Legends of the Vengeance : The First Adventure (9781310742866) (15 page)

Ship ahoy!

He jerked, hope rising within him. Nicolo’s
telescope trained in the direction indicated by Turk in the crow’s
nest. Eduardo shimmied up the mast, eager to see for himself. Still
on the quarterdeck, Nicolo saw nothing. Minutes passed, his eye
never leaving the water until at last he saw it.

A Portuguese ship sailed toward them. Nicolo
fought against the revulsion he felt in attacking it. He must, and
he knew it. Another day would mean even more weakness, and the men
couldn’t afford to grow any weaker. They were parched—desperate.
Even a few hours might be enough to risk their success. It must
happen now. Perhaps it would be a good thing. He could watch
Hector’s reaction. It might be a good test of the man’s
faithfulness.

Sebastian rarely left his cabin these
days—likely drawing again. What once seemed like a safe pastime now
felt like the hobby of a weak, girlish boy. The lad did his chores
without complaint and did them well. Nicolo’s heart swelled with
pride when he thought of Sebastian’s skill with daggers—still the
best on ship at only twelve! Even the boy’s sword lessons with
Jaime were going well, but no matter how hard he tried to hide it,
Sebastian’s heart wasn’t in it. This Nicolo did not doubt.

His eyes met Jaime’s, and he nodded. Turning
to the deck, Nicolo began calling out orders. The sailors changed
the sails and passed around the very last of the wine. This time
nothing must prevent them from overtaking and boarding their prey.
They must succeed or die. Since no one considered death an option,
all hearts on deck burned for one thing—victory.

Here—readying to fight and to fight for him
and his son—his men shone in brilliant glory. Each man knew exactly
what they needed to do and did it—often without direction. The ship
neared—almost as if already surrendering. Nicolo called for Giorgio
to raise the flag. Perhaps it would precipitate surrender. It would
work. It
must
work.

Eduardo’s voice called down to him from the
crow’s nest. “Spanish ship, ahoy!”

“Spanish?”

The men groaned, but this time, they groused
good naturedly. They knew he’d fight harder for a Spanish ship with
Hector on board than he would for anything else. With his heart
into the fight, they could—they
would
succeed. He turned the
wheel eastward, as if running from the Spanish ship, but the men
roared their excitement. The battle would commence.

As if prescient, the Portuguese ship turned
sharply and sailed due south, obviously trying to outrun the coming
battle. Nicolo ignored it. He had a job to perform.

Jaime hurried to his side. “Sebastian is
set. I—helped him prepare for anything. He knows there is food in
your cabin and where to find it. He’s prepared.”

“Well done. Get the cutlasses. We’ll need
them now. Have Turk pass them out.”

“We’ll succeed, Nicolo. You know we will.
The men will be so excited they will likely rejoice to hear of the
Caribbean!”

“Perhaps. Thankfully, if they don’t, they
still won’t have the strength to overtake those who are definitely
loyal to me—to Sebastian anyway.”

While Jaime hurried to tell the others,
Nicolo slowly turned the ship until the guns faced the Spanish
ship—ready to fire when it grew close enough. They dropped the
sails to prevent being knocked off course by the wind. The worst
part of battle preparation arrived at last— the wait.

Eduardo refused to leave the crow’s nest.
Usually reserved for men who needed disciplinary action or men like
Giorgio who liked to be alone, when it came time for battle,
Eduardo became possessive of the vantage point. His genius in
predicting changes in direction long before others would have any
idea made him the most valuable choice. “Three leagues out,” he
called, eager for the battle to begin.

Nicolo shouted orders, pulled on his hat,
and ensured his weapons were within easy grasp. Turk raced to the
galley to inform Mac of their situation and then onto the oarsmen.
The excitement on board became palpable.

The ship drew nearer, flirting with danger.
With the sails down, Nicolo knew
The Vengeance
looked weak
and ineffective, but they could raise the sails much more swiftly
than captains of larger ships realized. Thanks to Jaime and
Filipe’s ingenuity, they had swift mechanisms that responded almost
instantaneously when they pulled the ropes. Best of all, they had
oars.

“Chase!”

Sails billowed, the oars pulled them swiftly
through the water, and at last, they were able to pull alongside
the ship just hundreds of yards away. A cannon ball whizzed across
the water, one so misdirected that it had no hope of hitting them.
In fact, it seemed as though the Spaniards had deliberately tried
to fail. Nicolo would not be so generous.

The call came out, “fire in the hold!” A
full volley of cannonballs sailed across the water, over half
striking their target. A mast went down. Another. Two large holes
in the hull left significant damage but not enough to cause the
white flag of surrender that rose moments later.

Nicolo’s eyes met Eduardo’s and he nodded.
They lowered the dory and Jaime, Mac, and Giorgio went with Nicolo
to meet the captain of the
Victoria de Reina.
It was a trap,
but one that they expected.

With all eyes on the boats, Eduardo led a
large group of sailors to move the canons out of the firing holes
and they slipped into the water. On deck, the others cheered and
jeered at the larger ship, mocking the carpenters who worked
feverishly to repair the damage before it took on more water than
it could stand. Turk, in the crow’s nest, screeched his mockery
loudest of all—and for good reason.

Nicolo didn’t wait for the captain of the
Victoria to speak first. The moment he saw his men climbing the bow
of the ship, he threw a dagger into the man’s chest and one into
the chest of the first officer. Jaime leapt from their boat and
dove under water, swimming under the longboat and coming up on the
other side. He jerked two of the captain’s companions out of the
boat before they knew what hit them and then, once again, swam
under the boat and back to the dory.

One of the
Victoria’s
men drew a
cutlass, but Nicolo pulled a gun from the hip of his baldric and
aimed. “I could care less about your life, you dog. Sit down and
toss every weapon overboard.” At those words, a horn blew, and men
poured out of
The Vengeance
and swam for the damaged ship.
The captain and first officer, struggling to obey Nicolo’s orders,
cried out in pain as they dug daggers and knives out of sheaths
inside and outside their clothing.

Nicolo nodded to Jaime. “Bind them.” This
time, Mac and Giorgio went with him as he swam to the longboat and
tied up the men. Jaime shook his head as the first officer
struggled for air. The knife had hit a lung for sure. He grabbed an
oar and indicated for Mac to do the same. They rowed closer and
Nicolo stared at the man.

“He won’t make it, Nicolo. It’s cruel to let
him suffer like this.”

The second knife killed the officer
instantly. They tossed the body and turned their attention to the
captain. “I don’t know, Jaime. It looks bad but he’s not
struggling.”

“Leave him then. Maybe they can save him
when we leave. Let’s get over there and help.”

Fury

It took all day, through the night, and part
of the next day to unload the food, wine, rum, and small amounts of
gold and silver that they found onboard the
Victoria.
Nicolo
examined the hold, the galley, and every other corner of the ship,
and though he suspected that there must be more gold somewhere,
they couldn’t find it. “We’ll leave immediately. Bring the men
back, and we’ll set sail.”

“What do we do about the ship?” Eduardo
looked around him. “We can’t let them die of starvation. Do we sink
it or let them go?”

“Leave a knife barely within in reach. If
they can get it and find a way to cut themselves loose, then they
can sail home. They certainly won’t try to chase us.”

Eduardo hurried to call everyone back to the
boat. He sent Turk across with a knife and instructions to make it
possible but not easy to get. “We don’t want them firing on us
before we get out of range,” he admonished the young man.

Mac, aided by Filipe, Jaime, and Ammon,
began slaughtering a pig. Wine flowed and they dispersed apples and
oranges to everyone on board. They feasted—something their shrunken
stomachs would protest, but worth it in their minds.

With the revelry surrounding the coming meal
and the excitement with their final success, no one seemed to
notice the direction the ship took. No one but Sebastian, and he
wouldn’t tell anyone. They sailed due west, the wind pushing them
over the large waves with little resistance—for now. It wouldn’t
last. Eventually a storm would come, the wind would shift—something
would happen to remind them all that they were but a tiny tub of
wood and flesh in an enormous ocean. One wrong wave, one bad storm,
one foolish mistake and they could be lost forever.

Sebastian frowned at the sight of a crew of
men spilling on to the deck. He held his dagger at his side,
unwilling to throw when someone could step into the way. This could
only mean one thing; the crew had noticed and weren’t happy.

“Why aren’t we heading south?” the biggest
of the oarsmen roared. “Turn this ship around! We can’t keep—”

Eduardo stepped forward and set his fists on
his hips. Feet spread, he pointed at the man. “Desmond, who is
captain, you or Nicolo?”

“Maybe I should be. He’s going to kill us.
This ship wasn’t designed to withstand it out here! No one
mentioned going anywhere but to get a ship.”

Nicolo stepped forward. “Well, we’re not
going back. We can’t.
El Cazador
chased us. We have to
assume that he will try again.”

“If we didn’t kill him! You can’t take us
out here without our permission. Who do you think you are?”

“The man who has saved your hides from the
gallows, prison, slave ships—the man who will ensure you have
enough money to live quite well in the Americas.”

Silence hung in the air. Filipe, Giorgio,
Mac, and a few others joined Eduardo and Nicolo on the quarterdeck.
Jaime crept up behind Sebastian and whispered, “You need to get to
your cabin and lock yourself in. Now.
Do it
.”

He pretended to go. A glance back showed
Jaime making his way to stand with his father and a few other men.
It took some effort, but he managed to hide behind many of the men
and then behind a few barrels left on deck. They’d be used first,
but for now, he was thankful for them and the chance to stay and
hear what would happen. If only he could hear things better!

Several minutes passed while the two groups
argued. It’d been long enough that Sebastian hoped he could make
his way closer to the front in hopes of hearing more of the
argument. Twice someone said hello, but he ignored them, hoping
they’d get caught up in the moment and ignore him. It worked.

By the time he worked his way forward,
Sebastian realized his mistake. The men grew steadily more
agitated. He hesitated and then worked his way back through the
men, anxious to get to safety. Self-recriminations plagued him. Why
did he do that? Why did he always ignore the things that would
protect him most?

Panic overtook him. He tried to run, pushing
between the men in his haste to get away, but they ignored him.
That frightened him more than anything else could have. If they
ignored him, it was because of only one thing: they’d become
fixated on someone.

As he glanced over his shoulder at the
quarterdeck, his eyes met those of his father. They held one
message—run and do not come back. More terrified than ever, he
pushed through the crowd, running, stumbling, falling, crawling. No
one seemed to notice as he sprinted for his cabin and shut the
door. He fumbled in the box for the hairpin and struggled to make
it work—to lock the door instead of unlock it. Though it took
several minutes, he finally managed before collapsing against the
door, hand shaking. How could he manage to lock something with
shaking hand and in full panic but not be able to unlock it at
other times?

He stared at the hairpin, turning it slowly
in his fingers as he considered his options. What if he should have
gone to the corner under his father’s cabin? The moment he gave
full thought to that idea, he knew he wanted to do it. Determined,
he turned to work on the lock again. It felt futile. He’d never
managed to unlock it before and certainly not with any speed. A
small part of him hoped that he might manage to do it quickly, but
again he worked and worked without success.

A knock made him jump, jerking the hairpin
from the lock and jabbing it into his hand. He cried out in pain
but tried to cover it by calling for whoever it was to enter. “It’s
locked, though.”

Jaime pushed the door open as Sebastian
scrambled away from it. “Trying to get out again?”

“I seem particularly talented in locking
doors, but I am hopeless at unlocking them.”

“Your father wanted me to make sure you were
locked in.”

“Are the men still angry?” he asked,
nervously.

“Yes. He is concerned for you.”

Sebastian sighed. “I think he sees me as a
target in order to avoid the fact that he is the real one.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“He brought us out here to kill us!” Hector
cried to the group of angry sailors.

Nicolo smiled. A snicker preceded a chuckle
before he erupted in uncontrolled laughter. The men stared. Soon
other snickers, chuckles, and laughter rocked the boat. Hector
stared at all of them as though they were crazy.

“Don’t you care?”

“To kill us,” the man nearest Hector gasped
between guffaws, “would require him to kill himself too. Bringing
us out here might kill us,” the man glared at Nicolo before another
snicker escaped, “but it certainly wasn’t his intent.”