Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom

by A. C. Crispin

  “I release you from that duty. Go below. Guard my brother.”

  “No.” Tarek looked her steadily in the eyes. “When you were twelve years old, Highness, I gave up my manhood when your father asked me to do so, so that I might guard his only daughter, the flower of his soul, the delight of his heart. I will not turn away from my duty now.”

  Ayisha gazed at him, reminding herself that she had no time for emotion. She swallowed, then nodded. “Very well. I would welcome your help…and your company.”

  Spreading out her shawl on her bunk, she began tossing things into it, bustling about their little enclosure. Tarek watched silently as she scrabbled through their meager possessions. A stub of a candle in its holder. A skein of coarse woolen thread. Her hand-loom. All of them landed in the middle of the old gray shawl.

  Finally, he said, “Highness, you will need stillness and quiet to work transfer magic. The ship is bouncing and shuddering every minute or two, either from our guns, or the enemy’s. How will you be able to concentrate enough to weave a transfer spell?”

  “When the enemy ship breaks free of the land’s hold, its crew will need to handle the sails and repair the damage from the battle. While they are doing that, I believe they will be too busy to shoot for a few minutes. That is when I will weave my spell.”

  Ayisha slung the improvised bag over her shoulder. “I will need to be in the open air, within sight of the enemy, in order to envision the transfer point for my spell. I believe I know the perfect spot. But until the guns fall silent, we will wait nearby, in a safe place, where no one is likely to come.”

  “Where is that, Your Highness?”

  “Jack’s cabin,” she said, with a faint smile. “He will be all over this ship. His own cabin will be the last place he would go.”

  Tarek nodded. “Then I will go with you.”

  He followed where his princess led.

  Ayisha had indeed guessed truly when she’d said that Jack was “all over the ship.” His legs were beginning to ache, he’d been up and down ladders so many times.

  Damage control was going on, even as the Wicked Wench continued to pound Koldunya, only to be pounded in turn by the sloop’s broadsides. Jack had little time to spare for thinking about the battle in the abstract, but if he had, he’d have agreed that it was one of the strangest he’d ever heard of. Two ships, trapped and motionless, lobbing broadside after broadside at each other was madness. By the time they floated free, both were likely to sink. There could be no “winner” from such an encounter.

  As Jack hastened back and forth, up and down, checking on how Tench, the carpenter, was doing as he and Newton worked feverishly to patch holes and repair damage to the ship’s essential structure, he was aware of several things:

  First, the tide was coming in. At some point, the Wicked Wench might float free from the shoal on her own. But since she was a larger, heavier vessel with a deeper draft, it was far more likely that Koldunya would be the first vessel to break free. And when she did, Jack’s ship and crew would be what he’d most feared—sitting ducks.

  Secondly, it wouldn’t be long before the Wench’s gunners ran out of ammunition. Merchant ships didn’t have space or weight allowance for many cannonballs—his ship only carried sufficient cannonballs for each gun to fire twenty-five shots. Jack knew that if he hadn’t requested that extra powder from Cutler Beckett, he’d have run out by now.

  And thirdly, if by some miracle he managed to get the Wicked Wench free of the shoal, and escape or defeat Koldunya, he still wouldn’t have smooth sailing. His men had been through a lot already today. They were tired, and soon they’d be exhausted. Frank Connery had reported that the ship was taking on water, so Jack had assigned men to start working the bilge pumps in shifts. That was grueling labor, and he’d have to have fresh men to relieve them, and soon, but there were none to assign.

  The two carpenters were patching holes as quickly as they could using cone-shaped wooden plugs made to fit the holes left by the various sizes of cannonballs, but they didn’t have an indefinite supply of those, either.

  Soon the sun would set. Not that that was likely to affect Koldunya’s barrage of fire. Jack figured the Wench’s ammunition and powder would last until sunset. Borya’s supply, he was sure, would last a lot longer than that.

  Jack trotted up the ladder from the main deck, to be met by Chamba. He’d had the lad running errands for him, serving as a messenger between him and his mates. “Cap’n,” Chamba said, “I be just comin’ to find you. I be checking all the ship’s boats, like you said.” He grimaced.

  “Bad news?” Jack braced himself.

  “Cap’n, we got one little boat, the dinghy, it look like it can be fixed pretty easy. And we got one longboat, no damage. All the others…” he shook his head. “Smashed, Cap’n. Some of ’em hardly more than splinters.”

  “Great,” Jack said. He hadn’t expected anything else, but it was still a bitter blow. They couldn’t even abandon ship. However, with one longboat still intact, they might be able to kedge the Wench off the shoal, using the anchor, dragging it along using the boat, then seating it securely behind them in the deepwater channel, and then having men turn the capstan to winch the ship aft until she came free.

  The Wicked Wench shuddered yet again from more hits. How much damage had Borya’s ship sustained? The twelve-pounders were heavy cannon. Any hits the Wench’s gunners made were bound to cause serious damage if they struck in the right place.

  Jack beckoned to Chamba to come with him, then turned and headed back down the ladder, to inspect their remaining supply of powder and shot. He should have done that before coming back up to the weather deck after checking on the crew working the pumps, but it was hard to keep everything in his mind when everything was crucial, everything was vital.

  He started purposefully across the main deck toward the gunnery master, Jedidiah Parker, just as a ball smashed through the hull right between his third and fourth twelve-pounders.

  Men screamed and dove for cover. Wood splintered, sharp fragments flying everywhere.

  The concussion spun Jack around, and he felt something hit his left arm near his shoulder. It knocked him sprawling. The sound was deafening.

  He lay there on his back, blinking, unable to move for a moment. Chamba’s dark face swam into view, his eyes wide and frantic. “Cap’n Sparrow! Cap’n Sparrow! Can you hear me?”

  Jack shook his head, then tried to sit up. Chamba helped him. When Jack was up, the lad raised his hand. It was red. “Cap’n,” he said. “You bleeding, sir.”

  Jack looked down at his left shoulder, and saw a three-inch splinter of wood protruding from a hole in his coat. And Ayisha just mended that coat, he thought, dazedly.

  He tried to move his arm, and it moved. Jack reached up and grabbed his neckcloth with his right hand, then pulled it free. “Pull it out,” he told Chamba, handing him the strip of fabric. “And then tie this around me arm, tightly.”

  “But, Cap’n—”

  “That’s an order.”

  Chamba reluctantly raised his hand to grasp the splinter. Jack set his teeth and looked away. Men were gathered around something—no, someone—lying sprawled on the deck, a few feet from him. He watched Parker bend over the unmoving figure. Jack felt his stomach lurch as he realized exactly what he was seeing.

  He’d seen corpses before, even ones with terrible wounds. But he’d never seen one quite this bad. The body belonged to one of his own crewmen, but he couldn’t tell who it was, because…because…the head was missing.

  Jack had nearly forgotten about his arm; the shock of seeing one of his crewmen like that was overwhelming. When Chamba yanked the huge splinter out, he gasped and winced, but his own injury now seemed so trivial by comparison, he didn’t even want to acknowledge it.

  Jack felt Chamba wrapping the neckcloth around his arm, then starting to tie it. “Tighter!” Jack snapped. The boy tugged, and Jack hissed in pain. There were still fragments of wood in the wound, ju
dging by how it felt. But at least the bandage should slow the bleeding.

  “Now help me up,” Jack said. Chamba came over to his other side. The youth was strong after so many months working as a sailor. He heaved Jack to his feet, then steadied him as the Wicked Wench fired yet again, though the number three gun remained silent.

  Summoning his strength and balance, Jack managed to walk over to the gunnery master fairly steadily. Parker’s face was smudged nearly as dark as Chamba’s from smoke and powder residue. He gazed at Jack through reddened eyes. “How are our powder and shot holding out, Mr. Parker?”

  “Not good, Captain. Three, maybe four more broadsides down here, then a few more rounds of six-pound shot for the guns on the weather deck.…” He shrugged.

  Jack frowned, listening. Something was…strange. Different. After a moment, he realized what he was hearing was the lack of sound. Koldunya had ceased fire.

  “Captain!” one of the gunners shouted. “Look!”

  Jack and Chamba moved closer, bending to see out the gun port. A longboat was moving away from Koldunya’s stern, dragging an anchor cable.

  “He’s kedging off,” Jack said. “No wonder he ceased fire. He’ll need hands to the braces, and the windlass. Give him fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, and he’ll be free to nose her to starboard and come up behind our stern, and blow us all to oblivion. Can you hit that longboat, gunner?”

  “No, sir,” the lad said, his voice catching. “By the time we spotted it, what with what just happened to Wilson, you know…well, sir, they was already out of range.” He spoke anxiously, as though he thought Jack might scold him for his mistake.

  Wilson, Jack thought. Oh, yes. Nice lad, redheaded. Maybe twenty. Micah Wilson, that was his name.

  Even as he’d been thinking that, with another part of his mind Jack had been arriving at a decision. “We’ll need to shift one of the six-pounders into my cabin,” Jack said to the gunnery master. “Bash out the stern windows, and open fire. Chamba, find Tench and bring him to me on the weather deck, with his tools.”

  Chamba took to his heels.

  “Mr. Parker, you and your men start unbolting the starboard six-pounder so you can move it into my cabin as soon as the carpenter rigs a gun tackle to secure it. Make sure we save all the six-pound rounds left, so we can at least shoot back as he comes around.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  Jack turned and headed back up to the weather deck. He used his right hand to help pull himself up the ladder. He’d have to try to get a bit of line, get Chamba to rig a sling for his left arm, he realized. Every time he moved it, it felt like a hot knife thrust into the flesh.

  When he reached the weather deck, Jack turned toward his cabin, then stopped when he saw a body sprawled near the mainmast and another man bending over his injured crewmate. Repressing a groan, Jack ran over, dreading what he would find.

  The man on the deck proved to be Etienne de Ver, and the man bending over him was none other than his erstwhile sparring partner, Lucius Featherstone. “What happened?” Jack demanded.

  Featherstone looked up. He was chalky beneath his weathered skin. He pointed to the lee clew block, a carved chunk of wood used to hold lines in the rigging, lying in a tangle of tarred rope a few feet away. The block was bigger than a man’s head, and weighed nearly ten pounds. “It came down, Cap’n,” he said, in a choked voice. “A wild shot hit the rigging, and it came down. Would have bashed in me head, but…but de Ver, he jumped—hit me, knocked me clear.…”

  “Is he dead?” Jack asked, kneeling next to the Frenchman. He didn’t look dead. Jack put his fingers against de Ver’s throat, and felt a steady throb.

  “I think so. Oh, Lord. He…he just…he must be…”

  Featherstone was babbling. With mingled amazement and amusement, Jack realized that the man was nearly in tears. “He’s got a pulse,” Jack announced, briskly. “And he’s breathing.”

  “He…Etienne ain’t dead, sir?” Featherstone looked up, incredulously.

  “No.” Jack looked at the man’s foot, which was twisted oddly. “I think he’s got a broken ankle, though. It will need to be set.”

  Just then Chamba arrived, breathless. “Cap’n, Mister Tench, he be on his way. He be old, can’t move as fast as me.”

  Jack nodded. “Chamba, you help Featherstone carry de Ver down to the orlop deck. That’s where they’re taking the wounded.”

  Jack stood up as they carried the limp form of the Frenchman away. He looked up, seeing Koldunya beginning to move aft as her crew cranked the windlass. In moments, she’d be free. With only one sail left, she wouldn’t be able to move fast, but she didn’t have to go far to get into firing position.

  Jack’s heart leaped in his chest, then began slamming hard. He glanced over at his cabin, then scanned the entire weather deck. Where was Tench? And why was the light failing?

  Jack turned to look west. The sun was a scarlet streak against the crimson and coral horizon.

  Where the bloody hell is my carpenter? In about ten minutes, we’re all dead!

  Ayisha and Tarek huddled together at the highest point of the ship, near the taffrail. Tarek had boosted her up first, then used the L-shaped “knees” bolted onto the high railing at the back of the quarterdeck to climb high enough to pull himself up.

  It had been agony, waiting with Tarek in Jack’s empty cabin, but Ayisha knew she had to be patient, and seize her best opportunity. She could not afford to waste her power on failed attempts. So she had waited, trying to rest, so she would save her strength. Weaving a spell required that she be able to focus her mind, harness her power, then unleash it to work her will. Affecting physical objects was far more difficult than creating an illusion.

  Swiftly, she prepared for the spell, taking out the candle stub in its holder and putting it before her, then threading her handloom. When she wove spells, she actually wove, as a way of visualizing the power she was gathering, then unleashing it at the object of her spell.

  When she was prepared, Ayisha moved so she was sitting facing the sloop. To see it, all she needed to do was look up, and across the water.

  She did so, staring intently at the sloop. “Tarek…look! It is moving!”

  The eunuch turned. “It is. As you guessed, they have broken free. Perhaps he will flee now?”

  Ayisha shook her head. “He will not flee. This man, this rogue, as Jack calls him, has malice in his heart. Jack told me how he had encountered this rogue, and another one, named Christophe, five years ago. This one’s name is Borya.”

  “Ah, you know his name,” Tarek said. “Good. Names have power.”

  “It will help,” she said. “But I must hurry. It will not be long before he is behind this ship, and then he will fire.”

  “And we will be the first ones in the path of his guns,” Tarek said.

  “All the more reason to remove the threat now,” Ayisha said.

  Staring intently at the enemy ship, she began to chant, softly, the two names she knew. “Borya…Koldunya. Borya…Koldunya. Borya…Koldunya.”

  Her fingers began to work the threads strung on the handloom. Ayisha continued to chant. In her mind, she pictured an object located within the sloop. She had seen the ones aboard the Wicked Wench. She knew what they looked like. Wooden casks. There had been no metal about them that might strike sparks. And inside them, the black powder, the deadly black powder that propelled the cannonballs, or the musket balls, or the pistol balls. She had seen it, seen it do its deadly work, and seen the result, in crumpled bodies, emptied of life. She knew what the black powder looked like, what it felt like on the fingers, what it smelled like. Jack had shown her.

  “Borya…Koldunya. Borya…Koldunya. Borya…Koldunya.”

  The power was building, the spell growing within her mind. As she wove it, tightly, compactly, her fingers wove the actual thread, here and now. Ayisha felt the pressure of the target spell forming, weaving in her mind, pushing against her skull, pulsing above her eyes, throbbing, building, an
d weaving.…

  “Borya…Koldunya. Borya…Koldunya. Borya…Koldunya.”

  Never had she tried to harness this much power, to take so much from herself, from her body’s energy, its life-force, as she was doing now. But she was doing it. The black powder within Borya’s cask…she could feel it now, grainy against her frantically weaving fingers.

  “Borya…Koldunya. Borya…Koldunya. Borya… Koldunya.”

  Her head was pounding with the force of the spell-weaving, pounding like the surf of her island home, pounding like the running of swift feet, pounding like the slam of a hammer against a wooden peg, pounding like the Heart of Zerzura, pounding…

  She had the spell almost woven. Most of the threads were in place, in her mind, the threads of power, power so intense it could travel from an object here to the grains of powder in a cask there.…

  “Borya…Koldunya. Borya…Koldunya. Borya…Koldunya.”

  There was but one more thread to add to the weaving, and it was not the brown of the wooden cask, or the dull black of the powder. No. This thread was bright and hot, yellow and flickering, surrounding an orange-red heart. This thread was fire. Ayisha wove it into her spell, looked at her weaving, and saw that it was good; it was perfect. It was also beautiful, as perfection must be always be beautiful. Terrible, perhaps, but also beautiful.

  Shifting her gaze from the sloop that had now glided so far that its guns were aimed directly at the Wicked Wench’s stern, barely a hundred feet away, Ayisha brought her searing gaze down, down, focusing it on the candle.

  The wick sparked, sparked, sputtered for a moment, then bright yellow flame leaped into being, hot and bright and perfect.

  The candle burned. Ayisha poured her spell into that flame, letting the woven threads stretch from the candle to the wooden cask, and the dull black powder within it. She was a vessel for her spell, nothing more.

  The candle burned, and the flame lighting its wick stretched and streaked along the yellow-orange flame-thread in her spell…and then it was touching the dull black thread.