Direct Hit
Kyla suspected Lochwood was unaware they were being followed. She gave the crew a series of discrete hand signals to slow their progress, confident he had no knowledge of what she was doing.
Despite her anticipation, she nevertheless clenched her jaw when a command was bellowed on the wind. “Heave to in the name of King James.”
Her innards knotted when she half-turned to give the order. Corbin held a pistol to her head. “Keep going,” he hissed. “I’ll blow her head off if you approach,” he warned her crew.
The enormity of his stupidity struck her. Any one of her men could captain the boat. If he shot her, they would quickly overwhelm him before he had a chance to reload.
However, she’d be dead.
“It would be better to obey the order,” she said, hoping he didn’t detect the fear in her voice. “We have naught to hide.”
He pressed the barrel against her temple. “I will not stop for a Maxwell.”
Memories of her stubborn stepgrandfather came to mind. Rory MacRain refused to divulge the secret location of his clan’s Faerie Flag to the MacKeegans even after his daughter married into that clan.
The command came again, interrupting her reverie. “Heave to or we’ll fire.”
Time and gentle persuasion had changed Rory’s attitude, but she doubted persuasion would work in this situation. Corbin had evidently gone mad. Either that or he was, indeed, smuggling something.
She risked a glance over her shoulder. “’Tis a gunboat,” she exclaimed as gooseflesh marched across her nape. “We have nay choice.”
“To oars,” Corbin yelled to the men. “Row as if your lives depended on it.”
Kyla took advantage of his momentary distraction to take a good look at their pursuers. The huge eagle she’d mistaken for a figurehead was real. The knot in her belly tightened. There’d be no escape from a ship guided by the king of birds.
A deafening crack robbed her of breath. She cringed, expecting to fall lifeless to the deck. A wave of nausea surged up her throat when a cannonball splashed into the water on their starboard side and she realized the noise hadn’t come from the pistol. She gripped the railing in an effort to allay the tremor vibrating through her body. If this folly continued, her father’s boat would end up at the bottom of the Solway. “Kill me if ye wish,” she hissed through gritted teeth, “but I willna allow ye to put my crew’s lives in danger for no good reason.”
“Take evasive action,” Lochwood yelled.
She shook her head. “We’re heavier than the smaller galley. We canna outrun her.”
Jaw clenched, he turned and fired the pistol at the gunboat, a measure of his desperation since they were too far away for a shot to find its mark.
She whirled and shoved him hard. He dropped the weapon in an effort to regain his footing, but fell over, landing heavily on the deck.
Three crewmen hurried forward to hold him down at the very moment round-shot chewed into the port side of her beloved Lanmara. Splintered wood exploded and the waters of the greedy Solway rushed in to fill the gap.
*
Broderick’s elation at his gunners’ direct hit was short-lived when the birlinn began to sink, her crew jumping overboard into the choppy waters.
The captain’s refusal to heave to and his wild potshot confirmed Broderick’s suspicions the ship was smuggling. However, that didn’t mean the Hebridean crew knew of any contraband.
It was difficult to tell, but it appeared the navigator had been arguing with the captain and may even have shoved him when he fired at Broderick’s boat. The shot into the port side of the birlinn had perhaps been premature, but the damage was done and the law of the sea demanded he save as many of the shipwrecked sailors as possible.
He loosed Aiglon’s jesses. “Search,” he commanded, confident the bird would stand a better chance of spotting men swept away from the sinking ship by the incoming tide.
The eagle flew off, swooping low over the water, then soaring to swoop again.
His crew launched two rowboats and each made their way to where he pointed, following Aiglon’s calls.
Scanning the water alongside the sinking ship, he caught side of a head, just before it disappeared beneath the waves. A redhead. The navigator had red hair.
As they came closer, the man reappeared, struggling to extricate himself from his plaid.
Broderick leaned as far over the side as he dared and stretched out a hand, unsure if the man could see him for all the hair plastered to his face. “Leave it off,” he yelled. “’Twill drag ye down.”
“Nay, I canna…”
He disappeared again only to surge out of the water moments later, one arm holding the plaid aloft.
Broderick blinked. The white arm was slender. The wet shirt plastered to the man’s chest revealed what looked remarkably like…
Without a second thought, he unfastened his sword belt, stripped off his tunic, and dove into the seething water.