The Red King Read online

  He followed the instruction given him, scanning the horizon in all directions. Distant shimmers would mean another ship and shadows meant land was approachable. A pale speck far off past the bow caught his eye, and he tugged on the line to be brought down. His smile was wide and happy as he was lowered, more than he thought proper under the circumstance. Still, it could not be helped. “I see a distant sail, southwest,” he said as he was untied and released from the swing, “but no more, just sea and sky. Were you expecting something else?”

  Fleming, the man looked upon as second-in-command and who had been with the captain when Andrew had woken, answered. “We don’t expect, but we prepare.” He was looking at his captain. “We cannot let the coast stay unguarded, Ruaidhri. What are you about?”

  It was the foreign word that captured Andrew’s attention. “Roo-au-ree,” he watched the captain, repeating the word. “Is that your name?”

  He was ignored, but it did not trouble him when the captain answered. “That is Acklie’s ship, Fleming.”

  “You think to take them, too? Don’t we have enough to draw Maarten here?”

  “This isn’t for Maarten. This is for Andrew.”

  The sound of his name surprised him, as did the shock of pleasure he felt when the captain’s eyes fell on him. “What do you mean?”

  “You want to save them?”

  “Of course!”

  “Then you will,” the man said, moving closer to him. “It will help.”

  “I don’t…I am not…what do you mean?” Andrew stammered, meeting the man’s gaze.

  Fleming spoke. “I think he means to take the ship and to use the exercise as training for you. I take it that you agreed to our plan.”

  Andrew liked Fleming, his eyes were sharp with intelligence and shrewd thought, but his face held laughter in the lines around his mouth. Glancing towards the captain, Andrew said, “I haven’t agreed to anything. I know nothing of any plan.”

  “Damn it, Fleming,” the captain snarled. “You speak too soon.”’

  “What plan? What do you want from me?”

  “Ruaidhri, you play this one too close to your chest. He needs to know what you want him to do.”

  “What?”

  “I will deal with the boy as I see fit.”

  “Not if you want him to help us.”

  “If you would tell me…”

  “Tell me again, who is the captain?”

  “I will tell you who the braying ass is.”

  Andrew was tired of being ignored and his frustration edged on anger. His voice was louder than he intended, but it had the desired effect. “I will not agree to anything until I am familiar with the situation!”

  Fleming and the captain looked at one another.

  “Just tell me!”

  The captain frowned. Fleming looked concerned, but told him, “We need you to submit to capture by Maarten’s men.”

  “What?”

  “It will be the fastest, easiest way to get you to Maarten.”

  Andrew stared at Fleming as if he’d said the sky was green.

  The captain came to Andrew and took his arm in a firm hold. “My quarters, now,” he ordered, casting a furious eye upon Fleming. “Your mouth will be the death of you.”

  Andrew was propelled forwards, into the much darker cabin. The sudden change in light blinded him for an instant and he stumbled, but he was still held by one strong hand. He could not help but shout. “You want me to willingly surrender to those men? Those who wanted to trade me as a prize?”

  “If you face your pain, your fear of these men, you will see that they are only men. It will give you strength for the rest of what I need from you,” the captain said, pulling him close.

  Andrew tried to dislodge himself from that grip, to break its hold. “And what is that? What do you need?”

  “I need you to kill one.”

  Andrew stared at him in horror. “I cannot kill…”

  He was taken by both hands and shaken hard. “You will, Andrew, if you want to pay for your place on this ship.”

  “I can’t!”

  “It is your help I demand for payment,” he was told, “or you’ll be ransomed to Maarten for his pleasure without the means to protect yourself, and without your precious purity intact.”

  “You…you would not…”

  He was pulled against the man’s hard, muscled chest. “I will, Andrew. I assure you it would be quite to my liking to pluck your tender cherry.”

  The feel of the captain’s thighs pressing Andrew’s did not provoke the same fear as before. He trembled, unprepared for the sudden heat low in his belly as those long arms wrapped around him. He closed his eyes, tried to clear his mind with a deep breath. “Let me go. I cannot kill. I will not. Do not ask me.”

  “I don’t have to ask, Andrew. You will aid me, either way.”

  His lips were crushed, then, beneath the captain’s bruising kiss. Andrew had never been kissed thus, by man or woman. It was alarming, the feeling of the other man’s tongue in his mouth. His heart raced, his breath caught in his throat, and his neck bent back, yielding, submitting. He felt teeth scrape against his, a jarring sensation that caused him to jerk within the embrace. When Rory drew on his tongue, sucking it into his mouth, Andrew moaned and slid his hands up to clutch at the man’s shoulders.

  The captain pulled away. He looked down at Andrew, lips parted. Andrew could feel him breathe, taste his air. The man’s eyes were dark and heavy lidded, but his brows were raised as if in surprise. They were frozen together, locked in each other’s arms. “You...” the captain began; then stopped.

  “Yes…” Andrew whispered, not fully aware of what he wanted to agree to.

  “Do you…” the captain paused, swallowed. “Do you accept my terms?”

  Andrew tried to push away but was yanked back, falling entirely into the captain’s body.

  “I will not…:” he began, only to see the captain’s face close off, become distant. Andrew straightened, raising his chin. “I’m not a soldier. I cannot fight.”

  “When you spoke of yourself as a prize, you came closer to the mark than you knew. You don’t have to fight if you are willing to use your other gifts.”

  “What gifts? You speak nonsense. I have nothing!”

  The captain backed him into the wall, hands roaming, sliding down, clutching, pressing. “Your gifts, Andrew, are driving me to distraction. I see you with my men. One frightened glance from you and they soften, like clucking hens. They want to comfort you, make what is to come easy and painless.”

  “I don’t ask for that!” Andrew cried. “What of you? What do you want?”

  “What do I want?” the man repeated, his smile stretching to reveal his wicked, sharp teeth. “What I want is to feel your sweet lips around my cock and see your rosy ass raised and ready for fucking. I want to loose my come into your bowels while you cry and beg. I want to taste your tears, lick them from your cheek and know I put them there.”

  “Stop,” Andrew whispered, trembling, his untutored imagination painting the images as well as it could.

  The man took Andrew’s mouth again, biting, tearing into the softness. Andrew yelped at the pain and pushed him away. “And there…your blood…I want your blood,” he muttered, lapping at Andrew’s lower lip. His fingers dug into Andrew’s hips now, leaving bruises, marking him.

  Andrew was stunned, frightened; unmoving and gasping. “Why are you saying these things?”

  “I won’t be the only man to want these things. More than your pretty face and youthful form, the coquetry of your eyes and lips, it is your innocence that makes you a prize beyond measure. Outside your abbey walls your very presence provokes the animal in men.”

  “I tell you I do not do this!” Andrew protested.

  “Oh, but you do.” The captain shifted his weight, drawing his hips across Andrew’s stomach. The hard heat pressed against him made Andrew jerk and shudder. “For most, they turn into clucking hens. The worst of u
s want all of you, down to your soul. This is your power.”

  Andrew said nothing. He could tell how wide his eyes were, could feel the air across his lips as he panted. He lowered his head and swallowed, closed his eyes tight and tried not to feel the man’s strength, his warmth. His desire.

  “Only now do you guess what men feel when they look at you. You make them crazed. Ready to sacrifice any and all they have to possess you. I want you to use it. Use it to avenge us.” The captain’s voice had taken on a raspy note, as if his throat, too, was dry.

  Andrew did not know where the words came from, perhaps a bit of wisdom taught him by one of the monks. “Vengeance is a miserable price, no matter how richly deserved. It leaves nothing in its wake save an empty soul.”

  “Don’t give me your doctrines, I want none of them. What I want is to make Maarten Jans de Worrt suffer and die. I will use any tool at my disposal to make this happen. That includes you; whether you are willing or not makes no difference to me,” the captain said, releasing Andrew and stepping away. “It would be more pleasurable for you were you to submit freely, but in the end, it will not matter. Think on this as you go through your day’s labor. Find Malik. He will give you work.”

  He turned and went to his desk leaving Andrew against the wall, panting, staring open mouthed.

  “Get out. Now.”

  Chapter Four

  Andrew ran out of the cabin, back into the warm sun, shaking, sweating, and weak-kneed. He rested against the gunnel for a moment before seeking out Fleming, instead of Malik. “Oh,” the man said, looking up from where he wound rope around a bitt. He seemed surprised. “You’re back.”

  “Tell me what you want from me.

  Fleming shook his head. “If he didn’t say it, I will not.”

  “He told me some. I wish to hear the rest of it.”

  Fleming ignored him. He nodded to another post. “See that pin? When I take this line, I want you to pull the pin out.”

  Andrew took the wooden pin from its place and watched Fleming as he secured the line. “Tell me the truth.”

  The man’s pale blue eyes regarded him shrewdly. “Do you really want to know the truth?”

  Andrew did not answer, but waited, his brows rising slightly with expectation.

  Fleming crossed his arms across his chest.

  “Who are you? What are you? I hear the words pirate, guardian, protector…to my knowledge they are not the same ilk. You claim to be pirates yet I’m given clothes, fed, even cared for. I’m ripped from death by a…a spy, your spy…and dropped into a plot to kill a man that I’ve never heard of because Roo-au-ree has a…vendetta. I do not know this story, let alone my part in it. I only know for sure that I’ve no life or family to return to, and the man who rescued me is named Malik, and that no one will tell me what I ask!” Andrew had begun at a regular volume, a moderate tempo, but by the end he was shouting, shaking with suppressed emotion. He should have felt foolish, ashamed at losing his temper, but he was beyond such restrictions. His heart was racing and he felt strangely elated.

  Fleming stared at him. There were other men on deck, and they stared, too. At last Fleming ventured, “Was there a question in there?”

  Andrew had never felt the desire to do violence before in his life, but as he stood there, scrutinized with such disinterest, his hand tightened on the belaying pin. With a ferocity that surprised himself and Fleming, Andrew threw the pin straight at his head. If the man had not ducked he would have been injured, perhaps even unconscious.

  Righting himself, Fleming smiled broadly. “You’re stronger than you look.”

  Andrew closed his eyes. “Why won’t you just answer my questions?”

  “My name is Fleming. I was in the King’s Navy when our ship was taken by Danish brigands. I should be dead.” He turned to the man picking hemp from the deck joints and who looked up at Andrew with eyes that were alternately hard and wounded. “That is Joshua, from Gravesend. His family’s home was burned and his pregnant wife taken. He was left for dead on the beach.”

  Pointing towards the men at the portside lines, he continued. The first was a dark skinned man with raised, grey scars circling both of his forearms and had a welcoming, white-toothed smile. “Yousef was bought in Tunisia and chained to an oven for three years before he was sold to do the same on a corsair ship.” Beside him was a pale haired, wiry youth. “Jack was taken from his parents’ arms and sold on the block in Morocco. He is only four and twenty, and twenty of those years he spent a slave. ” Andrew was shocked by the young man’s drawn, haggard face, and met his stare with difficulty.

  Fleming pointed to a bent figure, quietly mending fishing nets. He seemed no older than Andrew, though his back was bent low like an old man’s. There was a different air about him, a silence that went deeper than just his voice. “Johnny there was in a room, just like yours, but he wasn’t kept in such pristine condition. When they tired of his screams, they cut out his tongue and fucked his mouth, just the same.”

  Andrew took it all in; meeting each man’s gaze in turn despite feeling as if would retch at any moment. He felt they deserved that.

  “Every man on this ship has a story and they’ve come to the same place.” Fleming came up behind him, his words softer, but as intense. “There are a hundred other tales, but their voices are silent. Maarten must be stopped or the stories will never end.”

  “But what part do I play in this?”

  Fleming looked Andrew straight in the eyes. “You have something…alluring… about you. You would be allowed to get close, to distract him and leave him without defense.”

  “Yes, I have been told it is my appalling innocence. I don’t understand what that means. What exactly do you think I can do?”

  “Appalling?” Fleming snorted, amused. “I see the point. You can seduce him, boy, get him unawares. He would find you very much to his taste.”

  “What?” Andrew asked, incredulous.

  “Seduce him, take him to bed, and kill him,” Fleming clarified.

  Andrew’s mouth opened, closed, and opened again. Fleming waited. “I can’t do that,” he said at last, very faintly. “I cannot.”

  Fleming took him by the shoulders. “We will teach you. We’ll teach you to fight. We won’t be sending you in there unprepared, or unprotected.”

  “And your captain…what has he to do with this?” Andrew shook him off and moved away.

  “He’s the man who saved us all. He took this ship from Maarten’s men then came to release us from the chains,” Yousef answered, coming closer.

  “He was enslaved, same as we were. When he was starved for refusing to pull the oars, he grew thin enough to wrench his feet from the shackles,” Jack continued.

  “He broke his feet to fit them through, but he still rose to kill the men who held him,” Joshua added from his place on the deck.

  “We owe him our lives. We will follow him into Hell.” Fleming said. The other men agreed with a unified “Aye.”

  Andrew scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to keep the tears from coming.

  “How is it that I’ve become your only hope? Surely there is someone else, someone better.”

  “You were taken before Maarten could have you. He’ll find that a personal affront.”

  Andrew looked around at them. “I…cannot…I am…not whom you seek.”

  “The captain does have some claim on your person,” Fleming began, but Andrew turned away from him.

  “Your captain with no name?” he snapped. “Your Roo-au-ree?”

  “My name is Rory.”

  Andrew started, looked to the stern rail to see the captain. Rory. Ruaidhri.

  “Like you, my family name was lost. It means little, where we stand. What you heard is Ruaidhri, meaning red king in the language of my father. It is a title bestowed upon me by the prisoners I ransom. This is the ship I was condemned to and I took the night I freed myself. I call it Taibhse, ghost. I use it to disrupt Maarten’s trading routes, his per
sonal cargos, and his raids. For that he has had us declared criminals, pirates, so that other corsairs will attack us for the Danish king’s reward. We are hunted, even as we hunt.” He looked to Andrew. “So, all that you heard is true. Does it matter so much in the end?”

  “Why couldn’t you tell me this before? Did you not think an explanation was necessary? Deserved?” Andrew asked, moving closer.

  “Hearing from the men serves a better purpose. A small taste of the magnitude of this man’s evil goes a fair distance.” Rory’s eyes fell upon him, no longer swimming with heat and hunger. Instead they were bright and anxious. “Will you help us now? We’ll teach you what you need to know. You have a strong arm, sharp eyes, intelligence. And you’re beautiful. He will want you.”

  Andrew felt more pressure in that gaze than all the others combined. He could read the death and suffering there, see the desire for revenge. There was, within Andrew, an answering cry for justice, but still he hesitated. There was something else at play, something at stake, and he could not puzzle it out just yet. “I’m not sure. I need time,” Andrew said.

  Rory looked back to the horizon, silent. Then he cast a slanted gaze at Andrew. “For every hour you take to decide, another life is destroyed by this man’s evil. There is but one way to stop him.” Turning to face Andrew now, he moved until he was so close Andrew could feel the warmth of his body. “I’ll tell you all you need to know. I’ll teach you—”

  “To fight? To kill?” Andrew interrupted, clenching his teeth. He did not look up at Rory’s face but stared forward, his eyes on a small tear in the shoulder of the man’s shirt. Fingers wrapped around his throat and Andrew gasped. They did not threaten, no squeeze or bruise came, only a tantalizing weight and presence that caused his flesh to ripple with chills down his chest and arms.

  “Everything,” Rory said, sliding his thumb up to press under Andrew’s chin, raising his head as he did so. Their eyes met. For Andrew, in that moment, the world…shifted.