Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Daily beatings.
The horrendous pain in my thigh would be less pronounced by the morning. I could do this. I’d endured a fortnight of torture on the admiral’s flagship. Blows against my bones with a wooden plank were less intrusive, less damaging to my psyche. I would survive this.
I wanted to see Priest and Ashley again too badly to give up.
Gripping both hands under the knee of my injured leg, I dragged it out in front of me. My choked whimpers couldn’t be helped. The agony swept through me like fire, but the limb didn’t look broken. No visible bones protruded. No unnatural angles. Just muscle and ligament damage, perhaps.
As the Caribbee heat blazed down upon my pale skin, I scooted into a patch of shade cast by the rigging. Over the next few hours, I moved with that shadow, desperate for its cool protection as it crept across the deck with the passage of the sun.
Blitz headed east. The bird island was southeast. If Madwulf had taken my bait, we would be headed there. But it was too soon to know.
That night, I lay on my back on the deck, staring up at the starlit sky and thinking about my father. I’d toyed with the compass all afternoon without any real commitment to opening it.
It was time to solve it. Shackled to the foremast, I faced certain torture on the morrow. At some point, I would have to give up the combination in exchange for mercy. But I needed to figure it out first.
So I closed my eyes and mentally recited poems, songs, and rhymes that I remembered hearing in my father’s Irish brogue. God’s wounds, I missed him. If he were alive today, perhaps he would be disappointed in me for taking so long to solve his puzzle.
When you’re ready, you’ll know what to do.
I didn’t know what he’d meant when he said that, but his compass had saved the two men I’d left on the beach. I didn’t think he would mind that I’d bartered his treasure in the name of love.
Maybe, if I unlocked it at the right moment, it would save my life, too. I just needed to be strong and patient.
My strength, however, waned miserably over the next few days.
Each day, at eight bells of the morning watch, Madwulf emerged from the lower decks. “Unlock the compass, lass.”
“I’m trying.”
Standing calmly before me, he signaled to his brutes and watched coldly as the plank of wood damaged another part of my body. It struck my ribs on the second day, my shoulder on the third. By the fourth morning, the pain was so tremendous I hadn’t slept.
I couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t stop whimpering. Couldn’t eat or breathe or focus on anything beyond the terrible, constant agony that decimated every muscle and bone.
My leg had swollen into a contusion of black and blue damage from hip to knee. Though I couldn’t stand on it, it was the least of my tribulation.
The ladder of bones beneath my left breast had broken in several places. I was certain of it, for every breath made me cry out and wheeze. And my arm refused to respond. It wouldn’t lift or move in any way. Dislocated shoulder? Possibly worse.
My teeth rattled endlessly, my nerves and sinews ceaselessly twitching and convulsing. The pain governed me, overtaking my motor functions, and the dread was more than I could bear. Could I withstand another blow from that plank?
Adding to the misery, the moon and stars had abandoned their watch over me. Clouds crowded the sky, black and brooding, rolling alongside Blitz as if set on the same course.
Where were we headed? The compass said south. The direction of the bird island. But after four days, we should have already arrived. I feared we’d gone too far east and overshot the destination. Jade’s destination, if all had gone as I hoped.
Madwulf never mentioned a route, and the crew didn’t speak of it.
Throughout the voyage, they lived loudly and boisterously, soaring with high spirits on board Ashley’s ship. Heavy drinking ran rampant day and night. The supply of farm animals dwindled as they gorged on freshly slaughtered meat. Sometimes, they tossed raw scraps to me, laughing and keeping their distance as if I were the feral dog.
As if.
As a result of their excessive drinking, eating, and overall misbehavior, they failed to do much of anything for the better part of a week. Madwulf didn’t partake in the merriment. He didn’t discourage it, either. Remaining below deck, he presumably indulged in the luxuries of the private quarters and slept in the bed I’d shared with Ashley.
It became my practice to block it all out. I sat with my back to the unruly festivities, turning the compass on my lap and reciting every rhyme I knew. All the while, I strained my eyes on the distant horizon, watching, hoping, wishing for sails to appear.