Chapter Three
“Don’t shoot. They’ll blow us out of the damned sea.” Donal’s voice was tight with tension. His strokes slowed, maintaining just enough
momentum to keep the boat steady in the water. Any attempt to go to Paddy put on hold by the immediate danger bearing down
on them, Fergus dropped back in his seat and picked up his oars.
“And what do you think they’ll do to us if we’re taken?” Seamus demanded fiercely.
But he held his fire as the force of the current pulled them inexorably out past the rocks that marked the end of dry land,
into the rippling waves of the open sea and the trawler’s path. There was no turning back, no changing course, nowhere to
go. Running without lights, the bigger boat took on shape and mass as it swooped toward them. Cloaked in darkness, under sail,
sporting canvas as inky black as the night sky itself, it reminded Rynn of nothing so much as a giant bird of prey.
Black sails meant near invisibility at night on the open sea. Adopted during the Great War to foil the Huns, they were a chilling
sight.
Watching the other boat’s approach, Rynn quaked inside. If, as she feared, their luck had run out, soon they would be prisoners,
with worse to come.
“Pitch the guns overboard. It’s the only way.” The solution came to her in a flash fueled by desperation, sparked no doubt by Paddy’s fate. His lifeless body, heavy and limp as it curled against her bent knees, served as a terrifying warning of what awaited them.
“That’s it! There’s the answer!” Donal shipped his oars. Bent almost double for balance as the Merrow rocked over the waves, he flung himself toward the stern, where the cargo—the thrice-damned guns, Rynn presumed—was stored
beneath the oilcloth that stretched tightly across the width of the boat.
“We can’t! We’ll be owing the Sullivans a fortune! They paid us five thousand pounds for those guns, and believe me, they’ll
be wanting either their guns or their money back!” Seamus pivoted in his direction.
Five thousand pounds? It was a staggering sum! At the idea of having to repay it, Rynn felt sick.
“Don’t you see? Rynn’s in the right of it. Without the guns onboard they can’t be proving a crime.” Dropping to his knees,
Donal started tearing at the fastenings that secured the oilcloth in place. “For all they know, we’ve been out fishing and
they’ve attacked innocent men!”
“No!” Careful of his balance as the waves picked up, Seamus clambered toward Donal.
“D’you want to die, then?” Donal flung over his shoulder.
“If we don’t deliver these guns to the Sullivans after they fronted us the money—” His rifle tucked under his arm, Seamus
stopped abruptly just short of his goal to peer through the darkness at the looming boat. “Wait, is that the Reaper? The Maguire’s boat?”
The Maguire, Rynn knew, referred to Owen Maguire, current head of clan Maguire.
He and his kin had lived in and around Killybegs for generations.
Since the famine, when blight had decimated the potato fields and thousands had died of starvation, the Maguires, formerly farmers like most thereabouts, had become, by and large, fishermen, surviving off what they could pull from the sea.
Like most everyone else, they barely eked out a living, except, lately, for this particular one.
A trawler, a fleet of smaller fishing boats, a stake in a fishery, a house in Killybegs and the rented farm where his widowed sister lived, had been, if gossip were to be believed, all purchased by him in the year and a half since he’d been wounded and come home from the war.
A fortune, everyone agreed, for one such as he.
Donal stopped what he was doing to look closely at the boat that was now almost upon them. “It is.”
“The Hero of the Somme’s no traitor.” Relief laced Seamus’s voice.
All four—Donal, Seamus, Fergus and Paddy—had signed up in the wake of the Somme, one of the longest and bloodiest battles
of the war. They’d joined together, along with six more of their friends from the area, spurred on by the widely circulated
tales of battlefield valor on the part of their countrymen, seeking such glory for themselves along with a steady wage as
a way out of the unemployment and poverty that was rife in Ireland. Rynn had begged Donal not to go, to, as it turned out,
no avail. Six of the ten had been lost to the war. She considered it a miracle of the highest order that not only Donal, but
Seamus and the other two as well, had survived to come home.
Which made it all the more terrible that, scant weeks later, Paddy lay dead at the hands of the British soldiers he’d so recently
fought alongside.
And County Donegal’s vaunted war hero Owen Maguire, who according to all the newspapers was an expert marksman who’d single-handedly
stormed a German machine gun nest at the Somme, capturing the gun and killing the gunners and afterward performing countless
other feats of derring-do that had him winning all manner of medals for his gallantry under fire, should be considered a possible
enemy by men who had heretofore idolized him.
“Merely because he fought bravely with the Thirty-Sixth doesn’t mean he’s not working with the Brits now,” Donal said. “He’s been home awhile. Allegiances change. Many things could have changed.”
“The Maguire wouldn’t be betraying his own countrymen.”
“What’s he doing out, then? Fishing for herring on Christmas night? Not bloody likely.”
“We don’t know, do we? We don’t even know that he knows about the guns.”
“Oh, he knows, all right. Why else would he be doing that?” Donal’s savage nod toward the Reaper came as she cut across the Merrow’s bow while at the same time signaling them to stop.
It was too late to speculate more, because the trawler was at that moment dropping anchor and sail. Rynn’s mouth went dry.
Given the currach’s limitations as to speed and maneuverability, there was no chance of escape. And with the soldiers behind
them, and possibly more positioned at any point along the shore by this time, there was nowhere safe to go to land.
They were trapped. The chill that went through her at the thought had nothing to do with her sodden dress, or the wind, or
how to-the-bone cold she was. Soon enough the four of them remaining might be following Paddy in death.
Even across the expanse of water that separated them, the Reaper loomed threateningly large. Looking up at the shadowy outline of her twin sails and the smokestack that was not presently in use, Rynn’s eyes widened.
Two men stood amidships at the rail facing the Merrow. Like the trawler itself, they were no more than black outlines against a slightly less black sky. She couldn’t see but could
feel the weight of their gazes.
Neither of the men she was looking at moved, but a rope ladder reaching almost to the water unfurled down the trawler’s side.
Given her size, the Reaper probably sported at least a nine-man crew. An order had obviously been given to drop a ladder.
One of the men at the rail lifted an arm, waving them in closer.
“He’s wanting to talk,” Seamus said.
“He’s being quiet about it. No engine, no shouting.” Still kneeling beside the cargo, Donal frowned at the bigger boat.
“No shooting.” A tiny flicker of hope reared its head as Rynn emphasized what, to her, was the most important part. Her already pounding
heart felt like it would beat its way out of her chest. The Reaper was aptly named, and only lacked a Grim in front of it to spell out exactly how she feared this encounter might end. “If he was wishing to do us harm, I’m thinking
he’d be doing it already.”
“He might be under orders to bring us in alive,” Donal said. “For questioning. They’d like to know who sold us the guns.”
“We don’t know that he knows about the guns,” Seamus objected. “And it’s the Maguire.”
“So you’re thinking this is just a social call, is that it?”
“My sister knows him.” Fergus’s voice was a thin approximation of his usual hearty tone. “She says he’s a good man.”
“Oh, well, your sister, then,” Donal said.
Seamus looked at Donal. “You know we can’t make a run for it.”
“I know.” Donal’s answer was grim.
“So we talk, see what he wants.”
“It’s a risk.”
“I don’t see what else we can do,” Rynn said. The sheer practicalities of the matter settled it, as far as she was concerned.
They couldn’t escape. Therefore, the best thing to do was talk and see where it took them.
“Aye, you’re in the right of it, as usual.” Grudging acceptance was plain in Donal’s voice.
“We’re in agreement, then.” Seamus answered the Reaper’s summons with a sweeping wave of his own.
“If we’re to talk, it might be best not to go confronting them with your rifle,” Rynn said.
“She’s right again,” Donal said. “In the event this is just a friendly chat.”
“Put it away, then,” Seamus said to Donal. Passing the rifle off to him in a clandestine move that Rynn was almost sure the darkness prevented the men in the trawler from observing, which she was equally sure was the purpose, Seamus took
the seat Donal had vacated and picked up the oars.
“Let’s take her alongside,” he said to Fergus.
Donal, meanwhile, slid the rifle out of sight beneath the edge of the oilcloth while keeping it within easy reach. Then he
looked at Rynn. “Sorry as I am to deprive you of it, I’ll be needing my coat back. Fergus, pass it over.”
Rynn frowned—to ask for such a thing wasn’t like Donal—but slid out of the coat and handed it to Fergus. A moment later her
unspoken question was answered as Donal, having yanked off his wet shirt and shrugged into the coat, pulled a pistol out of
the pocket and checked it before repocketing it. Seamus, who’d shed his own soaked shirt and put on his coat at the same time,
did likewise. Rynn couldn’t be sure, but she had to assume Fergus was similarly armed.
Her insides twisted as she realized how primed for violence they were. If one little thing went wrong . . .