Mystic Warrior (28 page)

The words that reached her now were not in someone's heart but shouted, carrying faintly over the night air.
“Ship to port!”
She could easily translate the French.

Despite the night and cloud cover, they'd been seen.

Closing her eyes and praying, Lissandra splayed her fingers against the walls of the wooden cabin to steady herself—

And realized they were sailing directly into the path of a second ship.

Standing at the helm, Murdoch sensed the second ship shortly after Lis did. He swore in three languages and with a few phrases he made up on his own. Two vessels at once! How large? What flag did the new one fly?

Had he possessed an Aelynn schooner, Murdoch could have sailed circles around both bulky vessels, but this fat fishing sloop had only one mast and little velocity.

At this wind speed, he had just minutes before they would be trapped between the two warships. Not possessing Aelynn hearing, his crew hadn't heard the faint warning cry from the frigate's crow's nest. They continued about their normal business.

If his men couldn't see either vessel, then the distance between them was too great for the cannoneers to target their tiny sloop. But sound carried at sea. If he started shouting commands to his three-man crew, the other vessels would pin down their location—preventing collision perhaps, but risking capture.

Murdoch groaned as Lissandra laid a hand on his shoulder. “Get inside,” he said. “I don't have time for distractions.”

“I know as much as you do about what is out there. I am not as adept at steering or raising sail, but I can pass on orders.”

Despite his raging desire to wrap Lis in cotton bat-ting and stow her safely in a barrel somewhere, the risk was higher without her aid.

“Fetch the mate, the man over there in a striped shirt.” He nodded at the sailor at the jibboom, alert but unaware of impending disaster.

Traversing the bobbing deck as if she'd lived on a ship all her life, she obeyed his command without argument.

Needing to think of others instead of just himself hindered Murdoch's natural instinct to react swiftly. He had to plot and plan and calculate risks and results. By the time the first mate had taken the wheel from him, Murdoch's strained patience had raised the first drifts of fog and mist—which did not necessarily improve the situation.

The farthest ship was British; he could hear the crew more clearly now. They could be caught in the midst of a naval battle!

“Wake the captain,” he ordered next, trusting Lis to obey before he strode off to give quiet orders to the rest of the crew.

He could sense the English vessel looming off their forward bow. From the sheer enormity of sensation bearing down on them, he had to assume it was a galleon. A galleon! Their tiny sloop could be no more than flotsam when viewed from the height of those decks.

A sliver of moonlight peeked from behind the clouds, illuminating the silhouette of the French frigate bearing down on them from the north.

Murdoch set the rest of the crew to hauling canvas to the course he'd set. Finally seeing their danger, they came alive, muttering curses. The French ship slowly came about, readying its cannon in preparation for ordering the sloop to present its colors. Neither his crew nor the frigate was aware of the galleon approaching. Maneuvering between the two enormous vessels without colliding, or one blowing up the other, might take more skill and concentration than Murdoch possessed.

He had stationed himself against the cabin wall to gather his energy and call on all his senses when Lis returned with the captain and awaited his next command.

In that moment, when his brilliantly relentless Lissy stood still without making a single suggestion, Murdoch was struck with the realization that she was
accustomed
to taking orders, that she'd obeyed her demanding mother all her life. No wonder she smacked him every time he tried to tell her what to do. In some ways, he'd been on his own since the day he was born. Lis had never been on her own and now struggled to learn how, and he wasn't helping.

It was a revelation and a dilemma he didn't have time to ponder. He commanded the captain to change course to the one he'd chosen, and when the man tried to argue, Murdoch used what little mind manipulation he could, along with the promise of an extra pearl.

Then he turned to Lis. “Can you keep our crew and passengers calm while I do what I must?” he asked as the small sloop rose and fell on the currents.

At least he hadn't raised a cyclone. Yet. His mind was too busy.

She didn't frown at his suggestion, although she had to know that whatever he intended could create a dangerously unpredictable situation. “I may need to touch the ones who panic.”

He'd rather lash her to the mainmast than let her roam this fragile vessel while waves splashed a slippery deck. Murdoch ground his teeth and nodded, forcing himself to trust her instincts instead of telling her what to do. Still, knowing her selflessness, he couldn't hold back a warning. “Keep in mind, you are more valuable than anyone else aboard.”

Her clear blue eyes pierced him as if she would drill through his skull and implant her opinion like a flag bearer stakes his claim.

“We will see,” she said, gliding off before he could respond.

Cursing, Murdoch watched the crew change sail to catch the direction of the wind he meant to create. Surprise would be his best strategy.

“Ahoy there!” came the cry they all feared.The French frigate loomed to starboard, blocking the moon's light. Cannoneers aimed their weapons. Armed soldiers stood on a deck high above them, waiting for orders to shoot if the sloop didn't drop anchor and trim sails.

Which Murdoch had no intention of doing.

Painfully aware of Lissandra slipping from man to man, reassuring them, encouraging the captain to hold tight to the inexplicable course he'd ordered, Murdoch braced his back against the cabin, spread his legs to steady himself, then held his hands to his temples to concentrate with more force than he'd ever applied before in his perilous life. He needed to change the wind's direction, circle it from west-blowing—

A burst of fresh southerly wind billowed the sails of the frigate. With its canvas set to heel into a westward breeze, the French ship lurched in the sudden shift, its heavy weight abruptly tilting northward, away from the sloop. Surprised shouts and confusion filled the air as soldiers slid backward and cannonballs rolled loose.

With their canvas already prepared to catch the wind shift, the small sloop sailed into the frigate's shadow, well to the north of the larger, slower galleon bearing down on their forward bow. As Murdoch had planned, they now sailed the strait between the two vessels.

Muskets fired through their sails. Still unaware of the galleon's approach, the frigate's disorganized officers shouted furiously, directing cannon to new placements. Should the two great ships see each other . . . men would die, and the sloop would be caught in the cross fire.

“Lissy, get inside,” Murdoch shouted as one wild can nonball overshot the bow and splashed into the water beyond them.

Damn it, that would alert the British!

Lis touched the elbow of the youngest sailor, who was giving off mental shrieks. The boy quieted. Then, to Murdoch's relief, Lis ducked inside the low cabin. He could feel her resting her hand against the wall behind him, as if to steady him. Amazing.

“Helm alee!” he shouted. Now that firing had ensued, he no longer cared if the French heard him. As the captain steered their dangerous course, catching the wind and speeding past the foundering frigate, Murdoch cried, “Galleon to port!” in a voice that thundered above the shouts of the frigate's officers and the explosion of gunpowder.

With the hell stench of sulfur, more cannonballs shot through the rigging, coming ever closer to splintering the deck. Murdoch didn't dare attempt to misdirect the balls for fear they'd crash through the sloop instead of into the water. If ever he needed to control his unpredictable abilities, it was now.

A fog might hide them, but it would also disguise the galleon bearing down on the frigate. Neither ship understood its danger yet.

“Galleon to port!” he thundered again, in clear French. Finally, he heard the cry picked up aboard the frigate. He trusted that someone over there would recognize the peril of firing on a British man-of-war, even if all they could discern was the galleon's running lights.

Another ball crashed through the railing before the frigate's officers could halt their gunmen. The French crew was already in the rigging, correcting its course for the southerly wind. Straining with all his might, Murdoch held the breeze steady, drawing on Lis's more reliable energy. With care, he filled the sloop's sail long enough to let it tack past the barricade, guiding it through the rapidly narrowing gap.

The horror of his crew was palpable as the galleon's menacing bow emerged through the mists. One strong burst of wind in the wrong direction and they could be crushed between the massive vessels.

The galleon's crew was too engaged in trying to correct its course to bother shooting at a fishing sloop. The abrupt wind change had caught the crew by surprise as much as it had the frigate's officers. Murdoch pressed his temples and continued to hold steady, drawing on the currents circulating in the air, keeping a chart in his head of their position, attempting to navigate the water's natural current below them.

His head might explode if he lost even one bearing and had to find it again.

Behind him, Lissandra calmly let her energy flow. He feared sapping her, but he couldn't afford to reject any offer of aid. Too many lives were at stake.

The instant the sloop slipped free of the galleon into open water, Murdoch staggered and gladly dropped his concentration, letting the wind and water return to their normal courses. With canvas newly set to catch the southerly current, the frigate lurched again with the new wind change, widening the gap between the two battle-ships. Still in the process of having its massive rigging reset, the galleon blew eastward, easily diverted from the collision.

With a slight tack of its limited canvas, the sloop steadily maintained its westward path, sliding into the Channel's fog and disappearing from the frigate's sight.

Temples throbbing, Murdoch slid down the wall, utterly depleted.

 

The crew didn't disguise their disgust when they dropped Murdoch in the cabin, thinking that their large gentleman passenger was frozen in fear. It had taken three of them to carry Murdoch's prone form out of harm's way.

“What's wrong with him?” Amelie asked worriedly, hovering near his hammock.

“Inflated self-importance,” Lissandra answered with a smile. This time, she had a better understanding of the forces that ripped through Murdoch's powerful mind, so she did not worry quite so much. Energy depletion could be treated with time.

His erratic and volatile reactions were a different danger, but tonight he'd kept them under masterful control. She applied a soothing compress to his brow and began the task of pulling off his overlarge boots and stockings.

Apparently lost in his own surly thoughts, Badeaux guzzled ale to drown his grief, unaware of, or unconcerned by, the danger they'd just escaped. Pierre had comforted his daughter through the gunfire, but he was too weak to be of much further use. Amelie, on the other hand, was a ball of energy and willing to run in circles upon request.

“Did Monsieur LeDroit get shot?” she asked.

“Not that I can see. He has headaches. They are similar to what the ancient Greeks called
hemikrania
. He will recover if we keep the room dark and quiet and let him relax.”

Lissandra had studied all the ancient medical texts in Aelynn's vast library. She doubted any physician had studied a man of Murdoch's unique abilities, but the symptoms he suffered were similar to those described in Greek treatises about migraines, although Murdoch's seemed related to energy exertion and not noise or light. She held her palm to the side of his head, felt the fiery heat of his distended blood vessels, and carefully applied her Healing energy.

Interfering with the brain was dangerous, she knew, but the arteries had to be reduced to their normal size before his agony would retreat. She feared too much overexertion could burst a vessel and cripple his brilliant mind.

She would have the rest of the night and the next day to ponder all the ramifications of an Oracle with a crippled mind. No wonder he had resisted training. To focus his energies inward as she and Ian did so naturally caused Murdoch excruciating pain. As a child, he must have learned to protect himself by diverting his energies elsewhere. Anywhere. And no one had known to teach him otherwise. Instead, he'd been condemned as an unreliable troublemaker.

She kissed his brow, placed her fingers at the pulse point of his throat, and let him relax.

England—and the precious chalice—awaited them, the magical chalice with the power to solve Aelynn's problems, return Murdoch to his home, and—with the will of the gods—raise him to the rank of Oracle. She had no idea what pitfalls might lie in their path.

She did know that once they reached her brother's home, if Trystan and Mariel still resided there, a battle of giants was inevitable.

Murdoch and Trystan had ever been rivals for her hand and for Council leadership. And Trystan had never forgiven Murdoch for unleashing the Greek fire that had nearly burned Trystan's ship and Mariel's home. The nature of Aelynn men would require a physical resolution.

The image of Trystan and Murdoch thundering the earth to throttle each other like two mighty gladiators fighting to the death gave her cold shudders—and made her doubt her wisdom in choosing this course of action.