Page 2 of The Withering Dawn
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?
“Señorita,” 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.
