Chapter Twenty-Eight Before #6
For the prize, Cat knew, eyeing the length of the Victorious. Her cannons, her hold filled with food and weapons, powder, ammunition. Charts and logs, naval intelligence. And the ship herself, formidable in the hands of a fleet captain. Fearsome in the hands of a pirate.
Valerian would not sink her. Not unless there was any other option.
And the Victorious was in his jaws.
He watched from only a yard away, firing off another shot himself, the knife still red at his side, a sailor lifeless at his feet.
Smoke wreathed his head, but not from any cigar.
The tricorne was long gone, his golden locks loose about his shoulders, the cobalt coat of a dead captain streaked with gunpowder and blood.
If the battle was hell, then Valerian Kane was the devil himself.
All the while, he shouted orders, commanding crew into position. Raise sail, push back. Ready fuses.
“Faster, Ana!” echoed loudest of all, the only order laced with desperation.
Time was their best weapon and steadily running down. The longer it took, the better chance the Victorious had to regroup. And worst of all, Cat realized, ready their own cannons.
One of the officers was too quick, fighting his way to the helm to get his ship back under control. He loosed the rope, spinning the wheel hard in the other direction. Below, the rudder chain splashed into the waves.
Ana followed, diving into the churning sea.
Without thought, Cat ran for the rail, almost throwing herself over in an attempt to spot Ana amongst the waves.
“Ana!” she shouted, heart in her teeth. Her focus narrowed to the fading ripple where Ana went into the water. And the Victorious towering over it, the warship turning again, the spin of the wheel and the disabled rudder sending the ship into a deadly spiral.
“Ana!” she screamed again, hunting through the fog and smoke, ignoring the whistle of bullets and rising screams.
Only for an arm to loop around her waist, hauling her back from the edge.
“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Valerian roared, spinning her to face him.
Cat met him with a snarl. “Your first mate is in that water!”
He shook his head, laughing darkly. “She’s the best swimmer on this ship, save your worry for yourself.” Then his eyes rose, fixed on something over her head. “You’ll need it.”
Cat’s stomach plummeted and she turned, fearing the guns of the Victorious. The truth was somehow worse. The figurehead snarled, the Meridian lion reaching out with its claws, the spiraling warship on a direct collision course with the Covenant, ready to tear her in half.
“Hard to starboard, half shot ready, even cannons!” Valerian called out over the fray, reloading his pistol as he commanded the helmsman. The wheel spun, gears clacking and creaking, the Covenant leaping to his will like a loyal hound.
“Ready, sir!” Garedo called out from the ladder to the gun deck, his scalp sheened with sweat.
The angles shifted but not enough, the distance between ships narrowing too fast. Cat watched slack-jawed, trying to calculate, to think as a sailor would, to see something beyond splintering death at the bottom of the sea.
“Is the crew clear?” Valerian snarled, his eyes flashing between the Covenant and the Victorious.
Cat could not help but clutch at him, willing him to fire. To send the Victorious to the deep before it could split them in half. It felt like being trapped between two giants, waiting to be crushed.
At the prow, still in his false uniform, Brimley searched along the oncoming ship. His ruddy face was deathly pale. “Almost—”
“Are they clear?” Valerian roared again, stepping back from the rail. Cat moved with him, her grip on his arm so tight as to be bruising. She worried if she let go, she might jump over the side herself and take her chances in the sea.
Suddenly his hand was in her own, palm against palm, their fingers laced. Holding her steady, even as the world seemed to split apart.
“Brace for impact!”
There was no fear in Valerian Kane’s shout, only an iron will.
But even he stumbled when the portside of the Victorious tore along the Covenant’s starboard, hull against hull, rail against rail, in a hailstorm of bullets and blades and splintering wood.
Cat could only duck to the deck, and Valerian bent over her, sheltering her head as more men poured across—bluecoats and Ana’s remaining warriors dueling from one ship to the other.
Ana was with them, climbing up from the water, her silver teeth catching the gleam of flashing guns.
The battling crews shot and sliced, spilling sparks and crimson blood, until Cat could not tell one from the other.
Except for Captain Kane. His hand released and he straightened, still looming over her.
He tossed his coat away, throwing it off to reveal a fresh spray of blood turning his shirt scarlet.
But the blood was not his. Through the debris, Cat glimpsed his white smile, a strange sight against the breaking world.
“We’re clear,” she heard him mutter, before howling down to the gun deck.
“FIRE.”
Cat curled against the terrible earthquake that were the Covenant guns, one shot after another, loosing the fury of a broadside at close range.
It was like sitting inside a thunderhead, struck by one bolt of lightning after another.
So many voices screamed, in pain or triumph, for glory or bloodlust. Cat’s throat burned and she realized she was one of them, the sound lost to the din.
But she yelled anyway, unleashing her terror, her frustration, even her rage, pouring it all out beneath the blanket of battle.
A curtain of smoke fell across the world, replacing the fog, flashing red with sparks and gold with the rising dawn.
Through slitted, stinging eyes, Cat watched as the Victorious rocked on its keel, driven aside by the force of the impact.
It bobbed like a toy in a copper tub, not a warship on the open sea.
Her starboard side threatened to slough off, a gaping wound torn through the wood, and a few cannons rolled on their carriages, plunging into the sea.
“Half shot ready, odd cannons. On my mark.”
Valerian’s voice rose above the onslaught, glaring across the water at his limping prize.
She was not sunk.
Yet.
The white flag seemed a mirage at first, too good to be true. But it rose higher and higher, clutched in the fist of a bloody officer, one arm hooked in the rigging of his beleaguered ship, the other holding the flag aloft.
Cat pushed herself up on shaking arms, staring through the smoke, barely daring to hope. Until the guns dropped, the sabers tossed away, and every living man of the Victorious fell to his knees in surrender.
She climbed to her feet, blood staining her dress, gunpowder in her hair.
She expected to collapse or retch over the rail.
It all felt like some horrible nightmare, the air too heavy, her steps slow.
But she forced herself towards the ladder down to the gundecks, avoiding corpses and debris as best she could.
“I must attend to my husband,” she said softly, the only words she could think to say.
Valerian eyed her through the swirling dust and smoke, his dark green eyes a sharp contrast to the haze. There was blood in his hair, blood on his face, blood all down his clothes. The blood of so many dead—and yet he had never looked so alive.
He watched her, expectant. Never coming closer or turning away. Letting her look at him, to see what he was, resolute in his silence.
She heard his voice anyway.
You don’t know the half of it.
The words echoed in her head, a warning and a lament.
I know now, Cat wanted to say, her vision spotting.
She expected to faint, as a proper lady would, in the face of so much violence.
It certainly would have been easier to pass out.
But the darkness never fell, and the true world pressed in.
The blood, the gunpowder. Death in every direction, on the waves and beneath them.
Slowly, Cat lowered her eyes, breaking the hold of Valerian’s gaze.
“I must attend to my husband,” she said once more. It sounded like surrender and felt even worse.
But it was the only path to walk.
While Ana shouted, beginning the laborious process of overtaking the wounded Victorious, Cat put her back to the deck.
And Valerian. The world blurred, bluecoats hazing in the corners of her vision.
Some threw away their uniforms, eager to defect and choose the black flag. The rest kneeled in surrender.
Cat told herself it was a mercy, to be ransomed or set adrift, instead of being shot on sight. But she knew that wasn’t entirely true.
You don’t know the half of it.
There was no erasing what she had witnessed, no squaring what she thought of the crew before the battle with the after.
Worst of all was Valerian, the whole of him now fully seen.
He was somehow still the man who offered her his coat when she was wet and shivering, plucked from the sea.
Who tasted of salt and smoke, strong enough to pull away when all she wanted was to push forwards.
Who smirked at her across a card table, watching her as though she were the only person in the entire world.
And then killed so many men with the same smirk on his face, as if they were not men at all.