"When a captain dies," Bellamy continued, "pirates take what was his."
"If any of them so much as touches me, they had better pray this man dies of his injuries." She said a silent prayer of her own to whoever was listening. Please don't let that happen, for my sake as well as his.
Bellamy raised the pliers to Dillahunt's face, and Calloway turned away, setting her hands on the rail that overlooked the main deck. Nathan was down there, supervising the gunners, pointing out targets. The crew seemed to have accepted his promotion without quarrel. Only a few scowled at him when he gave them an order, but they did as they were instructed. Ogle accepted every order, but the rancid look on his face indicated he would have unhealthy words with Nathan later.
A cannonball bounced across the deck, obliterating a young deckhand's right leg. The boy collapsed onto his side and stared vacantly at what remained of his leg. As comprehension grew, he loosed a low, mournful wail that gradually elevated into high-pitched shrieks, breaking only to take short gasps. Nathan stepped away from him and kept to his duty. "Captain! Captain! Captain!" the boy cried in swift succession, reaching for Nathan.
"It won't grow back," Nathan coldly replied without looking at him. "Stay down until the battle is done."
Calloway heard Nathan say something about "chainshot." A minute later, Ogle's gunnery crew fired two cannonballs at once that spiraled through the air on a three-foot chain. The chain tore through three crewmen and finally wrapped around a fourth man's torso, spiraling him into the water beyond. "That's it!" Nathan bellowed, clenching his lone fist. "Do that again!"
He's enjoying this, Calloway thought. He has no idea how much he's enjoying this.
"Captain! Captain! Captain!" said the maimed boy. He had crawled over to Nathan and was clutching his leg.
Nathan kicked the boy away. "Crawl to safety, man!"
Two deckhands seized the one-legged boy and dragged him to a less crowded spot.
Nathan turned to the gunners. "Now put her at the bottom of the sea!" They aimed the cannons downward, firing relentlessly. The enemy ship was listing on its portside, pieces of it tearing free and crumbling into the sea. Smoke wafted from dozens of holes pitted along the hull.
Three long planks suddenly extended forward, slapping down on Crusader's rails. Shadowed pirates leapt onto the planks and scrambled over. Crusader's crew drew their pistols, firing at them. One pirate's head snapped back, and he tumbled off his plank, lost in the dark abyss between the ships. Nathan took a step back, drawing his sword. "Push those planks off! They're boarding us!"
Ogle and a few others managed to lift one of the planks, but it was heavy with the weight of encroaching pirates, and they could not slide it far enough to one side to free its purchase. "It's no good!" Ogle shouted at Nathan.
"Then kill them all!" Nathan shouted back.
Calloway looked to Bellamy and found him staring back, jaw grimly set. "You'll need this," he said, handing her Dillahunt's pistol. She took it. "And when that fails, you'll need this." He handed her Dillahunt's rapier. "Gun first, then sword. It's easy. Even a girl can do it."
"That's funny," she muttered without an ounce of delight.
"I'm the funniest surgeon you'll ever meet," Bellamy quipped flatly. He drew his pistol and sword as well, standing beside her, in front of Dillahunt's limp form. "You know how to use it? The gun, I mean."
"Yes," she said. One of her clients had shown her how to shoot rocks.
"And the sword?"
She withered. "Grip the shiny sharp part and stick the hilt in their belly?"
"You're funny, too," Bellamy drawled.
"Why do they board?" she asked. "Surely they are too few to take us."
"They're out of options. Our new captain has done his job too well. Now they'll fight like devils, for they have nothing left to lose."
"They could surrender."
Bellamy tittered in annoyance. "A white flag would afford them a long journey back to the gallows and little else. They opt to die like pirates, and I don’t blame them. It's what I would do in their place."
"Why don't they just swim for shore?"
"That swim is longer than it looks. We'd be in our boats and on top of them before they ever got there."
Five grappling hooks shot from the enemy ship like splayed fingers, four of them latching onto the rigging. Pirates swung across, hollering war cries. Two of them were shot in midair and came crashing unceremoniously onto the deck. Both were instantly overwhelmed and impaled by cutlasses. Eight pirates made it successfully onto Crusader's deck. They fired pistols and swung their swords. A tall pirate with a bare, muscular chest barreled down on Ogle. Their blades clashed, and Calloway was shocked to see both men grinning. Then Gabe Jenkins stuck his sword in the tall pirate's back, downing him instantly. When Jenkins pulled the sword out, there wasn't nearly as much blood as Calloway had expected. Not at first, anyway.
Ogle shoved Jenkins to deck, screaming, "He was mine!"
Jenkins got back to his feet, tossing a lock of curly hair out of his pretty face with an angry flick of his head. "They're always yours, Ogle!"
Seven remained.
A pirate with a red bandana thrust himself at Nathan. The newly appointed captain dodged to his left and held out his sword, letting the man sweep himself across the blade. Red bandana fell dead.
Six now.
Two pirates fought back-to-back as Crusader's crew converged on them. Candler skirted the edge of the swarm, jabbing his cutlass through any gap he could find. On the fourth thrust, the point of his blade found a pirate's belly. Intestines snaked out of him, collecting in shiny curls at his feet. Calloway's mouth dropped open in awe.
"Like that, do you?" Bellamy said, watching her.
She forced herself to look away. "It's gross," she lied.
Candler continued to stab the man long after he was dead. "That's for my good friend, Captain Guy Dillahunt," he declared. "God rest his soul!"
Five.
As his partner sank behind him, the next pirate's back was left undefended, and three swords plunged into him at once. The tip of one sword exploded from his chest, splashing the deck with his blood. He gawked at the blade, face slowly relieving of tension, and then he tumbled forward.
Four.
A very large man—so black that Calloway had trouble keeping track of him in the night—and a thin, distinguished looking pirate were cornered between two canons. As the crew closed on them, they exchanged glances, nodded, and dropped their weapons. "I am Francois Laurent," the thin pirate declared in a thick French accent, "and I know when I am outmatched."
"Of course you're bloody outmatched," Candler sniggered. "Was it you who killed our dear captain?"
"It is entirely possible."
The large black man chuckled at his friend.
Calloway searched for the other two pirates.
A very young, very skinny pirate escaped the swarm, ducking his head low as he made a mad dash for the quarterdeck. His cutlass was dripping red. "Stop that one!" Nathan shouted.
"He killed the cook!" someone cried.
"He skewered Nic Lawsome!" someone else said.
Calloway braced herself, aiming the gun at the stairs. She set her finger against the cold metal of the trigger. Bellamy raised his gun next to hers. "Don't worry," he assured her. "One of us is bound to hit him."
"I look worried?" The barrel of her gun shuddered as she spoke.
The boy made it as far as the second step before he was shot in the back by Candler. He collapsed and slid down the stairs, big round eyes never closing. "That's two!" Candler shouted triumphantly.
"Bah!" Bellamy spat over the rail. "That one was ours!"
Calloway sighed and lowered her gun.
One left. She looked over the main deck. The men were glancing about, swords ready. "Anyone spot him?" Nathan said.
"Don’t know where he got off to," Jenkins said.
"He was a big one," Peter Lively said.
"Maybe he j
umped overboard," Candler suggested.
"Someone check the hold," Nathan ordered. He peered up at Calloway, and then his eyes went wide.
A massive hand shot over the rail, clutched Calloway's belt, and wrenched her violently toward the edge. A bearded hulk was crawling up from the main deck, desperation in his eyes. His considerable weight leveraged her waist against the rail. She struggled to aim her pistol, but the pirate easily snatched it out of her grasp and brought the steel pommel down on her skull. The world went fuzzy, and all sound fled her ears. Dillahunt's rapier fell from her other hand. She would have fallen back, but the pirate's hand was firm around her belt. Bloodshot eyes fixated on hers, lips parting from yellow teeth in a macabre grin. He flipped the pistol around and aimed it squarely at her face.
Another hand appeared from behind her, reaching past her, gold bracelets glinting at the wrist. Bellamy grasped the ascending pirate by the throat, shoved the barrel of his pistol into the man's right eye, and squeezed the trigger. Calloway did not hear the crack of the shot. Sparks ignited in the priming pan. The pirate's eye disintegrated, and Bellamy's pistol sank into the red hollow. Brains erupted from the back of the pirate's skull, raining down on the crew. They shielded themselves from the gore, laughing as bits of bone and brain pattered their arms.
The dead man's fingers released Calloway's belt, and he dropped off the rail, and the back of his yawning skull smacked the main deck with a nauseating squelch, splattering gooey bits. Calloway collapsed against Bellamy. He made no attempt to hold her, and she slid down his legs, her ass landing on his feet. He kicked her off and circled around, glowering down at her. A mask of smoke rolled over his face, trailing from the barrel of his gun. Calloway couldn't hear anything, but she could easily read the question his lips formed.
"Still bored, girly?"
ANNABELLE
She gave the robe a slight nudge, allowing it to slip away from her left nipple. Jethro was thoroughly distracted, trailing off mid-sentence. The wooden handle of the pistol had grown hot in her grasp, concealed beneath the sheets with the barrel aimed at his oblivious face. Jethro crossed his legs and licked his lips.
"You were saying?" Edward Teach said from behind his desk. His hand rested on a weathered copy of The Iliad, which he claimed was his favorite book, though Annabelle had never seen him read it. The curtains behind him were parted, and he was framed in the darkness beyond the stern gallery window.
Jethro cleared his throat and returned his attention to Teach. "Apologies," he wheezed. "Your muse is most distracting, she is." The man seemed to have trouble finding the breath to speak, but that never stopped him. When first he had entered the cabin, the setting sun revealed an older man. Now, the dim candlelight favored him, masking the bits of grey that speckled his short hair and mustache. He had taken off his black cap and set it on the desk, and he was strumming the tails of the red ribbon with thumb and forefinger.
"Then she serves her purpose," said Charles Vane, standing tall beside Jethro, hands on the back of his chair. "While your thoughts linger on plunging your cock betwixt those ripe melons, you take no notice of the gun secreted beneath those sheets."
Annabelle sighed, lifting the robe back in place. Jethro looked disappointed to be robbed of his view. Vane smiled self-assuredly.
Teach's beard twitched. "A precaution, nothing more."
"Fuck your caution," Vane spat. "Had you any, you would not pursue a man so trivial as Benjamin Hornigold."
Despite his perpetually foul temperament, Annabelle could not deny that Vane was an extremely handsome man. He had curly, shoulder-length auburn hair, hawk-like green eyes, and a chiseled jaw covered in two days' worth of dark stubble. One eyebrow was always arced higher than the other, and his thin lips were ever in the various stages of a smirk. He wore a forest green coat that matched his eyes, with polished gold buttons, white stockings, and strapped shoes with gold buckles. His voice flowed with gentle ease, at odds with the belligerence that escaped his lips whenever they were moving.
"Hornigold aggrieved me," Teach evenly replied. "I must right that wrong. If I permit him free reign of my ocean after betraying me and siding with Woodes Rogers, I will be looked upon as a weakling unbefitting of the name Blackbeard."
"You might have killed him before he fled," Vane suggested, his green eyes glinting in the candlelight.
"I did not know the loft of his ambition," Teach said.
"And now he's turned pirate once more, yet your wound still festers?"
"What a man does at the end of his life does not right his prior wrongs."
Vane laughed at that. "I know a priest who promises me otherwise. I keep him very close."
"Then Hornigold is truly damned," Teach said. "Either way, I have an image to maintain."
"I care naught for images or nicknames," Vane said, pacing behind Jethro. "Neither fills my holds with plunder."
"Oh, but you're wrong," Teach said. "They fall to their knees at the very sight of me, and gold spills out of their mouths quicker than words."
"Swipe their knees out from under them and they will fall just the same," Vane countered. "You waste too much time with theatrics. When Woodes Rogers finally apprehends you—and apprehend you he will, sooner or later—can you win him over with naught but fancy speech and a smoking beard? Will you tell him, 'nay, you cannot kill me, for I am the mighty Blackbeard'?"
Teach's cheeks folded into a smile above his beard. "Are you so frightened of Rogers? You, who burned a ship in his harbor?"
"My harbor," Vane growled.
Teach shook his head. "No longer. We will never take Nassau again, you know that."
"I have three ships now, Edward. I've placed Jack Rackham in command of Ranger. For the moment, anyway. Jack is a tad impatient."
Teach cackled. "The day I chance upon a pirate without a ship named Ranger, I'll shave my beard. Hornigold took that name as well."
Vane rolled his eyes and persisted. "And I trust you saw my new sloop? Smaller than Ranger, but quite fast."
"Yes. Impressive." Teach didn't sound very impressed.
"Sacking Nassau would require but a small fleet with two great captains at the helm of two great flagships."
"Aye," Teach replied. He lifted a goblet of wine, eyes narrowing as he peered into the glass. "I glimpse one such man before me. Let me know when you spot the other, for he be hidden from my sight."
Vane's smirk faltered only slightly. "It's good to know insanity hasn't robbed you of your sense of humor, Teach. I will sob myself to sleep when I learn of your demise."
Jethro's eyes flashed apprehensively from one man to the next. "Gentlemen," he rasped, lifting diplomatic hands. "The issue at hand eludes us." The word 'eludes' was nearly a whisper as Jethro's strained vocals broke on it.
"The fuck it does," Vane said, flinging his hands. "Benjamin Hornigold is no issue. If I should chance upon him, I would not waste the time it would take to feed him to the sharks. He presents no obstacle. He is but Rogers' dog, and a tiny one at that. The kind that nips at your heels. He strained his chain and found it easily snapped, and now he skitters across the Caribbean, chasing after a bit of shine. We have greater concerns."
Teach sat back in his chair, taking a long deep breath. "You bring me this man," he pointed at Jethro, "under false pretense, claiming to have knowledge of the bane of my existence."
Vane gave a lavish roll of his eyes. "I present two options, Teach, yet you remain stubbornly aware only of the lesser."
"No lie, sir," Jethro insisted. "I know where Benjamin Hornigold is, I do."
"My redundant friend speaks truth," Vane sighed. "I thought presenting him might afford me the opportunity to persuade you against foolery. Divided we are vulnerable, while our enemies converge as an army, gathering our own ranks against us. Together we would be an impenetrable spear, plunging through them to strike at their heart. The sight of our combined ships bearing down on Nassau would be a tale for the ages."
Teach was unmoved. "I have
given the ages many sights without your aid, Vane."
Vane shook his head in dismay. "It seems I waste my time here. Oh well. At the very least, I will be compensated for bringing you Hornigold's whereabouts."
Teach fixed Vane with a dangerous glare.
"I will be compensated for the information," the handsome captain insisted, meeting Teach's gaze. "You crave Benjamin Hornigold more than sense, and I have all but dropped him in your lap. I expect payment. Should I vanish mysteriously within the next hour, my quartermaster will instruct the crew to unleash hell upon you. True, we're no match for the mighty Queen Anne's Revenge, but we'd leave a few scars you wouldn't soon forget."
"So distrusting," Teach sighed.
Vane raised a finger. "And still alive, I might add."
Teach set his palms flat on the desk. "You will be compensated. Speak to my cooper on your way out."
"The skinny shit, lame of leg?"
"Nay, that be Narrow Ned, the boatswain. The cooper is Hemett. Squat and ugly fellow with a red sash."
"That's helpful," Vane quipped with a smirk more mischievous than usual. "Now I know to look for any man on this ship who isn't me."
Jethro sniggered.
Vane turned momentarily serious. "I trust your cooper knows the value of my information?"
Teach rolled his eyes. He plucked a quill from a jar of ink and scribbled a number across a parchment. He handed the parchment to Vane. "I seem to have misplaced my seal, but if he gives you any trouble, have him speak to me."
Vane quickly scanned the parchment and tried not to look impressed. He casually flicked his head back, tossing a loose auburn curl out of his face. "Not quite the ass-fucking I had expected."
"That can be arranged, if such things be of interest," Teach drawled. "A few of my men have questionable proclivities."
Vane's lip curled in distaste. "Seems every ship has a few of those. I pretend not to notice."
The Devil's Tide Page 11