Blood and Oak- Wolves Will Eat

by Garrett Bettencourt

  The remains of Eric Long lay under a sheet of canvas, the shortest body in a row of seven. Before the battle, this was the crew deck—intended for men to sleep in hammocks or share supper with their messmates. Now, it was a morgue. A small, pale hand stuck out from under the sheet. As John wandered the dark halls of his mind, he inhaled the strangely sweet stench of death.

  “Mr. Sullivan, heed my advice,” says Grace Auldon. She urges him to go home to Ireland, and forget the Barbary Coast. “Go, and don’t ever come back.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you do, revenge will lure you into the fire.”

  The battle above decks was finding a lull, and the ship barely creaked on the calm water. In the silence, words from the past blared in John’s mind like a bugle. Ever since the day the pirates took everything from him, he believed his only goal was the safe return of his family. To save the lost. To claim justice. He could no longer shut out the truth.

  Dominique pokes a finger in John’s chest. “Here you are again, doing what you always do. Scheming, smuggling, gambling, fighting—always for me, you say. Or my brother. Or Melly. Or Ethan. Or Katie. But it’s for you—only for you—because you love the chaos. All you’ll do is stir up more trouble, and we’ll pay the price.”

  The memory of Eric Long’s gap-tooth grin flashed through John’s mind. A boy of ten, eager for adventure, proud to have the duty of ringing the ship’s bell. A young keeper of time, looking up at John with admiration. With trust.

  “You see, John?” says Pierre Laffite in his French-Creole drawl. “You’d rather burn here with me than escape with your friends.”

  John recalled Long’s pride at becoming an acting midshipman. The boy was so hungry for adventure, so eager to prove himself. John saw a future filled with promise—and a chance to be a mentor.

  Declan looks at John with hard eyes. “One day, the men under your command are going to be counting on you…And on that day, as you look into their eyes and realize you can’t save them all, that’s when you’ll know what it is to be a leader. To be a man.”

  A decade on earth and back to the sea—that was all Eric Long ever got. All he would ever get. He’d thought John so clever. John had thought himself so clever. His heated shot had worked like a charm. And it killed that boy as surely as the pirates. John wanted to feel anger or despair. He’d even settle for guilt. But all he felt was numb.

  “Even if you find your mother and your sister, do you really think it will be the end of your war?” says a disheveled old man sitting in the boat. John doesn’t know it yet, but it’s his mortal enemy, Varlick Naim. “The Barbary Pirates built the crucible that forged Bloody Sully. A part of you must feel gratitude.”

  John’s hand coiled around the grip of his sword. “Yes, I am grateful.”

  A call filtered down from the spar deck. “Avast! Enemy ship dead astern!”

  The cry of the lookout sent a frenzy through the crew. John caught snippets of Ryland trying to rally them. A flush of heat spread from John’s chest to his limbs. He felt his heartbeat rising. His blood pulsed with energy. His eyes went to the hatch leading down to the orlop deck—and the powder magazine.

  “Men like us can never go back,” says Naim. “A wolf can never choose to be sheep. You may hang your sword over the mantle, Sullivan, but it will never be far from your reach…”

  John came to his feet. He pulled the pouch of qat from his coat pocket and pressed the last of the bitter leaves under his lip. “I am Bloody Sully. And I am grateful.”

  With a joyless smile, John walked toward the arsenal.

  ###

  “This is gone far enough,” said Quartermaster Wilson. “We’re down twenty men and shooting blank charges! We should escape in the boats. Let the bey have his damned ship.”

  Of all the officers Chester Ryland expected to turn on him, Wilson was among the last. Ryland long considered Wilson a friend and an ally against their mutual foe, Captain Bainbridge. Now, Ryland noticed Wilson had a hand on the hilt of his sword.

  “You forget yourself, Mr. Wilson,” Ryland said. “We will not abandon ship. If we try to run in the boats, the pirates will run us down. We make our stand on Independence.”

  “Aye, hear, hear,” proclaimed Old Man Meadows. A few of his mates echoed their agreement.

  Several pistol shots popped off from the enemy bow. Ryland glanced astern, where the Blooded Spear had closed to within fifty yards. In minutes, the corsairs would be flooding the decks of Independence.

  “I’m but a fisherman,” said a young man named Oliver—one of the slaves Sullivan had liberated. “We’re no match for a hundred pirates.” A few of the other slaves, still wearing their coarse canvas rags, agreed.

  “Look there, men!” cried Ryland. He pointed to the tranquil surface of the Mediterranean, shimmering in the sun like a chest of jewels. “There is your freedom, and it’s within your grasp!”

  A new voice clawed through the chatter like talons. “To Hell with freedom!”

  The crew looked toward the quarterdeck hatch. John Sullivan stalked up the steps with a canvas bundle over his shoulder. Like a Visigoth throwing down a challenge at the gates of Rome, he dropped it on the deck. Sullivan’s scowl roamed the crew. When the stare came to Ryland, it turned his blood to ice. It was the face of John Sullivan, but a primal creature looked through those eyes. As if he were a man possessed.

  “To Hell with surrender,” Sullivan repeated. “To Hell with you lot of craven dogs.”

  The men around the deck looked more shocked than insulted.

  A sailor half a foot taller than Sullivan glared back. “Who are you calling craven?”

  “You!” Sullivan rasped, taking predatory steps toward the man. The sailor’s expression sobered, and he backed off a step. “There’s an old saying on the Barbary Coast. ‘He who acts like sheep, the wolves will eat.’”

  The din of jeering pirates got louder as the Blooded Spear closed in. Hamit’s crew were waving scimitars and firing shots to taunt their enemy. Their voices sounded hungry for slaughter. Sullivan tilted an ear toward the murderous raiders as if he’d never heard such harmony.

  “Listen,” said Sullivan. “Can you hear them? Those are the wolves. And all of you…” Sullivan’s finger moved like a knife drawn across each man’s throat. “…You’re their meat.”

  “Christ, Sullivan!” said Wilson. “You’re out of your head! And you’re the reason we’re in this mess.”

  “You’re right.” Sullivan’s eyes were crazed as he looked at Wilson. “I came to this festering cesspit of a coast for one reason. Because a bunch of Turk savages killed my kin. They killed our brothers on the Allegheny. They killed Eric Long. And they’re not done.”

  The pirates’ jeers organized into chants. Low, guttural words, repeated over and over. A drumbeat of bloodlust. Ryland stared at Sullivan, unable to decide if he were rallying the men, or simply going mad. Perhaps it was both.

  “The pirates are coming for the kill,” Sullivan continued. “They want to tear out your guts. And you lot, you want to flee. Or surrender. Because you want to live. Let me tell you what I want.”

  Nearly every man aboard was transfixed by Sullivan’s words. As if they were all hovering at the edge of a maelstrom, moments before the plunge, enthralled by the fevered rant of a mad prophet. The pirate chants were the chorus of a nightmare opera.

  “I want to kill every last Barbary fucker that drags his carcass onto my ship. I want them to burn.”

  All around the deck, dark stares were forming like storm clouds.

  “I want them to drown. I want them to rot. I want them to scream and wail and beg.”

  A round of menacing cheers circulated the deck. The entire mood shifted. Sullivan had tapped into something primal. Something dangerous. Something not fit for civilization. He drew his rapier, the silver basketwork and gold pommel reflecting the red sun. “If you want what I want, pick up your weapons. If not, get the fuck off my ship.”

  Cutlasses, d
aggers, and hatchets scraped as men pulled them from their belts.

  Sullivan’s eyes slipped closed as if he were reciting the last exquisite line of a poem. “I. Want. Blood.”

  Gun hammers clicked. Boots ground against the deck. From somewhere in the crowd, a single voice began to chant.

  “Blood-y… Sull-y.”

  Other men joined in. The Independence crew began a savage chorus of their own.

  “Blood-y…Sull-y.”

  Buford banged the butt of his rifle on the deck. Every man with a musket did the same, adding a drumbeat to the chant. Quartermaster Wilson looked around as though surrounded by lunatics.

  “Blood-y…Sull-y.”

  The Barbary thugs were louder than ever. But the American crew no longer heard them. It was as if they were a single creature now, with Sullivan their beating heart. He moved among them like a barbarian king who considered savagery his due.

  Ryland knew the man leading this incantation of the damned. He’d seen him before, drenched in blood on the deck of a Barbary gunboat.

  “Blood-y…Sull-y.”

  “Blood-y…Sull-y.”

  “Blood-y…Sull-y.”

  Chapter 65

  Kaitlin’s Cutter

  The Mediterranean Sea

  Wednesday, September 14th, 1803

  Day 5, Afternoon

  Seagulls wheeled and cried overhead. The hot afternoon sun was bright on the open Mediterranean water. The gaff sail of the cutter snapped under a stiff wind. Kaitlin Sullivan watched the Carthaginian shore recede as the boat sprang over the waves. Varlick Naim sat at the tiller, eyes squinting toward the horizon as if he were looking for nothing more sinister than a good fishing spot. But as Kaitlin looked down at the cords of rope binding her hands, she understood the terrible reality.

  The shock of watching Kelham and the Marines die—murdered as they fought to protect her—reduced her to pitiful sobbing for the first hour of the journey. Naim occasionally looked at her as she cried, but said nothing. As much as it incensed Kaitlin to weep in front of the malevolent man, she couldn’t help it. But now, her tears had finally dried.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about Melisande. Would the brave warrior woman make it back to Independence? Would Johnny rescue Melisande before she died from thirst or loss of blood? In her mind, Kaitlin kept hearing the sickening sound of Naim’s sword twisting in Melisande’s shoulder. A sound like a butcher cutting into mutton.

  With her tears dry for the moment, Kaitlin looked over at her captor. Over the last few days, she’d begun to see the dreaded “Chronicler of Constantinople” in a new light. Having read his private thoughts, evaded him in the Lake Fort, and faced him at Carthage, the image of a crossbow-wielding monster gave way to something else—a man. A man who was tired. Aged. Tormented. Murderer though he was, a part of her pitied him.

  “It’s not too late,” Kaitlin blurted out.

  Naim gave a wry smile, but his eyes remained on the horizon. “For whom, I wonder? Your guild of the Silver Hand? Your slain Marines? Your brother?”

  “For you.”

  “For me, the hour is latest of all.”

  “I read your journals.” Kaitlin sat up, tucking her bound feet beneath her. “I know you still have a wife. A daughter.”

  Naim pressed his tongue into his cheek. “Ah, yes, the secret passage Bosun Toule told me about. I must give you credit Red Hart—hiding under my very nose. Few of my enemies have achieved that feat. If you read my chronicles, then you also know my wife and daughter disowned me. They fled into hiding. Even if I found them, they would not have me back.”

  “Really?” She pointed to a small wooden horse poking out of a satchel at Naim’s belt. Much of it was blackened by fire. There was a splotch of blood on the head. “Then how did you get that?”

  The Chronicler’s eyes flashed to his belt. He stuffed the child’s toy back into the bag.

  “It belonged to Ilyas, didn’t it? You tried to burn it when he ran away. But you pulled it out of the fire and burned your hand. You wrote that you left the horse with your wife. So if you don’t know where she is, how could you have it now?”

  Naim gave her a surprisingly warm smile. It was a rare expression for him, and it revealed how handsome he was for a man of advanced years. What a kind person he might have been in another life. “Very wise strategy to learn the weaknesses of your foes. To study them and their environs before you strike. Most men believe the keys to victory are prowess in battle, or noble rank, or boundless knowledge. But in the end, the key to undoing any enemy lies in the rarest virtue: patience. A virtue you possess in abundance, Red Hart. Much more than your brother.” His eyes became distant, as if he were lost in a fascinating thought. “A pity. In another life, I would have taken you for my protégé. What a chronicler you would have made.”

  “Why, so I could end up like you? You’ve bathed your hands in so much blood, you can’t see you’re throwing away the last good thing in your life. You gave up everything for your sultans. Was it worth it?”

  A gust of wind rippled through Naim’s hair. He ran a hand down his salt-and-pepper beard. His brows drew together. “I could ask the same of you, Red Hart. Truly, the carnage your brother leaves in his wake is plain for all to see. But what of the quiet thief? She walks unseen and unknown, the invisible hand stirring the chaos, sowing the seeds of ruin. What of her part in all this bloodshed?”

  A pang of guilt sickened Kaitlin. She looked away from Naim, tucking her bound hands and feet closer.

  “After all,” Naim went on, “I would never have believed your brother’s ruse had you not planted evidence in Corbaci Ildemir’s office. Many soldiers would be alive today but for your actions. And then there were your Marines and the poor dunce. If only you could have resisted this.” He slipped Nora’s green vellum journal from a pocket and held it up.

  Kaitlin’s brows quivered as she looked at the last vestige of her mother. There was no denying her pursuit of the journal had been the death of Kelham, Anderson, Poole, and Miller. Even so, her next words were a denial. “I had no choice! It’s all I had left of her, and you stole it.”

  “Of course. Your actions require no defense in this boat. Something you cherished was taken from you, and recompense was due.” Naim smiled like a musician listening to his own masterwork. “I understand all too well.”

  Kaitlin hung her head. After all, was he wrong? Hadn’t she unleashed as much destruction as any Ottoman assassin? As any Navy sailor? Her anger flashed hot. No! she thought. He had no right to that journal. It was him doing the killing, not her.

  “It’s true, Varlick. I’m responsible for the things I’ve done. But none of that can compare to your cruelty. I sought to rescue my family. To recover my mother’s words. Words meant for me and Johnny. I never wanted revenge. Not on you or your son or even the pirates. I still don’t.”

  Naim’s eyes flicked from the horizon to Kaitlin.

  “Despite all you’ve done to my family and me, despite all the innocent people you’ve hurt, even despite you killing my Mam…and Rune…” at the last word, tears welled in Kaitlin’s eyes, but she wouldn’t let them fall. “I don’t hate you. I refuse to hate you. I refuse to let your misery destroy who I am. You can tie me up, torture my brother, threaten my friends, and I’ll do whatever it takes to stop you. If I have to kill you to save my brother, I will. But I won’t become you.”

  There was that warm smile again. Naim spoke almost like a proud father. “You remind me of a boy I once knew, starving alongside his mother on the streets of Istanbul. Like you, he was brave and filled with faith.”

  “Hmph!” Kaitlin scoffed. “I can only imagine what you did to him.”

  “No need, Red Hart.” Naim’s expression was black as midnight. “I killed him as surely as I’m going to kill John Sullivan.”

  Chapter 66

  The Independence

  On the Channel

  Wednesday, September 14th, 1803

  Day 5, Afternoon

&
nbsp; Grappling hooks flew over the starboard rail. The screaming of the pirates thrummed in the air. Gabriel Sawyer huddled against the starboard bulwark between two guns. He was clutching a four-foot wooden shaft with a rocket mounted on the end, alongside forty other sailors and Marines. The crew had converted useless signal rockets into deadly projectiles by lashing weapons to the tips. They used bayonets, daggers, or old swords—most of them tarnished, broken, or dull—left behind by the former owners of the ship. They kept behind the bulwarks, hiding the rockets until the right moment. Through the gunports, Sawyer could see the port side of the Blooded Spear closing in as the pirates hauled on the grapple lines.

  Sullivan was crouching near the gap in the rail at the gangway, peering around at the enemy. He roared over the din of yelling pirates, “Hold fast, men! Wait for my order. Remember what it is we want.”

  A mutter of bloodlust rippled down the line. The starboard side of Independence was nearing the port side of Blooded Spear. Soon, the two hulls would collide, and the pirates would swarm over the rails.

  “Light fuses!”

  Sawyer’s hands shook as he raised his linstock and blew on the slow-burning match. It flared orange, and he touched it to a fuse, which burst into a fountain of sparks. All over the ship, fuses hissed to life, spitting sour smoke. Sawyer resisted the urge to fling the lit ordinance into the sea, terrified of being blown up. Sullivan had to give the order. Why wouldn’t he give the order?

  The two hulls collided, and the pirates climbed the rails.

  “Present!” cried Sullivan.

  Along the starboard side of the Independence, crewmen stood up and presented a row of jagged metal teeth. Sawyer aimed his own—tipped with the broken point of a poleaxe—straight at a roaring ogre on the other ship. The mass of pirates climbing over their rails returned looks of sudden shock.

  Sullivan bellowed, “We want blood!”

  The entire crew roared like barbarians charging down a hill. They planted their feet for balance, holding the rocket-tipped spears level. Many of the pirates tried to retreat. Some just screamed louder and leaped across the gap between ships. The first rocket screamed through the air like a banshee, spearing a leaping pirate in the chest. Two more launched, then four, then all thirty.