shaft of fear that made his legs watery and weak. The shore was receding fast, lurching away over the shoulder of the pirate in creaking oar-thrusts, and the thought that it might be his last sight of home brought a great choking sob out of his throat. He felt Madeleine squirm closer behind him, her cold hands groping for and then closing over his. Matthieu stared at the beach as though he could hold it still in his gaze. In that moment he saw it: a tall slight figure, indistinct against the dark shore but racing like the very wind, racing so fast it took only moments to realize who it was.
“Féolan,” Matthieu breathed. He snapped his face away, afraid to look in case the pirate noticed his flare of hope. They would be rescued. He would go home...
GODS OF THE DEEP, he would have to swim after all. If he was seen giving chase in a dinghy, all the pirate had to do was hold the children’s lives hostage. He could neither risk a bow shot nor continue the pursuit. Secrecy was his only ally here.
Stripping off his tall boots and his coat, Féolan plunged silently into the sea. “Grant me stealth and secrecy now,” he prayed, wishing he could black his face. He did not follow directly after the dinghy, but set out for the ship’s stern, hoping to angle away from the man’s line of vision.
He was twenty feet out, no more, when he heard the whistle shrilling through the night air. The pirate was standing in the dinghy, facing the shore where his men still fought. He blew three, long piercing blasts, half-deafening to Féolan from where he treaded water, and then a long series of staccato trills. Carried and amplified by the water, the whistle had an instant effect on the Tarzine men.
Casting stealth aside, Féolan put his head down and swam with everything he had.
CHAPTER NINE
THE WHISTLE SHRILLED THROUGH the dark air. A retreat? Dominic fervently hoped so—it was about time these poxy thugs were served their own poison. He wrenched his sword, locked against a young pirate’s blade, in an abrupt half-circle to free it, drew back for the lunge—and gaped in astonishment. His opponent had sprung backward a good three paces and taken to his heels. All around him, Tarzine men were sprinting for the water.
It was not a retreat to Dominic’s mind, so much as a headlong rout. Basin soldiers were drilled in the importance of an orderly retreat, with a rearguard keeping the opposing forces at bay. To allow an entire army to rush pell-mell from the field was to invite devastating losses.
The Tarzines were not, however, an entire army but a compact strike force, and Dominic soon saw the logic of their sudden flight. Yes, a few men fell to a hastily thrown spear or lucky sword-thrust in the back, but most gained the beach well ahead of the pursuing soldiers. They had to, or they would have no time to launch their boats. These had obviously been pre-assigned; without breaking stride, four or five men grabbed onto each boat and with one great heave had it afloat. With a man on each of the four oars, the little dinghies flew over the water.
Some of Tristan’s men lunged into the sea after them, but the horns soon called them back. They were ill-equipped to fight in chest-high water. Besides, their job here was defense—not slaughter.
FéOLAN GLANCED OVER his shoulder. The boats would soon be upon him. The crews’ attention, though, was fixed shoreward. With luck, he might still remain undetected and broach the ship. What more he might do, on a vessel swarming with enemies, he did not try to guess.
He was tiring too. The ocean was colder and choppier than the lakes he was used to, and his breath was already short from battle and his long sprint. As the first boat to pass close by him drew near, he pulled air deep into his lungs and sank into the black water.
He managed to stay under the surface until that dinghy passed and to rise unnoticed. Time only to suck in a few gasps of air until two more boats overtook him. This time, his chest burned with the need to breathe as he counted ten slow oar strokes. A few sweet breaths, barely time for the gasping to settle into a less urgent rhythm, and he was down in the cold arms of the ocean again.
But his luck failed. Though he escaped detection, the inky underwater darkness blinded him. He did not see the oars cutting through the water, did not know that on a call from the bow lookout one boat veered sharply to correct its course.
As Féolan floated unseen in the dark, an oar blade, pulled with all the brawn and will of a fleeing seaman, struck the back of his head. The world dissolved into a tumbled black void, without up or down or any other clear direction. Without land. Without air. He floundered for the surface—and found nothing.
Eight dinghies clustered around the great ship. Chains rattled and creaked as the boats were hauled, four to a side, onto the deck. A whistle shrilled, and with a great flapping tumult the huge triangular sails were unfu
rled, raked back on an angle like a stooping falcon. From the long thrusting bowsprit a last sail grew up to the night sky—then, like a dream that fleets through sleep and is lost, the ship was gone.
TRISTAN PACED THE water’s edge, restless with the jangly energy that always remained with him after a battle. The small bundle he happened upon barely caught his interest—just some pirate castoffs, lost in the retreat. He prodded at it with his foot, spreading open the soggy cloth to reveal tall leather boots, supple and soft-soled.
“Dark gods, take me.” What were Féolan’s boots doing here? Tristan looked wildly around, hoping to catch sight of his brother-in-law. He hadn’t seen him since...His heart sank. He couldn’t remember seeing Féolan since midway through the battle.
Sharp with worry, he collared the nearest handful of men and sent them searching. But his mind nagged at him. Boots, stashed at the water’s edge...They could not, as he first feared, have been left by pirates who stole them from Féolan’s body. The Tarzines had had no time, in that breakneck retreat, for looting. No, Féolan had done this himself, and that meant...
Tristan set off again along the surf line, jogging now, his eyes scanning the dark waves. Once again the moon, beloved of Elven folk, was kind. Its silvered rays danced over a dark shape bobbing gently in the tide swell.
Dominic found his brother in time to see him struggling back to shore, his arms clasped around a limp body.
“Who is it, Tristan?”
“It’s Féolan.”
Together they dragged Féolan out of the water and laid him gently in the sand. Fear tightened Tristan’s voice.
“Dom, I think he’s drowned.”
IT WAS A RECENT recruit to the Blanchette garrison, the son of a fisherman, who pressed the water from Féolan’s lungs and brought him, coughing and retching, back to them. The young man stepped back, overawed by his brush with royalty.
“He should be all right now, sire...sires.” The poor fellow blushed and bobbed his head, and Tristan pulled his attention away from his friend long enough to rescue him. He got to his feet and clapped the soldier on his shoulder.
“My most hearty thanks to you. What is your name, my man?”
“Barnaby, sir. Sire.”
“Barnaby, I will see that the garrison commander knows of your quick action. You have saved my friend’s life. But you’d best report back to your unit now.”
“Yes, sire. I will.” And the shy fellow escaped at the speed of a retreating Tarzine pirate.
By the time Tristan turned back to his friend, Féolan was breathing more comfortably, and Dominic was fingering the back of his head.
“Tris, he’s been wounded. See if you can get a torch over here—it’s too dark to see.”
Féolan’s hand waved off the suggestion. “Never mind that.” His voice was surprisingly strong. He planted a hand in the sand, pushed himself to sitting and turned to Dominic.
“It’s your children. They’ve been taken. I tried to save them, but I was too late. From the depths of my heart, I am sorry.”
CHAPTER TEN
HOW LONG HAD THEY BEEN SHUT UP in here? Madeleine squirmed on the thick coils of rope, trying to find space and air where there was none. The blackness smothered her, and the conviction grew that they would die here, shut up in a box, their nostrils filled with the reek of hemp and tar and rancid fish oil. Panic, kept at bay by a thin thread of will these long hours, swelled within her.
Turga had hustled them into the great storage crate as soon as they set foot on his ship. It was fixed to the deck, stocked with extra ropes and other supplies. Turga and a crew member had hoisted them over the side, pushed them down and lowered the lid. The sound of the lock clicking into place had frightened Madeleine more than anything that had happened so far.
At least their hands were now free, and the children had clutched at each other while they listened to the purposeful chaos that followed: the creak of chains and thud of dinghies being hoisted aboard, shouts and orders, whistle blasts and the sudden crackle and snap of sails. The gentle rocking of the anchored ship changed to a sensation Madeleine remembered from childhood trips to Crow Island—the breast and fall of a ship on open water.
“They got away,” she said. She had been waiting, she now realized, for a rescue, clinging to the belief that, however bad it seemed, things would turn out right in the end. Now the bleak truth sank its evil claws into her heart. Some nightmares you don’t wake up from.
“They’ll come after us,” said Matthieu. “Don’t worry, Maddy. Dad will save us.”
“He doesn’t even know where we are!” Madeleine’s voice was shrill with fear and accusation. She clamped down on her lips before more spilled out: Why did you have to come here? Why couldn’t you listen?
“Maddy, I’m sorry.” Matthieu’s voice was a trembly whisper. “It’s all my fault this happened.” A sniff, and another, and then Madeleine felt Matthieu wiggle around and drag an arm across his face. “I was so stupid.”
Somehow, Matthieu’s penitence allowed Madeleine to be generous. She squeezed her brother’s hand. “You were stupid, but so was I. I could have stopped you, and I didn’t. We both decided to come. So now, at least we’re here together.”
They were brave words, and they felt even braver when Matthieu told his sister that he was sure Féolan had spotted them. But then time crawled on, and the black closeness pressed down, and despair whispered to her. Nobody knew where they were going. Nobody even knew where the Tarzine lands were. Nobody knew who it was who had captured them. There would be no escape.
But she would not, could not, die in this hideous cage. She couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t move. The dark had taken on weight and texture and it would press the life right out of her.
The first breathy sound that escaped her snapped her self-control. She screamed, and then she couldn’t stop. She was shrieking, kicking, beating at the box.
“Maddy, stop!” Matthieu tried in vain to pull down her hands. “Stop, you’re scaring me!” He was yelling now too, the fear a contagion.
Flooding light blinded them and silenced their cries. Madeleine blinked and squinted, grasping after her wits as the crate’s lid was opened wide. Strong arms hauled them onto the deck. The children stood dazed, awed by the sight that surrounded them.
The endless silver ocean stretched out to the horizon, lit up by a breathtaking red dawn that spread its glory over the world with no care for human struggles.
Madeleine had a confused view of a crowded but tidy deck and men in once-bright clothes, now faded from salt and sun, busy at their tasks. All busy but one, sitting cross-legged with an expanse of ochre sailcloth spread over his lap, who put down his needle and stared at her in hungry appraisal. She looked away quickly, but not before she saw the sly grin spread across his narrow face.
The two men who had freed them barely glanced their way. They grasped hold of the children and hustled them down a narrow ladder. It was dark below decks, lit only by the two shafts of light that pierced down from the fore and aft hatches. Shadowy rows of hammocks strung two deep, holds stacked with crates and barrels fastened down with rope, a roughed-in stall crowded with bleating animals—all these passed by as the children were marched the length of the hull toward the narrow forward hold.
There they stopped in front of a solid wood wall spanning the breadth of the ship, broken by a barred iron door. Their captors pulled back the bolts and pushed them inside. Madeleine listened to the dry grating of the bolts being shoved home. This was her life now, she supposed: the sound of locks.
She looked around the dim, almost triangular space. There was just enough floor space to walk a few paces, and a raised platform fitted into the tapering bow. It stank—she smelled urine, and that fishy smell that seemed to permeate the wood of the ship...and body odor.
Matthieu nudged her and pointed. Huddled into the narrow end of the platform, draped in a ratty blanket that made him almost invisible against the dark planking, sat a boy. He regarded th
em silently for a moment and then scooted to the edge of the bed—it served, it seemed, as a bed—and stood.
He was taller than Madeleine, a little older too, she judged. Rough-cut straw hair, rough-woven clothing with patched knees—a peasant boy. He, in his turn, was taking in the children’s fine cloaks and garments. He hesitated, cleared his throat and spoke.
“I guess we’re all equal here, whatever we are back home. I am Lucien.” His formality dissolved into a sad fleeting smile. “People just call me Luc.”
DOMINIC COULD NOT stop moving. Dawn was not far off, and still they had no workable plan. He needed to go after his children— now— and with every passing hour they drew farther away.
Dominic and the others had wakened the whole household on their return: just telling what had happened and everyone’s shocked reactions had taken up precious time. It had been terrible to watch the blood drain from Justine’s face, to see the soft edges of sleep transform into terror. That terror gripped her still, Dominic knew, though she had pushed it back enough to sit at the big table with the others, searching for some plan that would bring back her babies.
Derkh was not with them. His eyes had grown big on hearing the news, and then he had blurted out, “I’ll be back,” and bolted from the room. They had seen no sign of him since. Well, it wasn’t Derkh’s family or his problem. Dominic put the man from his mind.
“All right, let’s go over it again.” Tristan, sensing Dominic’s growing agitation, took the reins. “We have to go after them, that much is obvious. But there are two huge obstacles. The first, I would take my chances with: Our ships are designed for coastal waters, not the open sea, and our sailors aren’t used to sailing more than a day or two away from landmarks. But the second has to be solved: We don’t know where the pirate ship is headed.”
The Bonemender's Choice Page 5
