Shandy stopped just outside and stared into the dimness. "Beth!" he called. "Are you in there?"

There was no reply except muttering from Hurwood, and Shandy took a deep breath, fumbled his clasp knife out of his pocket with his good hand, and stepped inside.

Hurwood was just straightening up from digging in an open chest against the bulkhead, and in his one hand he was clutching a wooden box Shandy had seen before. He turned and started toward Shandy, and Shandy felt the air thicken, pushing him back. It pushed him back out into the sunlight as Hurwood kept inexorably taking one step after another, and soon it became clear that Hurwood was heading for the ship's boat.

Shandy half opened his knife, laid his forefinger across the groove and then let the blade snap down. Blood spurted from his gashed finger, but the air stopped resisting him. Evidently even unmagnetized iron was enough now to fray Hurwood's spells. He stepped forward and, before Hurwood noticed his sudden freedom to get in close, punched the box out of Hurwood's hand.

The box bounced across the deck. Hurwood, his mouth hanging open from sheer effort, turned and tried to walk; he fell, but then on his knees and one hand he began crawling toward the box.

Hardly able to move any better himself, Shandy lurched ahead of the creeping man and sat down on the hot deck beside the box and, his finger still painfully caught under the clasp-knife blade, fumbled the top of the box off.

"My saber," he croaked to Skank, who was tying a bandage around his own thigh. The weary young pirate paused long enough to kick Shandy's doctored sword clattering across the deck to him.

Without unclamping the knife from his finger, Shandy grasped the injuring saber, squeezing the compass needle deep into his hand again, and then drove the sword's iron point down into the box.

The dried head inside imploded with a sound like old upholstery ripping.

Hurwood stopped, staring, then took a rasping breath and expelled it in a howl that made even the most badly wounded of Shandy's pirates look over in wonder. Then he collapsed, and blood began jetting from the stump of his arm.

With a shudder Shandy dropped the sword again and pulled the knife off his finger. Then he began clumsily using the knife to cut his cursed jacket into strips to use as a tourniquet - for if Beth wasn't aboard, he didn't want Hurwood to bleed to death.

Dizziness, nausea, and occasional moments of blank forgetfulness all helped make Shandy's search of the Carmichael a time-consuming one, but the main reason he took so long - looking inside chests that couldn't possibly have contained Beth Hurwood, and checking some cabins twice to see if she'd doubled back on him - was that he dreaded what he'd probably have to do if it became certain she wasn't aboard. The moment came, though, seeming all the bleaker for the postponement, when he had to admit to himself that he'd checked every cubic foot of the vessel. There was more gold and jewelry in the hold than could be unloaded in a day, but no Beth Hurwood.

He climbed listlessly back up to the main deck and blinked around at the battered men who awaited him, until he spotted Skank. "Hurwood regained consciousness yet?" he asked.

"Not last I heard," said Skank. "Listen, though, did you have any luck down there?"

"No." Shandy turned reluctantly toward the cabin where Hurwood had been carried. "Get me a - "

Skank stepped in front of him, backed up by the dozen other men who could still walk; the young pirate's face was as hollowed and hard as a sand-scoured twist of driftwood. "Captain," he rasped, "you said he had his goddamned loot aboard, damn you, the stuff from all the ships he - "

"Oh, loot." Shandy nodded. "Yeah, there's that. Plenty of it, just like I said. I think I sprung a gut moving chest of gold ingots around down there. You can all ... go roll in it. But first, hoist me up a bucket of sea water, will you? And see if you can't find ... fire, a candle or something ... somewhere. I'll be in there with him."

A little disconcerted, Skank stepped back. "Uh, sure, cap'n. Sure."

Shandy shook his head unhappily as he limped to the cabin door and went inside. Hurwood lay on the deck planks unconscious, his breath sounding like slow strokes of a saw in dry wood. His shirt was more dark than white, and spatters of blood, nearly dry, blackened the deck around his shoulder, but the bleeding seemed to have been stopped.

Shandy stood over him and wondered who the man really was. The Oxford don, author of A Vindication of Free Will? Beth's father? Husband of the unbearably dead Margaret? Ulysse Segundo the pirate? The bones were prominent in the open-mouthed face, and Shandy tried to imagine what Hurwood had looked like as a young man. He couldn't imagine it.

Shandy knelt down beside him and shook him by his good shoulder. "Mr. Hurwood. Wake up."

The pace of the breathing didn't change, the wrinkled eyelids didn't flutter.

"Mr. Hurwood. It's important. Please wake up."

There was no response.

Shandy knelt there, staring at the devastated old man and trying not to think, until Skank clumped in. New orange light contended weakly with the sunlight from outside.

"Water," Skank said, letting a sloshing bucket clank onto the deck, "and a lamp." After looking around uncertainly he set that too on the deck.

"Fine," Shandy whispered. "Thank you."

Skank left, closing the door, and the lamp's agitated flame became the room's illumination.

Shandy dipped up a handful of cold brine and tossed it across Hurwood's closed eyes. The old man frowned faintly, but that was all. "God damn it," Shandy burst out, almost sobbing, "don't force me!" He grabbed one of Hurwood's ears and twisted it savagely ... to no effect. In horror as much as rage Shandy stood up, pushing the lamp away with his foot, then lifted the bucket and flung the entire contents onto Hurwood's head. The weight of water turned the old man's face away and plastered the white hair out like a crown, but the breathing continued as steadily as before, without even any choking.

Genuinely sobbing now, Shandy turned away and reached for the lamp ... and then breathed a prayer of thanks when he heard spitting and groaning behind him.

Tags: Tim Powers Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net