Page 11 of Hooked by a Hero (Tales from the Brotherhood #4)
Six
C aspian’s first instinct on seeing Tumbrill armed with Dick and a few of the other convicts following him, also armed, was to race back up to the main deck, jump over the side of the ship, and find safety in the best way he knew how.
He would not leave Elias behind, however, and it would be too much of a shock and take too long to explain that, if done right, Elias could jump overboard with him and be perfectly safe.
Elias was not the only person aboard whom Caspian cared about, though.
“Get out of our way if you know what’s good for you,” Tumbrill snapped as he and the others hurried to the stairs leading up to the main deck, where Caspian and Elias stood.
“What are you doing?” Elias asked in a gasp, eyes wide with disbelief.
Caspian grabbed Elias’s arm, ready to drag him out of the way, even as Tumbrill said, “Exactly what I told that idiot, Woodward, I would do if he didn’t play nice.”
“But you cannot,” Elias said, still not moving when, really, he should have.
“We have to move,” Caspian whispered to him, staring warily at Tumbrill.
Tumbrill wasn’t the one they should worry about, however.
Caspian tugged Elias far enough out of the way so that Tumbrill could pass, but as soon as Dick stepped up after him, he shoved Elias so hard that both he and Caspian tumbled to the floor in a pile.
Partially because the ship rocked hard at just that moment.
Farther along the deck, screams or shouts for God’s help sounded from the other side of various cabin doors. Caspian sympathized with them, but they had yet to realize what sort of help they really should have been appealing for from their gods.
“Want me to run these Nancies through?” one of the convicts who had come up from below behind Dick asked, raising a long knife over Elias.
Caspian was ready to do whatever he could to protect his sweetheart, but Dick growled out, “No. He’s the doctor. We might need him.”
“Come on!” Tumbrill shouted from halfway up the stairs as rain and waves splashed down on him through the hatch he’d just opened. “If we’re going to do this, we have to do it fast, before Woodward has time to gather himself.”
Caspian didn’t need to ask what they were going to do.
He’d heard for himself weeks ago, when he’d taken his morning swim.
He cursed himself now for allowing Elias to distract him into forgetting, dismissing what he’d heard, and failing to tell anyone.
Not that Captain Woodward would have listened to him at any rate.
“We need to get away from them,” he said quietly but urgently, struggling to stand.
Elias nodded in agreement, but it was clear he was stunned by what was happening and could only react instead of taking charge.
They stumbled back several yards as the ship continued to pitch and sway.
Sounds of the storm were all around them now, including cracks of lightning that sounded entirely too close.
More men poured up from the lower deck, all of them armed and none of them in shackles anymore.
Whether there had been a plan in place from the beginning or Dick had come to some sort of agreement with Tumbrill during the first part of their voyage didn’t matter.
They were well and truly in the midst of a mutiny now.
“We have to warn the others,” Caspian said, pulling Elias deeper into the ship, to the long line of cabin doors halfway down the middeck. “We have to let them know what is happening.”
“But what can we do?” Elias asked, seeming to shake himself out of his initial fear.
Caspian’s gut dropped at the question. “I do not honestly know,” he said. “This may be the end for all of us. But at least the passengers should be given the option of facing their ends instead of cowering from them.”
Elias nodded, the ship dipped harshly as they hit another trough between waves, and they began to knock on doors.
The majority of the passengers were male, but that did not mean that they were ready to take up arms and defend Captain Woodward and the ship.
Caspian was disappointed that most of them wanted nothing more than to stay locked in their cabins, clinging to whatever they could, faces pinched in prayer.
A few men joined them in alerting the others, a man named Archer and another called Woburn, and one or two others headed up to the main deck to see what was going on.
Caspian and Elias encountered a much bigger problem when they reached the end of the line of cabins only to have green-faced Miss Winters open the door instead of a gentleman.
“The convicts have taken over the ship?” she asked, swallowing hard and bracing herself in the cabin’s doorway as the Fortune continued to roll.
“They have not yet,” Elias explained. “At least, as far as we know.”
“But they will,” Miss Winters said, bursting into a sob. “I shall be captured and brutalized by those horrible men.”
Caspian’s gut dropped farther, and not because of the raging sea.
Miss Winters was not being fanciful or exaggerating.
Caspian had seen the way women were treated by vicious men who had spent too long at sea, away from women.
Miss Winters, and Ruby and Lady Adelaide and the few other women aboard, would be savaged if Tumbrill and Dick won the battle for control of the ship.
“You need to come away from there at once,” Caspian said, thinking quickly and offering his hand to Miss Winters. “You need to remove your clothing and get as far away from your cabin as possible.”
“I beg your pardon?” Miss Winters asked, white-faced and shocked.
“Caspian, what good would it possibly do to traumatize the poor woman before Dick and his henchmen get to her?” Elias asked, equally offended.
Caspian shook his head. “They will be looking for women once all of this is over, but they will not be looking for young men or boys.”
Elias seemed to catch on to what Caspian was thinking straight away. “If the ladies disguise themselves as men, Dick and the rest will be less likely to touch them.”
“Precisely,” Caspian said with a nod.
“But they will know,” Miss Winters said, shaking her head. She was thrown against the doorway as the ship pitched again, but recovered enough to say, “They will drag us all onto the deck and find us out.”
Caspian shook his head. “You leave that to me,” he said.
Miss Winters stared at him for several seconds until another jolt of the ship seemed to decide her. “I can wear my brother’s clothes,” she said. “I can hide for as long as I must.”
It was a good enough answer for Caspian. Elias seemed to think so, too. They left Miss Winters to change and raced the rest of the way along the deck to the hatch leading above near the forecastle.
“She’s right, you know,” Elias said as he worked the latch to open it to the swirling storm.
“They will do an inventory of passengers if they capture the ship. Men like Dick and the others might not have seen the passengers before now, but Tumbrill has interacted with them all. The ladies will be discovered one way or another.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Caspian said.
Elias glanced back over his shoulder at him doubtfully. There wasn’t time to explain the particulars. The man would have to trust him.
“We have to tell the others,” he shouted above the suddenly loud rush of the storm as they clawed their way to the main deck. “Ruby and Lady Adelaide and her maid.”
Elias nodded, but the sheer intensity of everything happening on the main deck was too much for him to call back or discuss the matter.
The main deck was pure chaos. Between the storm and the mutiny, there was danger in every direction.
The ship rolled and tipped with the crashing sea, flinging everything that was not lashed down across the slippery deck.
That included the men who were locked in battle with swords and clubs and fists.
One grappling pair was so close as Caspian and Elias emerged from the middeck that Caspian had to grab Elias and tug him out of the way to avoid being hit with a club.
“It’s madness!” Elias shouted, though he was barely audible over the wind and the clattering of ropes and sails above them.
Caspian searched for the safest way to make it to the cabins in the center of the main deck, where the more distinguished passengers likely huddled in fear of what was around them, but every which way there was some sort of impediment.
He spotted Tumbrill crossing swords with one of the officers to one side and a few of the convicts throwing punches at the sailors.
One of them, a hulking man who still had thick muscles despite his confinement belowdeck, grabbed the sailor he was fighting with and tossed him over the side of the ship.
Caspian’s chest ached to jump into the water to save the man, but his chances of climbing aboard the ship again if he did were negligible. He had to concentrate on the people he could save.
“Hurry,” he shouted to Elias, then pushed away from the forecastle wall, where they’d been sheltering. “We have to find Ruby and the others and tell them to change.”
Elias nodded and pushed after him. It was nearly impossible to struggle and stumble across the ever-swaying deck while also dodging swords.
The men who were battling sliced wildly through the air, barely able to keep themselves upright as they fought.
Several of the convicts appeared to be looking for ways to save themselves rather than fight, as if they wanted no part of the mutiny attempt, and some of the sailors appeared to be fighting alongside the likes of Dick.
Caspian ducked at the very last second at one point, narrowly avoiding having his arm sliced off by one of those traitors.