The Pirates of Moonlit Bay Read online

  The Pirates

  of

  Moonlit Bay

  The Paladin Princess Series Book 1

  Also by Samaire Provost

  Mad World: EPIDEMIC

  Mad World: SANCTUARY

  Mad World: DESPERATION

  ROMANOV

  The Pirates

  of

  Moonlit Bay

  The Paladin Princess Series Book 1

  Samaire Provost

  Black Raven Books

  This is a work of fiction. All of the geography, characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Black Raven Books

  The Pirates of Moonlit Bay.

  Copyright © 2019 by Samaire Provost. All rights reserved.

  Cover illustrations copyright © 2019 by Ravven

  Printed in the United States of America.

  For information, including permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to

  Black Raven Books, P.O. Box 3201, Martinsville VA 24115

  The text was set in 12-point Californian FB

  www.BlackRavenBooks.net

  ISBN-13: 978-1-948594-10-3

  ISBN-10: 1948594103

  First Edition: July 2019

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedicated to Weibermacht

  The Pirates

  of

  Moonlit Bay

  Chapters

  1 - Not Saying a Word

  2 - Fear Rose in my Throat

  3 - Wet and Miserable

  4 - Vision Turned to Black

  5 - And With That Admonishment

  6 - Lost

  7 - A Shooting Star

  8 - Silent Mist

  9 - Deeper In

  10 - Mind Reader

  11 – Phoenix

  12 - A Surprise and a Question

  13 - Smiling at the Stars

  14 - Heart and Soul

  15 - Think Harder

  16 - Smitten

  17 - Amondine

  18 - Six Ghosts

  19 - Another Fire

  20 - A Bewitched Night

  21 - Bandits

  22 - Tambibo

  23 - Abü

  24 - The Key of Azurethene

  25 - Decisions

  26 - Preparations

  27 - Of Valkyries and Determination

  28 - The Tomb of Ancients

  29 - Trap of Sorrows

  30 - Royal Blood

  31 - Riches Beyond Imagining

  32 - Not as Easy as One Would Think

  33 - Escape

  34 - Pirates

  35 - Discovery

  Compendium

  A Brief Summary of Terms

  Advance Notice of New Books

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Not Saying a Word

  My toes dug into the warm sand as I walked, shoes in hand, surf loud in my ears, although I didn’t notice any of it. The sun was bright in my eyes, and my light cloak flapped in the wind.

  “Charlotte!” My mother called, in the distance. I was so far down the beach I barely heard her over the wind and surf. As I rounded a corner, her voice was cut off by the craggy bluff. I sighed and continued, my stomping changing to a shuffle as I calmed down.

  Mother was always demanding I act in certain ways, which I was used to, but this time she’d gone too far.

  This was my birthday vacation, after all. No one expects a proposal from a prince at their birthday celebration. Especially not a prince more than three times their age.

  I breathed hard as I walked, needing to get as far away from my parents as possible.

  Just because I’m 18 now doesn’t mean they have to marry me off, I thought. That old prince may have been in line for his father’s throne, but he looks like he weighs three times as much as I do, and when they introduced us, there’d been bits of his breakfast stuck in his beard. Half-chewed dates and specks of egg nestled in greying, greasy hair. Ugh.

  I shuddered in revulsion.

  My eyes turned toward the horizon. The sky was a beautiful, deep blue; fluffy white clouds dotted the edge, and I could see a small water dragon wheeling in the distance, searching for her breakfast.

  “Princess, please wait.”

  I swung around and saw it was just Caroline, my maid. I stopped, plopping myself down in the sand and sighing again.

  “Princess,” she kneeled by my side and put her hand on my shoulder. “You should not have run off like that. The guards from Prince Phillippe’s house say pirates have been sighted off the coast.” Her quiet voice barely registered above the sound of the wind. I closed my eyes against the spray of sand that kicked up this close to the ground.

  “Carrie, I don’t care. I’m not marrying that old oaf. I needed some space to breathe, to think.”

  “I understand, Princess.” She busied herself arranging my cloak so that it protected my pale face from the worst of the blowing sand.

  Caroline was loyal and dedicated, and I could not remember a time when she wasn’t by my side.

  “Would you like to go back, Princess?” Caroline looked around us nervously.

  “No,” I said, getting up again. I continued walking away from the royal party.

  Caroline rose and followed.

  The wind blew harder around this side of the bluffs, and I clutched my cloak tighter than ever. I hated walking in sand. It always seemed like I was barely making any headway. My feet pushed on in my slippers as the sand became spotted here and there by black rocks poking through. The gold brocade was probably getting torn up by the terrain, but I didn’t care.

  “Princess.” Caroline called after me. “Princess, please.”

  I stopped. “What is it, Carrie …” I said, turning.

  The sight that met my eyes sent a shiver through me.

  Caroline was staring up the short hill next to the bluff: a group of men, filthy and loud, was hurrying down the slope toward us. There were about a dozen of them, and they had swords. I turned and ran back the way I’d come, grabbing Caroline’s hand as I went. We got half a dozen steps before we fell. The wind had wrapped my cloak around my legs, and down I went.

  “Ha!” The men growled in triumph as they overtook us. Caroline screamed in panic.

  I struggled to my feet, the men holding both my arms. They wore ragged, sweaty, loose clothing and leather boots, and the belt around each waist was outfitted with deadly weapons.

  “You will unhand me. I am a guest of Prince Phillippe’s and under his protection!” I scowled up at them haughtily.

  One of the men, taller and filthier than the others, leered at me with an evil smile. “You’ve crossed the border, Miss. You’re now in open territory.” He snorted and laughed. “Like we’d’ve cared anyway. You’re coming with us!”

  I screamed in rage and struggled against the arms that held me. “You can’t do this!”

  They just laughed and tied our hands in front of us, then they dragged us through rocky terrain, a mile south, crossing over the side of the hills, and down to the water again. They pulled us along so harshly that I lost my slippers.

  My feet were bloody by the time they threw us down under a crude tent. There were maybe a dozen others similarly tied up, some seemingly unconscious on their sides. I couldn’t tell if they were even alive. The crowd we’d been added to groaned as the pirates pushed us into the pile of people.

  Pirates. I had come to terms with that while being dragged along. I closed my eyes and tried to slow my breathing, but it was no use. I felt filled with panic. These ruffians had to be the pirates Caroline had spo
ken of. What had she said about them again? Fear crept up my spine. Then a different emotion.

  Sitting up, I looked angrily out of the tent.

  “I want to speak to whoever’s in charge.” I spoke in the flawless Arabic my tutors had taught me. The men outside guarding the tent laughed derisively. “I demand to speak to your leader!”

  “Shut your hole, woman.” The nearest guard kicked sand into the tent, hitting me full in the face.

  I coughed, struggling to spit out the grit, blinking wildly to clear my eyes.

  “You’ll regret this. I am a princess visiting your land and guest of Prince Phillippe. He will hunt you down and kill you if you do not release me!”

  The men just laughed.

  “Here, ‘princess’ — a sand bath for your royal highness,” the first guard dumped a bucket of sand over my head.

  “Princess,” whispered Caroline. “Stay quiet. You may be in more danger if they believe you are royalty.”

  I swung around and whispered back. “Or maybe they will treat us better, I could be a valuable hostage to them.”

  The guards outside the tent were still laughing harshly, and I grew silent at their jeering words.

  “Here, your highness. Your crown!” A second guard plopped the heavy wooden bucket over my head. The hard wood slammed into my forehead and I saw stars.

  Caroline struggled against her bonds, trying to get to me to help. I fell over, trying to free myself. The bucket finally fell off sideways as the guards laughed. I remained on my side, feeling defeated. Breathing hard, I closed my eyes, my cheek stinging against the hard ground.

  Tears sprang to my eyes as I lay there, a growing knot of dread gathering in my chest. I was still wearing my morning attire, a light cloak over my breakfast shift, hardly more than a nightgown. I felt utterly vulnerable. Naked. I shivered in my cloak.

  Caroline lay down beside me, not saying a word.

  Chapter Two

  Fear Rose in my Throat

  “Move! Move, you lazy beasts!”

  It was still dark as my mind floated back up from the dream I’d been having. It had been about a giant black horse as huge as a tree. I was riding him so fast the wind blinded me and it was all I could do to hold on tightly and bury my face into his mane as he gathered his haunches and leapt into a storm-filled sky…

  A kick landed on my side, bruising my ribs and leaving me gasping for air.

  “Princess,” Caroline whispered urgently, trying to pull my arm up. “Hurry.” The guard who’d kicked me moved on to the next captive, kicking at the figure beneath the blanket. It was still. The blanket moved slightly with the harsh blow, then the person lay motionless.

  The guard called over his shoulder, “We’ve got another one.” He grabbed the body by its feet and began dragging it out of the huge tent.

  I shuddered. “Carrie, we’ve got to get out of here,” I whispered in a low voice.

  “Agreed,” Caroline looked around at the huddled figures, barely visible in the dark tent. “I …” She fell silent as the guard returned and began barking orders.

  They herded us out of the tent together at the point of a sword and forced us to assemble in a line outside. My feet stung, the blood long since dried and scabbed over. Dirt was embedded in the wounds, and I longed for a place to wash.

  Looking back, I could see there was twelve of us altogether. Seven men and five women; several looked quite young. My eyes met the gaze of the smallest young woman, a lass of about thirteen or fourteen. She looked terrified. Farther along down the line, a boy of maybe ten stood, eyes downcast, the arm of the man next to him curled protectively around his shoulders. We all awaited our fate.

  We didn’t have long to wait.

  They didn’t even address us. They simply prodded us with sword tips and forced us toward the shore. After boarding a large rowboat, we were transported to a huge ship anchored offshore. It was painted with black pitch, and as we climbed aboard using a ladder made of thick rope and wood, we soon found ourselves smeared with the stuff.

  The dawn pinked the horizon, and we were already on our way.

  We sat huddled under a heavy tarp on deck as a drizzle made everything soaked and soggy. Two pirates had been assigned to guard our group; we learned later there were other groups of prisoners below-decks. The ship had been so full they’d had to keep us out on deck.

  They untied us and handed us moldy bread, which we wolfed down. I rubbed my feet on the wet wood of the deck, trying to clean my wounds.

  “Princess, take this,” Caroline handed me a piece of fabric she’d torn from her petticoat.

  “Thank you, Carrie,” I held it into the rain to wet it, thinking. “Perhaps,” I whispered, “perhaps you shouldn’t call me ‘Princess’ while we are in these dire straits, held by these ruffians.”

  “Yes, Miss.” Caroline looked into my eyes and smiled.

  We passed around a cup someone had found, filling it with rainwater so we could drink. I’ve never tasted anything so delicious as that water, truthfully. It had been nearly 24 hours since my short breakfast with Mummy and Daddy, and I’d barely drunk any of my tea.

  As the day rose in the sky, we sailed down the coast of Alkebulan, the sun off our port bow. The rain had stopped by midday, and a blazing heat baked us as the deck rose and fell on choppy seas. The pirates paid us no mind and went about their business of sailing and the various odd jobs it took to run the large ship. Until…

  “You! Get up.” We all stared as the boy I’d seen earlier was picked out of the crowd and made to follow the first mate.

  His guardian reached out as the boy was pulled from his arms, begging, “Please! Take me instead. No. No, leave him be!”

  One of the guards turned and hit the man’s head with the butt of his sword, and he fell back, dazed, his temple bloody. The boy stayed silent throughout this exchange, his dark eyes wide. They dragged him below-decks, to an unknown fate.

  Caroline shuddered and tears formed at the corners of her eyes. “I was talking to his uncle last night, Miss. He and the boy had traveled to market after saving for a year, to buy his grandmother a gift. The pirates snatched them right off the street. The boy’s name is Akim.”

  I looked to where the boy’s uncle had fallen. He was sitting to the side, his head held in his arms, mumbling and rocking back and forth. Muffled moaning was barely audible. The ball of fear in my chest that had been there since we were snatched grew. When would this ordeal end?

  Little did I know, it was just beginning.

  “You’re a real beauty,” a voice said. I turned my head and looked up. A leering pirate swayed with the movement of the ship, and reached down for the young woman next to Caroline.

  “Leave her alone!” I said loudly. His attention was now on me. Lightning fast, he backhanded me across the face, making my mouth bleed. I swung back around, glaring at him. Caroline threw herself across me, shielding me from the second blow.

  “Kishon! Stop it. The captain said not to harm them. Leave them be!” The man who spoke shoved the one called Kishon away. “Get back to work before Sefu catches you idle.”

  Grumbling, Kishon stepped away, but not before leering again at the girl, who shuddered and turned her head away.

  The guard who had spoken out came over to Caroline and me.

  “Are you harmed?” He knelt down to examine us. We stared back, mute. He chuckled. “I asked if you were harmed, woman.”

  Caroline spoke, “I think I am uninjured.”

  I was amazed at the first show of concern for us, even if it came from a pirate.

  I studied his face. His head was wrapped in a keffiyeh, and I saw his dark eyes were kind, if curious.

  “Thank you for helping,” I said hesitantly, “I am unharmed.” Even as I said this, more blood trickled out the corner of my mouth. I wiped it hurriedly.

  “Here.” He handed me small, dried apple. I broke it into pieces and handed them to Caroline and the girl. As I sat eating, I noticed the man watched me
as he straightened and remained on guard duty.

  After a short while, his attention was diverted to something another guard said, and I had a chance to approach the girl.

  “Hey,” I said softly, and she turned to me. “My name is Charlotte, what’s yours?”

  “Christianne,” she replied.

  I indicated Caroline beside me. “This is Carrie. We’re from a distant land.”

  “I can tell from your accent.” She looked interested. “Where have you traveled from?”

  “We were visiting from the northlands when we were snatched off the beach. I had … we had been taking a walk, and ventured too far south, crossing the border.” I glanced at Caroline, and she nodded.

  The girl made a sympathetic sound. “I was caught as I drew water from the well on the edge of our farm, then a trader took me on a two days’ journey across the desert.” She looked down. “My little brother was hit in the head and knocked down. They left him on the rocks by the well. I … I don’t know what happened to him. He’s only three.”

  I remained silent, thinking about the picture in my head. “I am sorry,” I said after a minute.

  Standing up, I moved to the edge of the area we prisoners were held. No rope or barrier held us, just the dirty tarp above our heads, high at the front, but sloping low toward the back.

  “Be right back,” I said to Caroline. I walked a few more steps and was able to touch the railing at the edge of the deck.

  The ship was plowing through the water at steady pace. I looked down the side of the ship and could just see one of the giant manta rays that pulled the vessel leap out of the water. Its fin-span must have been fifteen meters. I could see where the straps of its leather harness bit into its hide, and the brilliant blue of its tail glittered in the sunlight. My heart sank as I realized we shared something in common with the majestic creatures: We were all prisoners of the pirates. They could no more escape their servitude than we could our captivity.