Wake of the Bloody Angel

Chapter Five

Shawano was six days’ ride from Watchorn. For a guy looking for a pirate, I was spending an awful lot of time in the saddle.

Two nights we stayed at inns, but the rest we camped along the way. The third night I spotted another fire behind us, and crept back to check it out. Granted, it could have been anyone who happened to be going the same way, but the hackles on my neck told me otherwise. By the time I got there, the fire was out and the camp abandoned. Whoever it was didn’t show themselves again.

The prison outside Mosinee, capital city of Shawano, was known as “the pirates’ graveyard,” because if a pirate was captured and not executed, he ended up here. After a few weeks in this facility, most pirates would welcome being hanged, their tarred corpses displayed as a warning. The prison was smack in the middle of a stretch of desert, isolated by a range of low mountains. On the other side of these slopes stretched miles of verdant countryside leading down to Mosinee and the ocean. Here, though, there was nothing but heat, dryness, and death. For a man of the sea, there could be no closer approximation to hell.

Only one road led to the pirates’ graveyard, and it ran straight across the open desert. This made sense tactically, since no one could approach without being seen. I’d picked up a wide-brimmed straw hat for the occasion, but this early in the morning, it wasn’t needed. Some weird weather inversion had drawn moisture across the mountains and bathed the area in a heavy mist. It wouldn’t last, but while it did, the temperature was almost pleasant.

Queen Remy of Mosinee led the international co alition that supported and funded the Anti-Freebootery Guild. Her goal was to make it more lucrative for these sea bandits to turn honest than to keep raiding ships, and it worked for a lot of them. I didn’t know the exact circumstances that turned Jane from pirate to pirate hunter, but she became as legendary fighting on the right side as she had on the wrong. I also didn’t know what had caused her to leave the sea entirely and turn land- bound sword jockey, but I could accept that none of it was my business. She never asked where I’d come from, either.

The prison walls were twenty feet high, with guards stationed at each corner. The only thing that rose higher was a single round tower, stretching into the mist so that we couldn’t see the top. Jane looked up at the tower and sighed wistfully.

“Sentimental about prison?” I teased.

“About my old job. Rody Hawk was the toughest son of a bitch I ever crossed blades with. When they sent me out to find him, I almost peed my pants, both because I was excited and because it scared me to death. For the first three weeks I hunted him, I was afraid he might be a ghost, the way he’d appear and disappear, like he was taunting me. Which he was.”

She’d shared many stories of the man known as “the Sea Hawk” on our ride. By the time she finished, I was really glad they were about a man who was locked up. “He knew you were after him?”

“He knew everything about me,” she said distantly, then came back to the moment. “He was a mean bastard anyway, but he got much worse when he heard I was after him. Like he was trying to pack in all the evil he could while he still had time.”

“Really?” I said. Jane wasn’t above a little self-aggrandizement, but something in her tone told me she wasn’t doing that here. Her intensity sounded almost religious.

“Yeah. I found one ship he’d hit, a little merchant vessel carrying settlers along with a cargo of rum. He killed the crew, then tied all the civilian men together around the mast. He hung the women and children by their ankles and drilled tiny little holes in their foreheads, so they’d rain blood down on their husbands and fathers. We heard the screams across the water before we even sighted the sails.” She shook her head. “Not many of the hanging ones lived. And a lot of the men forced to watch died by their own hand before we reached port.”

“I’m glad you finally caught him,” I agreed. We were close enough now to see the archers along the wall, and the long curves of their bows. They watched us with the silent composure of men secure in their profession.

Jane said, “Do you know what the hardest thing about catching him was, though?”

“What?”

“Leaving him alive when I had him under my sword.” I knew that feeling for sure. The fact that she did leave him alive reinforced my opinion of her. “And now where do they keep him?”

She pointed at the tower. “Up there. Permanently. No way in, no way out, and no visitors until he tells where his treasure’s hidden, or dies.”

“Then how do we talk to him?”

“Don’t worry,” she said. But she didn’t explain. We tied our horses to the empty hitching post outside the gate. Behind us, only our tracks disturbed the sand. I couldn’t imagine they got many visitors. A guard in leather armor watched us through the gate’s thick iron bars.

“Hey, Louie,” Jane said as she shook dirt and sand from her cape. “How’s tricks?”

“Same as always, Captain Argo,” Louie the guard said. He spoke to her but kept his eyes on me.

“I’m not a captain anymore, Louie, just a plain Jane. But we are here to see the Hawk.”

Louie pondered this. “I’ll have to get the warden.”

“You do that,” she said.

The whole area was silent, except for a lone crow cawing somewhere in the mist overhead. Given the absence of trees, it must nest somewhere on the grounds. I asked quietly, “You ever been in prison?”

“Nope. If I get arrested, I try not to stick around for the trial.”

“Me, neither.” I’d been in jail on occasion, but never served a real sentence. Standing here in this ghostly silence, I suddenly wondered if I’d be man enough to handle it. I hoped never to find out.

Louie returned with another man, this one in an official uniform. “Good morning, Captain Argo,” the newcomer said. “I hadn’t heard you were coming.”

“There wasn’t time to send a message ahead. Hope that’s okay.”

“Well, we do have protocols for visiting the prisoners, especially him. ”

“I know. I came up with them, remember?”

“I do, but it puts me in an awkward position.”

Jane leaned casually on the iron bars. “Warden, really. You think I’m here to bust him out?”

“I think we have rules for a reason, Captain.”

“She’s not a captain anymore, sir,” Louie said helpfully.

“That’s true,” Jane agreed. “I’m just here to visit a friend.”

The warden smiled a little. “So he’s your friend now, is he?”

Jane laughed. “Warden, in some ways I’m closer to Rody Hawk than to just about anybody else in the world.”

The warden nodded at me. “Including him?”

I stepped forward. “Eddie LaCrosse. I’m a business associate of ex-Captain Argo.”

“Warden Jim Delvie,” he said as we shook hands through the bars. It was firm enough, but the skin was smooth. The warden had been pushing a quill so long that any sword calluses had faded.

“Warden, either let us in or send us on our way,” Jane said impatiently. “Which in my case will be straight to the court of Queen Remy to get permission to visit the Hawk. You know she’ll give it to me. And you know what she’ll say when I explain why I have to bother her with it.”

The warden thought this over, then turned to Louie. “Open up.”

“Yes, sir,” Louie said.

Through the gate there was nothing but more open space around the main jail building and celebrity tower. The ground was hard and cracked, with no grass anywhere. The building rose only one floor above the ground, well below the top edge of the outer walls. Most of its cells were deep under the hard- packed earth.

Jane turned to me. “So who talks to him, me or you?”

“We can’t both do it?”

“No. Only one of us. Less risk that way.”

“Risk of what?”

“He has this knack of turning people against each other.”

I looked up at the tower, or at least the part of it not hidden in the mist. “I suppose I should do it. It’s my case, after all.”

“Are you sure? I know him.”

“I’m sure.”

She grinned. “You want to be able to tell Liz that you met Rody Hawk, is that it?”

I ignored the dig and looked at Delvie. The warden asked, “So who’s it going to be?”

“Me,” I said.

Delvie and Jane exchanged a look I couldn’t interpret. He asked her, “Are you all right with this?”

She shrugged. “He’s paying me, so he’s the boss.” The warden turned to me. “Have you had any prior dealings with Captain Hawk?”

“No.”

That seemed to satisfy him, if barely. “Follow me, please.”

He led us to the base of the tower. As we crossed the courtyard, a door opened in the main building and six pale, grimy men chained together at the neck were marched out by an equal number of guards. The prisoners were naked, but their bodies were so filthy, I first thought they wore black pajamas. Their smell stayed behind long after they’d disappeared around the corner.

“Monthly cell block washdown,” the warden explained. “They get rinsed off, then they clean their own cells.”

One of the prisoners turned and looked at us. His face was long and thin, and one eye socket was puckered shut. There seemed very little humanity left in his gaze, just the numb survival instinct of a clever animal.

When we reached the base of the tower, Delvie gestured at something on the ground. “Well, here we are. Your chariot to the clouds.”

A wooden basket about three feet across rested there, attached by a rope to a pulley mounted, I assumed, at the edge of the tower’s roof. I looked at it, then at the warden, then at Jane. She bit her lip and looked down to keep from laughing.

“This is how we get his food up to him,” the warden said. “If you want to talk to him, it’s the only way up.” He turned to Louie. “Go get some men to help lift this. A dozen would be good. Check the break room.”

“Yes, sir,” Louie said, and went into the main building.

I continued to look at Jane. “You’ve got to be kidding. It’s a picnic basket.”

With mock camaraderie, Jane punched me in the arm and said, “Come on, Eddie, you’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

“No, but I’m a lot bigger than a loaf of bread.”

“It’ll hold you.”

“Says you.”

“No, she’s right,” Delvie assured me. “The balance is a little tricky, but it should bear your weight just fine.”

“Do I sit in it?”

“You’re better off standing.”

“Fine,” I said, making no effort to hide my annoyance. Jane could’ve mentioned this earlier.

“You sure you don’t want me to do it?” she said.

“No, damn it,” I muttered.

“I’ll need your sword,” the warden said. “And all your other weapons. And anything that might remotely be used as a weapon.”

“I’m not going to hurt him,” I said.

Delvie stepped close. I could smell his morning tea on his breath. He said, “We used to send a guard up with the food, in case he cracked and started blabbering. This was back when we seriously thought he might tell us where his treasure was hidden. For a year, nothing happened. Then one day Hawk yanked him out of the basket and held him against the window bars. He threw the guard’s sword down, impaling another guard, then killed another with the first guard’s crossbow. One-handed, mind you, while still supporting the guard’s weight with the other arm. Then he dropped the man to his death.” He pointed at a spot on the hard-packed ground that was darker than the surrounding dirt. “He landed right there. You can see that the stain still hasn’t worn off.”

“The point is, he could’ve done it at any time,” Jane added. “He just picked that day, and that guard. He never said why. So now no one ever sees him. They just send up his food.”

“Then how do you know he’s even still up there?”

“The basket always comes down empty.” He paused, stepped even closer to me, and said in a grim whisper, “Hawk’s been called many things over the years, but you know what captures him best, in my opinion? That he’s simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. If you still wish to see him, then I won’t stop you.”

I looked into the mist. I wondered if Hawk could hear us discussing his exploits. More important, how would I convince him to help me if he didn’t want to? What could I possibly offer him? I hadn’t put any thought into that.

“You could keep a bigger basket around, you know,” I pointed out as I unbuckled my sword belt. “For special occasions.”

“I’ll mention that at the next budget meeting,” the warden said. Louie returned with the requested men, all of whom looked at me with a mix of respect and suspicion. They were big men, with the scars of former battles on their bare arms and faces. I suspected they were also one moral slip away from becoming inmates themselves. Luckily, all I needed them to do was have firm grips and strong backs.

“Yank the rope twice when you’re ready to come down,” the warden said.

As I started to step into the basket, Jane said, “The knife in your boot, too.”

I glared at her. That knife had saved my life more than any other weapon I owned. But as I withdrew it, I suddenly knew what I could offer Hawk that might make him cooperate.

“Ow!” Jane cried. “What was that for?”

“Something to keep my courage up,” I said. She took my knife and tucked it into her belt. I enjoyed her annoyed scowl.

I put one foot in the basket, then the other. The ropes from each corner joined at a waist-high iron ring, and above that a single rope led to the top of the tower. I grabbed that rope for dear life, the guards pulled, and I began to rise.

Immediately, I nearly fell back and the whole contraption spun as I fought to regain my balance. Jane laughed uproariously.

I rose into the mist. Jane and the guards disappeared below me, and for a few moments I was isolated in the haze, nothing visible above or below. There was absolutely no wind, and the faceless side of the tower made it hard to mark my progress. Only the squeak of the pulley above me, growing louder, assured me I was rising.

I passed a chink in the stonework where a huge black crow, the one I must’ve heard earlier, sat preening her feathers. She cawed once and regarded me with the same vague suspicion as the guard below. Even the wildlife knew I was doing something stupid.

Eventually the pulley stopped, and I hung in place outside a wide rectangular window. Vertical bars blocked it, and a heavy fishing net hung just inside them, making a double barrier. The room was painted bright white, even down to the window bars. Nothing moved, and of course in a round room, there were no corners to hide in. The combined net and mist made it difficult to see the dim interior, but I stared until I made out a cot, a chamber pot, and something on the floor.

I risked one hand on the bars to steady myself and called out, “Hey! Rody Hawk!”

There was no reply.

I pulled myself closer to the bars. The basket creaked and tilted as my weight shifted.

The sun chose that moment to flicker through the mist and flood the cell with light. The shape on the floor instantly resolved itself.

It was a body.

The man was sprawled on his back. He was tall and slender, with long dark hair, a long beard, and a black eyepatch. He wore white trousers and a loose tunic, with no shoes.

The sun glinted off his exposed eye. It was wide open, and stared at nothing. I’d seen enough lifeless eyes to recognize this one at once.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. Rody Hawk was dead.

Then a sepulchral voice commanded, “Don’t talk about my mother.”