As we sailed past the inky left arm of the harbor, my breath caught in my throat and stuck there in a painful lump. Corbin was just finishing up the last gun, but as he finished and stretched, everyone on board the ship stood silently as the full extent of our enemy’s intentions came into view.
The harbor was filled with ships, big ships, warships . . . and all of them had their guns trained on my sweet little town.
“That’s not a fleet,” I said softly, blindly grabbing Corbin for some much-needed support. “That’s a friggin’ armada.”
“And we’re all that stands between it and destruction,” he said softly.
Chapter 26
Let vengeance howl;
The Pirate so decides.
—Ibid, Act II
I turned Corbin so he had to look at me. The stunned faces of everyone on the ship as we slipped silently through the water toward what was sure to be our doom pushed me into action.
“Corbin, my love, my darling, I know that all you want is to get us out of this game. I’m totally with you on that as a goal. By my best estimate, I’ve been sitting in a chair for three hours, and I am going to have to move soon or my body is going to suffer damage. But even taking all that into consideration, I’m going to have to throw you overboard if you seriously believe we can take on those”—I squinted against the glow of the fire burning behind the town, which effectively cast the warships in the harbor in sharp silhouette —“eight warships with one little undermanned ship.”
Corbin brushed his thumb across my cheek in a gesture so sweet it almost brought tears to my eyes. “Sweetheart, remember what I said about having faith in me?”
“Yes, and I do, but this is ridiculous—”
“It would be if we were going to attack those eight ships, but we aren’t.”
I shook my head, confused. “You said we’re going to stop Bart—”
“And so we are. But Bart—Paul—isn’t on those ships. He’s on a sloop somewhere on the edges of the harbor, well back from the action, but close enough to watch and, more important, direct the attack.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, completely at a loss.
He smiled. “That’s where the having-faith-in-me part comes in. I know Paul, Amy. I worked with him for two years and, more important, I played the game with him. I’ve seen him engineer attack after attack on islands, and he’s used the same method each time. I see no reason for him to change that now.”
“But”—I waved my hand toward the harbor—“where is he?”
“We’ll find him. He’ll show himself before too long.”
I didn’t have quite the confidence Corbin had that Bart would act the way he was expected to, but I held my tongue and helped with the sails.
“Light sails only,” Corbin ordered. “Rig that steering boom in snug. We don’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves until we have Paul in our sights. Amy, get everyone at their stations, ready for hauling off.”
“Gotcha,” I said, clapping my hands together. “Ladies, let’s get the trysail boom on the starboard side, ready for jibbing.”
The women, all four of them, looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. I felt a moment of pride in how far I’d come from the first time I stepped foot on my sloop, but let that go to explain quickly what was expected of them.
Corbin was in the crow’s nest as our ship turned to follow the curved shoreline. I climbed up to join him, every muscle in my body protesting the action. “See him yet?”
“No. But he’s out there, hiding in shadows. I can feel him. He’s probably waiting for us to get into range, then he’ll—”
A flash of orange came from the left, slightly upward of our bow. The noise of guns firing followed almost instantly, but before we could shout a warning to those on deck, cannonballs ripped into the bow. Wood splintered and flew with the velocity of missiles. Men and women alike screamed and ran for cover.
“All hands at their stations,” I yelled as Corbin flung himself over the side of the crow’s nest, barely touching the rope. He was on the deck and shouting orders to fire before I was halfway down. Another flash and
boom boom boom
ripped through the night, the ship reeling with the blows. The hits were so hard, I lost my grip on the rope ladder and fell to the deck, lying stunned for a few minutes.
I managed to get my brain working again and crawled to my feet just as the ship bucked when Corbin fired off three guns. I felt a moment of satisfaction at hearing the shots connect with a solid form rather than splashing uselessly into the water.
“Drop the sails,” Corbin shouted above the sound of cries and orders being yelled by everyone. “Helm hard to port.”
I rushed to get the sails lowered so we could maneuver ourselves out of danger, but fell to the ground when our mainmast was struck by a lucky shot, the top part of it crashing down on the deck.
“Port,” Corbin yelled, loading one of the guns single-handedly. “Amy, helm to port.”
I dragged myself over to the wheel, jerking hard on it to the left. The ship shuddered and wanted to fight me as she took on bilge, but I tied the wheel and ran to help one of the women pull rigging off another who was unlucky enough to be in the way. We hauled her to safety aft. I ran back to help with the remaining sails, but a horrible grating sound stopped me dead.
“We’ve rammed her,” one of the men yelled. Over the remains of the downed mast I could see that he was absolutely right—we’d run smack dab into another sloop. Dark shadows danced around on her deck, indicating they were as aware of the situation as we were.
“Boarding axes,” Corbin yelled. “No quarter, mates. Let’s take them down.”
“Yarr,” I yelled with the others, snatching up one of the short axes that was used on board ship in numerous ways—as a handhold when boarding a ship (or cleaving someone’s head) was just one of its many uses. A couple of crewmates threw grappling hooks over the side of the sloop, but that wasn’t really necessary—her bow was wedged into the port side of our bow. Corbin leaped onto the railing, throwing himself onto Bart’s ship with a cry that would have scared the crap out of me if I’d been a member of Bart’s crew.
I scrambled up onto the railing, pausing for a moment to assess the scene. The men from our ship had poured onto Bart’s, meeting his crew as they were about to board us. The fighting that followed as the two crews clashed was noisy, chaotic, and bloody—at least, from what I could see it was. One of the women hauled herself onto the railing next to me, her skirt hiked up, an arm-sized piece of wood from the broken mast in her hands. I shoved the boarding axe at her. She protested, but I yelled, “I do better with a sword,” as I pulled out my foil and flung myself at the nearest pirate.
He had a flintlock pistol, which he fired in my direction, but his aim was (fortunately) lamentable, and he tossed the pistol down as I rushed him with my sword drawn. For a fraction of a second I truly considered running him through with it, but in the end I simply whacked him on the head with the steel hand guard and pushed him over the side of the ship. Bart had evidently beached his ship in order to hide in shadows cast by a couple of mangrove trees, so the pirate wouldn’t have far to swim to make it to shore.
“That’s one down,” I yelled, whipping my sword around in a dramatic fashion that would have done Zorro proud. “Right, who wants a piece of this?”
Two men rushed me, both with cutlasses. I did a bit of instantaneous calculating with regards to the strength and general effectiveness of my foil, of my skill using it, and of my overall health and well-being, and came to a quick decision. “Cooooooooooorbin,” I yelled, running down the deck to where I could see him madly fighting with another man, the two pirates in hot pursuit.
One of our guys fell backward in front of us, a short pike buried in his chest. I stopped, staring down at him, time seeming to halt as he gasped a couple of times, then died right there in front of me, blood seeping into a pool on the wet deck beneath him. I knew that man—he was one of Bart’s crew,
my
crew, a man who’d been pressed into service, but who had married one of the widows. His name was Gabriel. He was a nice guy, relatively gentle and soft-spoken . . . and now he was dead.
A fury like nothing I’ve ever felt swept over me, crashing into me with such force that I literally reeled for a second before grabbing the pike and jerking it from Gabriel’s body to run screaming at the two men who were pursuing me. Fear flashed in their eyes as I ran the first one through with the pike; the second fell a few moments later as my sword flashed. Blood and seawater were everywhere, the light almost nonexistent as various lamps were knocked down by the battles, but the screams of the wounded, and the sound of the wood creaking as the tide rocked the ships together, all served to combine into a horrible nightmarish scene that I feared would have no end.
I fought like a madwoman, ignoring both physical and emotional pain as I struggled against the almost overwhelming number of crew on Bart’s ship. Behind me, the remainder of my crew fought just as hard, but one by one they dropped until there were ten of Bart’s crew left, and just two of us. I crouched at the bow, bloody but unbowed, my sword held out before me, while Bart’s second crew formed a semicircle around me, laughing and sneering and taunting me.
I was too exhausted to answer, too outnumbered to stand a ghost of a chance at fighting, but I wasn’t going to go down without taking a couple of them with me.
“Paul,” Corbin yelled, his voice carrying over the groans of the wounded and the wood-on-wood shriek of the ships as they shifted. He ripped open the port hatch. “I know you’re down there skulking like the coward you are. Come out here and fight me like a man.”
Corbin started down the ladder to the lower deck but fell backward as a shot rang out from below. I screamed and threw myself heedlessly forward as a circle of red appeared on his side.
“Corbin!” The men caught me (but not before I made sure that one of them wouldn’t be siring children anytime in the near future), twisting my arms painfully behind me as they hauled me forward to where Corbin was struggling to his knees. Bart leaped out of the hold, standing over Corbin with a pistol in one hand, a sword in the other.
“How very fittin’ to have ye grovelin’ at me feet,” Bart drawled, putting his foot on Corbin’s shoulder, knocking him back to the ground. He kicked the sword from his hand, sending it skittering across the wet deck.
“Oh, you are
so
dead,” I yelled, struggling to free myself from the pirates who held me captive. “You slimy bastard! Did you have to shoot him there? That was healing so nicely!”
Bart looked over to me, his eyebrows raised. “If ye had done as I asked and killed him when you had the chance, we wouldn’t have to be goin’ through this now. But ye didn’t listen to me, did ye, dearie?”
“Like I would kill the man I lo—” I stopped, something in the back of my head clamoring for attention. “What did you say?”
“Ye heard me well enough,” he said, prodding the still downed Corbin with the long, curved blade of a scimitar. “I’ll take care of yer business this once, but I’m afraid ye’ll not be makin’ officer in me crew just yet.”
“Dearie,” I said, struggling briefly with the two men who held me. They jerked back on my arms in a way that had me seeing stars for a moment. “You called me dearie. But you never call me dearie—only Renata does that.”
Corbin groaned and rolled onto his side, pulling his knees up in a protective gesture . . . only I could see the hand underneath his body sliding slowly toward his boot.
“Still haven’t figured it out? And I was so sure you did last night when you caught me coming in to dope the grog.” Before my stunned eyes Bart’s form shimmered and changed into that of a small, elderly woman with shrewd eyes. “I’m disappointed in ye, lass, I truly am. I thought ye were so bright.”
My mouth hung open for a moment, I’m not in the least bit proud to admit, but only for a moment. “You’re Renata, too? How can you be two people at once?”
Renata changed back into Bart, her smug smile morphing into his. “I confiscated the mentor character when I learned you would be logging on. I had a feeling a hostage might be useful in forcing Corbin’s hand.”
“How on earth did you learn I was going to log on?”
Bart’s smile was so obnoxious, I wanted to slap it off his face. “Do you seriously believe I don’t have a program in place to spy on all of Corbin’s e-mail? Your daughter sent him an e-mail saying she was giving you a character on her account. I was happy to see that, actually. An adult player worked into my scenario much better than a teenager.”
“You . . . you . . .” My brain came up with lots of descriptive words, but I reminded myself that calling a madman a slimewad wasn’t the most prudent of ideas.
“Now, now, lass,” he said, back to his pirate voice. “Time for talk later. I’ll explain everythin’ then that ye’re a little slow in understandin’.”
I raised my chin and gave him a frosty smile. “I might not be the brightest bulb in the pack, but I’m not the one about to fall down those stairs with a stupid look on my face.”
Bart narrowed his eyes at me. “What are ye talkin’—aaigh!”
A silver flash shot out and sent Bart reeling backward . . . right into the opened hatch. He fell into it screaming.
I stomped down hard on the bare foot of the pirate nearest me, spinning around to plant a kick in the groin of the man on the other side of me. Corbin, who had leaped up as he threw his knife into Bart’s chest, snatched up the scimitar that Bart had dropped and used it to take down the nearest man before waving it at the two men near me.
“You even look at her and you’re dead, understand?”
The man I kicked in the happy sacks dropped to his knees clutching himself, moaning loudly. The other one looked like he was about to tackle me, but straightened up slowly as Corbin took a step toward me.
“Come here, love,” he said, holding out a hand for me. I didn’t have to be asked twice. I threw myself toward him, clinging to him for a moment before I swore and pulled back to look at his side.