The Thrice Born Page 4

  “This is futile, Capitán!” he cried over the unremitting flapping of wings, squawking, and men’s cursing. “You can’t fight these devils!”

  The Captain had just finished slaying his fifth creature. He turned to Rufio, who was bloodied and torn, too. “I can’t fight?” He gestured with one sword to the piles of beasts on the deck. “But see how readily they die!”

  Rufio had seen this battle’s end as soon as the creatures had run them out of the island. He’d prepared, too. “It’s a fool’s battle, Capitán,” he said, his voice lowering as he neared his superior. “Come with me. I’ve a boat ready.”

  For a fleeting moment the Captain stared at him. “You would run away?”

  Rufio swept one arm to the masses of battles, now losing battles, on deck. “They’re too much. Too many.”

  The Captain nodded slightly. “You’re right, my friend. We probably will not make it. But you may,” he said, stepping closer and grasping Rufio’s tattered shirt,” you may, if you promise me one thing.”

  Rufio frowned. “Anything, my Capitán.”

  For a few seconds the Captain took in the sight of his crew; men were falling, torn and ripped by talons and fangs, the Nephilim dying also, bodies piling high as the creatures blackened the sky. They fell onto the ship’s decks, making wood creak under their weight. A loud groan went through the vessel as it sank deeper into the water under the increasing weight of the creatures.

  The Captain could feel it happening. He knew the El tesoro del cielo, how she could weather a storm, her berth and size. He also knew how much she could hold. He looked to Rufio. “They don’t have to fight us,” he said, his voice tight with realization as more and more Nephilim slammed into the deck, mounting higher in body count with the defeated sailors. “Their sheer numbers will sink us. I’ll not go with you, Rufio,” he said soberly, hands tightening on both bloodied sword hilts, “but you avenge us.”

  Rufio shook his head. “But, Capitán —”

  “You go, but come back,” the Captain said, looking out over his dying men fighting to the very last ounce of strength. “And you take their golden statues,” he said, turning back to Rufio. “Take their damn island and kill every miserable one of these cursed creatures. Promise, Rufio.” His voice hardened. “Promise me or I will chain you in the brig and you can die with the rest of us!”

  “It’s useless to stay and fight,” Rufio said. “You cannot win against them!”

  The Captain was past negotiation. “God help me, but I’ve a soft spot in my heart for you, Rufio.”

  “And I for you, Capitán,” Rufio said. “But this —”

  “Promise me, damn you!”

  Rufio could see it was pointless. The Captain had made up his mind. “Yes, Capitán, I promise.”

  A sudden influx of beating wings made them both look up. A swarm of thousands of Nephilim littered the sky, all descending onto the ship’s deck in a heavy drop. Cries of the crew became muffled as the creatures buried them.

  The Captain mumbled a low oath. “Go, Rufio,” he said without looking to the man. “Before I change my mind...”

  Rufio took the Captain’s hand in both of his. He knelt, bowing to the steadfastness of the man, and then rose and retreated reverently. He bowed slightly to the Captain still watching the laden skies, and then took the stair to the quarterdeck cabins. He hurried through the companionway to his cabin at the end of the narrow walkway. He and the first mate both had officers’ cabins near the Captain’s quarters, and he had a few items to get before he departed the damned ship.

  He went into his small room, turning up the wick of the lit oil lantern that hung from an overhead beam. He hurriedly packed a few things in a leather bag from the ornate bureau, including every knife he owned. From the bottom drawer he took a diary with a fine red leather cover, its gilt-edged pages shining in the lantern light. He smiled, touching the gold embossed lettering fondly on the cover. He took its leather pouch from the drawer and carefully wrapped it and put it inside the bag. He stood, looking around the room for anything else he should take.

  A shadow darkened the doorway and he looked there to see Albert.

  The Englishman smiled. “I thought you’d be here. You’re the only one smart enough.”

  Rufio hitched the bag strap over his shoulder and stuck a few of the spare knives in his baldric harness with his pistol. “Smart enough for what, parasite?”

  “To leave this Hell hole.”

  Rufio fastened the buckle on the bag. “What makes you think I’d do a ridiculous thing like that?”

  Albert smiled more, making his sharp features look reptilian for a moment. “Take me with you.”

  Before Rufio could argue the matter, Albert pulled the gold statue from under his shirt. Rufio snatched it, grinning as he turned the treasure object in his hands.

  “It’s bigger than the other small ones on the shore,” he noted greedily. “How’d you get it?”

  Albert nodded, warming to the topic. “I found it on the way out from island, as we followed the trail back from the circle where we were attacked. I tied it to the side of the chinchorro when we retreated,” he added, proud of his cleverness while others were rowing frantically for their lives. “It is real gold, isn’t it?”

  Rufio smiled more, chuckling as his eyes moved over the treasure. “Yes. Of course. Hell, a man doesn’t want to go to sea alone in a small boat even if his companion is English scum.”

  Albert nodded readily. They both looked up as a loud noise came from the deck above. The ship made a plunge deeper into the water.

  “We’ll split it, eh?” Albert said. “Half for you, half for me!”

  Rufio gripped the statue tighter, the heaviness of the gold making him momentarily forget the men being buried under hundreds of Nephilim above. He could almost taste the finer life in his future now. “Why not?” he said, looking to Albert. “It’s worth a lot. We’ll need money. Plenty for both of us. Come then.”

  They made their way deck side amid the chaos of losing battles and falling creatures. For a moment it was surreal, the winged beasts dropping so thick they buried men, barrels, crates, and the few abandoned cannonballs. Against the quarterdeck stair they were waist high in spots, writhing human limbs and wings mingling like some sort of hellish, demonic orgy.

  Rufio didn’t look for the Captain or anyone else. It was too late. The creatures – the Nephilim – had won, even by sacrificing their skeletal bodies in burial.

  Rufio and Albert quickly lowered the small boat Rufio had quietly set aside with provisions earlier. Once it was in the water, they scaled the rope ladder and pushed off from the El tesoro del cielo’s hull.

  In the dark of the untimely twilight the two refugees slipped away, watching the ship that now rode low in the water. Her decks were a twisting mass of bodies still falling from the sky, the creak of wood straining to remain afloat.

  Rufio’s hands paused at the oars at his sides, looking past Albert on the opposite seat of the boat. The ship was listing, her aft port side lowest. Once the cannon ports there reached the water and began to submerge, the ship succumbed. Water ran into the gun holes, filling the hold, making the ballast shift, move to the lower, heavier spots.

  With a mighty groan, the vessel tipped, filling faster, water and weight of the winged creatures taking it down.

  Albert had turned in his seat, watching the forlorn sight of the ship sliding into the dark waters, the thousands of Nephilim riding it down to a watery grave as ever more creatures poured from the sky onto it.

  Air bubbled out of the hatches, violent ripples shoving toward the small boat of escapees, pushing them away from the wreckage.

  Rufio could swear he heard the voices of the crew in those bubbles burping out of the water. He was about to say something of it, but remained silent, crossing himself as the El tesoro del cielo plunged completely out of sight. For a moment silence reigned over the water, and then a great quake came from the sea floor, rumbling as if the earth itse
lf opened wide to swallow the vessel.

  Neither Rufio nor Albert said anything for the next few hours. They both took turns rowing, taking the small boat out into the expanse of night seas with only the few stars meekly peeking through the heavens as a guide. They’d situated their supplies, each offering silent prayers, grateful for their escape.

  After a while, the silence gnawed on Albert, and he decided to let his prying nature lead. He pulled at the oars, taking his turn at sending them farther into the vast waters of the Caribbean, watching Rufio across from him on the other seat.

  “Tell me one thing, my friend,” he said, his voice dry and sounding more tinny than usual.

  Rufio set his elbows on his knees, leaning over them, nodding. “Of course, Alberto. Don’t worry,” he said, predicting the Englishman’s query. “We have plenty of supplies. We can last a long, long time.”

  Albert paused rowing to point to the diary that was peeking from the leather bag on the seat beside Rufio. “I trust you, but tell me, for my curiosity is killing me; is that the log which brought us to the island?”

  Rufio frowned. “How do you know about the log?”

  Albert shrugged. “I heard you and the Captain.”

  “You want the truth, my English friend?”

  Albert nodded, eager to be taken into the Spaniard’s confidence. He pulled absently at the oars again. “Of course.”

  “This is my personal diary. There’s no log.” Rufio chuckled darkly. “I made it up.”

  Albert’s hands stilled on the oars. “Then...then how did you know about the island?”

  Even in the scant moonlight Rufio could see the man’s uncertainty. “I always knew. Since I was a little boy.”

  “No... How could that be?”

  “I don’t know. But the island was always in my head.” Rufio tapped his temple with a hard finger. “Now, I have a question for you,” he said, his voice growing suddenly caustic. “How’d you know about the island?”

  “I didn’t. I’ve never been in these waters,” Albert insisted.

  “All right,” Rufio said, “I’ll put it another way. How’d you know enough to recommend being within cannon range? It didn’t seem feasible to take the ship that close to the island in unknown waters. You had to know the island.”

  Albert shrugged awkwardly, both hands still on the oars. “Just an instinct. If you –”

  “Exactly.” Rufio leaned closer over his knees. “You knew the island. You knew something, damn you.”

  The Englishman frowned, rowing listlessly. “Perhaps.” A bit of grin came to his face. “Maybe I knew something, too.”

  Rufio chuckled, sitting back. “I thought so.”

  “But damned if I knew why.”

  Rufio pulled the diary from the bag beside him and found the ink-stained wooden stylus he’d been using during the voyage. He licked the end of it, moistening the black end. Albert’s frown returned as he watched the Spaniard opened the diary and find a page, and then begin to write on it.

  After a moment, he asked: “What do you write in it?”

  “Everything,” Rufio said, not looking up. “Even you are in here.”

  Albert stopped rowing. “You must take me out.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  Albert’s hands loosened on the oars as he shook his head. “If we’re caught by the English, they will mark me as a traitor,” he said urgently. “They will hang me.”

  Rufio licked the drying stylus tip. “You’ll not be hanged. I promise you.”

  “How can you know that?”

  Rufio tried to mark the diary with the stylus, but the tip was too dry. He set them down on the leather bag. “Call me a fortune teller,” he said, tauntingly. “Say my mother was a witch!”

  Albert shook his head. “I took that back!”

  “You’ll not be hanged by your countrymen, Alberto,” Rufio said quietly, his hand reaching to the pistol with the knives in the baldric crossing his chest, “because I am going to kill you now.”

  Albert looked confused. “Why?”

  “Let’s just say I’m not thrilled to share a fortune with English scum.”

  Before Albert could determine whether he was being toyed with, Rufio snatched the pistol from its sheath and shot him through the heart. Albert slumped over the Spaniard’s hand, coughing blood as Rufio stood over him. For a few seconds Albert sat dumbfounded on the seat like an unstrung puppet, one hand going to the lethally deep hole in his chest. He tried to manage an inquiry, but Rufio put a boot to his stomach and pushed him out of the small boat.

  Albert’s body made a clumsy splash into the night waters, ripples echoing out across the mirror-like sea beneath the stars.

  Rufio gave the Englishman’s sinking, sputtering body a dispassionate look and then wiped the water splashes from his diary. He calmly replaced it and the stylus back in the bag and buckled it. When he was satisfied the body was sinking quickly enough, he pulled the golden statue from the dead man’s bag.

  He smiled, wiping the lint from the form, the sleepy gleam of gold winking seductively at him in the faint moonlight.

  “You and I now, my lovely,” he murmured to it.

  He admired it for a moment longer, and then put it back in his own bag. He raised a makeshift sail fashioned haphazardly out of old canvas he’d confiscated from the El tesoro del cielo’s patchwork stock.

  He drew its rope tight and tied it off, eyes raised to the heavens for the North Star, and then settled back into his seat.

  * * *

  Father Elmo had taken great pains to allow himself some quiet time in the Vatican Library, but always there was Father Bertrand lurking close by and his time was very limited. He hurried through the tall corridors to the luxurious solitude of the library’s far end, hoping for privacy.

  The mosaic tiled floor sounded like gunfire as he tried to move as quiet as a church mouse. Under his arm was tucked his most prized possession. He made his way without being seen by anyone of any importance and ducked his considerable height into a far row of study tables. Beneath a tall fresco of some obscure saints – Father Elmo admitted he did not know all the saints anymore – he slipped on the white gloves and cautiously took the centuries old leather diary from its case.

  He smiled, opening the frail, sea-beaten journal to where he’d left off; where he’d left Rufio Catalán adrift in the Devil’s Teeth of the Caribbean in 1530 after killing his English shipmate.

  His eyes skimmed the ink that was smudged with time and water damage in spots. He’d read of the El tesoro del cielo’s fight against the Nephilim and her consequential sinking, of Rufio and Albert’s escape, of the golden statue, and of the murder.

  He had then been interrupted by Father Bertrand and the necessary but trivial running of the Vatican.

  He nodded as he found the words in the diary. “’...the boat is lighter without that English scum aboard,’” he read, his gloved, long fingers light on the page of faded ink. “’My spirits lift. I’ll set my course for the nearest mainland...’”

  * * *

  Dawn broke and Rufio awoke to the sun blazing in his face. The strong light seemed to judge him with the fires of Hell, burning deep into his chest and any exposed flesh. Around him the sun reflected off the waters, flashing back heat and pure horizon. There was no land in sight.

  He closed his eyes against the brightness, his mind spinning dizzily with the events of the preceding night.

  The battle with the Nephilim.

  His escape.

  Albert’s death.

  He smiled as images of gold dancing through his head.

  The statue.

  He was content in his flaming misery of sunlight, the small boat riding the gentle swells of sea under the sail’s force. He was thirsty, but he didn’t move to quench himself. He’d overestimated his provisions. He had discovered that just before falling into an exhausted sleep earlier. It was best there was no Englishman with which to share them.

  He licked his pa
rched lips, the sun hot on his eyelids.

  “You’ve disappointed me, my love,” a soft voice wove into his thoughts and thirst.

  Rufio’s eyes flicked open at the voice. He focused on the flap of the lone sail above him. He didn’t think he was thirsty enough to hallucinate yet.

  “Why has your heart become so blackened with hatred?” the woman’s dulcet tone continued.

  He ran his tongue along his crusty lips, glancing down to the front of the boat. There a shimmering light took form into the figure of a slender woman clothed in luminescent white robes. She was tall, statuesque in a femininely powerful way. Astara did not introduce herself.

  Like an angel, he thought, rising to one elbow in the boat’s bottom.He squinted at her. “Who are you?”

  The light around her was too bright to see her features distinctly, but she radiated beauty, her fair hair like silken gold framing her face in soft waves.

  He cleared his throat. “Am I dying?”

  Astara hovered at the end of the boat, her voice seeming to find its way into his mind without hearing. “Not yet, my love.”

  “Who are you?”

  There was a pause, as if she was thinking about her words, or waiting for him to remember something. “Some day I shall forgive you for what you’ve done.”

  He frowned. “The English sailor? He was nothing! Jetsam rot.”

  “All lives are sacred under God,” she reminded.

  Her voice faded as she said it, the light and her form dissolving.

  Rufio watched where she’d been, wondering, hoping she’d return. He dropped back down to the boat.

  At least his imagination was still intact.

  Six days later, however, it was a different scenario for Rufio. He was unsure how many days it had been; all he knew was that his food supply had given out two days ago. He’d rationed himself, but there still was little to eat.

  His angelic mirage had not reappeared, and he decided she was just that. Or, perhaps, a Death Angel, waiting to evaluate his life.

  It was a full ten days of merciless heat and blistering sun later that he received another visit, but this time it came in the form of three Spanish ships. At once both relieved and still selfish about his golden prize, there was little Rufio could do when a grappling hook latched onto his boat and towed him to the nearest massive hull. He couldn’t read the name on the escutcheon, too weak with hunger and dehydrated within days of his life.