by Dylan Doose
I looked out a firing hole down the beach at the purple coats gathering there. Admiral “Gallows” Gareth was there with them, a short, angry man, wearing a black tricorn hat and flowing purple cloak. His chin was up, that proud bastard on his high horse. Literally. He rode his white mare in on one of the launches.
I turned from the firing hole and stared at the crushed lizard. “Why’d you do that ?”
“Why’d I do what?” Wallace asked. He kicked the dead lizard over, leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes, then took a swig of his rum. “Crunch that lizard there like that?” Wallace smiled and ran a hand through his greasy blond hair, and with his other hand he put down his rum and began tying a pigtail.
“That is why we call you Golden Boy, Tim. That is why we call you Golden Boy,” Wallace said, and then tied his other pigtail and relaxed his head back against the stone wall. “Pass me my pipe and a match, would you? The bowl’s already packed.”
I went to his coat that he had shed and tossed in the corner, retrieved the pipe from the inner breast pocket where he always kept it, and brought it to him .
“Sit down,” he said. “Have a drink, have a smoke.”
“You are the kindest cruel man I have ever met, good Wallace. I would appreciate a puff of your fine leaves if you’d allow it.” I placed my back to the wall and slid down so that Wallace and I were shoulder to shoulder. He lit the pipe and took a healthy pull, then passed it to me and I did the same. Wallace was the man to go to when it came to smoking well, for he knew a thing or two about herbs, and he had collected plants from the world round during his journeys on the Sea Maggot . He kept some in pots that the captain allowed him to keep in her cabin by the window. The first mate watered them for him .
When I pulled in the smoke I felt a new warmth mix with the warmth from the rum, and then a coolness push the burning heat from my wounded shoulder and arse .
“Moon’s Widow,” Wallace said. “From Fracia. I met a doctor there, when I had occasional business with a gang known as the Grimers. He, too, had occasional business with them. Their leader was more beast than man, name of Butcher, nice teeth, but no skin on his face. None at all .”
I tried to picture that as I handed the pipe back to him, but couldn’t. He took a puff then returned it to me. By this point the mixture of the rum, the herb, and my injured, depleted state made everything seem hardly more than a dream. I felt free of repercussion and so I revealed things I had not spoken of, or even thought of, in years.
“I wanted to be an actor when I was a child, Wallace.” I looked at the dead lizard on the stone floor. I put my hands out in front of me, then panned them slowly out to the sides and whispered, “I had dreams of the stage. And… and I fear I have been acting on the deck of this ship, acting a hard man.” I paused and took another puff, and returned the pipe once more to that good man Wayward Wallace. “But I am afraid, not so much of dying, but dying in the fight that’s coming. I’m scared of that. I hope a bullet gets me before the swords are loose. I really do. I have no wish to stare into the eyes of my killer.”
“Agree. I would much rather stare into the eyes of those I kill,” Wallace said. I turned to him and he was looking at me, and then he wrapped his arm round my shoulder. He was many years my elder, and had taken a liking to me since I joined the crew; he and the captain both had. I was lucky for that. “Just don’t think much about it, Golden Boy,” he said as he released his hold. “It’s only death, and it’s only killing. It’s just part of the dream, you know ?”
I did not weep, but my eyes went warm and my cheeks got wet. Just a dream, free, like a dream. The captain’s words. Words she often used to remind us where she had come from, what she had achieved, what all of us could achieve if we only dared dream.
“I have to do this, don’t I?” I asked Wallace.
The sounds of the men throughout the fort preparing for battle carried to us: the bark of the captain’s orders, the scrape of heavy objects dragged across the floor, feet slapping stone. He took another long hit from his pipe, and he spoke as he exhaled so his voice became very deep .
“Yep, you have to. You’re one of us, Golden Boy, you’re one of us. Took me a while, too, to get in there, right into the whirlwind of blades. But I’ll tell you what: it is quite a special thing.” Wallace handed me the pipe, and I pulled until my lungs were on fire and held the smoke there in my chest, then I finally released. A purple haze veiled my vision.
Wallace stood, went to the firing hole, and looked out of it .
“So, are you ready, Golden Boy?” he asked with his back to me, then he turned and his eyes were wide and he was grinning ear to ear, his pigtails draped over his shoulders. “Are you ready to live the dream?” He threw a musket to me, and I caught it .
“I’m ready, Wallace.”
He nodded, dipped his chin toward the dead lizard, and said, “They bite. The wound festers. And then you die. Did no one tell you that?” Without waiting for my answer, he continued, “Go on with you now. See you at the other end .”
I set the musket beside the others and made my way back down the stairs. The captain’s voice carried from below as she gathered the men .
I paused just inside the door of the gate room where the men were gathered, and the captain stood in the center, sword at her hip, her blue coat, a trophy she had stolen from one of the church’s Seekers after she cut out his heart, nearly dragging on the floor, fury in her eyes .
“I remember my first time,” she began. “Six months north of here on a fast ship, on the western coast of the new world continent where tribes of cannibals and Lycans stalk the shores searching for survivors from wrecked ships. The golden tails of sirens glinted beneath the water's surface. They would at times rise from the water to lure men to the rocks and into the cold abyss with their naked, milky flesh and sweet siren songs.”
We could all hear the rumble of the purple coats’ snare drums down the beach. But it was the captain who held our attention.
“The waters were calm and the wind was a cold breeze carrying drifting flakes of snow. That was my first time seeing snow. It was hypnotizing as it fell silently from a gray sky. I watched my breath melt the flecks in front of my face before they reached the deck. They just faded in the vapor that left me. And I remember marveling in my own mind that just six months prior in the waters round this very isle that we now hold, I was freed from a slave ship heading to Brynth by Filthy Jack Lawrence and the crew of the Sea Maggot . They slew every slaver to the last, and Captain Lawrence offered every woman and child on the ship a voyage to the next isle, where they would be left with coin from the dead slavers. And to every man he offered revenge.
“‘Come with me now,’ he said. ‘Come with me on my journey, a journey toward bloody death, a journey free of shackles, a journey that will set the foundation for our sons and daughters to one day drag the kings and queens of the old world and the governors and ministers of the new to their own gallows and watch them dance as they are choked by their own ropes. It won’t be us,’ he said. ‘No it won’t be you or I who see that day, but come with me and let us make damn sure it will be our sons and daughters who see the thing done. Who see the dream.’
“I stood up. I was the only one to stand. Filthy Jack looked at me with his bloodshot yellow eyes and grinned his black, putrid smile. His lips curled and he took from his head his worn yellow tricorn, ran a ringed hand through his slimy hair, and said to me, ‘That offer was for the men, so unless you’re hiding something in your trousers, I don’t think so.’ Filthy Jack’s men hollered with laughter.
“‘You lost two men,’ I said. ‘Taking me on is better than none. These women and children are the wives, sons, and daughters of these men. They want a chance to live. They are in no rush to die. My family has already been taken from me .’
“‘So you are in a rush to die?’ asked Filthy Jack .
“‘I’m in a rush to use this,’ I said, and I pulled from my trousers a sharpened stake of woo
d, a stake I had plied from the wall of the hold where I’d been chained, my nails bleeding. A stake I had honed to a talon-sharp point by rubbing it against the chains that bound me. I raised it to Jack. And of course he smiled and laughed.
“‘So you were hiding something in your trousers,’ he said, and his men started laughing again. ‘Well, it’s a start, but I’m not sure if it will be quite enough.’
“‘I’ve been swinging a hoe, a shovel, a rake, a pick for those pig-skinned men all my life,’ I said to Filthy Jack. ‘Give me a fucking sword and I’ll show them I can swing that too .’
“‘Young lady,’ said he, ‘you’ll be mistress to death himself one day. I see it in your eyes .’
“‘You’re wrong,’ I said .
“He cocked a brow .
“‘I’ll be his queen.’
“At this his rotten smile grew and he gave me my sword. For six months, as we went north to the cove that he and his crew called home, I was taught day in and day out, in sickness and in health, the blade and the gun. And then that day finally came, the day that I had been preparing for, the chance to fight the fiends who took me from my home and killed my parents in the garden outside of theirs . I was filled with fear. I was not afraid of dying, but I was afraid of dying before I ate my fill of revenge, and I was starving. My legs shook when I heard the Monkey cry, ‘Sails,’ from high in the rigging, and they shook all the more when I saw the Brynthian juggernaut’s shadow emerge from the white curtain of falling snow .
“‘Load the guns. We’ll fire the forecannons as we charge them and give her a full broadside at point blank before we board.’ Filthy Jack roared the order. We went forward, the wind with us. The Brynthian juggernaut was preparing to fire her full broadside at us. This was before we had Stiggis on our deck, and our wizard at the time was only any real good at card tricks and lighting things on fire, so their guns were a very real danger.
“I was standing next to Filthy Jack as we closed the distance. I had a saber at my hip and was clutching my pistol in my hand. ‘When it comes to those things, don’t blow your load early,’ he said, pointing at my pistol. ‘Use it when you’re losing with the sword or if you’re at a numerical disadvantage. No other time, and never rely on it as your only way out. Make them shoot first’—he grinned at me—‘and always make sure they miss— ’
“‘And don’t let their screams slow you down,’ I finished for him. He chuckled and raised his looking glass, where he watched the shadow of the enemy captain through the snow on the deck of his ship, and when he saw the man’s arm go up to give the order to prepare to fire their volley, Captain Lawrence gave our order. ‘Fire .’
“The swivels and front cannons erupted and the Sea Maggot ’s deck quaked beneath me. We hit them just before they released the wrath of their broadside upon us. It disrupted their aim and their shots went too high .
“‘Pull your socks up,’ screamed Jack, and I hit the deck as the hot iron balls whistled over my back, ripping through the rigging and taking off the rotten maiden’s head, cutting slow men in half and reducing the captain’s quarters to splinters.
“Filthy Jack sprang back to his feet and with the voice of a joyous man, he gave the order: ‘Fire the swivels at will. They’ll rake us with another volley before we have her in our claws!’ I couldn’t see what he saw. All I could see was death coming for us all in the form of a bigger ship, more guns, and more men. But I trusted the dream. I was ready to die for the dream, to die free rather than live shackled.
“I could smell the man’s wicked breath from a meter away. His bloodshot eyes bulged as if they were about to burst, and he was smiling like a lunatic, red running down from his scalp, a splinter of wood pinning his tricorn to his head .
“‘Oh, here it is, young lady. Here it is. I feel it taking me,’ said Filthy Jack, and he grabbed me by my shoulders and shook me as the Sea Maggot closed the distance. ‘After it begins you’ll feel it too, young lady. If you’re to be—’ He turned and yelled, ‘Pull your socks up!’ and we hit the deck again. The Sea Maggot ’s main mast was chopped in two and our sharpshooter Higgins screamed as he fell into the frigid blue. ‘If you’re to be death’s queen, oh, you’ll feel it,’ Filthy Jack yelled to me as he sprang back to his feet and gave the order: ‘Turn her broadside, ready to board!’
“Every man on deck, and I the only woman, we roared, and as I heard the sound of cries of hatred for the Empire, I felt it. I was wet for it. The bloodlust had taken me for the very first time .”
When our captain reached this moment in the story, we hollered and whistled. That day with a few hundred of the Empire’s men on our shore, with Admiral “Gallows” Gareth spearheading the assault, we roared our cries of hatred, for we felt it too. The bloodlust had come, healed our wounds, and made us strong. As we roared, the admiral fired his cannons at the fort, and for a moment the world shook and my heart pounded in my ears. And then we were cheering, for the fort held, and it would hold long enough for us to get to the end of the captain’s story.
“The rotten maiden grinded across the Brynthian juggernaut’s port side,” she said as dust fell from the stone ceiling. “Our starboard flattened against them .
“‘Fire!’ ordered Filthy Jack, and the cannons that had kept their load for so long finally released, and we ripped that juggernaut’s inside apart. The men gathered on our starboard side, muskets, pistols, sabers, and boarding axes in hand. Our wizard ignited many of the crew’s drawn blades with fire, and we must have looked like demons straight from hell's pit. The Brynthians fired their volley of muskets and pistols first. Fear made their trigger fingers twitch. They fired without aiming and they fired too high .
“Filthy Jack wore two pistols at his hips and four on his chest, and he fired off all six with the devil’s speed. Then the boarding planks were down. Our sabers were drawn. Men were firing pistols and muskets into the men on deck of the Brynthian ship .
“‘With me!’ cried Filthy Jack, and we crossed the threshold. My boots splashed into sleet from the snow mingling with the blood of the men shot dead. The snow was falling harder now, and it became near impossible to see ten feet. At his instruction, I stayed behind Filthy Jack, guarding his back as he hewed down men like a god of war in a celestial dream. His silhouette in the snow hacking apart the silhouettes of his foes, spraying red through the curtain of white.”
Another cannon volley smashed into the fort, and this time it hit its mark. The front gates were reinforced with iron, but they were not invincible. They’d open soon, and four hundred purple coats would be charging up the narrow beach between the high stone walls that protected the wharf, a bottleneck that would work to our advantage, but for how long ?
The captain strapped on her pistols, two at her hips and four on the torso. All of them had once belonged to Captain Filthy Jack Lawrence, as had the saber she wielded. We parted as she walked down the center of us. Her steel leg clinked on the stone floor.
“A purple coat slipped round Jack and, saber high, he swung down at me. I parried.” The captain demonstrated, bringing up her blade in an arc with such speed that in the dim light of the fort the motion was invisible. “It was Jack’s teachings, it was bloodlust, and it was my will to live that blocked that strike. I heard gunshot— ”
As if on cue, another volley of cannon fire hit the gate, and splinters sprayed the interior as dust again fell from the ceiling.
“In the corner of my eye I watched the silhouette of Filthy Jack take sabers to his chest and belly. I watched him fall. I fought like a cornered hyena, and still I could not reach him, for the man I fought had size and strength and years of experience that I lacked.” She paused and drew a breath. “Oh, how I screamed. Tears burned down my cheeks, the first tears I ever shed over a pig-skinned man. A great man. Wrongly, I thought him dead. The bloodlust peaked in me and I stuck my saber into that Brynthian bastard’s belly. I twisted right, then left, then hauled up and split him to his breastbone. He was a tough man, and furious an
d frantic, and he did not die right away. He pulled himself further onto the blade, and I pressed into him and pulled it down, forcing him to his knees.
“I raised my pistol and stuffed it into the purple coat’s screaming mouth, and with my saber in his belly I pulled the trigger, and out the back of his skull onto the sleet-covered deck went the man’s blood, brains, and my hot lead. The snow kept falling and the fight kept thrashing around me .
“I remember him, that first man that I killed, but those who came after are all a blurred memory of ecstasy and bliss, of melancholy and hate.” The captain grinned and lifted her saber high. “I remember my first time .”
“Now hear me, my truest friends. What makes us kin is not the tone of our flesh. I care not if you’re as pale as a pig or as black as a boar. Or as golden and pretty as Golden Boy.” The men laughed, and I laughed with them .
“We could have gone down at sea, for that would have been a glorious death. But we did not, though not without sacrifice.” She paused, and we all thought of the men we had lost, and of Stiggis fighting to the end. Again came the roar of the cannons, shaking the world around us. “They think we are done. They think they have the wounded fox in a corner. And they do. But the fox is cunning, wily, and full of tricks.” She paced as she spoke, meeting the eyes of the men she passed. “To finish the job, they will have to come into our corner, the one we call home. And in our home, in the dark and the wet, they will break, just as the crew of the Tide Mauler broke, and the crew of the Lucky Rabbit broke, and the crews of the Empire’s best we slew on the beaches of Fracia last year broke. Facing the crew of the Sea Maggot , the most feared fucking crew on all the seas, facing them close as lovers, hacking them down in the shadows, they will break.”
“Aye!” we roared in answer to her, for though there was no chance we could win, she had reminded us of the dream. We howled like animals, the animals they wanted us to be, the monsters in the cave that the heroes of the Empire came to slay. Yes, we would be those monsters, and they would feel our claws and teeth.
