Winterwood, page 9
part #1 of Rowankind Series
“Why do they do that?”
“Reputation. The owners of the goods are rarely aboard the vessels themselves. Both the masters and common sailors know that if they give up without a fight they’ll live to sail again another day. If they fight and lose then it will go badly for them.”
“You’ll butcher them.”
“Only if they resist us. Only if we have to.”
“I’ve heard stories. Men being bled to death with a thousand small cuts or keelhauled until the bones showed through their back.”
“Luckily they’ve heard the same stories. They’ve also heard of crews being let go with no harm if they offer no resistance.”
“Have you done those things?”
He’d find out sometime. The crew might have told him some stories already. There was the time, before Will’s death, when we’d taken a slaver. Will had not been kind to the crew. There had been fourteen dead Africans belowdecks, still chained to their living companions in conditions no decent human being would have kept a dog in. Will had chained a slaver to each sad corpse and tossed them overboard before sailing back to the African coast and freeing the survivors along with the gift of the captain and the remaining crew. As we sailed away, I could hear screams from the shore.
I patted David on the shoulder. “I want you to help Mr. Rafiq bag the powder for the gun charges. You’ll be powder monkey tomorrow with Tommy Jelks. That means you keep the guns supplied as they need it. When we close to board her, you’ll need something to defend yourself with—try a marlinspike and see how it feels in your hand. Don’t stick close to me or Hookey, we’ll be in the thick of it. Stay with Mr. Sharpner. We can’t afford to lose him, he knows to hang back.”
“I don’t want you to do me any favors or try and mollycoddle me.”
“I’m not. Mr. Sharpner needs protecting. I expect you to get between him and trouble.”
I didn’t tell him that Mr. Sharpner was a veteran of a hundred such engagements and could take care of himself very nicely, and take care of David too, if I asked him to.
“And when it’s issued, take a double tot of rum. If you do get a scratch or two you’ll not notice so much.”
I kept the wind steady throughout the night, and with neither lights nor sound on board we ran at a fair ten knots. Our quarry carried lights and even in the dead of night was easy to track. By the dark hours just before dawn I estimated she was within range of our guns, so in total silence, save for the creaking of our timbers, masked by the creaking of their own, we close-hauled and ran alongside.
It was time. I slipped away to my cabin and dressed in my most intimidating raiding garb: breeches, soft leather knee boots (a stiletto holstered in each) with soles designed to grip in slippery conditions, silk open-necked shirt and frock coat cut for action. All black, save for the silk shirt in blood red. I tied a black kerchief around my hair and jammed my tricorn hat (it had been Will’s) on top. At my side I had a short sword, not as elegant as a cutlass but better suited to my strength and size. I had three flintlocks, loaded, primed, and ready to fire, tucked into a red sash at my waist.
I could smell the rum as I came back up on deck, but under orders not to break silence, it was gulped down quietly with some smacking of lips, but no toasts to the venture except for silent ones. I saw David throw back his head and down a tot and Hookey clap him on the back when he started to choke on the strong spirit. He looked like he was about to throw up. The worm churned in my own gut, but I pushed it down.
At first light their lookout probably pissed himself. I was standing by our number one port gun as the shout went up.
“Run up the black flag,” I shouted, and our plain black symbol unfurled from the rigging along with our Privateer Jack, the Union flag as a large canton on a red field. Though my objective was information, this had to look like a privateer raid. I nodded to Jeb Huddlestone, who kissed his burning rope-end to the touchhole and fired a clean round across the Lydia’s bow. His team swabbed out and reloaded with chain shot.
Sixty drunken, ugly, leering, jeering privateers shouted obscenities and gestured.
Mr. Rafiq used the hailing trumpet. “Surrender and you go free with your lives.” He repeated it in French for good measure. In answer there was a flurry of activity on board as they primed their guns.
“Fire as your guns bear,” I yelled. The last thing I wanted was an artillery battle; the Heart wasn’t built to take a pounding, and I didn’t want to hole the Lydia and lose her, cargo, crew, information and all. Apart from the first shot, I’d had all the guns load with chain shot designed to take out sail, rigging and masts. Before she could even run out her guns, three of our four had discharged chain. One had torn clean through the mainsail, its shreds flapping, and another had clipped the foremast.
“She’s pissing wind, Cap’n. We got ’er!” Nick Padder yelled from aloft.
Lydia’s canvas flapped like a petticoat, but her captain fought on.
“Starboard gun crews, make ready!” I yelled and ran aft to Mr. Sharpner. “Come about, Mr. Sharpner, let’s get behind her. I’ll give you a breeze.”
Our canvas snapped as wind filled the sails and the Heart surged like a willing horse into its bridle.
The Lydia got off one broadside, but it screamed over our topmasts, too high to do any damage. I began to count. We had maybe three minutes before she was ready to give us all her guns again. Two minutes. One and a half. One! When we came about there was that heart-stopping moment as we presented our vulnerable stern for the Lydia’s second broadside, giving her the opportunity to rake us, an opportunity I suspected she was waiting for. Damn her, why hadn’t she surrendered? We’d have her anyway, eventually, barring the worst of incidents. Her captain must know that.
At the crucial moment, when we were at our most vulnerable, I sent a rogue wind to catch what was left of the Lydia’s sails and cause her to roll. Her broadside went high and one ball punched a neat hole in our main tops’l. I heard a yell above the flapping of canvas and looked up to see Nick Padder swinging from his safety line, indignant but unhurt.
Then we were around and racing to the Lydia’s stern, out of reach of her guns and in a position to do to her exactly what she had hoped to do to us.
“That’s it, Cap’n. Fuck her up the arse,” Lazy Billy called out with relish.
The gun crews readied the starboard guns.
“Chain shot,” I yelled. “Take out her masts.”
My gunners may not be Royal Navy-trained, but they’re steady and true. Four guns discharged chain into the Lydia’s rigging simultaneously and her mainmast splintered like matchwood about halfway down. The lookout who had allowed us to creep up in the dead of night went with it. I fancied I heard a scream, but it was probably the wind.
“That’s it, she’s ours. Let’s close and board her before she comes about. Get ready lads.”
I had six marksmen go aloft with two rifles apiece, the new type designed by Ezekiel Baker for the British infantry. Hookey had acquired them from a navy connection, a supply officer with a gambling debt. I hadn’t asked for details, just accepted them gratefully. They were slower to load than muskets, but in the hands of a sharpshooter much more accurate. The Lydia’s captain tried to bring her around to present her guns again, but, with her mainmast gone and fouling the rest of his sail, he’d lost way. We nudged in neatly, our bow kissing the Lydia’s stern. My heart pounded as if trying to break out of my chest. I wiped my hand on my coat and took my sword with a dry palm.
By my left elbow, Hookey growled a string of obscenities. By my right elbow, Daniel Rafiq seemed as composed as if he were out for a Sunday stroll.
A deafening, primal roar came from the throats of the men.
“Now!” I shouted. We all rushed forward together, yelling fit to bust a gut.
Will was ahead of me, ghostly cutlass in one hand, knife in the other.
Too late, I saw the swivel gun mounted on the aft rail. Too small to be effective at long range, they were bloody murderers close up.
I yelled, “Get down!”
I flung myself sideways. Someone landed on top of me. I heard the gun discharge. Someone—more than one voice—started screaming and my nostrils were full of the stench of blood, gore and shit.
“Up and on before the bastard reloads.” I pushed a corpse off me and scrambled to my feet. I daren’t stop to count the maimed or help the living. If their gunners reloaded that swivel gun we could all be dead or screaming within the next minute.
We swarmed over the rails, and as soon as my feet touched the Lydia’s deck I had my sword in my right hand and the first of my flintlocks in my left. I pulled the doghead all the way back and aimed randomly into the press of Lydia’s sailors.
Red-coated marines boiled up from the two companionways. The Lydia was certainly not an ordinary merchant ship. Our English Privateer Jack was plain enough. They knew we were for King George and still they fought. Counting heads was impossible, but I estimated we had them outnumbered. Their muskets would be useless once we were amongst them. There was no room for fear. Rifles cracked out from our tops as we swarmed over the rails. Some of the marines fell, others hesitated.
Thoughts gave way to instinct as we hacked, slashed and shot our way around the smashed rigging and into a general mêlée. If there was another swivel gun aboard we were fighting too closely for them to use it without killing their own. I saw Hookey to my right facing off against two marines and David to my left with a belaying pin in one hand and a marlinspike in the other. So much for hanging back with Mr. Sharpner.
A sailor ran at me with a club, and I discharged my second flintlock into his face then used it to beat his body out of my way while he was still falling. My sword, seemingly working by itself, bit into the soft flesh of a marine who’d come at me from the right. I twisted and pulled the blade free of the sucking flesh and turned to find Simeon had his long knife at the captain’s throat and all but half a dozen of the marines dead or wounded.
It was over, but we’d taken some severe losses ourselves.
I looked around. Will floated up to the rigging, laughing silently. Hookey stood, chest heaving, flecked with blood that was not his own. David sat on a fallen spar, eyes glazed but otherwise uninjured. Mr. Rafiq looked as cool as he had before. I had the Lydia’s survivors herded together, stripped of their weapons with enough of my men surrounding them as to allow no rebellion. I set my gunners gathering the wounded. From the blood on the deck, the butcher’s bill would be high, I heard David choke back a sob.
“David, go with Lazy Billy, see what you can do for the injured.”
He didn’t move.
“Go!”
With a start he gathered his legs under him and tottered unsteadily back to the Heart.
“Mr. Rafiq, inventory.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Hookey, take men and scour belowdecks for stragglers. See if you can find the logbook. That might help us make sense of this.”
9
Information
NAVIGATING DEBRIS AND BODIES, Nick Padder trotted across the deck, apparently none the worse for being dangled eighty feet in the air on a safety line. He obviously didn’t want what he had to say to be heard generally, so I turned away to let him speak softly.
“Mr. Sharpner asks if you can come belowdecks, Cap’n. That damn swivel gun was loaded with scrap iron. We’ve six dead already and more wounded. Mr. Cruikshanks is very bad.”
There were some of ours dead on the deck, too.
“Tell Mr. Sharpner I’ll come as soon as I can.”
There was a commotion on the companionway and Hookey and his men returned to the deck pushing two men in front of them. One was in his forties, the other barely out of his teens and wearing an apron covered in blood.
As soon as he had line of sight, Hookey yelled, “They got a sawbones aboard, Cap’n. Damn me if he weren’t hiding away in his cabin wi’ his ’prentice doin’ all the work.”
“I’ll take the sawbones to the Heart. Guard the prisoners, Hookey. No games.” I stared hard at the captain. “Not yet, anyway.”
That would get the captain thinking hard about cooperation.
“You.” I pointed at the surgeon and his lad. “Both of you come with me.”
“If you think I’m going to lay a finger on that unsanitary rabble—” the doctor started.
“You’re a surgeon, there are men hurt.”
“Scum!”
I turned and cracked him across the jaw with the pommel of my sword. “Let’s have some respect. A man’s a man.”
He reeled backward as if he’d never been hit in his life before and sat down hard on his arse, clutching his bleeding mouth and looking dazed.
“You, boy, got a name?” I glared at the apprentice.
“Louis, sir.”
“How do you feel about treating scum?”
“A man’s a man, sir.”
“Good answer.” The boy would do. I wouldn’t trust the surgeon not to snip an artery and call it an accident.
I turned to go, but he put a hand on my arm. It was almost the last thing he did. I saw Hookey start forward and I only just stopped myself from bringing my sword up into the boy’s guts. He knew immediately that he’d made a big mistake, but he just kept his eyes on my face.
“S-sorry, sir, but if you want me to be useful there’s things I’ll need down in the cabin.”
I nodded. “Simeon and Jake, take Louis down to the surgeon’s cabin and bring back whatever he needs. If it’s sharp and made of metal, you carry it. Watch him for tricks. Bring him to the Heart.”
I clambered across the ships’ rails, now securely lashed together and bridged by a plank and safety line. I tried to ignore the bodies of men I’d known, spread-eagled in death where they’d fallen, and I headed belowdecks.
The stench was overwhelming. I’m used to the perfumes of shipboard life. They’d make most landsmen gag on a good day, but this was something else: blood, coppery and pungent, mixed with sweat, gore, and shit from ruptured guts. It was the smell of death.
Someone had rigged up a table in the open space beneath the cargo hatch, and there was a pale, half-naked body on it surrounded by four men.
In the middle of so much blood and pain, Mr. Cruikshanks was just one more casualty, yet I’d sailed with this man for seven years, shared laughter and tears. I swallowed hard to try and relieve the burning sensation at the back of my throat, and blinked tears out of my eyes.
David stood at his head and had a firm grasp of his hand while Lazy Billy, unofficial sawbones to the whole ship’s company, stood over him shaking his head. The daylight fell across the scene in squares from the grating above. I sent up a witchlight to even out the shadows, and by it I could see what was left of Mr. Cruikshanks’ belly. By rights he should have been dead already, but somehow he was not only alive but conscious and not screaming.
“I’ve given him laudanum, Cap’n,” Billy said. “Damn near the whole bottle, but I don’t know whether it’ll help.”
“There’s a surgeon coming over from the Lydia.” I didn’t tell them: an apprentice. A groan drew my attention to another body slumped against the bulkhead. Edmund Morrow was covered in blood, with his hand clutched to his chest. By him lay two more men, variously bloodied. Two others were obviously beyond help.
“How goes it, Mr. Cruikshanks?” I gulped down rising gorge and tried to school my expression to hide the horror. David hung on to Mr. Cruikshanks’ hand as if offering a lifeline, but no magic in the world could put this right.
“I’m dead, Captain.”
“We have a surgeon coming.”
“I hope he’s a miracle worker.” His words were cut short as a wave of pain overtook him.
I heard footsteps on the companionway and extinguished the witchlight quickly. Louis appeared at my elbow. He took one look at Mr. Cruikshanks’ belly and shook his head.
“Can you do anything?” I asked.
“I can stitch and patch and bandage and maybe he’ll die in two hours instead of one, and that fellow over there with the blood pouring out of his arm will bleed out while I’m doing it. Then you’ll have two corpses where there need only be one.”
It was hard, but it was fair.
“We’ll move him to my cabin,” I said.
“No. Leave him be while he’s in no pain. Set me up another table over there where there’s light to work by.”
So commanding for such a youngster. I liked this Louis already. The men jumped to while David and I stayed with Mr. Cruikshanks.
When David started to weave on his feet I brought a barrel and sat him down on it. I could see Mr. Cruikshanks’ pain building. David’s hand was white from the man’s grip.
“My thanks to you, Davy.” Mr. Cruikshanks’ voice was very quiet now. “I think you won’t have to lend me your hand for much longer. Cap’n . . .” He turned to me.
“Don’t try to talk. Save your strength.”
“For what? I’ll talk while I can.”
I smiled. “Fair enough.”
“Simeon Fairlow is a very capable young man . . . Make a good quartermaster’s mate.”
“He’s young.”
“Brought up in a dockside tavern.” Mr. Cruikshanks’ voice was harder to hear, his breathing labored. What words he uttered were between harsh breaths. “He understands business. Understands sailors.”
“Simeon Fairlow, right. I’ll see to it.”
“And that bloody swivel gun . . .”
“I’ll send it to the bottom of the ocean.”
“Send the ship down, instead.”
“I will.”
“A favor.”
“Anything.”
“Put a ball in my brain. I won’t die screaming.”
