by Noah Harris
“Up to the rigging!” Captain Seawolf bellowed. “Those idiots can’t see us clearly behind the Conqueror. They probably don’t even know they almost hit us. Get the sails out before they really do.”
There was no need to organize a rigging crew. Every man who was closest to the ropes started scampering up, Thomas among them. As he climbed up to help unfurl the topsail, he marveled once again at the discipline of this crew. Bloodthirsty thieves they might have been, but they knew how to run a ship. On a normal ship, each task had to be portioned out and enforced with a strict discipline. There were no volunteers on such a ship. Here, however, the men all pitched in of their own accord.
And of their own sense of self-preservation. The next volley from the earthworks was even more off the mark. One ball hummed over the deck, making everyone fall flat to avoid decapitation. Other balls splashed all around the Manhunter. One shot passed Thomas on the rigging. The whoosh of the air startled him, and he lost his grip. Desperately, he scrambled for the rope as sky and sea spun. He felt himself toppling backwards, the rigging out of reach, his weight pulling him down towards the deck far below.
A strong hand grabbed him and hauled him back up. Azenkua.
“Thank you,” Thomas gasped.
The ex-slave gave him a broad grin. “If you’re going to die in battle, make sure it’s a worthy enemy killing you, not some idiot landlubbers who don’t know how to shoot straight.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” Thomas said as they continued up the rigging.
Another cannonade from the fort made him glance over his shoulder. Whatever the abilities of the shore battery crew, the artillerists manning the fort guns knew their business. Their first barrage had fallen short. This one fell long, but barely. Thomas saw the spray fountain up, splashing the agitated men aboard the Conqueror. The gunners in the fort had the ship bracketed. Their next shots would strike true.
Then Thomas had to mind his work. He crawled along the topsail mast to his place and, with four other men, loosed the ropes that held the sail bound up against the long pole of wood. The stretch of hemp canvas unfurled into the wind with a snap. Other men on other beams released their sails, and within moments the Manhunter was under full sail and turning into the wind.
Just in time for the next shots from the shore battery to hit.
One ball severed a rope on the foresail, making that sail flap like a loose shirt in the wind, cutting their speed. Another shattered the railing down on the deck. Thomas looked fearfully down and let out a breath of relief to see that portion of the deck was unoccupied. The other shots hit the water, too close for comfort.
Thomas gritted his teeth and hurried as fast as he dared down the rigging. Sea battles were so different than fights on land. Men with ground under their feet could leap into action, like the men from the Conqueror bursting into that tavern. But on the sea, ships had to catch the wind and move into position. Gunners had to swab, dry, load, prime, and aim heavy cannons. Everything happened in slow motion, with far too much time for the combatants to mull over their mortality.
Thomas gave nervous glances at the unfolding battle as he descended. The Conqueror had finally turned and was able to give a broadside against the Guerrero. Despite their battered ship and suffering what must have been heavy losses, the gunners of the Conqueror gave a good account of themselves. Their first broadside was right on the mark, slamming into the side of the Guerrero. Splinters flew, and amid the smoke Thomas saw the red and gray puff of a powder keg going off.
As dark smoke started to issue from the ship, the remaining Spanish gunners let off their own broadside. The cannonballs slammed into the side of their enemy’s ship and left more holes in the remains of the Conqueror.
“A damn good bit of gunnery, but they can’t have much fight left in them,” Maggie shouted as she got her gun crews in order.
Thomas wasn’t sure which ship she meant—the Guerrero with its slaughtered crew or the Conqueror that had taken so many hits.
The next instant there was a series of smoke plumes from the fort, followed by distant thunder. Cannonballs sailed over the bay.
They landed perfectly. At least five of them hit the Conqueror’s deck at a sharp angle, spraying deadly splinters like a hailstorm of darts. The distant figures toppled, sails torn to ribbons, rigging falling limp and cut, swaying in the air.
Smoke still plumed from the Guerrero, but she would not be denied her vengeance. Once, twice, three times she sent volleys at the Conqueror, the last volley punching a hole below her waterline. By this time the Manhunter and all other ships in the area had gotten well away. They watched from a safe distance as the Conqueror sank to the bottom. The Spanish put out longboats and rowed towards the bobbing heads of the defeated crew in the water.
Thin threads of gun smoke rose from the men sitting in the front of the boats, and the sound of distant musketry came to Thomas’s ears. He saw the men in the water flail. Some tried to get away. Others jerked, shot, and sank beneath the waves.
“Good for the Dagos,” Captain Seawolf shouted. “After such treachery, none of that scurvy crew deserves to live. Three cheers for the Guerrero!”
“Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!” the crew responded. Thomas found himself joining in. As much as it sickened him to see helpless, drowning men shot before his eyes, it was no worse than what the Spaniards—or Lafayette and the others—had endured.
The crews of the other ships joined in, cheering as the wreck of the Conqueror slowly sank beneath the waves. The Spanish longboats, their deadly work finished, rowed back to the Guerrero.
An hour later, a boat full of port guards came rowing up to the Manhunter. Other boats headed for the other ships. A guard in fine livery, presumably an officer, came aboard.
“There will be a meeting of the captains at the Dockside Tavern at noon. Refreshments and entertainment will be provided. Sir Bartholomew wishes to clear the air after the recent unpleasantness.”
“Sir Bartholomew? Ha! Since when did the Weasel start pretending he was a knight?” Captain Seawolf laughed. “Ah, it is of no importance. I’ll be there. How many guards are allowed?”
“Five from each ship. We wish to keep this civil.”
“It will be, at least if we get our way. We didn’t start this fight, and those that did are down in Davy Jones’ Locker where they deserve to be.”
“True enough, but there are matters that remain to be settled. Good day.”
The guard returned to his longboat, and his men rowed him back to the docks. Once he was gone, the captain turned to the assembled crew.
“All right, then. For my guards, I’ll take the four men who got back unscathed last night—Osier, Thomas, Jeff, and Matthew. I’ll also take Frenchie so he can give the report to the rest of you scallywags once we return.”
“I want to go!” Gonzalo shouted. Several of the other Spaniards nodded, hate in their eyes.
“We’re trying to avoid trouble, not start it,” the captain snapped. “Besides, we have several days’ worth of maintenance and provisioning to do on the ship before we’re ready to head off on another voyage. We don’t need to end up in the middle of another battle.”
“Permission to go ashore early, captain,” Osier asked. Since they were in a potential combat situation, everyone had turned to Captain Seawolf as the supreme authority.
“What for?”
“We had to take a boat in order to get back. We didn’t want to have a run-in with the dock guards. I’ll return it and have a bit of a scout.”
“A scout isn’t a bad idea. Do you want some men?”
“Better if I go alone, captain. I’ll raise fewer suspicions that way.”
“True enough. Go on, then, and be sure to make it to the meeting on time. No drinking.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Osier glanced at Thomas with an unreadable expression and lowered a rope ladder down to the rowboat. Within a minute, he was far away.
Thomas approached Gonzalo, who stood
in an angry little group of Spaniards muttering to one another in their own language.
“I need to learn how to shoot,” he said. Gonzalo was in charge of the arms stores and powder magazine, and had already promised to teach him how to shoot. “I managed to shoot one man from the Conqueror yesterday, but that was more luck and short range than skill.”
The Spaniard looked him in the eyes. “I’ll be glad to train you. I’ll even give you a couple more pistols. I hope you use them.”
Thomas was outfitted with a brace of pistols, and more gunpowder than he needed. Then Gonzalo made preparations to teach him how to shoot. While he had practiced loading and cleaning guns since he had gotten aboard the Manhunter, various circumstances had kept him from practicing his marksmanship.
And they stopped him once again. He and Gonzalo had just set up a target and cleared a space on deck when Roaring Randy passed by.
“No shooting,” the first mate said. “The Weasel and the other ships are mighty jumpy. Best not to rattle their nerves.”
“I wish I had a blunderbuss to give you,” Gonzalo said with a shrug as he took down the target. “The way those things spray their shot a blind man can hit a sparrow in flight.”
“Perhaps I should buy one on shore. I saw guns for sale.”
“Perhaps. Best to go with someone who knows guns. All the merchants are crooked in this port.”
Thomas and the rest of the shore crew were off duty until the meeting, so Thomas relaxed by leaning against the railing and watching a group of his shipmates tarring some worn spots on the side of the hull. As the warm sun and their cheerful shanty lulled him into relaxation, he didn’t notice the approach of Paddy, an Irishman who had more experience than most of the crew. While not an officer, he was admired for the many ships he had looted and for his toughness in battle.
Paddy leaned against the railing next to him.
“Gonzalo gave you some fine guns, some of the finest in the armory.”
“He’s a helpful man. He introduced me to a good use for olive oil at a critical moment,” Thomas said with a chuckle. “Guns are trickier to use.”
“You’ll learn. Gonzalo obviously wants you well armed for the shore party. Silly fellow. He’s seething with vengeance. Wants to avenge the Spanish dead even though they already have been avenged. Spaniards are like that, hotheaded and protective of their own kind, although they’ll backstab each other for a bent doubloon.”
“I thought we had left nations behind. I certainly have.”
Paddy gave him a smile. It came across as false.
“As have I. After all, here I am a proud Irishman chatting pleasantly with an Englishman. It wasn’t always so. I used to hate Englishmen. Fought with the rebels, I did. Burnt English manors and killed English bosses who were grinding my people into the dirt.”
“Really?”
Paddy fixed him with a sharp eye. “Really. I won’t forget one time. We attacked the house of an English merchant in my town. I won’t tell you which town. They’d been mixing flour with chalk and fiddling with the weights on their scales. Cheated good Irish parents who only wanted to feed their children. The bastard also sacked his farmworkers right after harvest and denied them their last month’s pay. The workers tried to take them to court but with an English magistrate, how do you think that went? Something had to be done, so we bloody well did it.
“One night we crept up to the bugger’s house. There were twelve of us. The new men kept watch while the more experienced moved in. We had a good lockpick in our crew who opened the door easily enough, but that woke the dog. Barked his head off, he did, until we took his head off. The family didn’t have time to do anything but leap out of bed and scream. I killed the merchant with this knife right here. See how keen the blade is? Cut his neck from ear to ear and left him choking on his own blood on the floor. It was a good cut, it was. Pity no one got to see it. The other lads were too busy. The merchant had a buxom wife and three pretty daughters. No interest to me, of course, but the lads had a good night. Can’t say the ladies did, but they didn’t live to see dawn so they never had to carry the shame. I made sure I didn’t slit the Englishman’s throat until he heard what was going on with his womenfolk.”
Thomas felt a cold pit of fear in his gut. Why was this fellow telling him this? Paddy gave Thomas another of his flat smiles and went on.
“Oh, I hated the English, I did. I’d hamstring and blind and castrate any Englishman who crossed my path. I was good at my work, too. I must have killed dozens of Englishmen. Maybe a hundred. Who knows? I didn’t count because they weren’t worth counting. The only number that mattered was that they numbered one less. But don’t worry, Englishman, I’m not like that now. I’ve put nations behind me, like you said.”
Paddy tweaked his cheek.
“Glad to hear it,” Thomas said, pulling away.
“Take care on the shore party,” Paddy said, treating him to a level gaze. “Stick close to Osier. He makes a good friend, and an even worse enemy, than I do.”
The shore party left shortly thereafter. All were loaded down with weapons. Captain Seawolf and Frenchie knew how to fight and were two of the best fighters on the crew, and Jeff and Matthew had given a good account of themselves the previous night. Thomas hoped things would remain civil, as the Weasel’s officer had promised. But that wasn’t what worried Thomas. He was more worried about Paddy’s thinly-veiled threat.
“I’ve never heard of this happening at Cutlass Cove. No wonder the Weasel wants to have a meeting of all the ship’s captains,” Frenchie said, pulling on his oar.
“But isn’t the issue resolved? The Conqueror is at the bottom of the bay, after all,” Thomas said.
“Yes, that’s been taken care of,” Captain Seawolf said, his eye fixed on the approaching shore and his hands gripping a musket. “There’s more to it than that, I’m afraid. The Weasel likes to think of himself as a sort of leader of our kind. Wants to get us more organized and create a sort of pirate kingdom.”
“With him as king, of course,” Thomas ventured.
Captain Seawolf grinned without taking his eyes of the shore. “Of course.”
“Where would people like us be in this new kingdom?” Thomas asked.
Frenchie chuckled. “I suppose he’d let us live the way we want to as long as we paid taxes.”
“Taxes! In a pirate kingdom?”
“Wouldn’t be a kingdom without taxes,” Captain Seawolf said. “Which is why none of the captains support him in this idea. He’s put it forth before, and they didn’t bite.”
“No, I suppose not,” Thomas murmured.
The idea was an interesting one, though. What were kingdoms, after all, except a group of people with something in common surrounded by potential enemies? The pirates could do worse than make a kingdom for themselves. As it stood now, each pirate ship was on its own, hunted by the navies of the world or even, in the case of the Guerrero, by rival pirates. If the pirate ships banded together, with their expertise, they could defy everyone. At least for a time.
Thomas considered for another moment. No, the naysayers were right. As appealing as the idea sounded, even if you could get all the crews to agree and obey some sort of law, the colonial powers would see the threat and band together to crush them.
At the dock, two other launches from other ships had come in at the same time, and everyone got jumpy, even Weasel’s harbor guards. All the pirates edged off their boats, guns in their hands and only making a show of not pointing them at each other while ready at a moment’s notice. The sea battle had gotten their suspicions up, and Thomas realized they must have been wondering what had happened and who else was involved.
From the whisperings of the other crews, Thomas heard that the Conqueror had gone down with all hands. While the surviving Spaniards on the Guerrero presumably knew what the conflict was all about, Thomas suspected that he and Osier were the only other people in Cutlass Cove who knew that the fight had been over a treasure map, and that
the map was still “missing.”
Thomas wondered if Osier had told anyone, Paddy perhaps, and decided that he had not. The werebear had probably told Paddy and a few others of his inner circle to keep an eye on the Manhunter’s newest crewmember without saying why. He was the sort who could muscle a band of cutthroats into obedience. Thomas would have to take care. So long as he acted loyal, Osier would probably have no problem letting him be one of his followers. But if he crossed the werebear, his life would be very short.
Captain Seawolf led them off the pier and started hustling them into town and away from trouble when there was a shout and a scuffle behind them. They turned, guns at the ready, to see that the Spanish from the Guerrero had arrived in force. Instead of their captain and five bodyguards as everyone had been told to bring, they had shown up with three boats filled with at least twenty-five men.
The pier guards tried to stop them from going ashore, but they were outnumbered and were shoved aside. Thomas saw one of the dockworkers sprint off into town, no doubt to warn the Weasel that trouble was on its way.
“Let’s get to the tavern and out of the middle of this mess,” Captain Seawolf said.
True to its name, the Dockside Tavern stood on a little rise overlooking the docks. It was a long, narrow building with windows facing the docks and the sea. As Captain Seawolf’s group approached, Matthew told Thomas it was a raucous, cheap place that appealed to the poorer among the pirates. The Weasel had probably chosen it because it away from the businesses in town, so if a fight broke out, it would not hurt any valuable property.
The Dockside Tavern itself certainly wasn’t valuable property. The weather-beaten plaster was flaking off in large chunks, revealing rotted wood beneath. They passed a cordon of town guards going into the tavern, which was filled with rickety chairs and worn tables, their surfaces scoured with drawings and initials cut by drunken sailors. The old straw covering the floor did little to absorb the spilt rum and vomit. Even with the windows wide open, the place had a stale stink clinging to it.
“Ah, a fine bit of hospitality to match Weasel Bartholomew’s character!” Captain Seawolf said with a chuckle.