"Mister Tyler." He spoke loudly enough for all the crew to hear above Sam Bowles's screams. "We will waste no more of the ship's time with this matter. The prisoner is to be hanged immediately. Reeve a rope to the main yard. -" "Gundwane!" Aboli roared a warning. "Behind you!" And he started forward too late to intervene. Sam Bowles had reached under his petticoats. Strapped to the inside of his thigh was a leather sheath. He was as swift as a striking adder. In his hand the blade of the stiletto sparkled like a sliver of crystal, pretty as a maiden's bauble. He threw it with a snap of his wrist.
Hal had begun to turn to Aboli's warning, but Sam was swifter. The dagger flitted across the space that separated them, and Hal winced in anticipation of the sting of the razor-edged blade burying itself in his flesh. For an instant he doubted his own senses, for he felt no blow.
He looked down and saw that Sukeena had flung out one slim bare arm to block the throw. The silver blade had struck an inch below her elbow and buried itself to the haft.
"Sweet Jesus, shield her!" Hal blurted, seized her in his arms and hugged her to him. Both of them stared down at the hilt of the dagger protruding from her flesh.
Aboli reached Sam Bowles the instant after the stiletto had flown from his fingers and sent him crashing to the deck with a blow of his bunched fist. Ned Tyler and a dozen men leapt forward to seize him, and drag him to his feet. Sam shook his head blearily for Aboli's fist had stunned him. Blood dribbled from the side of his mouth.
"Reeve a rope through the main yard block," Ned Tyler shouted, and a man raced up the shrouds to obey. He ran out along the main yard, and a minute later the rope fell down through the sheave and its tail flopped onto the deck.
"The blade has gone deep," Hal whispered, as he held Sukeena against his chest and tenderly lifted her wounded arm.
"It is thin and sharp." Sukeena smiled bravely up at him. "So sharp I hardly felt it. Draw the blade swiftly, my darling, and it will heal cleanly."
"Help me here! Hold her arm," Hal called to Aboli, who sprang to his side, grasped the slim engraved hilt and, with one swift motion, plucked the blade from Sukeena's flesh. It came away with surprising ease.
She said softly, "There is little harm done," but her cheeks had paled and tears trembled on her lower eyelids. Hal lifted her in his arms and started towards the companionway of the stern. A wild scream stopped him.
Sam Bowles stood beneath the dangling rope. Ned Tyler was snugging the noose down under his ear. Four men waited ready with the tail of the rope in their hands.
"Your bitch is dead, Henry Courtney. She is dead just like your bastard sire. Sam Bowles killed both of them. Glory be, Captain Bloody Courtney, remember me in your prayers. I am the man you will never forget." "Tis a little cut. The Princess is a strong, brave girl.
She will live on," Ned muttered grimly in Sam Bowles's ear. "You are the one who is dead, Sam Bowles." He stepped back and nodded to the men on the rope's end, who walked away with it, slapping their bare feet on the deck timbers in unison.
The instant before the rope came up tight and stopped his breath, Sam screamed again, "Look well at the blade that cut your whore, Captain. Think on Sam Bowles when you try the point." The rope bit into his throat and yanked him off his feet, throttling the next word before it reached his lips.
The crew howled with wolflike glee as Sam Bowles rose spiralling in the air, swinging on the rope's end as the Golden Bough rotted under him. His legs kicked and danced so that the chains on his ankles tinkled like sleigh bells.
He was still twitching and gurgling when his neck jammed up tight against the sheave block at the end of the main yard high above the deck.
"Let him hang there all night, "Ned Tyler ordered. "We'll cut him down in the morning and throw him to the sharks." Then he stooped and picked up the stiletto from the deck where Hal had flung it. He studied the blood-smeared blade and his tanned face turned yellow grey.
"Sweet Mary, let it not be so!" He looked up again at Sam Bowles's corpse swaying to the ship's motion high above him.
"Your death was too easy. If it were in my power, I would kill you a hundred times over, and each time more painfully than the last." al laid Sukeena on the bunk in the main cabin. "I should cauterize the wound but tH the hot iron would leave a scar." He knelt beside the bunk and examined it closely. "It is deep but there is almost no bleeding." He wrapped her arm in a fold of white linen that Aboli brought him from the sea-chest at the foot of the bunk.
"Bring me my bag," Sukeena ordered, and Aboli went immediately.
As soon as they were alone, Hal bent over her and kissed her pale cheek. "You took Sam's throw to save me," he murmured, his face pressed to hers. "You risked your own life and the life of the child in your womb for me. It was a bad bargain, my love."
"I would strike the same bargain-" She broke off and he felt her stiffen in his arms and gasp.
"What is it that ails you, my sweetheart?" He drew back and stared into her face. Before his eyes, tiny beads of perspiration welled up out of the pores of her skin, like the dew on the petals of a yellow rose. "You are in pain?"
"It burns," she whispered. "It burns worse than the hot iron you spoke of."
Swiftly he unwrapped her arm and stared at the change in the wound that had taken place as they embraced. The arm was swelling before his eyes, like one of the Toby fish of the coral reef that could puff itself up to many times its original size when threatened by a predator.
Sukeena lifted the arm and nursed it to her bosom. She whimpered involuntarily as the pain flowed up from the wound to fill her chest like glowing molten lead.
"I do not understand what is happening." She began to writhe upon the bunk. "This is not natural. Look how it changes colour."