Shadow Road: Book 1 of the Shadows Rising Trilogy

17. Showdown

23rd of Uirra, Continued

The stillness after the shelling stopped was a tangible thing: silence so deep it became sound, relief so rich it felt heavy.

The thunder of cannon fire still rumbled in the distance, but there were no shells screaming through the air or ripping through the deck above our heads. For several blessed minutes there was only the gentle sway of the ship in the waves, and the acrid stink of blood, smoke and hot metal.

Then those who had survived began picking through the splinters to find those who hadn't, and a different wailing began.

I helped a woman named Lorren carry her younger sister to the galley, where Doctor Turragan and the Navy surgeon were doing their best to put the wounded back together. The doctor shot a furtive, almost guilty glance at me when I came in, as if I had been the topic of recent conversation. At the time I wasn't paying much attention to anything other than putting one foot in front of the other.

I did notice that the Captain was there, leaning wearily against the side of the access ladder. He was keeping a silent vigil, watching Turragan work on a young sailor's shattered leg, but when I came in, he looked up without lifting his head, eyes glittering beneath lowered brows.

It didn't occur to me that he was looking at me, though, so I helped Lorren lower Vinna to the floor, settling her into the last free space left along the wall. Then I stood up, took a moment to swipe the back of my hand across a trickle of liquid crawling down my forehead, and turned to go back into the main hold where several other people were still waiting to be carried in.

It took far too long for me to realize the Captain was saying my fake name. Once. Twice. Finally, he bellowed, "Miss Westerby!" and at last his voice filtered through that awful, buzzing fog in my head. My feet came to a stop on their own. Slowly, I looked at him, my heart skipping in my chest as I found myself the subject of a particularly icy glare.

He stared at me for several seconds, his jaw muscles ticking. Then he pushed away from the ladder and came striding around the tables, coming straight at me, fury radiating from every stern line of his body.

I ran. Idiotic, I know. Where was I going to go? Overboard? There wasn't an ounce of thought involved. I simply didn't want to find out what he might do if he caught me. With that one, clear aim in mind, I darted forward down the narrow hallway, past the kitchen and across the main hold, then up the set of garish red stairs that once joined the loading bay to the main deck.

The steps and the banister had been blown to pieces, but I managed to scramble up the risers that were still there. For about half a second, when I turned around at the top of those splintered, rickety steps and saw that Captain Arramy wasn't climbing up after me – because he was neither stupid, nor a monkey – I actually came to the conclusion that he wasn't chasing me after all. I even let out a silent whistle of weary relief.

Then I had to cringe at my own childish imagination. The Captain seemed to be a mature, rational person. What was I thinking, running away? As if the man would go through that much bother over one silly girl when there were so many bigger things going on.

Unfortunately, now that I was really looking at them, the broken steps looked much less appealing as a way back down.

There was too much to do below. People to fix. Lives to save.

And if I stopped moving, I would start thinking.

I didn't want to think.

Thinking would lead to realizing how much of this was my fault.

I recalled seeing another access ladder in the forward hold, so I headed that way.

Incidentally, I was mostly right. Captain Arramy didn't chase people. He just waited patiently for them to feel safe, or at least to think he might have lost interest. Then he came popping out at them like a great boogeyman of a jack-in-the-box.