by Steve Goble
Spider pushed his way through the men crowding around Hob and the others. After several seconds of shoving and pushing, he snagged two pistols, some shot, powder and wadding, and his rusty sword on its pitiful rope cord.
“’Luck in battle, Spider John,” Hob said.
“I hope you take a sword through the eye,” said Peter Tellam.
“I hope you live long enough that I might kill you m’self,” Spider told Tellam. Then he pushed his way out of the crowd and set upon loading his guns. All around him, men did the same, and the tension mounted.
“She gains,” someone said. Spider looked up. Sure enough, the frigate was making good headway on the slower Viper. She rode the wind like an avenging angel, and everyone saw it.
There was no real hope of outmaneuvering the king’s ship. The frigate could sail far closer to the wind than their converted whaler. Viper was vastly, ridiculously outgunned as well.
It would be a bloodbath, unless Addison surrendered.
Spider noted the man’s wide eyes, the way his tongue smacked at his dry lips, and the way his hands fidgeted and his body paced the deck.
Surrender was not in the offing.
Addison grumbled. “Goddamn all English shipwrights,” he said.
Spider finished his preparations and shot a glance at Hob. “You get the hell out of sight, Hob. This is going to be bloody work.”
“I ain’t no coward!” The lad tucked a pistol into his own belt for emphasis, then spun away.
“Damn it,” Spider said.
“We shall need more powder and balls, lads!” Addison had mounted the poop deck. “Stern chaser first, boys! And the ribbons, boys, the blue ribbons! It will be a fracas, I dare say!”
Discipline was not a word that might have described Viper’s crew most days, but when it came to battle everyone knew his role. Spider’s job in a fight was to prepare for close combat, either to repel boarders or charge across the enemy’s rail, unless Viper had been hulled or otherwise needed immediate repairs. He took his place and watched the frigate’s steady, tireless advance. He could just see faces now, peering back at him from the king’s vessel.
Spider kissed Em’s pendant, and prayed, as he moved among the men. Some muttered quietly, to God or Satan. Others stared blankly. Still others stared wide-eyed, swung swords restlessly, and fidgeted with their guns. They were nervous, and they had every reason to be.
The frigate likely mounted twenty-eight guns at least, and those guns would be full of grape and chain to tear bloody shreds out of Viper’s crew and rigging. She would not be satisfied with sinking Viper; indeed, she would not dare, for there was something aboard the pirate vessel that the frigate’s captain desperately sought.
“To arms, lads, and let us cut a fucking gory path to glory!” That was Tellam, breathing hard already, eyes blazing, nostrils flaring. “Death to tyrants!” He bore a sword in his right hand and a pistol in his left.
In seeming answer to Tellam’s bellows, ragged musket fire thundered from the frigate. Tellam’s tattoos gleamed darkly with sweat, and his eyes shone with fury. Spider feared that if the enemy did not close quickly enough, battle-mad Tellam might start killing his own mates.
“Are you ready, Spider?” Hob had suddenly appeared next to him, brandishing a sword and nearly slashing Spider’s chest. Only the carpenter’s quick step back saved him from harm.
“For the love of God, be careful, you fool! You are supposed to cut them with that thing, not me!”
The boy already had an identifying blue ribbon tied to his arm and held one out to Spider. Spider held his arm out, and Hob deftly tied the ribbon on.
“Keep low, if you won’t keep hid,” Spider said. “Don’t give them much of a target, and stay on the move until it is done!”
“Right, Spider, I will.”
Spider sighed. The lad was far too eager for this fight.
Addison called out: “Fire stern chaser!” The rear-mounted swivel gun belched out seconds later. Spider doubted it had hit the frigate. It most likely was a ranging shot.
“Reload, smartly, lads! Smartly!”
Spider glanced about. All seemed in order for a ship heading into battle. Nothing seemed amiss.
“Elijah! Goddamn you, there’s a tuck needed!” That was Addison, pointing into the rigging where a topsail had partially ripped from its mizzenmast spar, possibly the result of a lucky musket shot from the frigate. It was flapping and threatening to carry away more sail—and the last thing Viper could afford now was to lose even a square inch of canvas.
Elijah had that post, but Elijah was not aloft. Spider’s gaze pierced the rigging, darting along every yardarm and ratline, but saw no sign of Elijah.
“I will fix it,” Peg growled, swinging across from the mainmast to the mizzenmast.
Spider furrowed his brows. Where was Elijah? Had he gone below to hide out until the battle was done, when he could present the frigate’s captain with whatever the hell it was that was at the heart of all this? Was Elijah the spy? Was he the killer?
The stern chaser thundered again, and this time an answering salvo roared from the frigate, and grape and chain shot whistled through the air, chewing up wood and men. At least four men fell dead. Spider saw the naval ship drawing closer, coming about to bring more guns to bear so she could rip up Viper’s crew and sail, confident that she could resume her former tack and make up any lost ground.
Red Viper was doomed.
An explosion rang in Spider’s ears, and a bright flash erupted from the cargo hold. It was as if a thundercloud had dropped right out of the sky and onto his head. The searing flash blinded Spider a moment, and his ears felt heavy and full of mud. He fell, skinning his nose against the deck. The acrid tang of burnt powder filled his nostrils, and a billowing ghost of black smoke rose from the hatch.
That blast had not been the result of cannon fire from the frigate, Spider knew. Something down there had exploded. It had to have been a powder keg, a bloody powder keg set off somewhere below. Sabotage.
On an undisciplined ship like this, the culprit could have set his damned traps anytime he bloody well pleased, and all of Barlow’s little built-in cabinets meant there were dozens of places to hide the powder keg. The spy, the man who had stolen from Barlow whatever the hell it was the Royal Navy sought, had crippled the ship.
Spider rose, but another blast rumbled through the lower decks, shaking Viper and nearly causing him to fall again.
“Carpenter!” Addison roared. “Get ye ass below and fix what ye can, goddamn it! We’re listing! Pump crews, get ye below!”
Spider yelled a reply. He was already headed to the hold, not to fix anything, but because Ezra’s killer likely was hiding below.
He would be blind down there. Any lights below would have been extinguished at the first sign of battle, for you could not have open flames unattended in a ship-to-ship affair, and all hands were needed above. Roiling smoke from the fire below added weight to the darkness, and Spider was choking on the hot air. He reminded himself that Ezra’s killer was down there, somewhere, and clenched his knife between his teeth before descending. The twin pistols in his belt comforted him, as did the sword across his back.
A volley of grape shredded its way across Viper’s deck, shearing splinters from the mast and skin from crewmen in a sudden rain that fell on Spider during his descent.
Spider heard Addison shout, “Bloody hell!” Someone responded: “I said rudder’s gone, Cap’n!”
Spider could feel Viper growing sluggish. Taking on water, he thought. We will not outrun the frigate. We’re all out of miracles, and undeserving of them, by any account.
Once he reached the bottom of the ladder, Spider crouched below the rising smoke and took advantage of the thin sunlight that fought through the hatch above him. Viper had heeled over mightily, and the deck tilted at a frightening angle. Trunks in the crew hold had tipped and burst, blankets hung like draperies from hammocks, and Weatherall’s fiddle had somehow been shatter
ed in the violence.
Four men followed him down. He stepped aside. A hatchway led farther below, toward the source of the gray-and-black snake of smoke and toward the holes that now were letting the sea pour into Viper. There were pumps down there, too, and these men would go fight the water.
Spider knew their fight would be in vain, because he wasn’t going to waste time shoring up a busted hull while Ezra’s killer lurked in the darkness, waiting for the frigate to complete her capture.
Once the pump crew had gone deeper into the ship, Spider stepped toward the hatch to follow. A cough halted him. Someone was behind him, hiding.
Ezra’s killer, concealed in smoke and darkness.
Spider drew a gun and started to turn. “You filthy, murdering . . .”
His sentence halted there, snapped off like a life at the end of a hangman’s rope. He never saw the weapon that crashed against his skull. He spun and fell, hitting his forehead against the bulkhead and nearly tumbling into the hold below. His gun did drop below.
Despite the pain, despite the fear, his mind remained clear enough to know it was Ezra’s killer who had attacked him. The bastard had waited in the chaos and pounced like a scorpion fish springing from a coral reef.
Spider reached back with his right arm and grabbed the first bit of flesh his fingers found. He clawed into skin, his grasp mimicking a grappling hook, and yanked forward. He twisted, brought his adversary around hard, and then drove himself backward to pin his attacker against the bulkhead. The yawning hatch below their feet threatened to swallow them both. Spider heard his foe cry out in pain, and he redoubled his efforts to slam the bastard against the hard wood again. He still had a vise grip on the son of a bitch’s arm, and his fingers had partially shredded a bandage. One thin ray of light from the hatch poked through the swirling smoke and illuminated the exposed flesh, and Spider could make out a dark patch against the man’s skin. It was only part of a pattern, but it was a familiar pattern.
He had seen it every day, for years, on the arm of his best friend.
Every man who had served aboard the ill-fated Trusty, which had exploded and left few survivors, bore that tattoo. Ezra Coombs had borne it—and so had his killer.
“He recognized you,” Spider said, coughing. He slammed himself backward once again, knocking wind from his opponent, as Viper’s tilt grew more outrageous. Spider growled. “You were here to steal the cap’n’s . . . thing, for the navy, and Ezra knew you from Trusty, knew you were Royal Navy.”
“Aye,” the man said, breathlessly, and Spider tried in vain to identify the voice as the murderer’s fingers raked at Spider’s eyes.
“You bloody son of a bitch.”
“I did not want to kill him,” the man said. Spider still could not recognize the voice, weakened as it was by heavy gasps and a fog of pain. Then the man’s fingers hooked Spider’s mouth and spun him around quickly. Spider bit down as hard as he could and tasted blood, but he could not make out the man’s face before his own nose was grinding into the bulkhead.
Next, Spider found himself plummeting through the hatch. He caught himself, his arms spread wide and holding his head and shoulders above the hatch, but the blindness of pain and a fresh billowing of smoke closed off all sight. He choked, coughed, and winced—and heard Ezra’s killer get away. He heard boots on the ladder rungs and noted how the man’s passage momentarily killed the sunlight that tried to pierce the smoke.
Spider, grimacing in pain, pulled himself out of the hatch. Viper’s tilt made that more difficult. “I am going to get that son of a bitch, whoever the hell he is, God help me or damn me,” he said.
Shouts and gun blasts and the whir of shots through the air brought him back to reality. He headed toward the grotesquely angled ladder. Spider was climbing out of one hell and into another.
27
Spider checked that his remaining gun was still tucked into his belt, then emerged into the chaos above. He took two steps and tripped over Peg. The man’s good leg was a tattered red mess, and his chest was open to the sky. His eyes were open, but they saw nothing. The back of his head had splashed a pool of red against the deck when he’d fallen from the trees.
Spider gulped, then moved on. Shreds of sail, cut to ribbon by cannon fire, flapped uselessly, and Red Viper’s deck was tilted bow-upward and listing to starboard with the heavy water gathering below.
“Blast that bastard!” Addison was red with anger, waving Barlow’s cane wildly while gripping a pistol in his other hand. “Dowd! You stupid, cowardly, bloody . . .” He stopped, as if he was unable to conjure up an epithet foul enough to suit him.
Spider spotted Hob at the larboard rail with weapons in hand. He sprang to the boy’s side.
“What did Dowd do, Hob?”
“He ran,” Hob said. “Ain’t gonna fight.”
“A wise choice on his part,” Spider growled, watching the frigate pull up alongside, mere yards away. Her gun ports were wide open, like the maws of lions, ready for a tremendous broadside. Black coils still rose like pipe smoke from the guns’ last salvo. He could hear the calm orders of the gun crew leaders, the cannonballs clunking into place.
Spider scanned Viper’s deck and the rigging, looking for someone with a torn bandage on his arm, but had no luck.
“Dowd can barely navigate,” Hob said.
“His odds of finding land are better than his odds of staying afloat if he stays here,” Spider answered. He almost wished he were on Loon right now—but Ezra’s killer was here.
On Viper’s deck, nearly decimated gun crews worked furiously to ram home powder and balls; there were not enough men to handle all of Viper’s guns. Those men still alive had to work over the corpses of their crewmates.
“Pour on the fire, Vipers!” Addison cast his hat into the air. “We live or we die today, not in an English prison! Not on a rope!”
The frigate closed in at a shockingly fast clip. Spider now could see the very efficient work of the frigate’s gun crews and the officers behind them calculating the rise and fall of the ship.
The Englishmen could hardly miss at this range, Spider thought, yet their crews would work in an orderly and efficient manner just the same. Death angels would feast.
“Come,” Spider said, grabbing Hob’s shirt and pulling him away from the rail. “We can’t stay for this.”
“I am not a coward!”
“I know!” Spider yanked Hob across the bloody deck to the starboard side as quickly as he could, with the deck’s tilt working in their favor, then shoved him down and dove beside him. He’d picked a spot behind a ship’s boat for cover. He heard the shouted order to fire, and the frigate’s guns roared in a ragged symphony of thunder. Grape and chain shot sliced through rope and sail and bodies; men fell and died as splintered wood and blood rained across Viper’s deck. Splinters showered Spider and Hob, and a chicken flapping and squawking in fright exploded on the hill of the inverted boat that shielded them. “Jesus,” Hob exclaimed as feathers and blood stuck to his face.
The mizzen boom shattered, and a portion of the sail hung over the rail and dipped into the sea. A black gunpowder cloud drifted slowly across it all.
The frigate’s salvo spent, Spider risked a quick look around and spat a chicken feather from his mouth. He saw only chaos and death. He did not see a murderer with a torn bandage and a tattoo.
A hale of musket fire came next, and then grappling hooks flew from the frigate, finding purchase on the rail. Another order rang out: “Heave!”
“Charge, Vipers!” Addison threw aside his cane, drew a second pistol, then ran uphill across the poop deck, a gun in each hand. “No nooses for us!”
The captain leapt to the rail and fired both pistols into the frigate’s boarding party. He prepared to jump aboard the frigate, but a pair of slender black arms grabbed his belt from behind and pulled him back down to the deck. He landed on his back with a thump that winded him and stared up into the vengeful face of May.
She had someho
w freed herself from her bonds and had grabbed a knife. She knelt swiftly and ran the blade through Addison’s throat quickly and efficiently. A gush of blood flew upward and fell in red rain into Addison’s surprised, dying eyes.
May spat in the man’s face, rose swiftly, and turned to meet another pirate. She ducked under his sword stroke and plunged the knife into his crotch with a ferocity that made Spider wince. He could almost feel the pain himself.
Another Viper prepared to leap onto the frigate, only to be impaled upon a bayonet as a marine swung aboard Red Viper. The marine fired the weapon, and the man’s back erupted in a gusher of gore. The man’s corpse toppled overboard in a sticky, bloody heap.
None of the other Vipers tried to board the frigate. They hid by the rail, ready to fight when the navy came aboard, but they were not rushing to their ends. Musket fire flew over the gunwale, over their heads.
“Spider John.” The voice was from behind him. He turned. Peter Tellam crouched behind a chest, glaring, aiming his gun at Spider’s head. “You are supposed to be below, pumping water and fixing the hole.”
“It ain’t getting fixed.”
The next salvo of musket and pistol fire was followed by screaming English sailors. They poured over the rail, swords and guns in hand, as Viper’s defenders met them with steel and pistol shots to their bellies. Meanwhile, Spider and Tellam glared at one another. Spider hoped to see a ripped bandage on the man’s arm, but there was naught but scars and tattoos.
“Fuck the navy,” Tellam said, aiming his pistol toward the invaders and firing without ever taking his gaze off Spider. “We’re going to die today, Spider, or swing tomorrow. I’d rather kill you myself than let the king’s men do it.” He dropped the gun, drew his fine cutlass, and licked his lips.
Tellam had plagued him for weeks. Spider was going to make him pay.
“Well, then,” Spider said. He calmly drew his pistol and shot Tellam in the left knee, then tossed his expended gun away.