“Put some more water on that decking there,” Lye instructed. “Keep ’er drenched or we’re done, forget the pirates.” One of the mittened men picked up a large pail and sloshed the deck and the wooden blocks under the oven’s feet. Steam hissed and beads danced where water hit hot iron. Where it didn’t, it ran quickly toward the starboard rail, the direction in which the ship was now heeled.
“He’s got the weather gauge, Damrick,” Captain Didrick said. “He’ll take us from port astern. And in this wind, it won’t take him long.”
“Hard to port, then,” Damrick answered. “Let’s engage.”
Didrick saw cold fire in his son’s eyes. “He may ram us.”
“He won’t.”
Captain Didrick shouted out the orders. The helmsman spun his wheel, and sailors loosed the sheets, swiveling the great sails, adjusting the angle to take advantage of the stiff wind under a new heading. The captain of the Tranquility saw, turned his ship likewise to port to maintain the upwind advantage.
“Range?” Damrick called out.
“Four hundred yards and closin’ fast!” came the call from the crow’s nest.
Damrick watched in silence, standing beside his father on the quarterdeck.
A cannon shot flashed from Tranquility, fire and smoke visible first, then the whistle and splash of the projectile not ten yards forward of the prow, and then finally the boom from across the waters.
“Hold steady, men!” Hale Starpus called out. “You know your orders!” He walked amidships, inspecting his men.
“Strike the sails,” Damrick instructed his father.
“They’ll think we want parley.”
“They can think what they want. We’re going to burn them to the waterline. Strike the sails, Captain.”
Didrick took a deep breath, watching his son. There was anger in him. But he turned away and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Heave to! Strike the main, the fore, the mizzen!”
Hale Starpus ambled up, his short legs and long torso making his gait seem more waddle than walk. “Time to move the starboard cannon, don’t ye think, sir?”
“Do it, Lieutenant.”
“Gatemen! Starboard cannon to port!” Hale bellowed.
The three men at the starboard cannon were ready for the order. They had already loosened the bolts that held it to the iron deck plate as they watched the enemy approach. Within minutes, they had it bolted to an additional plate on the port side, installed for just this purpose.
“Let’s line the rails,” Damrick said to Hale.
“All muskets, port rail!” Sixteen more men joined the ten stationed there. The entire fighting force and both cannon were now positioned to oppose Tranquility.
A sound like distant thunder came from the pirate vessel. Had the ship been at a greater distance, they might have taken it for cannon fire. But no cannonballs flew.
“They’re what, cheering?” Lye Mogene asked, joining Damrick from his position at the stove.
“No. Them are drums,” Hale answered.
And shortly after, music drifted across the closing distance, not just drums but a pipe and an accordion as well.
“They’re celebrating already?” Captain Didrick asked, amazed. “They must think we’ve surrendered.”
“No,” Damrick assured him. “Our flag is red, not white. And theirs is black.”
“Skeel Barris likes a bit a’ music with his savagery,” Hale informed them. “He’d rather kill than dance, what they say. But to him, there ain’t much difference ’tween the two.”
“Can hardly wait to meet him,” Captain Didrick said.
“With a little luck and a little marksmanship, we won’t have to,” Hale assured them all.
Didrick fingered the cross around his neck.
Damrick saw. The cold fire in his eyes now blazed hot. “Let’s burn them down. Range?” he called.
“Three-hundred-fifty yards!”
The music could be heard clearly now, carried on the wind. It was a lively jig, a merry tune all out of place here. Damrick looked around at his own men. They all watched him, waiting. “Load up, sir?” Lye asked. Sweat dripped from under his cap.
“Not yet. But get ready.”
Lye moved back to his position by the stove.
“Two-hundred-fifty yards!” came the call from above.
Damrick said nothing. All the Gatemen watched him, waiting.
“Steady!” Lieutenant Starpus called out sharply. But he, too, kept his eyes on Damrick.
“Two-hundred-and-twenty yards!” came the call from above.
“All right, Mr. Starpus,” Damrick said softly. “Let’s open the gates of hell.”
“Hot loads!” Hale sang out.
Suddenly the decks were a beehive. The two men at the stove removed their pokers from the glowing oven, now revealed to be not pokers at all but something like long-handled ladles. They weren’t iron, but steel, forged and tempered, and the bucket at the end glowed red. The Gatemen gathered in a rough semicircle around the small forge. The men in the mitts reached into the hot baskets and pulled out iron musket balls, glowing red, a fistful at a time. Then they dropped a hot ball into each of the upturned muskets. In minutes, with only a couple of mishaps requiring that a loose musket ball be kicked under a rail where it could hiss into the sea, the men had loaded and tamped down the shot.
Across the water on the approaching ship, sailors watched, happily guessing what the opposing crew was doing. They saw smoke from the oven, assumed it was no more than a hot lunch. They saw the armed men with the leather lashes and red feathers. They knew what that uniform meant, but they saw only two cannon. The ship’s sails were reefed, she had slowed and then right herself. As they flew up from port astern, they saw a gathering amidships. None of this seemed particularly ominous.
Captain Skeel Barris himself, a grinning and pockmarked face atop a long and loose-limbed body, paused in his clapping and dancing. “Look, a prayer meetin’!” he said pointing, to general laughter. He folded his hands and put them under his chin. “Dear Lord, please let our leather garters and red feathers save us from the bad cannon of these ruthless scalawags!” His men roared their approval.
As the pirates made merry, the Gatemen aboard the Calliope returned to the rail and raised their rifles.
“Range?” Hale shouted.
“Two-hundred yards!” came the answer.
“Aim true, lads! For yer lives, yer wives, yer king, and yer country!” he cried.
“Looks like they gonna take us down with pop sticks,” the big captain said with glee. “Go ahead and put some more cannon fire down on ’em, but be careful. The Calliope’s full o’ good ale, and I’m thirsty!” His men had their main cannon primed and ready, but with little ability to aim they could only wait for their ship to come broadside. That turn to port was underway. The fore swivel gun, meanwhile, boomed again, launching its smaller round shot from amid a belch of fire and smoke.
This time the Calliope was struck square, the projectile smacking into the ship’s topside hull near the midline. But the hole it created was not close enough to the water to be an immediate threat.
Hale eyed Damrick, his teeth clenched in impatience. “Them loads ain’t gettin’ hotter,” he said. Then he added, “sir.”
“Let’s do it, Mr. Starpus,” Damrick said with a nod.
“Cannon, fire!” Hale shouted.
Both cannon aboard the Calliope barked now in sharp, crisp booms. Two holes opened in the approaching ship’s starboard hull. Though they struck at a glancing angle, these were long-range guns fired at close range, and both shots penetrated amidships.
As soon as he saw the results, Hale shouted, “Muskets now, hot fire!” Thirty long rifles erupted in a tight patter, sending tracers across the water. Gray smoke billowed around them, acrid in their nostrils, their eyes, and then it quickly blew away behind. Hale shouldered his own musket, letting it drift down onto the target, holding steady until it locked on. He, too, fired.
/> “Hot shots and bad aim,” Skeel Barris said with contempt from the rail of Tranquility. “That’s what they’re bringin’, is it?” Not one man aboard his ship had been hit. All the musket balls had hit the hull or nothing at all. “Raise your sights a bit, gents!” he called out to his enemies. His own men laughed. “All right, fire in return, boys!” he ordered. “Show ’em how it’s done.” And the pirates did.
Rifles and pistols cracked around him, putting smoke into the air. With the wind at his back, the cloud drifted toward the Calliope, obscuring his vision of his enemy. The captain took the opportunity to lean over the rail to see where in fact the hot iron had hit him. A bucket or two of water would douse any fire started by a musket ball. It had seemed as though the Gatemen’s rounds had been aimed for a particular spot on the hull, but he couldn’t imagine what.
Skeel could see where the cannon shot had penetrated his ship, two clean holes well above the waterline. No danger there. There were a few smaller, smoldering holes around it from embedded musket balls. But not many. Not nearly as many as had been fired. He squinted down at his hull for a moment longer, working it out. Then he stood up straight.
Suddenly, Captain Barris was no longer laughing. “Fire! Fire!” he sang out. His cannon boomed and gray smoke billowed. Skeel shook his head in obvious frustration. “No,” he corrected. “Water! Water!”
After the volley, when they could hear him again, Skeel’s men grinned at their captain as he jumped up and down, running and shouting something about both fire and water. They didn’t get the joke but were sure he must be making one. After all, the sorry marksmen aboard the Calliope hadn’t managed to hit a single sailor on the Tranquility. Their cannoneers weren’t close to a sinking shot, either, putting their rounds high up into the hull. And the Gatemen had retreated from the rails immediately, back toward the center of the deck, gathering around that little cookstove.
Aboard the Calliope, the dual cannon fired again. The crew had survived the return fire from Tranquility, mostly intact, their retreat to the stove for second helpings of hot iron keeping most of them from harm’s way. The freighter had weathered the storm of Tranquility’s cannon fire, too, with chunks of hull and deck and masts flying, but light casualties. Now back at the rails, they fired again. All had been instructed where to aim and why, and all were following orders. Many of these were marksmen trained at sea as Damrick, Lye, and Hale had been, and so a good percentage of the musket balls found their way through the holes created by the cannon shells, and were now burning were they struck, deep inside Tranquility’s belly.
“We’re afire, ye dimwitted swabs!” Skeel finally managed to say, with a full complement of pirates paying attention. “They’ve shot our hold full of fire!”
No one moved for a moment, and then, together, they realized the implications. The hold, of course, was where the gunpowder was stored.
“Fire in the hold!” the bosun sang out. “Fire in the hold!” Tranquility erupted into chaos, as men rushed to find and fill buckets, and get them below decks.
“Fresh out, boys,” Lye told the gunmen who came back for thirds. “It’s back to cold lead.” Relieved, the sweating smithies cast off their big mittens and picked up their rifles. The Calliope’s regular sailors, having struck their canvas and tied off their sheets, also picked up rifles and pistols and joined the Gatemen. Lye Mogene gladly took his own musket to the rail with the rest of the crew, and stood beside Damrick Fellows. Every soul aboard now aimed at any pirate in sight, and together they poured out a merciless barrage of small arms fire that very quickly added a distinct crimson hue to the chaos.
Tranquility was disorder in motion as she drifted past, unhelmed. Men who went below found the hold ablaze. Most of them hadn’t brought any water. Smoke and confusion and an excess of personnel kept even those with buckets in hand from any organized effort to douse the flames. Men who stayed up top were starting to choke on smoke as well as it poured up from below. Red-hot rounds that had not been aimed true burned where they struck. The high winds fanned the flames, spreading them rapidly. Those who tried to put them out were easy targets for the marksmen aboard the Calliope. As would-be firemen fell, the only men left alive on deck were those firing from protected positions, and unable to attend to the fire as it threatened to engulf them.
“Don’t they ever reload?” Skeel Barris asked his accordion player. The Captain was seated behind the gunwale, his back to the fray, reloading his own pistol. The musician to whom he spoke lay sprawled on the deck, his head propped up by a bulkhead wall, his forehead shot through by a stray musket ball. It had been a hot iron ball, too, and so it had left a bloodless, cauterized gray tunnel as it passed through the man’s brain.
“I can see what you’re thinkin’,” Barris said to the unlucky minstrel. Then he chuckled at his own joke. “You’re thinkin’ Conch’ll have my hide. But Conch’ll get the last laugh.”
Now an explosion from below rocked the Tranquility.
“Then again, he may not be pleased,” he said, less sanguine. “Me losin’ a good ship to a bunch a’ dandies like these.” But he cheered up almost immediately. “Gimme that dance box, will ye?” Skeel pried the accordion from the lifeless hand of its proprietor and began squeezing out a tune. “I know ye can’t sing no more,” he told the man, “but if the wind kicks up just a tad, ye might find ye can whistle.” He laughed again, and kept playing. “No? Well, keep an open mind about it.” Then he laughed some more.
Another explosion followed, and he raised his head. Then in quick succession three more, the last one ripping through the decking not twenty feet from him, an enormous fiery fist punching upward into the air. He could hear men screaming below. Skeel dropped the accordion. He looked down at his own chest to find what he figured to be an eight-inch wooden splinter sticking out about three inches, just below the center line. “ ’Bout time I danced wi’ the devil,” he said. “Hope he can take a joke.” He slumped over.
And then, with an enormous roar and a sudden bonfire of flame, the ship came apart from the middle, strewing deck and timbers, mast and sail, pirate captain and crew across the seas.
Cheering erupted aboard the Calliope.
“Keep firing!” Damrick’s order was terse and uncomplicated.
Many looked at their commander. “Ye heard ’im!” Hale Starpus bellowed. “Fire on!” The men went back to work.
Only a few seemed to have a problem with the order, and Lye Mogene was one of them. He lowered his musket, checked the flint absently. He watched as the others searched for targets. Live, conscious pirates were rare now, but the men fired on anything that looked like it might have once been alive.
“We takin’ no prisoners, then?” Lye asked. “Is that how we’re runnin’ this outfit?”
Damrick did not look away from the onslaught. He aimed, paused, fired. “That’s how I’m running it. You have your orders.”
“Then Lord have mercy,” Lye said, aiming an unloaded weapon. “ ’Cause it appears Mr. Damrick Fellows won’t.” He clicked the trigger.
Delaney’s fingers strained at the knot in his shirt, the one he’d used to scratch his back. He marveled now, as he had many times before, at how easy a knot was to tie and how hard it was to untie again. By the time he finally got it undone his fingertips felt like hot stubs. He put the shirt back on. It was still damp from his swim of…how long ago? An hour? More? But nothing ever really dried in this jungle. He watched the Chompers circle. They seemed playful with one another now. Just regular little fish in a pond, even if they were flat in the wrong way. They didn’t look like killers at all.
But they were.
Delaney sighed. Dying and killing. He’d lived a life too full of both, around men who didn’t all look like killers, didn’t act like it always, but who were. He’d made his decisions, and he’d become one of them. Those decisions were like tying knots, he realized, knots that were just plain hard to untie. Damrick Fellows had made hard decisions, too. But it seemed to Delaney that
Damrick had only given back to pirate captains what they’d done for ages, grimly refusing to give quarter even to those who begged for their lives.
If in fact Ham had told it right.
Delaney didn’t usually doubt the truth of Ham’s tales. Not that he believed there were no fabrications in them, but usually he had no reason to question one particular over another. But that night and that story, with Belisar the Whale listening, Delaney had to wonder. Pirates were not above pleading for their lives. They feared death as much as anyone, when it came right down to it. Many had become pirates for fear of dying, just as Delaney and his lot had done at Castle Mum. That not a one of Skeel’s crew had swum for safety toward the Calliope, or waved a white rag, or begged or pleaded, that wasn’t usual. That seemed like something Ham had left out. Telling it the way Ham did made the pirates seem braver. No sniveling or crying at the end. But the other way, the more likely way, that would be more like Damrick Fellows as he was known to pirates. He was no Avery Wittle. No, not at all.
One thing was sure and known to be a fact, and that was that Damrick’s men had fished the body of Skeel Barris out of the drink. No sense leaving valuable goods to rot. That man had had a price on his head; he’d make the Gatemen as much money as the shares for the cargo would. And either way, returning to port with the corpse of Skeel Barris aboard would be sure to rile up Conch Imbry even more.
And that could only help Ham build that dramatic tension he liked so much.
“What say ye now, Mr. Mazeley? Ye still say I shouldn’t a’ gone after this wretch myself?”
The pair stood on the docks of Mann late in the afternoon, watching the Calliope sail toward them, lazy and golden in the slanting light. Mart Mazeley had no immediate answer for his boss.
They’d been in port for ten days now, enjoying the pleasures of the greatest city in Nearing Vast. The Shalamon had arrived here two days after the Calliope had set sail. Conch had been itching to pursue. But Mazeley had pointed out that Shalamon made port with a partial crew, and the lack of hands had created difficulties just managing the high winds. It would be a far greater liability in a real fight.
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