Love Song For A Raven

Chapter 1

The man called Raven came awake between one heartbeat and the next. He lay without moving, listening with the absolute stillness of someone whose life has depended many times on sensing shifts in wind and sea. Beneath him the Black Star tugged at its moorings in random motions, telling him that even within the shelter of the inlet, the water was choppy. Currents of air moaned around the boat with a wild, clean sound, the voice of a wind that hadn’t touched land for thousands of miles until it reached the Queen Charlotte Islands. Now that voice spoke to mountains rising steeply from the cold ocean, mountains clad in evergreens and ferns, mountains so rugged that man had chosen to challenge the untamed sea in cedar canoes rather than to walk the cloud-wreathed, primal land.

The elemental song of wind and mountain and sea were familiar to the man who lay motionless on the oversize bunk. Raven listened for a moment longer, filed away the fact that the storm had arrived twelve hours early and fell asleep once more.

Beyond the shallow crease of the inlet, the sea was a heaving blackness churned by a reckless wind. The promise of predawn light had been reduced to a vague gloaming that barely penetrated the lowering clouds. The only relief from the seamless gray came from the pale curves of an open rowboat struggling against the wind-whipped waves.

Steering the powerful outboard engine with one hand, Janna Moran kept the bow of the boat headed on a diagonal course into the wind and waves. With the other hand she bailed out the boat, using a plastic bleach bottle whose cap had been screwed on tightly and whose bottom had been cut entirely off. Normally the half-gallon bottle with its built-in handle grip did an excellent job of keeping the boat dry. Or reasonably dry. Nothing in the islands was really dry. The combination of the cold northern sea and the relatively warm Ku-roshio current made for nearly constant fog, mist, drizzle, rain and more rain.

Usually Janna enjoyed the liquid varieties of „Queen Charlotte sunshine,“ but not that morning. The wild predawn churning of water and wind had begun without warning, catching her out on the open sea. The storm that had been scheduled to arrive that evening had obviously picked up both speed and strength somewhere over the Pacific. Instead of the customary rain, brisk wind and choppy seas that had been predicted, the storm was shaping up to be a much more formidable affair.

Anxiously Janna scanned the coastline to her left. By narrowing her gray-green eyes against the wind, she could just make out the rugged wall of land rising from the dark sea. She made a soft sound of dismay as she saw that she was still well short of the opening of Totem Inlet. The last time she had looked, just before the clouds had closed down in the east, she had needed only fifteen more minutes of running time before she could turn and head into the calmer waters of the inlet. But the wind had shifted. Now both tide and wind were running heavily against her, and waves were breaking over the bow as fast as she could bail.

Even worse, the outboard motor had been acting up. At first it had been no more than hesitations in the mechanical heartbeat that were so tiny she thought she had imagined them. By the time she had passed the halfway point to the inlet’s safety, the hesitations had become noticeable, more ominous. The engine had stuttered twice in as many minutes, making her own heartbeat lurch.

Janna stared toward the coastline again, wondering if she dared go in closer to the land, shortening her distance to the inlet. The memory of huge waves battering against dark cliffs on either side of Totem Inlet’s opening made her reject that possibility. The course she had chosen was longer but it was also far safer.

The motor coughed, faded, caught and then died.

Suddenly the wind sounded very loud. With her heart wedging in her throat, Janna turned, braced herself on the bench seat and pulled on the starter cord with all her strength. The engine made healthy ripping noises but didn’t catch. She pulled again and again and felt an almost dizzying surge of relief when the motor finally beat steadily once more. Instantly she turned the bow back into the wind and cranked the speed up a notch or two. More water would come in over the gunwale at a higher speed, but she would also get to the inlet sooner.

For a few minutes Janna made good speed. Just as her heartbeat had settled down again, the motor died without warning. She dropped the bailing bottle, grabbed the starter cord and began pulling. The motor ripped, muttered and died. Janna yanked on the cord again and again. Each time she pulled, the engine stirred but didn’t fully awaken.

„Damn you, start!“

As though it had only been waiting for the proper encouragement, the motor ripped into life. Janna’s slim fingers wrapped around the handle again, feeding gas steadily as she steered once more into the wind and the waves. Sheets of wind-driven spray broke over her, sending streamers of cold water pouring over her yellow poncho. Most of the water drained off into the boat, but some of it inevitably worked beneath the poncho’s hood to slide chilly fingers down her spine and between her breasts. Inside the midcalf fisherman’s galoshes she wore, her feet were soaked. So were her legs from midthigh on down.

Janna bailed rapidly – not out of any hope of staying dry, but to decrease the weight of the boat so that it didn’t ride so low in the heaped waves. Water was heavier than it looked, as her left arm reminded her with each stroke of the half-gallon bleach bottle. Yet for every quart she threw back into the sea, the wind delivered more across her face.

The motor shuddered and stopped. Janna dropped the bailing bottle and pulled on the starter cord again and again. With each pull the motor made a harsh ripping noise but refused to catch. She threw a worried glance toward the coastline. It was closer. Too close. Enough light had seeped through the clouds so that she could see a distinct line of foam where breakers threw themselves at the feet of dark cliffs. There was no gap in the white line, nothing to indicate a safe place to moor short of Totem Inlet itself.

Janna squeezed the bulb leading from the gasoline reservoir to the motor. Liquid spurted invisibly. She could feel its resistance in the bulb beneath her palm. She wasn’t out of gas. Whatever was causing the outboard to fail wasn’t a lack of fuel. Grimly she yanked on the starting cord, putting everything she had into it.

Nothing happened.

The boat slewed sideways as a wave hit. Janna barely managed to stay aboard. Without the motor’s power, the boat was at the mercy of the wind and tide. Now she was sideways to the incoming waves and being shoved toward shore at a frighteningly swift pace. She pulled hard on the cord twice more, but nothing greeted her efforts, not even the familiar coughing snarl as the motor tried and failed to keep running.

Suddenly Janna knew that it was futile to waste her energy any longer. There was no more time for her to spend pulling on the starting cord of a dead motor. She scrambled off the rowboat’s stern seat and threw herself onto the middle seat. Working as quickly as her cold hands would allow, she unshipped the oars, jammed the pegs down into the oarlocks and began to row with all her strength. As she pulled on the oars, she brought the bow back around to meet the wind and waves. Immediately the boat began taking on less water.

Janna braced herself and put her back into her work, pulling in long, steady sweeps as her brothers had taught her years ago on a small lake in Washington. She watched the shoreline that lay diagonally off her stern, trying to gauge her progress by landmarks that were slowly condensing out of the cloud-wrapped dawn.

When the landmarks appeared not to move, Janna thought she was simply overanxious. She picked another landmark, counted fifty strokes and checked again. She was moving relative to the land, but just barely. The wind and the tide were simply too powerful for her to overcome; and every few seconds more water splashed into the boat, adding more weight to the already unwieldy craft. At this rate she wouldn’t make Totem Inlet before her strength gave out and she was pushed onto the rocks or the rowboat was swamped in one of the larger sets of waves that humped up periodically out of the west.

For a few minutes Janna picked up the pace of the rowing, putting more space between herself and the dark cliffs that lined the edge of the sea. Always before now she had thought of herself as being reasonably strong and physically competent, the legacy both of a healthy body and the goading of three muscular brothers who had teased her mercilessly when she was too weak or too slow or too timid to play their rough-and-tumble games. She had learned to smile and joke as though she didn’t hurt; and she had learned to work harder and longer so that the next time she played she would be better. As a result, she had gained a reputation as a good sport with a great sense of humor.

Water sloshed ankle-deep through the boat. Janna permitted herself to look at the shoreline. She had made almost no progress. If anything, she was afraid she had drifted closer to the cliffs. For an instant fear burst in her, taking the strength from her arms. Then she set her teeth, headed the rowboat straight out to sea instead of on a diagonal course and rowed hard. After a hundred strokes the shoreline had receded somewhat. The inlet, however, was no closer.

Janna changed course slightly, choosing a heading that would bring her closer to the inlet. As she rowed she thought over her choices. Rowing straight out to sea would keep her off the rocks but wouldn’t get her to safety. Rowing a diagonal course would bring her closer to the inlet, but combined with the pressure of tide and wind, it would bring her closer to the shore, as well. It would be a race to see whether the tide and wind shoved her onto the rocks before she reached the relative shelter of the inlet. Frankly, she didn’t think she would make it.

And if she didn’t stop rowing to bail, she would sink before she reached either cliffs or inlet.

Janna dropped the oars, bailed frantically for a minute, then whipped off her waterproof poncho and dumped it at her feet. It the boat were capsized or swamped, she didn’t want to be weighed down by the unwieldly slicker. As she reached for the oars her long, cinnamon hair fanned out wildly in the wind for an instant, only to be plastered darkly against her skull when an unusually big wave burst over the gunwale. She picked up the oars and brought the bow into the waves once more. As she rowed she kicked out of the fisherman’s boots, knowing they would drag her down if she tried to swim in them. She left her soaking sneakers in place; she would need them if she got to the rocky shore.

„Not if,“ Janna said firmly to herself. „When. You’re a strong swimmer. Just two weeks ago you swam for about a mile without a break. It’s not even a quarter of a mile to the inlet’s mouth.“

What she didn’t say aloud was that two weeks ago when she had been swimming, it had been a rare, calm, hot day, and she had been in a very sheltered inlet, where the sea was as flat as a mirror. Right now the sea was neither sheltered nor calm. But there was no point in dwelling on reasons to be afraid. She knew that in dangerous situations, panic killed more people than anything else.

Pushing every other thought out of her mind, Janna bent to the oars once more. As she rowed, the fluorescent orange of her life vest swayed like a flame in the postdawn gloom. She was the only spot of life and color showing on either land or sea.

Raven stood on the stern of the Black Star, looking as broad shouldered and powerful as the mountains that rose steeply on either side of Totem Inlet. Beneath his feet the stern shifted and bounced slightly on the inlet’s choppy waters. He stood easily, swaying as necessary to compensate for the boat’s restless surges, oblivious to the chilly wind that tugged at the open collar of his midnight-blue flannel shirt. Eyes closed, he strained to hear the faint ripping sound that would tell him that the distant motor had finally caught and held. Nothing came to him but the shivering moan of the wind as it curled between the inlet’s rocky walls.

He stared up the inlet through powerful binoculars, his black eyes searching the water for any sign that the boat had reached safety. There was nothing ahead but the same tiny whitecaps and choppy Utile waves that slapped against the Black Star. Beyond the inlet’s mouth he could see a line of churned water. The powerful binoculars brought every detail close. Whoever was out in the descending storm would have his hands full, especially if he were in a rowboat with a dead outboard motor.

On the other hand, Raven knew that the sound of the engine could have been carried away by the capricious wind. He could be standing there imagining more problems than existed in the storm-tossed dawn. Few people other than professional fishermen came to the western side of the Charlottes. The tourists who came to the forbidding cliffs and narrow inlets either came with guides or had enough skill to sail to the islands on their own boats. They didn’t come in rowboats, either – and the sounds he had heard earlier had come from a single outboard engine.

That was why Raven wondered if he were imagining things. Few people had either the skill or the foolishness to take on the west side of the Charlottes in an open rowboat. Yet it was possible that one of the Haidas from Old Masset or Skidegate had chosen to make a personal pilgrimage to Totem Inlet. The descendant of people who had routinely raided as far south as Oregon in their dugout cedar canoes wouldn’t hesitate to put out to sea in a rowboat in order to reach Totem Inlet at the first stirrings of dawn.

A corner of Raven’s mouth curled into a faint smile. Of course it was possible that a Haida had come to the legendary inlet for personal reasons. That was what he was doing. He had come here in his season of discontent as though he could fish satisfaction from the dark veils of the past just as he had fished silver salmon from the green veils of the sea.

Yet satisfaction had eluded him.

With the ease of years of practice, Raven put his own personal needs aside and concentrated on listening to the wind’s flexible voice. From the faint, fitful sounds that had awakened him, he knew that the boat was beyond Totem Inlet’s mouth. Unless the motor had started again, the man would be forced to row against the wind and tide in order to reach safety.

Unconsciously Raven flexed his big work-hardened hands around the binoculars. If he were the man in the boat, he would be rowing right now, pulling hard on the long oars, feeling the power of his body sweeping down through the wood into the heaving sea. The boat would be cutting through the waves with deceptive ease, sliding closer to the inlet with each movement of the oars through the water.

But Raven was not the man rowing. If he had been, he would have been close enough by now to be spotted by someone standing in the inlet. There was nothing for Raven to see, however. Obviously the person out beyond the inlet lacked Raven’s strength or his understanding of the danger of letting a small boat drift too close to the unforgiving shore while he worked over a motor that was well and truly dead.

Several times Raven thought he heard faint shivers of sound that could have come from a motor. Each time he caught his breath, willing the sound to hold, to strengthen. Each time the sound vanished before he could be sure it had been his ears rather than his imagination that had heard it.

The wind flexed, paused and then blew with a new, sustained roar from a slightly different angle. Raven moved even as the wind did, listening intently, staring out across the chop with dark eyes accustomed to all the moods of the sea. Nothing moved within the binoculars’s broad sweep but waves and wind. Whoever was out there simply wasn’t getting any closer to safety.

If anyone were out there at all.

Yet even as the thought came, Raven discarded it. With a certainty that 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 to live more than he wanted her to love him. He had gone to her, dragged her brutally from her shell of despair – and had gotten his wish. Angel had gathered her courage and her strength. She had lived. In time she had even loved again.

But the man she loved was not Carlson Raven.

The sad memories flickered like distant lightning at the edge of Raven’s consciousness, memories called up by the violence of his feelings of fury and helplessness as he watched the unknown woman struggle against the storm and her own overwhelming exhaustion. He had spent a lifetime in a body so powerful that people automatically stepped back when they first saw him; yet that power couldn’t do a damn thing to help the woman now, any more than it had helped Angel long ago. It seemed to be the story of his life. Intimidating strength, a hard face, and beneath it a yearning that was as unexpected as it was enduring.

Raven’s mouth flattened making the blunt lines of his face even more pronounced. The speed of the woman’s bailing had fallen to nothing. Raven knew that soon she wouldn’t even be keeping up with the water coming in over the gunwale. Ready or not, safe or not, he had to make the turn for the inlet.

He eased the Black Star in a long, shallow curve that eventually, gently swung the row-boat in a direct line into the inlet. As soon as both boats were headed straight into the narrow opening, he turned and watched the row-boat through the binoculars. Now was the time of greatest danger, when the rowboat’s broad, low stern was presented to the waves. The woman knew it, too. He could tell by her uneven, almost convulsive motions as she drove her exhausted body to bail just a few more times, just a few more minutes, just a few more yards, just…

Cold blue-green water humped up and welled over the stern as the rowboat wallowed into Totem Inlet’s mouth. The gunwale was so low that the wave barely foamed as it rolled over the rowboat. The boat wavered, rocked wildly and turned over with shocking speed, trapping the woman beneath as it sank.

Raven threw the binoculars aside, slammed the throttles into neutral and slashed the tow-rope. An instant later he hit the water in a long dive that took him halfway to the white swirl of sea that had once been a rowboat.

Nothing floated on the surface in front of him but a single oar.