Chapter Nine #2
I didn’t actually enjoy the pillaging and commandeering aspects of the pirate life.
In all honestly, I wasn’t exactly made for such a pastime.
I had tried to learn sword fighting, but Hillier had given up on me after I’d nearly cut his arm off, and in my surprise and horror, I had hauled the weapon back and buried the point in the mast, so much that I couldn’t draw the blade out.
I had my dagger and could wield the weapon decently in hand-to-hand combat with one other person.
I didn’t think I’d do very well in a protracted battle.
Generally, I stuck close to Captain Martin, who could wield a sword better than most, and oftentimes we avoided bloodshed.
There had been one or two skirmishes on the way to Talamanca, but we’d easily subdued the smaller crews.
The ship on the horizon appeared bigger than those we had most recently encountered, and I worried we were taking on more than we could handle.
Then again, the Arrow was a sizeable frigate with a large crew. We had cannons, muskets, and swords. Our powers of intimidation were substantial.
That said, each time we approached another ship, I worried that all the things I’d read about pirate battles would prove true. I couldn’t help but think that so far, we’d been extremely lucky.
Like we usually did, we kept our decoy Dutch flag up until we were close enough to give chase to the other vessel, which didn’t take long as she was definitely crippled and not moving at a great pace.
“Raise the colours!” Hillier shouted, when we were in position and wanted her to know of our intensions.
The Arrow, in utmost advance and with her sails full, gained speedily on the French merchantman, the Eloise. There didn’t seem to be anyone on deck, which was quite strange, but perhaps they were hiding, knowing they were doomed.
“Fire over the bow!” Hillier commanded.
In a moment, there was a flash of fire and a boom that shook the Arrow as the canon discharged a warning shot.
We waited. No fire was returned, the Eloise eerily quiet.
Hillier came to stand with the captain and me.
“Shall we board her, sir? She must be abandoned. No one has responded to our approach.”
“Well…I suppose so. The men will want to. Perhaps there will be items aboard that we can use. Other than an obvious list to starboard, she doesn’t appear damaged. I wonder what happened.”
“As do I. We should be cautious, of course.”
“Come, Officer White,” the captain addressed me more formally than usual. “Get your jacket and put your bloody shoes on. For fuck’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you—”
But I didn’t wait to hear. I took off for the cabin and quick as I could, got myself put to rights so he’d be pleased with me.
I sometimes forgot I’d been promoted to officer and probably should remember my shoes.
But I’d got lazy whilst we were on Talamanca, and once back aboard, I became careless.
By the time I got back on deck, the Arrow was pulling alongside the Eloise and multiple crewmen were preparing to hitch the ships together.
“Toss the ropes!” Hillier shouted, as the men threw ropes attached to metal grappling hooks. “Prepare for trouble!”
But no trouble was had. The hooks made their connections, and the men hauled on the ropes to draw the ships together, as the wood of their hulls creaked and shuddered.
“Fasten the ropes! Keep us alongside!” Hillier shouted.
Once we were joined with the other ship, we could see the deck was empty and abandoned, which was suspicious, for where could they be? Were they hiding to save themselves or hiding to ambush us? Or had they abandoned ship?
“I don’t feel right about this,” I said, voicing my unease.
“Nonsense, White. She’s easy pickings, that’s all.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I trusted the captain’s and Hillier’s judgement. They were much more experienced than I.
“Get on her, then, and root out the crew!” Hillier shouted, giving Dinesh a nod before he went over the rails.
“Come on, Rooster.”
I gulped and nodded. “Aye, Captain.”
There was no way I was staying on the Arrow when almost everyone else had gone aboard the Eloise, so I scrambled over the rails behind him, keeping my gaze from the abyss between and gaining my feet on the Eloise’s deck.
“Where the fuck are the buggers?” Dinesh muttered as the boarding party spread out, swords drawn, pistols at the ready.
The captain held a finger to his lips, and we waited for any sign of life.
I pulled my dagger from its place in my belt and met the captain’s eye. He winked and gave me an encouraging smile, right before all hell broke loose.
There was a sudden cacophony from below decks as men appeared to materialize from the air, shouting and aiming pistols at us.
“No!” I yelled.
I saw one of our longtime crewmen shot in the chest. He went down, clutching his shirt.
“Get behind me. Now!” Dinesh yelled over the noise, pulling me behind him as he raised his sword.
The clang of steel and bursts of pistol fire filled my ears as the Arrow’s crew fought for their lives.
“A la victoire!” shouted the French merchants as they attacked with little skill but the desperation to survive.
“Attend! Attend!” Dinesh held up his hand. “On ne pas cherché la sangue!”
How did I not know the bastard could speak French?
“Abandoner! Abandoner tout suite!” he cried, fighting a rather stout fellow who already looked winded. These were merchants, not soldiers or vagabonds.
“Je vous traiterez bien!” Dinesh shouted.
“Non, tu es les rats! Victoire!”
I didn’t know how many of our men had fallen, and I didn’t want to contemplate who. We were surrounded and men would die if I didn’t do something.
As if he’d had the same thought, Dinesh shoved his opponent forward and glanced at me.
“This would be a good time to see about those powers of yours, Rooster.”
“Aye. If you can make sure I don’t die whilst I’m about it.”
“I’ll do my best, my love.”
“I know.”
The captain backed us up so that the rail was behind me and he in front. I splayed my hands apart and held to the wood, facing Dinesh’s strong back as I closed my eyes and called upon my magic:
“Bring me the fire and the flame,
O’er the ocean, in my name,
Give me the lightning and the storm,
From the heavens, let it be borne.”
I briefly wondered if I should continue. I could already feel the power rising within me, but this was no time to be careful.
“Smite those who threaten what’s mine.
They’ll not have anyone this time.
Let the sea and the flame rejoice.
Let the ocean and sky make the choice.”
Cries of terror and men yelling in two languages, then screams and mayhem even louder than before erupted. What if I made things worse? I had to trust I wouldn’t, and I couldn’t stop now.
Wind and rain battered me. My palms burned hot as the power gathered. I filled my mind with images of the men I wanted to protect—Dinesh, Hillier, Martinéz, Lahiri, the entire crew. I prayed the protection I could afford them would be enough to forestall a horrible end.
The noise of the wind, the scent of smoke and charring wood, the crack of broken timber, surrounded me. Something or someone crashed into me, and I was falling, tumbling, hitting a hard surface, and then everything went black.
I came out of nothingness to the sounds of frantic shouting from voices I recognised.
“Get the grappling hooks! Unfasten the ships! Now! Cut the lines, for fuck’s sake or we’ll be burnt to ashes!”
I tried to get up. I was sore and my arm was bent in a painful way.
I opened my eyes and discerned that I was back on the Arrow, thank God.
The French ship—the Eloise—was aflame. The swirl of lightning and black clouds obscured any sign of her doomed crew, but the Arrow was in peril.
And my magic was still churning around us.
I scrambled to a sitting position, my ears ringing, and raised my hands, focusing my energy into the swirling storm and somehow, somehow, settling and calming the forces at play with only my emotions and my mind.
I felt the energy dissipating, as if realizing that the magic wasn’t needed further, and with a strange whooshing sound, the conjuring was gone.
The Eloise still burned, and her crew lay dead on her deck in various stages of cremation. As I watched, the flames subsided as if the timber and the corpses they fed on had become wholly inedible.
The crew had regained their senses after being abruptly saved from attack, and scrambled to remove the last of the ropes that held the two ships together.
The Arrow and Eloise surged apart, creaking and rocking with their newfound freedom, the former a husk of herself—a floating coffin full of burnt corpses.
I would have felt bad, except that the Eloise had been a nasty trap, and I could still hear the ring of the shot that had killed our man. I sat by the rail, staring at my palms, which were red and raw. And then I heard a long note rising on the wind.
“Simon…” a melodic, familiar voice sang. One that usually visited me in my nightmares.
I squinted at the sky. But the sound wasn’t coming from above.
Strange that I could hear the notes over the cries of the crew, who frantically assessed the toll we’d taken.
I pulled myself up and peered over the rail at the rolling waves.
The song grew stronger in my head as I tried to see through the water. What was down there? What was calling to me? I felt an irresistible desire to find out.
“Simon Bartholomew White…” The seductive song pained me with its urgency.
I leaned farther. If I could simply…
“Simon!”
A hand grabbed my jacket and pulled me backwards.
I fell to my arse on the deck of the Arrow with enough force to knock the wind out of me. The song had vanished, and I gazed into the horrified face of Captain Martin.
“What the hell are you doing? You almost went over the fucking rail!” he shouted in a burst of anger. He rubbed a hand against his face. “Jesus, I don’t think my nerves can take anything more,” he admitted in calmer tones. He sank down beside me, holding his head.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”
“No. No, I’m all right.”
He lifted his face and regarded me silently. After a moment or two he spoke.
“What on earth came over you? You leaned so far over the rail, I thought you might fall.”
“I was trying to see something.”
He blinked. “You were trying to see something?”
“Aye. Where the song was coming from.”
“What song?”
“The song from my dream. I heard it again and… I can’t describe the melody or recall the words, though it always begins with my whispered name, spoken at my ear as if the being is standing right next to me. The music entrances me. I needed to find the source of the dirge.”
He stared at me with a look of grave concern.
I needed to distract him and I had to know the answer to this question. “How many men did we lose?”
“Thanks to their skill, and to you, we lost no one.”
“But…” I said, confused. “I saw at least two men go down.”
“They’re with Faraday. They’ll live, and with all of their limbs intact.”
“Thank Christ.”
“Yes, well, thank someone. Not me. I don’t know what Hillier and I were thinking. Overconfident, I suppose. It happens.”
I gaped at him. “Really? ‘It happens’? What the bloody fuck?”
“Yes, well, I feel rather rotten at the moment; you don’t need to rub it in.”
We sat there in silence, whilst the Eloise drifted away and the crew got the Arrow moving under a brisk wind.
“So, the incredible Captain Dinesh Martin ain’t perfect. Well, I’ll be fucked.”
He gave me a stern look as seagulls shrieked and the Arrow creaked and rolled beneath us.