Chapter 10
The dirt, which created a gritty feeling within her mouth, assured Brianna that her rescue from the portals of death was not a dying dream, but incredible, wonderful fact.
She had little time for anything but that realization, for all hell was breaking loose upon the earth.
She scrambled to a crouch beneath the scaffolding of the gallows while the sharp whistle of flying arrows continued to sound as music to her ears and the cacophony of pistols fired at close range set her ears ringing. Before her, the man who would have been her executioner dropped to the dirt.
All about her the people were shouting and screaming. For several seconds Brianna held very still, wondering in awe how Sloan had managed such a swift and sure attack upon the witchfinder and the forces of James II.
At last she crept from beneath the gallows, ripping the noose of hemp from about her neck.
She froze at the sight of a king’s man approaching her, then exhaled as a shot was fired and he spun about like a marionette jerked by strings, and fell.
Brianna gazed at him for a second of horror as his eyes glazed not inches from her feet, then crawled again to rise outside the scaffolding.
She raised her eyes to see that Matthews alone remained alive, standing on the gallows. He shouted orders furiously, but already a good fraction of his men lay dead while the rest fought the crowd to find their attackers.
Only Sloan could be seen. Mounted atop a gleaming roan, he charged through the crowd, who cheered him on and eagerly made way for him.
Matthews drew a pistol as Sloan approached. But the witchfinder panicked at the cold relentlessness of the man bearing down on him, and his shot went harmlessly into the ground. He was shaking too badly to reload, and cast the pistol aside, drawing his saber instead.
“Captain! The girl!”
Brianna saw that the warning had been shouted from the roof of a nearby smithy by Robin, one of Sloan’s young crewman. And then she gasped, realizing the cause of his warning—more of Matthews’s men were barging their way to the gallows. One burly soldier was almost near her.
Sloan was at last upon them—but his purpose changed radically when no other course was open to him. He had wanted to kill Matthews—God, how he had wanted to kill him—but Brianna was vulnerable. And the king’s forces were closing around her.
The roan pranced and shied to the steps of the gallows. Sloan kept one eye on Matthews and shouted. “Brianna! Run, girl, run to me!”
A soldier came toward her with his sword raised to strike her.
She ran to Sloan. He reached for her with one hand, commanding, “Jump, lass—now!”
She gripped his hand and leapt with all her strength and energy, throwing herself in front of his saddle. She felt the deadly tension of his arm as it swung, and his cutlass flashed in the air with deadly purpose. The soldier screamed and fell. “To the ship, lads! To the ship!” Sloan shouted.
Sloan’s arm came around her, securing her to the saddle with his vital strength and warmth. “Hold tight, lass!” he compelled her. The roan reared and bolted and took off in a mad, erratic gallop.
The crowd, now alive with excitement and frenzy, thundered out their cheers, parting to allow Sloan and the scattered sailors to escape. Matthews shouted orders in their wake, and as they clattered their way furiously down the cobblestoned streets, the soldiers were hard on their trail.
Merchants’ stands of fruits and vegetables crashed and careened around them as the sailors raced their way to the Sea Hawk.
Several of the horses were forced to leap a hay wagon, yet they continued on.
The streets swept dizzily by until they reached the dock—and the berth of the Sea Hawk, where the horses snorted and shrieked in protest as they were jerked to rearing halts.
Brianna found herself thrust into Robin’s arms from her seat atop the roan. “Take her below!” Sloan ordered, sliding from the mount himself and swatting the animal’s rear to send it skittishly racing away.
“Come!” Robin urged her.
His arm was about her and she followed his lead to the gangplank, but twisted to look behind her. Sloan was hurrying his men along, and shouting orders. “Slash her ties, men! Raise the sails!”
And beyond him the king’s troops were coming, Matthews at the lead.
“Robin!” Brianna shrieked as she saw an arrow sail through the air. She dragged him down with her, in time to save them each from a mortal blow, but too late to avoid a hit, as evidenced by Robin’s agonized screech as the arrow tore into his thigh.
“Leave me!” he commanded Brianna, gritting out his words painfully between clenched teeth.
“Nay, I cannot!” she cried in horror, locking her jaw together for strength as, placing her hands beneath his arms, she dragged him along. The task was almost beyond her and she was moving terribly slowly.
“Brianna!” Robin hissed. “Go—seek shelter.”
Salt sweat fell from her forehead in slender rivulets into her eyes, and she gasped for breath and tensed again to pull his weight along. “We shall make it, Robin.”
But they wouldn’t. The king’s men were almost upon the Sea Hawk. A cannon suddenly boomed from the deck of the ship, slowing the tide that swarmed upon them, but not ceasing it. There were still more men.
The thundering repercussion sent Brianna sprawling to the gangplank, coughing and choking from the powder that filled the air.
She struggled to her feet, tears falling as she reached desperately for Robin’s arms again.
She would not make it. Already soldiers were engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the remaining sailors upon the gangplank.
They drew nearer. And nearer. She stared with horror, then screamed aloud as a bearded soldier bore down upon them, his sword gleaming as it caught the golden rays of the brilliant sun.
“This way, gent!”
It was Sloan’s voice, and his cutlass teased the steel armor upon the man’s back and forced him to turn with a growl. “Soldiers should fight armed men, not defenseless girls and wounded boys!”
The soldier bellowed and charged at Sloan, who sidestepped him with agility, swiftly parrying the assault with a slash of his cutlass. The man let out a hideous shriek and careened over the plank to the water below.
Then Sloan was sheathing his bloodied cutlass and hunching down beside Brianna.
“Get aboard!” he ordered her, ducking to take Robin himself.
He grunted, and hefted the heavy seaman over his shoulder.
Brianna coughed and whirled to obey Sloan.
He followed behind her, shouting as they leapt to the deck, “The gangplank—drop the gangplank!” The men were all aboard, but so were more than two score of the soldiers.
The bow of the Sea Hawk was alive with the curses and screams of battle, the clash of swords, the thud of steel.
Sloan propelled Brianna before him as he hurriedly carried Robin to the shelter of the forward companionway and deposited him there.
“How is it, lad?”
Robin grinned through his pain. “Not so bad, Captain. Not so bad.”
Sloan nodded grimly and patted Robin on the shoulder. He glanced briefly at Brianna. “Get yourself to safety, girl! Into the cabin, now!” he railed.
She could not seek out the cabin—not with Robin upon the stairs and the men who had so valiantly fought to save her still locked in mortal combat. Sloan, assuming she would obey him under the circumstances, had already turned from them to join the fighting.
If he dies, I shall not be able to bear it, she thought.
A groan from Robin reminded her of his presence—and of the tearing wound within his thigh. She dropped down beside him, ripping shreds of material from her dress. “Robin!” she whispered to him. “I’m going to take the arrow out.”
“No.” He groaned. “The blood …”
“I can stanch it,” she assured him, trying to smile her assurance even as she heard the groans of the men fighting just feet away. “Trust me, Robin,” she encouraged him. “I swear I’ll not let you die.”
She clenched her teeth and studied the arrow.
Fortunately, the shaft had not fully penetrated the flesh.
Brianna breathed a sigh of relief. No major blood vessels had been severed, she was certain.
She placed her left hand upon his thigh and her right upon the arrow shaft, tensing with her determined effort to bring forth all her strength.
The arrow stubbornly refused to give; she just as stubbornly refused to allow it to remain.
It gave so suddenly that she keeled backward. Robin screamed, and she scrambled back to her knees swiftly to wrap the wound in the fabric from her dress, pressing upon his thigh firmly and pulling her bandage tight to stanch the flow of blood.
Robin’s eye opened his pain-glazed eyes. “I’m the one who called you ‘whore,’ ” he confessed with whispered shame.
Crimson splashed over her cheeks and she lowered her eyes, then raised them quickly to smile at him. “It does not matter,” she said softly, “and you must not try to talk.”
He gripped her fingers with hot, dry hands. “It does matter,” he whispered. “It matters, for I wronged you. You are not a whore, but an angel.”
She was stunned. Witch, whore—and now angel. The pity of it was that she was just a woman, a terrified woman now as the hand-to-hand combat continued just steps away upon the deck.
A scream caught in her throat at the sight of Sloan. As he engaged in swordplay with a soldier, a black-clad figure was creeping toward his unwary back.
“Sloan!”
Her horrified scream rose above the din of steel and men.