Page 1 of The Withering Dawn (Wicked Tides)

“Come about!” I bellowed.

Nikolas was at the helm as the Amanacer cut through the waves toward the ship ahead. It looked like a merchant ship. There were no gunports and it was moving slow, a mistake they would soon regret. Their burgee had a very unimpressive sigil of a sword and bullwhip crossed over each other painted on the fabric and it made my skin crawl. The man the sigil represented was the root of most of my problems and knowing I was about to raid another one of his ships was the only thing that made it worth the trouble. Otherwise, we would not have even been so far east in unfamiliar waters.

Men from the other ship were racing about, clearly unequipped for a confrontation.

“Easy loot, boys!” I shouted as the grapples were thrown to the adjoining vessel.

The moment they latched on, men were leaping from the Amanacer to the brig. It wasn’t easy considering the Amanacer was a galleon and the size difference made boarding a bit of an obstacle. But hurdling over obstacles was part of the fun.

The moment my boots hit the deck, I pulled my sword from my belt, giving it a fancy twirl as we advanced on the ship’s crew. They weren’t fighters by the looks of them, but a few shakily pulled a pistol now and then in an attempt to scare us off. Their aim was horrid. For the most part, the men dropped to their knees and surrendered, wanting no quarrel, which made a few of my men groan with disappointment. Our journey had been uneventful as of late and I knew they were itching for excitement, but they would have to wait a while longer.

This? This was child’s play.

I immediately marched to the captain’s quarters before anything else. The door was locked, but with two heavy kicks, I knocked the damn thing off its hinges and found a cluttered cabin full of chests, boxes, and books, but no captain. I grabbed whatever ledgers and notes and maps I could from the desk and rolled a few documents to stick them in my boots and then put whatever else I could grab in my belt until I looked like a parchment salesman. On the floor next to the bed was a small crate of bottles.

I pulled one out, uncorking it and bringing it to my nose. The sickeningly sour scent of wine punched me in the nose and I tossed the bottle to the floor, shattering the glass and spreading dark red liquid everywhere. I kicked the crate over as I turned, cringing at the odor that now filled the room.

I saw a ring of keys hanging on the wall by the desk before I walked away and snatched them off the hook.

All the greatest treasures were behind locked doors.

I wrinkled my nose at the unkept bed as I swung my gaze around. The captain, whoever he was, wasn’t very tidy and an untidy man was a careless one. I left his room, disappointed.

My men were efficient if nothing else and filtered through the ship, grabbing crewmembers from every corner and hauling them topside to go through the inventory and the number of men aboard the vessel. It barely took fifteen minutes to get what we thought was the entire crew accounted for.

“Who’s you’re captain?” I asked, a miniscule spark of hope that he would happen to be aboard one of his many ships flickering in the back of my mind.

They all sat on the floor, their heads hung like beaten dogs. It was almost aggravating that no one decided to try and defend the ship. Then again, they were just merchants or traders. Why on Earth would they want to die defending trade goods that likely didn’t even belong to them?

No one raised a hand at my request. I narrowed my eyes, scanning the lines of faces for one that might stand out among them. A man with a fancier coat. A man getting subtle side glances from the others. Anything. I got nothing. I pulled out my pistol and twirled it around my finger twice, making sure they all saw it. No one flinched.

“Odd, yeah?” Cathal, my quartermaster, said over my shoulder. “The way they’re all kneelin’ like that. Bunch of weird ones, eh? Not a lick of fightin’ spirit in them.”

“Strange indeed,” I sighed. “I will ask again. Who is your captain? If he is not among you but among them,” I pointed at a small pile of bodies my men were stacking behind me of those few who did take up arms. “Then speak up now.”

One man stood, his eyes low. I cocked my head at him, doubtful the scrawny young deckhand in tattered clothes was the captain. Then another man stood. Then another. I groaned, pushing up the corner of my tricorn hat with the barrel of my flintlock.

“I would rather not do this, caballeros.” I pointed my pistol at the first man who stood up. “But this ship is mine now and I’m not in the mood for games. I am capitán Nazario Basilio of the Amanacer and I would like to know who your captain is.”

The men slowly converged, standing like a wall, shoulder to shoulder. I narrowed my eyes at the lot of them, waiting.

“Do you see that symbol?” I pointed up at the flag. “Are you really willing to die for it?”

Silence. Just frustrating silence.

Finally, someone said, “God be with us,” and that didn’t exactly satisfy.

Then they all said it in unison and a very cold chill ran down my spine at the look of utter acceptance on all of their sun-chapped faces. Acceptance for whatever the hell they were about to do.

“Captain!” someone shouted from below deck.

I turned for only a moment when I heard a pistol fire. I thought it might have been aimed at me, but when I looked at the line of men again, I noticed one of them sinking to the ground, crimson chunks of his brain splattered on the shirt of the man beside him. The others were muttering words I could not hear, their hands locked together in front of them like they were in prayer.

“What the fuck?” Cathal said.

“Captain!” the same voice came from below and once more, I turned to find one of my men, Aleksi, trudging up the stairs. His eyes were searching for me, the front of his blouse covered in blood.

“Powder kegs! Tons of them! They’re—”

Before he could finish, a deep, shuddering burst of wood exploded up from beneath us in a column of flame and debris. Then another one, right under the feet of the praying men, throwing them in all directions.

“Get to the Amanacer!” I ordered.

Two more of my men scurried up from below with whatever loot they could carry.

“Oliver is still down there. Hurt his leg, he did,” Aleksi said, brushing wood splinters and dust off his shoulders and out of his thick, curly hair.

“Get him,” I ordered. “And whatever you can carry.”

“Ship’s takin’ water!” someone said as if we all couldn’t figure that out ourselves.

I circled around to the stairs leading below, the ring of keys in hand.

I could hear running water. That wasn’t good. I also heard Oliver wailing in pain as Aleksi and Cathal hauled him out of there. As they passed, I got a brief look at his condition and noticed his leg had been severely mangled. The fabric of his pants hung off in strips along with charred flesh.

I hissed a curse.

A few of my men were rushing to find the most valuable cargo to carry back to the Amanacer and when I heard men laughing and hooting, I knew they’d found something to make the raid worth it.

I headed to the only place on the ship with a locked door. The hold. I contemplated even trying considering there was more than one hole in the ship and it was taking water, but I had time. Not much, but enough.

Inside the hold, there was a rotten stench that made me physically draw back like I’d just hit a wall. I briefly surveyed the room for the source and was distracted by two chests lined with leather sitting next to the wall. Inside one, I found coins from at least twenty countries stacked to the brim. Silver, gold, copper. And I found trinkets. Crosses and other religious nonsense was interspersed inside and in the other chest I found pearls and precious stones all wrapped in individual leather pouches and silk bags.

Cathal stumbled into the room behind me and paused.

“Stinks, don’t it? Holy Hell on Earth.” Then he saw the chests. “I don’t want to know how or why Antonio would be moving this much gold.”

I held up one of the intricate gold crosses for him to see and then tossed it into the chest again.

“Religion is a lucrative business, my friend,” I said.

Cathal laughed joyfully and moved in to try and lift one of the chests himself. When he couldn’t, he called for a few other men and soon, the spoils of our strange encounter were being dragged to my ship.

When the second chest was on its way out, the men bumped it into the doorway, knocking a couple coins onto the ground. I slammed my foot on one before it got away, but watched the second roll into a small, gated cell at the back of the room blocked by storage. I followed it into the shadows with my eyes and spotted a small foot recoil into the darkness like a snail into its shell.

I approached the cell, letting my eyes adjust to the poor light, when a wave of ocean water flooded in. It was enough to sweep a large mass from the darkness of a corner and into the open. Whatever it was was wrapped in thin gauze and when the sickening stench hit me again, it was obvious I’d found the foul source. The arm that floated free from the coverings was anything but human. It was… monstrous. Green-gray flesh was enveloped in thin, red veins and the familiar sheen of scales spread down to bony, webbed fingers tipped with claws. I kicked a strip of wet fabric off its face to find it rotten and half-skinned like some kind of ocean creature had gotten to it already. Rows of long teeth made a permanent smile on its eerily human-like face, but the oversized, sunken eyes gave it away. They were more fish-like than anything. There was no hair and instead, a curved fin of sorts bisected its scalp and seemed to stretch down its spine.

Another wave of water filled the room, coming to my knees and knocking the body against the bars of the cell. And then I saw them. Two emerald eyes looked up from the dark, big and vibrant. I grabbed the bars of the cell door to steady myself and when I did, a figure unfolded from the ground and pressed herself to the back wall. The light finally captured her features to reveal a starved young woman with long red tresses. The way the water had wet her hair made it stick to her bare shoulders like trails of blood. Her complexion was pale and almost sickly with dark circles framing her eyes like she had been deprived of sleep for many months. And how could she sleep with the body of a monster nearby?

“Se?orita,” I said. “Are you—”

“Captain! We need to go!” Cathal called from above.

I hissed. There was no time to ask questions. The woman was coming with me.

I tried two keys before finding the one that unlocked her cell and swung the gate open against the force of the water. The woman moved away from me, nearly tripping over her own feet.

I didn’t have time for that either.

I reached in and grabbed her slender arm, tugging her toward me much more harshly than I would have in any other circumstance.

She was dressed in nothing but a faded red dress, the laces on the front so old and loose that they did almost nothing to cover her small breasts. I could practically see her ribs where the neckline plunged low.

Yet she pulled against my grip anyways, her eyes glimpsing the dead creature pinned against the outer bars.

“It’s dead,” I said, but she continued to refuse me.

We waded through the water, but I was practically dragging her behind me. I wondered if perhaps her legs didn’t work in her condition. Although, she certainly seemed capable of using them to resist me. She stumbled and wobbled as we went, but the ship was sinking fast now and I couldn’t let her slow us down. I got to the deck and yanked her against my chest, sweeping her legs out from under her. My men had put up a narrow wooden platform to transfer loot to the other ship through a gunport. I headed toward it with the woman in my arms. She looked around frantically at the destruction and the bodies of the former crew. Then her fingers curled against the fabric of my coat and she pressed her head to my chest, holding me tight.

God, she weighed nothing.

A sick feeling agitated my stomach again. I was no angel and my men certainly weren’t either, but we would never trade in flesh.

Never.

Holding her so close, I could smell the days, maybe weeks’ worth of filth and grime that she’d been forced to live in. She hadn’t been cared for let alone fed in some time.

“Captain!” Cathal bellowed.

I was going as fast as I could without losing my footing. I looked up at him to tell him as much when I saw him pointing his pistol at me. No… not at me. Past me.

The woman stiffened and gripped me harder, a soft whimper escaping her as I turned.

One of the men from the other crew was lurching to his feet, his head covered in blood. One hand was pressed to his bleeding abdomen and his other had a tiny pistol in it.

I swore under my breath when I realized it was aimed right at me.

“She cannot live!” he yelled, blood splashing from his lips. “She cannot—”

A shot was fired and the man’s head snapped back, but not before he squeezed the trigger on his own pistol. That time, there was no question. The slug hit me right in my shoulder, throwing me back and robbing me of my balance. My foot slipped off the wooden plank and I went careening toward the ocean below.

My body hadn’t exactly been positioned well for a plunge into choppy waves, and I was immediately disoriented.

The water was cold and filled with debris. The woman squirmed from my arms and in the madness, I opened my eyes, glimpsing the light from above. My clothes and boots did nothing but weigh me down as I kicked toward the surface, losing some of the papers I had stuffed in my coat.

The wood plank came crashing down above me, nearly knocking me on the head. Behind me, the sinking merchant ship, or whatever the hell it was, was eerily submerged halfway, its contents spilling out around me. And as if I needed anything else to go wrong, another explosion blew a hole clean through the hull. My ears were ringing. My vision wavered. I pushed toward the surface, my lungs burning. When I reached it, the Amanacer was swaying on the waves and rocked toward me, nearly crushing me against what remained of the other ship. I dove, attempting to get around it, but the moment I tried to use my left arm to swim, I was reminded that I’d been shot.

I was starting to lose my way in the rubble-filled water, too. Between the blood spilling from my shoulder and the floating gunpowder and debris, I was getting buried.

And then I saw her. The woman. She was nothing but a blurred image of herself in the murk, but it was her. I could tell by the way her hair followed her like a plume of blood in the water. Her skin was so white it practically glowed. No… it was glowing. It was so faint a detail, I could have denied it.

She moved toward me with grace as if we weren’t caught up in a disaster. Then she reached out, grabbing my coat and pulling me toward her. I started to swim again, hoping she knew something I didn’t because I was too disoriented to figure my way back to the surface.

I felt as if we were going deeper. The pressure in my ears made me question it until I saw the faint light from the sky above us come back into view. I pushed through the water, my legs compensating for my left arm, and breached the surface with a desperate breath. Men were shouting above me, pointing and waving as the climbing nets were unrolled along the side of my ship. I pushed toward them, grabbing hold of the ropes with one hand and then hauling the woman to my side with the other, tensing through the aches and pains of my wound.

Not that she needed my help. She swam like she was born in the ocean. If I didn’t know better, I would have said she was inhuman. She didn’t look entirely human in the water. Now that she had surfaced, perhaps I could reason that it was a panicked hallucination. That the light had caught her just right to make her look ethereal.

But I saw what I saw and warning bells were chiming in my head like the low hum of a bronze bell. Panting, the woman looked up at me, her hands tight around the ropes of the net. She peered deep into my eyes, her gaze pleading and soft and saying a thousand different words I couldn’t hear.

Even without her words, I knew what she was saying, though. She didn’t want me to kill her.

Because she wasn’t human.

The small fangs peeking out from behind her full lips were further proof of that. They slowly receded after a few seconds, but I saw them. She was shivering as if she was cold, but something told me she couldn’t get cold the same way I did. Like humans did. Her trembling was because of something else.

I strung my arm around her narrow waist and pulled her tighter to me, glaring, caught between driving my blade through her gut and thanking her for guiding me out of the debris.

I wanted her to explain herself, but her silence was evidence enough that she couldn’t.

“Have you a tongue, se?orita?”

She blinked and then subtly shook her head. I looked up at my men. They were waving at me to climb so we could sail away from the unexpected mess we’d fallen into and I wanted nothing more than to leave that cursed ship behind. I nodded and then gradually released my grip on the woman.

“I’m feeling grateful. Swim away now. Disappear. You’re no longer in a cage.”

She inched away from me, but she didn’t let go of the netting. Instead, she held my gaze, her eyes briefly glossing over the still-bleeding wound in my shoulder. Then, she did something I didn’t predict. She shook her head again as if to tell me “no.”

I groaned, getting sick of being in the water, and started to climb, hooking my good arm around the netting every time I pushed up with my feet so that I could pin my other arm to my side. When I came to the railing, my men helped me onto the ship and I collapsed, exhausted.

To my surprise, the woman climbed over after me and fell to her knees, her small dress doing even less now to cover her seemingly frail body. I raised my head to look at her and then propped myself up on my elbow, utterly confused as to why she was there when the open ocean was all around us.

“Who is this?” Cathal said.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

“What do you want us to do with her? She looks starved half to death.”

I stared at the woman for a while, waiting for her eyes to say something, but her expression was flat, drained off all discernable emotion. There was so much innocence in the way she presented herself, but I knew the stories. I knew what her kind was capable of.

“Put her in the hold,” I sighed.