by Alex Bledsoe
“Eddie? Where’s Miles? Is he here?”
“He’s home. Safe.”
“Are you sure?” Her voice was pitiful in its concern. “He’s not a fighter, he gets hurt so easily…”
“Absolutely,” I said. “He’s fine.”
“Good,” she sighed. Her eyes closed again.
After sunset, I lit the lamp, and again her eyes opened. This time they were clear, and they looked right at me. “Have you been here all day?”
“Yeah.”
“How am I?”
“ ‘Bitchy and foul-mouthed’ seems to be the consensus.”
She smiled. “I’m too tired to look. Have I still got my leg?” “Yeah.”
She chuckled weakly. “Skurnick usually doesn’t wait to amputate. I think he keeps score; his bone saw has little notches on the handle.” She raised herself on her elbows, an effort that took all her strength. “Goddamn if it isn’t the same leg I broke back at that conference where we met. Do you remember that?”
“I do.”
“Can I have a drink of water?”
I found the jug and tipped it up for her. She was still very pale, but her fever had broken and the sweat had dried. She asked, “How’s Suhonen?”
“Fine, the last I heard,” I said. Which was true. Like Jane, he’d either live or die based on his own innate toughness.
She lay back. “Who was that boy that was in here?”
“His name’s Dorsal.”
“Is he the cabin boy?”
I nodded. “But he thinks he’s the captain.”
“And the little girl?”
“I think you might have been dreaming her. There’s no little girls on board.”
She laughed, weak but unmistakably Jane. “That figures. Not sexy young men, just a strange little girl.” She smiled and lay back. “At least it wasn’t the handmaiden again.”
I remembered Clift’s drunken assertions. “You dream about her a lot?”
She nodded. “Don’t you dream about your failures?”
“I used to. Talking to Liz about it has helped, believe it or not. You ever talk to Miles?”
She snorted weakly. “What do you think?”
“You want to talk to me?”
She thought for so long, I worried she’d passed out with her eyes open. Then she said, “Close the door.”
I did so and sat on the floor opposite her bunk.
She said, “You were a mercenary before you became a sword jockey, right? What made you change jobs?”
I didn’t want to get into detail about the whore house massacre that left me the only survivor, with no idea who’d killed everyone else or why. It made me take a long look at myself and the life I’d chosen. “I saw who I’d become and didn’t like it.”
She nodded. “Me, too. I was a pirate, and a really good one. My crew made tons of money. Then one day we captured a ship with some noblewoman on board. She wouldn’t tell me where her jewels were hidden. I told her I’d kill her if she didn’t cooperate, but she was stubborn. That snotty kind of stubborn, you know? When I threatened to torture her, one of her handmaidens jumped to her defense. So I snapped the girl’s spine across my knee.”
I knew where this was going. I’d suspected something like this ever since I met Jane. “Did the noblewoman change her mind?”
She laughed, weak and without humor. “No. She didn’t think any more of the girl than I did. Except after a while, I couldn’t get the girl out of my mind. The look on her face, the terror…” Big tears welled in her eyes, but her voice remained steady. “Sometimes we have to be ruthless, you know? Show no mercy. But I killed that girl for all the wrong reasons, primarily just because I could. For the hell of it. I was fucking showing off.” She wiped her eyes. “I didn’t like myself much after that. I became a pirate hunter because I thought I could help balance the scales for that girl’s life, you know? But they don’t ever balance, do they? The past never goes away.”
“No,” I agreed.
“So I became a sword jockey. I make my own rules, decide who and how to help, and choose what lines to cross and why. No ship’s crew to satisfy, no Anti-Freebootery Guild to boss me around.”
I took her hand. It was as big as mine, and callused around the many rings.
She looked up at me. “Don’t you get mushy on me, LaCrosse.”
I didn’t pull my hand away. “Stop telling sob stories, then.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Must be the blood loss talking. Gets me all light-headed.”
I squeezed her hand. “I think you’ll be all right.”
She yawned and stretched. “Mind if I go to sleep?”
“Would it matter if I did?”
“Not a damn bit,” she slurred, and in moments she was out.
She slept until Clift relieved me at midnight. I passed Dorsal on my way to the deck, lurking in the shadows by the ladder, and he nodded sagely. I wondered if he’d overheard Jane’s story.
A very light breeze blew across the deck, and the moon illuminated the monster’s ship. I got a drink of rum, found a spot to sit, and sipped it gratefully. My involuntary nap that afternoon had thrown me off, and now I was wide awake.
I spotted Duncan Tew trying to concentrate on unwinding and de-kinking the grapple line again, but he wasn’t paying much attention to the job. Instead he kept glancing at the other ship, watching for any change.
I sat down beside him. “Weird to think what’s out there, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said without looking at me.
“You know, you did a great job. We wouldn’t be sitting here talking about it without you.”
“I pissed my pants,” he said, eyes downcast. “When it tried to grab me out of the boat.”
“I don’t think anyone noticed. And you still did the job. Hell, I was scared to death, too.”
“Then why didn’t you piss your pants?” he demanded bitterly.
“Because I have more experience being scared like that.”
“Is that all it takes? Experience?”
He said it sarcastically, but I answered him with the truth. “Yeah.”
He snorted as if he didn’t believe me.
I asked, “Did you ever hear the story of the colo nel’s red shirt?”
He shook his head.
“There was this colo nel in the army of his kingdom, it doesn’t matter who or where. Whenever he’d be about to go into battle, he’d say, ‘Fetch my red shirt.’ No one knew why, until one day a lowly private worked up the nerve to ask. Do you know what the colo nel said?”
He shook his head again.
“He said, ‘If I’m hurt, the bloodstains won’t show on a red shirt. My men will think I’m invincible, and follow me into hell if I want them to.’ ”
Duncan smiled. “Clever.”
“Yeah, until the day his army had to fight one five times larger. You know what he said then? ‘Fetch me my brown pants.’ ”
Duncan laughed for a long time. At last he settled down, worked silently for a while, then said, “You think my father is behind that ship and the monster?”
“I hope not, for your sake.”
“I mean, being a pirate is one thing. But this is… so fucking cowardly. Letting a monster do all the dirty work.”
“Can’t argue with your take on it.”
He didn’t look at me. “Part of me hopes he is behind it. That way I can hate him with a clear conscience.”
I put a hand on his arm. “Just wait until you know for sure.”
He shrug-nodded the way some kids do. He was still half kid, despite being a father. He was struggling toward maturity all on his own, with no template to go by.
Seaton came on deck and blew his whistle. “Captain wants everyone here, now,” he bellowed. “All hands on deck!”
The crew quickly gathered below the quarterdeck. Clift stood up there with his hands on his hips, looking over at the nameless ship outlined by moonlight. When there was reasonable quiet, he said, “Men, we n
arrowly avoided the same fate that befell those ghost ships we encountered. But whoever set that trap doesn’t yet know that. So we’re going to disguise ourselves as a ghost ship and wait to see who comes to salvage us.
“We don’t know how long it’ll take. There’s no way for the villain to know his monster has snagged a victim, so he probably comes around on a regular schedule. We have to lie low and play dead, possibly for days. Maybe weeks. That means no one on deck during the day, no lights at night. We shift the weight so that the ship lists a little. I want some cut lines and spare canvas draped over the side, like they’ve fallen from disrepair. And here’s the hard part.”
He paused for effect. “We have to be ready to fight as soon as they appear. No matter how much time it takes. I’m asking a lot of your patience, and your courage, and your strength of character. But I promise you, the fight will be worth it. The Guild will reward us handsomely for capturing the bastards behind this. And we get the satisfaction of doing what no other pirate hunter has been able to do. Songs about the Red Cow will be sung in every tavern along every coast. What say you?”
A roar that might’ve disturbed the exhausted sea monster rose, along with fists and brandished weapons.
Clift smiled. “Aye, lads, that’s the spirit. Now let’s get the Cow ready for her date, eh?”
Another cheer rose from the men. Clift came down and walked among them, thanking and encouraging them individually. He knew how to command, that’s for sure. At last he reached me, put a hand on my shoulder, and said, “I’d like to speak to you a moment.”
“Sure.”
He pulled me aside but stayed within view, if not earshot, of the men. “I left Skurnick with Jane. Her fever’s gone, and she’s sleeping normally. It looks good for her.”
“And Suhonen?”
“We don’t know yet.” He paused. “When the moment comes, when the carrion crabs come around to see what they’ve caught, I’d like you to lead the attack.”
“Me? I’m just a passenger.”
“False modesty is still a falsehood, Mr. LaCrosse. You’re also the man who got away from that sea monster with barely a scratch, as well as rescuing both our best fighter and my former captain. I know how good they are. You seem to be better.”
“Just luckier.”
He leaned close. “I’m serious. The men know what you did. If you don’t lead them, they’ll assume it’s because you think we can’t win, and then I’ve lost them. I need you.”
I glanced past him at the crew. All of them watched with varying degrees of discretion. I’d fought on ships before, so I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with it, but at the same time, I barely knew these men and, except for Suhonen, I’d seen little to impress me. If we spent our days cowering belowdecks, we’d have no chance to practice and drill so I could get to know them better, either. We were all on this ship together, though, and that meant I had a vested interest in how the battle came out. “Okay,” I said. “But I want a third of my money back.”
He nodded. “A man deserves a fair pay for a job. But only if we win.”
I grinned, the kind of sideways grimace that has nothing to do with humor. “If we don’t, Captain Clift, poverty will be the least of my problems.”
Chapter Twenty-one
One way to tell the true strength of any fighting force is by how well it waits. By this measure, the Red Cow ’s forces were pretty good. Of course, it helped that we had to wait only three days.
Before we started hiding and waiting, though, we again disguised the Cow as the Crimson Heifer, just another derelict whose crew now filled the belly of the nearby beast. A spare sail was draped over the bow as if it had tumbled from the foremast, along with enough rope to mimic its rigging. Lines were dropped over the side, their ends ragged as if they’d broken loose from the monster ship. The deck was cleared of anything that could signal recent occupancy.
Jane continued to recover, although she remained too weak to move. Suhonen wasn’t dead, but neither had he opened his eyes; he simply slept, like some animal in winter hibernation. Bandages swathed his broad chest, with three small red spots where blood soaked through. The men gave his hammock a wide berth, except for Skurnick, who checked on him regularly. He lay in the dark, swaying with the ship’s movement, like a statue that might come to life at any moment.
When I approached him, one sailor grabbed my arm and said, “I’d use caution.”
“Why?”
“I’ve heard stories about Suhonen. They say that if he’s hurt in a fight, he wakes up and thinks he’s back in the middle of it. I saw him knocked out once, and when he awoke, his arm was still in mid-punch. Like to near flattened Mr. Greaves, who was standing just beside him.”
“I’ll be careful.”
The sailor shrugged. “Your skull, sir, not mine.”
I waited until I had some semblance of privacy, then leaned down and spoke into Suhonen’s ear. “If you can hear me, I just wanted you to know Clift put me in charge of whatever fight we end up having. I know you won’t be up to actually joining us, but you know these guys better than I do and I could use your advice.”
There was no response.
On our first day hiding in the hold, three fights broke out. Clift settled two of them quickly, but a third looked to keep brewing even after the men were separated. I understood completely: it was so hot, humid, and crowded that my own temper was on edge. I could’ve retreated to my cabin, but I wanted the men to see I was in it with them, not lording it over them. I had them move Suhonen to my bunk, where his huge bare feet hung off the end. Jane was sitting up now, scandalously undressed in the heat.
I had to avert my eyes whenever I went to check on her. This amused her to no end. “It’s a pair of boobies, LaCrosse, they won’t kill you.”
“I’ve run into plenty that were quite lethal, thank you very much.”
“How goes the preparations?”
“We’re prepared. Now we just need for the bad guys to show up before we all skewer each other.”
“How are you going to run it?”
“We’re going to let as many of them board us as we can before we give ourselves away. They’ll likely tie onto us, but they’ll cut those lines right away if they start to lose the fight. We’ll use the ballistae belowdecks to fire grapples up through the ports. Hopefully, since we’ll be shooting up at their rail, by the time they figure out where our ropes are, we’ll have taken their ship.”
She nodded. “Smart.”
“I also had the carpenter install another hatch aft of the main one. It’s flush with the deck, so you can’t see it unless you’re right on it. When the bad guys come down the main hatch, we’ll have a team ready to go out that one. That way we won’t get bottled in.”
She shook her head and smiled. “You’re a clever SOB.”
“I just want this fight to be quick and one-sided. If I’m right, they won’t be expecting any resistance.”
“And you’ll take Marteen alive, right?”
“Yes. I’ve made that completely clear. Clift said any man who kills Marteen forfeits his shares for this whole voyage.”
“That should do it. You don’t mess with a pirate’s money.”
“Ex-pirate,” I corrected with a grin.
“Oh, yeah,” she agreed ironically. “Completely ex.”
AS soon as darkness fell, we rushed on deck, grateful for the space and air. The monster ship was barely visible on the horizon, and we saw no other vessels. Men pulled buckets of water from the ocean and doused themselves with it to cut through the day’s accumulated sweat. I took some rum to Jane, checked on the still-immobile Suhonen, and touched base with Clift.
“Not good,” the captain said. “We’re drifting. If we move too far from that other ship, they might not find us.”
“They found the others.”
“Aye, but I imagine they tied up to the monster’s vessel before boarding. Then their ship stayed put.”
“I suppose we could tie up to
it,” I mused.
“Unless you swear to me that creature’s dead, I’m not risking becoming a ghost ship for real.”
If I’d done permanent damage to its mouth, then it would eventually starve to death. But for all I knew, it had been catching fish outside and stuffing them through the portholes all night. Or perhaps it could simply wait a long time between meals. “I left it hurt, but that’s all I can say.”
“Then we’ll just have to row in closer and hope Marteen doesn’t spot us while we’re moving.”
So we did, using a launch to tow the Cow back to where she’d started. The next day was another scorcher, and again everyone was on edge. But this time, knowing that nightfall would eventually come and we would escape, they were able to contain it. When we did emerge, Clift had to remind the men to speak in whispers; sound carried far over the water.
And then, on the third day, we sighted another ship.
She bore three masts, a flush deck, and no flag visible at this distance. She headed straight for us, taking advantage of the wind that slowly pushed us away from the monster ship. Clift and Seaton peered out the porthole, careful not to let the sunlight illuminate their faces. I stood with the crowd behind them, waiting for their word.
“That’s the one,” Clift said at last.
“How do you know?” I asked, fighting the urge to whisper, as if a ship miles away could hear us.
“A feeling,” he said. I wondered if perhaps he was wrong, that this was just some passing merchant or naval vessel wondering if we needed help. But the closer it got, the more I shared Clift’s intangible sense that this new vessel was dangerous. It was a sense that I, like the captain, had long since learned to trust.
I turned to the crew. The men stood ready, arms unsheathed, making last-minute adjustments to their leather armor and weapons. They all looked expectantly at me. It had been a long time since I’d been watched with that kind of eager, almost childlike reliance. I felt a surprising rush of what I can only describe as excitement.
“If I’m right, the ship will pull alongside and board us. I don’t know how close they’ll look us over; I hope that by now they’re overconfident about their monster. But they may be on their guard because we’re drifting and not tied to the other ship. We have to let as many of them get on board as we can, even coming down here without giving ourselves away. They’ll be sunblind in the hold, so it’ll take time for their eyes to adjust. Let them give the alarm: when they shout, everyone left above will have their eyes on the main hatch, and we’ll come busting out the new one.”
