Pirate Wolf Trilogy by Marsha Canham

finished.”
    “Bloodstone?
Walsingham’s bastard?”
    “ He
prefers the term nephew , but aye.
One and the same.”
    “Last I heard,
he were the new darling o’ the Court, the prettiest face to amuse
the Queen.”
    “ Indeed,
he has a pretty face and Elizabeth likes to surround herself with
beauty in the hopes it might be contagious. He also knows how to
sail a ship, damn his soul; I can’t fault him for lack of skill or
experience. It was the only reason I agreed to take Bloodstone on,
and in the beginning he did not disappoint. We sailed for Vera Cruz
like two hungry wolves stalking fresh meat.” He hesitated and
stared blankly out the darkened gallery windows. “Do you know the
Spanish harbor at all?”
    Spence
shifted in his seat, obviously not wanting to appear ignorant, but
at the same time not wanting to admit he had never risked so deep a
foray into Spanish waters. Vera Cruz was a terminus for the mule
trains that carried gold and silver out of the mountains of Mexico.
It had confidently been declared by the Spanish to be out of reach
and impregnable to any foreign sail, as heavily fortified as any
madman would expect a treasure depot to be.
    “ At any
rate,” Dante continued, talking now to his rum, “thanks to Lucifer,
we knew of a secluded bay on the Island of Sacrifices, not five
leagues from Vera Cruz. It was big enough to hide two ships and
easily within striking distance of the harbor. We each carried the
framework for several pinnaces in our holds on the voyage down, and
when we reached the inlet, it was a small matter to assemble the
vessels and launch our tiny fleet on a surprise night
raid.
    “ No one
expected us, No one raised an alarm, for we looked like harmless
fishing boats. We landed a mile or so up the coast and went
overland into Vera Cruz; eighty men in all, and each came away with
as many bars of gold as he could load onto a mule. Christ, the
cocky bastards even left the stables unguarded.
    “ By
morning, of course, all hell broke loose, for we had not exactly
been tidy with the bodies at the treasure house. As luck would have
it, however, a squall blew up and delayed their pursuit by a full
two days—plenty of time for two nimble wolves to slink away and use
those same winds to blow us clear across the Caribbean. We were
successful too. We broke into open sea and were more than halfway
home before misfortune struck. A gale, the likes of which I had not
seen in twenty years, swept us along like spindrift for seven days
and nights. It battered the Virago so badly, she ended up on a reef with a hole in her hull
wide enough to swim through.
    “ Our
first thought was to find someplace safe where we could haul her
over and make repairs. We were as yet unsure of where we were but
the lookouts spied a small island and we made for it, hoping for
time to make repairs. Once there, we lightened the Virago’s burden by off-loading our
weight of gold bars along with every spare barrel and crate we
carried—including most of our food and fresh water.
    We had the
cables attached and the men on shore to careen her when we saw
sails on the horizon.” He stopped and snorted at some terrible
irony, which he shared a moment later with Spence. “They were
bloody zabras. Six India guards unluckily driven off course by the
same storm that ripped at us.”
    “Blow my
ballocks,” Spence muttered. “What did ye do?”
    “ The only
thing we could do: We stood and fought. The Virago was wounded, aye, but we had Bloodstone at our
back; we should have taken them in a trice. He was to remain out of
sight behind the island while we drew fire and led the zabras away.
The intention was to catch them with their eyes looking forward,
not back, and while the Talon bore some damage to her mainmast, she still had full
steerage and an equally full battery of guns to call
upon.”
    Dante’s voice
grew brittle and a tremor appeared in the hand that gripped the
pewter cup.
    “ The
zabras took the bait, as we