The Rapier

Chapter Eleven

In answer I felt soft hands at my cheek, and a moment later Elena fell shaking into my lap, sobbing already, her tears warm and wet against my torn shirt and bruised skin. "I thought for sure that you were dead," I told her, "Or worse. But you are alive, my love, as am I. Please, don't cry." I tried my best to quell my anger and soothe her. "Untie me so that I can hold you."

Elena did as I asked, making good time against the knots, the clumsy rope no match for her small fingers. Freed, I held her gently against my chest, and when the sobs finally subsided I made her promise me she'd not been raped.

"It's not me you should worry about, Remy," Elena chided me, albeit gently. "The things they did to your body," she shuddered. "How can you stand the pain?"

"There's no pain as long as you are here," I answered, although she was right, and I wouldn't be alive much longer if we were kept in the damp darkness.

"Don't be silly, I saw them beat you. We have to escape, Ridolpha, you need help." When her fingers brushed lightly against the back of my head I groaned. She felt the sticky warmth. "Youre bleeding."

"Don't fret," I took her hands in mine and held her close a moment longer. "We must find a way to escape."

"Why haven't they killed us?" she asked, a question I had been silently asking myself. The answers I had formulated to that question were dire, as all the reasons pirates kept captives were wont to be. Torture was at the top of that list, although no amount of torturing me would produce any gold that I simply did not have. More then likely we would be held prisoner until we reached Madrid, where I could come up with the money and pay them off. If I was very lucky we would escape unharmed further, but I doubted that very much. Elena was too beautiful a prize.

"We're valuable," I explained to her, leaving out my darkest thoughts. "Now, help me stand and then we can find a way out of here, somehow."

"We're much to far from shore this time to swim," Elena noted as she pulled me up, holding me as I swayed, the blood rushing back into my head too fast.

That was true, and I mentally crossed that option off my list. Left to us was bargaining for our lives, fighting our way through the traitorous group of criminals, or succumbing to our fates. Considering that Elena's fate was sure to be far worse then my own, I decided not to count that as an option, either.

As I stood swaying in the darkness, the low rumble of the thick chains that attached the ship to it's anchor began to echo through the darkness. If I wasn't mistaken, we were putting to shore, and I said as much to Elena. "Where?" she asked.

My heart sank.

The only place that a group of criminals could put into dock was the Lost Island, a veritable hotbed of low life and riffraff. Even most pirates avoided Lost Island, knowing that the chances they would escape with their lives, much less their ships, cargo and crew were always slim to none. The calls of rough sea men echoed down through the darkness to the brig, and my suspicions were confirmed.

A moment later streams of light pierced the darkness around us, and for what seemed like ages we were blinded, the only sight an overwhelming brightness as the brig was opened as we were dragged on deck by four rough men.

"On your knees, you fucking fife," I heard a grunt and rough hands pushed me to the deck as my feet were swept from beneath me. "You too, Countess!"

Elena's breathless gasp unsettled me as the blurry images of the men who were once my crew threw her harshly to the floor. It was harder for me to keep quiet then it ever had been when Elena was being hurt, but I knew better then to protest. If we were lucky we would not be sold as sex slaves to the highest bidder once we reached the main land, and my silence was the key to our luck.

"Now then, Captain De Saviola," came a grating voice in halting Spanish. I peered up into the fat face of a man I had known as Byron the Blower, a most notorious mad-man who I had been reluctant but forced to let aboard. Second to Trent, my first mate, who I was sure had been killed and thrown overboard days ago, Byron was the only other man with enough charisma to rally the men towards mutiny. I cursed my stupidity, realizing now that it would have been so much smarter to deny him passage aboard the Nuevo Fortuna. "You and your little pet here," he reached down to caress Elena's tousled curls, and laughed when I snarled at him. "Are going to find a way to pay us our money, or be killed. And we'll keep your ship, too," he decided.

"You fucking rat!" I shouted, unable to keep quiet any longer. One of the crew kicked me in the gut and I doubled over, resting my head on the wooden deck, trying in vain to catch my breath. Byron certainly hadn't heard the last of my insults.

"You'll be better off saving those words for yourself and your pet, De Saviola," Byron drew my rapier from it's scabbard on his belt and leveled the point of it against the back of my neck. "Or I'll make do with your life, now."

I stayed silent.

"Now, you are to get ashore, find a way to pay each man here the fifty gold nobles you owe them and fifty more for their troubles, and bring it back here, or your little pet will suffer a worser fate than even you can imagine."

I scowled, surging to my feet in one swift movement, brushing aside the rapier with the back of my arm and wrapping both hands around Byron's fat neck, the force of my attack surprising him long enough for me to leave him mostly defenseless. But we were surrounded by a crew of men twice my size, and moment later I was pulled from Byron's body and thrown back onto the deck. "I'll never leave her with you!" I shouted at the top of my lungs as I fought man after man with my bare fists, quickly being overcome. Elena was screaming at the top her lungs as two men held her from me, each grinning furiously as she struggled.

"You will, or she dies!" Byron recovered the rapier and pressed its sharp edge to Elena's neck. A moment later I saw the sky, and then felt the cold shock of the ocean as I plunged through it's surface and touched the bottom, thrown overboard with only the promise of Elena's death to keep me going. I hadn't even the chance to tell her goodbye.