Edward M. Erdelac by Red Sails

Author:Red Sails
Format: epub
Published: 2013-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

On the deck of The Trivia, Captain Absolon Vigoreaux watched the fire burning on the shore and gripped the rail, deliberating. Obviously they had found the stores, and Badham had taken the launches. It was a wetting or a gamble. He peered down at the inky water, saw the moon lying there like a china plate. The moondoggers had their hunts to keep the fires stoked in their hearts. After so many years, what did he have?

He smiled to himself and lit his pipe.

* * * *

Timóteo thanked the Lord for the wind. His calves ached and his bladder was heavy, but he had heard the tremendous explosion from the beach and knew the Trivias were coming. He knew it was sinful to pray for vengeance, but he thought of poor Abbot Ramón breathing his last on a heathen table, and he thought of his brothers’ suffering, and he did so anyway. He prayed too for resolve. He had never killed a man before. He held his musket close.

He thought of the woman somewhere to his left in the dark watching the same path for signs of the creatures. She would kill without hesitation. He had seen her. Poor, savage little thing with no knowledge of God’s love, no regard for her fellow creations. Yet another feeling rose in him, one long buried in incense and abstinence; the exercise of manhood. Neither he nor his father, nor even his grandfather had ever been soldiers, but as a boy he had thrilled to the exploits of Ambrosio and Olivares, and sometimes wondered had he been born into another life, if he should have been able to fight. He supposed this was a musing common to boys, and he felt it in his breast again now, like the discovery of a fond and forgotten plaything.

But this was not boyhood play, it was the everlasting game of God and the Devil, and immortal souls were the wager at stake. This was the work to which he had sworn himself, the eternal conflict, stripped down to a literal, elemental level. He prayed he had prepared Jan enough.

An animal noise came to his ears, as of a pack of hunting dogs. Then the signal fire lit up high on the point above the waterfall, and was met by primeval howls from below.

A great snarling went up among the milling creatures, which he could only perceive by their sound, too far away to see them. It reached a ferocious crescendo and then one of the things let out a bloodcurdling sound somewhere between a canine yowl and the shriek of a man in agony. The sound dwindled, and the pack of beasts set up a terrible baying, drowning out the lone casualty entirely. A great body of them tore across the jungle toward the far off firelight, and the remainder came in their direction.

Timóteo steeled himself, then saw the dark shadows rushing low ahead like Satan’s dogs come to hound the damned. There were six crashing through the bushes.

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