Love Song For A Raven

transcended words, he knew that someone was out on the open sea, caught between the storm and the unyielding shore. He leaped to the deck of the powerboat with a speed and lightness that was unexpected in a man of his size. From the stern locker he pulled out a long rope. He tied one end to the stern cleat. In a continuation of the same motion he threw off the stern mooring line. A few seconds later the bow line was off. At his touch the two powerful inboard engines snarled into life.

Minutes later Raven was approaching the mouth of the inlet. Windblown spray sheeted across the bow as the Black Star surged out into the unprotected water. Raven handled the bucking, shuddering boat with the assurance of a man born and raised on the surface of the world’s biggest ocean. Braced against the hammering waves, steering with one hand and his powerful thighs, he brought the binoculars to his eyes and swept the area where he thought the boat should be.

There was nothing but water being ripped apart by the wind.

Raven widened the search, feeling minutes slipping away, knowing intuitively that his worst fears were true: someone was out there, someone whose danger increased with every second. Raven couldn’t spot him, despite the fact that the waves were barely big enough to hide a rowboat in their trough. Yet the water was more than rough enough to be coming in over the gunwales with every wave, rough enough to swamp a small boat before Raven could find it.

„Come on, come on, show me where you are,“ Raven muttered. „It’s bad out here, but not that bad. You shouldn’t have swamped this quick even if you don’t have much time to spare for bailing.“

After several more sweeps with the glasses showed nothing, Raven brought the Black Star onto a different heading, one that would take him farther from the inlet and closer to shore. The boat wallowed protestingly as it presented its stern to the wind and waves. A few minutes of that twisting, cork-screwing motion would have sent most people to the nearest rail with a bout of seasickness, but Raven noticed the motion only in that it made controlling the boat while looking through the binoculars almost impossible.

Just when he was ready to switch to a different heading, he caught a flash of color off toward shore. He frowned even as he turned slightly. The flash had been too close to shore and too far away from the inlet’s mouth to be the boat he was looking for. More likely it was a fishing float or crab-pot marker that had torn loose in the storm.

The flash of color came again. Raven focused and saw someone straining over oars.

The rowboat vanished from sight in the trough of a wave, then reappeared in a burst of spray. Instantly Raven realized that the man was in real trouble. He obviously wasn’t strong enough to make headway against the tide, wind and waves, which had pushed him dangerously close to shore. In fact, he looked more like a teenager than a man. His shoulders weren’t broad, nor were his arms muscular.

Abruptly Raven began to swear, his words as savage as the wind. He threw the binoculars aside and slammed the throttle forward, sending the Black Star leaping toward the smaller boat. That wasn’t a man out there nor even a boy; it was a woman, and she was pulling her heart out against the relentless sea. Her rowboat wallowed and rolled sluggishly, bringing the gunwale perilously close to the water. Both the woman’s fear and her determination were in every straining line of her body as she fought to keep the waterlogged boat on a safe course, away from the dangerous shore.

Raven sent the Black Star on a broad curve that brought him close to the rowboat. He saw the look of stunned relief on the woman’s face when she spotted him. Easing closer, he cut the throttle and abandoned the wheel long enough to throw coils of the heavy towline over to the rowboat. He held his breath while the woman scrambled to the bow and made the line fast.

Only then did he notice how much water filled the rowboat. It was all but awash. He started to yell at the woman to bail, only to see the pale flash of a bleach bottle as she bent to work. Very carefully he eased the throttles up on the Black Star, taking slack from the tow-line. He felt the slight jerk as the rowboat’s weight hit the end of the long line. Slowly, carefully, he began towing the rowboat toward the inlet.

Once both boats had settled into the new motion, Raven picked up the binoculars and turned toward the crippled rowboat thirty feet astern. For minutes that seemed like years, he divided his attention between steering the Black Star and watching the woman bail. Despite her efforts, the rowboat still rode far too low in the water for safety.

Suddenly the woman stopped bailing. Raven’s mouth flattened as he watched her slump on the bench seat. Didn’t she know that the danger wasn’t over? The rowboat was wallowing like a pig in mud. When the time came to make the turn into the inlet, the rowboat’s stern would be presented to the waves. There was no help for it, for there was no other way to get into the inlet. Unless she got to work the first wave that broke over the stern would send the rowboat right to the bottom.

And unless Raven cut the towrope as soon as the rowboat went under, he stood a good chance of going down with her.

Even as the thought came, Raven kicked out of his waterproof boots. Unconsciously his hand went to his belt for an instant. The worn, leather-wrapped hilt of his sheath knife nestled against his palm in cool reassurance.

„Bail!“ Raven yelled, his voice as deep as the thunder of waves breaking over rocks.

A gust of wind ripped the word from his mouth and flung it back at him. Cursing, he stared through the binoculars. The woman seemed to be wrestling with something, but he was damned if he could figure out what it might be. Finally her struggles caused her to turn slightly, bringing her hands into the viewing field of the binoculars. She was prying at the fingers of her left hand, which were wrapped around the handle of the bleach bottle in a death grip.

Raven saw the muscles of the woman’s left arm locked in a rigid spasm of protest over the demands that had been made on them. The arm was useless and would remain that way until the muscles uncramped. He saw tears of frustration welling from the woman’s eyes as she fought her own body. Then he saw the brutal lines of exhaustion that had drawn her mouth into a harsh line and the blue-tinged pallor of her skin that warned of a body dangerously chilled. She was past the end of her physical strength, stripped to the core, all reserves spent.

Yet still she fought, refusing to quit.

A chill went over Raven, tightening his scalp in primal response. He had never seen anything quite so beautiful as the woman’s courage. She was outmatched, overpowered, overwhelmed, yet she drove her slender body to work still harder, refusing to give up. Raven called to her as though he could give her some of his immense strength through an outpouring of words. He doubted that she understood him across the thirty feet of wind-churned sea, but he called to her anyway, wanting her to know that she wasn’t alone.

When the woman finally managed to shift the bleach bottle to her right hand, Raven let out a hoarse shout of triumph. She began bailing with jerky, mechanical strokes, sending water sloshing out into the sea. He turned, adjusted the course of the Black Star and looked back again. Small plumes of water shooting over the rowboat’s gunwale reassured him that the woman was still bailing.

With agonizing slowness the Black Star pulled the waterlogged rowboat toward the safety of the inlet. Raven checked through the binoculars every few moments. The water level inside the boat had gone down some, but not nearly enough for safety. He cut back his speed as much as he could and still hold his own against the storm. Although he wanted to reach the inlet’s shelter as soon as possible, he had to wait while the woman bailed. If he tried to turn into the inlet now, the rowboat would capsize and sink.

Helplessly Raven watched through the binoculars as the woman struggled against the storm. The sight of her made agony twist deep inside him. It was too much like a time eight years ago, when he had watched helplessly as the woman he loved slid further and further into alternating bouts of rage and despair. He had tried to reach Angel with words of comfort and hope, tried to tell her that he loved her. He had wanted her to shift the focus of her love from a dead man to himself, from death to life. Later, when he understood that Angel was slowly killing herself rather than face life without the man she loved, Raven had realized that he wanted Angel