Knights of de Ware 01 - My Champion (35 page)

“Stay calm, all of you. Captain Campbell,” he told the frowning Scotsman, “we’re about to be boarded by sea reivers. They’re looking for me. If need be, I’ll go with them.”

“Nay!” Linet argued.

“There should be no trouble for the rest of you,” he continued. “Simply do as they say.”

“Nay!” Linet repeated more vehemently. “It isn’t you they want.”

Duncan had no time for her protests. El Gallo was coming. He swept her off her feet, dropped her into the chest, tucked a layer of wool over her before she could draw breath to complain, and slammed the lid shut, anchoring it closed with his raised boot.

There was, thankfully, a loud commotion on board as the two ships came abreast of one another and El Gallo’s grappling hooks clawed the merchant ship closer. Otherwise, Linet’s muffled cries of outrage might have alerted the Spaniards to her presence.

From inside the chest, Linet spat the foulest word she knew, to no avail. Damn that scheming beggar! She pulled a tuft of cloying oily wool from her mouth and pressed up hard against the box’s lid. It wouldn’t budge. She tried not to think about how like a coffin the chest was, pitch black and stifling and sealed by whatever part of the beggar’s anatomy he’d chosen to apply to the lid. Already the air felt thick and stale, and wool adhered to her sticky brow.

Something sharp poked her in the back. She patted her hand over the object. Of course, she thought with gallows irony, a pair of wool shears. She was going to be buried alive with the tools of her trade.

She could tell by the tortured creaking of the deck planks that El Gallo himself had come aboard. She stilled her movements and strained to hear the conversation.

Duncan felt the reiver captain’s gaze scrape down him like a crofter’s rake.

“Ah, my
friend
, what a surprise!” El Gallo sneered. “I had not thought to encounter
you
again in this world. But see how impetuous fate has brought you to me.” He paced in a half-circle before Duncan, eyeing his injuries. “I must say you look a bit more…seasoned than before.”

Duncan set his elbow on his knee and cupped his chin in his hand as casually as he could, given the circumstances. “Indeed, captain,” he replied with a grim smile, “though not as
seasoned
as the ones who visited this upon me…God rest their souls.”

Aside from a tiny muscle twitching in El Gallo’s jaw, his face remained as passive as a clump of dough. “Where is she?”

“She?” Duncan feigned puzzlement. “Ah, the wench,” he chuckled. He planned to tell El Gallo that he had long since tired of Linet de Montfort. He planned to tell him that she was dead.

But then he spotted Harold, Linet’s servant, cowering in chains to one side of the reiver captain, and he swore silently. He couldn’t let Harold believe that his mistress was dead. It would devastate the poor man. After a brief pause, he shook his head in self-mockery. “Alas, the vixen escaped her tether some days past.”

El Gallo stared at him with cold pig eyes for a long while. Then he snapped his fingers once, and two crewmen brought Harold forward. The man trembled like a winter leaf.

“You do not know where the girl is?” El Gallo repeated, strutting like a smug rooster between Duncan and Harold. “Pity, I had some rather good news for her.”

Duncan shrugged, feigning disinterest.

The reiver captain smiled humorlessly and perused Duncan again from head to toe. “What colorful bruises you have earned, my friend,” he crooned. “Perhaps my men shall give your companion here some of the same…decorations?”

“Companion?” Duncan tossed off with a lightness he didn’t feel. “I’m not acquainted with this man.” Hopefully, his lie would keep the servant from harm.

“Really? You do not know old Harold here?” El Gallo said, flexing his fingers. “Then you do not object if I…”

Before Duncan could stop him, he hauled back one meaty fist and plunged it into Harold’s face. There was a sickening crunch. The passengers gasped. Harold staggered back with a moan, clutching his injured nose with shackled hands.

Duncan clenched his jaw. He fought the compulsion to fly at El Gallo, wrap his hands around that fat neck and squeeze the life out of him. Instead, he remained icily silent.

Unfortunately, someone else had a lot to say. “You devil’s spawn! What have you done to Harold? I pray you rot in hell!”

The outcry wasn’t Duncan’s, though his thoughts were running along the same course. The audacious protest had come from within the wool chest.

“Harold!” Linet cried. “Harold!”

Damn, Duncan thought, she couldn’t have picked a worse time to break her silence.

El Gallo smirked slowly, crossed his arms over his thick chest and eyed the wooden box. He motioned to his men. “Remove him,” he ordered.

To Duncan’s credit, it took four of them. But the reivers ultimately wrested him away from the chest, securing him at sword point.

Once the pressure of his foot was removed, Linet sprang up out of the chest. Tufts of wool fell from her, and her hair hung in disarray. But there was a dangerous fire in her emerald eyes as she faced the reiver captain.

“You leave my servant alone!” she commanded.

El Gallo was highly amused. “Leave him alone?” He pretended to ponder the idea. “Leave him alone. Perhaps you are right. I know of no place more alone than here, in the middle of the sea. Oso!” he called. “Leave the man alone.”

“Nay!” Linet cried. She flew at El Gallo like a kitten against a hound, batting ineffectually at his great stomach and clawing him with her nails.

The captain subdued her within seconds, squashing her against his side. But the distraction of her struggle had been enough to allow Duncan to duck his captors and confiscate one of their swords. In the blink of an eye, he swung the point of the blade to El Gallo’s throat.

Even with the reiver captain’s ruddy flesh quivering beneath his blade, Duncan knew his leverage was shaky at best. El Gallo’s crew far outnumbered the men of fighting ability aboard the English vessel. He’d have to use his brain instead of brawn. If only he could offer the sea reivers something more tempting than their captain’s revenge…

In a low voice meant only for El Gallo, he said, “Listen, Captain. You and I know that reivers are about as loyal as rats on a sinking ship. This crew of yours might just as soon see their captain perish as live, if it means a reward for them. So I suggest you weigh your options carefully.” Then he announced, “Release the wench and the old man, and I’ll come with you in their place. They’re useless to you anyway. He’s but a poor servant, and she’s an imposter to the title of de Montfort.”

Linet squirmed in protest.

“You have a far more valuable hostage in me,” he added. “Have your men contact Lord James de Ware in England to demand my ransom. I am Sir Duncan de Ware, my father’s oldest son, heir to the castle.”

He heard Linet moan in disbelief. But he’d garnered the interest of the Spanish crew.

“My family, de Ware, is wealthy,” he said in Spanish, eyeing the reivers individually. “They will pay well for my safe return, enough to make each of you captain of your own ship.”

There was impressed muttering amid the crew.

“De Ware?” one man repeated.

“I’ve heard that name before,” another said.

“Of course you have, imbecile,” El Gallo said, his eyes shifting dubiously. “The brothers are said to be matchless with a sword.”

Duncan pressed his weapon’s point against the flesh of El Gallo’s neck. “Would you care to find out?”

El Gallo’s placating smile and the lack of a reply couldn’t mask the fury in his eyes.

“Why should we believe you?” one of the Spaniards challenged.

“You deceived us before,” a second added.

“If you choose not to believe me, so be it,” Duncan said. “I’ll slay your captain outright then, and you’ll be obliged to kill me. Then not only will you lose your hostage, you’ll have the other two de Ware brothers hunting you down for murder.” He let the message sink in. “On the other hand, if you decide to trust me, you could all live quite well the rest of your days on the ransom. It’s a risk you’ll have to take.”

Duncan had no intention of giving the Spaniards one coin from his father’s coffers—he would die first—but he knew he’d used the right bait. Avarice lit up the crewmen’s faces as they considered the idea.

“Let these two go,” Duncan pressed El Gallo, “and I’ll come willingly with you.”

“Nay.” Linet breathed the word.

“Very well,” El Gallo hastily agreed before his men could conspire against him. “It is a risk worth taking.” He waved anxiously at the steel against his neck. “Put up your sword.”

Linet could only stare in disbelief as the beggar tossed the weapon to the deck and bravely raised his head. El Gallo nodded for Harold’s release and called for the shackles to be placed on the new prisoner. She could scarcely breathe, so tightly was El Gallo squeezing her against his ribs. He lugged her across the deck, and then, with no more ceremony than one would give laundry, hefted her up and dropped her back into the wooden chest. Too stunned to move, she watched as the beggar held his wrists out for the shackles.

It was a stupid thing for him to do, she thought as her chin began to quiver at his bravery. The beggar owed her nothing. Now that she had no coin to offer him, there was no good reason for him to continue protecting her. El Gallo would surely kill him when he found out he’d been deceived yet again, and it would be an ugly death. The damned fool was risking his life for a servant he’d met once and a wench who’d cruelly betrayed him. It was an utterly stupid thing to do.

She wiped at her wet cheek.

It was the kind of stupid thing a nobleman would do.

She raised her eyes to the beggar. He looked like the very picture of chivalry, standing there courageously before the notorious reiver captain. Bruised and beaten, he was willingly offering himself up for yet more. To protect them. To protect
her
. As the irons were locked about his wrists, he didn’t flinch once, but only gazed stoically off across the sea toward the shore he might not live to see again.

Linet bit her lip. She’d been wrong. Her father had been wrong. Nobility was not a matter of birth. It had nothing to do with manner or dress or speech. It was a matter of principles, of priorities and sacrifice. This man—this beggar—was right. He had more nobility in his little finger than most nobles she’d met could boast of their entire lineage. He was good. He was honorable. And he was…about to be stabbed!

Linet saw the damning wink of steel in El Gallo’s fist. Time stretched as the reiver captain slowly drew the dagger from his belt.

The beggar turned his head toward her as if in a dream, oblivious to the danger, looking his last at the woman he’d once claimed to love.

The blade came free of its sheath. Linet opened her mouth to scream. This couldn’t be happening, she thought. But El Gallo drew the knife slowly back.

Her voice came out in a long shriek. “Nay!”

She reached beneath her to push herself up out of the chest, and her hand closed around something cold and hard.

El Gallo’s dagger paused at its zenith, and then reversed direction, drifting forward toward the beggar’s chest.

Linet leaped at what felt like a snail’s pace out of the box and lumbered toward El Gallo. Her heart thundered once, twice, as she closed the distance, and then thrust her hand forward with all her might.

The blades of the shears sunk deep into the soft flesh of the sea reiver’s belly. He twisted upon the steel, his enormous weight plunging them deeper. His dagger fell from nerveless fingers and clattered harmlessly at his feet. His mouth opened and closed like a fish’s, and he staggered backward. His disbelieving eyes grew wide, then vacant, and then glazed over. He fell to his knees, swayed, and crashed to the deck in a widening pool of blood.

Linet shuddered. Blood was everywhere. It oozed from El Gallo’s horrid wound. It spattered the wood planks of the ship. It soaked the green wool of her surcoat. Her hands glistened with the bright red fluid, and she smelled its coppery scent on her fingers.

But she didn’t faint.

She’d done it, she thought, staring down at her grisly handiwork. She’d slain the bastard. And she’d saved the beggar. She’d done it.

Duncan was too astonished to speak, let alone move.

Harold was the first to recover. His nose still trickling blood, he snatched the sword from a gaping reiver and, with a lucky punch, managed to send the stunned man to oblivion.

After that, all hell broke loose. Two reivers came at Captain Campbell. He tossed a heavy coil of rope at one of them, knocking him to the deck, and turned to battle the other. Harold called out feeble challenges to any comers. A young boy began vigorously kicking the shins of whatever reiver he could find, and squeamish maids recoiled even as they hurled tankards and weighty purses at the heads of the enemy.

Duncan had to help them. He rattled the chain of his shackles.

On board the
Corona Negra
, several of El Gallo’s crew began to grow suspect of the mayhem taking place on the merchant ship.

“The grappling hooks!” Duncan called out to the captain.

“Right!” Campbell ordered his mates to disengage them.

“Harold!” Duncan called, lifting the shackles.

Harold battled his way toward Duncan. Then he raised his plundered sword to break the shackle chain asunder, nicking the blade in the process.

“You owe me a new weapon, m’lord,” Harold complained in jest, his old eyes twinkling, when Duncan was free.

“I owe you a new nose.” Duncan clapped him on the shoulder. “Now promise me, old man, out of loyalty to your mistress, that you’ll stay out of the way. Trust me. I can handle this alone.” He heaved a quick sigh. He hoped he was right.

Without an instant to spare, he pushed Harold out of the path of an oncoming dagger and into the belly of a reiver armed with two swords. As the two disentangled, Duncan filched the swords and braced himself for battle.