Page 70 of The Pirate Queen

“Strike the sails!” she orders Ultan, and his eyes flash in alarm just once before he relays the command in a rich baritone that is almost ripped away by the wind.

Men scatter across the deck to lower and secure the sails to the masts so that they can reduce the wind resistance. If the masts break, then they will be at the mercy of an angry ocean. Countless men have drowned for lesser offenses.

“Signals!” Ultan shouts. He waits until the three men assigned to the other lanterns watch for his command.

Once. Twice. Thrice, he throws his cloak over the cabin deck lantern to caution the other ships to strike their sails as well. Within a few moments the signalmen repeat the sign in unison. They will continue until he gives the next command. Grace can only hope that Caoimhe and the Róisín Dubh catch their warning.

“Keep her bow to the sea,” she orders Ultan so that the waves will not catch them broadside and capsize the boat. Better to drive into the waves. Better to drop and be thrown skyward relentlessly than to be tossed like a barrel and rolled under.

“Tá,” he says with a grunt, his entire body holding the tiller in place.

“All men to stations or below!” she commands.

She wants no man on deck without a purpose, and the few Gallowglass left above are heaving their guts anyway. Best to get them into the hold, where they can’t be washed overboard.

“Tie the lifelines!”

The crew scrambles forward, rigging a series of ropes across the deck, tied at specific points, to help them maneuver between stations or across the boat when Niamh rolls and drops. Otherwise, they’ll be little more than crabs, scrambling through the waves that wash across the deck every few moments.

Ultan curses and spits. He utters every obscenity she has ever heard—and many she hasn’t—blaspheming the English queen, his own mother, every saint in the canon, six different chieftains, and her as well, using the worst epithet he can think of for his own captain: Grace O’Malley, her English name. He throws his weight against the tiller and grinds his teeth until she’s certain they’ll crack.

“Have I ever told you that I hate the fecking ocean?” Ultan asks. “She’s a right merciless bitch!”

“Liar!” Grace shouts. “You love this more than any woman you’ve ever bedded.”

Ultan laughs, wild and unguarded. “I would not be the first man to love a thing that wants to kill him.”

“There is a reason we name ships after women,” she tells him.

“If that was meant to encourage, you’ll be worse at it than fog on a wet day.”

She laughs, then shouts to the crew, “Bind yourselves if needed!”

Better for them to be lashed to the ship itself than taken over the gunwale by Manannán and drowned.

Onward they go for an hour. Then two. They are working toward their third hour in the storm when she finally loses all sight of her fleet. No more distant flicker of lanterns in the distance. But that means little, for she cannot see from stern to bow on Niamh herself. And her own lanterns are out as well, drowned by the rain. Caoimhe and the Róisín Dubh could only be a stone’s throw behind them and she would never know. The storm has swallowed them whole.

Grace ought to be afraid. And she is, in the mortal sense. She knows she might die this day. But something else stirs her soul as well. A sense of awe. Wonder. And a kind of holy thrill. A feeling no man, no woman can ever experience unless they find themselves in the soft, warm palm of God’s own hand. Sovereignty alone can decide whether the fist will close and crush her, or whether she will feel a breeze at her neck, dandelion fuzz blown to safety.

She feels the power, the might of this entire ocean around them. No gentle breeze, this, but the raging breath of God.

It will be what it will be.

“No man leaves his post,” Grace shouts at last and fears, even as she does, that the wind has stolen her words. “Arm yourselves with courage!”

When Niamh runs aground, it is with the sound of breaking bones. Never in her entire life has Grace heard such a noise. And terror might grip her throat like a vise at the idea of all those Gallowglass belowdecks gasping for air as the sea rushes through a broken hull. But the impact throws her forward, headfirst, into the rail.

It is the kind of pain you can see—a strike of lightning that turns you blind, then makes your teeth scream. And after that, only darkness.

“Is she dead?”

It’s one of the Gallowglass. Ultan doesn’t know his name. But he’s big and bearded and hadn’t liked the idea of sailing with a woman to begin with. He’d been mouthy and needed shutting up before they left Oban. Ultan can see the bruise blooming like a thistle under his eye, all purple and angry. And if the knuckles on Ultan’s left hand are sore? Well, it just means he’s executed his duties as first mate.

Now Gráinne is laid out on the sand, her skin pale as the inside of an oyster shell, her hair a bloody, matted heap. Sand in her trews from where they dragged her across the beach. It’s the cut on her scalp that has Ultan worried, though. The damn thing won’t stop oozing.

He grunts and shakes his head. “She’s out cold but breathing steady.”

If not for the tiller, Ultan would have also gone flying when they hit the rocks. Instead, he flipped over the heavy wooden beam—arse over elbow—and ended up on his back, the wind knocked out of him.