Wake of the Bloody Angel el-4

by Alex Bledsoe

  They all nodded excitedly. Again, like eager children.

  “I’m going to split you into two squads. One of them will concentrate on defending this ship; the other will board theirs. I’ll be leading that one. The ones staying behind, you’ll answer to Captain Clift.” I hadn’t cleared this with him first, but he nodded agreement. “The danger is that the other ship might break away from us. If they do, the men with me will be trapped in the enemy’s lap.”

  “Not for long,” Clift said. “She can’t outrun us.”

  I’d seen nothing to indicate the Red Cow had that sort of speed, but it seemed the wrong time to make an issue of it. I continued, “It may mean being taken prisoner, at least for a while. It may, of course, mean dying. So I want real volunteers, not people picked out by the first mate.” I glanced at Seaton. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” he said. “And I’ll be the first to sign up.”

  “Me, too,” said Duncan Tew.

  In short order I had my team, twenty men ready to join me in boarding the other ship. I stressed two things: Watch your fellow soldiers’ backs, and take the captain alive.

  I went to see Jane. Her leg was noticeably better, and she was bright-eyed and rested. “Hey, boss,” she said when I came in. I put a sword beside her. “What’s this?”

  “Not as big as you’re used to,” I said, “but big enough. We’ve spotted another ship closing in.”

  She tried to stand. “I’m not waiting in here-”

  “Yes, you are. I’m leading the boarding party, and Clift’s commanding the troops here. He claims this heap can outrun anything, so if they get away, you’ll have to make sure he chases us down.”

  “He will. But I can still fight. Just give me a crutch and-”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “You can’t even put your pants on, Jane. Just stay in here until the fight’s over.”

  She glared at me. “Could you?”

  “I could if you told me to.”

  She started to snap back, but I added, “I’ll get the carpenter to knock together a crutch for you. But it’s only for emergencies. And I won’t be here to watch your back.”

  She grabbed the collar of her tunic with both hands and ripped it open almost to her navel. “And they’ll be too busy staring at my front. Go do your job, LaCrosse. I’ll be fine.”

  Now the waiting had a purpose, so the men were silent and still. Clift and I risked peering through the porthole to watch the ship as it neared.

  “Look,” Clift said. “The banner.”

  It was black, tapered, and trailed like one of the monster’s tentacles. Stitched in white was an image I’d seen before, on the letter Angelina had kept all these years: an angel holding a sword over a skull. And then, beneath it, the double X.

  “And the name,” Clift added.

  Painted on the bow in large black letters were the words BLOODY ANGEL.

  A thrill I’d never expected to feel again went through me. I was about to lead men into battle, and damn it, at some level, I loved it.

  “Ready, lads,” the captain said as loud as he dared. “We’ve hired the band, now it’s time to name the tune.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The Bloody Angel ’s crew scurried into their sails like monkeys, gathering the canvas and slowing the big vessel as it neared. They were slower than the Cow ’s crew, but then again, they were self-employed. She was a third larger than the Cow, and consequently her crew outnumbered us. I wasn’t worried about that nearly so much as I was about having no real place to retreat. If my trap failed and they bottled us up on the Cow, all they had to do was set fire to us and watch us burn.

  The ballista gunners stood ready at their weapons, the grapples pointed up as much as the ports allowed. They would arc over the Bloody Angel ’s rail, fall to the deck, and then we’d yank them back until the hooks caught. Then we’d reel them in. If we were lucky, it would rock the Angel ’s deck and confuse them even more.

  “Swing across!” someone called, and a moment later there were multiple thumps on our deck. I counted at least half a dozen; I’d hoped for more. That left an awful lot of them still on the Angel.

  The boarding party walked around, inspecting the ship. If we’d inadvertently left anything on deck to betray our presence, we were screwed. Then a voice yelled back to the Angel, “Looks like a merchant ship. Lots of crates on deck. Tie us up.”

  “Not so fast. What’s the cargo?”

  I caught Clift’s eye. Someone on the other ship was already suspicious.

  “Fuck if I know,” came the annoyed reply. “Think I can see through solid wood?”

  “Open a crate and check it,” the first voice said.

  “You open it, I’m going to check the hold.” To someone else in the boarding party, he said, “I hate these fucking empty ships. I keep expecting a ghost to jump out at us.”

  “Yeah, and this one wasn’t moored to our trap,” his compatriot said. “That’s why the captain doesn’t want to tie on to it.”

  “No shit. You figure that out yourself? I’ll tell you what’s happening: After all this time, the captain’s paranoid. It just broke loose and drifted away, any idiot can see that. If anyone had been alive on board, they’d have been yelling to get our attention, thinking we might rescue them.” He laughed. “Dumbass floating salesmen. Probably a hold full of damn women’s shoes. Come on, let’s get what we came for and send this heap on its way.”

  We moved back into the shadows so that the light from the hatch wouldn’t reveal us. I crept to the top of the ladder beneath the new exit and made ready to throw it open.

  Just below me a sword hit the deck, jostled from someone’s hand. The noise sounded like crashing cymbals. We all froze, waiting to see if there would be cries of warning, but apparently no one on deck heard. “Steady,” Clift whispered.

  “Wait a second!” a new voice said. “Here, look at this. These are ballista sockets.”

  Damn. It hadn’t occurred to me to cover the holes where the weapons were mounted. I saw by Clift’s expression that he was mentally kicking himself, too.

  “It’s another damn pirate hunter,” the first man said. “Son of a bitch, disguised as a damn merchant ship.”

  “Don’t be a moron, you headless eel,” a woman’s voice said. “Somebody too cheap to build their own ship just bought an old pirate hunter. Either way, it’s empty now.”

  “She’s right,” a third voice said. “Let’s find the-”

  The noise of the main hatch cover being lifted drowned out the final words. A pair of boots appeared on the top step. The first one down was the woman, short and round and with one of those arrogant, vicious little faces you saw on a lot of criminal types. She had gray hair cut mannishly. Behind her were a half-dozen big, filthy men, also older than I expected. They all wore rags, except for the odd bit of newish gear they’d likely looted from ships like this. These were real pirates, the kind I remembered from my mercenary days, and as if to confirm it, the first wave of their stench reached me.

  But one thing I hadn’t expected: They were so confident in their monster’s thoroughness that none of them had drawn their weapons.

  The mean round woman reached the bottom of the steps. Tense sweat stung my eyes. A dozen men stood within arm’s reach, but she couldn’t see them, because her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted.

  “Fire,” I said softly.

  The ballistae thunk ed as their pronged bolts shot into the air.

  I took a deep breath and bellowed, in a voice I thought I’d never again use, “Stab at their balls, men!” Then I shoved open the new hatch and led the charge up onto the deck.

  Like the old days, I absorbed the scene in a glance. Dozens of men lined the Bloody Angel ’s rail, but surprisingly few of them were armed. On the Cow, four men waiting to descend into the hold stared at us, frozen in surprise. The biggest surprise was that they were all old, with gray hair, white beards, and missing body parts replaced with wood or metal implements. That
didn’t make them any less dangerous; veterans were twice as vicious as even the most enthusiastic new recruit, because they had the skills to survive.

  Then both ships rocked as the lines fired from below caught and our men pulled the hulls together. They hit with a solid thud that knocked down most of the Angel ’s unprepared crew, as well as several of ours.

  “To the other ship!” I shouted, stepped onto the Cow’s rail, and leaped the short distance to the Bloody Angel ’s deck.

  There was no time to pick and choose targets, and I cut down unarmed men as well as those with weapons. Many died still struggling back to their feet. I fought off two men and a woman who had sense enough to attack together. They were good, but they didn’t realize what they were up against, and I quickly overcame their sloppy technique. In moments, all three lay dead at my feet. My tunic was sticky with their sprayed blood. The woman had time to spit at me before she closed her eyes.

  I glimpsed Duncan Tew battling a taller, older opponent. He wasn’t making much headway, but he had his defensive moves down pat, and his opponent was getting pissed off. If Duncan could keep his temper while the other man lost his, he’d soon get an opening. Nearby, Seaton moved with the slow, methodical strokes of a veteran, blocking and thrusting as if it were part of his daily routine. He left a row of dead men on either side of his path.

  By now Clift’s men had emerged from the hatch and overcome the boarding party. About half the Angel ’s crew swarmed onto the Cow, not quite noticing that their ship was simultaneously being boarded behind them. I took advantage of this confusion to rush the Angel ’s wheel and cut down the helmsman struggling to turn his ship away from the Cow. I spun the wheel the opposite direction, and the two ships again slammed together. I heard screams and splashes as the impact knocked men overboard.

  My foot slipped in the helmsman’s blood. When I regained my balance and turned, a new man stood before me. He had the unmistakable air of command about him, wearing as he did a tricornered hat, red velvet coat, and boots either recently bought or stolen. He also looked nothing at all like Duncan Tew. I said, “Wendell Marteen, I presume.”

  He looked at me closely to see if he knew me. “That’s Captain Marteen to you, you pox-faced parrot. You think you’re clever, don’t you?”

  “Since you fell for it, I’d say I have the right to.” Marteen’s eyes bulged with anger, and he swung his wide- bladed sword at me with both hands. I dodged and hit his blade with mine as it went past, making him spin and fall. His hat went flying. The big sword clattered to the deck, slid across the wood, and tumbled out between two rail posts. I jumped to put the tip of my sword at Marteen’s throat, but he scrambled away and cried, “Men! Assistance!”

  Four of his crew jumped-well, shuffled with alacrity-to his defense. I got one through the belly, but the second one seriously cut my right shoulder and the third barely missed decapitating me. The pain from the cut was monumental, and I shifted my sword to my left hand. The remaining two grinned and charged me. Overconfident old bastards.

  I dropped and rolled at their feet. They fell over me, and one continued tumbling over the rail and into the water. The third hit hard, and his eyes cleared for just an instant before I stabbed him through the neck.

  I looked around for Marteen. The decks of both ships were a chaotic mass of flashing swords and swaths of red blood, and bodies dotted the water around us. I spotted him near the Angel ’s mainmast, and hacked my way toward him. When he saw I wasn’t dead, he looked confused, then scared. I knew I had him.

  I was so confident, in fact, that I failed to notice the knot of men surging toward me as they fought one another. They caught me up in their struggle and, before I could react, pushed me over the Angel ’s rail and into the space between the hulls of the two ships.

  I released my sword and grabbed one of the two grapple lines that held the ships together. The heavy, rough rope burned my palms. If the vessels slammed together again, I’d be squashed like a bug.

  I held on with every bit of strength I had. My cut shoulder expressed its dis pleasure with pain like hot knitting needles jammed down my arm. Beneath me, in the churning water between the ships, bobbed the dead and dying from both crews. Distinctive triangular fins slid among them, turning the foam pink. That motivated me, and I climbed hand over hand up toward the Bloody Angel ’s deck.

  And then somebody cut the rope.

  The instant of free fall made my heart try to leap out of my throat and into the sea. Somehow I held on, even when I smashed into the Cow ’s hull and my boots dangled in the water. A huge shark’s mouth opened beneath me, and I yanked up my feet just in time. Above me, men continued to fight, oblivious to my dilemma. There was no point in shouting for help. I tried to climb to the Cow ’s porthole, but my arms and injured shoulder had no juice left. It took all my strength to avoid losing my toes to the eager jaws below.

  The other ropes had been cut as well, and the two ships moved slowly apart. Men jumped the gap until the last possible moment, and a few even after that. One of the Angel ’s crew smacked into the Cow ’s hull, bounced off, and landed in the water. He grabbed the trailing end of my rope and held on until one of his overboard shipmates clutched at his legs and pulled him free. A half-dozen fins converged on them, and their high-pitched screams filled the air.

  As the Bloody Angel pulled away, I saw Duncan Tew at her rail, looking helplessly at the Red Cow. Behind him, smiling with perverse satisfaction, stood Wendell Marteen. The Angel ’s sails unfurled, caught the wind, and drove the vessel quickly away.

  A ladder slapped the hull beside me. I switched my grip to it, but had no strength to climb. Eventually someone noticed and began to pull me up.

  My strength was exhausted, but not my fury. I hoped Clift was right about the Cow ’s speed, because I was not about to rest until I shoved that smug grin down Marteen’s throat.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  I crawled over the rail and fell limp to the deck. No one offered to help me up. I heard shouted orders and acknowledgments, and felt the thudding of urgent feet through the deck’s wood. Finally Greaves knelt beside me and said, “Do you need the doctor?”

  “No,” I croaked, and pushed myself up with my good arm.

  Greaves helped me to my feet. “Are we going after them?” “Aye, sir. The captain is-”

  I shrugged off Greaves’s concern and rushed astern, dodging the sailors hurrying to their tasks. The fake fallen sail had been cut away, and the false crates dumped overboard. Clift stood at the wheel, but instead of watching the departing ship, his eyes were on Estella at the foremast crosstrees. Greaves strode about, directing the lowering and trimming of sails, all of which filled with wind. Yet the Bloody Angel was leaving us behind despite our having every bit of canvas deployed.

  “Still under full sail!” Estella called down. “Ten knots, maybe twelve!”

  “Steady as she goes,” Clift ordered, and Greaves repeated it. The captain looked at me grimly and said, “That didn’t go as planned, did it?”

  “Sometimes it doesn’t,” I agreed. The Bloody Angel ’s wake sparkled in the sun.

  “We’ve got seventeen of their men dead or captured below, and by best count, twelve of ours remain on the Bloody Angel.” He nodded at my shoulder. “And you’re hurt.”

  “It’s a scratch.” I clenched my fists helplessly. “And correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t they getting away?”

  He smiled. “You had your shot, Mr. LaCrosse. Now just sit back and enjoy mine.”

  I wanted to punch that smirk from his tanned face, but I reminded myself I wasn’t really angry at him. And besides, he was right. My plan hadn’t worked; hopefully, his would.

  Like the Bloody Angel, the Red Cow was soon running under all its canvas, but the other ship rapidly pulled ahead. No one seemed concerned with this, least of all Clift, who serenely steered his ship and frequently checked with Estella above us. The Cow seemed to be straining against something, and even with my limited nautical
knowledge, I realized she ought to be going faster.

  “How fast are we going?” I asked Greaves.

  “About four knots,” he said with no concern.

  I said to Clift, “Is something wrong? Shouldn’t we-?”

  He nodded brusquely toward the rear of the ship. I looked over the rail and was astounded: the barrels I’d previously seen tied to the stern now dragged behind us, slowing us to a crawl no matter how many sails we deployed. Each barrel was connected by a rope to a central metal ring, which a single thick cable bound to the ship. I started to demand an explanation; then my weary brain comprehended it. It was a hell of a plan if the Angel fell for it.

  Greaves asked quietly, “Did you happen to see the situation surrounding Mr. Seaton on the other ship before you disembarked?”

  “He was holding his own. I got the feeling he’s done this before.”

  “Oh, aye, he was once a madman with a cutlass. But he hasn’t fought in a boarding action in years.”

  “Really?” I said in surprise. “Why did he volunteer, then?”

  He shrugged. “No way of knowing. He’s a mystery, Mr. Seaton is.”

  Before I could pursue this, Jane thunked her way across the deck on her new crutch. One leg of her trousers was cut away to reveal her ban daged thigh. The effort showed in her face, but when she reached me, she acted as if nothing were unusual. “I take it they didn’t roll over and play dead.”

  “No. Most of the boarding party is still on the other ship.”

  “Was it Marteen?”

  “Yeah. And a crew of white-haired old water dogs.”