Beloved Warrior by PATRICIA POTTER Page B

men dropped where they’d stood.
    Several had been wounded by loose sheets and objects sliding along the deck. One of the ship’s boats had torn loose and injured three men. One man was missing, probably lost at sea.
    Patrick surveyed the moaning men lying on the floor in the surgeon’s cabin. He knew a few rudimentary things to do, but there were too many needing help. Kilil, the Moor who had shared his bench, had taken over the surgery and was doing what he could in binding wounds.
    Then he thought the women might help. Mayhap it would do two things. Add more hands to tend the wounded when the rest of the crew was near dead from exhaustion, and give the men a reason to respect them.
    He was desperate for sleep, had reached the end of his endurance. Since the takeover, he hadn’t slept at all. Diego had slept only for a very few hours.
    All of them needed to keep their wits.
    His side was bleeding again, reopened by the stretching and pulling of the past few hours, but his wound was minor compared to some of the others.
    He went down the steps to the women’s cabin. Manuel was dutifully still there, sitting outside. His head lolled from side to side. He was asleep.
    Patrick knocked on the door, waited a moment, then went inside without waiting for a response. It was obvious one had been sick, and he soon realized it was the young girl. Her face had a greenish tinge, and her dark brown eyes looked bloodshot.
    The other woman, the Mendoza, had her arms around the girl. A Mendoza with a soul.
    Mayhap.
    Or mayhap she was using the girl as a shield.
    “The storm?” she asked uncertainly.
    “Over. For the moment.”
    A shudder shook her body, but he did not see tears. He had yet to see them.
    She stood. She still wore the dark blue gown, but her hair was pulled back in one long, thick braid. Her face looked wan and tired.
    She was also coping far better than he believed any other woman of his acquaintance would do. She obviously feared for her virginity and her life, and that of her young companion, but her back was rigid and her chin set and her eyes determined. Admiration rushed through him.
    She glanced down at the wet and newly bloodied bandage. “You have opened the wound.”
    “Does it matter that a slave bleeds?” he asked.
    Her face reddened. “It matters if anyone bleeds,” she said shortly.
    “The oarsmen wish your uncle had felt the same way.”
    “He and the crew paid for it, though, did they not?” she said.
    He had to grudgingly respect her defiance. She did not cower despite the signs that she was very badly frightened. Instead those tired eyes sparked with outrage.
    “They tried bloody hard to kill us,” he defended himself.
    “Some of the crew must have tried to surrender,” she persisted.
    He shrugged. There was no point in reminding her that the oarsmen had been starved and beaten for months and, in many cases, for years. They wouldn’t recognize surrender.
    “You did not want witnesses?”
    He tensed. She was confronting the fact that had nagged him since he found the two women. She was right. He did not want witnesses. But he knew it was not in him to kill women.
    Nor to see them killed.
    He was one among one hundred. He was not sure how long he could keep the others from rape and more murder.
    “You slaughtered them,” she persisted.
    “They would have slaughtered us. I suspect you would have preferred that,” he added with bitterness.
    “Nay,” she said slowly. “I would not want any man to die.”
    “But given a choice?” he retorted.
    “I had no choice.”
    “Your wealth, that dress you wear, are the fruits of the labor that killed countless men. They died of exhaustion, starvation, whippings. Then they were rolled off the ship for the sharks.”
    “I did not know.”
    “Or care.”
    “I do care,” she cried out. “I know it was terrible, no matter what you did, but . . .”
    “No matter what I did,” he repeated softly. “What do you think I might have done,