Chapter One
Saint-Malo, France, 1693
Silence is the worst part of battle, Roarke thought, as he stared at the black expanse of the sea.
Standing on the stone ramparts of the old city, he listened to the lap of the tide rising. The wind whistled through the narrow streets behind him. The English had already destroyed a fort on one of the rocky outer islets, but they had halted their bombardment this evening. The moon had not yet risen so he could see nothing in the darkness, but he sensed with a growing restlessness that some other plan was afoot.
He prowled the northwest ramparts until by torchlight he spied a sentry hunched over the wall.
“At ease,” Roarke said as the sentry startled. “Have you seen—”
The sentry lunged. Roarke saw the flash of a dagger just as he felt the cold slice of steel in the fleshy part of his palm. He swerved to one side to avoid the next strike, and then swung out an arm to grab him. But this sentry was no brawny soldier—he was small, slight, and quick. Roarke caught nothing but air as the boy dashed in the direction of the next sentinel.
Damn it.
Roarke shot off after the boy, who was fast but shoeless. Soon he had a handful of the urchin’s collar in his uninjured hand. He disarmed the fighter of his flashing dagger before the boy could inflict any more damage.
“Idiot.” Roarke retrieved the offending weapon from the stones upon which he’d knocked it. “You’ll alert the city for nothing.”
“I know an English accent when I hear one.” The boy struggled like a wild thing, landing sharp blows on Roarke’s shins. “And I know my enemies are English!”
“Your commander is, too.”
Roarke squeezed his fist to stop the bleeding. This was the second time today he had been mistaken for the enemy. The folks of Saint-Malo were a suspicious tribe in the best of times, and not every soldier knew that an Englishman had recently been elevated to commander.
Nobody trusted a traitor.
But the mention of his rank had the intended effect, for the boy went still. Roarke sensed the urchin’s terror as the boy dropped his gaze. He supposed it was better to have an overanxious sentry than one who let the enemy slip by. But it galled him that despite his fluency in French, remnants of the Devon accent kept slipping through.
Surely his mother was rolling in her grave.
He shook out his hand and gave the boy a good look-over. “How old are you, boy? Twelve? Thirteen?”
The boy’s sharp jaw hardened. “I’m fifteen.”
Roarke knew a bald-faced lie when he heard one. The urchin barely reached his chest in height. By the ease with which he’d lifted the imp by the scruff, the boy could weigh no more than a hundred pounds.
“If the English knew how badly this city was guarded,” he muttered, “they’d have launched a full assault.”
“I’m not green.” The imp rubbed his upturned nose with the back of his sleeve. “I’ve been working on the sea all my life.”
“A few years tarring hemp doesn’t make you a soldier.”
“Pirates don’t waste their time tarring hemp,” the boy countered. “They spend all their time shooting cannon and fighting.”
The mention of cannon teased a fragment of memory. He’d been observing the performance of each soldier during the earlier bombardment of the city. When and if he ever received his privateering papers from the French, he’d have to hire sailors for his new ship. There was no better opportunity to gauge a man’s fighting skill than in the thick of a fray.
Now he remembered that he’d seen this boy loading cannon on the northern ramparts. Though the skinny boy had struggled with the sixteen-pound cannonballs, he could sight along it like a seasoned veteran.
He said, “You’re far too young to be taking up a pirate’s life.”
“I’m a son of Saint-Malo, Englishman.”
Roarke conceded the point. He’d traveled half the world to get to this city on the English Channel just for the Malouin sailors, who were bred, like this boy, for the sea. Still, this sentry was as scrawny as a feral cat. It dismayed him that the defense of an entire city depended on barefoot sailors and ragamuffins.
“Go home, boy.” He flipped the boy’s dagger and offered it up, handle first. “I’ll take your watch tonight. I can’t allow a bedraggled child guard the most vulnerable side of the fortifications.”
“I can fight.” The boy seized his dagger and raised the blade to the torchlight. “My knife sports a commander’s blood.”
A smarter brat would have left that truth unsaid, but Roarke understood where his brass came from. A young boy on a pirate ship would learn to be a scrappy fighter, sharp of teeth and nails, for someone this small would be the whipping boy of any crew. Some pirate crews treated their weakest no better than many captains of the British Navy.
He set that dark thought aside.
“That dagger-needle did nothing but scrape my skin. And I could have you whipped for using it against your commander.”
“You should have identified yourself.”
“You shouldn’t have been as skittish as a woman.”
“I’m not skittish, I’m careful. And I can’t leave my post.” The boy thrust his hands into the pockets of his loose breeches. The wind pressed his shirt against his bony shoulders. “The sentry paid me to take his place. I won’t get the other half of what he owes me until he relieves me in the morning.”
“You’ll never see that coin. He’s drinking it away in some tavern.”
“I’ll see that coin,” he insisted. “I’ve got two bellies to feed.”
Other street children, he thought. This pup was probably in one of the many gangs of youths that ran through the city. Roarke suppressed a sigh and reached into his pocket to pay the boy to return to safety.
Then a dog bayed. Its bark was high and thin, carried raggedly by the wind. Roarke went still and he felt the boy stiffen, too. The guard dogs of Saint-Malo were vicious beasts. Nights were usually cursed with the animals’ barking, but the bombardment had cowed them into silence.
This dog sensed something coming.
He scanned the ocean, trying to discern the rocky shapes of the islets and their small forts, or the reefed sails of the English fleet, but the cloudy, still-moonless night obscured all form and color.
Then the wash of the sea on the sand changed rhythm and became choppy and short.
Beside him, the boy whispered, “Something’s approaching.”
“A ship,” Roarke said, as a shape loomed into view, “and it’s coming straight for—”
Then the world exploded.
***
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