ODESSA - ONE FOR SORROW

ODESSA - PREQUEL TO TEN FOR THE DEVIL

Chapter 1

The Wreck of the Fair Maiden

Somewhere along the English Coastline – 1815

A strong wind blew strands of blonde hair across the weary disfigured face of a warrior. Luke's deep-set eyes were wide with excitement as blood lust set his heart pounding. Turning to face his followers, his harsh voice carried above the pounding surf, as he trekked the sand dune to the shoreline.

"Show no mercy!" Luke shouted, as he choked on the bonfire's smoke that filled the air. "Kill ... you hear me or we'll all hang by a goddamn rope!" The night's events were in its final stages.

Luke focused on one man and charged forward. With an axe waved high in his right hand, and a knife clutched in this left, he swung and felt it tear through flesh to crush the man's collarbone. Next, his knife speared deep between the man's ribs. The dying sailor collapsed falling forward into Luke's extended arms. Their eyes locked and Luke watched the life drain from the younger man. He yanked out his knife and the lifeless body fell to the sand. The sailor did not have time to make a single sound.

Ashen smoke, bellowing from the bonfire lit the night before, darkened the early morning sky.

Luke turned his long lean frame to face the remaining men emerging out of the cold sea. He shouted again. "Be ready now! Don't give the bastards time to get on their feet."

A rag-tagged mob, armed with clubs, pitchforks and knives, ran behind him joining in the kill until the seafoam turned red with blood. The screams of murderers and those massacred, merged as one with the rumble and reverberating uproar in the distance.

With the help of pounding white capped breakers, the once proud ship, the Fair

Maiden was being ripped apart on the rocks off shore. The screams of her survivors were unrelenting, as they either jumped or fell from the ship into the sea. The sounds of their cries and the ship's pending destruction mingled with the echoes of shrieking sea gulls and crashing waves.

Back on shore, the coppery-rust stench of blood filled the mob's nostrils, mixed in with the scents of burnt wood, seaweed, and human sweat. Many were weeping from either the sting of black smoke, from fear, from the ecstasy of the kill, or being in the final stages of death's cold grip.

The ship's crew had only time to launch one lifeboat before she sank, and it held armed sailors and frightened passengers. As the survivors headed for shore, officers fired their muskets into the crazed pack waiting for them. Only one pellet hit its mark.

The Blacksmith, a huge brute of a man, was shot in the upper arm. He paid no notice and marched forward with his iron hammer in one hand and found the skull of an unarmed man. With one swing of the Blacksmith's heavy hammer, the poor fellow dropped to the sand, leaving blood splattered on the Blacksmith's leather apron. Without hesitation, he continued on to his next kill.

The village Baker, who was not so bold as to strike the first blow himself, approached and pierced the fallen man between the ribs with a knife. The Blacksmith's wife accosted the Baker from behind and tossed him like a bag of potatoes off the sailor crying out, "He's ours, bugger off. Make your own bloody kill!"

The Blacksmith's sons, miniatures of their father, helped their mother drag the body of the sailor up the beach, and started to strip him of anything worthwhile. The young, gingered hair sailor, only a few years older than the boys who were striping him, called out with his dying breath for his dear mother. Tears ran down his freckled cheeks.

The pox-holed faces of the Blacksmith's boys broke out into snickers. The younger of the two, took a dirty index finger and drove it into the sailor's knife wound making the sailor cry out in pain. The wicked boys snickered again.