The Bloody Black Flag

by Steve Goble

  Spider cursed inwardly, but it was kill or be killed, no matter where he wished he was at this moment. He could cast aside his humanity, and his conscience, or he could die. Survival instinct prevailed.

  A pistol in each hand, he ran toward the starboard rail and leapt upon it, then launched himself toward Loon.

  Others did the same. Dream sat a bit higher in the water than Loon, so Barlow’s marauders had the advantage of height and speed, but still more than a couple of leaping Dreamers collided with men swinging on lines from the enemy ship.

  As Spider leapt through the air, a late-firing four-pounder on Loon took a direct hit from one of its counterparts on Dream. Loon’s suddenly crippled gun lurched off its carriage, tilted crazily upward, and launched its own ball skyward.

  Shouts and gunshots filled the air, and the sound of balls whizzing through space to either side of him filled Spider’s ears.

  Spider did not land on his feet, but he rolled and rose quickly. A man he did not recognize rushed him. The bastard could have belonged to either crew, but Spider did not see any blue ribbon on the man’s arms so he fired his right-hand blunderbuss, and the man’s forehead and cheek opened up in red gore.

  The man fell at Spider’s feet, dropping a saber. Spider knelt, tossed his empty gun aside, and took up the other man’s blade. He spun, found an enemy—for that was what they were now, despite his earlier prayers—and slashed a throat. That vanquished man fell, and behind him Spider saw Addison thrust a knife upward into another man’s chin. Addison’s foe stared with bulging, dying eyes, and Addison kissed the man before spitting on him and shoving him aside.

  Odin, Peg, and others up in the rigging rained withering musket fire down on Loon’s deck, and Spider hoped like hell they could see those blue ribbons on his arms.

  The deck below Spider’s feet lurched crazily, and a glance upward told him the rigging above was fouled. Spars and lines were all tangled after the collision, but it would not get straightened out until one side vanquished the other. For now, the two crews were locked into a struggle to the death.

  For a brief, surreal moment, Spider imagined everyone from both crews dying in this battle, and imagined some other vessel coming upon the conjoined ships in the future, the passengers gawking at all the dead men lying on the decks.

  Then a man plummeted like a meteor onto the hard deck nearby and died in a wet, red thunk. Spider could not determine in a glance whether the man was part of his crew or part of the enemy’s crew, and in that precise moment he wondered whether God himself gave a damn about that matter.

  Gun smoke assailed Spider’s nostrils, and a musket ball zinged by with a bizarre bumblebee sound.

  Near the target ship’s mainmast, Weatherall crossed blades with two men. Spider pressed his left-hand gun against the spine of one of Weatherall’s foes and shot him in the back; Weatherall sliced the remaining man’s leg and kicked him in the groin.

  Spider tossed aside the second empty gun and took up his own sword in his left hand. Then he ducked low, in hopes of being able to see underneath the gun smoke wafting across the deck, and spotted a scuffle aft. He rushed to the aid of the man with blue fabric on his arms. Spider slashed, stabbed, got his back against the rail, and fought for all he was worth.

  Smoke burned his eyes, gunshots rang in his ears, and every breath he took tasted of blood and fire. A musket fell near his feet, and Spider glanced above to see men clambering like monkeys across the interlocked spars, sticking one another with knives.

  Around him, wood splintered as musket balls raked masts and yardarms. An unholy din of shouts and curses and gunshots and blades ringing off one another made any sort of communication impossible. The only thing to do was fight until there was no one left to kill—or until he himself was dead.

  And so he did, and he lost count of the bellies he cut wide open and the necks he hacked. The tilted deck under his boots grew slippery with gore, and he stumbled against a corpse more than once.

  Tellam, bare-chested and with blood streaked across his wild tattoos, emerged from a waft of smoke. He grinned like a man demented, muttered quietly, and stared at Spider while approaching with a cutlass upraised. Spider squared in defense, but Tellam veered away and drew steel across another man’s back.

  Coughing from smoke and wiping sweat and blood from his eyes, Spider felt a lancing fire across the back of his right thigh. He whirled, lashing wildly with both blades, but there was no one there. A musket ball, not a sword, must have done the damage, he decided, hoping he would live long enough to have Doctor Boddings look at the wound. He nearly fell but staggered against the mast and remained upright.

  “Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord,” said a man who sounded Irish and did not sport the blue armbands of Plymouth Dream. He lumbered across the deck, a sword dangling in one hand and his guts trying to spill out around his other hand. Spider took two steps, drove his blade through the man’s neck, and figured he’d done the poor son of a bitch a favor.

  Black clouds of smoke, the flares of guns, the shouts of men in indescribable fear or in rapturous bloodlust, the stench of vomit and burnt powder—all these assailed Spider’s senses, and it was only the knowledge he’d lived through such blasphemies in the past that helped him get through the present.

  Spider wished like hell that Ezra was here. Ezra could fight like a demon, and Ezra would have stood side by side with Spider, offering his protection and making sure that, whatever else happened, he would do what he could to help his friend survive. He and Ezra had always looked out for one another, above all else.

  God, how Spider missed Ezra right then.

  The wind caught a scrap of sail shredded by musketry and grapeshot, and it whipped across Spider’s face and blocked his vision. He ducked low, rolled, came up in a low crouch, and found himself face-to-face with a man he did not recognize. Spider slashed the stranger’s throat.

  A mighty roar sounded above all the other din, and Spider looked in that direction to see Captain Barlow leap aboard the enemy ship. “Fuck and bugger!” Barlow screamed as his feet found the deck, and his pistol fired point-blank into a man’s forehead. Barlow threw his emptied pistol aside and then grabbed the handle of his ever-present cane, and Spider noted the quick twist that allowed the captain to pull the handle away from the cane’s stem and reveal a rapier blade within. Spider also noted the cool efficiency with which Barlow slipped the newly revealed blade into an opponent’s throat. “Now that I have slain you,” Barlow screamed while turning to whip his blade across another man’s eyes, “I will find your mother and sister, and I will diddle them both! Diddle-dee-dee, diddle-dee-doo, I just might bugger you, too!”

  A man putting fire to the touchhole on one of Loon’s swivel guns, in hopes of blowing the marksmen above to hell, took a musket shot to the head. He fell across his weapon, and the damned gun swung wildly and thundered. Spider dove to the deck as grapeshot riddled the chests and backs of men around him.

  Spider rose as Barlow stabbed another foe, this time through the heart, and laughed like a maniac. His mad, foul, singsong banter continued as the currents of the pitched battle mercifully forced Barlow and Spider away from one another. Spider had never seen anyone take such joy in killing, and it made him feel a bit sick inside.

  He had no time to ponder such things, though. Spider jumped back to avoid a cutlass slash, then stabbed the man who had tried to kill him. Meanwhile, he thought he heard Hob shouting.

  Spider looked in the direction he thought had produced that voice, but all he saw was a stranger’s face. Spider spat on that face before stabbing the body below it. Then he heard Hob again.

  “Plymouth Dream!”

  Spider spun toward the sound. It was Hob, indeed, with fire in his eyes, a pistol in each hand and blue ribbons on each arm, leaping across the rails and landing on the enemy deck.

  Spider cursed. “I told you to hide below, Hob!” But if the boy heard him, he showed no sign, and then a thick, bright, fiery orange flash nearby beat a
ll of Spider’s senses into submission. He fell to his knees and wondered what exactly the hell was going on.

  Hob moved on, and Spider lost track of him as enemy crewmen rushed him. Spider desperately wished to be somewhere else, but that did not happen, so he jumped up and slashed and stabbed, kicked and slashed, stabbed and kicked.

  It seemed the tumult would never end, and Spider watched man after man fall dead while the deck lurched maniacally under his feet. A frightened chicken flapped wildly and fell from the larboard rail, and the target vessel must have had swine aboard, because Spider could hear the animals grunting in fear below in the hold.

  The fight raged on, with smoke and ripped sails and blood flying, and all the anger Spider had tried to conceal since Ezra’s death slowly swelled up in him, until he swung his rusty blade with what felt like demonic force and wished every man he hacked was his friend’s killer. He had fought many times before, but he’d never slaughtered like this. He both hated it and found it freeing.

  A flash of green-and-yellow plumage flashed in front of Spider’s face—a cockatiel or parrot, he could not be sure—and he lashed at it with both swords. An explosion of feathers and blood erupted. God, how Spider hated those damned birds.

  Somewhere along the line, after a wicked blow to the head, Spider decided he’d already died and gone to hell and that this madness would just go on forever, and ever, and ever.

  Eventually, though, the eternity of battle gave way to Barlow’s booming voice. “The bitch is ours, Dreamers! We’ve won!”

  Spider found himself bloodied and sweat-soaked, but finally with no one standing in front of him to fight. The other men nearby wore blue armbands and familiar, weary faces, while a few dozen living strangers knelt on the bloody deck with their hands laced atop their heads in submission.

  “Thank you, Lord,” Spider muttered. “Thank you, thank you.”

  “Well done, well done, lads!” Barlow twirled his cane and brandished a pistol. “Victory and spoils are ours, gents!”

  Spider sank onto his ass and covered his face with both hands. His shirt and breeches bore the rips and tears of enemy blades, and his arms and hands had more than a few scrapes. He alternatively praised Jesus for preserving him and begged Jesus to forgive him, then noticed a few others doing the same. One of those was Weatherall, who held his right hand over a viciously bleeding gash on his thigh, but who otherwise seemed to be all right. Weatherall uttered a prayer Spider could barely hear, but he heard enough to know it was an echo of his own.

  Spider’s heart danced when he saw Hob, alive and well. The boy stepped toward the rail and flung something out upon the waters, and Spider’s throat seized up as though in irons when he realized the boy had tossed someone’s arm into the deep.

  Spider prayed that Hob would not become just another pirate on the account and wondered if God listened to a pirate’s prayers.

  Barlow laughed like a madman and spun about slowly. “It is our day, gents! Our day!”

  Then Barlow’s eyes went wide. “Is that the captain?” Barlow pointed his sword at a scrawny, long-haired man being dragged toward him by two Dream crewmen.

  “Aye, I am Captain Joshua Horncastle, commander of the Loon, and I want to know what the bloody hell . . .”

  Barlow, glaring wildly, pulled a pistol from his belt and stuck the barrel into Horncastle’s mouth. Barlow pulled the trigger, a rain of gore flew in the wind, and the man fell dead onto the deck. “Enough of your goddamned nonsense,” Barlow said. Then the captain laughed again.

  “Overboard with him,” Barlow yelled, “and with the rest of his cursed lot, alive or dead, unless they are useful. Addy!”

  Addison rushed to Barlow’s side. “Aye, sir.”

  “Get in the cabin and down below and discover what we’ve fucking won, aside from this fine vessel. And have someone gather our own dead, so we can treat them decently.”

  “Aye, Cap’n.”

  Barlow then turned his attention aloft. “Peg! What goddamned news? Is our escort from the Royal Navy skulking about?”

  “Nothing else out there, Cap’n!” Peg seemed enraptured to Spider’s eyes despite the fact that a cannonball or something had removed more than half of his wooden leg. He sat upon a yardarm over on Plymouth Dream, the broken hunk of wood dangling beneath him next to his good leg.

  “Ha!” Barlow spun in triumph. “Bless us, I say! The devil may already own our souls, but we, blessed above all other mortals, live another day to fight and love and count our fucking blessings! We are the most free of men, ruling all within range of our guns and our blades! Let any fool who might stand in defiance of us bend over for the devil’s buggery, for we are masters of our own fates!”

  Weatherall handed the captain the stem of his cane, and Barlow wiped his slender blade on a dead man’s chest, then locked the sword back into its housing.

  “Good show, John Weatherall. You’re a man, you are. Glad to have you aboard. Now go see that idiot Boddings about your wounded leg, and let us all hope he is a better fucking surgeon than he is a fucking cook.”

  Weatherall departed, and the captain addressed Spider. “You fight like a man who has done it a few times, Spider John, that slash on your leg be damned. You are earning your keep. Now go see Boddings, then get up top, part these vessels, fix what needs fixed,” he said. “Peg’s fucking broken leg can wait until the important work is done. Grab a couple of sure hands to help you up top. And Hob! Where are you, little cock? Grab some buckets and start filling them with guns. Gather up the swords, too, boy. Anyone besides Addy or myself holding a weapon had best turn it in now, or get shot in the balls.”

  Addison’s voice lifted over the crowd. “Cap’n, I do not ken what treasures await us below, but surely there is none so fine as this.”

  Addison stood in front of the aft cabin, grinning, with his right hand clamped on the arm of a stunningly beautiful black woman. She wore a gray muslin shirt, untucked, and a dark skirt that fell to her knees. Her sleeves were rolled high on slender, yet well-muscled, arms, and her feet were bare. Her wide eyes, framed by long, dark curls, flashed white defiance at Barlow.

  Spider, like all the other crewmen, stood and gawked. The captain, looking perplexed for once, stammered something inaudible.

  “She was hiding in the cabin, Cap’n,” Addison said. “Bit of sport for the former commander of this brig, I dare say.”

  Spider figured her age to be around fifteen, maybe older, maybe younger.

  “I am Captain Horncastle’s wife,” the woman said, without parting her clenched white teeth. Her accent was born on some island somewhere, no doubt, but Spider could not place it.

  “Unfortunate, that,” Addison said, pointing to the captain’s remains being carted toward the rail.

  Her mouth fell open, and her lower jaw shook. Then she grabbed a knife from Addison’s belt and slashed at his neck.

  Addison was taken by surprise, but he was still able to step back and raise an arm in defense. A wicked sweep that might have cut his throat sliced some skin from his left forearm instead. The woman spun with the force of her blow, and Addison drove a fist into the back of her skull. She fell hard, and the dirk slid across the bloody deck.

  “Bloody bitch!” Addison drew his blade and stepped toward the woman.

  “No,” Barlow said.

  Addison stopped and stared at the captain. “No?”

  “No.”

  Barlow stepped toward the woman. His dark eyes, normally hard as glass, were soft, and he ran a hand slowly through his dark beard. “What is your name, girl?”

  “May,” she answered, propping herself up on an elbow. Blood from the deck clung to her shirt.

  “You have spirit, girl,” Barlow said. “That bastard ought not have brought you out here. I am glad I shot him, I dare say.”

  May’s eyes widened, but she said nothing.

  “If you wish,” Barlow continued, “you may join my crew. No man aboard will touch you.”

  That brought
some jeers from the men.

  “No man aboard, I say!” Barlow, back to his familiar bellowing form, spun, swinging his cane hard and forcing Spider and a couple of other men to jump backward to avoid a thwack. After a tense pause, the captain turned back to address the girl, his demeanor once more soft as a kitten’s.

  “What do you say, lass? Will you sign the articles and join my crew, with equal share in all so long as you pull your weight and abide by our laws?”

  May rose slowly, her lip quivering and her eyes lowered. Then she dove forward, hard, toward a spot below Dobbin’s feet. Spider caught sight of a flintlock pistol there, and May snatched it. She rolled quickly, got to her feet, and strode toward Barlow before anyone in the stunned crowd could react.

  She put the barrel against Barlow’s forehead and fired.

  Nothing happened. The pistol had already fired its lone shot and had been cast aside by its previous wielder.

  May glared at Barlow, who returned her gaze with a rather sad expression. “Spirit ye have, for certain,” he said quietly. Then he turned and walked away. “Addy, bind her well and find her a spot in Dream’s forecastle. Set guards on her. Then get back to assessing the plunder. Men! Elect three, per the articles, to help with the count and see none are cheated.”

  Barlow returned to Plymouth Dream without looking back.

  Addison, surprised and pissed, nonetheless complied.

  Spider handed his sword to Hob—and suddenly felt very exposed—then turned away and cringed. The girl’s courage and determination moved him greatly, and it reminded him again of the grim duty he needed to perform on Ezra’s behalf. In a way, he envied her, for she had no need to mask her hatred. She knew who had killed her husband, and she had nothing to gain by hiding her feelings. Spider, on the other hand, had to swallow his anger and move about a vessel full of suspects. He looked about at the carnage on Loon’s deck. He would create some carnage of his own when the time came for his bloody vengeance.

  That revenge had just become less likely, though, for Spider knew what would come next. Barlow had won a new vessel for his brigand fleet, and he would have to assign a prize crew. That meant dividing Dream’s crew, and that meant Ezra’s killer might go aboard one vessel while Spider was on the other. Both ships were damaged, and both would likely need a carpenter’s touch, but dividing his investigative efforts would be a huge hurdle.