Chapter Five
The dawn was dim and cold, a slow fog from the ocean rolling over us in a short time. Elena was the first to wake up, already shivering cold and mostly miserable. We had a few miles walk to any city, and although I knew that our closest option was Tarsus, that was a place neither of us wanted to go. Elena gathered her damp clothes and slid into them with a disgusted look on her face. She was used to being relatively clean.
"Goodmorning, darling," I said to her, sitting up to stoke the fire back to life. She only huffed her response, shivering and cross. "We should leave as soon as we can."
"And go where?" she responded sharply. "In case you've forgotten, you've destroyed my home."
I watched her watch me out the corner of my eyes, trying to hide the pang of guilt that rolled across my chest at her words. She was right about that, at least, but I continued to tell myself that I was a pirate, and pirate lords never apologize, however sorry they are.
"Come," I instructed her after we were fully clothed. "The next port is only a few hours walk from here. There we can commandeer a ship and be well on our way, my dear."
"If by commandeer you mean steal-" she started, and I whirled around to face her, placing my one good hand on her shoulder. Her self righteousness was already getting old.
"You know very well that I do," I interrupted her with half a smile, brushing a wayward strand of hair out of her face. "Now, come along, darling. We musn't be late."
If Elena had anything to say, she held her tongue, which was a rare occurrence, and followed me up the beach and into the brush, where we fought against mostly untamed undergrowth to find a path or trail that lead to the main road between Tarsus and Oporto, the next city.
After a few minutes she broke her silence. "How is your arm?" she asked me, watching as I snapped branches to clear a path behind me with one arm. No gentleman would let a lady be bushwhacked.
"It hurts," I admitted truthfully, not turning to see her response. She'd already made her lack of remorse quite obvious. "It's smarting."
"It needs to be redressed," she responded, a fact I already knew well. "At least let me lead us, I can make a way just as well as you can, and I have both arms."
I grimaced, wondering if my pain had been that obvious, and ignored her offer to help. Even if we had just slept together again, my pride was much too important to let her lead, not when I was pretending to have the perfect plan at hand. "It's alright," I finally replied. "I'm fine."
We continued on in silence for more than a mile, until Elena stopped to take a rest, complaining that we had no water and the morning sun had begun to rise. It was going to be another sweltering day on the coast.
We were close enough to Oporto to smell the fish of the town's world renowned market. The stench hung in the air downwind like a low fog. "We're close to town," I offered in answer to her complaints.
"We are?" she frowned, desperately out of shape despite how fit her body was in other ways.
"Can't you smell the fish?" I asked and she nodded after breathing in for a moment. "Come on, we're nearly there and you can rest when we are on the sea."
She sighed and we continued on, finally coming to the main road, blending in with the considerable foot and horse traffic there, as travelers poured into the port city of Oporto to sell their goods and buy others, the bustle of progress bearing the stench of dead fish and the sea.
The gates of the city stood wide open, guarded by soldiers who checked each cart and turned away beggars and thieves. Elena's clout as the countess of a neighboring town would have been enough to pass through under normal circumstances, but surely word had come that she was missing or deserted, and I had destroyed her home. If we were recognized it would be the end of our journey.
"How do we get inside?" she asked me as I eyed an apple cart with a wide berth.
"Quickly now," I pulled her behind me, cutting in the line of travelers behind the cart, first standing and then kneeling behind it before pushing her to climb underneath the cargo, to the thin planks that made up the underside, where most people stored their belongings. We just fit.
I held my breath as soldiers surrounded the cart, inspecting the goods and charging the driver three pence to enter, promising punishment if he were found sheltering thieves. Elena looked at me with wide eyes, gripping the bottom of the dusty cart with white knuckles.
The wheels began to turn again and we were in the city of Oporto the moment we crossed the moat. We clambered out from underneath the apple cart a moment later, ready to dash from the bustling wide lane into the darkness of the closest alleyway and hope for the best.
"Hey, you there!" I heard the gruff call of a soldier behind us and turned to see two men following Elena and I, spears in hand.
"Quick, run," I told her, grabbing her hand and pulling her into the alleyway, stopping to push a hand against each door we passed until one came open, and I pulled her inside. The men passed by, their boots echoing loudly in the dingy alley while I stood holding Elena in my arms in darkness.
It was not until I felt another pair of arms wrap round the both of us that I moved, and moved with fervor. "Unhand us!" I shouted as Elena stifled a gasp, drawing my rapier and whirling in an instant to pin a rather grimy looking man against a far wall. A single shaft of sunlight shone down to illuminate his shocked face.
"Let's go," I withdrew, backing out of the door and into the narrow alleyway once more, keeping Elena safely behind me. "Hurry, we must make it to the docks before ships set sail before low tide."
Elena nodded, her face pale with fright, and I took her hand, leading her through winding narrow streets and alleys on pure intuition, following the sound and smell of the sea.
When finally we came to the dock of Oporto, Elena's mouth fell open at the sight. Literally thousands of boats seemed to be moored here, some tiny and bobbing pleasantly on the ever moving ocean, some large and hardly floating with the tide. I eyed the long rows of boats for the stateliest ship, wishing I had the loyalty of a crew to handle her all the way to the Isles. But we would have to be stowaways, or pay for our keep in gold, at least until we reached my homeland where I could no doubt recruit a crew of able bodied sailors.
"Which one?" Elena asked me when she had overcome her astonishment. I smiled, pretending to know the answer to that question with a nod.
"Whichever we can sneak aboard," I replied, bravely, the ache in my arm growing with intensity as I walked past the dock guards without a glance in their direction. Acting suspicious usually got me in more trouble then anything else. "Come on, let's see what's here."
Together down the dock we walked, Elena counting the number of smaller docks attached to the main one. By the time we had reached the end of the dock she had counted twenty-two offshoots, and as we took a left turn she counted the spaces. "There's room for at least two thousand ships here," she whispered to me as we passed a young gentleman and his lady. They seemed to be on a stroll, and they looked at us strangely.
"We've got to do something about your hair," I realized, interrupting her estimations. Odd enough it was to see two men dressed in wrinkled salt stained clothes and covered in sand and sweat, but that one of them had a pretty enough face and long enough hair to be a woman was memorable. Memorable was exactly what Elena and I did not want to be.
As I was watching the sun glint off her auburn locks something burgundy and black caught my eyes. I stared past her in disbelief, stopping dead with my mouth open.
"What is it?" she turned after she realized I had stopped, and looked to see what had startled me.
"The Fortuna," I hissed, taking her arm and pulling her down the closest dock way, ducking behind a stack of wooden crates. "She's here," I realized, peering around the crates to see what was left of my pride and joy, the Lady Luck. "Callahan must have brought her in for the bounty."
"Bounty?" Elena echoed, generally clueless.
"Five hundred thousand gold nobles to any captain who can bring down the great Ridolpha De Saviola, scourge of the fifteen seas," I quoted the wanted poster I had seen tacked up at every dock from Tarsus to my home, in Madrid.
"There are only seven seas," Elena corrected me with a smirk. "I should turn you in and take the bounty for myself."
I turned to her with wide eyes, a brilliant smile slowly spreading across my face. It was ingenious.
"No, no," Elena shook her head immediately, already following my train of thought. "No, that's the worst idea in the world," she began to argue before I had even spoken.
I decided not to engage her in my thought process, and instead turned back to my ship, amazed that it was even still afloat. Had I known Callahan was after me for the bounty and not my treasure I would have used a different strategy to defeat him. As it were, without the aid of the Fortuna's thirty guns, as I had been the day before, I would probably have ended up in much the same predicament.
From where we stood on the dock it was easy to see that a crew of men were going about stripping my ship for all she was worth, which wasn't much after the damage she had sustained. What was left of the sails were being cut into smaller pieces and folded, the gold inlays from the handrails and galley way already carved out. No doubt Callahan had taken my glorious bed for himself, as I saw no sign of the oversized mattress or my satin sheets. His boat floated gallantly beside my own, her white sails billowing in the morning breeze. Relentless she was called, although I could easily see her hailed the Fortuna.
The plan was quickly forming in my mind.
"We're going to steal that ship," I pointed the Relentless out to Elena who blanched. "First, we'll get that bounty, then we'll free my men, and then, we're going to take that damned Callahan's ship and sail her straight out of the harbor, or my name isn't De Saviola."
Elena looked from the ship and back to me, unconvinced.