The Dust of 100 Dogs - A. S. King [75]
After an hour of gunfire, the boats met and there was fighting on deck. Emer smiled at the familiar language of battle the way she’d once smiled at the musical call of the returning swallows. She heard men fall to their deaths and men laughing aloud. She heard men skewering the dead, their blades sticking into the ceiling above her head. She heard men falling overboard, their bodies meeting the hull before they finally hit the sea. And then she heard two sets of footsteps approaching the dark cabin. Assuming her team had lost, she quickly lay flat and played dead.
“It’s locked, sir,” someone said.
“Kick it down.”
There were several light kicks to the door.
“Harder!”
The door finally flew open, half of it snapping and landing on the floor next to the doorway.
“Sir, are you here?” David asked.
Emer sat up. “Over here.” She reached out toward his voice.
“Come with us,” he said. “Hurry.”
“I can’t hurry, David. I can’t bloody walk.”
The two men walked to her bunk and picked her up. She snatched the medicine bottle and shoved it in David’s trouser pocket. When they got her upright, Emer faltered and felt dizzy. The men held her at the waist and the three of them moved through the doorway and up the steps to the sunlit deck. Emer closed her eyes and heard David gasp.
“Bring the doctor,” she whispered to him. “The one with the spectacle.”
David ordered his men to get the doctor. He carried Emer over the ropes and onto the Vera Cruz. The rest of the men continued to fight while they went below deck to her cabin. Everything was exactly as she’d left it almost a year before. Even her cape still hung on its hook.
When the doctor arrived, David left him in the cabin with Emer and one marine and went back above deck to finish the battle. He ordered the gunners to their places and the marines to untangle the ships and get aboard. When they did, the Vera Cruz sailed past the Chester twice, pouring endless double shot into her hull. The Chester began to take on water and sink as they tacked west.
When David returned to her cabin, Emer was lying in the bunk looking tired.
“What happened to her?” he asked the doctor.
“She is very lucky, you know. She could have lost her whole foot.”
David said, “You’ll stay with us until she’s good as new, you will.”
The doctor nodded. “We’ll need some things.”
“What things?”
“Medicine for her leg. Rum for her pain.”
David looked at Emer. She smiled the best she could through her shame. “Now this,” she thought. “A menace to my crew.” He sat down beside her on the bunk, and took her weak head in his hands and kissed her.
“I have a surprise for you, Captain. A very big surprise.”
“I’ve had my fill of surprises, David. Tell me.”
“Well, if I told you, then it would scarcely be a surprise, now would it?”
“I order you!”
“Presently, sir. You can’t order me. You can’t even walk! You’ll see soon enough what I have for you!”
She handed the small brown bottle to the doctor and allowed him to examine her foot and apply the dark liquid to the place where her toes used to be. He made her eat two biscuits and then left her to sleep.
Two weeks later, Emer was able to walk around her cabin with the aid of a crutch. Three weeks later, she could limp steadily without the crutch and began to turn the proper color. She walked circles in the cabin, and each day would make it through the entire ship’s undercarriage twice. She ate one full meal a day, and had managed to keep down some dried meat. By the time the Vera Cruz reached its surprise destination, Emer was nearly healed. She would always limp, the doctor warned her, but it would become slight with time and practice.
David arrived one morning with a plate of fruit. “Today you get to see your surprise,” he said, smiling.
She dressed in a pair of black trousers and a clean blouse. She attempted her boots, but one was still too small