Isle of Swords (48 page)

Thorne stood stock-still, knowing with eerie certainty that something had gone horribly wrong.

47
TRIAL BY FIRE

A
blinding flash lit the entire sanctuary, and a sound that was not so much of a boom as a wave of pressure slammed into the holy keep. Beams in the rafters cracked, one of the balconies collapsed, and all manner of dust and debris rained down.

The pirates who had been busy loading the last of the treasure onto the sleds all fell to the ground and covered their heads. Even Bartholomew Thorne found himself on the floor. A horrible wind began to howl down upon the keep. Everyone in the sanctuary listened as things began to creak and crackle above. The rafters groaned. All turned to the window as something red and orange careened by. Suddenly, a piece of the roof collapsed, and a flaming piece of rock slammed into the pews. Two of Thorne's men were crushed beneath it. The fire spread quickly.

Still stunned, Thorne's crews looked to their captain. Thorne had pulled himself to his feet and yelled to them, “To the ship! Take what you can carry!”

But his pirates—so entranced by the shining riches—paid no heed and continued to fill satchels with the remaining jewels, gold, and silver. More flaming projectiles struck the roof, and patches of the ceiling burned.

Stede and several men ran out of one of the adjoining rooms.

Thorne motioned for Stede to draw near. “Help me!” he commanded, trying to lift the wooden chest.

Stede took one side of the chest and Thorne the other. They pulled with all their might, but there was no give. The monks had somehow secured the chest so that it could not come free. Thorne growled and gave up. The entire building began to shake. Thorne shoved Stede down off the platform and rasped, “The lava! If it reaches the tunnel entrance, we'll be trapped.”

“What was in there?” Stede asked as they stomped away.

Thorne stopped and pointed to the floor. “Nails, bah!”

Stede saw one nail that had slid half under a broken pew.

Another was still stuck in the golden tiers from the case. A third lay in a puddle of blood near Ross's feet. The moment Thorne turned his back, Stede kicked the bloody nail. His aim was perfect. The nail slid and bounced as it struck the pillar where Cat was tied.

Stede raced out the entrance. Thorne shut the heavy door and locked it. “There will be no escape for the Sea Wolf this time,”

Thorne rasped.

Far below the clifftop castle, Thorne's men continued loading their longboats with treasure from the sleds. Much had been lost as they raced through the forest and the tunnels, but less than might have been. The pale creatures that had assaulted Thorne's men when they traveled the tunnels the first time did not attack on the return trip. Grimly figured the eruption and the ensuing quake had a lot to do with it. He didn't really care why; he was just glad to get through without being bitten again. Another explosion from above. Grimly looked back over his shoulder as a great spray of fire and ash spewed into the sky.

“Shove off, ya louts!” he roared at them. “We don't have much time!”

“We've still more to load!” a sailor hollered back.

“We'll put the rest in a different boat, ya fool! Shove off, I say, or you'll capsize!”

Grimly looked back up at the black mouth of the tunnel. Where was Thorne? It was Grimly's job to hold one last longboat for his captain. But where was he? What if he never showed up? The thought made Grimly grin.
Captain Grimly
, he thought.
Has a nice ring to—
”

“Mister Grimly!”

He turned and saw his captain and the other man loping down the hill.

“Cat,” a female voice yelled. “Cat!” Louder now, higher pitched.

“Cat, grab the nail!”

Cat opened his eyes, blinked. And there was Anne. She was bound to a pillar, he realized, just as he was. Blood streaked down her left temple and her face was swollen with bruises, but her eyes were clear. Planks and bits of the roof lay burning all around. The air was half filled with choking smoke.

“What happened?” he asked pitifully.

“The volcano's erupting. Oh, Cat, listen to me!”

“What . . . ?” he asked, still disoriented.

“Grab that nail, Cat!”

He looked frantically, right and then left. And there on the stone was an eight-inch nail, half coated in crimson. Cat looked up to the altar, saw the open chest, and gasped. “Anne, this nail . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Can you reach it, Cat?”

“Ahgg.” Cat dropped his shoulders as much as he could and stretched out his left hand. “Got it!” he yelled. The keep shook again.

“Can you pick apart the knot?” Anne asked. “From here it looks like a hitch. I—I'm not sure.”

A tremendous crack sounded overhead. They both looked up. A huge portion of the roof had begun to cave. The fire continued to lick all over it, and the sky was an angry black. Then they heard a groan.

“Da!” Anne screamed. Cat turned his head and saw Declan Ross tied to the column nearest the altar. Ross opened his eyes, but his head swayed.

“Anne,” he said. “You're alive.”

“Yes, Da,” she said, and tears spilled down her cheeks.

“You haven't called me that since Edinburgh, since . . .”

“I know,” she said. “I know.”

“You put a gun to my head,” said Cat.

Ross swayed his head to look at him. “I was bluffing.”

“Cat, the knot!” Anne yelled.

Cat went to work on the knot. He poked and prodded it with the nail, but nothing pulled loose. At last he found a place that the nail could pierce through. He slid the nail in and lifted. He felt the pressure of a strand of rope and angled his hand enough so that he could pull. It came free. Cat grabbed the strand with his right hand and pulled like mad. The knot unraveled, and the ropes that bound his arms and shoulders loosened. In a moment, Cat was free.

He had Anne and her father untied a few moments later. He inspected Ross's wound. “This doesn't look good,” Cat whispered.

The sanctuary shook. Cat and Anne steadied themselves on a pillar.

“I'll live,” said Ross, but his eyes looked weak.

“Okay, we'll carry you.”

“Wait,” said Anne. “I think Thorne locked the door to the keep.

I heard it slam when he left.”

“I'll check,” Cat said, and, jumping over fires and broken pews, he raced out of the sanctuary. He returned quickly. “You were right.

It's locked. There's no latch on this side, no way to open it.”

“How do we get out?” Anne looked around.

“Lay your father down. We'll check all the rooms. There's got to be another passage or door or something.”

Listening to the howling wind and intermittent rumbles from the mountain, Cat and Anne darted in and out of the small rooms on both sides of the sanctuary. They found the stairs leading to the second level and more rooms. But not one had an exterior door or a window.

They raced down to find Declan crawling across the floor.

“Father, what are you doing?” Anne cried. “Lie still!”

“Rope,” Ross said with a pained cough. “Like the treasure.”

“What?” Cat asked. But as he looked at the rope, he began to understand.

“Ah, he's right!” Cat ran to the window. He saw the last of Thorne's ships exiting the shards, and, down below, he saw the
Robert Bruce
, waiting. “We'll lower your father down to the ship in one of the treasure baskets!” he yelled, and ran to the first basket.

Next, he combed through the pews and found a massive coil of rope. Realizing he still had the nail in his left hand, he dropped it into his pocket.

“Here!” he cried, and tossed one end of the rope and the basket to Anne. “Tie this end to the basket hoops!” He took the other end and ran to the pillar closest to the window. Around and over, back and through—twice more—and then he put a foot up on the column and pulled the end of the rope with all his might.

“Okay,” he said, “give me the basket!”

Cat ran to the window and tossed the basket out. He watched it plummet. Down it went, until, finally, the rope went taut. “NO!!”

Cat yelled. “It's not long enough—not near long enough!”

“Oh no, Cat, what can . . . wait, what about these other pieces?”

She pointed to the pieces that Thorne's men had used to tie them up. “Can we tie them to each other?”

“We could try,” Cat said doubtfully. “But rope this thick . . . it could slip, and then we'd all be dead.”

A large piece of rafter fell, crushing a pew beneath it. “We've got to do something!” Anne yelled.

Cat ran about the room looking for something, anything he could use to connect the strands of rope. He saw so many familiar faces among the fallen as he ran. Midge had been shot from behind by the look of it. And Caiman was half-buried in debris. Cat had to stay focused.

Anne fished up the basket. She untied the end from the basket loops and grabbed another section of the rope. It may not work, she thought, but she was surely going to try.

Cat looked into all the vaults. There were a few small daggers in one of them, but weapons were not what they needed. He charged up the altar and looked all around it. A tapestry on the wall might help. No, that would slip just like the rope. There was nothing he could use. He turned too quickly and slipped in the blood, almost falling. He looked down and saw one of the other nails, the one still stuck in the golden section of the rack. An image flooded into his mind. The
Bruce
that night in the crosscurrents. There was Ramiro barking orders. Enrique and Claudio shifting the bowsprit in the gooseneck. The gooseneck! As if in another life, Cat saw himself grabbing the tack pin off the deck and shoving it into the thread holes on the gooseneck. That's when he knew what to do.

“Anne, I've got it!” he yelled. “Get me all the pieces of rope! Tie off the last piece to the treasure basket.”

Cat reached for the other nail, let it slide out into his pocket.

Then he banged the broken three-tiered rack against the side of one of the treasure vaults. That left him with three rectangular pieces of gold, each with three holes in it.