Page 99 of The Pirate Queen

There is no time left for thought as the second man is already charging for him, dagger drawn. The other rushes past, a hungry look on his face. Donal lunges for him, trying to stop his progress toward Gráinne, but he sidesteps Donal and then the other man is on him, arm raised, dagger descending in a deadly arc.

Donal has never been in a real knife fight before, has only fought men of his own clan, men who pull back when it counts, give him nothing worse than a nasty cut to teach the young pup a lesson. This man is different. He has murder in his eyes. Donal does not understand how time slows enough to study his eyes at all, but his mind records every detail of his opponent. Eyes the color of sand. Long beard. Longer hair. Open shirt and light breeches and old boots. He looks feral and moves with utter silence. A dog indeed.

Donal’s dagger is in his hand, though he doesn’t remember grabbing it. He swings his arm and shifts backward just in time, his body remembering the endless lessons that Eóin and Sivney and others have drilled into him. This response earns an angry hiss from his opponent.

Then he hears the cabin door click shut, and one scant glance determines that both Gráinne and her assailant are inside.

Her knife. Grace must reach her knife. But it’s strapped to her upper thigh and there are too many skirts in the way, too much fabric, and that damned sea dog has a look on his face that turns her stomach. His eyes are locked on her bare leg. He licks his lips.

Panic curls in her belly.

She is in here with him.

Alone.

Now he’s grinning and pushing his tongue into the place where a front tooth should be. That pink bulge makes her retreat to the far wall, her heart hammering in her chest. He speaks, low and threatening, his head nodding approval as she tugs at her skirts, but she does not understand a word he says.

There. The hilt of Cook’s old kitchen knife. She slides it from the small leather scabbard, brandishing it uneasily in her left hand, knuckles tight on the handle, the blade pointing down. The sailor pauses. Then laughs. He moves forward again, holding his own knife, but with a different grip.

When he reaches for her, Grace darts away, but the bed is in her path. She means to scramble over it, but he throws himself forward and his weight knocks her down onto the mattress.

Arms and legs everywhere. He is heavy. He stinks like a man who’s been months at sea, and when he runs his thick tongue along her jaw and into her ear, she finally screams. Anger and rage and disgust. But mostly anger that she cannot fight this heathen off. The sound is ripped from her chest, a thing she hears apart from herself. Someone else screaming. Someone else is scared. There is a helplessness to the sound that she hates.

Grace is pinned face down, right arm stuck beneath her body, left arm flailing wildly behind her with the knife. She pokes and stabs but catches only air. An elbow on her scalp shoves her face deeper into the rough wool blanket. The sound of ripping fabric as he yanks at her skirts.

She thrusts her knife backward again, and it sticks this time, but not deep enough. Grace finds no satisfaction in his grunt of pain. Instead, he curses and, with his free hand, bends her wrist backward until the pain loosens her grip on the handle. Cook’s knife falls to the bed beside her and he bats it away.

There is a booming in her ears. Greater, even, than the sound of her rushing heart. One loud, horrific BOOM. It sounds like the world caving in. Like thunder and horses and water falling from a great height. Grace twists and thrashes and scratches with every ounce of energy she has. But he is a big man. Heavy. And she cannot fend him off.

Finally, the sea dog tires of her resistance. From the corner of her eye she sees him raise his knife hand, and it falls again before she can blink. It falls like a stone and then there is a blinding pain in her head and all goes dark.

There is a dead man at Donal’s feet. Blood on his hands. A terrible pounding in his skull. He thinks that his nose might be broken. Two fingers as well. But when his sister screamed, he became something new. He became a man who could kill. And he did so quickly, efficiently. Now he’s running for the cabin door.

Whatever is happening on deck of the Esperança is none of his business. It sounds like bedlam and shouting, and in his periphery he sees men sliding down the ropes onto Niamh. Men running along the deck behind him.

Donal hits the cabin door with his shoulder and it flies backward so hard that it bangs against the wall with a boom and cracks down the middle. He lunges toward the bed just as the Portuguese sailor brings the hilt of his knife down against Gráinne’s temple.

Her body goes limp.

Donal throws himself against the foreign sailor, his shoulder catching the man’s jaw, and they fly off the bed in a jumble of limbs and fists and knives.

Then there are five other men crowding around them, yanking Donal away, raining their own fists down upon the foreign sailor.

Only minutes have passed since his sister’s hair got caught in a gust of wind and drew the attention of those two men. Funny how an entire life can change in a handful of seconds.

Donal struggles to his feet. Shoves his fellows off him, then steps forward and grabs the sea dog by his beard.

“You will die for that,” he says.

His daughter lies limp on the bed. That is all that Eóin O’Malley sees when he bursts through the cabin door. All he needs to see. All his mind can grasp in this one horrible moment. He put her in danger and he will always hate himself for that. Gráinne’s safety should have been his only thought, not his misguided notion that she has been touched by Manannán, or that he ought to train her for a life at sea. None of it matters now that this cunting Portuguese pox-ridden cod-fungus has laid a hand on his only daughter.

Her skirts are torn and there, near her empty hand, is a small dull knife.

Donal has never seen his father speechless before. He has never seen such a look of grief and anger on his face. Eóin stands frozen beside the bed, his eyes wide, fixed on Gráinne.

“He did not rape her,” Donal says.

His father turns to him. “What?”