Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) Read Online Free Page B

didn’t turn back.
    “We should go after him!” Cassie said. “We
could lose him overboard as easily as the captain.”
    Callum and Cassie let go of their post at
the same time and in two steps were able to clutch the door frame
as David had been doing. The crew had pulled down the sail, since
it would only capsize the boat in a storm like this. The horses
whinnied and tried to rear, though they were tied down so tightly
they couldn’t. Callum was glad only five had been staked to the
deck. If even one worked free, it could maim everyone on the ship
in its panic before escaping into the sea. At the other end of the
cog, the first mate was trying to hold the ship together by sheer
willpower. Callum could see him gesticulating and urging his men
on. Through the rain and the wind, Callum couldn’t hear what he was
saying, but it looked as if they were trying to fix the tiller.
    Callum peered through the rain and was about
to set off towards the stern of the ship after David, when he
reappeared, bringing with him a thick rope. Like everything else on
the ship, it was waterlogged, but he managed to tie it around
Cassie’s waist anyway.
    “Get your men out of the hold if they will
come,” David said.
    Callum went to the trap door and lifted it
up. At the start of the journey, his men had insisted on staying in
the hold, but now a tall Saxon named John scrambled up the ladder.
“The hull is breached! We’ll drown if we stay down there.”
    “Unfortunately, we’re already drowning up
here,” Callum said.
    Several more soldiers came out of the hold,
though not all of them. Callum stuck his head through the trap
door. “Come on, men!”
    “We’re going to die!”
    “I can’t swim!”
    Callum reached a hand down and hauled two
more men out before another huge wave swamped the cog and poured
water into the hold. Those he’d rescued scuttled to the stern and
huddled there with the crew.
    David, meanwhile, had pulled out his belt
knife and begun working at the ropes that bound the horses.
    “What are you doing?” Callum said.
    “I’m turning the horses loose. They should
have a better chance of surviving out there than on the ship.”
    Callum would have helped him, but at that
moment Cassie screamed and clung to the rail as the plummeting ship
swept her off her feet. Callum leapt towards her, catching her
around the waist with one arm and gripping the rail with the other.
As the ship climbed back up out of the trough, he tied the other
end of Cassie’s rope around his own waist to link himself to her.
If a wave sent them overboard, they could more easily find each
other—and save each other—if they were attached together. Callum
continued to keep her between him and the rail, both of them
hanging on for dear life.
    The first mate joined David with the horses,
cursing as one of them reared and flailed his hooves. Callum
glanced down the deck to his men and was horrified to see fewer of
them than before. With the horses finally gone, David returned to
where Cassie and Callum cowered by the rail. He grabbed the end of
their rope, wound it around his own waist, and then urged them
towards the mast.
    “David, what exactly are you doing?” Cassie
said.
    “Saving us, I hope!”
    “How is tying us to the mast saving us. The
ship is sinking!” Cassie was soaked from head to foot. Rain
streamed down her face, and she swept a sodden lock out of her
eyes.
    “What about everybody else?” Callum
said.
    “I don’t think they want to go where we’re
going,” David said, “and I couldn’t ask it of them, even if I could
control what happens next.”
    “What happens next—” Cassie stopped speaking
at the look David gave her.
    David remained focused on tying the rope to
the mast, and then he cinched it tight one last time. “If this
turns out like I fear it might, it would be better if we took the
ship with us.”
    “With us?” The words caught in Callum’s
throat. For months, up until the day he and Cassie