The Steel Rogue: A Valor of Vinehill Novel Read online

  Nothing but a dull buzz in his ears, filling his brain.

  He didn’t hear the first canon shot.

  Or the second.

  Or the third.

  It wasn’t until a sailor running past him tripped over Des’s leg and his cutlass clattered to the deck by Des’s hand that Des looked up. Slowly. His eyes unable to focus.

  Panic—panic on the sailor’s face as he shuffled onto his hands and knees. The fear of the devil approaching in his eyes. The sailor scrambled to get the handle of his cutlass back into his hand and he scampered to his feet.

  Des’s eyes bleary, he watched in a haze as the man leapt down onto the main deck.

  A boom thundered in his ears just as wood splintered in the air to his left, the railing exploding.

  Des jerked, his hand shielding his face as he spun around onto his knees.

  Bloody Judas.

  A schooner. So close, so fast there could only be one purpose for it.

  Pirates.

  Hooks swung out, latching onto the railings of the Primrose, pulling it closer. Closer. Ropes dangling. Men swinging across. Planks lowering into place.

  The crew of the pirate ship advanced across the gap of water, cutlasses swinging, daggers flashing, pistols firing.

  Grabbing what little was still sturdy of the wooden railing, Des yanked himself to his feet.

  Hell.

  Men were going down all over the deck. Sailors. Captain Youngling.

  Des’s hands ran across his waist.

  Nothing. No steel.

  He’d put down his blades and walked away from them the moment they landed in Bridgetown. He thought he’d been done. Done for good.

  And now he had nothing on his person to defend himself, the ship. Nothing.

  His vision came into focus. There were plenty of blood-splattered blades scattered across the decks with owners no longer alive to carry them.

  It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. Corentine was dead.

  He moved down the ladder onto the main deck, thick with smoke and the last clanks of resistant steel from the Primrose’s men.

  Screaming. Women’s high pitched squeals as the passengers from below were dragged out onto the main deck.

  The blackguards were rounding them into a line on the far railing, going through their pockets.

  Through the thick of the pirates and smoke, Des’s look dipped to the boards of the deck and he counted the skirts, the impossibly shiny boots, lined in a row. Twelve women. Four men.

  On the opposite side of the deck, Des slipped alongside the main mast and the bodies strewn about.

  More screams as the air cleared. Crying. The pirates huddled in a wide arc around the remaining passengers as a man—tall and filled with pomp—walked along the row of passengers, looking them over one by one. The pirate captain, Des could only assume.

  Des leaned forward, his hand outstretched to a cutlass wedged into the wood of the mast. He couldn’t take all of the pirates out. But he could take at least four. Maybe five if he was quick and lucky.

  Four or five might give the remaining men on board a chance. Maybe.

  “What move do ye think to make, ye fine nob?” A black-toothed snake of a sailor appeared to his left, his long dagger full on Des’s throat.

  Damn his clothes. Damn that he’d stopped to buy proper clothes before stepping onto the ship. Damn that he’d wanted to be presentable for Corentine.

  Where a moment ago he’d been ready to have a blade run him through, self-preservation appeared in full force and Des’s palms whipped up as he leaned away from the dagger. He eyed the snake sailor.

  He could take him. A spin to the right and a swinging heel to the man’s knee and the brute would go down. Des knew he was that quick. But the line of pirates standing along the deck—swords at the ready—behind this brute made Des reconsider.

  The pirates had dispatched the defenses of the Primrose in short order. Too short, for the rabid looks in some of the men’s eyes. One more death would mean nothing to them.

  “Into the line with the rest, ye coward.”

  The dagger at his neck prodding him along, Des moved to the railing, stepping into line with the rest of the passengers.

  Des glanced over his shoulder at the sea lapping along the side of the ship.

  Steal the rest of the valuables and then toss them over one by one?

  His hands clasped behind his back, the captain strolled back and forth along the line of women and the few men interspersed among them. All the remaining men were older and none of them were in any capacity—by age or body type—able to fight.

  The captain, a tall man, but not wiry or fat—with muscle under his red coat, Des presumed—had a short black beard that made him look years older than what his eyes revealed. He ambled along the line of passengers again, moving closer to Des, but then he stopped three people away from Des.

  Directly in front of a young girl—eighteen at the most.

  “Yer name, lass.” A good foot and a half taller than the auburn-haired girl, he leaned over her, the raw edge of his voice digging into her, making her cringe.

  “No, not my daughter.” The woman next to girl grabbed her daughter about her shoulders, trying to shove her child behind her.

  The back of the captain’s ring-filled fingers cut across of the woman’s face without warning, sending the mother flailing to the deck.

  “Mama. Mama,” the girl screamed, collapsing to her knees, her arms and body wrapping around her mother, shielding her from the captain as best she could.

  The captain had none of it, grabbing the girl’s upper arm and ripping her up from her mother. “Yer name, lass.”

  The girl looked to her right at the portly man standing next to her. “Papa—”

  The captain gripped her mouth between his thumb and forefinger, dragging her face to his. “No. No papa. No mama. Yer name. To me. Ye look at me.”

  Her father made no movement, his eyes on the boards of the deck.

  Lily-livered coward.

  But the girl met the pirate’s stare. Silent. Challenging.

  About to get herself killed.

  Des jumped to his left, wedging himself between the girl and the captain, breaking the man’s hold on her, his voice a growl. “She’s just a child. Pick another. Pick none. She’s just a child.”

  The captain shifted his look to Des, having to look slightly upward to meet Des’s eyes.

  For a long second his cold dark eyes, a gateway to hell, seared into Des’s soul. He sneered. “She’s a full grown woman. And yer a full grown fool.”

  The swing of a boot from one of the pirates came from his left side, knocking his left knee inward just the heavy hilt of a sword banged into his temple from the other side. Des dropped to the ground and the captain’s heel was on his neck before he could even think to breath.

  “What’s this?” The captain chuckled to himself and leaned over, the pressure of his boot cutting off all of Des’s air.

  “What ye got in yer hand, fine sir?” The captain twisted his boot, grinding its heel into Des’s chin. He plucked out the letter from Des’s grip.

  Folding it open, the captain stood straight, his boot keeping Des in place on the deck as he smoothed the wrinkles from the vellum far above Des’s eyes.

  Air, he was losing air. No air. Losing light. Black spots dotting in his eyes—expanding, shifting.

  An acerbic chuckle cut through air, but distant. So distant from his ears.

  Des twisted his head upward, his hand stretching up toward the paper.

  “Listen to this, ye bastards.” The captain waved the paper in the air to his crew. “It says his wife died.” The captain cackled, a viscous raw bark that echoed across the silent waters. “That’s a kick.” He laughed again. “This one—this one we leave alive boys.”

  The captain looked down at Des for a long second, his top lip snarled high, then his head snapped up, and he glanced about at his crew still going through the pockets of the passe
ngers standing along the railing. “Be sure to jab him on the way off, though.”

  The captain leaned forward, his full weight on Des’s neck.

  All air in his lungs gone. Crushed.

  The girl set her hand on the captain’s chest, her voice shrill. “Stop. Stop. I’ll go. I’ll go willingly. Just leave the man be.”

  The captain stared at her for a long second, then grabbed the back of the girl’s head, yanking her around Des’s body to him. “I’ll know yer name girl.”

  He kicked off of Des’s neck and dragged the girl across the deck.

  The last image Des saw before his world slipped into blackness—the swish of the girl’s peach colored skirts along the deck, her boots struggling to not step forward.

  Resistance.

  Even though she’d just promised willingness. Resistance.

  Resistance was going to get her killed.

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